BRAS COUPE
"Kristin, I love you," I blurted, sounding like I was trying to convince myself more than Kristin, even though I was sincere. I both wanted her and wanted her to know I wanted her. Nevertheless, like rotely instructing a client on how to fill out a 941, at the moment, I felt emotionally disengaged.
I snuggled closer. "Kristin..."
"David, you don't have to say that to get me to do it. I know you love me."
As I pressed close to her, all down my chest I felt her body stiffen. There was no smile on her face as my fingers traced the outline of her lips. She was distancing herself from me like I was the manager of a department where thirty grand was missing. I reached across her head and turned off the lamp on the night table. Almost as soon as the room was dark she spoke, "I'm not staying tonight. I've got an early meeting and I want to be prepared."
I had been caressing the side of her face, down her neck and moving toward her breast when I stopped. Suddenly, I had the strangest sensation we were being watched. The light was out and we were alone, but it felt like Kristin's conscience was standing by the side of the bed auditing us. I imagined an unemotional spectre with PDA in hand intently and efficiently noting the details of every movement of two overeager people who were gropping in the dark searching for the right words to say to each other, determinedly trying to discover the right touches to unlock passion in each other.
I wanted to say, Kristin, what's the real reason you're not staying? I wanted to say, Kristin, are you tired of sleeping with me? Maybe you want out of this relationship. Maybe you don't know where this relationship is headed. God knows I don't know.
She placed my hand over her breast, "Come on, hurry up. I want to leave before ten."
I didn't want to hurry up. I wanted to take it slow, like they say women prefer in those self-help, sex manuals Kristin furtively reads. I don't know why people even read those books, the procedures never work like they say. Even the ones with pictures don't work. It's a case study of diminishing returns. You try all that stuff and afterwards, all you've managed to accomplish is you've "tried stuff." The profit margin's too thin when you only accrue an extra penny's worth of pleasure for every dollar of time you invest in reaching the ultimate climax.
She reached down and touched my dick. "You're not hard." She gently tugged at it. "Oh, David..." An exasperated exclamation, and then suddenly she scooted beneath the thin sheet covering us, and I felt her take me in her mouth.
Please hurry up and get hard, I vainly instructed my dick.
It didn't.
After a minute or so, she gave up, pulled the covers back and sat up in bed. So instead of me asking her what's wrong, she was checking on me, "Honey, what's wrong?"
I could feel my dick limp against my thigh. "Nothing."
"Nothing," she softly repeated my lie like a proctor giving you a second chance to admit you cheated on a test. Then, with the adroitness of a prosecution lawyer waving a key piece of evidence before the jury, she reached under the covers and fingered my dick. "Yes, there is."
I felt like I had been caught with a signed, blank company check in my wallet. Kristin had the uncanny ability to make me feel guilty about wanting to enjoy sex with her.
"Maybe, I'm just trying too hard." Upon hearing my words, she immediately moved her hand.
"Oh David," she said as she leaned over and kissed me. I didn't respond to her kiss.
I wasn't looking for pity and besides it wasn't me taking the prufunctory approach. "I'm alright."
I loved Kristin but I wasn't fully comfortable in bed with her yet. She would do whatever I asked her to but I always had to ask. I could never get a sense of what, if anything, she really wanted. Our relationship was humming along like a chain of hardward stores, efficient, neat, well stocked, well managed and totally without excitement.
The lamp light blazed on. I turned my head into the pillow. The light physically hurt my eyes. After the metallic click of the lamp there was a long silence.
"Did you hear about the shooting?"
So that's what it was that was bothering her. God, somebody was always getting shot.
"They," she paused briefly to let the weight of the loaded, one syllable sink in, "shot this lady's baby. My god, they shot a baby. None of us are safe."
"What color was the baby?"
"What difference does it make?" She misunderstood me. That was precisely my point, color shouldn't make a difference, but I knew that color was what she was really concerned about and not murder. "It was an innocent baby. Somebody has got to do something."
"What color, Kristin?"
"They didn't show the baby on television..."
"What was the child's name?"
"Etienne."
I turned my head away and looked at the wall. I knew what was coming next, the same old white/black issue. I didn't feel like arguing about the color of a dead baby and whether color made a difference.
"David, why did you turn away while I was talking? You make me feel everything I say is so wrong."
The words I didn't dare let out of my mouth, played loud and clear in my head: Because if I turn around and tell you how racist you're acting, we'll end up arguing with each other and I don't feel like fighting. The truth is you're upset because the baby was white. If the baby had been black you might or might not have said anything but you certainly wouldn't have felt threatened. You...
"I know you think I don't like blacks but that's not it. David, I'm scared."
"I know. I'm scared too," I agreed, except my fear wasn't for my personal safety. My fear was that blacks and whites would never get beyond being black and white, separate, unequal, and distrustful of each other.
"If you're scared, why did you move into this neighborhood? Something like fighting fire with fire?" I didn't answer and Kristin chattered on barely pausing for a response to her rhetorical question. "Soon as the sun goes down the only people walking around outside are..."
I turned over slowly, lay on my back, and covered my eyes with my forearm. "Are what? Murderers? Muggers? Rapists? Thieves?"
"You said yourself that some of these people don't even like the idea of you living in their neighborhood."
"I'm really sorry to hear about that baby." I uncovered my eyes and reached out my hand to touch her knee. She covered my hand with a firm grip.
"My brother says I should get a gun if I'm going to keep spending time with you."
"I bet your brother Mike owns every Charles Bronsen video ever made and carries a long barrelled forty-four like he's Dirty Harry, or is it David Duke?" my accusation hung in the air like a fart.
I could see her wanting to recoil but, like being trapped in one of those small interreogation rooms that IRS agents use for audits, there was no where to run and she had run out of documentation to prove her innocence. "Kristin, you don't have to come here unless you want to."
"I want to be with you." Our eyes locked and searched each other until I turned my head and flung my forearm back across my face. Kristin started her well rehearsed sales pitch, "Besides, it's senseless for me to come pick you up, take you to my place, then bring you back to your place, and then drive back to my place."
"That's right."
"And you refuse to buy a car."
"That's right. My bike and the buses do me just fine."
"So obviously if we're going to be together I have to come see..."
"At least until yall get bus service out their in civilized Metairie."
"David, I'm not complaining about coming to see you. I was just talking about the safety issue."
"Has anything ever happened to you around here, or to me? Has anybody even so much as said something out of line?"
"David, it only has to happen once... and then... then you're ruined for life."
"You only die once."
Why did I say that? I have to learn to control my mouth.
"Why did you say that? Mike says you have a death wish."
"So your brother Mike has given up the family construction business to become a psycologist, huh?" She flinched at my parry but continued her offensive.
"I told you about Ann Sheridan didn't I?"
"Yes."
"She'll never be right again."
We were about to get into a bad scene. This was one of those classic delimmas: you're callous if you don't sympathize with the victim and you're a bleeding heart if you criticize the routine stereotyping. I felt like I was trying to talk to a client who was also a good friend and who was trying to get me to help them cheat on their taxes. I guess I could say, let's not go there; it's not healthy. Or I could sympathize, being raped is a terrible, terrible thing.
"She's seeing a psychiatrist. She stays pumped full of drugs. And she can't even stand to be in a room with a black man." Clearly this was going to be one of those evenings when all of our time in bed would be spent talking about the major issues of the day rather than more productive and more pleasurable pursuits.
"Hey, you want a beer?" I bounded out of bed. Two hops and I was in the doorway, "Abita Amber." I looked back, Kristin shook her head no.
When I got back from the kitchen Kristin was laying still with the covers pulled tightly around her. I stood looking down at the trim form shrouded in my ice blue sheet. I had been so smitten by her from the first time I saw her jogging in the 5K corporate run.
"Hi, my name is David, and I just got to tell you, I think you're beautiful."
"David, I'm Kristin. Your flattery is appreciated, but you said it so easily, I'm sure I'm not the only girl who's heard that today."
"Look, I'm not from here. How does one get to talk to a girl like you?"
"Do you want to talk to a girl like me, or do you want to talk to me?"
"Touche." We walked in silence for a moment, catching our breath. Then we started talking, and we talked and talked, and talked some more. And now here we are several months later.
As the immediate past of our getting together jetted through my mind, I concentrated on Kristin's hairline and on the upper half of her face which was the only part of her visible. Her eyes were closed but I knew she was awake.
"Suppose it happened to me?" she said, picking up the conversation where we had left off when I tried the let's drink a beer evasion. Her voice was partially muffled by the sheet but the import of her question came through unimpeded.
I put the beer bottle down on top of Ed McMann's smiling face on the Publisher's Clearinghouse envelope announcing that I had won $30 million dollars. At least the worthless envelope made a convenient temporary coaster. Usually that junk went straight from the mailbox into the front room trash can, but Kristin insisted that I ought to reply because "who knows, you can win a lot of money"—as soon as she leaves it's trashville for that scam.
"Don't think like that," was my reply to her question as I leaned over and pulled the sheet down so that I could see her whole face.
"I can't help it. I'm a woman. You're a man. You just don't know."
I sat down facing the foot of the bed, one foot on the floor, my left leg drawn up next to Kristin.
"Every time I leave here after dark, it's traumatic." Ignoring the strain in her voice, I turned, leaned over, brushed back her auburn hair from the side of her face and lovingly surveyed her facial features. She was ravishing.
The subtle scent of an Italian perfume intoxicatingly waffed upward from the nape of her neck. The milk white orb of a perfect, polished pearl, stud earring highlighted her porcelin smooth, golden colored facial skin which was cosmetized with a deft finesse that made it almost impossible to tell what was flesh and what was foundation.
New Orleans women, the mixture of French, Italian, English, Indian, Black and, god knows, what else gave a new meaning to feminine pulchritude. She had a classic Romanesque nose and a pert mouth whose tips ended in a slight upturn which almost made it impossible for her to frown. The attractiveness of Kristin's almond shaped, light brown eyes nearly hypnotized me and made it hard to respond to what was clearly some serious issues that she wanted to talk about.
"Sometimes, when I get home, I have nightmares thinking about whether somebody has broke in and...
"And what, shot and robbed me or something?"
"Yes."
"Is that why you always call in the morning."
"Yes."
"I'll be sure to phone you if something happens to me," I tried to joke.
"David what are we going to do?"
"Try to keep on living. Try to love each other. Try to make this city a better place."
"That all sounds so noble but I keep thinking about that baby and about Ann."
"Don't think about it."
"That baby wasn't thinking about it and now he's dead. Before it happened to Ann, she never thought about it. I'm not an ostrich. I can't just stick my head in the sand and forget about it." I had to smile at that and hold my sarcasm in check. I had started to say that's exactly what you're doing by living in Metairie.
After a short pause, Kristin continued, "Why do they act like that. They have to live here too? Can't they see that..."
"Kristin, sweetheart, we're all in this together," I whispered while running the back of my fingers up and down her forearm.
"No, we're not. We're the ones who have everything to l....," her vehemence indicated a real feeling of being wronged.
It never seems to occur to many of us that black people suffer more from crime than we do. "You know the overwhelming majority of murder victims are black. You know most of the rape victims are blac..."
"I know about Etienne. I know Ann."
"I bet Ann was crazy long before that guy raped her," I said under my breath. Before she could ask me to repeat what I never should have uttered aloud in the first place, I tried to change the subject. "Come here," I said as I slid beneath the covers and pulled her toward me. Outside somebody was passing with some bounce music turned up to 15. Bounce was that infectious, New Orleans variation on rap that featured chanted choruses over modern syncopated beats. I felt Kristin stiffen in my arms as the music invaded the atmosphere of my bedroom.
"I don't know how you stand it," she said into my chest.
"It's just music," I responded while rubbing my face into her hair.
"I'm not talking about the music."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, pulling back slightly so I could read her physical expressions.
"Not knowing when one of them..."
"Them. Them! Who is them? You mean a black person," I questioned while disassembling our embrace and stretching my arms upward.
She propped up on one elbow and spoke down to me. "No, I mean one of those crazy young black guys, the kind who would shoot you for a swatch watch."
I looked her directly in the eyes, "You mean the kind who listens to that music we just heard?"
Kristin didn't answer. After a few seconds, I turned away briefly at the same time that Kristin reclined and twisted her head to stare up at the ceiling. I watched her and waited for her reply for about forty-five seconds. Although she didn't say anything, something was clearly going through her mind. Her eyes were darting quickly back and forth like she was checking figures in a set of books against figures on an adding machine tape. I finally broke the silence with a dare, "Penny for your thoughts."
She responded while still looking up at the ceiling, "Honest injun?" That was our playful code to inaugurate a series of questions and answers with no holds barred.
(end of part 1 of 4)