Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing Part 62

FROM Drop.

Friday, I opened the door for her. This little woman, too proud to even look up at me past the rib she came to. She stood, beneath layers of white skies and before wet sidewalk, a vision. A face so black it was bold, cheeks a duo of sweeping circles beneath the soft rainbow of a head wrap that contained all the colors that could scream or cry for you.

"Is this the place?"

"Excuse me?"

"Is this the place that's supposed to be taking pictures of me?" she asked. She was so much smaller than I'd been expecting, but she had to be the dancer David hired: She was too pretty not to be getting paid for it.

"Please, please come in," I managed. I shouldn't even have been answering the door because by this time, besides clients growing and waiting for our attentions, Urgent had a secretary, too, a bony, Marlboro Lightsmoking Brixton boy named Raz who should have been down here with this woman, saving me from my awkwardness. The shoot was scheduled for a half hour before, but models, David reminded, were always late. Taking in the smell of her: of violet water and hot sauce.

"Fionna Otubanjo?" She just walked by me and started heading upstairs; I couldn't tell if she'd nodded. Tiny, this one. The size of a girl but the shape and proportions of a woman, making the stairwell look cavernous as my eyes struggled to keep perspective.

After I took her coat, introduced her to the photographer, the stylist, and even Margaret, who was taking a rare intermission from her reading to make an appearance on the third floor, I showed Fionna to the bathroom that would be her dressing room for the day. Then I pulled David to a far and relatively secluded section of the floor.

"Cuz, she's gorgeous." Somebody in the room had to acknowledge this.

"Really? A bit of a head on a stick, I thought. A short stick at that. She looked bigger on her Z card. If you like, maybe later we'll go for a curry or something, you could ask her to tag along." David reached into the cereal box in his hand and threw a kernel into my mouth.

Golden Crowns, an old-brand cereal owned by one of several companies that realized Urgent knew how to implant hunger in even the most bloated, who understood that our work was the stuff people were starting to whisper about, the kind that would be bringing back industry awards in the year to come. Its box stood in the center of the white cove, ready for its picture to be taken, short and proud and belligerent with caloric prophecies. Golden Crowns, a combination of flour, water, high-fructose corn syrup, and yellow dye number 24, but also something so sweet it didn't need milk or morning.

"Alright, luv," David was bellowing at the emerged Fionna. "What we need you to do is just run, leap right over the box, right? Spread your legs open like scissors, give it as much as you can. We want to capture you directly above the Golden Crowns, almost as if they gave you the gift of flight."

"I can do that," Fionna said, looking at me, and wasn't it immediately clear that she could do much more? That she could hold your head in her lap, rub her little palms over your face and wipe away everything else besides the blackness behind closed eyes? That if there were arranged marriages I would have had David call her family immediately on my behalf, have stood behind him smiling and jumping up and down like a h.o.r.n.y Masai?

The photographer's tin can lights sat on the floor, hung from erected scaffolding, rested on the ends of tables and chairs, all pointing in one direction, metallic ravens holding brilliant court. The heat almost solar in intensity, pulsing away from the illumination to the rest of the s.p.a.ce beyond, the warm touch linking all those in the room together. And within the fire, one body moving. To watch her run, to see her leap. The determined start with bare feet slamming the floor and then the jump, the seizing of s.p.a.ce with a ferocious kick, a smile that flashed gloriously as soon as the pivot foot left the ground. How could one so short fly so high? And all this along with a bowl of glued Golden Crowns in one hand and a spoon in the other. Running and leaping and landing. The toe and ball of one foot touched back down and the rest of the body followed, the flesh moving slightly past the limits of her bones for a moment until it bounced back into structure again. David walked behind me and snapped his fingers by my ear-"Pay attention to the work"-but how could anyone with her perspiring until the midnight fabric of her leotard became even darker beneath the neck and arms, her form becoming an essay on the possibilities of blackness, a diatribe about refusing the limitations of one word? I sat, leaned against David's desk with my s.h.i.+rt open, my sleeves rolled, watching. Witnessing the sweat drip away from her as she ran and explode around her when she landed, giving a s.h.i.+ne to the floor. Steaming the windows to opaque rectangles, forcing me to sweat along with her, to feel my own oily wetness and susceptibility, until, in one particularly triumphant soar (spoon and bowl held by hunger), she landed in the puddle of sweat that she created, broke the spell, and bore a new one in a helpless painful cry.

"Oh, f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!"

The first to reach her, I held Fionna's back as she held her ankle. "Are you okay?"

"No, it's not okay. I'm hurt!"

"Is it broken?"

"No. I don't know. I don't think so." Inspired by the urgency of the moment, I moved around Fionna and gently took her leg into my lap, touched her ankle with my famished fingertips, bent the joint slowly in my hands up until "Ow!" and slowly back down until "Oh!" and left "Ew!" and right "AY!" until "No, it's not broken" but d.a.m.n, isn't it divine to hear you scream and imagine that the sound must be the same when pleasure motivates it?

After the food, after the drinks, after it was too late for a limping girl to ride all the way back to East London, I offered my place to her for the night. It was the perfect time to ask the question: I had finally reached that delicate plateau where I was drunk enough for bravery but not too smashed to p.r.o.nounce the words. Fionna agreed that would be good, "Because I'm very tired." When I carried her from the cab into my apartment, the driver looked at me funny: Even he knew she was too pretty for a wreck like me to be holding. I managed to get out my keys and open the door without dropping her or her overstuffed duffel bag that weighed nearly as much as she did. What's in it?

"Just some of my clothes. Lately I've been staying with girlfriends while I hunt for a new bedsit. This is your place?" Fionna asked inside.

"Yeah. This is me."

"You live alone then? No roommates or anything? How much do you pay?"

"I don't know. David says he take it out of my salary."

"I've been looking for a new place for months, and I haven't seen one this nice. Not one that didn't cost a fortune." She made me feel unusually lucky.

I turned on every light in the house as I carried her upstairs to the living room, trying to destroy any shadow that might scare her. Trying also not to bang her bad ankle against a wall. The swelling had gone down in the hours since the sprain, a.s.sisted by a variety of towel-wrapped foodstuffs Margaret found for her, but it was still an ugly thing sitting above her foot.

"Were you robbed recently?" Fionna looked around like maybe she didn't want me to put her down in this place.

"No, is something wrong?"

"You don't have any furniture," she said, shocked, staring at my apartment with nothing more than its own dust and possibilities to fill it. "How long have you been living here?"

"About nine months. I bought a kitchen table and some chairs." Actually, Margaret had made that donation from her bas.e.m.e.nt, along with some dishes, flatware, and pots and pans after the time she came by the house to offer me leftover spaghetti and had to watch me sit on the floor eating it with my hands.

"Do you like it here?" Fionna's was a new voice echoing around these walls.

"I love it. I'm not going back to America."

"I meant the flat. There's so much room, isn't there? You should really get some more furniture, right? Some carpets and such. Make a home. It could be really nice, once you get the proper things together. Then you could rent a room out or something. It's too big for one person." Fionna took the seat on the futon I offered to her. I turned on my clock radio hoping for something romantic; it was pathetic, that tinny, cheap, monotone sound. I slapped it off again and tried to smile.

"Have you thought of painting any of the rooms something besides white?" Fionna asked.

"I like the white walls, actually. It makes me feel kind of free, for some reason. No stimuli. It's like the color of silence. It's an old place: a bit more than a hundred years, I think. You should see what they used to paint the place. In some rooms, I've actually chipped at the paint a bit, with a knife, all the way down to the wood, to see all the layers the walls were covered in before. You know this room was actually pink once," I said, motioning around. "And light blue, too." What the h.e.l.l was that? I was making things up and I still sounded like an idiot.

Fionna looked around. Her leg hung out of her dress; you could see the light cut a perfect line down whatever angle of it was closest to you. Her toes, poking out the front of her sandals, were long and beige on the bottom, as if she'd been walking through sweet pancake batter. On one toe was a golden ring, a strip of solid metal seizing a strip of delicate skin. If I took her foot in my hand and pulled that ring off slowly, she would be more naked than the mere lack of clothes could ever provide.

"Do you like it?" Fionna asked. "It's very expensive. I got it in the town of my father. In Nigeria. I could probably sell it here for enough for a car, if I wanted one." Keep talking. As long as we're talking I won't try to kiss you, and then things won't go wrong. There won't be that moment when you say "Please, no," and then that awkward time after I apologize when we're both sitting here, trying to act out the scene that mirrors this perfect time before anything stupid was done.

"I've always wanted to go to Africa. I actually got David to put some of my money aside, a bit each check, into a savings account, and that's the big thing I was planning. Fly down into Egypt, go into Cote d'Ivoire, then go by land the rest of the way into West Africa. Do you go back there a lot?"

"Sometimes. I go at Christmas sometimes, to see them. Christmas, there's parties, things to do. Our house, where I was born, is very big, very old. You would like it. It was the magistrate's, when it was still a colony. Tall ceilings, and so much wood. My whole family lives there. Maybe you could visit. We could have a good time there. I want to go to America someday."

"No, you don't."

Fionna fell asleep on the futon, halfway through an Alec Guinness flick on BBC2. Awake, I stared at her, petrified that if I fell asleep I would succ.u.mb to flatulence, or wake up with a viscous pool of my warm drool coating us both. So I just kept looking, scared she would wake up and catch me and then it would really be over. This wasn't like with Alex; it could not be as simple as reaching out to another sibling of solitude. Fionna was of another caste, the one stories were told about and pictures were taken of, so far above my own I was surprised she found me visible. I kept looking at her closed lids as the b.a.l.l.s swam joyously beneath them. My ear resting on the mattress edge, listening to her breath.

Sat.u.r.day, a lack of blinds combined with an eastern exposure meant that, as usual, I woke up at dawn blinded and sweating. Scared that she would awake and then leave me, I got dressed and went down to the supermarket to get some food, cook a breakfast so big that she couldn't move.

At Sainsbury's I resisted the urge to stand gawking at the incomprehensibly large selection of baked beans and pork products by jogging through the aisles, grabbing at staples. Back at my front door, I became sure Fionna had already vanished, that inside was a good-bye note with a smiley face but no phone number, but upstairs she was still lying there, pulling on her top sheet with the blind gluttony of the sleeping. Back down in the kitchen, I cooked in careful silence: Shoes off, movements slow and studied, I even turned down the heat on the potatoes when the grease started popping too loud. When I finished, I could hear her above me. A repet.i.tive, scratching sound. Probably clawing her way out the living room window. But when I climbed the steps, the sound was coming from the bathroom. Fionna was in the tub. Crouched down on her knees, working on something. Her back to me, I saw her bare legs. The right ankle was so bloated it seemed to belong to another, much larger person.

'You don't clean the bath very often, do you? How can you take a bath in this?' Pus.h.i.+ng all her weight into the brush in her hand, scratching at the stain I had confused for permanent.

'I take showers,' I offered, pointing at the hose that she'd disconnected from the nozzle.

'Well, I prefer baths,' Fionna said, and kept scrubbing. Taking away not just the dirt but the discoloration that hung beneath it. Elbow jerking frantically, purposeful, as if she never wanted to see it again.

Sat.u.r.day night turned out to be Fionna's club night. Iceni, below Piccadilly: all jungle, free c.o.c.ktails for the best dancers, ladies free before eleven, men a tenner at the door. I'd managed to keep her around all day (you want some lunch, a nap, have you seen this video, wow it's time for dinner) so I wasn't about to lose her to my hatred of nightclubs. Once her ankle was wrapped, I carried her on my back down to the mini-cab, and then, in the West End, through the streets and into the club to a table full of waving, pointedly attractive women the same size as herself. 'My American' was how I was introduced, to which the response was 'Oh, right!' with smiles and ungripping handshakes.

Everywhere f.a.gs smoldering, f.a.gs burnt out, snubbed, f.a.gs crushed and left to die at the bottoms of dark bottles. Bright f.a.gs with wet lipstick stains perpetually kissing their b.u.t.ts. And for all of the hunting for unspent packs and elaborate lighting rituals (which usually commenced as soon as a new man stopped by to pay his respects to their grouping), I seemed to be the only one who was actually smoking, who was actually pulling the dark cloud into me and letting it spill back, warming my nostrils and s.h.i.+elding me from this room. It was the perfect evening because this was the perfect arena for me to go David-less out into the world: concealed under an unyielding blanket of sound, obscured by a calculated mix of darkness and random, off-color lights. Snug within the mist of tobacco, sips of my pint-cured bursts of self-consciousness. Saved by music so loud that it made my social deficiencies irrelevant. I was actually succeeding. Everyone seemed very pleased with my presence, introducing me to strangers for no apparent reason. The other ladies bent forward to me with occasional questions or comments. Somehow they'd been given the impression I was from New York, so I endorsed this misconception with several unprovable lies that we would both forget the next morning. Fionna held tightly on to my arm as if we were lovers. And then, just when her hand was getting warm, an intro to a song came on that made everybody at the table's eyes inflate as they reached out to clasp one another's hands.

In the seconds it took for the beat to kick in, Fi's friends were gone, off to dancing. Foreplay was over. Fionna released my arm. Everyone was screaming on the floor, hands in the air, bouncing as it there was cash on the ceiling. I stood up to watch. Look at them, b.u.mping, shaking, jerk, jounce. Fionna pulled herself up from her seat by grabbing my leg. Her head bobbed with them. On the floor, slightly below us, the crowd was spreading. These friends of hers could dance, and everyone in the room knew it. No partners: a flock of individuals, simultaneous soloists performing variations on the same work. The crowd grew still because watching them dance was more enjoyable than doing it themselves. I looked down at Fi to compliment them but her head had stopped nodding.

"Lift me."

Thank the Lord-time to leave. Riding this mood and with a little drink to blame any embarra.s.sments on, I could make my move in the cab home. I grabbed Fi into my arms and started heading for the exit.

"Where are you going?"

Fionna pointed to a wall. "Over there," she said, her finger pointing toward the dance floor, that place everyone else in the room was staring at. I walked. Someone brus.h.i.+ng past with two drink-filled hands banged Fionna's out-sticking foot and Fi screamed demonstratively, digging her nails into my arm as the guy cursed his spillage and kept going. "There. Over there." I was directed to a high table covered with flyers. "On top," I placed her rear at the table's edge. "No, on top." I lifted her higher till she had put her good foot down and was standing upon it, where everyone could see her. Immediately, knee bent and bad ankle behind her, arms reaching out to the air for balance, Fionna started dancing. "Chris, come on, come up and dance with me. No, come on, climb up. Now."

"I can't." I offered a grin as I yelled back to her. I really couldn't.

"Why?" Because if I got up there they would boo or laugh or throw rocks at my head. Because I wasn't made for the pedestal, I was unsuitable for display. No crowd would ever accept Chris Jones held up above them. Philly had already taught me that, and who knew me longer than it? Definitely not the graceful Fionna, who reached out to tug my hand while still doing her one-foot shuffle. I grasped hers just so she wouldn't stumble.

"I'll dance with you down here, so if you fall I can catch you," I told her, and she accepted that evasion, released me of the obligation of humiliating myself.

Look at the way she moves and imagine what she could do with two feet beneath her. Reluctantly fulfilling my promise, I began bobbing awkwardly below her, forwarding racial harmony by dispelling stereotypes of black grace with every pathetic jerk. But then the crowd took even that responsibility away from me. All around me, bodies stilling as they took her in. Little woman up above them moving like there was nothing you could put on her that she couldn't just shake off, radiating life so bright it might even burn your troubles, too. Whatever made us alive, whatever it was that made us more than functionally bags of blood, she had it and she was showing it to the room. A sliver of G.o.d vibrating there before us. And I knew everyone could see her the way I did because they were all trying to get a better glimpse, pus.h.i.+ng me out of the way to do so. Knowing instinctively that I shouldn't even be there to witness this event, the crowd expelled me, shoved me shoulder by shoulder back to the dance floor, now emptied. Fionna kept going; I could make out from over their heads. I don't know if she knew I wasn't there anymore, but I knew she knew the crowd was. That they were yelling for more and she was feeding them.

I went back to the table we'd been sitting at, picked up a drink I was pretty sure was mine. The other seats were deserted, so I commandeered a dark pocket in the corner, against the wall. For the remaining hours, I sat and played shepherd to the jackets and lighters the dancers left behind. The club made snakebites and the waitress didn't care how many I ordered, as long as she could keep the change from the tenner each time. So by the time the music ended and the only sound was my ears buzzing, I felt prepared for the solitary night bus home. But, as I struggled to get up again, there was Fionna, hopping back from the light to greet me, tugging on my hand once more.

"Why you come back for me?" I managed.

"Because we need each other." Fionna giggled, hugging my waist tightly (or was she keeping a drunken man from falling down?). Propping me against a pillar and hopping back off again to call us a mini-cab out of there. Having the bouncer help me out to the car. Waking me up in Brixton by giving a pinch to my cheek and delivering the words "Christopher, we're home."

Sunday, my day-after embarra.s.sment evaporated when Fionna walked into my bedroom, sheet wrapped around her, and said, "Chris, I have a bag of clothes already packed at my last bedsit that I've been meaning to retrieve. Maybe you could pick that up for me?" Immediately, fueled by hope, I was on the tube to Hornchurch, riding all the way out to the East London address she'd given me. The trip took as long as my last flight to Amsterdam, regardless of how close it looked on the Underground map. Maybe, if it was a large bag, she might stay the whole week.

The landlord was a big woman and a cop, dressed in a uniform when I got there. Her jacket was off and I could see her bra hugging her fiercely underneath the white s.h.i.+rt, her back looking as if it needed to be scratched. Smiling, I said I was here to pick up a bag for Fionna.

"Well, I'm sure you are, but first, let's see the money. Mind you, I told her that from before." There was an ATM a mile back by the tube station, so it didn't take me long to gather up the cash. When I got back the lady was standing at the door behind six suitcases, big enough to hide bodies and heavy enough to make me believe they did. I took a cab back to Brixton, paying the driver nearly forty bucks for the ride. From the car I walked to my door with three cases in each hand, letting the handles try to break my bones as the weight hammered my legs with each step.

At my front door, the odors-fried onions, sausage, hot pepper, and olive oil-all coming from my property. Inside, I stood at the kitchen door, luggage still in hand, looking at the place settings Fi had laid out on my table. "Try this." Grinning, she came toward me, one hand holding a spoon and the other guarding underneath it. She was wearing one of my T-s.h.i.+rts as if it was a dress; she'd even found one of my ties was a good belt for the outfit. My hands still caught inside handles, Fionna put the spoon's tip in my mouth and lifted it up so it could pour in. It was some kind of chili, I could taste the salt and the crushed tomatoes. When she pulled the spoon away, excess sauce dropped onto my bottom lip, sliding down to my chin. "Sorry," Fionna told me, and she reached forward and grabbed a d.i.c.k that was already hard for her, pulling me down to her eye level. Slowly, with the end of her tongue, Fionna retraced the drip's path along my chin up to my bottom lip. When she reached it, Fi surrounded mine with both of her own, catching me in her teeth and sucking my flesh clean again. Oh, to put my hands on her, to hold her to me as hard as she was now biting, but at my sides my swollen hands were now stuck in the luggage handles, which made things even more difficult when Fionna started pulling me down to the linoleum. Her teeth released, and I wasted precious time trying to maintain contact with those lips before I realized that she really wanted my face to drift away.

"Talk to me," she demanded, and my words began pouring confessions of attraction, instant love and des- "No. Talk to me black," African woman said to me, and neither one of us thought she meant Swahili, Yoruba, or Twi. Black. And not the black I coveted, not the one I was walking to. The other one. That was her price, the cost of this fantasy. Lady, do you know what you ask of me? Do you know what this payment says about my desire? Take it. So I gave that to her: released the owners.h.i.+p of my tongue to the sound it had been meant for. Oh, and wasn't that sound happy to be free again, eliminating prepositions and conjunctions with its loose grammar and curving my sentences into its drawl? Reveling in its parole and scheming for permanent freedom? Give ear to me, Fionna. Hear the voice of the life I want to smother. Listen to what the n.i.g.g.e.rs on the corner have to say to you. Her fingers traced the moving lips that spoke to her until those same hands went to my neck and pushed my face lower, down to a place I wouldn't a.s.sume clearance. Lips to lips once more. "Keep talking," Fionna demanded as my tongue took on additional duties.

My hands still stuck in suitcase handles, my arms outstretched above me like a gull in flight, I continued to rap my ghetto garble. As Fionna's moaning grew, I spoke louder. Wet words wandered within her. Fionna's fingers slipped to the back of my head and stayed there.

Keys in my hand was the best part of the day because there it was, physically, in my hands: David's world, heavy and jagged and multiplicitous, held together by a ring attached to a black plastic duck. Everything he had was contained within its weight and I stood on the street alone with it, unprotected, unguarded.

I would find the brown, round-head key, slide it in the door, then walk up the stairs to the kitchen where I heard him yell, "Make us a cuppa" which meant pour the old water out of the electric kettle and add cold water for the new. Lay mustard on the white bread and cover that with cheddar and put it in the grill hung above the stove.

While water boiled and cheese melted and brown man spat and farted in the bathroom beyond; I read the newspaper that Margaret would place on the table after she left for work hours before (always the Guardian and always placed back in order, section within section, without crease or jam stain, just like new although she had surely read it over breakfast hours before). When the sounds of his shower had ended I went back to the kitchen and poured one inch of milk into a mug that held one gray tea bag, then laid the steaming water on top of it. David would appear, in long pajama bottoms and still no s.h.i.+rt but maybe a towel across his thick shoulders or on his head like a frustrated boxer. He would sit hunched over, a few feet from the table, so that his head was nearly level with it as he held his tea mug close to his mouth with both hands. Sipping was the only treble. For ba.s.s, he might moan.

When Red Rose had burnt away the encrusted syllables he might begin with explanations of the night before ("After you left, I really tied one on, got right p.i.s.sed") or show me a souvenir of his travels ("See this sign? I pulled it off last night. Right off a stone wall with my hands, right? I was mad, p.i.s.sed out of my head. I used to chat up this girl that lived on Thorncliffe, number seventy-four. Lovely, you should have seen her.") or pa.s.sionately reveal his latest fascination ("Mushrooms are the fruit of the soil. It's like eating the earth when you eat them. That's what it is."). Then a walk to the third floor. David would get the messages from Raz, and we'd go down the blackboard in the center of the room, figure out the agenda and schedule whatever in-house or client meetings were needed.

But how long could that last? Particularly when the spritz of lager cans being opened marked the top of the hour better than Margaret's antique grandfather clock (the German one, with the thick oak sides, and the two bra.s.s pendulums)? Inevitably there came five-thirty, a time to pick up the downstairs before Margaret came home. A time to pull up empty and half-empty cans and the ashes of f.a.gs and spliff, for the list of ch.o.r.es to be executed while David hit the shower again, this time destined to arise with more clothes than his pajama bottoms. Was the work done? No, but as long as people were contacted, meetings were kept and deadlines were met, I could do all the work I needed to do that night, downstairs in my study, complete now with the drafting table, lamp, and file drawers that Fionna'd gotten me to buy, the only distraction being her calling me from upstairs to tell me when something good was on the telly ("Christopher, you'll like this one, come."). As long as David was there every morning, guiding me, ma.s.saging the clients, creating the designs, Urgent could keep going. David took care of the business, dealt with the people, I birthed the ideas. I was good at my job. I liked working. I liked working for him.

If the pre-Margaret ch.o.r.es were quick (get vitamin C, cod oil, and ginseng from Boots, renew the subscription to the Voice, mop kitchen floor) I could make my disappearance before six having taken care of things. If the ch.o.r.es took too long it was just "Do what you can do, I'll take over when she gets here. Wake me when you hear her keys in the door."

"Are you going to wipe his a.r.s.e, too?" Fi asked me. I was late. Only a little, but she had been waiting for me down by the ticket machines in Brixton tube station and that short homeless brother with the busted lip and the lobotomy scar had yelled at her. We had opera tickets for the Royal Albert: I'd never gone and she was excited she was going to show me.

"You know it's not like that. He takes care of me also," I told her, going down the escalator.

"David takes care of himself."

"David pays my rent, he pays my bills, everything. He got me here. That's how he takes care of me. He's my boy. Without David I would have nothing." And without David, I would be nothing. Lady, you don't know it, but without him propping me up, you wouldn't even be standing next to me.

"That man will suck as long as you let him, and then when there's nothing more he will fly off like a bloated bat. By then you will be too weak to even swat him down." Fionna stared forward while she said this, as if she were watching this unfold. For a second she wasn't a beautiful woman, someone who looked just the way beauty was supposed to. For a moment Fionna was just a skinny little black girl, hair straightened, lipstick done, trying to look cute in a dress she had no hips to be wearing. She could be from Nicetown maybe, East Mount Airy or Ogontz.

"Fi, really, don't worry. David is cool. Just because he needs me doesn't mean he's using me."

"Chris, who am I? I'm the one who loves you, the one who will always be here for you. I am the woman holding your hand." Fionna's hand was a light thing, impossibly soft, even at the palm. The thin veins on top could barely be traced without looking. Later, when we got to the show, I held it during the entire performance, letting my hand explore hers as she led me through the sound.

The opera was a story about an old guy who married a young chick and then she cheated on him, and they all suffered, but that didn't matter; I was a Phillystine and didn't care about that silliness. What mattered was that we sat close enough that you could see the spittle shooting out of the actors' mouths, that the voices of these performers were so strong, their sense of the emotion so complete, that when they sang I could feel their sound upon me, vibrating the hairs in my nose, as loud as when you're waiting for the sub at Fairmont Avenue and the express roars by. What mattered was that here was a plain old Philly boy, costumed in a suit and actually enjoying the sounds of this world. The only one under these ornate ceilings who knew what malt liquor tasted like, what to do when someone starts shooting up a party or how to open a Krimpet without letting the icing stick to its plastic bag.

Antiquated Desires.

BY CRIS BURKS.

I was practical when I married Mr. Pete, or rather, I felt obligated to marry him.

Mr. Pete first broached the subject of marriage the summer of Alex's fourth year as we lazed in Mama's backyard on Loomis Avenue. It was too hot to do anything but sip lemonade and watch Alex play with Paris, Mama's c.o.c.ker spaniel. Mr. Pete and Mama yakked about the good old days when my daddy was alive, and he and Mr. Pete ran the streets.

"Now, Helen, you know Alex never cheated," Mr. Pete a.s.sured Mama.

"Humph. Show me a man that doesn't cheat, and I'll show you a dead man," Mama said.

Mr. Pete laughed, low chuckles that sound sinister. The shrill of the phone disturbed our tranquillity.

"I'll get it." I rose, but Mama flagged me down.

"It's cranky old Pat," Mama said. "I told her I was coming over."

While Mama was in the house, Mr. Pete and I laughed at Alex and Paris's antics. Paris was so old that he limped as he tried to escape Alex's grasping hands.

"You know, I always wanted a son," Mr. Pete said.

"You and Miss Verna never had any children?" I knew the answer before I asked the question.

"No, Verna and I was married for almost forty years but she couldn't have children."

"Uhmm-hmm," I said. I was not good company for old folks like Mr. Pete and Mama. The past lived in their heads like old sitcoms, same stories told and retold. Their conversations revolved around things that happened, or should have happened, or shouldn't have happened.

"Here I am, seventy-three, and still wanting a child," Mr. Pete said. "A son from my blood."

"Well, Mr. Pete," I said brazenly, "you need a woman for that."