Heat Read online

  I was feeling it now and tossed my hair casually over my shoulder as I offered a soft smile to a man who stood watching me from the other side of the carousel. His wife was chatting endlessly on her cell phone.

  Possibilities all around me, and who would know if I met with the immigration officer? Who would know if I fucked the married man with the attention deficit wife? No one but me! This was my reality show and I was the only one who had access to the channel.

  I plucked my suitcase from the carousel and set it down beside my feet. I had one more bag left and looked behind me to see how long the customs line was.

  The tourists never queued up on the line “Items to Declare” even though they were coming in with American food products and electronics.

  They sailed, smiling, through the “Nothing to Declare” line while casting quick glances at the residents of the islands, whose luggage was being opened and dumped on the large tables so customs officials could go through their belongings like mad dogs.

  The second bag rolled around and I made my way to the “Nothing to Declare” line.

  The stone-faced customs inspector peered at my declaration form and glanced at the green passport I clutched in my hand before checking me out from head to foot and then nodding that it was okay for me to pass.

  I was outside. Back out beneath that glorious sky. Oh God, it felt good! It felt better than good: it felt perfect.

  “Hey, gal.” Neville’s voice came from the left of me. I turned, then rushed and threw myself into him.

  “I missed you too, baby.” He laughed.

  Geneva

  i’d been sitting, crying and smoking, since five a.m.

  At around three o’clock I’d suddenly jumped straight out of my sleep. “What have I done?” I yelped in the darkness as I reached for the lamp switch. Directly across from my bed were my dresser and mirror. My reflection looked back at me. My short Afro was matted to one side. I looked horrible!

  “My hair!” I wailed. Why had I done this to myself—why, why! What had possessed me to cut my hair off?

  I leapt from the bed, pacing the floor and pulling at the short kinky strands. I looked at my reflection again; I looked like a man, or a straight-up dyke!

  Now I looked even bigger, rounder, fatter! Deeka was going to flip, totally freak out, when he saw me. It was over. I knew he would take one look at me and end it.

  “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

  I could fix it, right? I could get Shenika from the third floor to put some extensions in. Yeah, yeah. Long braids, right down my back, to my ankles, down to the friggin’ floor!

  That’s what I would do. As soon as the sun came up I would call her and make an appointment.

  I laughed out loud at my foolishness and then snickered at my ingenuity as I climbed back into bed and turned off the lamp. An hour later my eyes were still open and my heart was racing. Another hour passed and sleep was nowhere in sight.

  I climbed out of bed again and lumbered into the kitchen and then to the fridge. Two glasses of Diet Pepsi later, I was sad again.

  I looked at the clock; Crystal would be on her way to the airport now. I reached for the yellow wall phone. I would call and wish her a good trip, a safe trip. I pressed the first three numbers of her cell phone and then my mind clicked.

  Why should I wish her anything?

  She knew that Deeka and Eric wouldn’t be home for another three weeks. Couldn’t she have waited until they came back? She was selfish. Selfish and stupid! Who in their right mind would keep flying down to see a man who was clearly unavailable? He was using her, that’s what he was doing, and Crystal was too stupid to see it.

  Well, she deserves whatever she gets, which will probably be a disease!

  I slammed the phone down again.

  Later for her! She wasn’t nothing but a flat leaver anyway.

  After pacing the apartment for twenty minutes I decided to do some cleaning. There was dust everywhere, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d scrubbed the bathroom tile.

  I turned on the radio and the apartment filled with music. The DJ was playing old-school jams, and I was bopping my head to McFadden and Whitehead’s ever-popular tune “Ain’t No Stop-pin’ Us Now” when the phone rang.

  I reached for the phone with one hand and turned down the volume on the radio with other.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, baby, how you doing?” Deeka’s voice came to me as if from the far end of a long hallway instead of where he actually was, which was thousands of miles away in Saudi Arabia.

  “Deeka?”

  I was so happy to hear from him I immediately became choked up.

  “Are you all right, baby? You sound like you’ve been crying. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, wiping at my eyes and clearing my throat.

  Of course everything wasn’t okay with me. Men are so stupid. How could everything be okay?

  Was he here?

  Was my son here?

  No, they weren’t, and neither was my best friend either. Everybody was gone. I was all alone.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Is Eric there with you?”

  “Nah, baby, he’s out on the town.”

  My own son couldn’t find the time to call me, his mother. I was the one who’d laid up on a hospital gurney for thirty-six hours straining to push that big-headed boy out from between my legs. But oh no, he was in no hurry to get out of me—it was like he was scared to come into the world!

  Now he’s grown and done forgot about the nine months I carried him inside of me, done forgot about what I went without so that he could have.

  All that sacrifice, all that pain, and for what? Nothing, that’s what! Not even a fucking phone call.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I miss you, baby.”

  Did he miss me or was that just something he felt he needed to say?

  If he missed me so fucking badly, why didn’t he just hop his ass on a plane and come home and show me how much he was missing me? He wasn’t missing—

  “What was that?” I asked, pressing the phone even closer to my ear.

  Was that a woman I heard in the background? Deeka had a woman laid up in his bed, spread eagle, her cookie spread out for all of the world to see. He probably had his finger up in her right now. Son of a bitch!

  “Nothing, babe, just the television. Wait a minute—let me turn it down.”

  Likely story! What’s he doing now, sucking on it, licking it?

  “There, is that better?”

  I looked at the phone and calmly placed it back down on its cradle.

  Fuck him.

  Chevy

  i was still stewing over my humiliation at Melu-Melu yesterday when my cell phone rang. The word “Unknown” came up. That could only mean one of two things: it was either Noah calling or a bill collector, and I didn’t want to speak to either one of them.

  I was stretched out on the couch, Anthony Hamilton blaring from the hi-fi. I turned on my side and my vision fell on the stack of bills piled on the sofa table. I quickly turned my attention to the aquarium and the expensive fish, which watched me with disdain from behind the glass.

  Had I fed them today? I couldn’t remember.

  I turned roughly onto my back and my eyes locked with the glossy, smoldering ones of the artist formerly known as Prince as he glared down at me from the poster on the wall.

  Eyes, eyes everywhere, I thought, and turned back onto my side again. My stomach grumbled but I ignored it—there wasn’t any food in the refrigerator anyway. I had thirty dollars in my wallet, but needed that to buy a Metrocard to get to work next week.

  I was going to starve to death.

  Maybe I could scrounge a meal off Crystal. I hadn’t seen her in a while.

  Sitting up and reaching for my cell phone, I rehearsed what I would say to her:

  “Hey, Crystal, girl, where you been? We should really get together. It’s been a while.”

  I grinned to myself as her p
hone began to ring. I had it all planned out: when we finished our meal I would dig into my purse and look up with a shocked look on my face and announce, “Omigosh, I left my wallet at home!”

  “Hello?” Crystal answered with a hushed voice.

  “It’s Chevy—what you doing today?”

  There was a pause and then she said, “I’m on the plane. We’re getting ready to pull off from the gate.”

  I sat right up. “Where are you going?”

  “Antigua. Gotta go,” she said, and hung up. I just stared at the phone. Crystal was on her way to Antigua—now who would feed me?

  I tossed the phone down and began to rack my brain.

  There was always Geneva. I hadn’t borrowed money from her in years, so she shouldn’t give me too much of hard time.

  Just as I was about to dial her number, the house was suddenly filled with the sound of blaring music. The base was so loud that the windows were rattling.

  “What the—” I started and then rose from the couch and hurried to the window.

  There was a moving truck parked in front of the house next door, and behind it were two Hummers, an H2 and H3, and an old Ford Mustang. All twelve doors were wide open, blaring the popular reggae song “Willie Bounce.”

  There were about eight stocking-capped men unloading the tackiest furniture I had ever seen. Mattresses with piss stains, two broken rocking chairs, and an ugly ecru-colored Formica dining table with matching chairs. “Ecck!”

  Standing in the middle of the sidewalk was an oversize woman with multicolored extensions hanging from her scalp like ropes. She was dressed in a pink tube top that barely covered her triple-D-size breasts or the stomach that bulged out beneath it.

  And to top it off, she had the nerve to be wearing shorts, putting her varicose veins on display.

  A cigarette dangled lazily from the corner of her mouth, and gathered around her legs were more than a dozen children, ranging in age from two to eleven, not counting the infant she balanced on her hip.

  I stepped back from the window and thought, Oh, Noah is going to have a fit.

  I’d been desperate in the past. But not as desperate as I was sitting on the train headed uptown. Headed to Geneva’s place. Headed to the projects.

  I was left with no other choice. A girl’s gotta eat, gotta get her hair and nails did, right?

  Funny enough, as I was sitting around debating whether or not I was going to call Geneva, the phone rang and who do you think was on the other end? None other than Geneva Holliday herself!

  We hardly ever call each other, so imagine my surprise.

  After the obligatory hello she launched right into the fact that Crystal was off again, running behind that man, and how all men were shit to begin with, including her son.

  Now, that statement took me off guard, because Geneva loved that son of hers more than life itself and I had never heard her say a negative word against him.

  She went on to say that both Eric and Deeka were over in “Sadi-rabia,” fucking everything that moved.

  “Saudi Arabia,” I corrected her, but Geneva didn’t hear a word I’d said, and if she had, she just ignored me.

  “It’s just you and me, Chevy, just you and me—we got to stick together,” she said.

  Just she and I? I didn’t think so.

  I gave the phone a quizzical look. Geneva sounded out of her mind. “Have you been drinking?” I ventured.

  “Nah, but I sure do need me a Corona or two right about now,” she grumbled, and took a long puff off her Newport. “You wanna come up and knock back a few with me?”

  Now, y’all know I don’t drink beer, but I would if I could get a meal and few dollars out of it.

  “Sure. I’ll be there by two.”

  So here I was, seated on the A train headed uptown. I tell you, the things a woman has to do to get along in this world.

  Crystal

  we stopped at a rum shack that was perched on top of a hill overlooking the ocean. The heat was less suffocating there, being kept at bay by the cool ocean breeze.

  I ordered a bottle of water and a vegetable patty; Neville also had a veggie patty but chose to wash his down with a bottle of beer.

  We sat in silence for a while, watching the other patrons but mostly staring out over the water. I was full, spilling over with peace and happiness. I’d only just arrived, but I knew I wouldn’t be near ready to leave in seven days. And, as if reading my mind, Neville reached across the small white plastic table and asked, “Can’t you stay a little more than a few days?”

  I smiled at him. “I wish I could, but I’ve taken so much time off already.” I sighed and ran my thumb along the back of his hand.

  “Really?” Neville’s expression was one of surprise. “It’s just April.”

  “I know—I’ve been in kind of a bad place,” I said, moving my eyes away from his face and back out to the water.

  “What’s going on with you, babe?” Neville’s voice was laced with concern.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “I think maybe I need a change.”

  “Well, Antigua is a great starting point.”

  My eyes found his face again. His strong jaw, the three gray whiskers gleaming in the midst of his otherwise dark mustache. He was beautiful.

  “Yeah, I think it is.”

  We sat a little longer, talking some, but mostly just savoring the beauty that was thriving all around us. The sun had already started to dip when Neville guided the car up the narrow road that led to his home.

  “Something’s different?” I said as I stepped from the jeep.

  Neville grinned proudly. “Yes, I had the outside painted.”

  I snapped my fingers. “That’s it. Wow, it looks wonderful. What color is this?” I asked, moving closer to the side of the house.

  “Vanilla.”

  “Vanilla.” I moaned as I leaned my face close to the wall and stuck my tongue out.

  Neville laughed. “I doubt it tastes like vanilla, though.”

  Raven, Neville’s black pug, was the first to greet us when we stepped through the door. Sherman, the African gray parrot, was the second, squawking loudly from his corner in the living room and then saying, “Hello.”

  Even the rainbow-colored tropical fish seemed to wave their fins in welcome from within their glass aquarium.

  I slipped out of my mules and left them on the straw mat at the door. The wooden floor was warm beneath my feet. Neville carried my bags into the master bedroom, while I walked to the sliding glass doors and slid them open.

  The cool evening air rushed in. Below, the boats in the harbor moved slowly out to sea, while others dropped anchor and settled in for the night. All of them turned on their lights and suddenly the dark sea seemed to be filled with twinkling stars.

  “God, it’s so beautiful here,” I said aloud.

  “What’s that, baby?” Neville asked, coming up behind me and wrapping his strong arms around my waist.

  “I said, it’s so beautiful.”

  Neville kissed my neck. “Yes, yes, it is. And you being here makes it even more beautiful.”

  I turned into him then, pressing my lips against his mouth. Our tongues found each other. His mouth was hot and he was already hard, and my hand responded by pushing its way underneath the waistband of his linen pants, finding the narrow slit in his Calvins, and then wrapping around his manhood.

  “Ooooh,” I moaned, already feeling my legs beginning to buckle. I wrapped my fingers around his meat and marveled at how my heart and his member were beating the same rhythm.

  Neville was slowly unbuttoning my blouse, and then unclasping my bra, springing my breasts free. His mouth was on my nipples; his tongue felt like hot taffy on my skin, and just as sweet. I threw my head back in ecstasy.

  We were in plain sight, right on the front veranda, the moon a spotlight on our foreplay. I could hear cars moving up and down the road along the side of the house. I knew that the passengers could clearly see our prelude to lovemaki
ng, but I didn’t care.

  “Come on,” Neville said in a husky voice as he took hold of my hand and led me from the veranda. I thought that we were headed toward the bedroom, but instead we walked the length of the house and out through the back door.

  Once outside, he pointed to a tall wooden structure that stood directly in the middle of the backyard.

  “What’s that?” I asked, bringing my hands up and onto my breasts. I was suddenly aware of my nakedness.

  “You’ll see.”

  I followed him to what looked like a huge wooden box. Once there, I saw that there was a black handle, which Neville pulled. The door swung out and open. I peeked inside; it was a shower.

  “A shower? Outside?”

  “It’s great, baby—do you know what it feels like to bathe your skin with the blue sky overhead, or the stars?”

  He reached in and turned the shower on. Without another word, he stripped out of his clothes and stepped in, beckoning me from beneath the spray of the water. After a moment’s hesitation, I followed.

  “Let me,” he said, when I reached for the sea sponge on the shelf.

  After he squeezed what smelled like lavender bath oil onto the sponge, he instructed me to turn around. “Press your hands against the wall, spread your legs.”

  I did as I was told.

  Neville started at the base of my neck, with slow circular movements that released the knots I had carried in from New York living. Then he moved the sponge down my back, across my buttocks, and then gently, ever so gently, to the space between my buttocks.

  My breathing went shallow. I wanted to turn around, but Neville put a firm but gentle hand on my shoulder, pushing me back into position.

  When I was good and soapy, Neville leaned his naked body against me. Cupping my breasts, he rolled my nipples between his thumb and forefingers while he stroked my spine with his tongue.

  I was shaking; my fingernails clawed at the wood.

  Neville’s penis was between my legs. I squeezed my thighs closer together. He moaned and began a slow thrust. I pushed back; I wanted him inside me so badly.