in the a.m., put in eight miles flat, then came back and tried to decide what I was gonna do with the rest of my weekend. My friends, Womack and his family, lived right over the hill, and I was thinking about going over that way. He has a house full of kids, three little boys and a brand-new little girl, so we’d end up either shooting hoops in his backyard, playing Nintendo, or watching a Disney video that we’d seen a thousand times. That was my plan until Dana called me from a cell phone, a technological device that players use.
I cut to the chase. “I wanna see you today.”
She maintained her business tone: “You don’t waste no time.”
“Nope. Tomorrow’s never promised, have to go for what I know today.”
“Before we go any further, do you have a girlfriend?”
“Nope.”
“I’m not looking for drama. Been there, done that, wrote a postcard.”
“Same here.”
There was a pause. In the background I heard her car radio whistling soft jazz, the echo of traffic too. She said, “I’m leaving church.”
“Want to meet me for lunch at either Aunt Kizzy’s or Dulan’s?”
“No can do. I have an open house today with Gerri.”
“Open house can’t last all night. Wanna catch a movie after that?”
“I’ll call you when I get some free time.”
“Well, can I get a number where I can reach you?”
“I’ll call you.”
Then she was gone again.
After my wife, I didn’t have a lot of faith in women, not on a romantic level, so I didn’t expect Dana to be a woman of her word.
Monday evening after work, Dana and I met up in Ladera at Magic Johnson’s buzzing Starbucks, another overcrowded meat market for the twenty-something that’s been disguised as an extravagant coffee house. We talked for about an hour, then she glanced at her watch and said she had to go. Her pager had been blowing up the whole time. I figured she must either be living with somebody or had somebody in her life. Tuesday, on my lunch break, I called her job, had a short phone conversation. Wednesday, didn’t hear from her at all. Thursday, another brief conversation during lunch.
Finally, she gave me her home phone number. But that was because she was having problems with her PC, needed me to come by and look at it.
Wanted to get some free work out of me. Just like a woman.
A one-bedroom condo in Culver City, the side of town that used to be all movie studios but now was overpriced condos. Her place wasn’t a castle, but it wasn’t a dungeon either. IKEA-style furniture, gray carpet, white walls, vaulted ceilings, black-and-white pictures from Harlem, a lot of books. I mean, way over three hundred books, some new, most of them old, some stacked in a corner, some on a bookcase, a stack in the loft next to her white computer stand—and those were all she kept when she left Harlem.
When I got there, her phone rang. It was a dude. I could tell by the way her tone dropped, the way she sucked her jaw in, the way her body shifted away from me.
Dana wore black stretch jeans, dark blouse with three buttons open and sleeves rolled up to her elbow, silver bracelets on her right arm, scarf over her braids, glasses with small oval lenses, her look more genius than diva.
Her hand went over the receiver and she whispered uncomfortably: “Long-distance. I’ll be back.”
I pretended I was so into her computer that I hardly noticed.
She left me in the loft, reformatting her disc drive, reloading all of her software, making sure her modem and fax were connected. She took the phone downstairs, went into her bedroom, stayed gone for almost an hour.
When she came back, she had a confused lover’s disposition.
I finished her PC. She thanked me with a handshake. I left.
Told myself, don’t waste your time.
“Black Man Negro, where you at?”
I laughed along with my buddy, then told him, “I just got in from the gym, Womack. How’s UPS treating you?”
“Same way they’ve been treating me for the last ten years. Working me like a Hebrew slave.”
We talked for a while. His three boys all hopped on the phone at some point, all wanted to say hi to their uncle Vince before they got ready for bed. His little girl was asleep. I’m the godparent to his children. He’s the godparent to mine.
Womack asked, “You see my wife up at the gym?”
“Nope. Didn’t see Rosa Lee.”
“She wasn’t in Evelyn’s class?”
“She