Z. Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Marie turned serious. “Since I’m assuming that you don’t go to bars regular, you must a come looking for me.” She didn’t say it friendly, like she’d been that morning. She looked down at the ice at the bottom of the glass, rearranging it with her straw. “Must need a place to stay.”

“No,” Tia said. “I don’t.”

“Don’t be no fool, girlfriend.” She met eyes with the bartender. “Gin and tonic.”

“I just came to say I did something with Dezi.”

Marie moved in closer. “You use protection?”

“I don’t think it’s what you think.”

Marie dug into her purple purse and produced a handful of condoms. She pressed them in Tia’s hand, under the bar, and squeezed Tia’s hand tight, many times, as if trying to Morse code a message.

Tia put the condoms in her skirt pocket. “I’m just asking for your help. I mean, you’re a—”

“A what?” Marie looked at her, daring her to say the word. “A whore?” Marie answered not bothering to lower her voice. The men at the bar looked at them. The bartender spray-gunned a drink, shaking his head. “Let me tell you something, little girl . I’m an independent. Damn straight. Not like these other girls.” She gulped the gin, made a face as if she were about to belch, then swallowed it in triumph. “And I don’t work for Dezi. We partners, me and him. Business partners. I stop off and get a nap or some food. If I need to spend the night, he lets me. Don’t get me wrong, I do pay him. But sometimes I stop by his place just to shoot the breeze.”

Tia looked at her. Perhaps Marie was drunk. She wanted to believe that Marie was drunk because it seemed as though Marie had turned on her. Obviously there was something more to Marie and Dezi’s relationship than that. Perhaps they were a couple, in some weird form. She wanted to ask about it, if she could find the right words, but it didn’t matter. Marie’s unforgiving smile ended further discussion.

“But see,” Marie said, her hands chopping the air in explanation, “I’m saving up. There’s these condominiums they got over in Buck-head. I’m saving up so me and my baby girl can live there. These condos are slick. Pool, gardens. A little health club with shiatsu massage. Shiatsu .” Marie grinned uncontrollably at the word, then got serious again. “This here”—she gestured at her outfit and, it seemed, to the entire bar—“is part-time.”

“You have a daughter?”

“Yeahhh,” Marie said, her voice getting dreamy. “A daughter and a son. Boy lives with his father. Daughter’s in day care.”

“Sounds more like night care,” one of the men said.

Marie looked hurt, though she acted as though she hadn’t heard the man. Tia tried to make Marie feel better by sliding closer to her, trying to finish the fruity drink. “What’s your husband like?”

“Oh, he ain’t my husband. Not no more. Divorced. He’s a good man, but he got issues.” She rolled her eyes as though it was too much to go into.

“Like?”

“Like he like fucking other mens,” the same man said. The men at the bar tittered and snickered like girls for a moment, then looked the other way to avoid Marie’s wrath.

“Yes,” Marie said defiantly. “All right, nosy butt. He do like ‘fucking other mens,’ to use your nasty terminology. But I’m O.K. with that, hear? That’s his business.” She flicked her hand as if the men were mere motes of dust. “Look,” she said to Tia, “he takes care of his son, and that’s good .” Then she raised her voice, for the whole bar to hear, “More than I can say about a lot of Nee-groes up in this place.”

“Your ex-husband friends with Dezi?”

“Hell, naw.” Marie shook her head wearily, absently tugging at her hair. “Dezi, boy. He helped me through some times. Dezi try to pimp, a few years back. You should’ve seen his skinny butt out there. He just didn’t have it.”

Marie pushed her empty glass toward the bartender as if this were sad news. “He likes you, though. I can tell even though I ain’t seen him with you. But don’t fool around with that man. You what, eight? Nine years old?”

Tia wasn’t going to dignify the joke, but then said, “Fourteen going on fifteen.”

“How old you think Dezi is?”

Tia didn’t bother answering, knowing that whatever she said would be wrong.

“Dezi’s what age …” Marie looked at the martini glasses hanging from the ceiling, “Thirty-two. Thirty-two come November,” she said almost wistfully. “Fourteen. Thirty-fuckin’-two.” She weighed the different ages in her palms like a balance beam gone out of control.

Tia sighed. The alcohol, disguised with fruit juice, was starting to have an effect. Marie offered to walk her back, but Tia said no, she knew how to get there.

SHE RETURNED to the apartment complex, getting lost in the maze of identical concrete buildings. She saw a dim figure lurking behind one of the generic bushes, and felt her bladder contract and almost loosen with fear. It was Gerard. He tossed a ball, then dribbled it with amazing control.

Relieved that it was only him, she yelled, “It’s too late for you to be up.”

“Look, woman, I live here. I be up all hours.”

“Well you shouldn’t be.”

“Damn, lady,” Gerard said, “you must think you somebody’s mama.” The words were without malice and suddenly she wished she’d had brothers and sisters. Her mother seemed more impossible to her than ever. As she remembered the woman on the phone, the woman who should have been her mother, Gerard tossed the ball to her, surprising her, but she caught it just when she thought she couldn’t. She threw it back to him.

“You need a little work,” he said by way of farewell, dribbling his way to the neighboring complex.

Tia finally found the right door. It was unlocked.

“Where you been?” Dezi asked.

“I told you. I went to see Marie.” She pushed her way past Dezi, into the apartment.

He closed the door, putting a gun on the table.

“What,” Tia said, “are you doing with a gun?”

Dezi winced, annoyed. “What you think I’ma do? You don’t got no key. And it’s late. Gotta strap myself in case someone else come busting through.”

“I could knock on the door, like a normal person. You could let me in, like a normal person. No gun involved.”

“Girl, I don’t even want to hear it. Like a normal person ,” he mimicked, high and whiny.

Then it hit her. They were fighting, like lovers.

SHE DID not stop him, and there was no ceremony. Her blouse was off, her skirt was in a heap on the floor, and he had undone his pants with a single hand.

He wiped the saliva from her mouth with the pads of his fingertips. It had been a long time since she’d felt anything smooth next to her skin, and now, so much of her skin was touched by skin not her own. He stroked a spot on the back of her neck, and it both frightened and mesmerized her, like when she’d once seen her own hand move, without her permission, into a candle flame. She knew what it was that lay on her thigh, and it moved of its own accord, like a water hose flicking out of control in the grass.

“Let me,” he said.

His hands no longer felt smooth as they pushed against her, and she understood that he expected more than nakedness. She remembered overhearing girls in the junior high cafeteria talk about sex, about how men spurted sticky semen into women. They squealed with delight at the grossness of the word “semen,” squirting mustard onto their corndogs with exaggerated gestures.