Merritt Tierce - Love Me Back

You should have seen Nic Martinez doing his impression of Konstantin later in the parking lot. A Mexican doing a German trying to be black. Nic took a puff of Cal’s one-hitter and passed it to Cal and then put his hand on Cal’s biceps and said I feel you Cal my man my brotha my nigg we straight? You my homey right? You vant a couple more bills? You vant me to lick your nuts? and then he was laughing so hard, so crazy, he was leaning over in front of Cal, still holding on to his arm and coughing from the big hit he was trying to hold in and say at the same time Teach me how to get my own German, massa! Teach me!

Cal was holding up straight, letting a smile stay in his cheeks but looking at his pipe all serious, knocking the cache out, reloading. I know he knew his muscle was popping out strong with Nic hanging on him like that and he took pride in that and pride in his balls-out way with “his people,” as he called his call parties. Ain’t nothing to teach, he said to Nic, just got to be you and bring it.

He looked bronze with the streetlight shining on him, reflecting off his white undershirt. He looked the same color as Nic but he was really a goldish cinnamon. He said he was ochre, terra-cotta, and sepia, colors a former girlfriend, a painter, gave him. He liked that. He was always painting himself for me.

I mean did he really feel that way about himself though — the way he made it look in the bank suit, the way he made it look with Nic hanging on him. Where was the nugget you couldn’t massage or change or put a pinstripe on and was it that confident. Was that kernel whole and well or was it sad, smacked out, lost. I don’t know but I think a showman is all show. There’s no secret — or there is, and that’s it. Like when I asked Danny if that scotch rep Alyssa’s tits were real and he said Yeah they’re real — real fake.

Cal would have a little taste, as he called it, near the end of the shift when nobody was looking, a taste of Grand Marnier neat. Danny didn’t care as long as the guests didn’t see and Danny was usually drinking with him anyway. Cal’s taste would become two or three tastes and then he would get so frisky, he would start touching all the women — servers, guests, the pastry chef — like you trail your hand through cattails out on a skiff. Pleased, enjoying the weather, nature.

One night after a few tastes he sat down with Doc Melton’s woman — Doc wasn’t there, and Doc was one of his big men, the ones who kept him on a sick and regular payroll of inflated gratuities at The Restaurant and threw in extras like Mavs tickets. Cal sat down with Cassandra Melton and he told me all about how he felt her up under the table, his fingers on her pussy lips, how fluffed and slick they were and how she sat into it delicately. He did this and after she and her girlfriends left, after he kissed her on each cheek, he came over to me and Danny where we were doing tequila shots at the corner of the bar. He was flying. Oh my Gawd, he said touching his fingers to his lips, that pussy. I can’t believe I haven’t been getting none of that. Why don’t you Cal, I asked, why don’t you just take it, always complaining about how long it’s been since somebody took care of you at home. Fuck knows it’s on offer for you everywhere you go.

No, he said. Can’t do that. I’ll touch me some titties and some pussy but I won’t do that . Cal, that is such bullshit, I said, and he said You just say that because you want me to cross over. I do want you to cross over, I said, but it’s still bull.

That was the summer Cal would come over to my apartment after he got off from the bank, before we had to be in at The Restaurant. Those were warm afternoons, my apartment toasting the Texas sun through big old perfect windows. I moved into that place when I saw the money I was making at The Restaurant. I bought that car too. You can make good money — high fives if you really push, low sixes if you’re Cal — but you never lose the feeling that it’s fragile, your connection to the money. That place I lived in after I first got that connection, it was small and expensive but it was clean and bright and everything was nice. The carpet was thick and new and Cal and I would scuffle on it every afternoon. His kisses. His face — so soft — Your face! I’d say — I take care of myself, Mami, it’s what you got to do he’d murmur — his lips hot, fresh.

That much he allowed. But even if he was stripped down, his suit draped carefully across the back of the loveseat, his white V-neck undershirt tucked into his white boxer briefs, he wouldn’t allow me to touch him. I reached and he said No, don’t do that. We can’t. Mama gon kick me to the curve, I might as well move in.

Okay, I said, move in. I’m ready.

You not ready. You don’t know. Why you always want more.

You want it too.

I do. No doubt. But you think we ought to touch outside of our want?

He was forty-four and I was twenty-two but he was in better shape. His waist as trim as mine, his pecs tortoiseshells, his quads modeling those boxer briefs. Before The Restaurant he used to train the Highland Park moms at Gold’s. He still got up at four every day to do his reps — pushups, crunches, curls — before his daughter woke, then he’d make breakfast and take her to school. That was his time with her. Home late, never to bed before two or three in the morning, the office afternoon would fall on him like a tree. Him in that bank chair, sleeping upright in that suit.

So his excuse for coming over was he needed a nap. Only once did we actually nap — or he did, sleeping clean and gentle in his whites. I lay behind him, my hand on his thigh, breathing in the warm buttery smell of his neck, afraid to move, afraid to sleep and miss his sleeping in my arms, as if he were a comet, an eclipse, a papal visit. Not just a man pausing on me, a bead in his rosary.

But usually we rolled around on the floor, I listened to him talk, I begged for it, then I’d give up and go take a shower and he’d watch me start to finish, hand me the towel. Once he said You got a body too. Baby Rie-rie, lil M, look at those big nipples she got. Ugh. I could work with those big gumdrops and that bush. Real woman got a bushy bush like that, don’t know what all this mess with some naked pussy lips is for.

Don’t talk about it if you don’t want it, I said. You’re not for real. I’m for real. I’m ready.

You sure not ready for work, he said, looking at his watch, changing the subject. Looking at his fingernails. He got them buffed every Saturday, they were always shiny. His shoes too. He’d drop off one pair and pick up another. He had some military standards. He believed in the power of systems and order to manifest success. He believed in every clichéd thing about the power of belief. He believed in believing in belief. I tell my baby she not allowed to use the word can’t, he said. And he said I don’t get sick cause I just refuse to. You tell yourself Oh I’m sick — he said this in a whiny puny voice, screwing up his face — you sure enough will be.

That swaggering, who knew it wasn’t his belief in himself that made it all go. That it did work if you worked it. I was never that certain about anything. That’s your problem, he said, you doubt yourself. You got to want it. I do want it, I said. Nah you don’t. Not if you don’t know you want it. What’s that big dark thing behind you? he said, and I said I don’t know, what, showing him I was impatient with whatever lesson was coming. That’s the shadow of a doubt and you best deal with it right here right now.

What I wanted was some jack. Make that jack, baby, make that jack. Another of his mantras. I got to get out there and make that jack, he said in the back station at The Restaurant, taking a long draw of his protein-ginseng-vitamin smoothie before heading out into the dining room with purpose. I wanted to know how to do what he did. Conjury. Turning dinner into livelihood, wealth, stability. My girl lived in a one-bedroom apartment with her dad, she slept on a futon in the living room. Cal’s daughter lived in a giant suburban house with both her parents and took ballet. It’s not that I even wanted a giant suburban house for her. I just wanted her to have something from me, anything better than absence.