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  At the next light, I braked extra hard, jerking her forward.

  “That was totally unnecessary. And childish,” she said.

  “Put your stupid seat belt on,” I told her.

  A car pulled up next to us at the light and I looked over casually at a late-model Mercedes, then at the brother with a bald head, wearing a business suit and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to a Ramsey Lewis tune on his radio.

  “Unfortunately, Don was involved with someone,” Simone continued.

  The brother bopped his head over in our direction and nodded in acknowledgment. Still upset, I ignored him.

  “Hello,” I heard Simone call from the backseat.

  “Hello,” he answered, smiling over his shoulder at Simone. “Why are you in the backseat?”

  “My friend likes to pretend she’s my chauffeur.”

  The light changed and I hit the accelerator, jerking her back.

  “Do you have to speak to every man you come in contact with?” I said, disgusted.

  “Why does it bother you so much?”

  “It doesn’t bother me. I just don’t understand why you have to flirt with every man who speaks or smiles at you.”

  “It’s basic human nature. I am woman, I like men; ergo, I flirt.” She explained this with her expressive, salon-manicured hands and her slow, clipped English. “I can’t help it if you don’t like men. Miss Evileen.”

  I decided to let that one go. “Just because I don’t screw men as often as I go to the bathroom doesn’t mean I don’t like men,” I told her, hoping my words would hit their mark and shut her up. “Just because sex is basic human nature doesn’t mean you have to act upon every desire. You’re not an animal.”

  “For your information, I don’t screw men as often as I go to the bathroom—which is a tasteless analogy, by the way. You need to stop being so self-righteous just because you have a low sex drive. I can’t help it if I’m high-natured.” Through the rearview mirror, I could see her glaring at me, furiously snapping the pages of her script.

  “How many men have you been with?” I asked her.

  No response except the flipping of pages.

  “Are you ashamed? I mean, if you’re so high-natured, and it’s such a basic human need, why can’t you tell me?” I pressed.

  “Because it’s too personal. And no, I’m not ashamed.”

  “You know my sexual history. I have nothing to hide.”

  “I don’t either, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to confess the intimate details of my life to you.”

  “Is it that you don’t know or you can’t remember?”

  Her eyes narrowed like a snake’s and when she spoke, her voice was not her own. “My sexual life is between me, my men, and the Creator, and no one else.”

  “I only asked to prove a point. Women want to be equal to men when it comes to sex, but the truth is, we can’t brag about our conquests like they can, because we are the spoils, we are the ones who get soiled. And it’s not just because of societal stigmas. It’s because of the way we’re made biologically. It’s the way of the world.”

  “I’m not ashamed,” she repeated. “I just don’t think it’s any of your business.”

  I shook my head, exasperated. We had had the same argument many times and it always ended the same. She accused me of being a man-hater; I accused her of being a man-teaser. Back in high school, Simone wasn’t very popular because many of the other Black girls didn’t like that she spoke so-called proper English and had long hair. Back then, she wasn’t tuned in to her Afrocentric side and wore her hair relaxed. The same Black girls didn’t like me because even though I looked Black, I spoke with an accent. The Hispanic girls stayed away from me because even though I was Hispanic, my skin was too dark, my hair too curly, bordering on kinky. Unlike the other girls, Simone never questioned why I read Essence or books by Black authors, nor did she ask me to teach her Spanish curse words. The teasing and our exclusion from the popular cliques made us best friends. One would think she would remember those earlier days, before she pulled a stunt like the one in the bookstore.

  I approached Simone’s apartment building and braked, switching into park abruptly and bringing the car to a jolting stop. Still looking at me in the rearview mirror, Simone gathered her bags from her earlier shopping spree, her fashion magazines, and her script.

  “So are you coming to the screening party this weekend or what?” she asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. I’ll let you know.”

  “Maya’s coming.” She leaned on the passenger headrest, suddenly trying to make up. “I need you guys there. You know I love you, right, chica?”

  “I told you, Puerto Ricans don’t say chica, they say mija.”

  “Well, I like chica. Mija sounds like ‘hee-haw.’”

  Simone, who had been my girl for over twenty years, was finally learning Spanish, but like everything that took time and patience, she wasn’t trying too hard and wanted to write her own rules.

  “You forgive me?”

  “Yeah, yeah, get out.”

  She blew me a kiss and exited. “BYOB!” she yelled as I drove away. The second “B” referred to not only “beverage,” but to “boy”—the latter of which I didn’t indulge.

  Home at last, I kicked off my shoes and absentmindedly browsed through the mail on the sofa, petting King, my sons’ rottweiler, as he snuggled his head on my lap. When they were little, I promised my boys, Tony and Eli, that they could have the dog of their choice once we got a house. When they asked for a rottweiler, however, I hesitated, given the bad reputation the breed had in the media and the public’s mind. They tried to convince me that we needed a big dog to protect us since we didn’t have a man in the house. After talking to a dog breeder who insisted that it was the owners who made the dog, I caved in. The boys took the last part of their grandfather’s name, my father, Joaquin, and named the dog King. As everyone predicted, I ended up taking care of King after they left for college. At first, I threatened to give the dog away, but eventually I fell in love with the vicious-looking, yet noble, animal whose bark and appearance were worse than his bite.

  I reached over to the phone table and checked the voice mail. I had six calls: Maya called twice and my aunt, Titi, called the other four times, from Puerto Rico. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, not even my sister, who was closer to me than anyone else would ever be. I felt the beginning of a headache, which could mean one of three things: my monthly cycle, a barometric pressure drop, or stress. Since it wasn’t that time of the month, and Simone’s childish prank, while not stressful, had thrown my good mood out of whack, I attributed it to a storm front that the weatherman had been threatening for days. Sometimes I thought it was denying my “basic human right” that made me so moody. But other times, I knew it wasn’t just that; I had been moody since I was a kid.

  I fed King and let him out into the backyard. After changing out of my workout clothes and into a top and sarong, I reclined on the sofa, pressing the remote connected to the stereo and TV. On the stereo, I had Yolanda Adams and Táta Vega’s CDs from the day before. On the TV, I pressed the mute and closed-captioning buttons because I preferred to read the news rather than listen to the broadcaster’s scripted commentary.

  The best part about my being single was the peace and solace. There were people who always needed to be with someone—like Simone—and then, there were people like me who longed for oneness. I had never been alone, going from my father’s house, to my aunt’s house, then straight into an early marriage and premature motherhood. After my divorce, I raised Tony and Eli, who were, at last, both away at college. The things I enjoyed doing in my spare time—reading, listening to music, and writing essays and articles—were all things that didn’t require another person. I was only just beginning to enjoy being alone.

  I glanced periodically at the TV screen with a combination of disbelief and dismay. The images of the latest murders, political corruption, and terrorism had bec
ome all too familiar so that the reporters’ straight-faced presence seemed trivial. By the time the newscast closed with the feel-good story about a toddler calling 9-1-1 and saving her mother’s life, it was too little, too late.

  The phone rang, but I didn’t move to answer it right away. After spending the majority of my day on the phone at work, it was the last thing I wanted to do at home. I debated whether to let the voice mail pick up, but I knew if it was my sister or aunt, they would think something was wrong. Ever since my children left home, they constantly checked up on me, worried that I was at the mercy of the psychos who roamed the streets of Chicago. I reached over to the phone table, just out of reach, and ended up on the floor with a thud.

  “What?!” I answered, irritated.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Maya asked.

  “Nothing. I fell reaching for the phone,” I said, getting up.

  “Dummy. Listen, you’re still going to Simone’s party, right?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. She made me mad today.”

  “What did she do now?”

  “It’s not even worth talking about.”

  Simone had been my best friend first before I introduced her to Maya, who was a year younger than us. Over the years, they became closer because they always had the topic of men in common. Maya had Alex and Simone was never without male companionship. Things changed when Maya started cheating on Alex—although Maya didn’t consider it cheating because she had not slept with her “friend”—yet. Simone thought what Maya was doing was her God-given right since Alex had cheated first. I told Maya she should divorce Alex if she didn’t want to be married anymore. After all, she had religious grounds and just as she had done when she first got saved, I quoted the scripture she cited to me after my own ex-husband cheated: Matthew 19:9, which justified divorce on the grounds of adultery. Although it refers to a husband divorcing his wife, it applies to husbands also, she had insisted. She and Simone thought I was crazy to suggest that Maya divorce. Who is going to pay the mortgage and car notes? Simone asked. Who is going to raise our two sons, Marcos and Lucas? Maya demanded. Maya thought divorce was the easy way out for husbands; Simone believed staying married while doing your own thing was the best revenge. What Maya objected to was Simone’s insinuations that her relationships with her two lovers were similar to Maya’s relationship with the two men in her life.

  “L’s coming,” Maya whispered. Maya referred to Luciano, her friend, as “L” or in feminine pronouns just in case Alex was within listening range.

  “Do you really think that’s smart?”

  “She said she’s tired of meeting in dark places.”

  “Whatever.” I was temporarily distracted by Yolanda Adams singing “The Battle Is The Lord’s” juxtaposed by the TV clips of the latest suicide bombing in the Middle East.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. I have a headache.” I began to sort my bills in one pile, junk mail in another, and the latest issues of Hispanic, Black Enterprise, and Diaspora, a new Christian lifestyle publication, in a third.

  “You’ll be better by Saturday, won’t you? I want you to get to know her.”

  “I don’t want to get to know him.” So far, all I knew about Luciano was that he was half-Cuban and half-Black. I vaguely remembered Luciano from high school when they first met, before Maya started dating Alex in her sophomore year. Years later they met again at a school where Maya was a teacher and he was a security guard. But by then, she was married to Alex and Luciano had married the first of his three wives. Maya said he treated her like a queen. I told her all men did—in the beginning. But she insisted he was different, as all women who were in love believed. There was no reasoning with her; her rationality was gone.

  It wasn’t that I sided with my brother-in-law, or that I felt sorry for him, I just didn’t like being an accomplice in Maya’s tangled web of deceit. After getting over the fact that Alex had seduced my fifteen-year-old sister when he was eighteen, I thought he was a good man, the kind of guy who would be good to her. But then he cheated, and it was almost like he had deceived me also. Initially, I took it personally, but I eventually forgave him, partly because it was the Christian thing to do, partly because he was a good father, but mostly because I didn’t have to live with him.

  “If you’re mad at Simone, I better not tell you what she has planned.”

  She got my attention. “You better tell me.”

  “I can’t—” she said, then stopped and her voice faded away as she turned to speak to someone in the house. “What? I don’t know where it is. Just look for it, sweetie. That’s what I do when I can’t find stuff.” She turned her attention back to me. “She told me not to tell.”

  “Maya, I am not kidding,” I warned. “Blood is thicker than water.”

  We had all married in our teens, within months of each other. Simone and me were nineteen, Maya was eighteen. None of us had been counseled about going on to higher education since we had worked from the time we were fifteen. We were all anxious to be on our own, so we made plans to get an apartment together. But at the time, we all had boyfriends we loved, and marriage seemed like the next best thing.

  Although the youngest, Maya married first. While Alex worked at City Hall, she got her bachelor’s and master’s in education. They were married almost nine years when their twin boys were born. After teaching for several years, she became one of the youngest principals in the Chicago public school system while Alex became an alderman.

  A few months after Maya wed, Simone married her high school sweetheart, Bruce—not because he asked her, but because she wanted out of her parents’ house. The marriage lasted a year before she decided she wasn’t cut out to be anybody’s wife. Instead, she decided to pursue a modeling and acting career. Over the years, she appeared in several magazine ads and acted in a few local plays, even worked as an extra in a couple of big-name movies. In between modeling and acting jobs, she worked as a manager at an upscale hair salon. She lived rent-free in her father’s apartment building, and always had men who provided her with almost everything else she needed.

  “Okay, okay. She’s going to set you up with a guy at the party.”

  “Ooh. She is so dead.” The throbbing got worse in my temple and I began applying pressure with my thumb.

  “You’re not supposed to know, so don’t call her, please? She’s just looking out for you.” Again her voice faded away. “Alex, honey, I’m on the phone,” she said, condescendingly. “I swear every time I get on the phone … ”

  “What’s his name? Where did she meet him? Give me details or else. I mean it, Maya.”

  “I don’t know. All I know is she seems to think you have a lot in common with him.”

  I closed my eyes trying to squelch my anger at Simone while wondering whether my own sister knew more than she was disclosing. The last time Maya introduced me to a man with whom she thought I had a lot in common, he turned out to be an ex-con who had found Jesus while incarcerated. Not that I don’t believe in the power of God to transform criminals, but after he beat up a guy who took his parking spot on our second date, I decided he still needed some more Jesus.

  “You never know,” Maya continued, “this could be your Mr. Righteous.”

  “Riiigght,” I said cynically.

  CHAPTER 2

  ADAM

  THERE IS NOTHING like a good old-fashioned STD to clear a man’s head. After I got one three years ago, I vowed to be more careful with my choice of ladies and to wear condoms more consistently. I abstained the required six weeks—which was torture—and thereafter I did the condom thing—more torture, but the alternative, another STD or a child, would have been worse. After that, I dated sporadically, never spending the night, or sending the woman I bedded home rather than waking up next to her with lies or excuses. Not that I had been with that many women. If I thought about it, I could probably count them on the digits of all my extremities and still have fingers and toes left over. I could
even remember their names—well, with the exception of two.

  Sondra was the first and last woman who broke my heart. We had met at an African arts festival, and truth be told, I was attracted to her looks and body at first. But she manifested into something more, the kind of woman who made a man want to do everything to defy male stereotypes. We talked about moving in together, but after my first live-in disaster, I was still cautious and held her at bay. I couldn’t handle the fact that I was falling in love, so we broke up.

  A few weeks later, I slipped and slept with a one-night stand without protection. As sadistic as it sounded, having an STD the second time around was a blessing. Thanks to an overzealous resident who insisted I have an ultrasound, a mass was discovered on my testicle and eventually diagnosed as cancerous. Subsequently, I was referred to a specialist. Even though the doctors all assured me it wasn’t related to my sexual partners or the STDs, I became scared enough to put women on the back burner. The first specialist recommended surgery but I refused and sought a second opinion. The second urologist also stated he couldn’t treat me without surgery. The fact that the specialists were men who didn’t seem to understand my refusal to part with a vital part of my manhood made me search for a third opinion. After doing some research on the Internet, I found a doctor, a woman, who was conducting a study that involved removing the tumor without surgery, using an ultrasound-guided needle. I agreed to this procedure, which was followed by multiple courses of radiation and chemotherapy, then months of observation and tests. During the treatments, I was too weak and sick to care about sex, let alone think about it.

  After the doctor declared that the cancer was in remission, I also went into an emotional remission. I no longer viewed women as beautiful creatures or Venuses, nor were they Delilahs or Jezebels. They were just mortals from another dimension to be treated with extreme caution. Now, whenever I saw a hot lady teasing me with her short skirt or low top, I saw warning lights blinking on and off: Danger, Danger! Proceed with Caution! All I had to do was envision the humiliating examinations, or the life-draining radiation and chemo treatments, and that would be all she wrote. Most times it wasn’t that hard, since some women were turned off by my grungy appearance and saw me as a poor brother who wouldn’t be able to wine and dine them like a gentleman should; I let them think that way. There were some women who thought my clothes and hair were eccentric, but these women bothered me too. I concluded that if a woman judged me by my outward appearance, in the long run, I was better off without her.