Black Silk (2 page)

I was still shaking my head in regret at having told them, knowing full well it would take about an hour before everyone else
in the group had heard about my dreams as well. On Ninth Street, hopscotching my way around some dog business, I jumped even
wider to avoid tripping on two big cranberry-colored cowboy boots growing out of a tenement stoop. I frowned at the owner
to let him know he wasn’t making my life any easier.

“Easy now. You’re going to wind up in my lap.” At a glance, I decided he was Puerto Rican. With a salt-and-pepper mustache
curling around an insulting sneer.

“Not in this life.” It was my way of cursing at him without getting knocked into the pile of dog crap I was trying to avoid.

“Well, you have a good evening anyway, sweetheart.” He sounded like he’d decided to ignore my snarling and bless me. With
a Spanish accent.

By the time I got to my apartment, I’d stomped myself into a substantial pout. I boiled some water and made a mug full of
Doreen’s Higher Plane Tea, throwing a shot of cognac into it. I slammed the refrigerator door so that all the magnets fell
off, letting my Xerox of the L.H.A.L. mantra slide to the floor. I stooped to pick it up, staring at a photo of myself glued
to the side. Originally, it was a picture of me and Turtle on the Circle Line boat that goes around Manhattan. I’d cut it
in half when I joined the group, as a reminder that I had a responsibility to the one of us who hadn’t gone through the Safeway
window. Above my head was printed in large purple letters,
EVERYTHING THAT TRULY GIVES ME PEACE, I CAN FIND IN MYSELF. A MAN ONLY GIVES ME SOMEONE TO SHARE IT WITH.
I stuck my finger deep into the mug of hot tea, honey, and cognac, then slowly up the center of my tongue and farther down
into the back of my throat. Soon. Let the sharing begin.

It doesn’t feel unusual for me to be coming down the street carrying a mug of spiked tea, although I can’t remember ever doing
it before. What is stifling, though, is my winter coat with the rabbit collar buttoned up around my neck. I know it’s the
end of July, so I don’t know why in hell I have it on in the first place, but I sense I don’t have any choice—it’s the only
thing I own right now, which isn’t exactly a calming thought by itself.

What does seem to have a soothing effect is the sound of singing farther down the block. I know I’m getting closer to the
singing because it gets louder, but no matter how close I get, I can’t seem to understand what language the singing is in.
I’m pretty sure it’s Spanish, though, and it’s a man’s voice. When I get right up to him, I know it’s Spanish I’ve been hearing
because it’s the man in the cranberry cowboy boots from the stoop. As I get closer, I have to blink my eyes because I am so
shocked to see the boots are all he has on.

Well, this time I cross to the other side of the street because I am not at all interested in whatever he’s exposing right
there on the stoop. And I know this has upset me somehow, because if I thought I was perspiring before, I can feel the coat
clinging to me now, at the small of my back, under my breasts, and in between my legs. I can feel that the entire outline
of my body is there for all of Ninth Street to see, as though I have on a wool skin-diving suit, and I’m damned humiliated
and angry at the same time.

I decide to take a quick look back to see if maybe I haven’t made the whole thing up, and sure enough, there he is—Mr. Puerto
Rico, stark naked with his legs wide open and that damned sneer on his face. Grinning at me. Like a lunatic.

The next week I avoided Ninth Street. I suppose my dream embarrassed me so much I was afraid I might run into Mr. Puerto Rico
again and he’d somehow know he’d mattered enough for me to dream about him. Exposed like that.

Saturday night, though, at our L.H.A.L. meeting, Ainah Trotter spoke on Staring Down the Obstacles, and as much as I find
Ainah goes a little heavy on the dramatics when she’s giving her Personal Experience Testimony, I found myself picturing Mr.
Puerto Rico again and decided I should definitely take Ninth Street going home. It was silly for me to avoid an entire block
because of a man I was probably never going to see again. And as it turns out, I was almost right.

When I got to the corner, all the stoops were clear. I let out a breath that made me realize I’d been holding on to it, and
as I started down the block, I smiled thinking of how Ainah had finally closed her testimony by telling us to remember, “Just
when you finally have the courage to look at those obstacles close up without flinching”—and I thought of how foolish she
looked doing her version of a flinch—like she was about to be struck by a bolt of lightning and bit on the backside by a rabid
Doberman at the same time—“very often,” she told us, “those same obstacles have shriveled up and disappeared.”

At the same time it was occurring to me that I might want to try to remember a few details of what Mr. Puerto Rico had looked
like in the dream. I could admit to myself that the dream had not only been abundantly specific but was also not altogether
unpleasant, considering the man was a complete stranger to me.

“You’re on my block a lot, aren’t you?”

I jumped, instinctively clutched my purse up under my breasts with one hand, and reached into my pocket for my open safety
pin with the other.

“Man, why are you always trying to catch somebody off guard?”

“Truly, truly I am sorry. If there’d been any way to give you a warning, I would have.”

There it was again. And if it wasn’t a sneer, it was the best damn imitation of one I’d seen. I marched away from him, calling
back, “If I’d had any warning, I’d have gone in the other direction.”

“Now you see how you are to me? And I was going to send you a valentine.”

Bastard. I’d gone to the meeting early and stayed late trying to ignore the fact that it was Valentine’s Day Eve. Egyptia
Nelson, who’s got to be somewhere around the same age I am, claims she’s had her share of valentines and she’s content. She
says Valentine’s Day is for the card companies to get rich on; it’s only one day on the calendar, and if you occupy your time
wisely, you won’t notice. Well, I think Egyptia is beginning to sound older than I ever want to feel, ’cause when Valentine’s
Day comes on the fourteenth of February, I notice.

There were lovers giggling in the A&P, nose to nose in the ATM line, holding on to each other in the Chinese laundry,
slapping butts coming out of the YMCA, and the couple in front of me hadn’t even stopped kissing long enough to answer how
many coffees they wanted at Starbucks. The man just held up his hand for two and paid for them with his mouth still glued
to the little blonde’s he was with.

“I’m going to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day, anyway.” Mr. Puerto Rico was right next to me. I thought he might be exaggerating
his accent. He was probably used to revving it up, using it on women who were susceptible to having their ears opened a little
wider by a foreign tongue.

“Don’t you have anything better to do on a Saturday night than run up and down the street harassing women?”

“As a matter of fact, I have a young lady waiting for me now. But when I saw you go by, I could not pass up the opportunity
to come out and say, Hello.
Buenas noches, señorita.
Happy Valentine, beautiful lady.”

“And you left another woman to come out here to speak to me?” I suddenly realized that I had actually stopped to have a conversation
with this man.

He shrugged and pointed behind him. “She won’t mind. She has at least another twenty minutes under the dryer.”

He was pointing to a small hairdresser’s shop that I’d never really noticed before. It had two oversize flowerpots with white
birch trees in them on either side of the doorway. The name of the shop was written in turquoise-blue script that I couldn’t
read from where I was standing.

“And she doesn’t know her man is out here in the street trying to hand a silly line to a woman he doesn’t even know. In Spanish.”

It wasn’t as though I hadn’t seen it before. But it had definitely been years and then some since I was the woman being run
out to. Well, I’ve never been desperate enough to stand openmouthed while someone was feeding me a line. I turned to go. He
hurried alongside me.

“It’s true we have never been introduced. But then you have never stopped long enough for an introduction.” He held out his
hand. “I am Cortez Rojo Picasso Velasquez. And the woman under the dryer is not my lover. She is my seven-thirty appointment.”

“Excuse me?”

It wasn’t as though I hadn’t heard him. I’d heard him as if there’d been no other sound in the streets. Mr. Puerto Rico grinned
so that the one part of his body I hadn’t paid much attention to, either live or in my dream, opened in front of me like a
velvet drape before a wide white movie screen.

“I’m the lady’s hairdresser.”

And I was trying hard to take it all in. His announcement, his teeth, the full tan lips that framed them, and the mustache
with hair thicker than most women’s I knew, dark with silver strands, smiling back at me. More silver at the temples and the
nape of his neck. The same as me except he wasn’t dyeing his ’cause he must’ve known it was right on schedule and in exactly
the right place. This was more information than I’d had to deal with in a very long time.

“You, you work there?”

“I do. She is my last appointment for the night. If you would consider giving me your number I could call you when I am finished
here and maybe you would allow me to take you to dinner. That is, if I knew who to ask for when I dialed your number.”

Oh, he was smooth. Yes, indeed, he was. Like Wesson Oil in a hot iron skillet. And this is how I sounded.

“Rotina. Rotina Washington. But I can’t go. To dinner. Tonight.”

And it’s not that I could tell you Mr. Velasquez wasn’t real easy to look at, because even if my tongue wanted to start, some
other part of me would be whispering,
Rotina, you’re lyin’, lyin’, lyin’.

“Of course. It’s the short notice. I’m sorry, Miss Washington. But you inspire the impulsive in me. Whenever you say. You
give me the night. I’ll make the reservation.”

I looked down at the cranberry cowboy boots with the gold tips, trying to figure out how I could buy some time to think about
this without making any commitment—but without turning him down flat either.

“Why don’t you give me your number? I’ll go home and check my datebook and give you a call.”

“Ah! Fantastico!” This Mr. Velasquez shouted, like a ten-year-old at Christmas. “Come to the shop and I’ll give you my card.”

“I’ll wait outside.” What would it look like with me coming in there like some gullible schoolgirl waiting for the man to
give me his autograph?

He ran ahead. I walked slowly behind. Before I even got to the door, he was back outside already waiting for me. I tried not
to go right up to the window where I could be seen, but he wouldn’t move from the doorway, holding the card out to me and
flashing those white Mercedes teeth. I took the card as quickly as I could and mumbled, “Yes, well, you take care,” trying
to sound as if I was used to doing something I’d never done before in my life.

He called out, “
Hasta muy pronto!
” which could have been something disrespectful except for the way he bowed when he said it. I hurried across the street determined
not to look back, which I didn’t until I had prayed,
Please God, if you love me, please don’t let him still be there.
And even though I always tell myself God’s gonna get tired of me testing Him like that one day, He’s never failed me yet.
Mr. Velasquez had gone back in to his seven-thirty and I was able to stop long enough to get a good look at where he worked.
It was small but clean looking, up to date, I suppose. But nothing could have prepared me for what was over the door. In big,
turquoise script it said,
PICASSO’S SALON DE BELLEZA
and next to that was a neon mustache curling over a pair of full lips. I looked at the card and there it was again. Mr. Velasquez
was Picasso! And even though I knew he wasn’t the real one, I didn’t even think Picasso was Puerto Rican! Well, even if it
was just Mr. Velasquez being extravagantly ambitious by calling himself Picasso, I thought it was kind of admirable. It meant
he had vision. In those cranberry-red cowboy boots with the gold tips. Picasso. I’d dreamed about Picasso. Imagine.

I carried his card around with me for almost a week before I decided what to do. On Friday I called him at his shop.

“I would say to you that I was beginning to give up hope,” he told me, “but number one, it sounds like a line from a bad movie,
and number two, I wasn’t giving up hope because that is not who I am. I can be disappointed, yes, but I was taught by a very
determined woman to never give up hope.”

I was impressed, but I refused to sound like it. When he asked me to pick a restaurant, though, I was stumped. “Oh, I’m open,”
I told him and immediately regretted my choice of words.

“Well, Rotina, I will have to think of a place with enough light for the rest of the room to see how lovely you are, but romantic
enough for me to begin to say the things I’ve been thinking these past five days.”

On one hand I thought Mr. Cortez Rojo Picasso Velasquez was coming on like a local train makin’ express stops only, but it
was also true I had pretty much given up ever hearing anything that even resembled a seductive routine. Turtle’s idea of seducing
me was calling to say he was gettin’ off his shift early and that I should wait up ’cause he wasn’t a bit tired.

Mr. Picasso told me he knew the perfect French restaurant, Les Deux Fleurs, and we agreed to meet there at eight-thirty. He
wanted to make it earlier, but I decided to go to my L.H.A.L. meeting, if not to share my news, to at least center myself
for the evening ahead.

One of the reasons I didn’t feel comfortable telling my Sisters about Mr. Picasso was that there was a not-so-unspoken code
among the members that part of sexual sanity as an African American woman means restricting your dating to African American
men. Egyptia even went so far as to say, “Stick to men who look like you. Don’t no man make you crazier than a man who’s got
it in his mind that every time he enters a black woman, he’s conquering Africa.” And she got an enthusiastic chorus of “amens”
on that one.