Eye to Eye Read online

  I patted the side of the bed again, and this time Earl sat down next to me. I thought of the Katies, looking me up and down whenever I kissed him, the Ians who smirked at Earl, at the way he dressed, the way he talked, and me, who didn’t want him at the hip-hop show with us because he wouldn’t fit. But in that moment, I realized I was more afraid of losing him, and that was worse than all the bullshit I was letting get to me. I grabbed his hand.

  “I’m scared, Earl. And I don’t ever want to make you sad. I don’t want you in Langsdale. I want you here, with me. We have to work. I want to work at this.” I squeezed him. “We’ve got to trust each other, Earl. I’m not going to run off with every black man who looks at me, and I have to trust that Katie and any other bitch like her is never, ever going to get into those Wranglers of yours, especially if you’re going to be a big star.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Earl said, stroking my hand. “I don’t even want to be in no movie.”

  “Not even if it pays a few bucks?”

  “We’d have to see about what kind of bucks they’re talkin’.”

  “Big bucks!” I yelled. I’d forgotten about Doris out there on the couch. Earl shushed me.

  “Enough for you to get yourself a proper car, one that don’t quit on you every time you turn around.”

  “Amen, brother.”

  Earl stood up and slid out of his jeans. “How was your night?”

  “Ooohhh,” I said, scrunching up my face, thinking of Jake, the show, Ian. “That’s a conversation for tomorrow. Let Doris tell you about the show. She’s guaranteed to give you colorful commentary.”

  Earl shook his head and grinned. “Hey,” he said, stretching out on the bed, “Did we talk enough? Are we all right?”

  “Yes…but we’ll always have to keep checking in.”

  “Okay,” Earl said. “Will do that. No question.” Then he smiled at me. “Ain’t you hot with all them clothes on?”

  “Know something?” I raised an eyebrow. “I am. I am hot.” I stood up in bed, took off my shirt, twirled it around my head, and threw it so that it landed on Earl’s face. And then I got out of my skirt and kicked it to the floor.

  “You sure are, darling.” Earl whistled softly, a long, low whistle. “Come on over here.”

  In less than the two hours since I’ve landed in Atlanta, I’ve had biscuits, meat loaf, macaroni and cheese and key-lime pie. “You’re trying to kill me with food,” I say to Doris as we’re handed the check.

  “I’ve got this,” blurts Doris, slapping her credit card on the table. “I’ve got an actual job, as crazy-making as it is. Not a bad way to go, by the way, death by food.”

  I look around the café. “Everybody here is so coiffed. Like really put together. Pearl necklaces and all that.”

  “And in L.A. they’re not?” Doris is gathering her things. “I will never forget how folks dressed for the supermarket, for God’s sake. Miniskirts and thigh-high boots to get your cereal and milk in the morning?”

  “I don’t dress that way, and I’m a native.”

  “Yeah, but that’s just because you got brainwashed by Indiana—and that big, hot man you got living with you. You wore fishnets, you taught in fishnets when you first got to Langsdale. Classic L.A. fashion, apparently. And now look at you. Cowboy boots. Who’d a thunk it?”

  “I love those boots. By the way, where are your space shoes?”

  “Two words for you. Good Will.”

  “It’s actually one word.”

  “Do you want a ride to Burning Spear or not?” Doris asks, getting up from the table.

  “This is exciting,” she singsongs as we drive to Burning Spear. “I don’t care what you say. This book could be your big Terry McMillan moment.”

  I stare out the window at the scenery. Atlanta is a cool city. It feels citylike, but dignified in ways that L.A. won’t ever be. I tell Doris this and she tells me not to get all romantic about the place.

  “Here in Atlanta, a particular brand of woman reads too much Margaret Mitchell, spends all her daddy’s money, and gets paid more money to tell the world her demented views on marriage and feminity, so don’t talk to me about dignity.”

  I settle in my seat. “Well, I still think it’s very nice.”

  I think about what Doris said about my McMillan moment and I don’t know about that. The problem with Burning Spear Press is that they’re trying to make us all Terry McMillans. That’s cool, nothing against Ms. McMillan. It’s impossible not to feel appreciation for her success and what it’s meant to black women writers. But I’m a black woman writer who wants to do something a little different. I had made as many of the changes in F: The Academy that they wanted me to. I made Doris black, which, I have to say, was really, really hilarious. I made Dottie’s and Wanda’s circle of friends almost exclusively black, no other ethnicities, which seems, inexplicably, the norm in a lot of contemporary fiction. It’s one or the other kind of folk, nothing in between. I even threw in a couple of “girlfriends” and “sho nuffs” to make it more “friendly toward their market,” is what they told me.

  I also added all this relationship bullshit because the first draft was seen as too much of a character study—what we used to call good writing in graduate school. But after all that, it’s not the book I envisioned I’d write, not by a long shot. And yet there’s no denying that a writer is lucky to get published these days, ever since everybody started relying on Harry Potter to save the literary day.

  “I’m going to be in that café across the street,” Doris says, pulling up to the curb. “I’m going to have a coffee and read People magazine and pretend that I have a glamorous life.”

  “Make sure you have condoms.”

  “Ew.” Doris gives me the thumbs-up. “Good luck. I hope you hit it off with everybody.” And then she pulls away.

  Just like all the publishing houses on TV, the building is one of those slick, modern types, but inside, it’s still going for the velvety, antique, curly-furniture thing. Very schizophrenic, and very Gone With the Wind, in fact. I’m on time for my appointment, on the dot, so I wait outside Arianna Covington’s office until I hear her secretary announce that I’m waiting. When the door opens, a tiny woman in sleek charcoal slacks and a white silk shirt pokes her head out and turns first to the left and then to the right looking for me. This is something that I’d get on Ian about, making assumptions about people and all of that, but for some reason I had assumed that Arianna Covington was black. I mean, since she was running a black imprint and everything. Instead, she was a pixieish redhead, with blue catlike eyes and freckles across her face. Young, too, of course.

  “Veronica Williams?” She extends her hand and gives me a big smile. “Please. Step inside my office.”

  Her office is well-appointed, as they say. Elegant fixtures and silver-framed photographs of what must be her family. There’s a picture of Arianna with a handsome, grey-haired man and a red-headed toddler on a bookshelf to the right of where I’m sitting.

  “Cute,” I say, pointing to the picture. “How old is he or she?”

  Arianna laughs. “You can never tell what they are at that age. She. But she’s much older now. Three years old. Little Jocelyn.”

  “Your husband, he’s handsome.” I stare at the picture. Really, they look like the perfect family.

  “Ah, well,” Arianna says. “Ex. We’ve been divorced for about three years.”

  “Oh.” Damn. Somebody must have really acted up for one or both of them to jump ship immediately after the baby was born. I think about Bita and the choices she’s making, and all of it seems hard.

  “So,” Arianna says, clasping her delicate hands and getting down to business. “I do have to say how happy I am to meet you, since we rarely meet the authors we edit. We are very excited about the book and think it’s going to do very well.”

  “I’m excited, too…” I pick at a hangnail on my not-so-delicate hands. “I’m worried, though, about all the changes I’ve made.”r />
  “Oh?” Arianna frowns and tips back in her seat. “What are your concerns?”

  How long did she have? “Well, I’ve made an awful lot of changes to make it more reader friendly, or whatever, and, well, I’m afraid it might be too bland or something.” And will totally suck. “Too much like everything else that is already out there. Not brave enough. Not interesting enough. Not smart enough. And there’s already so many of those types of books out there. The McMillan clones.”

  “Yes,” she says, smiling amiably. “But your book is different. It’s set in academia, and that’s something we’ve never quite seen so far with this press. That’s a good thing.”

  “Really?” I cock my head just a tiny bit in that do-not-bullshit me tilt.

  “Really. Don’t forget. You cover many topics in this book, the ivory tower, how women are treated in the academic setting. And it’s funny, too. It’s a good combination. A winner.”

  I’d read some sections to Doris over the phone, a section with Dottie, and we laughed, mainly because it was too funny imagining Doris black, but also because I had fun with the dialogue. My character, Wanda, was supposed to be the nerdy, bourgeois black girl from Washington, D.C., and Dottie was supposed to be “from the streets,” at the university on scholarship. The whole thing was absurd, so I just decided to go with it. Dottie had lines like, “Mothafucka, I will cut you.” And “hell, naw.” And “Bitch, do you think I’m playin’ with yo silly ass?” Doris and I almost hurt ourselves, we were laughing so hard.

  Still, Arianna makes me feel better. She may be young, but she knows what she’s doing it seems. She even shows me reviews from some of the press’s more successful titles. We talk some and laugh some and I leave the office promising her the final manuscript within the next month. And after that, nothing to do but wait.

  When I leave the building, I can see Doris sitting in the window of the café across the street. When I get closer, I see that she’s talking to someone, someone handsome.

  “Ronnie,” Doris says, putting her coffee down. “This is Maxwell.”

  “Hello.” I grin at him like an idiot. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Good stuff,” I add, a little too late, guessing from Doris’s what in the hell is the matter with you?

  “And,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me. “This is Ronnie, Maxwell. The soon-to-be-published author. Her very first book.”

  “Wow. Congrats,” Maxwell says, shaking my hand, strong and sturdy. He has nice ones.

  “Did Doris tell you she’s black?”

  Doris and Maxwell stare at me openmouthed. “What?” they say.

  Maxwell gives Doris a good long look. “You’re black? You never said anything about being black.”

  “That’s because I’m not,” Doris says, smacking me hard on the arm. “Are you insane? Did you do a line of coke in old Arianna’s office? What my crackhead friend means is that she turned the character based on me, in her book, black.”

  “Oh,” Maxwell says, in a long breathy sigh that seems almost like relief.

  “Yeah, ‘Oh,’” Doris says. “Anyway, we were just headed out.” She stands and grabs her bag.

  Rude. What’s going on here? “Nice to have met you, Maxwell,” I say, before Doris damn near rips my arm out of my socket, dragging me out of the joint.

  “Jeez.” I gently rub my arm. “You got a fire in your panties? What’s going on?”

  “Pick up the pace,” Doris orders, hustling down the street. “Okay, even though you were completely nutty, turning me into a tragic mulatto back there, I was glad to see you because I have blown off Maxwell for a long time now, told him I was traveling, sick, the whole repertoire. I was feeling quite busted.”

  “I didn’t know you two were seeing each other. I thought he vanished.”

  “He did. Then reappeared. Then another bad date, after which I felt more lukewarm, which of course made him heat up. Now we’re just sort of halfhearting it on the phone. I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazy.”

  “Maybe?”

  I’m out of breath from the spontaneous track meet by the time we get to the car. I collapse in Doris’s car and we lurch onto the street. “Easy, Charlie’s Angel or Starsky or Hutch, whichever one you’re trying to be. Remember, we were going to die by eating ourselves to death, not in a fiery car crash.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maxwell’s nice. He’s a nice guy.”

  “And handsome. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers.”

  “What about, like, curds and whey? Would you kick him out of bed for eating curds and whey?”

  “I know about Little Miss Muffet, but is that some actual vegan thing? Curds and whey? You’ve seen him eat that?”

  “Well,” Doris says, flipping her sun visor up and down, “not the curds, but the whey.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

  “So I’m a horrible, rotten person because I don’t like Maxwell.”

  “Oh, no. Don’t even go there. It’s not the skin color that’s bothering you, it’s the whey—and the faux-leather sandals. Damn, those are some ugly shoes.”

  “With khakis, he was wearing those. Why, God, why?”

  “So maybe you get him into some kind of other shoes.”

  We’re pulling into Doris complex and it’s my last night with her. Who knows how long it will be before we see each other again? I miss her already.

  “Wahhh.” Doris watches the garage door close behind us. “I’m holding you captive in here. You have to live in my garage and not go back to L.A.”

  “It’d be cheaper. Could I bring Earl?”

  “Like there’s any choice about that. You guys? You guys are stuck like glue.”

  I let Doris have the breezy view of our relationship because I really hope it’s true. If we’re lucky, Earl and I will always be talking. Race relations is a bitch, but some things are worth the hard work. And some things are not, as in the case of Bita and Charlie. “Unless Hollywood sucks him up and he becomes a jackass.” Or I go to jail for killing Katie.

  “Never happen. Not to Earl. Not in a million years. He’s jackass-proof.”

  Probably. Most likely so. But if you’re not an idiot, then you know that life is always and forever transitory, shifting into one shape or another. I should have told Doris all about everything that happened after the hip-hop show, but I don’t. I just let her good faith wash right over me.

  Bita’s picking me up, as always. There’s a special place in heaven, I’m sure, for people who pick their friends up from the airport. I keep looking out for her ginormous car among all the crawling alongside the curb and ignore the little hybrid honking and honking right in front of me. I ignore it as long as I can until I’m about ready to cuss the driver out, but it’s Bita.

  “What? Oh, man. Now you’ve really gone and done it.” She grins at me as I struggle to get in the car. “I’m so happy to see you. Give me a hug, dammit.” I squeeze her as hard as I can and stare at her. I can’t believe she’s gone and gotten this itty-bitty car. An LAX parking security guy blows his whistle at us and motions for us to get going.

  “What in the world is going on? I’m only away for a few days and already with the new car? I thought you were joking.”

  “I’m doing what is called getting my shit together.” Bita runs her fingers through her thick, dark hair. “New car, new life.”

  “Good for you,” I say. “Good for you.”

  I hold on to the side of the door because as I’ve said Bita drives like a wasted rock star sometimes. And in the big car, that was cool, but in the itty-bitty, environmentally safe car, I’m scared shitless. I know, I know. Hypocrisy. But maybe a medium-size car would be better for Bita—and her passengers. “Why the sea change?”

  “The what?” She glances at me and frowns. “Don’t sound so teacherly and corny.”

  “Why the complete turnaround?”

  “Better,” she says smiling, and slaps my thigh. “No more golden hand
cuffs.”

  “Bita. I really don’t want to know.”

  “You dummy. Not sex handcuffs, metaphorical handcuffs.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, I went for the golden handcuffs, marrying Charlie, living that lifestyle, and at first, I didn’t think it was that bad a choice. Now, ten years later, and probably a lot of affairs later, I see it was a real shitty choice. I’m tired of it, tired of turning the other cheek, ignoring God knows how many vaginas Charlie’s been into.”

  “Bita! Watch out for that asshole. He didn’t use his signal.” She calmly slows down and lets the person cut her off.

  “Don’t sweat these fools,” Bita says, all Zen. She is changing. She’s the person who I was always sure would get into some bizarre road-rage episode, be on the news with a telephone number asking viewers to please call if they’ve seen this woman, who is considered armed and dangerous. “It’s that simple. You decide what you want, what you can take, and then you go from there. You change.”

  Somehow, after returning to L.A. from Atlanta, a million years passed, and Earl became, well, not a jackass, never a jackass, but he got a lot more excited about this film stuff. When I called him from Doris’s place, he told me that he’d called back home to Indiana and his family and buds had put some stars in his eyes. Now, as I peer through our screen door, I can see and hear him in the bathroom practicing. His delivery. “Jackon the rocks? Jack. On the rocks. John Daniel, coming right up. Johnny Daniel suit you?”

  “Okay, De Niro,” I call out as I come in and drop my bags on the floor. “What’s this?”

  “Hey, baby!” Earl’s face is lit up, happy to see me. “Come here, girl. I missed you something terrible. Better put your arms around me.”

  “It was only four days.” I grab his behind and pull him to me.

  “Them was long days, baby. Looong days.”

  “And now you’re a method actor.”

  Earl blushes. “Sit down. You want a beer? I want to sit at the table and have a beer with my woman.”