Eye to Eye Page 6

  Jimmy D. wanted to see about a union at the car parts factory. He was out of there faster than you could say Norma Rae. Not even Ray, Earl’s cousin who was the foreman, could do anything about it. I could tell he wanted to toss me out on my ass before he’d see Jimmy D. go, but I was only a temp. I let my backpack fall to the ground and crossed my arms. “So why is this so hard for you to understand? People don’t like to get treated like crap. That’s all.” I stared at Earl whose face was a deep red. He looked miserable.

  “Ronnie,” he said. “Veronica.” He took my hand in his and his voice got soft. “I didn’t mean to upset you the way I did. I just thought I could tell you what was on my mind. I want to be able to tell folks who I care about what’s on my mind. Talk to me. Let’s talk about all of this. Make me see what you’re saying.” He put his hand on my cheek and stared at me. I was looking into blue eyes that were trying to get me to see him and give him credit for trying, and for being the person that he was.

  “I don’t want to explain. I want you to already know.” The wind was picking up then, and something flew in my eye. “Dammit,” I said.

  “Let me see.” Earl held my face in his hands and blew in my eye softly until it watered. I blinked a few times, and then whatever it was, was gone. He wiped my cheek and then tugged on a braid. “Some things I cain’t know until you tell me,” he said. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to understand what you need me to understand.” He was still holding my face, and so I leaned into him and felt his big arms wrap around me. We stayed at the lake and talked until it got almost too dark for us to get out of there, and Earl and I came to an understanding. We didn’t know how all of this would end up, but we would always talk to each other, talk things through. Doris is right, I have to snap out of whatever this is I’m feeling. Earl is the real deal, Katie or no Katie. When the phone rings, I think it’s Doris and I’m happy to tell her I’ve come to my senses. But when I look at the caller ID, I don’t recognize the number or name. My hello is met with a Southern accent. Hmm.

  “Hi. May I please speak with Ms. Veronica Williams?”

  This voice sounds exceptionally Southern. Could be a bill collector—I am one of their favorite people—but they usually didn’t sound this nice. I could say, “She’s not home right now, may I take a message?” Classic. That’s old-school bill avoidance right there. Not for amateurs. But I gamble, take a Vegas chance. “This is she.”

  “How wonderful!” The accent thickens. “My name is Arianna Covington and I’m calling from Burning Spear Press.”

  Burning Spear Press…Burning Spear Press…I’m hoping to remind myself, and then I realize that I don’t care. I got traffic to look forward to. “I’m sorry, I can’t afford any subscriptions or anything. Thanks for calling.”

  The woman on the other end clears her throat. “Oh no, honey. You misunderstand. I’m calling about your manuscript, your novel, F: The Academy? You sent it to a friend of mine at Smith Alloy, who passed, but she sent it to me. I liked it a whole lot and would like to publish it.”

  All at once I’m trying to figure out everything she’s telling me. The manuscript I sent out after graduating Langsdale, sent out on a whim because Professor Lind, my Shakespeare professor, told me to, the manuscript that had exactly sixty polite, two-line rejection letters to show for itself, the manuscript that I had just thrown in a drawer and accepted as every writer’s first novel that never gets published—until you’re dead—was wanted by some publisher called Burning Spear Press. “Are you serious? This better not be somebody screwing around with me.”

  “No,” Arianna Covington says, coughing slightly, “I’m not, uh, screwing with you. We’d very much like to publish F: The Academy. We think it’s exactly the thing for our press. We’re a new house, but we’re big, and we’re looking to publish promising up-and-coming writers.”

  And then I flip out on old Arianna. I scream. I carry on. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I barely hear what else she tells me, only that my book which, by sixty other editors has been called many things, from a boring meditation on class, to a humorless meditation on class, to a pointless meditation on class further marred by a tedious discussion about race, is something that Burning Spear Press is very happy to be publishing. Other boring stuff about contracts and money—surprise, not very much—is also mentioned. Then Arianna, in her charming accent, congratulates me once again and I can’t wait to tell everybody: Bita, Doris, Earl, my family. Yet there’s a lingering silence on the other end of the line that makes me uneasy. Damn. There’s a catch. There’s always a catch.

  Arianna starts out nice and sweet. “If you are familiar with our books…though, I’ve forgotten, you’re not…” She stammers all over the place.

  “Yes?” Uh. Oh.

  “Well, Burning Spear has a very particular demographic. It’s a press that publishes exclusively African-American books by African-American women for African-American women.”

  “Uh-huh.” It was starting to sound awfully claustrophobic, but I stayed quiet so she could keep talking.

  “So, let me just be as frank as I can be, Veronica. We’re wondering if you’d be willing to make Dottie’s character black.”

  Dottie was based on Doris, but I was confused about the rest. “You mean dark? Like a villain?”

  Arianna pauses. “No. I mean black, like African-American.”

  I like old Arianna. She’s a crack up. “That’s funny,” I say. “I’m going to like working with you. You’re hilarious.”

  Silence.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “No, Veronica. We talked about the book in meetings—we love it—but think it would read more smoothly, be more attractive to our readers, if Dottie was African-American.”

  Hmm. Was I getting punk’d or something?

  “Are you there, Veronica?”

  “Kind of,” I reply.

  “What are you thinking?” Arianna asks, after a moment.

  “I’m thinking it’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”

  “Listen,” Arianna says, in a gently urging voice. “Dottie can stay the same person—more or less. You just identify her as black and keep the book basically the same.”

  “I don’t know. It’s a weird change. I mean, part of the point was that Dottie’s white.”

  “Imagine that she’s exactly the same, but just a different color. That’s all.”

  That’s all? It’s a lot to think about. Honestly, I don’t believe that Doris would be the exact same if she were black. Environment and culture, etc.

  “So will you take the book if I don’t make the change?”

  Arianna sighs. “I’m not trying to make this sound like an ultimatum, but there are other books that better fit what Burning Spear does.”

  Oh, well, at least I got to feel good about being a published author for about five minutes. On the other hand, the more I think about it, parts of Dottie would be the same except a different color, right?

  “Can I think about this for a day or two?”

  “Of course,” Arianna says. “Please call as soon as you decide.”

  After I hang up, I think about what an asshole ingrate I must have sounded like on the phone. Let me think about it. What a jerk. But there’s something still exciting about this and I’m amped, amped with a caveat.

  I grab my keys, ready to rush out the door to see Bita, when I hear Earl’s bike pulling up, deafening everyone in the neighborhood. It’s strange he’s home so early, but then I’m happy that he is. When I hear the key turning in the lock, I stand near the door so I can jump on him and tell him my news. When Earl comes through the door though, he doesn’t quite seem himself. He’s clearly tired and in a bad mood—which for Earl is never mean. More like distracted and worried.

  “Hey, baby.” I hug his thick torso before peering up at him. “What’s the matter? You’re home early.”

  “Yeah.” Earl squeezes me before he walks to the fridge to get a drink. “There’s nothing but half a can o
f Diet Coke in here.” He sighs.

  “And an egg,” I say, waiting for Earl to pop his head up from the fridge and grin at me. But he doesn’t.

  “I sure could use a beer. Something cold.” He straightens up and comes to me on the couch.

  “What kind of bartender are you, anyway?” I say, pulling him down next to me. “Living in a house with no booze, just a pitiful can of Diet Coke.” I pat his firm belly and settle in close to him. Earl only gives me a weak smile. He pulls away from me so he can take off his boots and then he sinks into the couch with a sigh.

  “You sure are sighing a lot and saying a little. What’s the story?”

  “Just got tired out is all. Didn’t feel much like going for a ride after all.”

  “What? You’re not getting along with Jake and them anymore?”

  Jake’s a guy Earl works with from time to time. He doesn’t bartend so much because he’s just okay, not a pro like Earl. But he’s a homeboy—of sorts—because Jake’s from Illinois and claims the Midwest, like Earl does. He’s younger than Earl, a kid mostly, only twenty-one, with dreams of “making it,” and so on and so forth. Still, Earl likes him because he likes to ride, too, and isn’t prone to “get carried away with himself,” as Earl calls it.

  “Naw,” Earl stretches his arms behind our heads and pulls me close with one of them. The way Earl says “naw” seems to have an ellipsis at the end of it, but he doesn’t volunteer much more. He’s closing that whole strong-silent-type business, but I’m not having it.

  “Cut the shit, Erardo Lo Vecchio. What the hell happened?”

  Earl sits up and straighter, then turns to me so we’re not side by side anymore. He’s finally grinning, he likes it when I get my version of badass on him. I do sugar and spice and everything nice as often as I can, but I can go from sweetie pie to motherfucker, like going from zero to ninety.

  “Wellll,” Earl says, dragging his proverbial foot right away. “It ain’t nothin, not really, but at least part of this story, you ain’t going to like it.”

  What Earl is saying is code for “You’re going to want to snatch that skinny Katie bitch baldheaded.” But since I’m trying not to be jealous, I don’t say a word. I just tell Earl to go on and give me his story. “So?”

  Earl scratches at his wavy, sandy hair and then folds his big arms across each other. “I was all set to go out with Jake…” Earl pauses and looks at me for what seems like longer than he needed to, as if he were considering something.

  I nod. Jake was hot, though I didn’t say much about that to Earl. He was a tall, lanky brother with a shaved head and dimples not dissimilar to Earl’s. He’s always greeted me with a smooth, “Whas happenin’, sistah?” whenever I came through the door. His smooth, flawless, dark skin puts me in mind of Lavarian Laborteux, who I knew was for sure by now Dr. Laborteux and never letting anyone forget it.

  “So me and Jake and them had made plans, but they had to cancel, except I hadn’t heard all about them needing to cancel before I said yes, when Katie asked if she could come along, ride with me on the back of my bike.”

  What a pro, that one.

  “And so I said yeah. I didn’t see no harm in it, and then when we was all set to head out the door after work, Jake says hadn’t Katie told me they wasn’t going to go.”

  I raise my I-told-you-so eyebrows at Earl, because I’m always teasing him about his very well-fitting, tight-fitting Wranglers that show off everything Earl doesn’t mean to advertise about himself. Earl wears them like the good old boys wear them, and shakes his heads at the hipsters with their jeans sliding damn near down to their ankles.

  “I know it,” Earl says. It’s a phase he always uses when he gives me credit for being dead-on right. Earl strokes his face and stares at nothing in particular for a bit. He used to stroke his beard but now it’s his face out of habit. “Anyway,” he goes on, after a while, “Katie was standing right there and was put on the spot, said she thought they were talking about something else, not tonight.”

  “So you blew her off then?”

  “Yep.” Earl held my face by my chin and kissed me on the nose. “Told her I wasn’t going out with only us two and then she said, ‘What’s the matter, Mr. Earl? Scared of your girlfriend?’ And I knew she was making a joke, but I didn’t like the way she said that. Something about it made me mad so I just had to get on away from the bar and come on home.” He levels his eyes at me and then closes them. He sinks down into the couch. “I’m beat,” he says. “Need to rest my eyes some.”

  I stare at Earl’s face, then kick off my flip-flops so that I can lie down lengthwise on the couch and stretch my legs across his lap. He runs his fingers up and down my thighs, but keeps his eyes closed. “This is all I want to do for the night. Sit here like this with you. Beer or no beer.”

  I think about everything that he has just told me and he was half-right. I hadn’t liked what he told me, but it really isn’t Katie trying to pull her crap that bothers me, it is more the fact that something about it really bothers Earl. He was a good sport, quitting the Midwest and coming to crazy L.A. for some broad (me) that he’d met bartending. But it isn’t that alone. I knew from the moment I took my first ride on Earl’s Harley that we weren’t going to ride off into the sunset, that we would have to work at this. And now, it’s happening, the work. Something is up because Earl is confused over some puny little girl who’s chasing after him.

  “Erardo.”

  “Mmm-hmm?” Earl murmurs. His eyes are still closed and he is still touching my legs. He smiles. “Am I in trouble about something? You calling me Erardo. I cut the shit like you asked me to.” Has he?

  “Something else is bugging you, I know it. Start talking, bud.” I sit up and poke him in the side.

  “Ain’t no getting around you, is there?”

  “Nope.” I swing my legs off of Earl and then I straddle him. I take both of his arms and hold them back behind his head. “You’re my prisoner until you tell me the truth.” I kiss him on the lips and then on his neck. His favorite place. And then I put my hand on his belt buckle and lift the buckle. “There’s more where that came from, but you gotta be good. You gotta be a good boy and tell the truth.”

  I know I’m not being quite fair: a man can’t have a serious conversation about his feelings with a woman grinding up against him on his lap. But Earl tries. He looks down at my hands on his belt buckle and I kiss a tiny bead of sweat that has formed on his temples. He tries to put an arm around my waist, but I put it back and keep his arms pinned behind him. Of course he could break my hold with a sneeze—if he wanted to. “Uh-uh,” I say. “That’s only for good boys. Now tell me the truth.”

  Earl’s breathing hard and he locks his gaze with mine. I know that look. He’s just about done playing. I put my face close to his so that our noses are almost touching and he tries to kiss me. I pull away. “Uh-uh.”

  “All right,” Earl says, slow and steady. “You listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s bothering me is this—I don’t like people trying to come between us. I don’t like people looking at us like we’re strange when I grab a hold of you out on the street. I don’t like people treating me like I’m some ass-backward, ignorant hick the minute I open my mouth. I don’t like people talking at me slow, like I cain’t hear, just ’cause I talk the way I do, I don’t like people carrying on about me like I’m some cute dog they just found on the street, so goddamn amusing. I don’t like you thinking and worrying about all of this because I see that you do. And I don’t like the way folks try so damn hard to be seen around here. Don’t like the Vietnamese food place you’re always taking me, too, neither,” Earl adds. “I know it’s cheap, but a person cain’t get full.”

  I don’t know what to say. Earl’s really not laid it all out like this since moving to L.A. I’m usually the complainer, the one’s who’s telling him what I don’t like. He’s been my rock, the guy who goes along. The guy who says everything is fine. “You should hav
e said all of this before.”

  “I know it.”

  “We have to do a better job of talking.”

  “I know it.”

  I finally let his arms go, lie down on his chest and slip my arms around him. He smells like soap and sweat and feels nice and solid on our soft couch.

  I notice that one of the sleeves of Earl’s white T-shirt has a smudge of what looks like peach-colored make-up. There’s a smudge of lipstick, too, which is too light to be mine. I wonder where it came from, wonder if I should ask Earl about it. I feel strange though, because these smudges had to come from somewhere. Somewhere I wasn’t going to like. Still, he’d already told me about his night, and that had to be good enough for now.

  “Hey.” Earl smiles. “I’ve been a fine prisoner.” He’s rubbing my neck and lifts the back of my tank top to run his fingers up and down my spine.

  “But we’re not through talking,” I say, thinking about the smudge. Earl puts his finger to my lips. He tugs one of my arms out from behind him and puts my hand on his belt buckle, keeps his hand on top of mine and holds it there firmly. He levels those blue eyes at me again. We’ve sat and talked so that it’s gotten very dark and there are no lights on in the house. Only the moonlight coming through the windows.

  “We’re through talking,” Earl says.

  doris

  The Existentialists: A group of writers and philosophers who valued subjective over objective experience, and believed in the basic need for a woman, alone in her apartment, to grapple with the meaning of her life (with or without a nice bottle of chardonnay). Think of Kafka’s hero waking up to find himself a cockroach, or Camus’s Frenchman shooting an arbitrary Arab on the beach. Or maybe, most famously, Bergman’s Antonius Block (medieval knight portayed with decidedly nonmedieval craggy hotness by Max Van Sydow) playing chess with death on a plague-ridden beach. (One never thinks of the existentialists as beachy, but a theme does seem to emerge.) As one might imagine, the existentialists tend toward deathiness and despair, and are slightly over-represented among the French. But as with fashion, cheese and chocolate, the French got this movement right on the money.