“Damn right.” He is defiant as he spits out the mild swear word, forbidden here. “Come with me?”
Inhaling deep, she can taste the sweet scratch of tobacco smoke in her throat, something she has not known for two years. Her fingers curl around an imaginary cigarette but she stops short before she pretends to puff it.
“I can’t.” Her words are a cry, wrenched from the bottom of her soul.
“The fuck you can!” Charley’s pretense of faith fades now in the moment of reality. “Leave the sorry son-of-a-bitch!”
“Can’t.” Whispered, the word strangles and she coughs, lungs filled with night air and the wafting smell of chicken manure from across the road.
“You’re not even his wife!”
“I’m not yours either.”
Heads swivel to face one another, glares powerful for a moment that ends in laughter.
“That’s ‘cause you ain’t near dark enough, sugar,” Charley says. His love for black women is something she knows. He loves the way their skin shimmers back the light, the tight curl of their hair, and those liquid brown eyes. As a teenager, his preference was a scandal. When he took Nikki Delight to the high school prom, he had been removed from all sports teams and kicked out of the National Honor Society.
“Your loss,” Laurie croaks. Her throat aches and she wants to cry. If she were a black woman, he would love her, want her, and need her. Because she is not, he loves her as his friend, his companion but nothing more. She desires him in all ways and loves him. Always, since the day she met him, but they have never kissed on the mouth.
“I know.” Something in his voice makes her tense. Shoulders tighten and she feels like opening the car door to run away. Instead, she draws breath.
“What do you mean?” Some strange emotion too much like hope flares up inside and makes her chest ache with the strain of it.
“You fry chicken better than any chick I’ve known.” His laughter echoes in her ears like harsh static but she tries to force her lips into a smile. Her effort failed because she saw his grin slide from his face like eggs over easy off toast.
“It’s more than that.” His voice was different now, strange to hear. “You always smell so nice and you think like me. I’ve often thought it was sorry that you weren’t born black.”
Whether or not he teased, she did not know but anger replaces her hope.
“That’s as racist as anyone not liking someone because of skin color.” Salt on her lips from perspiration tastes metallic and flat. “What you’re saying is that I’d be ideal for you, that we would be a couple, except for the simple fact I’m a white girl.”
Laughter vibrated in his chest without humor.
“Yeah, I guess.” He did not sound very sure.
Mental images of his last three lady friends play across her brain. There had been Leona, a light coffee color who came to church and with whom no one but Laurie helped to pray when she came to the altar. Then Rudi, a woman older than Charley with very dark skin and bright red lips, beautiful and exotic. She worked at the poultry plant, too, until a few weeks ago when she quit because her daughter had a baby and she was going to mind it, days. Before both, Charley had been with a sweet-faced girl – no more than twenty years old – named Thrusha who sang like a lark but preferred bars to church pews, especially on Saturday night.
Quiet came and it was uneasy, turbulent and filled with unspoken emotion. Laurie feels it like a drumbeat in her blood and despite the humid night, she is cold enough to wrap her arms around her body. Fear that she had spoiled the friendship between them makes her shake. Without Charley, she would be alone. If he were upset with her for raising the subject of a relationship beyond what they knew, then she would leave. Church, work, this humble house would all be left behind and she would change herself into someone else, a new creation.
Waves of sorrow hit with such powerful strength that she uncurls her hands to cover her face and sits, leaning against the steering wheel. She grieves that he did not understand her, that he does not want her, that he cannot love her as she does him and all because of her pale hue. Sobs hurt her throat and the pain grows until she must open her mouth to release them. Ugly, racking moans fill the car and she loses control of her emotions.
When he touches her, she stiffens but he pulls her to him, embraces her, and puts his mouth over hers. His lips are warm on hers and her body softens, weakens, as it wakes to his touch. Between her legs, a moist tension cries for satisfaction and she caresses him, hands reaching beneath his shirt without care. Her fingers, nails shorn short to debone chicken, move over his skin with heat.
“Jesus God.” He is not praying now.
The crotch of his pants looks swollen and she regains enough cognizance to wiggle backward.“Let’s go in the house.” Her voice is husky, her nose stuffy from the tears. “If you want me, let’s go in the house.”
They go and cannot wait until they reach either of the bedrooms but fall to the living room floor to join with power, with joy, with such lust that she thinks she will die from his strokes. She does not and floats instead on a flood of intense pleasure, release that shakes her soul. After, their grease stained clothing that reek of cooked chicken crumpled into a corner, he traces a line from her cheek to her breast.
“First time I ever did it without a woman of color as my partner.” His voice sounds faint, as if he is dying from giving his all, from pouring his essence into her body.
“Is that so bad?” With effort, her voice is light.
He bellows out a laugh that causes her to start, to half sit up and then fall back, laughing with him.
“No, not bad at all.” Charley says, face between her breasts. “I think maybe I’ve loved you for a long time but didn’t see it. Sorry, Laurie.”
“I’m not.” She can speak with strength now. “My granma always told me, at night all cats are gray.”
He sits up; face serious now, pale in the moonlight that comes through the thin lace curtain on the window.
“I don’t know about that, kitty-cat.” He says, his face sober and still. “But I’m buying you a lipstick tomorrow morning and a pair of blue jeans ‘cause you’re gonna to Nashville with me. Okay?”
“Yeah.” She feels like a cat, contented, full, sated and certain. “Oh, yeah.”
They sleep; naked and twined together bathed in moonlight, sinners just as the church folk had feared.