CAFE AU LAIT

CAFÉ AU LAIT

Hey folks! New short story I just finished. I hope you like it. As always please leave any types of comments: good, badd, or indifferent! Gracias!

“I thought you’d been with black women before?

“You assumed I’d been with black women before.”

Our toes stuck out of the covers at the end of the bed. I rubbed mine on his and he kicked my foot away. We played footsie and I wondered why our complexions couldn’t meld together. It would always brown on top of white. White on top of brown. The footsie died down.

“Maybe you could get a tan?”

“Would that make you happy?”

“It wouldn’t make you happy?”

“I’m already happy.”

“I am too, but… no one else is.”

Bile filled my mouth and I pretended I needed to check on the chicken. Actually, I did need to check on the chicken. Two birds, one stone.

“What’s wrong with the chicken?”

“My chicken is fabulous. Why’d you ask that?”

“I missed you.”

“Liar.”

“You just took longer than usual. I got worried.”

“So worried that you stayed in bed and kept watching TV. On mute, no less.”

“The bed is where I do my best worrying.”

“Something about you makes me croon.”

“I missed you.”

“I know.”

I nestled into the space where his shoulder blade and his chest met as his arm wrapped around me. The nook, he called it. If I stayed there too long I’d be in an embarrassing snore-laden sleep and the chicken would get mealy. His underarm smelled like the Axe deodorant I’d bought him. Mine felt like I had a secret. Maybe I should put on some Secret.

“Hold on.”

“Deodorant alert?”

“You watch me too much.”

He was staring at my calf again. Same spot as usual. My splotchy beige colored birthmark that was embedded in medium brown skin. It looked like someone had splattered bleach on me.

“Confession.”

“Spill.”

“Sometimes I get the urge to color your birthmark.”

“Of course you do.”

“See, you thought I meant brown, but I meant green or red or something.”

“Assumes the assumer. I knew you meant blue or orange or something. You’re an artist, remember?”

“I remember.”

I started a bare foot tap dance: the one I was doing the first day we’d met in Central Park. He slapped his thighs along to the beat. The shag rug swallowed my sounds and he projected them. I finished the 60 second routine and he applauded like he always did. Like he’d never seen it before. Chicken time.

“Are you coming to get your plate with me, or do I have to sprinkle the rat poison on it behind your back?”

“Just put the arsenic in my wine glass. I have to prepare something up here.”

“Light a match, shut the door, and use the spray.”

“Not that.”

“Un-huh. Do you want dark meat or white meat?”

“Medium brown meat.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!”

It was times like these when a dumb waiter was the most convenient feature of the entire house. The roasted chicken and the sautéed green beans and the saffron orzo and the rosemary potatoes got cozy on the plates and permeated the air. He was going to ask questions when I didn’t drink the red wine. A 2-Liter of Sprite would have to do. The bell on the dumb waiter was so loud that I could hear when it arrived on the second floor.

“I’m sending something down.”

“Not the sprite. I am an undercover alcoholic trying to survive!”

“Not the sprite, lush-bucket.”

“I got your lush-bucket.”

“I heard that.”

I made faces at the dumb waiter door and pretended to curse him out.

“I saw that.”

“AAAHHH!!!!”

“Like you didn’t hear me come down the stairs.”

“You know I’m deaf in one ear.”

“You’ve got noise repellant in the other.”

“Is there a reason for your heart attack inducing presence?”

“I missed you.”

“You need a new line.”

“I’m leaving you for another woman.”

“I missed you, too.”

He held my back against his torso with one arm and supported his weight on the wall with the other as we watched the cables revolve and send the dumb waiter down.

“Did you slide down the banister or something?”

He exhaled a laugh through his nose and knocked his knee into the back of mine. My leg gave way and he caught me.

“My hair doesn’t smell like strawberries, yet you continue to put your nose in it.”

“I don’t like the smell of Herbal Essence. I like the smell of Razac.”

“Sure you do.”

I turned around and brought my hands together behind his neck. The dumb waiter dinged, but he held me still. I hadn’t made to turn around. He had the type of eyes that others would consider lucky. They were the grey of a suit of armor. Steely. Hard. Cold. But set amongst the warmest face, so they were no longer threatening. Before walking outside with him I had to stare into his eyes and let his steel become mine. I needed his armor to pour out from him and envelope me.

The specks of grey in his black hair were from stress, not age. They weren’t there when I met him, but he preached that I was not the cause of their untimely arrival.

“Now who’s staring?”

“Well, sometimes I want to color you, too.”

“That would be rather strange: me walking around with strands of goldenrod and turquoise in a head of black hair.”

“Oh, because my leg would look so much better?”

“I’m in love with you.”

“How is that so easy for you to say?”

“I open my mouth and say it.”

“You and your off the wall suggestions.”

“Try it.”

“What if I don’t mean it?”

“You mean it.”

“The chicken is re-freezing itself as we speak.”

His soft lips were a hair away from mine and I closed my eyes in anticipation. He liked this part. He liked when I begged him with my rapid breathing and wrinkled brow. He had the type of mouth that I wanted to have wrapped around me all day, so I held myself back from kissing him as often as possible. He already had me treading water in the deep end of the pool. It took work to keep a clear head around him. Work that he wanted me to abandon so I’d drown. Work he wanted me to forego so I’d see he was just beneath the surface waiting for me with an oxygen mask.

I pulled his head down the rest of the way and our four lips became a chocolate-vanilla blob. Though he was so sweet it was more like a milk chocolate - white chocolate blob. I liked this part. I liked the tingling in my nipples and I liked the smell of his skin right under my nose. I could feel each raise in his taste buds when his tongue sucked mine. He slid his hand along the cup of my ass and pressed my middle to his middle. It was comfortable there. He closed the space between us and the wall and licked my chin when I pulled on his hair.

“I thought you sent something down?”

“I thought you were about to submerge yourself in the water?”

“Drown, you mean?”

“Submerge.”

“Well now it’s not authentic if you’re trying to beat it out of me.”

“Your name is not Kizzy. I’d never beat anything out of you.”

“If you were black you wouldn‘t have even said that.”

“You’re right. I would’ve said something about Ike and Tina.”

“Touché.”

We stared at each other. Grey eyes on brown.

“You know it’s funny. I’m colored, but my skin’s brown, my hair’s brown, my eyes are brown. You are white and your hair is black, your eyes are grey, and your skin is nude. You tell me who’s colored.”

“We can both be if you let me color you in one day.”

I laughed into his chest. My chest hurt. He was so easy and I was so hard.

“Did you paint me again?”

“What’d you say?”

I moved my mouth out of his shirt.

“Did you paint me again?”

“Do you need something to drink?”

“Maybe a little water.”

He pulled me off the wall and walked us to the refrigerator. I walked backwards, him forward. He reached around me and made noises. Clink. Clunk. Sworsh. Or whatever sound water makes going from the refrigerator door spout into a glass. He put his feet on top of mine as I drank. He didn’t want me to run away from the conversation.

“Pretty soon you’re gonna be chopping my feet off like they did Kunta.”

He didn’t have a rebuttal so he just stared. I apologized.

“You brushed your teeth.”

“All the better to kiss you with, my dear.”

He licked my teeth. That was my move.

“The food’s ruined at this point.”

“Are you telling me I can’t sustain you?”

Brown on grey.

“You can. You do.”

“I love the smell of Razac.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“Do you hate that?”

“No… but they do.”

“Are you in love with them?”

“At one time.”

“Are you any more?”

“Not any more.”

“Are they still in love with you?”

“Maybe.”

“That could be true for anyone.”

“True.” Pause. “They called me race traitors.”

“Did they laugh afterwards?”

“Yeah, but you know what they say about jokes.”

“That you’re as broke as one?”

“What does that even mean?”

“We can google it after we heat up the food.”

I walked backwards. He walked forward. We stopped at the dumb waiter. He’d sent the food back down.

“You know, this seems clairvoyant of you, but, in truth, if you hadn’t jumped down a flight of stairs and struck up a conversation this wouldn’t have been necessary.”

“I can’t even impress you anymore.”

“Are you sure you’re white? You’re looking a little clear.”

“That was so corny.”

“Give me a break! I’m hungry.”

“Open Tony.”

I opened Tony and there was our food, conveniently covered in foil and still hot.

“You’re pretty clever, for a man.”

“Racist and sexist. Someone should put out a law against you.”

There was the Sprite. There was the flatware. There he was eating the food right out of the dumb waiter. There I was joining him. When did he pull up a bar stool and when did I climb into his lap? When did we forego the flatware?

“Tell me again.”

“That I love this food and I’m the best chef ever? I love this food and I’m the best chef ever.”

I munched on my green beans while he shoveled orzo into his mouth. Some rolled onto his face instead and I suctioned it off. I fed him a potato with one hand and fed myself one with the other. Our greasy fingers slid along the skin of the chicken.

“I’m in love with you.”

Grey on brown. Silence.

“We both have a secret, but the secret is I know what both of the secrets are, and you only know yours.”

“Spill.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“I’ve known that since the summer.”

“Did you know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you?”

My throat was dry again. Damn sweaty palms and slippery fingertips were no match for the cap on the Sprite bottle. He grey on browned me as he took it out of my hands and released the cap with the bottom of his t-shirt. My chest rose and fell dramatically as I drank from the bottle. I calmed myself down before I started up a real asthma attack.

“Good. You calmed down. I don’t want to have to tell our kids that before I got the chance to propose to their mother she had to be rushed to the hospital because her lungs failed.”

“Well you waited five months. Another few hours wouldn’t have killed you.”

“You knew my secret?”

“I knew your secret.”

I inhaled the air that he exhaled. He reached behind my ear and performed the greatest magic trick I’d ever seen. He held a flawless diamond ring between us and made my focal point go from grey to diamond.

“You are the woman I want to love for more years than I dare to count.”

“Yes.”

I was crying somehow.

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I only waited so long because I wanted you to be sure.”

“I know.”

I backhanded my tears away. He already knew I loved him. He didn’t need to see it leaking out of my eyes too.

“Do you have that drowning feeling?”

I held my left hand up so he could slip the ring on my finger. My nails were bubblegum pink.

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes. I’ll marry you now. I’ll marry you forever.”

He smiled and the steel in his eyes softened when his face did. My torso got lodged to his in the hug and his nose pushed into my neck when he hid his face there. I rocked back and forth and his middle rose to meet my middle.

“What are we going to name it?”

I pulled back to brown on grey him. Now that he knew I loved him it seemed ridiculous that he not know everything else.

“You knew my secret.”

“I said I did.”

“You did say that.”

“Well?”

“Well doesn’t it depend on the sex?”

“No.”

“Well in that case… I was thinking we could name it Café Au Lait.”