Daykeeper, page 5
I no longer try to conceal my smile. My stomach is dancing.
“So, my question still stands,” I say.
“What question?”
“Can I see your night gown again?”
She lifts her eyes as if to consider my request. “I guess so,” she responds, in mock reluctance.
She stands up and begins to dance, her body moving rhythmically to a melody that only we can hear. I watch the way her hips roll, the way her arms stretch upward as she sways her body. She places her hands on her hair as she moves, her eyes closed. She opens them slowly, as if waking from a dream, and struts toward her computer.
“That’s all for tonight, Ed,” she says coyly.
My erection is so strong I shift uncomfortably from the aching tension in my pants. I want her so badly that I will do anything.
“So I will see you on Saturday?” I ask, not even worrying about how thirsty I might appear at the moment.
“That’s the plan, isn’t it,” she responds.
“Yes.”
“Then, I’ll see you on Saturday.”
I nod. “OK.”
Coco404 disconnects the webcam and goes offline. With thoughts of her still dancing in my mind, I close my laptop and embrace the darkness that surrounds me.
Chapter Sixteen
Thumbing through mail while sitting in my office, I come across a photocopied article that had been placed in my department mailbox. My name is printed across the top of the front page, and I would have set it to the side, had I not seen my name appear randomly throughout the first page. “What Nelson fails to see,” “such naivety from an academician is inexcusable,” “maybe Nelson’s intention is to have black people be a godless people, in spite of thousands of years to the contrary”: all quotes in this paper. The paper does not strike me as being particularly academic in nature, but its author has managed to find some obscure journal willing to publish it. I look at the by-line and see the name: Rev. Dr. Cordell Murphy, an up-and-coming professor in Ellison-Wright’s religion department.
I stare at the paper for a moment, flabbergasted that another faculty member would so publicly attack me. I have had more than a few disagreements over the years with my colleagues, but I have never taken my thoughts public in so unprofessional a way. My first thought is to walk over to the religion department across campus and kick Cordell’s ass, but I quickly sit back in my chair and breathe, the one thing that seems to slow me down when I get upset.
Nearly a year ago, I had written a paper that got published in a journal on African-American studies. The paper tied into some research I had been conducting as an offshoot of my dissertation on present day vestiges of transatlantic slavery. This particular paper dealt with religion as one of those vestiges—not the most revolutionary of ideas, I must admit, but it seemed to fit in perfectly with the debate surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright during President’s Obama’s first presidential campaign. Although I never mentioned Rev. Wright, or President Obama’s pluralist upbringing for that matter, I did refer to my curiosity at the growing religious conservatism of black people, given that religious conservatism was often a significant justification for their own historical persecution by racist whites. I knew the paper would be the subject of debate, as anything that involves religion tends to be, but I was hoping to temper some of that reaction by focusing exclusively on the subject from a historical perspective. Apparently, Cordell took offense to my paper and decided to take me to task as publicly as he could.
I place the paper on my desk and shake my head. He is citing my paper, citing my facts, and countering with pure theological and hermeneutical subjectivity. I should be glad that my paper has even stimulated this degree of debate. After all, the paper was designed primarily to strengthen my CV for tenure review by putting a few more publications under my belt. I shouldn’t be mad at Cordell. In fact, I should be thanking him, I tell myself. Just off of my response to his counter-argument, I can secure another publication credit before the end of the school year—that is if anyone even cares about this discussion at all.
I lean back in my chair and look out the window, over the quad. Next week students will be walking back and forth across this campus like ants swarming a kicked anthill. Tanya will be among those students, and I wonder briefly if I will even be able to make her out from my office window as she goes about her daily activities.
My daydreaming is interrupted by a knock on my door. I look up to see the chair of my department, Dr. Evelyn Chambers. “Got a minute?” she asks.
“Sure.”
She walks into my office and leans against the file cabinet pushed against the wall by the door. “I just wanted to welcome you back and let you know that if you need anything, we’re here for you.”
“Thank you.”
She glances around my office before continuing, “I also wanted to let you know that the dean has appointed you to serve on the presidential scholarship committee. You will serve as the representative for the School of Liberal Arts. I hope that’s not a problem. Don’t worry. They only meet once each semester to review scholarships that were awarded the previous semester to ensure grade point averages are maintained and all of that jazz.”
“No problem.” I know I will have to probably serve on a few more committees before the year is out. The good thing about serving on a committee that rarely meets is that you get credit for the committee on your CV without the time burdens often associated with most school committees.
“Good. The dean just notified me that you will be meeting later this afternoon at four o’clock in the Hughes Hall conference room. Will you be able to make it?”
One of the things that I don’t miss about Ellison-Wright is their need to spring things on you at the last minute. But being that classes have not started and the fact that my syllabi have already been submitted to the copy center, my schedule is actually open.
“Sure. No problem,” I say.
She smiles and pulls the door closed behind her as she leaves.
One day, when I get tenure, I will be in that magnanimous position to use the magic word that most professors here dare use, and use it without fear of repercussion. A simple word, only two letters, but it embodies the essence of freedom: no.
The gods must surely have a sense of humor, because the eight person committee that oversees the presidential scholarship reviews for Ellison-Wright includes the one person I would have loved to avoid altogether: Cordell Murphy. He sits smugly down the table from me, as if through his article, he has attained some kind of moral superiority over me. I ignore him and focus my eyes on the list of scholarship recipients being handed around the table.
Excluding grants and private scholarships, Ellison-Wright gives out ten different full academic scholarships, known as presidential scholarships, each year. They are renewable each year if the recipient maintains a 3.0 GPA or better for both the fall and spring semesters. I look at the names on the list, and oddly, I don’t recognize any of them. The scholarship recipients all have GPAs that are well into the 3.0 – 4.0 range.
The meeting goes by quickly, and we plan to meet again in January before the spring semester begins. But rather than return to my office, I go home and take a nap.
Saturday is right around the corner, and the upcoming dinner feels like a loaded nine-millimeter in my virgin hands. Its beauty is chilling, but I cannot afford to forget its inherent danger.
Chapter Seventeen
No. 25
I carry her smile home with me,
my fingers locked around this Pandora’s box,
eager to place it atop my desk
and unleash that wicked light into this
space that yearns to feel the heat
that dances from her sweet lips, calling
my heart to ignite what’s left inside.
Chapter Eighteen
My house is so clean that it looks like the showcase house for a start-up subdivision. I have not seen it this clean in quite a while. In fact, I woke up early this morning vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, and putting things away. It’s Saturday, and while Tanya won’t be here until around seven, I feel as though I need to be preparing for her, which is ironic since she is the one who is cooking tonight’s dinner.
Satisfied with the cleanliness of the house, I toss on a t-shirt and some sweatpants and head over to the gym for a quick workout. My mind flows in a million different directions as I jog on the treadmill with Ledisi’s “Alright” playing in the ear buds of my iPod. The energy pulsing through my legs feels good, and my breaths are matching drop of each foot. “Everything is everything; it’s gonna be alright,” I find myself singing under my breath. I smile as sweat trickles down the side of my face and my abs tense with the movement of my legs. After my cool down, I do some benching, back work, curls, and triceps pulls. I love the feeling of my body coming alive, and as I look at the mirror behind the dumbbell rack, I try to see myself as Tanya described me. Maybe if I were the vain type I would flex, but to me it’s just me, which at age forty is not bad at all. I am healthy, and I guess that outweighs everything else from an aesthetic point of view.
I shower before leaving the gym, anxiety building the whole way home. I try to call Marcus for some last minute advice or encouragement, but I can’t reach him. Left alone with my nerves getting the best of me, I set the alarm on my cell phone and lie down to take a nap on the couch. Closing my eyes, I focus on my breaths, counting from one to ten several times before I feel myself drifting off.
When I awake, I can’t remember my dream or the feeling of anxiety. I reach over and check my cell phone and realize that Tanya doesn’t have my phone number. I walk over to my laptop and check for any instant messages, thinking to myself for the first time that we might need to find a more immediate way of contacting each other if things should evolve into more than late night chats.
As far as I know, I still have an hour before Tanya arrives, so I take another shower and put on the polo shirt and khakis that I ironed earlier this morning.
Glancing in the mirror, I think to myself, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
Seven o’clock comes and goes, while I sit on my couch, peeking through the blinds beneath the closed curtains. Occasionally I walk over to my computer and check for any messages before returning to the couch.
Eight o’clock comes and goes, and I begin to consider whether or not something bad has happened. I have no number to call, but I consider calling the Atlanta Police Department to check for any accidents. Another part of me whispers that I might have simply been stood up. Maybe this is just a game to her, getting a professor to step across that informal code of conduct to confess a romantic interest in her. I feel like such a sucker. Am I really that old creepy professor who gets off on young girls? I am suddenly flush with embarrassment and then fear. Could something like this come back to haunt me on my tenure review next year?
I stop cold. I’m overthinking this again, I know.
I turn off the lights in the den, and as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I walk into the kitchen and grab a banana. I peel it and take a bite. Through the blinds in the den I can see a pair of headlights pulling into my driveway. I walk closer to the window and immediately recognize Tanya’s car. I see the headlights turn off and her door crack open so that the interior lights come on. It’s definitely her.
She gets out of the car, and I can only make out that she is wearing a sleeveless light colored button-up shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. She walks toward the house, but her hands are empty.
I am so surprised to see her that I open the door with the lights still turned off in the house.
“I’m sorry, Ed,” she starts.
I don’t really know what she’s apologizing for, but I respond, “That’s OK. What happened?”
Her face looks troubled, and instinctively I take her by the hand and usher her into the house. I reach over and turn on a lamp resting nearby.
“Have a seat,” I say, pointing to the couch.
She walks over and sits down in the center of the couch, and I take a seat next to her.
“It’s been a crazy day,” she says, placing her hands on her knees and looking upward to gain some composure.
I nod attentively.
“Hey, let me start by apologizing for not getting a chance to make dinner for you. It was in the plan, but plans change, you know.”
I look at her curiously, not understanding what she is getting at. I wait for her to continue.
Finally, she says, “I broke up with Kevin today.”
I don’t know what that means for her or for me, but I know that break-ups are rarely pretty.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
She looks at me, and I can’t make out what her expression means. It looks like a cross between pain and elation.
“I mean, I knew that sooner or later we would probably break it off, but I didn’t wake up this morning thinking, you know, that this would be the day.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s just that he—whoo,” she starts, her voice going up an octave on the last word before she attempts to stabilize it, “that asshole just picked the wrong damn day, you know?”
“Yeah,” I offer, trying not to get in the way of her thoughts.
“OK,” she says, breathing deeply. “This is how it went down. He went to the pajama jam last night and we got into a fight on the way home.”
“A fight? Like fists?”
“No, I mean an argument. I kept asking him about that girl over in Columbus, you know? Asking him if that baby was really his. He kept on saying ‘no,’ but then he got mad and said that it was his and that it was something that happened in his past and that I needed to just get past that. I was like ‘hell no!’ How do you get past a kid? He must think I got Boo Boo the Fool written across my forehead. So he kept calling me all this morning, and I let it go straight to voicemail. Finally, he shows up at my crib, and I’m getting ready to make your meal, and he starts getting all up in my face, saying stuff like I’m the one who’s tripping. When I tell him that I don’t want him anymore, he starts yelling on me. I told him that he can’t yell at me—even if this wasn’t my crib—but especially because it was, you know?”
She is talking quickly now, and I can tell that she’s reliving the conversation as she recounts what happened, although I’m not quite understand all that she’s saying.
“Then he said that I could never find a man like him, so I needed to just accept facts and get over myself. And I was like ‘what the—?’, you know? Then I told him I was going out later anyway. He asked me with who, and I told him none of his business. I think that’s when he saw all the food laid out. He was like, ‘You cooking for this dude?’ And I said ‘Yes.’ So then he flips the whole thing on me saying that I was the one who was cheating on him.”
My stomach sinks, as I hear myself becoming a part of her story. This is definitely not what I wanted—getting pulled into a relationship gone sour. I wonder what I have gotten myself into.
“Did you tell him who you were cooking for?” I ask, trying to disguise the concern in my voice.
“No, but he thinks it’s one of the frats from the party last night. I told him that I hadn’t done anything with anyone, unlike his cheating ass. Then I started getting his stuff and throwing it at him. That’s when he really got mad. I emptied out this drawer he had been using for when he stayed over. Gave him all of his shit back and told him to get the hell out of my house. And this fool acted like he didn’t want to leave. He started throwing my food on the floor and stuff. It got real ugly. My roommate finally came home and threatened to call the cops on him. As soon as she picked up her cell phone to dial, he said, ‘Fuck this’ and left.”
“Did he come back?” I ask.
“No. Just left, you know? And that’s when it hit me that it was all over.” She turns her face away from me. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you all of this.”
“It’s OK. I want you to be able to talk to me.”
“Yeah,” she responds, brushing her hand across her eyes. Up till that point, I did not realize she was crying.
I place my hand on her back. “You want anything to drink?”
“No. I’m cool.” She sits with her head downward, looking at her hands. “Hey, Ed, I’m sorry about your dinner. He messed up everything.”
“Hey, I’m cool,” I say, lifting what’s left of my banana. “I was already eating when you got here.”
She smiles and shakes her head. “You’re crazy. You know that?”
“That’s what they keep telling me.”
I reach for the remote control on the coffee table. “Want to see what’s on the TV?” I ask.
“Sure.”
I fan through channels until she tells me to stop on The Five Heartbeats.
“I love this movie!” she says. “Can’t nobody sang like ole Eddie King!” She says the word “king” so that it rhymes with “sang.”
We laugh and settle back onto the couch.
“You want the lamp on?” I ask.
“No. I’m cool,” she says.
I turn off the lamp, and before I know it, Tanya is snuggled against me on the couch, and I sense that the day is finally getting better for both of us.
Chapter Nineteen
I open my eyes, and it takes me a moment to realize that I am still lying on the couch. I look around for Tanya and immediately feel her head nestled against my chest, asleep. The TV is still on, and as my mind clears, I feel vaguely like I am in Boomerang, that Eddie Murphy movie with Halle Berry, where I am waking from a drowsy conversation about Star Trek. My arm is stiff, and I feel the urge to stretch, but I don’t want to move her. I like the feeling of her lying on me.
I take my free hand and rub her arm softly. When I do this, she moans.
“I should probably get home,” she mumbles. “What time is it?”
