“You should come with me! We should go, as a date, together,” I say to Roslyn, to see what will happen. I long to see Roslyn unnerved. And if she comes undone, maybe Sunita Habersham will be off balance because of it. That’s what I want. I want to see someone else uncomfortable. It works. The tree sways a bit. I follow with, “Sun said there’s a great Ethiopian place, we’re going to meet up there first.”
“Almaz,” Roslyn shoots back. And there is no sway there. There is only rigidity. “You know what? I think that’s a fantastic idea.”
As Roslyn walks away, we both stare after her.
“You know what, man? You’re a wild boy,” Spider says when she’s out of range.
“Don’t use that word. That b-word,” I tell him, at which he frowns with a total lack of amusement.
15
ELIJAH. I say his name for hours. I say it and I spit. Literally. Even when I’m indoors. Eel. Lie. Junk. I fucking hate him. I hate him when Roslyn picks me up in the center’s school bus. I hate him enough to fill every empty seat gaping behind us as we drive downtown. I fucking hate him. And I’m sure he’s a nice guy. I’m sure he’s a great guy. I’m sure he had the strongest of college recommendations, that there are old ladies who just think of his horrible name and start to cry because humanity has a hope after all. I forgive Sun for being his captive. For being seduced by his lies. Because they must be lies, because he must actually be a horrible person, because how else could I hate him?
Roslyn knows where the restaurant is, and insists on guiding me from the school bus by my hand. They’re sitting on the floor, on pillows. Elijah’s white. This is fine, I prepared a special hatred program in case he was a white guy, and it’s ready to roll out. I’ll have to delete the black Elijah, Asian Elijah, and mulatto Elijah mental files, but this just gives me more room to focus. He’s probably one of those white guys who think they’re enlightened just because they’ve realized the obvious fact that black women are beautiful. He’s probably one of those white guys who think poking their pink members in black women will somehow cure racism. I don’t trust interracial couples. I don’t even trust the one that made me: I think of who my father was, who my mother was, and I have no idea why they first hooked up, let alone fell in love. I don’t know if I’m the by-product of a racialized eroticism or a romantic rebellion of societal norms. I’m fine with mixed-race unions that just happen, are formed when two people randomly connect. But there are other kinds of interracial couplings with suspect motivation, with connections based on fetishizing of black sexuality, or internalized white supremacy — those kinds exist too. Yes, I was in an interracial relationship myself, but I distrust my own initial motivation.
I can dislike interracial couples while acknowledging I’m the product of one. Every misogynist came out of a woman.
Elijah’s got a ponytail. It’s braided. This is a bonus, because I can hate this more and do. It’s red and he says his last name and I refuse to register it but it’s Scottish so I feel relieved in hating him without too much Celtic overlap. He’s skinny, and he wears two gold chains that shine through his open collar, and this is fantastic for hatred. It’s so good that I look over at Sun and find that my disdain is becoming so voluminous that some of my hatred for Eel-Lie-Jah is spilling over to her. I look at Sun, who looks at the menu as if bored. But I don’t think she can be bored because we’ve been having sex several times a week for months and now we’re having dinner with her boyfriend.
“Do you know what you want?” she asks me. Then she winks. Only I can see it. For the length of the time it takes for her lids to shutter down and up again, we are in the Beetle, and she is naked, on me, facing me, kissing me like she wants my tongue at the bottom of her stomach. And I blush and look down at my menu and say, “I’m just here for the pancakes.”
“Their injera is pure love. A lot of places, they use an electric oven, but they use a traditional clay oven here. You can taste the authenticity.”
Elijah says all this, and he’s very warm about it too, his eyebrows pop up excitedly with the word love, and I look back at him and smile and wonder for the first time, Does he know me and his girlfriend are fucking?
“For Elijah, everything has to be authentic,” Roslyn says. So she knows him well, clearly. Well enough for there to be a slight disapproval in her statement.
“What is something worth if it’s not real? I just prefer truth. Some people choose otherwise,” Elijah says back.
Roslyn does that laugh, as though a child has said something inappropriate, and drinks, and I don’t know what the hell they’re really talking about. I hold the menu. I hold it up to my face, releasing my facial muscles from the strain of hiding disdain. I don’t read the words. I want to hold it like this all night. I could do that here, and at the concert next. Who’s that? Oh, that’s Warren. He’s very serious about what he’s going to order tonight.
“They let the dough ferment for days, then hand pound it,” Elijah says. “You really can taste the difference. If you’re like me, you’re going to love it too. And it looks like we have the same tastes, right?” and I look up, and he’s smiling at Sun. Whose response is, “You know what, I think I need to powder my nose.” Because Elijah totally knows we’re fucking.
Roslyn makes a motion with her arm like she’s going to get up and go with Sunita and I reach over and grab her hand and say, “Will you help me pick some appetizers?” with my mouth and Please don’t leave me alone with this white boy with every other part of my body. Roslyn gets up anyway, pulls her hand free. Before she leaves, though, I get a kiss, on my forehead, that lasts long enough that I have to be still to not hit her in the nose. And then it’s just me and the white guy who’s smiling at me.
“Let’s get out the weirdness. Let’s just get it out, set it free, send it on the road.” This is his toast, two glasses tink. He brought his own bottle of red wine. The label is boring and not at all hip and I’m sure that that means secretly it is.
“Hit me,” Elijah says. I look up from my glass. “Just hit me.” I put the glass down. “Not, like, in the face, bro. I mean, the ladies are only going to be gone for a minute. Let’s have mano to mano time.”
Mano means hand. I kind of want to punch him with mine. Not really. Just a little, but not really. I’m suddenly tired. I want to go home. I have a daughter. Tal doesn’t need this. Tal needs me to date a woman who can add something to both our lives. I don’t need this. I don’t even really need a penis anymore. It can go. I could use a tube to pee or something. It’d be awkward, but I could get over that.
“Sun said you used to be married?” Elijah asks when my silence becomes too much for him.
“Married. Divorced. The whole cycle.”
“That’s why you get it, then.” Elijah goes to clink my glass again. It’s already empty. He fills it up for me once more.
“Marriage for men, it makes sense in a world where the average life expectancy is thirty-seven. If you’re a guy in a village of like sixty, eighty people, with just a few women of childbearing age. But in our world? Never catch me getting married.” He twirls his ponytail as he talks. He twirls it faster and faster. I look at the hair; I can’t look at him. I hear the words, I even think about them, but I can’t look at Sun’s white boy as he deems to whitesplain the world.
“Maybe we should just kill ourselves at thirty-seven. Have you considered that?” I shoot back.