“Oh no—not again,” she said, ignoring me as she chewed a mouthful of tortellini. “Have you set the date?”
“Not yet.” I shifted my eyes away from hers.
“Angela, I love you, but, okay, stop it!” Mae said, nearly shouting. Two hangers stopped pushing their food around their plates and looked up at us.
“Please…” I didn’t want to get into this with her. There was so much she didn’t know.
“No, PLEASE! Keith is a good man. He’s awright-looking for an academic, and he loves you and wants to marry you,” she said, ticking off Keith’s strong points on her left hand. “The boy’s romantic, you’ve got to give him that. Remember your engagement?”
After four years together, I had mentioned to Keith offhandedly that I longed to go to Africa. “By the time I see the motherland, I’ll be a grandmother,” I had said as we climbed into bed one night. A month later, he surprised me with a ten-day trip to South Africa. After visiting Johannesburg, Cape Town and a lavish game lodge in Kruger National Park, we ended up in Franschhoek, South Africa’s lush wine country. Over dinner on a terrace with a view of Table Mountain, Keith said to me, “Angela, ‘you make my life fine, fine as wine.’” Then he smiled. Langston, his favorite poet. “Will you marry me?”
Looking way beyond corny down on one knee, he presented me with a 4-carat diamond ring, an heirloom passed down from his grandmother, Lottie. It looked as big as a suitcase on my finger. Between the ring and the poem, and the motherland and the ice-cold Sauvignon blanc, I started sobbing uncontrollably.
Crying, too, Keith had stroked my hand. “Uh, ‘baby, I’m never gonna give you up, so don’t make me wait too long,’” he said, deepening his voice. Barry White, his other favorite poet. Even more cornball. Through the tears and giggles and second thoughts, I managed to sputter out a “yes.”
“Besides that fantastic proposal, get real,” Mae said, reaching over and stabbing a bite of salmon from my plate. “He’s a man, he’s black, and he’s got hair and vital signs.”
“Okay, okay.” I pushed a piece of salmon and an olive onto my fork.
“There is a SHORTAGE, I know you know that—catch up.” She snapped the fingers of her left hand, pushing a stray piece of asparagus onto her fork with her pinkie.
“Oh, knock it off,” I said, grabbing her hand to stop the irritating snapping. “I’m not rushing into marriage because of your crackpot scare tactics.”
“RUSH, you’ve been with this man, what, six years? Plus, you do love him.” This was not a question.
“Yes, I do love him,” I said, raising my voice, too. “But, Mae, how do I know that Keith is my soul mate?”
“Shut up—PA-lease. No one marries their soul mate, except for lesbians, and they can’t get married.” She widened her eyes and stared at me. I felt my heart jump, lurching out of sync for a beat as Caitlin Getty’s face flashed in my mind.
“Break up with him, then,” Mae continued, taking her napkin from her lap and dabbing at a bit of stray sauce from the corner of her mouth. “Then see how easy it is to find your so-called soul mate. Forget the stats; look around at black women who are thirty, your age shortly. Where are a bunch of eligible black men jumping in line to date us?” she said.
“I just read an article in one of the black magazines that said sisters have our expectations too high and that we need to date bus drivers, rather than wait for a man on our level. You know what, that tired advice doesn’t even work anymore. I was eating up at Amy Ruth’s last week, and I heard two women fighting over a guy—who was in prison. Now, you do the math: If there are two women fighting over every guy in lockdown, that means four are fighting over every bus driver and eight are fighting over every college professor, and God knows how many are fighting over an investment banker.”
“And your point is?” I asked, wishing she’d pipe down.
“You know what—I turned the page in that magazine,” she continued, waving her fork. “And I was advised to draw a hot bath, light a candle and marry myself. Why would a magazine tell you to marry yourself if there was a living, breathing person to actually marry?” She was getting very worked up.
“I get it,” I said. I wanted to get her off this subject.
“No, you don’t,” Mae said as she stuck her fork into a neat mound of risotto. “Miss Wright, where are you going to look for Mr. Right? Here? You work at a friggin’ women’s magazine company. Do you see any men here?; well, any that won’t be on the 3:50 train to the Pines ferry on Fridays?”
“Okay, if things are soooo dire, why are you always so picky?” I looked at her pointedly, raising my eyebrows.
“Girl, please, I am not picky, I’m discriminating.”
“Girl, please yourself.” I was irritated, talking much more black than usual. My “black woman voice” seemed to have more authority.
“Listen, Mae, maybe I’m scared, okay?” I said, feeling tired and shaky. I reached across the table and gripped her hand. I wished I could tell Mae about my secret desires for women. But I was afraid. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to tell her. Maybe after I was safely married to Keith. Or maybe this wasn’t the kind of thing I would ever tell my best friend. These were thoughts that I would always savor and later punish myself for.
“Mae, I’ll be okay. I just need more time.”
“I know, I know, of course you are, of course you do,” She moved her hand from underneath and rested it on top of mine, squeezing lightly. “Everybody gets scared before marriage.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“So have an affair.” Her smile was playful, her voice matter-of-fact. “Men do it all the time. They get jittery before they’re supposed to get married, so they find some bimbo to screw. Have you thought of that?” She grinned; her gap looked large enough to walk through.
“Now you really are insane.” I stood up, holding the tray. “Listen, I’d love to sit here and continue this crazy talk, but I have a meeting with Lucia in ten minutes and I’m not too prepared.”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s more important to look pretty. Here, put on some lipstick.” Mae pulled a tube from her purse and pushed it toward me. “You ate off whatever you applied earlier to try to impress your ho in chief.” Mae couldn’t stand Lucia.
“That wasn’t for her, that was for you, silly.” I went around the table and kissed the top of her head, before tugging my own lipstick from my pocket.
Chapter 3
I walked into Lucia’s office a few minutes late, hoping she had gotten juiced about something this week, since, for a change, I was light on ideas. I had been preoccupied thinking about Cait Getty and then willing those thoughts away. Twice a month I met with my boss to help her brainstorm ideas for her editor’s note, “Deep Désire.” It was an odd duty: Most editors at my level would kill for private meetings with the editor in chief of the magazine and were not in on writing an editor’s note. But most editors of my level were afraid of Lucia, our brilliant diva of a boss. And most weren’t gifted at spinning out magazine ideas. I was the Stephen Hawking of ideas, much to the irritation of my peers.
Lucia Bravo appreciated my skills. She was widely considered a quirky genius and “Deep Désire” had a large, dedicated following. She had reworked the prudish “Tips for Girls” column inherited from the previous editor into a no-holds-barred, monthly sex romp—with tips. Most columns featured Lucia’s own escapades or those that she said were hers. In her younger years, she had slept with dozens of men, in hundreds of different locales, and tried numerous, often highly gymnastic, sexual positions. She had also used every fruit and vegetable as a sex toy, had licked various dessert toppings and pie fillings off sex partners,