All the Trouble You Need Page 8

  “I think we should just relax. You know, rest. I’m a little burned out from the drive,” he said.

  Jordan paused, thinking of something else to say, but she kissed him. If he was going to do the deed, he figured the safest course would be to make this the longest foreplay of his life. How did “To His Coy Mistress” go? . . . “Two hundred years to adore each breast” . . . Yeah, he’d make her explode with desire, and maybe he’d relax long enough to get an erection. Ten minutes later he was fumbling with a rubber.

  “Wait a minute—do you know . . .”

  Here it comes like clockwork.

  “I guess you know I’m a virgin.”

  “Yeah, I never suspected.”

  “What do you think about waiting?”

  “Sure, wait. Why not? We have all night, the morning . . .”

  “Until we’re married.”

  Cold water crashed against the modest embers of his desire.

  “Now, that could be awhile.”

  “Would you be mad at me if we waited?”

  “Well, I . . .”

  That was it. She crawled on top of him, but her eagerness seemed forced.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said.

  “You don’t want to? You want to wait?”

  “I mean, waiting is fine if you want to wait.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  Her small breasts looked perfect, inches from his mouth. How was he supposed to show restraint?

  “I don’t know. I mean, we’re different. I need things, but I respect you—you know, your beliefs.”

  His hands slipped to her hips.

  “I’m using a diaphragm. It’s my first time trying it out,” she said, as though she had made a joke.

  “Let’s just take this slow,” he said, with new resolve, and slid her off him.

  “You’re not disappointed?” she said, on her back, looking up at him.

  He looked down at her on the verge of panic, wishing he had had the foresight to have put virgins out of his mind altogether. He should have worn a T-shirt that said something like “No virgins accepted here,” or “Will not deflower!” He patted her shoulder, and tried to ignore that blood red teddy barely restraining her hips and breasts.

  “I’m willing to wait,” he said, and took a deep breath. Trisha kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you for being so patient.”

  Somehow that was enough. Not getting laid wasn’t the end of the world; not if the weight of the world rested on a cherry.

  In the morning, Jordan woke to a fully dressed Trisha, sitting across from him at the room’s desk reading Pismo Today!

  “Ready for breakfast?”

  “No, I think I need to get back home.”

  “So soon?”

  “Yes.”

  Jordan sighed, and dressed without looking at Trisha.

  “Breakfast really means that much to you?” Trisha finally asked.

  “Breakfast means a whole lot to me.”

  “Okay, then. I have time for breakfast.”

  “Cool,” Jordan said, grinning.

  Farmer Boy Restaurant was on the other side of the pier but it was so crowded that only a few counter seats were open. They waited in the still foggy morning air for a table to free up and were surprised to see another black couple exiting the restaurant in high spirits.

  “Look, more colored folk. Maybe this is the hangout,” Jordan said. After hearing his name called, he happily led the way into the bustling Farmer Boy. It annoyed Trisha how cheerful he was.

  “Jordan, we need to talk about last night.”

  Jordan tensed to her words.

  “Last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened last night?”

  “You know what happened.”

  “We slept. I thought that’s what you wanted to do.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “You didn’t even try.”

  Jordan sighed.

  “Listen, I don’t force women into doing something they feel uncomfortable about.”

  Trisha looked away from him.

  “I thought maybe you didn’t like me, or weren’t attracted to me.”

  Jordan sighed.

  “I like you. That’s why I didn’t try. . . . It didn’t matter that much to me.”

  “So, you’re saying that if you didn’t like me, you would have tried harder?”

  He paused, trapped.

  “These women you sleep with, you don’t like them?”

  “It’s not really like that.”

  “What’s it like, then?”

  “I like you a lot.”

  “Like? You have sex with women you don’t like. You have respect for me, probably because I haven’t slept with you.”

  “Now, that’s bullshit.”

  “Is that what happened to the new girl? She gave it up and that was that?”

  Jordan stood up, yanked some bills from his wallet, dropped them on the table, and walked out.

  Trisha had never seen him so mad.

  Outside, she saw him far down the road, walking quickly on the shoulder of the highway.

  “Jordan! Jordan!” she called.

  She waited a half hour before Jordan returned, acting calm as though nothing had happened.

  “What’s with this running off?”

  Jordan shook his head.

  “You don’t want to talk about what I mean to you, or what this other woman meant to you. Some people would say that makes you a dog.”

  “You really don’t understand men. I’m not a dog. I don’t try to dog women. Sometimes things get ugly and there’s nothing you can do about that. It’s the way it is.”

  Trisha sat quietly, wondering how she could have spent the night with him.

  As they drove south, the fogginess cleared, and the ocean was choppy and blue. On their left the rolling hillsides were green, and the many dark oak and walnut trees were in bloom, verdant leaves against black branches. Jordan slipped in a CD, and the car filled with Al Green. She wanted to be angry with him for the entire ride back to Santa Barbara, but she couldn’t. Everything was so perfect; the empty highway stretching like a long ribbon before them, the sharpness of the morning air, the smell of the ocean. They passed a few dilapidated farmhouses that looked sufficiently melancholy, but what caught Trisha’s interest was a boarded-up roadside café with an “Eat” sign high enough for even the most unobservant driver to see. Obviously, it didn’t attract enough attention to keep the business going. The café was made to resemble a train car with portal-shaped windows and a railroad-crossing sign above the entrance; it looked as sad as she felt. She wondered if it was for sale. Maybe she could buy it and she could retreat from life, running a roadside diner. What would the locals say? “That black girl’s diner can’t be beat.” Locals, tourists, and maybe even some cowboys, if they weren’t total racists, would come by for good Southern cooking. The restaurant would become a local institution because Pie would train all the cooks. Trisha would make more than enough money to buy an old farmhouse and restore it to its former glory. There, she’d live alone with yard dogs and house cats, content to read fat Trollope novels. She’d spend the years in spinsterhood because this rat, Jordan, couldn’t be honest.

  “So, why do you feel so comfortable in Santa Barbara?” she asked, over the dull roar of the engine.

  “Don’t you? It’s beautiful. The ocean next to the mountains. No smog. People leave me alone. It’s safe.”

  “But I was born here. I’m used to being the only black person around. I have my family, some friends. I know how to live in this world. For you it’s got to be different.”

  “Hey, I made my own life here. Everybody has to figure it out for themselves. It’s everything I need at this point. What should I do, find some corporate job, be a suit? I spend mornings at a café reading, having coffee, walking to the ocean. I get paid to talk about books. It’s a good life.”

 
Trisha wanted to respond but her thoughts became jumbled. Her life was so utterly unlike his; she didn’t feel like she could judge him, but she did.

  “Are you running from Los Angeles, from black people? It’s where you come from. Don’t you feel like you don’t belong here?”

  “What?”

  “Only since I got to college do I feel like I truly belong. It was nice when I was little, but eventually I started to understand; my father was the first black on the Santa Barbara board of education. Even here in this quaint tourist town, we received death threats. I had a policeman driving me to elementary school and parking in front of our house. I know this place, the good and the bad. I don’t see how you can come up here and spend a couple of years and feel like Santa Barbara is it.”

  “Eight years.”

  “Whatever. You still think you fit in.”

  “You act like there’s a correct way for me to be living.”

  “I think it’s more than that. I think you’re running from yourself. You want to be someone else.”

  The Triumph accelerated sharply. Ninety easily, but if that’s how he hoped to change the subject, she wasn’t intimidated.

  “You don’t understand. I’ve lived a little bit. I dealt with this before. A woman checks you out and doesn’t like your prospects. Let me tell you, it’s worse back in the big city. I always had a job. Once I worked at a fish market over on Fairfax. I made some decent money for a high school student; I had a sweet little Mustang and all the new sneakers I needed. One day I had to pull a morning shift because the owner was sick. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get home to shower. I scrubbed up at work and rushed to school for an exam in my English class. Somebody got a whiff of me, you know, smelling of fish. I get called ‘Fish Sauce’ for the rest of the year. Everybody was calling me ‘Fish Sauce’; scrubs, girls I was trying to get over with, my so-called friends from Baldwin Hills who didn’t need to work at a fish market. You want to know what I learned from that? Do what you please ‘cause people will do their best to try to shoot you down.”

  Trisha shook her head. What the hell was he talking about?

  “Jordan, I respect you. I’m not criticizing your job, or how you’re living your life.”

  “Then what exactly are you criticizing?”

  Finally, he slowed to negotiate the sharp turns to her house. There, Trisha bolted from the car, but she turned to meet his eyes.

  “You’re not being honest with me,” she said.

  “I’m through with you picking on me, sitting in judgment of me. I know what you’re mad at. You think of me as some race traitor because I like living in a beautiful city anybody would want to live in. Your father made that decision; do you give him the grief you’re giving me?”

  “No.”

  “Okay . . .” He finally looked at her, his eyes showing anger, but more hurt.

  “Call me?” she asked, as he put the car in reverse and swung around to coast downhill. She wanted another “okay,” but he said nothing. Instead, he waved weakly and rolled away to freedom.

  She didn’t want to face her parents or anyone else. Before she could decide what to do, her mother and Pie arrived.

  Through the window she could see Lady Bell crying and heard Pie’s gravelly voice, “Tell the girl.”

  “Bad news, Trish. Daddy’s in the hospital.”

  “What?! What’s wrong?”

  “He has to rest,” Lady Bell said.

  “The man’s gone and let himself have a nervous breakdown,” Pie said, harshly.

  Right as Trisha’s knees buckled, Pie’s strong arm grabbed her around the waist.

  Inside the house, Trisha noticed the stacks of books almost to the ceiling, blocking the kitchen and hallway doors.

  “The bookcases were too difficult to move so he moved the books,” Lady Bell said.

  “All night that man’s been acting like a nut trying to build a wall of books,” Pie said.

  “Dad?”

  “Oh, yes. It was quite a scene. I’ve never seen him like that.”

  Her mother’s forced cheeriness finally cracked. Tears streaked her face faster than she could wipe them away.

  “Aw, yeah. Then he got out that golf club and chased us.”

  “Chased you?” Trisha asked.

  “Well, he was trying to protect us,” Lady Bell said. “From the voices he’s hearing.”

  “Protect us? That man just wanted to run us around the house like some chickens. Lucky we got it from him before the police came. Coulda got ugly.”

  “All this happened last night?” Trisha asked, following Pie and Lady Bell as they inspected each room of the house, assessing damage. Chairs stacked on couches, couches pushed against doorways; almost every doorway had some kind of blockade even if it was no more than television trays piled high with ancient Reader’s Digests.

  “This is where he was holed up,” Pie said. “In the master bedroom.”

  “Mom, I left him last night and he seemed okay, just tired. I made him a burger before I left for Michelle’s.”

  Pie, though in her seventies, pushed aside the couch blocking the way to the family room and rearranged it in its normal position facing out toward the pool. Lady Bell smiled gratefully and sat down and gestured for Trisha to do the same.

  “Your father has been on medication for depression for the last year.”

  “You didn’t tell me?”

  “He made me promise not to tell you or your brothers. He hoped to protect you. He hears voices. He thinks we’re in danger.”

  “In danger from what?”

  Lady Bell sighed. “He thinks we have enemies. People, Caucasians, who want to . . .”

  “Lynch y’all,” Pie added, as she went about straightening the room.

  “The doctor worried that your father might become more depressed, but we didn’t think he’d be like this.”

  “Great,” Trisha said, putting her face in her hands.

  “Y’all ready to get back to the hospital? Mr. Bell is gonna need his things.”

  “Right. I have to pack a bag for your father.”

  “A bag? How long is he supposed to be in the hospital?”

  “ ’Long as the Lord wants him there,” Pie said.

  Lady Bell began to cry again but she slipped away to pack before Trisha noticed. Trisha found herself doing the same but her tears turned to sobs. Pie came over and sat with her.

  “Trish, don’t worry. Your daddy’s gonna be fine. That man is just tired. That’s all that it is. He just needs to rest.”

  Trisha pulled herself together long enough to nod.

  * * *

  Trisha watched her mother enter the hospital room, hoping she didn’t have to follow. She had no idea of what to expect, and since she wasn’t given a hint by Pie or her mother, she expected the worse. She wanted to sit next to Pie and wait the whole thing out, but Pie frowned her disapproval.

  “Go on. You ain’t gonna let your mama do all that grieving by herself, are you?”

  Reluctantly, Trisha entered the room. She saw her mother sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed, holding her father’s hand. Trisha could barely bring herself to look at him. It was obvious that he was heavily sedated, but she noticed the straps to hold him down.

  “Daddy?” she said.

  He continued lying there, sphinxlike. She wanted to leave as fast as she could, because looking at him was making her panic. Even sleeping, his face looked as rigid as raw iron. He was incapable of relaxing even with all kinds of tranquilizers pumping into him.

  “Trish,” he finally said.

  “Dad?”

  “Trisha,” he repeated in a surprisingly strong voice. “I want you to . . .”

  She waited for him to complete his sentence, but he became even more rigid, gritting his teeth; then a slight shaking started, and it grew stronger.

  Her mother ran out for help.

  “It’s okay. . . .” he said, his voice falling to a whisper. “Listen . . . protect yourself. Th
ese people want to destroy us. Your mother doesn’t know the danger. Watch out for these white people. They’ll destroy you. . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Then Lady Bell returned with a nurse. The nurse didn’t look surprised.

  “He’s been like this, slipping in and out of consciousness, becoming aggressive and then withdrawing.”

  With those words, Trisha returned to the waiting room. Pie was there to hold her as she cried her eyes out.

  CHAPTER 8

  Jordan and Ned arrived on State Street after a two-mile jog from the sad little shack on Milpas. A run downtown on a warm afternoon guaranteed serious girl-watching. Maybe they’d make it to the wharf for cheap fried-catfish sandwiches, but if they ended up eating at the Italian deli on Cota, that was cool too.

  “You gonna miss all this,” Jordan said.

  Ned shrugged. “Yeah, another beautiful day in paradise, but I’ll get over it.”

  “Soon as it starts to snow your ass will be driving straight back to Santa Barbara.”

  “I don’t think so. D.C. got a whole lot of sistas and I got a whole lot of catching up to do.”

  “Man, you could find a woman here,” Jordan said.

  “Like you? All the women you mess with are too high maintenance for me—like that Daphne; I thought you were through with her.”

  Jordan shook his head.

  “I thought I was. She came to class last week, and it’s back on. I just looked at her and I knew I was sprung. I mean, it’s bad. If she wanted the keys to the Triumph, I’d go gas it up and get it waxed before I’d hand her the pink slip.”

  “As much as you love that silly little sports car, you must be in love.”

  “Yeah, I’m gone.”

  “Don’t lie, you like it.”

  “I’m just hanging in there, waiting for the wrong turn, hoping I have time enough to throw myself clear before the big crash and burn.”

  “You should stop with the stupid car metaphors, but I’m gonna give you one: If you don’t watch out, you gonna have a head on-collision with a broken heart.”

  Jordan laughed, then stopped and turned at the sound of an alarm ringing faintly in the distance. A crowd gathered at the jewelry shop next to the entrance of the faded pastels of the El Paseo courtyard. Ned hung back, but Jordan headed into the crowd spilling from the sidewalk into the street. Minutes later he returned, shaking his head.