Saturday
Dear MaMaeve,
Things going good here. Real smooth. Job’s okay. Flapjack says hello. Yes, he’s still a fool. Oh, and I gots me a date tonight. Real nice girl…
“Wallace, come on! Daaamn, it’s ten already! Bring yo black ass, boy!” Flapjack yelled loudly, one hand around a can of Schlitz Bull, and smiling from the driver’s seat of a rusty, gray Pinto.
“Play that funky music…” boomed out of Flapjack’s hatchback.
The D.C. street was alive. Old men sat in the nightshade of their stoops, laughing with wrinkled faces. Old women and mothers scolded leftover children to come inside from window ledges ’cause the streetlights were already on. Down the corner the hoods slouched by Big Joe’s “Vience Sto” or squatted behind a dumpster shooting craps. And even now the whores lined the street, heels clicking on concrete as they flashed black fishnet stockings and painted smiles. Everywhere there was noise and life, cars honking, people yelling in the heat of it all. Everywhere there was life, a steady rhythm of it pumping and slapping the streets.
But Wallace couldn’t feel it, couldn’t touch it, and didn’t know it. Wallace stepped out of his apartment and onto his stoop, wiping his face on his sleeve. Old Man Lenox offered Wallace a sip of his Wild Irish Rose as Wallace stepped over him but Wallace declined. He thought, as he pulled up his navy-blue, frayed shirt collar, that it was Saturday, wasn’t it? (Wallace tried desperately to feel what a Saturday was.) Party time, right? Forget Mr. Towns at Rib Smack Shack. Forget the light bill on the coffee table under the blue ashtray. Forget the feel of D.C. on Saturday nights alone. Saturdays, man!
Forget everything, ’cause it’s Saturday, Wallace’s mind said with eyes raised to a cobalt sky, forget, forget, forget. Only he couldn’t forget and he couldn’t remember how life used to feel, how Saturdays used to feel. So he made the motions and spoke the words and pretended. But tonight would be different.
Wallace ignored the ache in his right leg and pimped to Flapjack’s Pinto in that awkward and slightly fiendish way. Let folks think him a hood, but they must never know his frailties. He remembered to slam the door twice to make it shut. Already in the car, besides a grinning Flapjack, were two women (Arlette and Josie) lounging in the shadow of the backseat. A little anticipation grabbed Wallace and he smiled. In a quick flash Wallace remembered being seventeen and the dates. He remembered bits and snatches of those memories. Lisa…was that her name? Tonight would be fun. Flapjack, the mastermind of this double date, like a complete dumbass introduced everyone in darkness while taking another sip of Schlitz. Wallace could tell from the sweet-burnt smell that Flapjack had already passed a joint. Everyone was mellowed except Wallace. One of the women giggled and popped her gum. The other one was silent. Wallace hoped she wasn’t Josie. (That was his date.)
“Evening, ladies. You’re looking nice tonight.” Wallace turned on full charm with a berry-lipped smile. In the dark he could barely see them… Lisa Calloway, that was it. Wallace smiled wider. He imagined Lisa. Only their legs, one coffee, the other banana colored, flickered in the passing streetlights from the backseat as Flapjack drove. Only one woman’s raspy voice answered thanks.
“Yeah, evening ladies,” Flapjack said, wiggling scraggly eyebrows through the rearview mirror.
“Where you takin’ us, Flapjack?” the raspy voice said.
“Wherever you want to go, Arlettie-baby.”
Arlette laughed, raw and from her stomach. Shit, Wallace thought, the talking one was Arlette. She leaned forward onto the back of Flapjack’s seat. Wallace saw her. She had bright-red lips and coffee skin. She was pretty, in a concentrated makeup sort of way. (Her face would probably rub off on your pillow.) Wallace rubbed his leg hurt in ’Nam. Josie still hadn’t spoken. Forget, Wallace thought. It’s Saturday. Tonight was going to be fun. Arlette asked again where they were going.
“How about Rib Smack Shack?” Arlette said, smacking gum.
“No.” Wallace looked out the window when he said it. Arlette popped her gum quietly, and Flapjack turned up the radio. “Get down on it…” boomed from the car.
Finally they settled on McDonald’s, the drive-thru. The girls got shakes and fries, Flapjack a Coke. Wallace got water (didn’t drink sodas) and a burger. They sat in the car, listening to music and eating. Wallace stopped rubbing his leg and got caught up in the moment. It was like it used to be. Wallace remembered being sixteen and Lisa Calloway, his hands sweaty as he tried to unhook the white bra. So much had changed in those nine years. He remembered the tender awkwardness of the moment. Now he could feel it.
Josie asked Wallace for a napkin. (Well, damn, she could talk!) Things were improving. Wallace finished eating quickly.
Well, everyone was expecting it. And no one was exactly unwilling, certainly not Flapjack and Arlette. They couldn’t wait. Wallace thought it would be a lot of trouble but he wouldn’t back out. So now that it was almost upon him, now that it was time, Wallace thought that at least there would be feeling. Lisa had soft fingertips with French-manicured nails, and she had talked with a slight lisp. Wallace thought that maybe in the groping, the breathing, in the rush of it, there would be something to take back home tonight, some memory warm and quiet.
Flapjack pulled into a parking lot. Josie must have recognized it because she sat up in her seat. Wallace then saw her face clearly defined in the night lamps. She was a high-yella, horsey-faced girl. She wore ruby lipstick and had a white sun-back dress on. (The left shoulder strap kept falling down.) Josie obviously knew where she was, ’cause she said, real determined, in a low, slightly Southern voice, “I ain’t goin’ to do it in the back of no churchyard.”
“Better talk to yo woman, Wallace.” Flapjack then proceeded to park the car and start getting out. Wallace rubbed his leg in slow, circular motions; the ache went in dull throbs to the bone.
“Well, I ain’t.” Her thick lips were set in her face, and Wallace felt no softness for her. Lisa had had a more refined look, but her image was fading. Wallace swore, then called a laughing Flapjack and Arlette back to the car. Flapjack, still smiling (or high), drove the car one hundred yards to the back of a supermarket. Then Arlette and Flapjack once again left, giggling.
Josie didn’t even look at Wallace as he crawled slowly to the backseat. He put his arm around her shoulder and leaned into her neck. Josie sat quietly and looked out the window. Well, hell, Wallace thought and felt compassion. She didn’t want to do it in some supermarket parking lot with some frayed-collared stranger in the back seat of a rusty Pinto; he almost smiled. This was closeness and he was content, more than content. Satisfied, he closed his eyes and held the solemn-lipped Josie. From her profile he conceded that she had a pretty nose. He stretched both legs between the two front seats. Then she said it.
“So, let’s just do it.” No emotion; she just said it flat, like asking a man for a napkin.
“Aw, come on, baby.” His voice was low and soft. “We ain’t got to do nothing.” And he really didn’t want to do anything, to take anything. (And that’s all she was offering, her shoulders taut and tight.)
“No, just get it over with.” Josie put her hand on Wallace’s crotch and flexed her fingers. She turned her head to stare at him, flexing her fingers until he responded. And Wallace couldn’t help but respond. He tried to tell her again to wait, but her lips were firm in her face. So he did it, with her urging him back in sharp upward jerks. He did it, trying to think of Lisa and her fingertips, but he couldn’t focus her. Below him Josie made not a sound. Wallace frowned, hating the horsey-faced bitch as his leg started to throb from the cramped positioning. They finished the final motions and sat up. Later Flapjack and Arlette returned, laughing and sharing a joint. At 12:32 Flapjack dropped Wallace off.
The night was quiet now. No men laughed from the stoops. No women called for their children. Wallace walked up the stoop and over Mr. Lenox. He opened his apartment door, then closed it.
…I gotta go, MaMaeve. Date went all right. Tell everyone I said hey.
Talk to you later,
Wallace
Telisha Moore Leigg received her MFA from Warren Wilson College and is a high school teacher. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crate, Stickman Review, Evince Magazine, and others. She has received an honorable mention for Glimmer Train‘s July 2012 Very Short Fiction Award. She has also attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Under her pseudonym, she writes interconnected short stories, mostly flash fiction. Many of her stories take place in the South. In her free time, she enjoys reading, conversing, and writing in Japanese.