talked about yesterday?”
Lewis gave her his undivided attention. “No, I don’t remember.”
“Your going to Mama’s, spending the night there, remember?”
Lewis frowned and said, “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” He looked at me and said, “John, will you take me over to grandma’s house?”
Right off I knew something was up. A Friday night, the fridge filled with food, and Lewis asking to go to his grandma’s? No way.
Doreen said, “Why’re you looking so suspicious? Oh, I see, you’d rather Lewis stay here and you guys pop popcorn and watch Nick Jr. all night.”
“Lewis,” I said, “when you want me to drop you off?”
An hour later Lewis got out of the Caddy and I was backing out the driveway of a coal-colored brick, two-story house when his grandmother, Gloria Banks, walked outside in a blue night gown and up to the car.
“How you doing, John?” she said.
Gloria had to be fifty, perhaps sixty, but looked forty in a black wig with red streaks in it. I said I was doing fine and she told me she didn’t feel her daughter-in-law was the right woman for her son.
“No drive, no motivation,” she said. “Can’t even hold a decent conversation. Pooh needs someone who’ll push him, somebody with imagination.”
Unable to meet her inquisitive eyes more than a few seconds, I wondered why was she telling me all this, wondered what she really thought of me if her son’s quiet, nervous wife was such a pain in the butt.
“You ever been in her house?” she asked. And before I could answer: “Filthy, just plain filthy. You can tell a house is nasty by the way the front yard looks. It don’t take much to pick up a broom--”
“Ma’am, I’d better get going. Doreen’s probably wondering what’s keeping me.”
“I didn’t mean to hold you,” she apologized, and then started up where she’d left off.
But for her being Doreen’s mother I’d have told her to give it a break, keep her nose out of other people’s business, and get away from my car so I can go!
She stopped midsentence. “Is that my phone?”
“Sure is,” I said, though all I heard was the traffic on Wilbur Mills Freeway that ran in front of her house. She told me to hold on, she’ll be right back. I said, “Sure,” and drove off the second the screen door closed behind her.
At the apartment a brown van was parked in my spot so I had to park two complexes down. Going up the steps I realized what was going on: Doreen wanted Lewis out of the house so she and I could have a romantic evening, the whole shebang, candlelights, staring into each other’s eyes, lap dances, oral sex… Damn!
The lights were off inside and when I flipped the switch several people shouted, “Surprise!”
I wasn’t surprised, not at all. Almost ruined my shorts, but was not surprised.
Dokes, dressed in a white two-piece suit, Vida--as usual showing off her boobs in a skimpy candy-red tank top--Doreen, now in a navy-blue dress, and three women and a man, dressed casually, none of whom I knew, were all clapping.
A streamer saying Congratulations John hung below the ceiling along with a dozen or so red, white and blue ballons. In place of the missing couch in the front room was a sheet-covered fold-out table covered with platters of fried chicken, deli-cut meats, and an assortment of half gallon spirits. On the floor, on white bath towels, were two large coolers, the tops open, filled with ice, beer and wine coolers.
Doreen stepped up to me, kissed me, and said, “I wanted to surprise you.”
I wondered how much all of this cost.
Doreen introduced me to the three women and the man, names I forgot the second she told me, each saying the same thing, “Your wife has told me so much about you I feel I know you.” The man an obvious fag, several earrings in each ear, holding the handshake a little too long to my liking.
Dokes patted me on the back, shook my hand and gave me a bear hug.
Damn! A closet fag and a flagrant fag in the same room and
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