her trip over there, crazy-always-guarding-the-door-ass Wanda, her lateness, and her neutral corners rationale for asking him to pick a spot near where neither of them lived. She’d even forgotten the silly day-of-the-week thing about Wednesday.
The softness came from what the music at Earlie’s did to the space she felt around her. At first, she didn’t hear anything. The sensation was that she had entered through a door in the wide hip of an upright bass. She heard Shame’s voice and saw his head gesture this way and that. He didn’t turn around. “I come here for the plants, the wood, and the sound. I can’t really hear the music anymore, but it’s good to know it’s there.” He continued while she followed thinking, “Maybe this corner isn’t quite neutral enough.” Shame said, “This place always makes me feel like ordering a Scotch so old you can’t even drink it, you have to just tip the glass, close your eyes and inhale it into your lungs.” He continued, “It’s the same with the sound. Do you know an amphibian hiccups to breathe under water?” Strangely, she did know that. But she let it blow by.
Maybe Shame was nervous. He went on, “Do you know who Reggie Workman is? Red Garland? Wynton Kelly? Otis Spann? Errico Beyle?” “Ah, musicians?” Ndiya managed. He said nothing in response. He might have nodded but that could have been a way to silently say hello to someone at one of the tables. They came to a corner table between two windows looking out at a small garden, a courtyard. On the table stood a white card with “S. L., 7:30” written on it in black marker. The time had been crossed out and “8:00” had been written in; the “8:00” had been crossed out and, this time in red marker, “8:30!” had been added. Ndiya winced.
Immediately after they arrived at the table, Shame sat down, swept the card into his back pocket, reintroduced himself and, before she could sit, asked if she had a tissue. Ndiya thought to herself how glad she was that he hadn’t made a big act out of pulling out her chair, etc. She asked if he had a cold and he said the tissue was for his glasses though he wasn’t wearing glasses. She rummaged around at the bottom of the bag. Playing off her surprise at feeling the slim plastic packet without having to go in after it headfirst, Ndiya assured him, “Of course, sure, here you ar—”
Then the scene dropped like if she’d stepped backward off a ladder she didn’t remember climbing. When her hand emerged from her bag with the pack of tissues, a Velcro patch from her brother’s busted-open house-arrest ankle cuff caught her sleeve. The ruined hunk of plastic and wire leapt as if it had hurled itself out and landed on the table. It bounced once and turned over the sugar bowl and toothpicks spiraled across the dark grain of the floor and through the aisle coming to rest strewn about the feet of the couple at the next table.
Shame sat looking at her with one hand on the table-top. His other hand was extended toward her to take the tissue. He hadn’t flinched, he hadn’t moved at all. Judging by his relaxed posture, nothing strange had happened.
Ndiya’s ears reduced the room to the sound of the flat-line, we’re-losing-her tone. The jolt triggered a kind of survival mechanism she had employed many times in her life but knew nothing about. Her body leaned into the immediate present, her brain snapped back and became surgically abstract. It all happened without her intending, and it worked. It was kind of the way her brothers and their friends used to discuss running from the police. You never run in the same direction. They called it fifty scatters. They described it all in comic, managerial tones: “Now, police show up, we out, fitty scatter on they ass. Meet up later and assess the situation.”
Ndiya felt her body fifty scatter. Her mind abstracted, analytical: “No matter the length, all instants are exactly the same size. It’s the shapes that never repeat. Some twist and recede, some gape and come right at you, others, furtive, listen around corners.” She took account of the instant. The objects before her eyes on the table made no sense. She thought perhaps the place had been bombed. Maybe the toothpicks were splintered wood from the roof? Her mind a-twirl, the room somewhere bent and concave in the chrome mirror of the still-revolving sugar spoon. She couldn’t recognize the broken-open cuff of plastic on the table. Obviously, she had no idea Malik had hidden the damn thing in her handbag. As if laying down cover, her brain told her that it wasn’t a bomb. Her eyes recognized the torn blue flag with its four red stars, of the CPD. Her mind filled the instant with Malik’s milky-eyed, laughing, beautiful face.
Ndiya watched her vision like a foreign film as it hopped from the broken cuff across the toothpick-strewn tabletop and landed on Shame’s face, Ndiya watched her vision like a foreign film. Then he did react. Ndiya’s mind backed away and took in the scene as if it was printed in subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Shame’s eyebrows lighted into an asymmetry of pure surprise and sheer pleasure. Ndiya watched as her mind leapt in to abstract the anomaly of Shame’s expression. She decided it was actually wonder and that, for Shame, at least, wonder must be a subset of pleasure. “Or maybe vice versa?” her brain asked itself. “No,” she thought as Shame’s expression replaced Malik’s face in her mind, songs pinned all over it, like a depth-chart of Lake Michigan with no water in it, “Definitely, Shame’s wonder is inside pleasure.” Ndiya’s mind continued on: “Pleasure’s the wider circle. Wonder is the deeper blue.” It concluded, “Shame’s wonder gets deeper as its surface area gets smaller. That’s about pressure. So the formula: wonder equals pleasure under pressure.” Then her brain gave up its finding: “In other words, this man is trouble.”
Her analytical brain circled the wagons. Tactically, she could feel that retreat wasn’t an option. So, Ndiya’s body stood its ground before the absurd scene. The absurdity was her brain’s problem. The rest of her was right there. To an observer it might have appeared that showing up late and tossing a busted-up house-arrest bracelet out on the table was how she usually began a conversation with a man she’d just met.
Ndiya heard Shame laugh in words, “Well, hey now!” And she felt his extended hand take hers, lightly, and guide her down to the chair beside him. She wasn’t blind, exactly. There were bowls of light playing in and out of each other. The whole plan about acting normal, about the false and real confidence was out the window. She remembered thinking, “Another blown date. So blown!” Another page of life had been slashed diagonally across the middle and torn from the book.
All this was trivia, however. The real trouble was that the push and pull of Shame’s stolen faces was totally gone. A familiar play of curves appeared, somehow, from under the angles of his face. Her thought just then wasn’t a thought, it resolved a melody in her body. It was like a sound in her hands or a turbulent feeling around them as if she’d reached into rushing water. She sat down and turned toward a pair of eyes that looked like leaves on the bottom of a clear pond. Light brown, flecked with dark spots. “Sunspots,” she thought, as her brain informed her that sunspots are actually huge magnetic storms. Shame’s voice: “My cousin used to use an electric can opener and a Bic lighter, looks like you just slammed yours fifty times in your car door or something.” He looked under the table and laughed. “Is your ankle OK?” Then he turned to the waitress, who looked as if she was afraid to approach the table with the piece of wreckage on top of it: “Angela, may we have two Blue Labels, please, neat.” Ndiya saw the waitress staring at her out of the corner of her eye. The waitress said, “Right, Shame, sure.”
This date was so blown. Oh so blown. Somewhere, she’d already begun to type the postmortem email to Yvette-at-work. Email. This thought brought with it its own waves of disbelief, but that was the story of date number two and, for now, that was too much. And, remember, date-by-whatever-name number two hadn’t ee-ven happened.
Ndiya felt music around her. A distant song played, something about no mountains and no moving, no tides and no turning. She couldn’t quite hear it. Or maybe it was thunder? Shame’s voice was stuck in her head among the clanging sounds. She heard echoes of the phrase Bic lighter over and over. Then Shame’s voice: “Ever notice the tiny dude with the huge Afro on Bic lighters?”
Shame’s honey and molasses accent. “Here I am,” she thought, “deep, in denied territory.” And Shame: “Let’s have a drink.” And she: “You already ordered.” And he: “So I did. Done! I stay away from expensive liquor, but in this case.” Her eyes focused on him