"Ma, don't—MOMMA. I told you about getting ugly at the nurse's station. What they gon' do to Daddy when you ain't—"
"—patellar stress fracture. Now we're looking at surgery." Smiling, Roderick adds, "Yeah, I said 'we'."
"—about his swelling? That don't look right, and if it's still that same infection, one of them heifers gonna get hurt—"
"Hour? I'm there. Yeah."
"No, you going home. I—Excuse you! Oh." Mid-eye roll, mid-shriek, Tamara's gaze darts from the hand on her camel leather tote to a face that one blink transforms from stranger to husband.
"That's it, right? Let's roll. I scrub in at five."
A thunder clap of metal baggage claim scales, of Roderick's sandal heels slapping against his broad feet as he wheels their luggage toward the double doors, resonates in her mother's voice on the line. "Hospice?" Sharp as a hat pin stabbed through her skull, the one word blinds Tamara, leads her into the path of a sky-cap cart cranky with siren and squealing tires.
"'Scuse me, ma'am."
She loses a beige kitten heel to her haste; five baby blue toenails appear before Roderick's impatience and the concrete heat of the Atlanta Hartsfield airport. "Put your shoe on, woman. You ready?"
"I gotta go. . . Baby, can you—"
"Five o'clock, Tam, and it's a quarter to four," Roderick cuts in over the squawk of the rear passenger door; his voice, distant and disembodied, echoes out of the trunk. "You can go by yourself, right? I'll call you later. Tamara," he snaps to her silence and staring, his glare obscuring her outstretched hand clenching a phone with shattering force. "What's the matter with you?"
"Forget it, Roderick. Take me to the house so I can get my car."
Silence as dull as tires turning over interstate 85 becomes deafening in their quiet cul de sac of magazine manicured lawns and new model SUVs in ambitious silver and champagne finishes. Even at the gate of Roderick's unwashed pick up truck where the taxi stops and Tamara hauls out rattling a fistful of keys, the silence thickens and then stiffens in the stagnant foyer where he drops their luggage next to a small white door that leads to the garage. "Tamara?" Roderick asks of her keys left dangling from a hook below the lacquered pine 'Home Sweet Home' plaque they purchased on their last road trip to Orlando. Up the stairs, he hesitates before the bedroom door and the siren call of a change of clothes. "Tam! Where you at?"
A newly installed walnut door at the end of the hall swings open. "What?" Tamara barks, eyeballing him.
"What bit you?"
"Don't you gotta go scrub in?"
"Yeah, if you wanna keep snapping at me instead of saying what the problem is. I'm about tired—"
"You know what I'm tired of? You ain't never here. I'm sick and tired of that!"
"Tamara. You talked to. . . your mama," he supplies, recalling the one thing loud enough to penetrate his own thoughts. "What's going on?"
"I told you, I'm gon' have to take over the business and. . . Mama can't handle this. I don't know—"
"And I told you, great. Go for it. You ain't doing nothing around here but running up the credit cards anyway."
Her lips pressed together squeeze out a sour frown. "Professional woman for a professional man, right? Gotta make a brother look good in front of his boys."
"No, Tamara. You have a degree; you might as well—"
"This ain't the damn Cosby Show! People hurt in real life, Roderick. People get sick! People—" A door slam chops off the sentence, shuts out his murmurs and soft wraps, familiarly few and brief like his gaze at the mention of the reaper who comes to claim all that he tries to sew back together. Over the soft thump of his retreat down the white carpeted hall, her cell phone flips and speed dials. "Hey Mo, Lucas. I. . . we made it back. Uh, call me when you get a chance, okay? This is Tamara. Bye." House shoes traded for treacherous heels sink into a moss-thick floor rug; Tamara tramples cream stars and lilac moons to a glider-rocker where she sits and snaps the tag from a stuffed giraffe. Together in the sniffling silence, they wait.
"Call screening. Modern miracle."
Marlowe trades a smirk for the thin slit of her lips pressed to a wine glass in its second rotation. "She doesn't sound right. Maybe I should call back?"
"Last night was family night. This is our night." Candle flames flicker in the wake of Lucas' rising from a damask draped table of two chairs, two jade dinner plates picked clean of summer greens and strawberries and delicate goat cheese, two forks traded across the table for exaggerated moans of pleasure. The loose edges of a rolled-open magazine flutter in front of Marlowe's smile into the porcelain sink; her hands still beneath running water nearly as warm as Lucas' body heat to her back, as his nearness to her heart dragged at a distance on an ever shortening rope of doubts. "So you like this pink dress—"
"Fuschia."
"—with the curtain you throw over your shoulder 'reminiscent of a sari and the sultry Orient, the perfect complement to an ethnically-aware wedding ceremony'," he reads against her earlobe. "Won't that look funny if we're not Oriental?"
"If we're Occidental?" Marlowe corrects, shrugging her chin away from his nipping teeth.
"Yes, Miss Ross. Klein. Mrs. Klein."
"Marlowe Ross-Klein." Binding as a snug sable stole, the name is a safe hold from the wintry gaze of being single, that slow growing frost that like the prisoner's sleep makes a destination of loneliness. Marlowe shuffles back into his arms, away from a cranberry casserole dish of burnt glazed chicken that was the price she paid for sitting on his lap after she poured the Chardonnay. "It's just an idea. I like ethnic since I'll have a traditional gown," she daydreams, twining her arms around his gingham sleeves and her fingers between his fingers scrunching the hem of her black jersey skirt. "Maybe we don't need a hall. We could have the reception at my parent's house. We could be up there on the balcony, you in your tux, me all princessed-out looking like a—" Her laughter vibrates his chest, and he closes his arms about her. "Like a shredded roll of toilet paper."
Silent to her snorting, Lucas whispers, "Tell me how you really feel."
"No, really."
"No. Really," he repeats. "Sounds like you don't want to do the princess thing."
"I do."
"You sure? Because I always saw you walking to me on the beach—"
"Condé Nast Traveler, huh?"
"—in that blue swimsuit with the one arm."
"Aqua. And are you crazy? Tamara would. . . the wedding is for the family—"
"What are we, on work detail?"
"—your mama to cry, and your sister to catch the flowers, and your daddy to give you away."
Of the woman in his arms, a daughter cuts thin ribbons of grief tattered from constant twisting, and wet like his shirtfront where Marlowe's cheek rests on his sternum. The reservoir in his chest swells to bursting; strained words trickle out. "I met your father. He was in the service, Nam. He seemed like a good man."
"He would want me in that dress. At the house."
"He wouldn't want you with me, though," Lucas gruffly replies. "That's what Roderick said."
Marlowe's hair shakes over the back of his hand. "I can't talk about that right now, okay? I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it."
"It's okay to be scared, Slo Mo. Courage is being scared and still doing what you have to do."
"Have to?" she sputters, stepping back and swiping her nose. "You make it sound like a suicide mission."
"That's an interesting choice of words."
Of the man before her, a husband makes disapproval of his hip-perch against the cream formica counter, of his crossed bare ankles, of his hands, after a stint of drumming and a quick clap, fisted and stuffed into his khaki pockets.
Smiling eyes memorize the posture for future reference. "C'mon, Mr. Ross-Klein." Marlowe grasps his hand and drags him through the living room. "I got something for you."
"An apology?"
"For what?"
"For that suicide mission comment."
"No. I have a present."
"Sex won't buy my forgiveness."
"Why not? It did all the other times. Sit down."
"Marlowe," he begins, huffing as his knees frame the corner of the bed. His grip tightens on her hand pulling from his; a tug turns her eyes to meet his, finally, and there behind the flickering shutters is a plea for time that promises a lifetime. "I have something for you too." From beneath the edge of the bed, Lucas pulls a slender pink box embossed with silver letters. Marlowe smirks. "Put it on."
"What is it?"
"It's how I see you," he replies, pressing a kiss to her bare ring finger.
On his back on the bare cotton sheets, Lucas inhales the soft cleansed scent of life in a woman's care, a round-edged cool touch to his skin feverish with blood and burden, needled by necessity. Through the bathroom door, his woman comes to him as a gift in bridal white, her skin darker, deep velvet against the calf length shimmer of old Hollywood fish-tailed satin, diamond cut to her curves from bodice to hand-tailored hem. "Amen," Lucas replies to the sex-whispering swish of her walk, of her hips turning a circle inches from his fingertips.
"It's beautiful. Thank you."
"Don't," he says to her hand at his throbbing jugular. "Just stand there."
Marlowe smiles, turns, tips side to side until grace crumbles, amusement dissolves, and his stare in a too sharp spike chisels possession into her heart. "I love you, Lucas."
"I know. I love you too," he replies, though it is in his eyes that love has life, and in his hands breath and form and movement, an art too true for talk. "Not yet," he says to her touch on his shoulder. "I need to remember this. God, you look like my dreams. I'm. . . stunned."
Marlowe tackles him. She jumps right on his lap and flattens him with her hips and heavy kisses. "I'm gonna marry you, boy. Lord knows I've done some stupid things in my life, but letting you get away won't be one of them. Nate—"
"Nate's an asshole."
"Listen to me." A heavy sigh ruffles his hair. "Daddy was real disappointed when I broke up with Nate. He—"
"—made you feel like shit. About your looks, right? You said that. Fuck him."
Marlowe rocks back to a sitting position. "Will you let me talk, please?"
"About him? No—Marlowe, okay," Lucas sputters, dragging her back onto his lap. "You go over to that chair, you're going to wrap up in your robe and cross your legs and get cranky. I'll listen if you stay here. "
"Daddy didn't understand that, okay? Roderick either. It's just a stupid hair style, right? And why did I throw away a good man over that?"
"To you, it's not. I see you in the mirror, trying to decide if you're beautiful today. You change your hair; you get pissed. You wash it back; you get sad. I don't get it, but—"
"You wouldn't."
"—but I do know that asshole didn't love some Marlowe Ross like I do. Forget him. He sucks. Poof. Gone. Let's get naked," Lucas suggests, shuffling satin up her thighs.
"I thought you said wait."
"Changed my mind."
"I still have a present for you."
"Don't care. Ow," he winces against her pinch-full of rib meat. "I care. What is it?"
"Aida is coming to town; it's a musical. I got us tickets." Her smile plays David to his goliath silence. "It's about this black woman and this white, well Egyptian man who falls in love with her—"
"We've got that here at home." The words tumble and clip over her neckline like his kisses, wetter, warmer. "Waste of money."
"Heather Headley," she counters, straining to push their linked fingers back to the bed; at his bare thighs, Marlowe digs in her nails, and he relents. "One night only. You have to support black performers."
"Mozart wrote the Hallelujah chorus but I couldn't give a crap unless you're screaming it."
"Handel," Marlowe corrects dully. "Are you gonna be like this every time I try to teach you something?"
"Quit trying and I won't have to," he replies, inching toward her mouth, sighing when she pulls away. "So I'm average GI Joe instead of bachelor number one; is Dad going to pop up and fucking object? Shit," Lucas hisses softly. "I'm—Ow!"
"Sorry; I know. You didn't mean it like that," Marlowe croons sweetly, cocking her head to admire the low grade bruise reddening on his side. "It's okay."
"What I mean is your objection is the only one that counts—"
"Sss!"
"Tell me you feel the same way," Lucas demands, rubbing the sting from his handprint on her behind.
"I do."
"Say that again."
"I. Do," she giggles.
Lucas tips back on the bare cotton sheets, and her hair feathered over his chest becomes an angel's wing, her touch healing, her kiss heaven. "You know, if you want somebody to suck up to, you could start with me."
"Maybe I will," she mumbles into his neck. "Mmm. What's this you got on?"
"Nothing—"
"Liar."
"—but 'soap and me', just like you do." A shadow cools his closed eyelids; Lucas snickers and squints up at Marlowe's glare hovering above.
"Where did you put my spray, boy?"
"What spray?"
"Thief."
"Cheater. Money waster," he retorts, throwing her over onto her back. Satin slides easily against the sheets and slips right up to her waist when he drags her legs up almost to his shoulders and presses her feet to the headboard. "You don't need that stuff," Lucas breathes into her navel. "I always have a sweet tooth for chocolate covered cherries."
