Tamara doesn't frown at him like he expected her to. She turns from her inspection of the cabinet and smiles brightly, looking him over from head to toe. "Woo! Boy, if wasn't already married . . ." She fans herself with her hand and giggles.
Blushing, Lucas murmurs, "Good morning, Tamara. Good morning," he repeats to Marlowe.
Marlowe peers at him over the rim of her coffee cup. She doesn't want to be impressed with his lean muscled physique, but she is. "Morning," she mumbles over a sip of coffee. They stare at each other for an awkward moment before turning their gazes in opposite directions.
"Excuse me, ladies. I'm going to hit the shower." Instead of crossing between them, Lucas ducks around the corner and exits through the dining room. His exit doesn't prevent them from turning their heads when he comes back into view. Tamara's and Marlowe's eyes follow him down the length of the living room until he makes a left and disappears into the guest room. They look at each other, each accusing the other with raised eyebrows, before cracking up laughing.
"I wouldn't mind hitting that from the back," Tamara cackles, borrowing the lyrics to a popular song. "He got booty for a white boy."
"Mmm hmm," Marlowe replies quietly, trying to regain her composure.
"Oh, come on," Tamara says, swatting Marlowe with a yellow dish towel. "I'm married but I ain't blind. Lucas got the goods. Lucas got the goods!" Tamara chants, doing a little dance step.
"Tam, please. I'm trying to eat over here."
"Toast," Tamara declares distastefully. "Grapefruit and toast. That ain't real food." She flicks her wrist dismissively and resumes mixing up pancake batter.
Marlowe takes a bite of her toast and smiles. It amazes her that two people so different in their particulars can be so much the same at heart. On the surface, Roderick and Tamara are nothing alike: Roderick is conservative, Tamara is flamboyant; Roderick is practical, Tamara is indulgent. When she wanted to take a weekend trip to the Taste of Chicago, Roderick detoured her to a sporting goods store to buy her the treadmill and weights set. He sneaks sugar free cookies into the cabinet. He schedules all of her check-ups and escorts her to every appointment. Roderick worries about losing Tamara in light of all the losses he witnesses in his career. Tamara doesn't worry about loss; even if her years on this earth are short, everyday will be full to the brim. Though Roderick walks carefully through the world and Tamara dances through it, it is the love of life that binds them together. They wake up in the morning happy to see another sunrise, as wondrous as children imagining what the day will bring.
Marlowe has an old soul. She doesn't exercise and eat well to prolong her life; she just wants to keep her strength up. Life is a challenge, a battle to be fought and won. There are wrongs to right, oppressed to uplift, tyrants to depose. She is zealous not for her own pleasure but for the pleasure of others; she takes joy in doing good and preventing harm. As such, the dawn of the day is her call to arms; it is only at dusk that she dresses her wounds and counts up the spoils of war. She is a woman of sunsets and last stands; she will likely never be so happy as on the day when she passes from this world and feels that she did everything she could.
It is hard to love a warrior woman. Whatever her cause or calling, her eyes are always turned to the battlefield, her heart always tuned to the beat of the war drum. A warrior woman's love is blood red and furious. It can never be captured; it can only be met in a tangle of limbs and wills. A man of many needs will go hungry in her house. But a man of war will find satisfaction at her side and solace in her arms at the close of the day.
It is for this reason that Marlowe's mind turns over and over the thought of Lucas like a slow stone grinding bitter grapes into wine. There are many reasons, sociological and historical, why she doesn't want to like him. He is the kind of man that she usually has to face on the field. Then there are personal reasons, chief among them her fear of Reverend Meadow's prophesy. Mixed into her fear of failure is a fear of failing the men of her race. Some say that she shouldn't take on that burden. But she is a warrior, a burden bearer. She can't help herself.
Yet beneath her many layers of reason there is the feeling of like calling to like. It takes a brave man to stride into her parlor, sit down, and make himself at home. It takes a certain kind of man to neither flinch from her nor admire her from a distance as though she is some kind of pagan warrior goddess. To take her on as an equal - she never thought to see the day. She prayed and then buried her prayers. If in Lucas her prayers have been answered, how foolish would she be to decline the gift of God?
"HELLO?"
Marlowe stirs and turns at the sound of Tamara's call.
Tamara scrapes across the tile in her house shoes. She looks over the table and then stares at Marlowe. "What in the world are you looking at?"
"I was thinking," Marlowe mumbles apologetically.
"Again?" Tamara heaves an exasperated breath. "You think too much."
Marlowe's brows draw together. "I don't."
"Yes you do. You do this all the time, wander off to la la land. What are you thinking about this time, a man?"
"Why does it always have to be a man, Tam?"
Tamara blinks. "What else is there?"
It's moments like this when Marlowe remembers why her times alone with Roderick and Tamara are so few and far between. Marlowe clears her throat, rises, and carries her plate to the garbage to scrape clean.
"Good morning again," Marlowe hears in a mellow greeting from Lucas' lips. He appears next to her in his jeans and orange 'Sooners' t-shirt.
"Hey." Marlowe's lips twitch as she examines him. She tugs at the hem of her black tank top. Neither of them is given to over-packing.
"Sit down, Lucas. I'll fix you a plate," Tamara calls out. "You like bacon?"
"I like anything that you put your hands to," Lucas replies, touching Marlowe's shoulder as he passes by her and moves to the table.
Tamara favors him with a beatific smile as she sets a hefty plate of pancakes and sugar cured bacon before him. She frowns at Marlowe in passing as she returns to the stove. "Some people around here eat toast and fruit for breakfast."
"Appalling," Lucas comments over a mouthful of bacon.
"I know. That's not even a meal; that's a snack," Tamara remarks snidely. "That's why some people around here are so skinny." She wags her spatula at Marlowe like a disapproving finger.
Marlowe is too amused to be offended. She perches her hip against the counter and studies Tamara's petite hourglass frame wrapped in a pink velour pants suit. "What is the secret, Tam? You eat anything you want, and the only time I see you walking is to the car and back."
Tamara smirks, saunters across the kitchen, and places her hand on Lucas' shoulder. "Tell her how I do it, Lucas."
Lucas swallows before speaking. "By the grace of God," he declares with mock reverence.
Tamara nods her head. "That's right. He asked me the same thing last Thanksgiving. If you heathens went to church more often, you would know that." The spatula slices through the air as Tamara marches righteously back to the stove, scraping her house shoes the whole way.
"You came for Thanksgiving?" Marlowe demands of Lucas. She'd spent last Thanksgiving in a soup kitchen serving up turkey stew and sour pumpkin pie.
Lucas eyeballs her over his glass of juice. "Yes."
"He helped me make potato pies," Tamara says. She snickers. "We ate more filling than we put in the crusts, though."
"Taste testing," Lucas murmurs.
"Right! We had to taste it." Tamara's face is as round and cheerful as a cherub. "Those pies were thinner than you, Mo. But they were good, child!"
"They were good," Lucas chimes in.
"Uh huh." Marlowe turns her attention from Tamara to Lucas. He eats like a starving man, one bite after another. Side effect of the military, she muses. She can't wrap her mind around the image of Tamara and Lucas in this kitchen, eating pie filling, chatting amidst the savory smells of a Thanksgiving feast. Why didn't he go home to his own family? Marlowe wonders.
Tamara swats her with the dish towel, interrupting her thoughts. "Go wake up Roderick," Tamara says.
"Why? He's your husband. You go wake him up."
Tamara pouts. "I don't want to. I was going to let him sleep in but we have to go see the travel agent this morning."
Marlowe frowns. "When?"
"Ten o'clock. And my poor baby ain't had no rest this weekend. He came straight from the hospital to the rehearsal on Friday, then it was the wedding, then we went out last night."
"How's it gonna be better if I wake him up?"
"You're tough, Mo. He told me you used to snatch the blankets off him in winter to get him up for school." Lucas snickers in the background. "I can't do that. He usually wakes me up."
"Nuh uh," Marlowe protests. "I don't want to see Roderick in his drawers. That's your job now."
Tamara opens her mouth, stops, and blinks rapidly. "Uh, nevermind." As she recalls, her husband's boxers were lost somewhere between the bedroom door and the bed. "Watch this pancake for me. I'll be right back." Tamara surrenders her spatula and scuffles out of the kitchen.
Marlowe moves to the stove. Ten pancakes, dripping with butter, are piled up on a platter at her elbow. She raises an eyebrow as she flips the last pancake and lifts it onto the pile. "Do you want any more?" she calls to Lucas as she turns off the burner under the griddle.
"I'm good." Lucas rises from the table with a satisfied grunt. He carries his bare plate to the sink. "I don't usually eat like this in the morning."
"Oh yeah? And what do you usually eat?"
"Toast and fruit like all chubby heathens should."
Marlowe chuckles. "You ain't hardly chubby."
"Not anymore, but you should see my baby pictures."
Marlowe smiles. There isn't a trace of childhood in him except for his sometimes sleepy, sometimes sullen heavily lashed eyes.
"You were rail thin as a kid, I imagine."
"All my life," Marlowe replies, sighing with resignation. She squints, peering down at her breasts. She would be grateful if she had just a handful to work with. She opens the oven and slides the pancakes inside. "Maybe I should have some pancakes."
"If you had a child, you would round up." Marlowe turns to him in surprise. "My sisters did. Only now they're really round." He puffs his cheeks out.
Marlowe laughs. "How many sisters do you have?"
"Two. Twins."
"Younger or older?"
"Five years older. Karen and Kaitlin."
Marlowe purses her lips. "Yeah, you seem like a baby child."
"How's that?"
"You're willful and irreverent. You expect things to go your way. Yvonne was like that." She hesitates only a second over her sister's name. "The middle child worries about everything; they try to get everybody to love them. That's Roderick."
"And the oldest?"
Marlowe joins him at the sink. She pulls out their breakfast dishes and stows them in the dishwasher. "Responsible. Maternal. Obedient." She's a sociologist; she knows these characteristics.
"That's you right?"
But she doesn't feel them. Marlowe shrugs. "Used to be."
"What happened?"
"I grew up." She slides the tray in and closes the door. "I'm still responsible though. I need you to do me a favor."
"What favor?"
"I need to take the rental car back to the airport. It's not due until eleven but since they have a ten o'clock appointment, I need to take it back now. It's already 8:30."
"Shit." Lucas puts his hands on his hips, frowning. "I forgot to change my tickets. I was supposed to fly out Sunday morning."
Marlowe raises her eyebrows. "Well, we better get a move on if you plan to hassle someone into an exchange."
Lucas nods. "Let's go."
