Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do Page 16

  “Then go to bed and don't worry about it.”

  “But what if it is happening?” I was whining like a four-year-old.

  “Then you are a very lucky woman who will have wonderful tales to tell your grandchildren.” She yawned again.

  “You're a big help.”

  “I'm sorry, sweetie, but I had the vision, didn't I? What do you want from me?”

  She was right. Everything was happening just the way she said it would, and here I was waking her up to fuss. I took another deep breath.

  “You're right,” I said. “It's just kind of scary, you know?”

  “Have you told him about the vision yet?”

  “God, no!” I said, wondering how you tell a person your crazy aunt said he was your man in a past life.

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Why?”

  “You're not going to be able to figure out what he is until you know for sure what he isn't.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Who knows? You'll have to figure it out. Good night, sweetie!”

  She hung up without waiting for me to respond. I clicked off the phone more frustrated than I was before, and walked over to the window just in time to see Blue's Lincoln pull up out front. I hadn't turned on the light, so I didn't think he'd see me standing there, but he got out, turned his face up, and raised his hand in greeting like I was standing in a spotlight. Two out of three might be enough for Aunt Abbie, but it wasn't good enough for me. Blue Hamilton had some explaining to do, and there was no time like the present.

  I waited for him at the top of the stairs, and he greeted me with a smile of real pleasure.

  “I must be living right,” he said.

  “How's that?” I smiled back at him.

  He stopped two steps shy of the landing, so I was looking down into his face. “You're waiting for me, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He stepped up so we were looking eye to eye. “How much more proof do I need?”

  “I need to ask you something.”

  “All right,” he said, opening his door. “You don't have to ask me out here in the hall, do you?”

  I hesitated for just a second, but he saw it.

  “Of course, if you're more comfortable out here, that's fine, too,” he said, still smiling.

  “I'm sorry. Of course we don't have to talk out here.”

  “Perhaps I can offer you a drink,” he said as I followed him inside. “And then you can tell me what's on your mind.”

  “Thanks,” I said as he hung up his coat. “To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure if I want to ask you something or tell you something.”

  We were both still dressed for the party, and in the mirror behind the bar we looked relaxed and elegant. He poured us both some cognac and came to sit beside me on the couch. He picked up a remote and Miles Davis came pouring out of the speakers seductively. His music is so beautiful it can make you cry, but he treated women so badly, it's hard for me to listen to him without getting mad.

  Blue looked at me and clicked the music off immediately. “Not a big Miles fan, huh?”

  I shook my head.

  “Serves him right, mean motherfucker.”

  I laughed. Sade replaced Miles as the background music to my confessions.

  “Better?”

  I nodded. “Much better.”

  He picked up his glass and leaned back. “I'm all ears.”

  I took a deep breath. How could I ease into this without making him think I was completely insane?

  “Do blue eyes run in your family?” I blurted. Oh, great! Now he'll just think I'm rude.

  But he didn't look at all surprised or offended. People had probably been asking him about his eyes all his life.

  “No,” he said, “I'm the only one.”

  “Did you ever think it was … odd?”

  “I thought it would make me easy to find if anybody was ever looking for me.”

  “Has anybody been looking for you?” I asked softly.

  “Other than you?”

  I swallowed my cognac in one long gulp. He looked at me with an expression I couldn't read, and when he spoke, his voice was very gentle.

  “It is you, isn't it?”

  “What do you mean?” I whispered.

  He set down his glass and slid over closer to me. He took my hands in both of his, and I looked into his eyes like I might find the answers there without having to ask the questions.

  “Tell me what you know,” he said. “Tell me exactly what you know.”

  Well, crazy or not, here I go! “My aunt had a vision. …”

  “What kind of vision?”

  “A voice told her a man … a man in Atlanta had been looking for me.”

  “Why was he looking for you?” “I don't know,” I said, glad his hands gave me something to hold on to. “But she said I would recognize him because …” I couldn't say it. This sounded so crazy!

  “Tell me.”

  “Because he would have blue eyes.”

  He squeezed my hands suddenly and let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a moan. “I knew it! It is you! Thank God! It is you! I had almost given up hope, and then I saw you that day listening to the Marley and you haven't changed a bit. Still that serious little face.” He touched my cheek lightly. “Still those beautiful brown eyes.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, moving away from him just a little.

  “Don't you know me?”

  I shook my head. I would have remembered those eyes, but there was something else so familiar about him. “No.”

  He stood up and walked over to the window. “We've been apart for too long.” He turned back to me slowly. “What else did your aunt tell you?”

  “She told me you were not who you appear to be.”

  That made him smile. “And who do I appear to be?”

  “That's what I came over here to ask you,” I said, relieved to have come back around to my original question.

  He came back to sit beside me, and his face was suddenly serious. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, because what I'm going to tell you might sound strange at first.”

  “At this point, nothing sounds strange to me.”

  “Then I need you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “Look into my eyes.”

  “Is this a line?”

  He laughed softly. “No, Gina. I don't have to work this hard to get women to look in my eyes.”

  That was probably an understatement. “Then why?” “I want to answer any question you want to ask me, but first you have to be able to look at me. You have to be able to look into my eyes and see the truth is there; otherwise, you might not know what to believe and what to chalk up to playacting and bullshit.”

  He was right. The questions I wanted to ask required me to trust him to tell the truth, and required him to trust me to know what to do with it. How could I do that if I couldn't even look him in the eye? We were close together now. I turned to face him, knee to knee, tried to make my heart stop pounding so hard, and looked deeply into his eyes.

  It was like looking at sunset and sunrise and the full moon over the ocean. This close, his eyes were not one uniform shade, but an ever-changing kaleidoscope of turquoise and robin's egg and aquamarine with tiny flecks of gold. The black of his pupils stood out like a bull's-eye in all that blue, and his lashes, which I had never been close enough before to notice, were straight and thick and almost invisible against the soft black of his skin.

  But the color was just the beginning. His eyes were full of stories and sorrows and strengths and something else I couldn't name. Not yet anyway. And in the depths of his eyes, there was no meanness or manipulation or lying. Looking into those eyes, I felt like I could trust him with my life.

  “All right,” I said softly, so I wouldn't break the spell. “Now tell me who you really are.”

  28

  HE SPOKE SLOWLY,
AS IF THE RIGHT choice of words was all that would keep me from covering my ears and dashing back across the hall to the safety of my own apartment.

  “I've been here before,” he said, and stopped.

  “In Atlanta?” I prompted him gently.

  His voice was very quiet. “I've had other lives.”

  “What?”

  He sounded sane, but most people don't talk about past lives so casually unless they're psychics or Buddhists or bohemian movie stars or visionary postmenopausal aunts.

  “Last time I was here, things were different. I wasn't part of a group of people still trying to get over the effects of slavery,” Blue said. “I was a free black man leading a nation of free black men.”

  My mind was whirling. I walked over to the window and looked out to be sure this was still southwest Atlanta. It was.

  “Go on.”

  “We created a great civilization. Our libraries were the envy of the world. Our armies were invincible. Our culture was a rich melting pot of all those who found their way to our shores, and our healing powers guaranteed each citizen a long and fruitful life.”

  I felt like I was listening to a utopian fairy tale. “Your nation sounds like paradise.”

  His smile was sad. “It was as close as men have ever gotten, but that was the problem.”

  “Problems in paradise?” I smiled, but he didn't.

  “We brought them on ourselves,” he said. “And we ignored them until we were beaten by an enemy who should never have been able to bring us to our knees. And do you know why they were able to defeat us?”

  Something stirred deep inside me and I heard a voice that sounded like mine say softly, “Because you wouldn't listen!” But I just shook my head. “Why?”

  “We were defeated by an enemy that was able to infiltrate and finally overwhelm us because they had a powerful internal ally we had never considered. And do you know who that ally was?”

  “Who?” “Our women. The women we called our wives, our mothers, our girlfriends, our sisters,” he said sadly. “The women we said we loved, but never paid attention to. The women we protected from everybody but one another. The women who had our children and never saw us again. The women we ignored and abused and neglected and underestimated even when they tried to warn us about the inevitable consequences of our foolishness.”

  This all sounded so familiar I wasn't sure if he was talking about past lives or present ones. The conversation felt surreal, but not weird, and that's a pretty fine line in a conversation like this one when you're talking about past lives and such.

  “And did they try to warn you?”

  He looked at me strangely. “You tried to warn me. It was you trying to tell me what was coming if we didn't change our ways, but I didn't believe you.”

  “Why not?”

  “How could I? I was the emperor.”

  In men's stories, they're always the emperor or the king or the president. In women's stories, we're always beautiful and smart and loved, not necessarily in that order.

  “I told you that what you were suggesting would destabilize the entire nation.”

  Somehow I didn't think the person he was describing would find destabilization a bad thing. “What did I say to that?”

  He smiled a little at the memory. “You said destabilization was nothing compared to what was going to happen if we didn't get right.”

  I liked my past self. She sounded like my kind of woman! “So why didn't you do it?”

  He shook his head. “Because, like most men, I was an arrogant fool.”

  Good answer, I thought. “So what happened to me?”

  He took a deep breath. “After a series of rapes and child murders, you left the palace and became a leader of the women's revolt against us. When you saw I could not be convinced, you left a letter saying you would never return until women were safe on the streets and in their houses and in the arms of the men they loved, and then you disappeared into the mountains with a small band of warrior women and I never saw you again.”

  His eyes were sparkling with regret or tears, I couldn't be sure. I didn't know what to say. A rebel leader of angry women? Is that what drew me to Beth? The promise of access to women warriors?

  “I've been searching for you ever since,” Blue said.

  “So you could apologize?”

  He took my hands again. “So I could make it right. The war that sent you into the mountains is still raging, but not here. Not in this house. Not on this block. Not in this neighborhood. In this neighborhood, women will walk in peace and safety and freedom so you'll learn to trust me.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then if I am very patient and very lucky, you will fall in love with me again and we can continue our journey through time together the way we're supposed to.”

  I stood up suddenly before I knew I was going to. Was this the plan Flora had been talking about? I didn't know, but I have my own journey to complete. I have my own house to secure from the weasel. I wasn't here to fall in love with an exiled emperor, I don't care how blue his eyes are and how ancient his song.

  “I've got to go home now,” I said, heading for the door before he could say another word. I had asked for it, but I was on overload.

  He stood up immediately, his face full of concern. “I didn't mean to frighten you. I know it's a lot to absorb.”

  “You didn't frighten me,” I said, smiling. “Maybe that's what's scaring me.”

  That made him smile, too. He opened the door and took my hand.

  “I hope we can talk about this again.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We will.”

  “Good night then.”

  “Good night.”

  I closed my door behind me and then leaned against it until I heard Blue's door click. My mind couldn't even begin to process all that he had told me, so I didn't try. There was plenty of time for that tomorrow. Right now what I needed was some sleep. I hung up my new dress, fell into bed, and pulled the covers up to my chin.

  It wasn't until that brief moment just before you fall asleep that I realized Aunt Abbie had been right again. He was none of the people he appeared to be. Or was he?

  29

  IDIDN'T GET MUCH SLEEP. My brain was going a mile a minute trying to make sense of my evening. When I did doze off, my dreams were so vividly real that I'd wake up thinking I was back there with Blue in that past life, a female freedom fighter, prepared to die for the struggle. That's what I couldn't get out of my mind. I admired that woman. I wondered why I didn't remember being her. Or maybe she had just made herself known in ways I hadn't known how to read.

  Blue said I was part of a band of women warriors who were demanding change. That's exactly why I'd signed on with Beth in the first place. Because she had crafted a movement for change where women were in charge instead of somewhere behind the scenes, servicing whatever charismatic man was up front, reading the speeches we wrote like he had thought them up himself. Beth's movement was female in its heart and soul, and my response to it was so strong and immediate it shocked everybody but me. Is that because Beth was truly wonderful or because I had been looking for those warrior women from my past life and this was as close as I could get? Was I just like Blue, wandering through the twentyfirst century looking for fallen comrades and lost lovers and leaders who died before they had a chance to change and grow and grow wiser?

  The idea that any of this could be true appealed to me and made me feel foolish in equal measure. If I opened myself up to the possibilities, my imagination ran wild. I saw myself sitting around the campfire—once you take to the hills, there's always a campfire—talking to my sisters. Planning. Strategizing. I saw myself trying to lobby the emperor for our interests and failing.

  The emperor's scenes are always in a palace, not around the campfire. You know the kind of palace I'm talking about. The one with the marble steps and the flowing fountains and the handmaidens (how's that for a job title?). The palace in Hollywood's vision of Cleopa
tra and Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments. That's where I'd be lobbying the emperor. I'd be wearing some kind of flowing blue biblical robe number and Blue would be there wearing the tux he'd worn last night, but it didn't matter. I couldn't convince him to help us, and neither my arguments nor our long friendship could help us navigate the moment in a way that didn't end in disaster. So, I took to the hills, and then what?

  On the other hand, even if I completely dismiss the possibility ofpast lives and Amazonian insurgents hiding in the mountains, I still had Aunt Abbie's vision to contend with. I had taken a journey I wanted to avoid, and met a man with blue eyes who sang an ancient song and was not who he appeared to be. All of that was undeniable and fit right into what Blue had told me last night, but what did it all mean? And what about that dragon and the damsel in distress? When were they going to show up?

  The next morning, I walked into the West End News so deep in my consideration of possible past lives that I didn't notice Uncle DooDoo walking in right behind me. I was headed for the cappuccino counter when I heard his voice, too loud. Too mean.

  “Where the fuck is that blue-eyed nigga who think he the godfather?” he shouted.

  All conversations and motion among the six or seven patrons already there stopped, except for the big man in a dark suit who headed straight for DooDoo, who was still standing in the doorway, poised for flight. He had come to bluster, not to really fight anybody.

  “King James say tell him keep his ass on this side of Stewart Avenue or take the consequences.”

  The man in the suit reached the door as DooDoo leapt into a waiting SUV and squealed off down the street. Nobody moved. The cappuccino-maker was hissing gently, but the old man who served it remained motionless. Then the man at the door turned to all of us apologetically.

  “Please accept my apologies for this disturbance,” he said calmly. “Brother Richard, give these good people what they're drinking on the house.”

  I was already standing at the counter, so I ordered my cappuccino and stepped aside as we all breathed a sigh of relief that a meaningless burst of bravado hadn't escalated into something more deadly. DooDoo was bad news. Every sighting or report was worse than the last one. I wondered what had happened across Stewart Avenue that brought DooDoo across the line with a message from King James.