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“That’s not true and I—”
“Rachel, it’s fine. Don’t insult my intelligence by trying to explain. I may not have gone to college, but I’m pretty bright,” Bird said. “You see me every week working on cars. I have greasy hands and shit all over my shirt. I know that’s not what you want. You want one of those Morehouse men who wear suit jackets to work and can impress your friends with his credentials—like your boy who came by the shop today. That’s cool. You can have that.”
“I’m open to try anything,” I said and I didn’t know how crazy that would sound until I heard it come from my mouth.
“I don’t want anyone to ‘try’ me.” He held up his hands to put invisible quotes around try. “I want what everyone else wants. What you want. For someone to choose me. Now, I’ve asked you out dozens of times. And that’s just the flirt in me. I’m a man. If I see a beautiful woman, I’m on it. If you wanted to go out with me, you would’ve said yes a long time ago. Not just when your boy was there and you wanted to impress him or something.”
“He’s my friend. I wasn’t trying to impress him,” I offered.
“Well, we can be friends, too, baby girl. We can go out. We can hang hard. But I won’t be your settlement man. When I find my woman, she’ll be looking for everything I am. And then, I’ll shower her with everything I have.” Bird smiled. “And that’s a whole lot. Car repairs don’t come cheap. My wife won’t have anything to do but make sure her man’s belly is filled when he gets home.”
The bartender came back to our end of the bar. “Another round, Bird?” she asked.
“Why not?” Bird said, clinking his beer bottle against my glass. “I got it.”
For the rest of the night, Bird kept the conversation going. He’d gained the upper hand and I felt smaller than the fly that had landed in my drink. In the car ride on the way back to the office to get my car, I wanted to pop in my earphones and listen to my iPhone. To disappear never to be heard from again. O
nly, I knew that was too far from the truth. We’d see each other again, and those times would be even more uncomfortable and awkward than this. He offered to walk me into the garage to get my car, but I shot back with a firm “No!” and jumped out at the curb on Peachtree where he’d picked me up earlier.
“Give me a call to let me know when you’ve made it home safely,” he said before pulling off.
I agreed, but we both knew I wasn’t picking up the phone to call him ever again unless it was about my truck.
From the red light in front of my building, I could see the light on in my living room. Flashes of color, probably from the television, bounced off the window where the light above was just dim enough. Grammy Annie-Lou and Ian were the only people with keys to my place. Pulling into my parking space, I was sure it was the latter, as Grammy Annie-Lou hated coming into the city for anything but revivals and funerals. So, if it wasn’t Ian, the only other person who could have my living room light on and the television going was a burglar, who took time to check out my DVR collection.
“Welcome home, Ms. Winslow. Dr. Dupree is upstairs,” said Jeremy, the front doorman and elevator operator as he gave me a lift to my floor in the raw freight elevator that once carried mattresses when the building was a mattress factory. Some years ago, following an Atlanta trend pushed by new socialites and the avant-garde, a developer had purchased the abandoned space, rezoned it, and built condos he could sell quickly to those hoping to be on the cutting edge, and live in the city with a little bit more space and style than those stuck in apartments and condos. There were forty units in the building, and all forty residents seemed to be the same—except for Mrs. Jackson, an old woman that moved onto my floor after her son almost lost his unit to foreclosure. Still, the rest of us were young, entrepreneurs, financially secure, and single. Jeremy, a twenty-six-year-old doctoral philosophy student who wore spikes in his brown hair and jumped the curb on his skateboard as he waited for residents to arrive, was the perfect punctuation to the post-hipster vibe in the building.
“Wonderful,” I replied to Jeremy’s observation. Certainly, as a doorman, he knew that he ought to tell me that a man, even if he knew that man was my best friend and said man had a key to my place, was waiting upstairs for me. Lord only knows what he’d seen over the years. One of the units on the top floor was occupied by a strip club owner, who wasn’t shy about bringing work home.
“Two visits in one day?” I announced, walking into my place. Ian had left the door unlocked. “To what do I owe all this attention?”
“Figured you’d want to talk after your date.” Ian was laid out on my couch. His naked feet were up and crossed on one end and his head was resting over his hands on the other. His tie was loose, but he was still wearing the same clothes from earlier at the car shop. I knew that he hadn’t been home yet.
“Talk? I can call you on the phone to talk to you.” I put my work bag and purse on the dining room table that was across the room from the couch and television.
“I figured you’d need a little extra attention tonight.”
“Why?”
“After your date with Sparrow. If things went bad, you know?”
“Bird. His name is Bird,” I said. “And no, I don’t need any extra attention.” I rolled my eyes and started walking toward the kitchen. “Everything was fine.”
“I already made your tea. Thought you’d want the coconut chai,” Ian called.
In the kitchen, I looked at the stove. The tea pot had steam coming from the spout. The warm, sweet scent of my favorite tea was wafting overhead. It was exactly what I wanted. What I always had after one of those dates that flat-lined for no reason I understood. I rolled my eyes again.
“I was going to make the ginger, but I thought it would be a coconut chai night,” Ian said, now standing in the doorway of the kitchen behind me. “I mean, after I saw Dragonfly Jones, I . . . Well, we know the track record.”
My eyeroll was decidedly dramatic as we walked back into the living room. “Bird. His name is Bird,” I said, sulking and looking up at the black and white printing of a Kara Walker silhouette of an African woman with angel wings hanging over the couch. Maybe something in the coconut chai air was breaking me down. “And I hate you.”
“Ahhhh.” Ian stretched out his arms and pulled me into a hug. “Was it that bad?” He pushed my head into his chest dramatically though I resisted. “Tell daddy everything.”
To anyone watching, this skit of pain and comfort that Ian and I had performed many times might look bizarre or even suggestive of something more, but it was just us. As the best friend of a female, Ian had to be my comforter, my stand-in daddy and shoe picker. For every reason I hated him for assuming my date would likely be a flipping flop, I backed it up with a rationalization. I needed that shoulder to lean on. Someone waiting to listen to me when I got home. Someone who knew the right tea. At the right time.
“Men suck,” I proclaimed a little later after I’d had two cups of tea and told Ian all about Bird and his “no settlements” statement.
“I know, but dude kind of has a point,” Ian said.
