Sweet St. Louis by Omar Tyree
“How long have you had my visit on your mind?” she asked.
He smiled again. “Are you asking me that just because my apartment is clean? What, I’m supposed to be a pig, and can’t cook or do dishes or laundry just because I’m a guy?”
“Yeah,” she answered.
“I’ll ask you this then,” he said. “Does my mom seem like the kind of woman who would do all of those things for three boys and a husband? Because she didn’t. She used to tell us all the time, ‘If your narrow ass don’t learn how to do it, then it won’t get done, and it will get done! You understand me?! Because every narrow-ass nigga in this house is gonna do it!’”
Sharron could imagine it. She could even see it. She broke out laughing.
“My mom didn’t play that shit,” Anthony told her. “And I guess that if she had a daughter or two, I could have gotten away with not knowing how to do much. But since she didn’t have any daughters, she was like, To hell if I’m gonna clean up the house behind them every day after I come home from work. I’ll kill ’em first!’”
“Your mom used to say that?” Sharron asked incredulously.
“Yeah,” Anthony answered. “She meant that shit, too.”
Sharron thought about it. “Is your mom really that violent?”
“Yeah.”
She laughed again at his candidness.
“So both of your brothers know how to clean and cook?”
“My brothers, and my cousins. Or at least the ones who came over our house a lot. They knew the rules.”
“But she still couldn’t stop your father from cheating,” Sharron commented.
“I mean, it’s not like he did it in her face,” he responded. “She just kept hearing about things floating around in the streets.”
“Did she ever try to kill him?”
He smiled. “Plenty of times. That’s why he had to leave. You want something to drink?” he asked her, breaking from the subject.
Sharron shook her head. “Not right now, but maybe later.”
Anthony walked into the kitchen to serve himself while Sharron looked around in his living room and at the collection of mostly rap CDs. They sat in a CD rack that stood beside his massive stereo system. She was still thinking about his mother and the relationship she had with his father. Her own father was a very loyal man, loyal to his wife to the grave. Then he picked right up with a new woman soon after and became loyal to her. But what kind of man would Anthony be with such a bad example from his father. Could he be loyal? Ever?
She picked up an empty CD case from the stereo system and looked it over as Anthony walked back into the room with juice in a tall green glass.
“This Makaveli CD is old. You still listen to this? You like Tupac Shakur like that?”
Anthony nodded. “I was just listening to it the other day. Tupac was raw, man. He was the truth. And everybody knew it.”
“From what I heard, he made up a lot of things,” she said as she looked over the artwork of the slain artist/actor/poet/hip-hop activist on an illustrated crucifix.
“Even when he made shit up, it was the truth. Because he wasn’t really glorifying nothing. He was just tellin’ it like it was.”
He wasn’t glorifying anything? Shit, he could have fooled me then, with all of that West Coast Gangsta stuff! she thought with a frown. But she didn’t express it. However, she was interested in what particular messages Anthony listened to and how they reflected on his life.
“Which one of these songs is your favorite?” she asked him.
“I like the whole album,” he answered, taking a seat on his sofa. “But I wouldn’t listen to that for me and you.”
“Why not?” she asked, curious.
“You don’t listen to that with no woman. You listen to Faith, Brandy, or Levert or something.”
Sharron smiled. “But this is what you listen to.”
“I can listen to other things. I have other kinds of music.”
“Like what?” she walked over and searched through his CD rack, finding nothing but rap.
“R & B. Movie soundtracks. Slow jams. Oldies. A lot of different things,” he answered.
“What’s your favorite slow song?” she asked him.
“Ahhh … Damn, that’s a good one,” he commented with a chuckle. “I like a lot of that old Jodeci stuff, when they were still together.”
Sharron sucked her teeth. “All of that freaky whinin’ and stuff.”
Anthony shook his head and smiled. “See, now that’s a trip that you even said that. Because women talk all the time about men not expressing themselves. Then when they do, like Jodeci and R. Kelly and them, then we hear women complainin’ about them whinin’.”
“Because they are whinin’,” she said with another laugh. “You can sing without doing that. Look at Boyz II Men. They sing, they don’t whine.”
With that, Anthony sucked his teeth. “Aw, girl, they can’t even write their own music. That’s Babyface’s stuff.”
“They did write their own music on their last album.”
“Yeah, the one that didn’t sell nothin’.”
“Whatever.”
“Name one of their songs from that last album,” he asked her.
Her mind went blank because she hadn’t listened to it in a while.
“That’s what I thought,” Anthony said before she had a chance to come up with a song.
“So is that what you want to listen to while we make love?” he asked, shocking her. She smiled and took it in stride.
“I’ll Make Love to You.’ That was one of their latest songs,” she said, referring to Boyz II Men.
“I don’t have them. Pick something else.”
“I wasn’t talking about us. I was just naming a song.”
Anthony looked at his watch. “It’s getting late. I only have until one o’clock, right? That’s what you told me.”
Sharron’s heart started to beat. Here goes nothing, she told herself. She spotted the bathroom. “I’ll be back,” she said, heading inside with her brown bag of things in hand.
Inside the bathroom, she pulled out a green satin chemise and proceeded to undress. “I don’t even know why I’m putting this thing on,” she mumbled. “Men don’t care about any damn outfits. They just want to get to what’s under them. I should just walk out of here wearing nothing.”
Then again, wearing nothing wasn’t exactly her style. Not that she was ashamed of her body, because she wasn’t. She was tall, lean, and well curved in all the right places. She just didn’t want to seem too blunt about things. Wearing a green satin chemise with no panties and bra was blunt enough.
She sprayed a small can of vanilla-flavored mist around her most sensitive parts: neck, shoulders, breasts, and inner thighs. Then she added the final touch with cherry-flavored lip gloss to kiss him with.
She took a deep breath, grabbed the door handle, and mumbled again, “Here goes nothing,” as she walked out. But instead of returning to the living room, she walked straight into Anthony’s dark bedroom.
He followed her in and said, “I like the color. It looks good on you.”
“Thank you,” she said awkwardly. Anthony was still fully dressed, right on down to his shoes. “Should I climb under the covers and wait for you to join me?” she asked.
He chuckled at the idea. “Yeah,” he told her. “You do that.” Then he began to undress.
As Sharron pulled back his covers and climbed inside, she couldn’t help but imagine how many other women had been there. It soured her mood immediately. She felt so disturbed by it that she thought of climbing right back out and returning to his living room. She would rather go to the floor than use a bed that may have held up to thirty other women.
“How many other women have been in this same spot?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
Anthony couldn’t believe it. She would ask questions right down to the last second. She would probably even ask him questions during the act. By then, he planned on fla
“If you don’t want to do this, I understand,” he said, tired of it all. She was wearing him the hell out! But he still wanted her, especially since he was finally so close to the sweetness.
“I’m asking you too many questions again?”
“Yeah,” he told her, dropping the last piece of his clothing and standing butt naked before her. Sharron liked what she saw. A lot! Every raw, brown, muscular inch of him.
“I just want to ask one more question,” she said, pleased with the sight of him.
“Aw’ight, go ahead and get it over with,” he snapped, still standing naked before her like a silhouette in the darkness. It was almost as if he were showing off, striking a black naked Superman pose that made her laugh.
“What’s so damn funny?” He failed to find anything humorous. He was too ready for the naked dance of life.
“Nothing,” she said, holding her thoughts to herself.
“Well, what is your last question? And remember, you told me this was the last one.”
“I know that,” she responded. “I just wanted to ask you if you had any protection.”
Anthony calmed himself and smiled. “Reach under that pillow behind you,” he told her.
Sharron looked at him quizzically and searched behind the pillow, pulling out two attached Sheik condoms. Anthony began to chuckle at her reaction.
“I don’t find that funny,” she told him. “Now did you put them there tonight, or do you always have them there?”
“Actually,” he said through his laughter, “I put them there while you were in the bathroom.”
“Is that the truth or another lie?”
“It’s the truth. I don’t lie about small things like that.”
“Oh, you just lie about big bad things,” Sharron countered his hasty words.
He shook his head and frowned. “Didn’t you just say you only had one more question?”
“One question can lead to many. Especially in your case,” she told him.
He said, “Do you want me to climb in there and warm you up real quick or what? Let me know.”
“Real quick?” she questioned. “How long do you expect this thing to last?”
He looked at his clock on the nightstand. “You told me I have until one o’clock, right?”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because that’s what you said. Then I have to get up and take you back home for work in the morning after you get your eight hours of sleep.”
“Are you telling me that you actually listen to everything I say? What if I told you that we can’t do this until I have a ring for marriage.”
Anthony just stared at her. “What?”
“That’s what I thought,” she told him. “Come on, get in. I definitely don’t want you to just stand there with no clothes on.”
“Why, is it turning you on?”
She smiled and was speechless.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said, mocking her as he approached the bed.
When he slid inside the covers, she huffed, “Damn, you’re warm. Do you have a fever or something?” as his body met with hers.
“I have a fever all right. A fever for the …” He never finished his statement, deciding better of it.
“A fever for the what?” she asked.
“That’s about four questions past your limit now.”
“What limit?”
“The limit that you set for yourself,” he told her as he felt his way around under the sheets. “No panties or bra on. Interesting,” he commented with a smile.
“What did you think?” she asked him. “And what if I walked out of the bathroom butt naked?”
“That wouldn’t have surprised me. Or maybe with you it would have. Because you don’t seem that bold.”
“You’re right. Because I’m not,” she answered.
Anthony quickly slid under the covers without another word and began to moisten her nipples with his teasing tongue. Sharron contemplated whether to caress him, deciding that she would not, just to see what his response would be. Did guys really want a woman’s involvement, or could she simply lay there like a Barbie doll that needed to be moved and positioned every step of the way.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sensing her limpness.
“Nothing. It feels good.”
“Well, shit, I can’t tell,” he pouted.
“Do you need me to tell you?”
“Yeah, and in some way. Body, mind, voice, or something! Damn! Don’t just sit there.”
“Would it disturb you if I wasn’t really into that, you know, responding to it?” she asked him.
“If that were the case, you wouldn’t be human,” he snapped, climbing back up to face her.
“Some people do have that problem. They just don’t feel anything,” she said. However, she was not one of them. Sharron felt everything! Nevertheless, it was more mental than physical for her, as it was with many women. But the physical still had to be workable.
Anthony rolled over on his back and said, “Yeah, I know what you mean. With some people, you just want to get it over with as soon as possible. Then with others, you don’t want that shit to stop.”
“You would do a woman and want it to end. Why? Because you just wanted to get a nut?” she asked him candidly.
“Basically. Yeah.”
“So, what is it with me?”
He sighed. I just can’t fuckin’ win with this girl! Why am I even goin’ through all of this? he asked himself.
“I don’t know what it is with you. Sometimes I just wish that you would shut the hell up and enjoy my damn company for a change,” he told her.
“I do enjoy your company,” she responded, smiling. “Because trust me, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask you half as many questions, and I damn sure wouldn’t want to spend entire days with you.”
He thought about that for a minute.
“You want to spend entire days with me?” he asked. It wasn’t as if other women didn’t.
“We already have. And I wasn’t bored for one minute. Were you?” she asked him.
Surprisingly he wasn’t. He wasn’t bored with her either, even with her irritating quiz games.
“Naw,” he told her. “And that’s the truth,” he said before she asked. “I don’t lie that much. In fact, I should have never said that to you, because it don’t even really apply to you. You ask too many questions to lie,” he added with a laugh. “For a guy to lie to you, he would have to lie on about five different levels.”
Sharron relaxed and touched him, the rough ripples of his abdomen, the bulging curves of his chest, and the smooth swivel and dip inside his hips.
“You’re turning me on again,” he told her with a grin. “I just wanted to let you know that in advance.”
“That’s what I’m here to do, right?” she leaned over and asked him with a greedy kiss.
“Mmm-hmm,” he mumbled through her lips. “Exactly.”
“As long as I turn you on in the mind, too,” she leaned back and reiterated to him.
“You do.”
“Do I?” she asked, caressing him with her soft hands.
“Yes. I told you that.”
She searched again for the condoms under the pillow and took one out for him to slip on, while asking him something else.
“Am I gonna regret this?” Simultaneously, she lowered herself upon him and connected her puzzle to his.
Anthony stared up at the empty ceiling and breathed, “Naw.”
Sharron proceeded to give him the moment, but definitely not her all until she was sure that she could keep him, piece by piece. However, her confidence in him and in herself was still on shaky ground. So while Anthony fully enjoyed himself on their first night of bliss, Sharron faked it, filled with too many thoughts on her mind to let herself go. Thoughts about longevity and the vulnerability of making so many decisions where you seemed to have so little control over the final results.
“You know I was high that night on the phone, dawg. I ain’t mean to dis your girl like that,” Tone said, apologizing to his partner at a north St. Louis park.
It was a perfect night as they sat out on top of a wooden bench. Ant was daydreaming about his new treasure, Sharron Francis, who was more pleasurable than he ever thought she would be.
“You hear me, Ant,” Tone said, pressing for forgiveness.
It was no big deal to Ant. They had crossed each other and regained their friendship plenty of times. That’s what friends are for. How else can you make friendship last for twenty years?
“I’m not worried about that, man,” Ant finally responded to him. “But you can’t come to my job no more for lunchtime and shit now.”
Tone looked puzzled. “What the hell that got to do with anything?”
“My boss called like two minutes after I hung up on you. I thought it was you and said the wrong things. So that led to conclusions, and he said that if you came near the job anymore, and you happened to be high, he’d fire my ass on the spot and have you arrested.”
Ant said this all as a matter of fact.
Tone snapped, “Man, fuck him!” Since he knew that Ant was loyal to his job, he planned on leaving it alone. But he couldn’t.
“What do you think about that?” he asked Ant.
“It won’t make no difference with your new job. You won’t be down there to see me anyway.”
“I bet he don’t say that shit about them white boys that come up there to the shop.”
Ant shook his head. “Don’t make it no black and white thing, man. Just go on about your life.”