Infinite Us

One

Nash

The thumping, incessant rhythm wasn’t welcome when the headache started.

Brooklyn was loud, midnight dark, full of chaos, adding to my insomniatic misery. But the noise from my upstairs neighbor wasn’t the only thing keeping me up. Numbers and algorithms coated my inner vision like some Pollock piece. My body? Stupid with tension—the kind of tight coil that twists your spine and keeps your shoulders from any damn thing but bunching pain.

The numbers, the darkness, all that chaos fought for space inside my head, dimmed by the racket I heard above me. That thumping, hyper noise of a drumbeat from some clueless asshole’s speakers in the upstairs apartment, tamped out the jazz pouring from my headphones. Coltrane was wicked, the smooth slip of his sax like the voice of God; the heady mix of condemnation and praise, pain that both harmed and healed in every note. But even the long, sweet whisper of the sax couldn’t overcome the thumping of the trespassing drums barging in or keep out the noise of the crazy bitch singing out of tune one floor up. Had to be a woman. No dude’s voice could be that high-pitched or whining.

For the fourth damn night.

Insomnia first became my side-piece in college. Every night for four years, the noise of frat brothers stepping in line to DMX and his gravely-voiced barks in Get It On the Floor in the quad, the Alpha Phi Alphas and Omega Psi Phis vying for bragging rights of who was the flyest with every step-dance they made, and the general disturbance of new-held adolescent debauchery kept sleep from me. Those Omegas always won.

I’d trained my mind then, let insomnia linger until there was an uneasy relationship between us—me tolerating the elusive hum of sleep and that affliction keeping me from it. I’d wrangle four hours of sleep, plenty for a Computer Science major, enough to ace my classes. Enough that I didn’t look like an old man when I left for MIT. By then, insomnia had become the ride-or-die chick that refused to leave me. Got tied down to that bitch. Now I wanted a divorce.

That racket from the apartment above was not helping.

The noisy upstairs woman started a louder chant, something that reminded me of the weird mess my twin Natalie watched every Halloween with her friends when we were kids back in Atlanta. Some movie with three white chicks from Salem, singing about spells and sucking the souls out of children. The one with the redhead woman that my assistant Daisy says likes to burn Kim Kardashian on Twitter. That shit was funny, hell of a lot funnier than the other movies she was in that made my mom laugh so loud when I was six. It was a Broadway phase she kept from my pops. Nothing like the witchy mess from that old movie, that nonsense was crap. And that’s what my new neighbor sounded like.

Four nights. Four nights of this rambling, tone-deaf torture. Four nights of the voice of God being drowned out. Four nights too many.

Coltrane fell silent when I pulled the headphones off and moved across my apartment, not giving a damn that my t-shirt was wrinkled when I picked it off the floor and tugged it over my head, not caring whether or not that loud woman would get pissed if I interrupted what had to be some nightly juju ritual.

My skin pebbled in the cool air from the vents at the elevator but I didn’t shake or cross my arms to get rid of the sensation. It fed me as I slipped into the car, ignored the quick flash of my reflection on the metallic doors showing the bags under my eyes, the streak of muscle that twitched when I stretched my shoulders. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to confront this chick, but I was tired and annoyed, and before I stopped to think about what I was doing, the elevator dinged and I stood right in front of 6-D’s door. There was a constant thump of a drum line bumping beneath the sliver of light at the bottom of the door; the only shadow I could make out slipped around that light, probably dancing to whatever voodoo junk pulsed from those speakers.

Coltrane was music. Spirit music. Deep, heart-aching music that seeped into your soul, filled in all the fragments that life left empty. This garbage? Hell no. This was racket and chaos set to a disjointed rhythm.

Two bangs of my fist and I stood there, arms braced against the doorframe, loops of black tattoos, things I wanted to remember, things I could never forget, visible over my forearms, moving as I twisted my fists on the wooden frame. I didn't care what I looked like, a tall inked black man breathing fire at her door. Not worried that this woman might see something of a threat in me, thin, wrinkled shirt over wide-shoulders, jeans slipping low on hipbones. Instead, I focused on that mean ache of messed-up calm and lack of sleep crowding in my skull. My stupid pissed off attitude amped up the longer it took her to open the door. Waiting, I envisioned that I’d yell, I’d unload on her, then get the hell away before she could react, stalk back to my apartment with my anger leeching out behind me. Then maybe Coltrane would work and I could get at least a few hours’ sleep.

The drumbeats stopped. Footsteps. The snick of a lock.

Angry breaths flared my nostrils. My eye twitched. A vein in my forehead pulsed.

With the smallest creak of a hinge, the softest slip of light, the world around me went silent. The silhouetted figure before me sent a whisper straight to my brain. But it was the light cast across her face and the good look I got of her that rattled me, really rattled me. I couldn’t shake it. I didn’t know this woman, yet she felt freakishly familiar. Like I’d dreamed about her for a year and never caught her name. Like that dream had haunted me and I was only just remembering why. Like there were details about her face that had been branded into my memory and I just uncovered them. One glance, and I stood frozen, unable to squash the rush of memory and confusion that shot at me like a wave.

Sensation overtook me and I got caught up by what felt like a whip of wind moving through the park, of plastic beads and forgotten parking tickets on Bourbon Street the second Fat Tuesday ended, of the spray of waves that had crashed against the quay. It slapped across my subconscious. A whoosh, a break of something that could have been a kiss, likely was a punch in the gut, though no one touched me. Before I finished one blink, there she stood, half a foot from me, staring as though she knew me, like she’d been waiting on me to knock on her door.

"Oh. Oh no." The woman’s eyes—bottomless circles I wasn’t sure I could look away from even as she seemed to take in every square inch of me—got huge.

It was her.

The girl.

She’d been everywhere—outside my window, soaking up my attention like I had no control over it, and every time she brushed by me on the street, moving like a bubble floating to the deli on Henry Street or the cleaners down past Orange, some fucking specter I wasn’t sure was real that kept me standing right where I stood every damn time I spotted her.

Once, coming home, I noticed her walking a block in front of me, and followed her like a stalker, not even realizing what a freak I must have seemed liked. Every time I saw her, it was like her presence had gripped me like a crazy moth to a flame, but I’d been too wrapped up in my work and my own damned mind games to even consider that she was real, and approachable, and living nearby.

And now she stood in the open doorway, only inches from me.

Honey… just, no.

Her touch brought me from my gawking stupor. At least, it made me move. She touched me and a bolt of electricity coursed through my body. Fingers warm against my skin, pulling me forward like she expected me to follow. Resisting her was not an option.

Her grip tightened as I followed her inside, and a voice started screaming in my head to back up, to get away from this chick before I did something stupid or got blamed for it. But I looked at her again, and the voice quieted to a whimper.

This woman wasn’t like anyone I’d ever seen before. She was tall, heightened by the dark tights she wore and the loose, bright top with swirls of green and yellow which might have been flowers that cupped her small waist and drifted nearly to her thighs. She reminded me of a bunch of balloons, the kind that jackass clowns twist into animal shapes to impress stupid six-year-olds. There was so much color and noise in this woman—the whiteness of her skin, the loud shade of her dark lips, the jingle of the stack of bracelets on her wrist, and the thick bundle of long chestnut-colored hair that hung in a riot of waves and curls past her waist.

But it wasn’t the chaos of colors she wore that kept me from bolting: It was the stare she gave, the pause before she spoke as though she knew exactly who I was and why I’d pounded on her door.

Hold up. Why had I pounded on her door?

I couldn’t explain the sensation if I had a billion words to describe it. It was something weird but familiar, something I didn’t recognize in her expression, in the slow, sweet smile that moved across her face the longer she watched me. Like she knew me. Like I was supposed to be right there standing in front of her waiting for something to happen.

Hell. I was sleep-deprived.

When she stopped watching me, when that little smirk vanished from her features, she squinted, looking over my head as though she was considering something, like she needed to figure out what kind of flaw I had.

It’s bad. She waved her long fingers over my head, swooping one hand up and down my body, breaking the moment and confusing the hell outta me. It’s just the wrong color. Another wave and I finally wrestled my thoughts under control enough to step away from this crazy woman even as she tugged me further into her apartment.

I finally found my voice and my reason. That shit is too loud, I said, mustering all the good damn sense I could, as I looked around her cluttered apartment.

What? she asked, her brown eyes wide, innocent.

My gaze settled on an old ass record player in the corner, spinning, with the needle up. Your record… that turntable?

She frowned, but more confused than unfriendly. She had one of those faces that tears and worry and rudeness wouldn’t, couldn’t, keep from being beautiful. And she was. For a tall, skinny white chick, she was damn beautiful.

The turntable, the speakers, you got to cut that shit down. I can’t sleep as it is, but that fucking …

"Oh, you shouldn’t curse like that."

Again she reached for me, fussing at me, bossy as hell as she led me to what I guessed was supposed to be a sofa but looked like a stack of fluffy mattresses with the loudest looking blankets and pillows thrown around them. The entire place reminded me of a circus caravan—colors that were deep and rich, tapestries and blankets draped over all the furniture, covering the lampshades like some drifter’s wet dream. Flowers, both dried and blooming in vases, along the window sill and across the mantel. The thick scent of something that smelled a little like weed clouded in the air, something sticky and sweet, but too flowery to be anything worth smoking.

She stared me down, gaze hard, critical. I brought my attention back her, trying to dismiss the fact that I’d gotten nosy eyeballing her place but not wanting to give in entirely. Um… mind your business about my mouth…

Sit. When I folded my arms, keeping another curse between my teeth for God knows why, the woman moved her brows up, those coffee-colored eyes matching me pound for pound. I meant to tell her to fuck off. I thought about just rolling out without so much as a word to her, but that look on her face, the one that was both severe and tempting all at the same time kept me stuck in place. Damn, it would be a mistake to underestimate this woman, doe eyes or not.

After her glare went on for damn ever, she nodded at the sofa, staring at me like she’d lost her own shit a long time ago and hadn’t bothered finding it. A few seconds, several long, furious blinks and I gave up, too damn tired to fight with some woman I didn’t know.

I sat, damn the good sense God gave me. No one bossed me but this woman found a way to get me inside her place and on her sofa with half a dozen words, all of them bossy as hell.

Now, I want you to relax and breathe deeply. I’m going to focus your aura…

Look, lady…

Just relax. I need to assess where the problem is. Another glare and she relaxed her expression, her nose flaring as she inhaled deeply. Now, close your eyes. Even as she commanded it, she did it herself. I closed my eyes, but damn if I wasn’t still completely aware of her.

The image of her, the long cascading hair, the softly chiming bangles, the blouse shimmering around her body, all lingered behind my eyelids. She smelled like jasmine, a weird scent that I only recognized because Luke, my college roommate, thought he was Erykah Badu’s soul mate and was gearing up for the job by shopping at some funky head shop that sold all kinds of crazy essential oils. Jasmine was Luke’s scent of choice and of all the nasty oils he brought into our room, the jasmine smelled the least like ass. On her, it smelled... well, better than any damned oil, essential or not.

There’s a misalignment in your auric field, I’m afraid. Her voice went still, deep and as I squinted to peek at her through the half-light , I caught the expression on her face; all studious, the deep line between her eyebrows that hadn’t been there a minute before giving her a focused, worried look. She, at least, thought there something serious that needed fixing, and that something serious seemed to be me.

Her face was round, a sort of heart shape that made her look like a kid. But then I got a good look at her eyes and caught something in them that I hadn’t before—stories and legends. That’s what my gramps used to say of folk whose past was clouded right in their eyes. Stories that became legends; a life so unbelievable or sad, so lived that it showed in the stare someone had, how they held it, kept it as though every story would live in their eyes, but they’d never speak it out loud. You had to look, gramps would say. You had to look hard.

I didn’t even know this woman’s name, but inside of three minutes, I knew there was something belly deep she kept to herself.

I just finished cleansing my aura. It came out like an afterthought, something she said to fill up the space between us as she moved her hands around my body, motioning like she meant to rub my skin, but without touching me. Not once. She moved weirdly, hands and fingers stretching all over me; head, shoulders, chest, down to my knees and feet, then back up again, to my shoulders and neck, around my aura, whatever the hell that was, until she finally rested her fingers against my traps, exhaling hard as she worked her nails up and along my neck, her thumbs rubbing in circles just under the back of my head. It’s probably why yours was so easy to notice.

That right? I tried for skeptical, but my voice sounded far away. I forgot about the stupid music she’d blared through her apartment over the past four days. I forgot about the sleep that wouldn’t come to me. I forgot about all the worries and work that had kept me up, all gone as I gazed at her face. I’d never seen skin that smooth or freckles up close like that, lips that ripe. If I moved a little, brought her close, I could touch her mouth in a fraction of movement.

Damn. Where the hell had that come from? I wasn’t into white girls. I wasn’t against messing around or hooking up with them, maybe dating for a little bit, but I’d never really been into them. I’d always been into Latina girls or sisters, definitely, but white chicks? Not really. Despite my current tatted image, I’d spent high school locked up in the library or the computer lab, away from everyone but my teachers and tutors. College for me was Howard, a historically black college, before I transferred to MIT. Not a lot of chance for white women to enter my orbit. Not a lot of women, period. There was no reason for me to want to watch her the way I did or think about how she’d taste, what it’d feel like to have that smooth skin against my tongue.

Oh… Surprise worked across her features the harder she massaged the muscle of my neck. "Oh…"

Oh? I saw her expression focus, become determined and deep, and when she licked her bottom lip I almost lost it. Just like that, I forgot about what type of girls I’d always been into.

It’s… She blinked twice, her gaze moving around my head, as though she saw something I couldn’t. It’s changing colors.

Weird. That was weak but I couldn’t think of anything else. I kept the frown on my face, as if that wouldn’t give away what was in my head, but I got the feeling this chick didn’t buy it. At least she didn’t act like it, not the way her cheeks flushed brighter the longer she rubbed my neck.

She paused, and I watched her, wondering what was making her smile like that, wondering why the hell I returned it with one of my own. She noticed.

You’ve got a great smile. She moved my face in her hands, revealing the dimples pronounced in her cheek. I like it.

Then, just like that, she went all focused and bossy as hell again. Close your eyes. That demand came out soft, the smallest hint of something deep between each syllable, like she wanted to say please, but wouldn’t ever. The tension is here. There was a small graze of nail against skin when she touched my neck and I breathed deep, liking the way she smelled, how that soft, firm touch warmed my tight traps. There’s so much tension… you don’t... you don’t sleep well, do you?

When I opened my eyes, ready to answer her, she brushed her fingers against my lids, making them stay closed. No. I didn’t bother sweeping her hand away. She worked some kind of juju on me and for the fucking life of me, I couldn’t stop her. Didn’t want to. That’s why I came here. Your music…

It’s the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz. Well, their chants, anyway. They relax me. You should try listening…

I opened my eyes despite myself. That wouldn’t relax me. That’s why I came banging on your door.

What would? She didn’t stop me when I looked at her, but her hands relaxed briefly on my shoulders. What music would relax you?

Coltrane. She frowned then, back straightening as she rubbed against my muscle firmer, deeper, as though to avoid looking at me. I couldn’t read her expression. You don’t like jazz? I asked.

What? No, I do. She corrected that frown, her features returning to the sweet softness again. "My świenty dziadek. I frowned and she waved a hand in apology. Sorry. I meant my great-grandfather. Our people were Polish. Some things stuck. Anyway, he loved Coltrane. She smiled, remembering. He’d sit in his office, smoking a cigar, sipping on a glass of bourbon, listening to Coltrane’s Spiritual. Maybe Louis Armstrong if he was feeling ‘a little New Orleans’, he’d say. She seemed to be lost in the memories, her face both sweet and sad. He’d do that for hours."

Why does that make you sad? That made her glance at me, as if she was surprised that either she had been that open, or that I had been that observant.

He died. Last month. She moved her chin, her expression evening out as she refocused and stretched and moved her fingers around me, away from my skin. He was over a hundred years old and I… I loved him a lot. She shrugged, exhaling like she needed it. Coltrane makes me a little sad now.

Coltrane is supposed to make you sad. She pushed on my shoulders and I sagged back against the pillows, dismissing how weird it was that I was letting this woman touch me, trusting her to touch me, and not putting up my guard. That’s what good music does.

She moved her hands away, head tilting as though she hadn’t heard me quite right. Good music makes you sad?

"Nah. Good music makes you feel."

It always had for me. Jazz, Blues, especially, really good rap like Rakim, P.E. or Common, old school beats that went deeper than the bragging rights most artists spit out these days, back when lyrics were about fighting the man and celebrating the beauty of who we were and where we were going. Music should be elemental. It should be bone-deep. All those thoughts ran through my head, but I wasn’t about to start preaching to some pretty woman I didn’t know, the same woman who somehow managed get me on my back with her scent and fingers all over me, working some weird new wave bullshit over me while remembering her granddaddy and his afternoons with Coltrane. Hell, I’d only come up here to get her to cut off that dumbass chant music. I’d done that. I needed to jet.

So why the hell couldn’t I move?

Maybe. The word came out weak, like she didn’t buy the line I’d fed her. Maybe it should sometimes. But I can’t listen to Armstrong or Coltrane, or smell those Padrón cigars or catch a sip of Pappy’s without it reminding me of him and how he’s not here anymore.

I shouldn’t care. Not about this woman. She’d kept me up for four nights straight. Looking at her, seeing how she carried herself, how bouji her place was, despite the Technicolor boho mess, how she looked as though she’d never known hardship in her life, I knew we had nothing in common. We were completely different people. But I still wondered what she’d been through, why she felt the way she did. I shouldn’t have cared about this woman. God help me, though, I did.

He a good man? It was out of my mouth before I could think about how stupid it might sound.

Without skipping a beat, her face lit up with the most beautiful smile. The best.

There was no doubt in her reaction. She believed no one had a better grandfather and I understood the feeling. I let the moment chill, and when her face started to settle again, I cast around for something to say. "Remind me to tell you about my granddaddy one day." My sister Nat and I only got to live with him for four years after our mother died, but those years had made an impact. My mother’s father had been a good man. He’d been the best, too.

It was an invitation I didn’t mean to make, telling her I’d give her that story, but again, something had spoken for me, some weird, stupid thing that had me itching to let this woman know I’d be back around.

She didn’t miss it, and it seemed like my suggestion had pleased her, even as she tried to distract herself with the tassel on one of her bright red blankets. Does that mean you’ll come back? Before I could answer, she shrugged, fronting like it didn’t matter, but there was a wisp of teasing in her voice. My chanting music or my aura cleansing didn’t completely scare you away from ever speaking to me again?

She went back to fiddling with my aura, all business, or at least pretending that she was. Long, thin fingers moved over my arms, again not touching but coming close enough that I could feel the heat of her body on my skin. She moved closer, and again I saw something a little hungry come into her eyes, a look that housed a thousand legends. Something thick bubbled in my stomach the closer she came and when she glanced at me, reaching forward as though she would touch my face, I realized I hadn’t answered her question. Maybe.

She smelled so good and the heat between us grew, ran into something that felt like a memory, familiarity that made no damn sense to me. Something old and primal seemed to move her and she came closer, leaning on an elbow to bring herself near enough for me to catch a whiff of her breath—spearmint from her toothpaste, gum maybe, enough of a distraction that I didn’t think of those lips for half a second. We moved together like magnets, the force unbreakable, undeniable and out of our control. But at the last moment the scent of her breath and proximity of her body jarred me from whatever small spell we’d been under, enough that blinking to clear my head did the job, brought me out of whatever fog I’d stepped in the second I sat on the sofa.

It was as if the air had cleared, and a kind of understanding came to me. After all, pretty women weren’t all that uncommon in New York. There were models and actresses, folk coming in from all parts of the world, adding to the melting pot. Pretty women were everywhere and I sat right in front of one of them, but she wasn’t what I wanted, not right then, not with everything else bearing down on me. Yes, she was beautiful. She was sweet, weird and bossy as fuck, but she wasn’t for me.

Maybe it was me moving back, maybe it was just the spell breaking for her, too, but she went still and stiff, as though realizing where she was and what she was doing. Then suddenly she jerked her hands back, staring at them as if they belonged to someone else.

I don’t… Her gaze didn’t leave her hands, as though she half expected lightning to shoot from her fingertips. There was a hard line between her eyebrows and when she closed her eyes, scooting back to put distance between us, I thought maybe I’d done something wrong, had said something that put her back up.

You all right?

What? she said, distracted, waving her hand, looking like she wanted to shake something that ached her from her limbs.

She moved her gaze over my face like she’d only just realized there was someone else her apartment. Her confusion was plain, though the low dip of her mouth did nothing to take away the sweetness of her features. Still, she seemed unsettled, continuing to stretch her hand and extend her fingers as though her joints ached. When the seconds lengthened and she went on without speaking, without doing a damn thing but look worried and confused, I figured it was time to make an exit.

You want me to go? Before she could answer I left the sofa, moving slow,