82 Desire

“I’m working on your project.”
    “What do you mean you’re working on it? Why don’t you have it?”
    “I’ve hit a snag, to tell you the truth.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “They’ve added some security. I haven’t been able to get into the file I need.”
    “What the hell kind of security?”
    “Nothing I can’t solve. Don’t worry, it’s happening. Just give me a couple of days.”
    “I don’t have a couple of days.”
    “I’m doing my best, okay?”
    “I guess it’ll have to be.” He sounded miffed, but fuck him.
    Miz Clara came into the room. “You gon’ call that young man or aren’t you?”
    “Mama, he called me at work. He’s due here in a few minutes. Does that make you happy?”
    “Oh, Lord. I guess I’ll have to get my own supper.”
    But Talba could tell she wasn’t that upset about it.
    She turned her attention to finding something to wear that wasn’t a white blouse and navy skirt.

Sixteen
    DINA WOLF WAS the last person he expected to end up in bed with, but there they were in her brass bed with the white-painted finials and floral comforter.
    The walls were white in the bedroom, living room, and kitchen, which pretty much comprised her condo, unless you counted the balcony, or whatever they called it in Florida. The place was airy and comfortable, with bright laminated ads on the walls, which at first he didn’t get, until he realized they were her own work.
    Right, she was a graphic designer. Russell had a hard time with that—it seemed a decent profession and she evidently owned the condo, but there were things about her that seemed so ding-y. Like her clothes, the first night he met her, and the fact that she was in that bar at all (though of course he was, too), and her extraordinary penchant for purple toenails.
    Did grown women really go around in baseball caps and purple toenails? She kept saying, “This is Florida, baby. You gotta relax,” and no doubt she was right. He really did have to relax.
    Underneath the baseball cap, she had brownish, very fine hair cut in a sort of cap with bangs, wispy side ends pushed behind her ears as if she just couldn’t be bothered. Her eyes were blue and very big, and her skin tan, but less than perfect—a little mottled from the sun. She favored white sheets (always his favorite), and now, cuddled up in them, she was undeniably cute as a button.
    So these were her personalities—cute, kind of bossy and straightforward, ding-y, and somewhere, somehow, professional, he supposed, but he hadn’t seen that one yet.
    She was a far cry from Bebe, or from any woman he knew in New Orleans, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe he needed to expand his horizons.
    He lay on his back and thought, That’s why I left, isn’t it? He looked over at Dina to reassure himself. She was warm and soft and alive and accepting—though way too abrupt for his taste; way too weird for him; in the long run, not his kind of woman at all. But nobody said they were getting married.
    He liked her a lot. He just wasn’t sure what planet she was from.
    He put a hand on the warm, soft skin that covered her rib cage and she stirred a little.
    Sex with her had been a pyrotechnical display the likes of which he could more or less remember from somewhere back in adolescence, but which he’d almost forgotten about. It had never been that way with Bebe; it was always just sort of companionable and sweet. It had been downright scary with the too-beautiful Cindy Lou—not that Cindy Lou wasn’t what Douglas Seaberry called “technically perfect,” but he just couldn’t believe he was in bed with her, and that really put a damper on the process of enjoying it.
    This girl Dina was like some prerational protohuman, all tongue and legs and slippery, sliding surfaces, twisty moves, odd little noises. She was so aggressively sexual, he wondered if she’d had a sex change—women, in his experience, just weren’t this wildly, wonderfully demanding. It confused the hell out of him.
    He’d kill to do that again—what they’d done the night before, which was everything. But this girl was a wild animal. Weren’t they supposed to be dangerous?
    She woke up and smiled. “Hi,” she said, and touched his cheek, more like a little kid than an animal.
    “Hi.” He reached for her and she snuggled against him, closing her eyes as happily as a puppy.
    She’s so trusting, he thought. She doesn’t know me any better than I know her, and