Free My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

by his first name because her attempts to pronounce Mister Donovitch were hopeless. “He gave me a doll-baby. ’Member? For Christmas?”
    “I remember.”
    David sighed shortly, no longer hiding his irritation. Jessica wondered if he was somehow jealous of Peter, if he felt threatened by her friendship with him. True, David was always simply courteous when Peter visited, holding himself at a slight distance only she could detect. But jealousy didn’t make sense; she’d told him she thought Peter was gay. Did David have a problem with whites, then? She’d have to wait until they were home and Kira was bathed and tucked in before she could corner David in the bedroom for an explanation.
    She found David spread-eagled across the bed, lying on his stomach. The bed, which David had imported, cost him twenty thousand dollars, he told her the first night they shared it. It was more than a hundred years old, a canopied opium bed that once belonged to some useless lord in China. The rich teak frame was engraved with intricate patterns of dragons. The bed was so high, David had explained, because its original owner probably rarely got up and wanted to meet visitors at eye level. Even now, whenever Jessica sat on the bed, which was built to rock slightly on a hinge, she felt like she’d entered an age-old sanctuary.
    “Okay. Tell me what’s bothering you,” she said.
    “I hate hearing secondhand about developments that affect our family,” David said, his voice sounding muffled.
    “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just mentioned it to Alex—”
    “I know what it takes to write a book, Jess. And traveling besides? I don’t like it at all.”
    Jessica felt a stab of hurt, but it quickly turned to anger. “I planned to talk it over with you. I didn’t know I’d also be asking permission.”
    “Apparently not. It sounds very much decided.”
    “You wrote a book, David. Remember?”
    “Exactly my point. I wrote a book before I had a family or any life to speak of, and it ate up vast portions of my time. Four months, to me, sounds highly optimistic. I’d say at least six.”
    “So? What’s six months?”
    At this, David rolled over to look her in the eye. “Six months,” he said, “is six months. A very short time, and yet a very long time.”
    She didn’t understand him. No matter how long she lived with him and observed him and tried to think the way he did, he always confounded her somehow. Was it chauvinism? Selfishness?
    “Peter says—”
    David cut her off with a disgusted sound and rolled toward the wall. He was muttering to himself in another language, not Spanish this time, but Amharic or Arabic. She couldn’t tell which. She thought of Ricky Ricardo having a tantrum on I Love Lucy .
    “English, please,” she said.
    Groaning, he lifted himself and sat beside her so that their feet dangled together over the edge of the bed. He rubbed her thigh. “Do you watch my face when I listen to Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik? Or Bessie Smith? Or when I look at you and Kira? Do you see the delight?”
    She nodded. She’d seen that expression today, when he talked about music and his lost Jazz Brigade records with Uncle Billy.
    “That’s how your face looks,” he said, “when Peter comes. Or any of your other reporter friends. You cloister in a corner and build a bonfire among yourselves, feeding it with analysis and supposition and gossip. The city commissioner’s race. The presidential election. What’s Peter’s specialty? Oh, yes. The Mafia. Santo Trafficante and the rest. The sites of their summer homes, their illegitimate children, and so on. That’s where we lose each other, Jess. You can sit with me and enjoy Mozart. And Bessie Smith. And Kira, of course. And you even tolerate my ramblings about the Crusades, or King Tewedros the Second in Ethiopia, or Francisco Pizarro, or the Huguenots in France—”
    “Sometimes—” Jessica cut him off. As college faded behind her, Jessica realized her