Free Friends and Lovers by Eric Jerome Dickey Page A

on the StairMaster.
    She said, “I’m moving in with Bryce. He asked me to.”
    I chewed the inside of my lip. Rocked a bit.
    She said, “Bryce told me a few things about you.”
    I said, “I just want you to know, I don’t have anything against you. Me and Bryce have some unresolved business. The sooner we handle it, the better for everybody involved.”
    Nancy said, “You are a beautiful woman.”
    “What?”
    “I said you are a beautiful woman. I’ve never seen anyone like you in my life. Would you like to go out sometime?”
    “Go out with you? You asking me out on a date with you?”
    “No. With me and Bryce. Maybe we could all get together.”
    I blinked a few times. Heard her say something about wine. Then I blinked a few more times. Swallowed twice. Heard her say something about it not being that unusual and she could look at me and tell we had something in common. Between each blink, it seemed like the heifer had scooted closer to me. I know she did because when I stopped blinking, she was next to me, right up on me, with her hand on my damn leg. Rubbing my sweat up and down.
    I knocked her hand off me and hopped to my feet.
    Nancy looked scared as hell.
    The door opened and a couple of sisters stepped inside tittering, tee-heeing, and lollygagging. They stopped laughing and yacking when they saw me and Nancy the Nympho standing in front of the hot coals. The sisters’ mouths gaped open, eyes bugged out with expressions of discovery, like they had stumbled across a couple of invisible lives.
    I snapped, “It ain’t that kind of party.”
    I was naked and angry as angry could be. I stuck my finger in Nancy the Nympho’s face, said something, but it was so fast and had so many curse words it sounded like gibberish.
    I couldn’t get out of that sauna fast enough. Couldn’t shower fast enough. Couldn’t scrub where she had touched me hard enough. Couldn’t dress fast enough. Couldn’t leave fast enough.

7 / TYREL
    Six p.m. Friday. Leonard was on my sofa, reading the entertainment part of today’s
Times
, laughing at the review he’d gotten from a show he had done at the Improv days ago.
    He trudged around, sang along with a Keb Mo’ bluessong while he stopped in front of the pine bookcase, looked at the pictures of my twin sister and her husband and their twins, picked the photos up like he hadn’t seen them a thousand times already. He did the same act with an old picture of my parents, when they were young and still together.
    I said, “You nervous, bro-man?”
    “Thinking about this girl Debra, bro-man. That’s all.”
    “Feel free to clean up something.”
    “Ain’t nothing here dirty.”
    “Cleaning lady came by yesterday.”
    Leonard rambled around and looked at the new tri-matted cultural print I had picked up down in Leimert Park Village. For six years I’ve tried to buy one piece of original art a year. A little something-something to pass on to my children, if I ever hooked up with a decent sister and had any. My main man eyed and touched it like he was a critic in an African-American museum.
    I stepped into the bathroom and trimmed my goatee. Massaged a dab of Nexxus Humectress in my short hair so it would stay soft. Rubbed some Aveda over that so it would shine, but not be greasy.
    Leonard asked, “How’s the j-o-b?”
    I told him about the pressure we were feeling from Bill Gates and Microsoft sucking up Dan L. Steel’s business. Shareholders were getting shaky and stocks had dropped a few bucks today. Told him the San Francisco office had contacted me five times in the last five days. They were trying to get me back up there on loan to their inept marketing department.
    “By the way,” Leonard said. “I need about six computers.”
    “What happened?”
    “Somebody broke in.”
    “How they do it this time?”
    “Used an acetylene torch, cut the locks, stole all of the computers. Didn’t take one book.”
    “Books are too heavy with knowledge.”
    “What can you do