Free Aching For It by Stanley Bennett Clay Page B

to
the Dominican Republic for one flat fee. The delicacy of the inevitable
interview sessions he and Frankie would have to endure was, true to Frankie’s
acute assessment, more emotionally challenging for me than for either one of
them. I was like the father-to-be in the waiting room, attacked by
indescribable anxiety, sweating in agony, in need of sedatives and painkillers
to ease my mind’s spastic contractions, desperate for a psychological epidural
while my spouse bravely endured the pain of real labor.
    “I will be ready, Papi ,” Étie assured me as I
explained to him what he would face under consulate interrogation.
    “You and Francesca will have to be totally prepared. You’ll
have to have long, detailed conversations about very intimate things,” I
nervously cautioned him.
    “You think I do not know how this works?”
    “I just want to make sure, Étie. I don’t want you to get
tripped up.”
    “Considering what I have already experienced in life and
considering what I have to look forward to, nothing can—how you say—trip me up
now, Papi .”
    * * * * *
    Over the next few weeks, Étie and Frankie got to know each
other, really know each other, over the phone. Some of it, I was able to
fill each of them in on. I could tell Étie all about our brothers Andre and
Craig, our sisters Desiree and Niecey, our beautiful widowed mother and our
wonderful late father. Filling Frankie in on Étie’s dark and Dickensian
life—his mother’s death, his father’s cruelty—was not so easy, but oh so
crucial. I knew that Frankie was a good enough actress to pull it off, but the
very things I so loved about Étie were the very things that worried me most—his
honesty, his purity of heart and his unlying eyes.
    But somehow they were able to discuss and retain the details
of their invented intimacy, including the details of their invented sexual
activities, to their mutual satisfaction, details I did not need to be made
privy to. The very idea of the discussion was enough to blush me plum-purple.
    By the time Étie and Frankie were summoned to the American
Embassy in Santo Domingo for their interview, Frankie knew as much about Étie
as I did and Étie knew more about my sister than I needed to.
    At the small hotel in downtown Santo Domingo where we had
booked rooms, I paced back and forth and sweated.
    But it was my nerves, not the humid weather that drenched my
forehead, chest and underarms as I anxiously waited for Frankie and Étie’s
return from the inquisition. I showered again to kill the time that wouldn’t
die and tried to distract myself with the Spanish language telenovela —a
Latin soap opera—that filled the TV screen with brimming melodrama.
    Suddenly I heard the sound of familiar voices in the hallway
right outside the room. I shot up like a jet just as the door opened. Étie
escorted Frankie in.
    I rushed them, giving them both a scare.
    “My God, Junie,” Frankie scolded. “You freaked the living
shit out of me.”
    “Sorry,” I said, unable to tell by their demeanor if the
interrogation at the consulate went well or not.
    Frankie, more fluent in Spanish than I, was saying something
to Étie in his native tongue that I didn’t understand and Étie was answering
her in what seemed like a heated debate.
    “What?” I asked anxiously.
    “I know my brother,” Frankie said to Étie in firm English,
ignoring me.
    “And I know my lover,” Étie countered with equal firmness.
    “Just look at him,” Frankie insisted, examining me like a
corpse.
    “You are okay, true baby?” Étie asked me, staring me in the
eyes.
    “Okay?” I yelped. “I’m a nervous wreck!”
    “I told you,” Frankie humphed triumphantly, stretching out
her hand to Étie. “Pay up, Mr. Saldano.”
    “God, you guys are killing me!” I growled impatiently as
Étie reached in his pocket, pulled out a fifty pesos note and slapped it into
Frankie’s open palm. “I can’t take it anymore! Tell me! Tell me before