Flower

Excerpted from the novel Fish Tales by Nettie Jones (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

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I think we could say that I was feeling maudlin that early summer night. Six extra-dry vodka martinis with dilled Brussels sprouts and dinner alone in Detroit can make a monk feel maudlin. I was also tired of Little Harry’s cocktail pianist. That pianist was for sure not Bobby Short. He reminded me a bit of my piano teacher, Mr. Alpino. My mother had insisted that I learn to play piano. She had always wanted to learn, it seemed. Mr. Alpino, I guess, needed the two dollars per hour. He certainly did not need my banging out the three Bs.

Little Harry’s was full of bunches of middle-aged affluent blond people on their way out of Detroit before it really got dark. Every now and then one drunken account executive or another would burst out in song; you know the type I mean. And that silky, shrunken pianist would bang out the melody.

I slid out of my red leather seat, stumbling only a little, and tipped over to the piano.

“Say, Charlie, how about playing ‘Meditations,’” I asked loudly. “If we’re going to make this joint an old church, let’s play a hymn I wanna hear.”

All the people at the piano bar grinned nervously. The one Black man that was there didn’t. He just looked on blankly. Guess he was comparing my aggressiveness with the quietness of his little polyester-draped blond date.

“Sure, Lewis,” the pianist said as he graciously accepted the five-dollar bill I laid on his tray.

If he played “Meditations,” either I didn’t recognize it or I didn’t hear it. Angered by what I presumed was a slight instead of a lack of talent, I blurted out:

“Y’all are in Motown, you know, not Germany, nor Italy, nor Grosse Pointe. Charlie, how about Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder?” I asked.

“How about ‘Just the Way You Are’?” a soft lady’s voice asked from a corner of that tired old room.

“Don’t know it,” Charlie responded.

“I do,” she said one note above a whisper. That’s when I saw her. She was wearing a man-tailored double-breasted black silk suit with a hot pink silk blouse. She was so fair and her hair so ashy. The most amazing thing about her was her size. She must have weighed three hundred and seventy-five pounds naked. Yet her face was not fat, just rounded and very beautiful.

As she approached Charlie’s bench, the room became quiet. The young bartender even stopped shaking a cocktail he was making. She walked like a dancer, erect, slowly and assuredly. Graciously, she slid a bill on Charlie’s tray, sat down, and began to play and sing.

“Don’t go changing . . . Just the way you are.”

The Black man sitting at the piano bar began to hum, then whistle, then sing behind her. They stopped in the same way that they began—elegantly. Outside of their music, they never touched each other. I don’t think they even looked at each other.

“My name is Little Flower,” she said. “People that like me call me Flower,” she said, sitting down across from me. I could see that she was a real redhead, freckles and all. Her gold-framed, rose-tinted glasses made her blue eyes look gray. She sat on the edge of a too-small chair, lighting up the first of an endless series of Turkish-smelling cigarettes. The tiny ebony gold-trimmed holder that she held between long unpainted manicured nails was rich. She looked rich, too. That is, if you overlooked her peacock’s suit and concentrated on her. Her teeth had been pampered all of her life. The fair skin unblemished, almost translucent. Her fat even looked lush. I imagined her walking the streets of Florence in a long black flowing cape. Her perfume was thick. There is something about the way perfumes mix with obese flesh that makes you want to get closer.

“My name is Lewis. Thanks for the ditty. It was needed. You a musician?”

“No, I’m a collector. I collect pretty broken things and make them prettier. I sell some of them for a living. How about some seltzer water and a wedge of lime? I drink it all of the time. It’s good for you.”

“Sounds good to me, Flower. Only, have the bartender add a couple of shots of vodka with mine. I’m not that concerned about what’s good for me. I like what feels good to me.”

“You won’t accept seltzer and lime without vodka, huh? That’s too bad, Lewis.”

“Why’s that, Flower?”

“’Cause that means you’ll have to buy your own drink. I don’t buy pretty things drinks. It breaks them.” She was peering over her tinted glasses now, still sitting on the edge of that too-little chair.

“And that means I’ll drink alone, then. The way I was doing. Thanks for the song. Do you need a waiter to help lift you off the edge of that chair or can you lift yourself, Miss Healthy?” I was giving her my crazy Lewis stare without stopping. “Those foreign cigarettes stink, too.”

“Tough,” she said. “You’re really tough. It would have been fun,” she said, lifting herself daintily from that too- small seat.

Watching her walk away from me like a giant bull elephant grazing through a jungle, I felt maudlin again. I felt like sleeping, sleeping.

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George, Little Harry’s parking attendant, was waiting on me at the bottom of those green outdoor-carpeted steps. Occasionally, George walked me across the street home if I got wrecked after lunch. He reminded me of all of my uncles. George was probably earning more money in tips than Big Harry. I adored his style. “There’s a lady waiting on you, Miss Lewis,” he said. “She asked me to ask you to come over to her car when you came out.” George was at least six foot five and one-half inches, Hershey bar brown.

“Did she pay you, too?” I asked with only a slight slur. “A twenty,” he said. “You gonna do it?”

“For you, for sure, George,” I said as he walked up those steep steps to help me down them.

“Her car is the pink Caddy over there. She’s a real lady. Her father is a big preacher in town.”

“Now that we’ve found love, what are we gonna do?” blasted out of her car tape deck as George opened the door for me to get in. She looked lush, stuffed into the driver’s half of the front seat, and she smelled like lavender. Her skin was even fairer than it had appeared in the darkened restaurant. Three tastefully selected rings decorated her long, slender fingers. One ring was a cluster of diamonds that formed a butterfly with emerald eyes. The second ring was pink gold with a square-cut amethyst. The third ring was a wide, plain gold wedding band worn on her right baby finger.

Later that night, after she found love in me, she told me about herself. Her former husband was an international Middle Eastern dealer of antiques. They had divorced three years ago, their two boys going to him. He couldn’t see his boys growing up in a dyke’s household. That was his favorite name for her, she said. We were sprawling in her brass bed when she told me this.

“You think of yourself as a stud?” I asked. “A dyke? My friends and I simply think of ourselves as free. ‘Dyke’ sounds as ancient as ‘fairy,’” I said to her as she began to make love to me again. “Dyke, pronounced Dykay, was a Greek goddess of love, you know,” I said to her as she nuzzled her head between my thighs. She was quick and smooth. “You ever hear of Sappho? Now, she was really something . . . That feels good,” I said as she rocked my boat. “You feel good,” I said, stretching out and letting her love me.

And she smelled so good. Her thick red hair felt like dolls’ hair as she rubbed herself on my knee, gently. I felt her dampness. It was warm as it flowed. I felt myself open up to her, reach out to her. I wished that I could love a woman as Flower loved me.

After she had satisfied herself and me, she held me and we cried. She tried to entice me when she sensed I was ready to leave her.

“Hungry? I have some great king crab legs just waiting.”

“Nope.”

“Want some different music? I guess the Third World is tired of finding love.”

“I love ’em. Leave ’em on,” I said, sitting up. “Who’s she?” I was looking at a photograph of a little brown woman lying naked on the beach.

“That’s Blake,” she said, lighting up one of those heavy Turkish cigars. “We were married once—in church—by a liberal minister. I wore a tuxedo and everything. I used to dress in drag a lot. The wedding ring I wear was hers. One day she threw it at me. Pronounced me a bawdy, bizarre bitch. Said our marriage was a joke. Before I knew it, I had knocked her out with a right hook I didn’t even know I had. When she came to, I had cut off her hair, slashed up her clothes that I bought, and had Bo-Bo pick her up. Bo-Bo’s my boys’ bodyguard-housekeeper. She calls me every now and then, says she’s real sorry.”

“I bet she is,” I said, looking around her bedroom for the first time. It was filled with good taste and wealth.

“Wanna go someplace?” she asked, embracing me.

She was ready to go at it again.

“Yep, I do,” I said, giving her a peck on her satiny cheek. “Home. I wanna go home,” I said, sitting up in that bed, staring at Blake’s picture.

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