Playing Hard To Get

“It’s true. I’m dying…like an old cow out to pasture,” Tasha cried dramatically.

“You’ve never even been to a pasture…probably haven’t seen a cow.”

“First the platinum hair in my basement15…then this one on my chin…next I’ll have a beard and mustache. You know black women can’t get electrolysis.”

“You’re overreacting. Bring it in and calm down. What’s got you so on edge lately?”

“It’s everything. Everything,” Tasha admitted, looking at her reflection. “Sometimes I sit and look at myself in the mirror like this and I think I can see myself. Like I’m still me and everything, but I wonder if I’m the me I thought I would be. When I was younger I was gonna go out and take over the world. Now I feel like the world has taken over me. I’m a mother of two who lives in the suburbs. I take Pilates on Wednesday and spin on Friday. That’s my life. Predictable…And then I die.”

“No…and then you wake up and stop dreaming, because you are not dead yet,” Tamia said. “Don’t just give up. You can still have everything you ever planned for…you just need a new plan to get it.”

And then it was like a pinch on her thigh or a prick on her thumb…Tasha had an idea.

“You’re right,” she said, amazed at what was cooking up in her head.

“Really?” Tamia was astonished her words had any effect.

“Not you…I mean you…you and her,” Tasha explained quickly. “I need to move back to the city. Back to Manhattan to reclaim my life. You heard that Lynn out there…she said I’m still hot. She said I have it. She said people could help me.”

“Whoa. I didn’t mean all of that,” Tamia said. “I was just suggesting maybe you switch your gym classes or add a hobby…knitting or Parcheesi…not up and moving back to the city. What about the girls? And Lionel? What are they gonna do?”

“They can come with me!” Tasha jumped off of the counter and fixed her dress. “I’m moving back to the city!” she confirmed. “I have to go get Lionel. I have to tell him.”

“I don’t think it’s—”

“You can’t talk me out of this. I know it’s right. I feel it.”

Tamia tried not to frown at her friend. Tasha always “felt” something.

“Okay. I guess so…. But—”

“Not another word!” Tasha sounded so excited. “Let me get Lionel and I’ll meet you out front. You still want a ride home, right?”

“Um…” Tamia looked at her watch. It was a bit before 11. Late for people going to work in the morning, but early to end a New York night. “You know, I might make a stop before heading home. You two go on without me. I’ll get a cab.”

“You sure?” Tasha asked, picking up her purse.

“Yes.”

“Well, give me a buzz when you get home. I want to be sure you got in okay,” Tasha said. “It’s a jungle out there.”

The friends kissed and Tasha walked out of the bathroom to begin her new life…only by the time she would find her husband and get him alone, she would go soft and lose her courage.

“That woman is crazy.” Tamia laughed, pulling the card Malik gave her from her purse and looking at the address beneath the soft bathroom light. She still hadn’t decided if she was going, but something about the invitation, from Malik, and the idea of seeing him again kept it on her mind.

She pulled her purse onto her shoulder and was about to walk out of the bathroom, but there, at the lower corner of her eye, she saw twinkling, like a spinning star, in the dull darkness of the bathroom.

She turned her head a little and noticed that it was coming from beneath the closed door of one of the two stalls she thought were empty. She looked and saw that the sparkling was actually a familiar disco-ball clutch, hanging from a metallic string.

“Is someone in there?” Tamia called, wincing at the thou

ght of the last someone she’d seen with that purse having heard what she’d shared with Tasha moments before. Really, while the exquisite accessory was quite expensive, it wouldn’t have been silly to consider that anyone else at the party might have had one identical to the one Tamia had seen. It was possible. But right then, considering the law of bad luck, it was also implausible.

The stall door clicked open and out emerged a screw-faced Ava.

She didn’t look at Tamia. She headed right to the basin, where she washed her hands and replaced her lip gloss with the focus of a shooter.

Afraid to move or even speak the apology she was editing in her mind, Tamia just watched her.