No, ma’am. Jay was well acquainted with those other kinds of behinds. “Naw, this one,” she calculated, grinning, like the magic room had already spread the delectable woman across her platform bed, those purple panties tossed high on one of its four posts, “no, this one did something else. This one simply strolled.” The strange part was, she hadn’t seen the woman’s face, and a pretty face with pussy lips always lit Jay’s auto pilot. Yet, this woman could look like whatever. Jay didn’t care. In that instance, she realized why she’d been standing there, dreaming, thinking. Her neighbor’s pretty ass had to do what it did, capture her, but the lady’s mysterious persona would do what it must, keep her.
Evening fell as supple as silk while Jay stared. When fireflies twinkled and crickets sang, the lady’s loft dimmed to candlelight. There was no call for desperation. Jay knew her potential. The last time she’d checked, wherever she appeared, looking as tantalizing as the last treat in a box of Lady Godiva chocolates, women—some gay, some straight, (it didn’t matter) declared, word had it, that Jay Morrison was The “She-Can-Get-It” Woman. Thus, armed with such confidence, Jay descended the stairs to her kitchen and leftover Chinese take-out. Her mind savored a new intention: to have her mysterious neighbor in every way she could have a woman.
Two weeks later, Jay posted up against the window in her back room, again, but this time, music drew her there. Big band music. Josephine Baker in a banana skirt and no-bra music. Hypnotic, it was the sort of music that conjured images of glossy stages and rows of leggy, dancing angels in flamboyant feathers and skimpy costumes, kicking up their heels and flashing yards of endless thighs. For once, Jay scanned her usual surroundings and never registered a thing outside of her new neighbor’s, her next woman’s, third-floor window. All investments were put on the back burner, for Jay hadn’t seen a flicker of life in the loft for days.
“A traveler,” Jay speculated. “Cool.”
Distracted by that beautiful butt, on Monday evening, she lay on the room’s bed and snaked one hand into her pants. Damn. She felt good masturbating, releasing. No lady and work dominating her days, she ached for some good loving, every fiber in her hollering for punany: its spice, its flavor, its juice. She closed her eyes and imagined those purple panties strapped to her nose. Breathing in their fragrance, she prayed their owner boasted a face with a pair of the prettiest pussy lips she’d ever seen. Pussy lips that left her on her knees, begging to lick and kiss, suck and nibble, same as she got stuck between a woman’s thighs, mesmerized by her other pair of pretty lips.
She dreamed herself straight into Wednesday, the day those curtains waved to her on a gusty evening breeze. In a rush, she lifted the back closet window and filled her lungs with the beginning of April and snapshots of the strolling beauty just beyond the floral curtains. Shoot! Jay had a mind to—fuck it—show up at the woman’s door with a housewarming gift, perfume, and a dinner proposition the sistah couldn’t refuse. As Jay stood there, strategizing, she heard it again. That music. She listened spellbound, an addict hooked on the next glimpse of mind-altering ass. The compelling melodies transported her back, decades back. By the time the CD changer reached its final cut, Jay had made up her mind. She ripped herself from the glass and headed for the shower. A half-hour and her sports car was dodging Boulevard’s craters and traffic-defying teenagers to pull into a parking spot steps away from Best Buy’s electronic double doors.
In the CD section, a cute, turbaned woman leaned on the ordered counter. Rajima was stenciled in black on her name tag, a sensuous smile stenciled in pink on her lips.
“May I help you?”
“Hey, baby.” Jay mirrored her enthusiasm. “I’m in a hurry. Do you have Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s 1957 rendition of Porgy and Bess? If not, bring everything you have by them, separate or together. Please.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rajima purred, rounding the counter to gracefully take Jay in fully, before walking away, her hips swaying under a long summer skirt.
Jay grinned. Sexy-ass women. They kept her nerve endings racing. She shifted her attention to a basket of discount CDs, but none whet her curiosity. Leaning against the counter, she panned the store’s wares and wondered how long her mystery woman would be in town, wondered if she should leave her a love note, candy, an airline ticket.
“This is everything we’ve got.” Rajima spread a handful of CD cases across the counter and rang her total. “Is there anything else you’d like?”
Jay slowly considered her offerings. “Huh, not now. Thank you.”
“Whenever,” Rajima promised, accepting Jay’s three C-notes, her stare fierce, tongue glossing her bottom lip. Jay nodded, advised her to keep the change and departed the store in long, determined
strides.
No music. No lights.
Only stillness, when she returned.
Jay felt powerless for a moment, standing in her open garage, a thing she rarely did, gazing up at an obviously empty loft and emptier sky. “Hell, maybe that’s her crash pad,” she rationalized. “Won’t sweat it,” she encouraged herself, utilizing her investment savvy. “I am patience personified. She belongs to me.”
Miss Purple Panties failed to sashay those jaw-dropping hips past the still fabric of her curtains for what must have been an eternity and one more weekend. In her absence, Jay’s faith wavered and cut the absolute fool, filling her mind with doubt. Under it, she almost passed out; her longing and the ache in her pussy heavy, intense. So, until muted lights burned an amber haze in her loft once more, Jay ended up licking the view from across the courtyard’s bricked blooms with eyes meant for, at the least, fucking…or prayerfully…if she could hold a joyous image long enough…for making love to a woman who rattled her without one hello.
Jay’s dog, Valentino Starr, lay in on her doorbell one Friday night, like a drunk without a bottle. Behind her, Jackson Street joined in with its late-April night music.
In Valentino’s pockets were tickets for a different type of Saturday-night entertainment. It was no secret her gyrl had been working serious overtime hours in an effort to bring new horizons and renewed dreams to the strolling disenfranchised under her loft windows. And that alone, Valentino knew, deserved appreciation, being she rarely thought of streetfolk, unless it was to remember to lock her car doors or keep loose bills handy—what with her demanding wife and life.
“Just don’t keep a sistah waiting,” she’d forewarned Jay just last night. Despite that, here she was, waiting for those second-floor curtains to part so she could cuss.
“Glad I didn’t invite Justina,” Valentino muttered to herself and doubled-checked her watch. Knowing her wife, she’d have waited five minutes then politely stuck Jay’s ticket under the welcome mat.
Just as she decided to execute the thought, Jay drove up to the curb, the Mercedes spotless, and flung open the car’s passenger door. “Get in, my niggah!”
She smelled expensive, like she looked.
“Don’t play, dude. You still late,” Valentino growled, but she had to give it to her—her friend was the cat’s meow. “In New York, the N-word is illegal, kinda like the L-word everywhere else.” The analogy broke her up.
Jay smirked and gave Valentino the finger, frowning. “Shut up and close that door. Look, man, where we off to anyway?”
Valentino cracked up again, relieved she didn’t have to drive herself, or worse, attempt to unload last-minute tickets on a street where most intoxicated night strollers couldn’t spell burlesque, had no money, or thought only dresses and ribbons were velvet.
The Velvet Room was upscale, noisy and filled with some of the finest women Jay had ever prayed would be in one location. Alluring, they were everywhere. Even outside the club’s Peachtree front, in black tuxedos, valet parking a queue of fabulous cars.
“For whatever this is,” Jay whispered to Valentino inside the establishment’s lavish, darkened interior, “I’m damn sure down.”