Continental Drift

He hasn’t been aware of that, of course, until now, when he unexpectedly finds himself staring at Marguerite, examining her boldly but nonetheless innocently, for at last his curiosity has overcome his fear and at this moment, but only for this moment, he has not yet made himself sufficiently familiar with her darkness to begin to long only for her, to touch and hold her, lick and kiss her, to lie down and fuck her and her alone and not just any tall, slender, attractive black-skinned woman, which is the way it has been until this moment, impersonal, abstract, pornographic and racist. Here I am on a white shag carpet fucking a beautiful black woman, me, Bob Dubois, for God’s sake, pale and hairy, muscles tensed, cock swollen, red, stiff, while the beautiful, smooth-skinned black woman shakes her round buttocks in my face and peers back at me and offers me some more of her marijuana cigarette.

George has started sweeping in the far corner of the store, out of sight beyond the head-high shelves of gallon jugs of cheap wine, and the woman turns back to Bob. “I think I’ll be picking him up and leaving him off for a while,” she says thoughtfully, biting her lower lip with large, widely spaced upper teeth. “He’s still not … like he was yet. I’m a little worried about his getting the right bus home and all, you know? And getting off at the right stop? You know?”

“Oh, sure, sure, I understand. I mean, it’s a hell of a shock to his whole system, probably.” Bob feels himself stumbling after the words he wants to say. He wants to be both suave and consoling, as reassuring as he is seductive, but he knows he sounds instead like a man who’s busy and hasn’t quite heard what’s been told to him.

“So … you’re a nurse,” he finally says. Her hair, cut in a short, loose Afro, is black and shiny and prematurely flecked with gray.

“Yes, I work for three doctors, out at the Westway Clinic.”

“Ah,” Bob says, as if gaining an insight.

“You know it? You live out there in Auburndale?”

“No, no. It’s just … that’s a nice job, a nurse in a clinic. Better than a hospital, right?”

“Better hours. But that’s about all,” she says. Then, “You got a nice smile, you know that?”

“Ah,” Bob says again. Suddenly he asks her, “Are you married? I mean, George never mentions a son-in-law. Only you. He talks about you a lot. So I wondered …” Her skin is clear, unblemished and roan-colored, dark brown with a slight reddish tinge brought forward, Bob notices, by lipstick and the makeup on her cheeks. She’s wearing perfume, lilac, and when he sniffs for more of it, he looks at her nose, broad, symmetrical, functional. A true nose, he thinks. Not a large, pointy, phony nose like his, not a dog’s nose. Elaine’s nose he hasn’t looked at for years, although he used to wonder at it, because it was so perfectly shaped, or so it seemed to him then — slightly curved, short and narrow, giving to her small face the look of a fierce bird, like a falcon or hawk — but now he can’t recall it. His memory is only of having paid attention to something that has disappeared, swallowed by her eyes, so that now, when he looks at his wife’s face or remembers it, all he sees is the center of her eyes, as if her face has somehow gradually become invisible without his ever having noticed until after it was gone, lost to him, he is sure, forever.

Marguerite answers his question as directly as he asked it, as if she is used to having white men she barely knows ask her if she is married. She was, she tells him, but not now, not for over five years. Her husband was in the air force and stationed here at Shure. “But,” she says, shrugging, “that didn’t work out so good. But I liked it here, and I had a better job than the one I used to have in Macon, so I stayed. And the next year my mama died and Daddy came down.”

“It doesn’t make sense, your being alone,” Bob says with great seriousness.

She laughs. “Yes, it does, Mister Dubois …”

“Bob.”

“Okay, Bob. Yes, it does make sense! A lot of sense.” Then, turning to leave, she smiles and says, “Besides, I’m not alone, you know.”

“You’re not? I thought …” He doesn’t know what he thought.

“I got my daddy!” she calls from the door. Then, to the old man, “Bye, honey! I’ll pick you up at five, okay? You remember, now, y’ hear?” And then she is gone, leaving Bob Dubois standing at the cash register, his heart thumping, head abuzz, hands, he suddenly notices, wet with sweat.