course of South African lobster tails, with Mojitos as the featured drink. The clink of silverware and the thick murmur of pleasant conversation speaking above the easy-listening jazz coming from the speakers filled the air as a live band warmed up, playing some lukewarm Kenny G impersonation.
The ceiling recalled the inside of a lighthouse. Fish and flatscreen televisions, each like prize catches, were mounted on the walls alongside New Orleans jazz scene paintings and hanging ferns. Sails created canopies for the booth. The evening proved too cool to sit out on the deck but they could still see the waves of the reservoir. Ominous and calm, deep and mysterious. The perfect place for a romantic dinner. Just King and Lady G.
And Prez.
A blue dress, a silky number with a plunging neckline, stopped high on Lady G's thigh. She had borrowed a pair of evening gloves from Big Momma that ran to her elbow, which she decided finished her elegant look. King wanted to take her someplace special, he said, and she wanted to dress the part. Though he lived on his accrued Social Security benefits from his mother's passing, he wanted to be the man, the knight, she deserved. She wanted to play the sophisticate yet she felt so young and inexperienced around him. She rummaged through Big Momma's closet forever, eventually finding herself in the low-ceilinged attic which housed artifacts from her aunties. Outfits dating back decades. She searched through every box until she found the perfect dress. No relationships happened by accident. She couldn't shake the nagging feeling that there was something degrading about the whole thing. That sense that she was little more than arm candy. So very devastated, an emotional cripple in many ways, she scrambled to be good enough for him, to please him. And part of her struggled with the notion that she wasn't with him, but rather with the idea of him.
She sighed, too loud, drawing the attention of both King and Prez. She decided that her mood was probably put off because King decided to bring his newest puppy along with them.
Not quite hidden behind a menu with the words 'Fresh Jazz, Live Seafood' splayed across its front, Prez stared at the array of silverware before him. The letters in gold script on his black hoodie read Light Fingered Brigade. He wondered why he got followed in stores.
'Start from the outside in,' King said.
'What?'
'As they bring you out dishes, salad and appetizers and stuff, use the forks starting on the outside.'
'Can't just use one fork through the whole meal? Seems awful wasteful,' Prez said.
'White folks got too much time and too much kitchen help to worry about that,' Lady G said.
'Just a different way of doing things is all.' He resented the unspoken implication that he was trying to turn the two of them white.
Though pissed that King had brought his latest special project along with them, Lady G couldn't stay mad at him. He was so good with Prez, almost like a father. Probably doing what Pastor Winburn did with him years ago. She always gave into King's wants and requests. Partly because she wanted to please him, partly because everything he did seemed so… important. King was large, not just physically imposing, but his life seemed lived on such a grand stage. His every action and decision seemed to carry such weight. It was intimidating. Timid and hard-headed, yet boisterous and fierce-sounding, she was still the shy little girl whose time was better spent in a book. And she resented the flash of sentiment that perhaps she was every bit the special project to King that Prez was.
'You sure I'm not intruding?' Prez asked.
Yes, Lady G thought. 'Naw. King too scared to be alone with me.'
'It's cool.' Though pleased that Lady G acquiesced to letting him bring Prez along, King knew he might have been pushing things a bit. A hard, impenetrable man who would die for those he loved, inside he was still the frightened boy fearing the monsters that came for him in the night. 'I just wanted to take two people I care about out for a nice evening. It's all about possibilities, you know.'
'Yeah.' Prez's eyes glazed over, not knowing what King went on about. The food felt good in his belly though.
The dinner passed uneventfully. King and Prez talked of the Pacers' penchant for big white farmboy acquisitions, and the holes of the Colts' defensive line. They talked about the best places to eat ribs. They talked about school and passed knowing glances at women, King's arched eyebrow asking to Prez's shake of disapproval as waitresses walked by. Nothing too deep, though the conversation about school was cut short by Prez as it veered too close to thinking about the future and making plans. No, tonight was about being: being still, being present, and being with each other.
Back at Breton Court, Prez ducked immediately into King's place. King walked Lady G over to Big Momma's place.
'Sorry about that. Just thought with him having no place to go, it would be a bad idea to leave him by himself,' King said.
'I don't care that he came along, it's just…' Lady G hated to sound pathetic and needy. Like a girl. 'I just thought it was going to be only us.'
'I thought I could do both: be with you and help him along.'
'I'm not some item you can just multi-task to check off your 'to do' list.'
No competition, no domination, they held on to each other, rushed into each other. What one had to give the other was pleased to take, like sweet-tasting fruit. But too much of even the best fruit spoiled one's diet.
'It's just… there's so much work to be done. Not enough time to do it all. Not enough workers. Not enough people care. And as much as I want you beside me, it's also dangerous. So I want to keep you as far from it as possible.'
'There you go again. Trying to determine folks' business. Who elected you our Black Messiah?'
'What?' King thought he'd opened up and poured out his romantic soul. He didn't expect the sharp sting of words.
'You don't get to decide that for me. It's my decision to make. I'm tired of the men in my life trying to tell me what's best for me.'
'Is that what's bothering you?'
'I said it, didn't I?' She held a steady gaze behind a deceptive mien. He made her see old things with new eyes. He gave her confidence, shared her secrets and felt loved. He helped her define herself. King was the one person who accepted her. Who knew her. Who had been real with her. She couldn't hide from him.
'You just seemed off is all. A little preoccupied,' King said finally.
'Just a lot going on. Life with you is hectic. Still getting used to it is all.'
'All right then.' He read her face like emotional tea leaves. Whatever he saw there he decided not to press the matter.
She kissed him, which lately she did more often, when he asked too many questions, camouflaging her discomfort in an expression of love.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A sculpture of Robert Indiana's agape-inspired painting 'LOVE' and the huge series of fountains were the first things people noticed when they entered the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Three main areas made up the IMA: the museum proper, with its Oval Entry Pavilion, a three-story, glass-enclosed jewel box of a building, the Gallery Pavilion, and the Garden Pavilion; the Virginia B Fairbanks Art and Nature Park; and Oldfields, Lilly House and Gardens.
The twenty-six-acre Oldfields estate was named for the former farmland on which it was sited. A French chateau-styled mansion, Oldfields overlooked the White River valley. The twenty-two room mansion was built for Hugh McKennan Landon and his family between 1912 and 1914. In the early 1920s the Landons built the Ravine Garden, a design masterpiece of bulbs, perennials, wildflowers, ferns, and flowering trees and shrubs that featured a bubbling brook that descended the fifty-foot hillside and fed three rockrimmed pools. In the 1930s, Josiah K. Lilly Jr. acquired Oldfields. For all of the IMA's picturesque beauty, no one ever asked why it was closed on Mondays.
'Where are all the ladies in bikinis?' Prez asked.
