4. Big Fun With The Wretched
Big Fun With The Wretched
Bianca
“Ijust got you back and you’re leaving meeeee for an Italian man and a castle on the hill.”
“Please take your dramatic ass in the house.” I blow smoke away from Stephanie’s stiff lip and flared nostrils. “I didn’t say a thing about a man or a house on a hill, dummy. You geekin’.”
“Really, Bianca? Who was the one talking about moving to Italy before my luggage crossed the threshold, hmm? You took one look at that woman on the screen and her antique fixtures and said fuck me,” she snaps between sniffles.
“Are you really about to cuss me out after I picked you up from the airport with the food you wanted?”
Stephanie’s chin wobbles, her lips still coated in grease from the chicken box she’d inhaled with her half-and-half. The same chicken box and half-and-half I picked up from our spot on Greenmount, a bop from here.
“Excuse the fuck out of me for feeling some kind of way about my best friend of all my life finally freeing herself from the shackles of Corporate America. Now you decide to leave me? I planned to make a cake!”
I roll my eyes and take a pull from my blunt. “You don’t bake, Stephanie.”
“Is it not the thought that counts?” She stretches her arm in front of her to paint whatever delusion has her thinking she won’t burn flour. “Imagine a boxed vanilla cake with fondant icing, not that buttercream mess that tastes like clouds and whispers.”
I cough through a cackle, too high for this conversation. A piece of cake would hit the spot right now.
Stephanie’s expression remains bothered. Wide eyes and lips carved into rich cocoa. Every bit of Marsai Martin with Jenifer Lewis’s theatrics.
“Written in the middle of the cake would’ve been, ‘Bitch, you tried your best. They never deserved your pantsuits or your Pringles.’”
We crack up. Our laughter gets the attention of Ms. Spencer, who sticks her head out of her window.
“What is all that hollering?” she shouts from her bedroom window next door. Her head is a bouquet of pink sponge rollers to match the floral nightgown many a grandmother cooked greens in while raising six kids.
“Is that the devil’s lettuce I smell down there?”
Shoot.
Stephanie and I freeze. In my head, it makes complete sense to blend in with the asphalt shingle roof we’re sitting on above the kitchen. We look like the thirty-nine-year-old versions of Zoey and Diane from Black-ish whose former Sunday school teacher caught them lighting up.
I deflate my cheeks of smoke in slow puffs and push the blunt between my fingers over to Stephanie, who slaps my hand.
“I, um.” My words stall on a cough.
“Did you get it from Mouse?” Ms. Spencer asks, brows drawn.
“Dartavius,” I say, too faded to lie to an elder. Mama Vee would slap me in the back of the neck if I did, dead or alive.
She nods. “I’ll give him a ring after service tomorrow. I expect to see you both.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Stephanie and I say.
Ms. Spencer smiles. “I’m happy you’re home, Bianca. Don’t be no stranger or get an ounce of smoke in Viola’s house.”
Does she want a hit?
Don’t ask her!
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
Her eyes cut toward Stephanie. “And you, stop all that whining. You’re not at a repast.”
“Yes, Ms. Spencer,” Stephanie says.
“Get inside soon. Ain’t nothing out here this time of night but poor decisions, STIs, and bullets.”
“Yes, ma’am,” we say before her window closes.
I collapse onto the roof and sigh.
Ms. Spencer and Mama Vee were the authorities on our block. Love and a warm meal were available to anyone who needed them, but those two weren’t for the bullshit. Ms. Spencer still isn’t and will put the fear of God and act right in you.
I’m marching my ass right into the house... After I finish this blunt.
I exhale smoke through my nose. The gray cloud reaches up to grab the stars. The temperature has cooled since the movie ended hours ago.
“Something is calling me,” I say into the night. “I can’t explain it, but there’s this urge to go.”
Stephanie reaches for the blunt. “And this urge says to go to Italy? Who am I going to steal clothes from if you’re not here?” She motions toward the sleeveless tank and stretchy waist shorts set she’d taken from my drawer.
“Yourself!” I cackle. “I haven’t been living, Steph. Just going through the motions.”
“Now you’re ready for big fun with The Wretched, huh? I’ve been trying to get you to go on vacation, and all it takes is one movie about Tuscan sun?” Her inhale is sharp. She closes her eyes and pulls on the blunt. “When are you leaving?”
Stephanie and I have known each other since we met during timeout in Ms. Spencer’s Sunday school class when we were six. She lived with her aunt in McElderry Park, minutes from my house in Patterson Park.
There were lots of sleepovers in my house that turned into bunk beds in the eighth grade, and Steph living with us when her aunt moved away for a man. Mama Vee always considered her family. That’s my sister, the best friend I keep bail money in my bra for just in case.
We did everything together.
Fighting whoever needed a reminder that we’re cute but still throw hands.
Basement parties.
Poly-City games.
Sneaking off to NYC for the day on a Chinatown bus in the summer.
College was the first time we went our separate ways. Steph got her nursing degree and hops from place to place as a travel nurse. I went off to Jersey on a full scholarship for human resources. We support each other’s moves, even when we don’t like them.
“I’m leaving in a week, maybe two,” I say to Steph’s frown.
Silence.
“For at least a month.”
“Bianca!” Stephanie whisper-shouts, not to summon Ms. Spencer again.
I snatch the blunt back to ash it. “You’re really fucking up my high. I’m taking time for myself before I start a consulting business. Lots of companies need outsourced human resources support. I can work on my terms, with the clients I choose.
“I want an adventure, and I don’t want to wait until I’m fifty to have one. I’ve worked thirteen-hour days, five days a week, and I need a reset. My fortieth birthday is in less than two months. I want to travel with the wind in my braids. Because you know I’m not fighting with my hair overseas.”
“Hello!” Stephanie high-fives me.
The bass from Rod Lee’s “Dance My Pain Away” echoes down the street in the distance. Growing up, the roof was my place to dream. The few times I’ve been home since Mama Vee’s cancer battle ended, I come here. To remember.
My voice trembles. “Mama Vee wanted to go to Italy. She always worked to take care of us and never left the city. I want to go for her.”
Coming home wasn’t easy. The two-bedroom row house she left is rich in memories but still empty without her. Every milestone since she adopted me when I was a baby remains trapped.
“I still think I’ll hear her yell at me to put my shoes away at the front door whenever I check on the house.” Steph wipes an eye. “God, I miss her.”
I rest my head on her shoulder. “Me too.”
“You should go,” she says quietly. “For you and her.”
“Come with me. You have that short contract next. Then what?”
The silk scarf securing her edges tips back in a mental scroll of her schedule. “I’m taking the month of August off.”
“So meet me there. A housesitting opportunity just popped up in Naples.”
“House-sitting?” She says the word like it has toe fungus. “Is it safe?”
“The website is legit.” I shrug. “The owner is eager for someone to come soon. It’s a three-level penthouse in the city, with five bedrooms and a terrace. I have pictures on my phone. I’ll be there by the end of the month and will request to stay through August.”
Stephanie crosses her arms over the PJs she stole. I’m wearing the same set in black. “And what will you do for a month and a half by yourself in a foreign country?”
“Live. Shop. Visit a few beaches. Get a kewchie tune-up. Michael B. Jordan isn’t knocking down my door, and I need more than hard plastic to get me off.”
I love my curated toy collection and could pay a mortgage for the year if I ever showed off my pussy’s grip in public. But I want a man who can handle my mouth and knock me through a wall with his dick.
The few finance bros I messed around with never had read an instruction manual on how to care for a vagina. The ones who didn’t chew my clit were into questionable shit. I’m all for a good time, but I’m not hanging anybody from a ceiling by their nuts.
“I want pursuit. Passion. Pleasure marks,” I say.
“Ooh, bitch. My pussy is giving you a standing ovation.” Stephanie crosses her legs and closes her eyes.
“Destination dick was exactly what the doctor ordered when I went to Antigua that one time. Girl, I was speaking in tongues when I left, with a sore throat and a dented hip. Get you some foreign penis.”
“I plan to,” I snap.
“What did Vince say?” Stephanie arches her brow at my attempt to roll away. “You didn’t tell him?”
I wince. “I will…once I’m over there.”
“Bianca!”
“You know he would shut it down or force someone from the kitchen staff to accompany me as a personal bodyguard. I’ll tell him once I’m settled.”
I told Vince I was taking time for myself at the end of the month. He won’t bother me unless I go too long without calling.
“He can yell at me once I get back,” I say with my braless chest.
I’m not afraid.
…maybe a little.
“If you come back,“ Stephanie says with a wink. “Watch you meet the love of your life over there and never return.”
I roll my eyes. “You watch too many movies.”
Whatever man I deem worthy to have me will have to earn me. I learned my lesson the hard way and am only here for a physical connection during my vacation.
Nothing else.