"That ain't nothing. I have so many stories I could tell you. But damn. This morning, felt good waking up in bed with a fine man. Get tired of sleeping by myself. I missed that. Hard for a woman to find her somebody nowadays. Might have to move out of Greensboro if I'm ever gonna meet somebody worth something. It's hard. Damn hard."

She had loved a good-looking man, despite his faults. We all had our weaknesses. I had succumbed to literature, good looks, Hollywood, poetry, intelligence, and the burning need to satisfy my own lust.

She said, "Hard to believe that girl didn't marry Karl."

"What girl?"

"He told me he was engaged one time. Some African girl. But he never got married."

"I didn't know that."

"He told me that. Said him and his brother...there was some big falling out about her."

"When?"

"He just said it was a while ago."

"Never knew he and his brother had a falling out over a woman."

"That was all he said. Told me that last night when he was over here. He didn't get into it. Right then he started getting friendly with me. Put some alcohol in Karl, he gets real friendly real fast."

I thought about the tattoos on his flesh. Thought about the woman named Kenya.

She said, "I have to confess something."

"Okay."

"I saw Karl's MySpace page two months ago. That's how I met him. Saw his page, saw his work, got in contact with him, asked him to come shoot me for this adult calendar I'm putting together. I'm doing a sexy calendar that I'm going to sell at some grown folks' places around Charlotte and up in Virginia."

"You picked him because you wanted to meet him."

"I was going to do the calendar anyway. But when I saw what he looked like, I was like, I really need to meet this man. Had to see him for myself. He has some sexy pictures of him on his page too."

"Uh-huh."

She nodded. "Didn't expect him to show up with somebody who looked like Yasamin Kincade. Wasn't planning on sleeping with him or nothing like that. You the one got me all hot and bothered."

"You're pretty hot and tempting yourself."

Her doorbell rang and stopped me from asking about her conversation with Karl. Her doorbell rang and once again Kiki Sunshine was as excited as a teenager about to go to the prom.

I said, "They're here."

Instead of going to the door, Kiki Sunshine came to me, stood in front of me, touched my face.

She whispered, "Your mouth is so sexy. Can I kiss you?"

The way she asked was so polite, so arousing. So submissive. I nodded.

She leaned over, her breathing smooth, her breath sweet, and gave me her tongue, not her lips.

I smiled. "Are you going to get the door?"

She winked. "Momma told me to never rush to a man."

She kissed me again, her kiss stimulating, touching my face in a gentle way, then she smiled.

She said, "You tasted good. When you were here yesterday, you tasted good."

"Thanks."

"Like honey and pineapple juice."

I smiled with her. Saw that she also loved to be in control.

The doorbell rang again.

Kiki Sunshine asked, "How do I look?"

"You look fine."

"My hair okay? I don't have on too much makeup, do I?"

"Everything looks fine."

She ran to a mirror and checked herself, adjusted her sundress and her breasts before going to the door. The men had arrived. Mark had on Diesel jeans. He came in first, the heat moving with him.

Mark said, "What the hell are y'all doing in here?"

Karl had on cargo shorts.

Karl said, "Hot as fuck outside and y'all have us standing on a damn porch."

Kiki Sunshine said, "Hush. Wash your hands so we can bless the food and eat."

Both had on fraternity shirts. They belonged to different fraternities. That surprised me.

Mark said, "These pancakes better be good."

We ate, talked, laughed. Kissing started. Touching commenced.

Soft music was put on. Games were played, games that created wetness and hardness.

Mark and I were on the red leather sofa. Sexual tension magnified with every breath.

Kiki Sunshine and Karl were in front of the fireplace, her breasts out, being sucked.

She watched us as I watched them.

I thought I would be too sore. But when Mark touched me, when he put his mouth on my neck, when his tongue eased inside my mouth, when his hands touched my breasts, sparks turned into flames.

My moans blended with Kiki Sunshine's, created a lyrical song made of fever, our sounds of plea sure the types of noise that, if a stranger was passing by her front door and paused, could be mistaken for pain and torture. Eyes glazed over, viewing the world as if I was underwater, thirty minutes of lovemaking and laughter equaled ten nights of ecstasy. It was beautiful. It was tender. It was intense. I should have been flustered by what I had done, by the things I had done over the last few hours, things that were new and out of character, but I wasn't.

I glanced at Mark. Asleep. He made love like a philosopher. So meticulous. I glanced at Karl. Almost asleep. He fucked. That was all he did. Fucked. And he fucked well. I glanced at Kiki Sunshine. A woman desperate for love. Her breathing was heavy, her eyes closed. We all lay naked, sprawled across the floor and each other.

Drifting toward unconsciousness. Beaten into submission by ecstasy.

I woke up to the sound of voices and moans. I was on the carpet, in the candlelit room, near the front door. Kiki Sunshine, Mark, and Karl were on the red leather sofa.

Mark was taking Kiki Sunshine from the back as she smiled and gave oral loving to Karl.

They were exchanging plea sure, moving as if they could not get enough of each other.

I tried to move, but my satiated body was so heavy, running and sex had me worn out. Voices were getting louder. The woman who was talking about a furniture sale was the loudest. Sounded like she was on her cellular phone, angry because she had to come find Kiki Sunshine so they could get to the furniture store that was going out of business, heard her complaining about how she had been waiting for her daughter all morning, expected her to come pick her up, but she wanted to get to the furniture store now so she was going to get Kiki Sunshine so they could get on the road before the day was gone.

I tried to call out, but the sounds in the room hid my voice. Kiki Sunshine was moaning. Now she was on top of Karl, had Mark behind her, her yoni and chocolate star being penetrated at the same time.

A key slipped inside the lock. I tried to get up and grab the doorknob. But I couldn't move fast enough. The door opened and daylight blinded me for a moment.

My eyes focused and I expected to see Kiki Sunshine's mother, expected her religious fury. It wasn't her mother horrified by four naked lovers, three in the throes of passion, one at her feet.

The woman who was glaring down at me in shock was Hazel Tamana Bijou-Wilson.

It was my mother.

TWENTY-EIGHT.

I jerked awake.

Pulled out of the wretched nightmare I was having.

Consciousness found me first, brought me back to this level of existence in degrees.

I was breathing heavily, drowning in a room filled with air.

The front door was closed. My mother hadn't flown to Greensboro and invaded the room. But the television was on. I had rolled over on the remote, my backside had somehow pressed the on button, the local commercials had wormed inside my dreams. I turned the television off.

Ceiling fans were spinning. The room now cool. Darkness being broken by melting candles. My eyes adjusted to this new reality. I saw Mark. Kiki Sunshine was in his arms, her palms against his chest. Warmth was next to my body, a hand around my waist. Karl was wrapped around me. One by one, they woke up. Thirty minutes had passed. My identical sins needed to get back to ATL. So did I.

Kiki Sunshine pulled her red hair from her glowing face, glanced at the Mikasa clock and yawned. With a broad smile she looked at me and said, "Damn. Too bad I have to take my momma furniture shopping. I'd hop in my truck and follow y'all back to ATL and hang out for a while."

Kiki Sunshine wanted more. When it was good, you always wanted more, no matter how tired you were, no matter how sore your yoni felt.

Five-minute showers were taken, lotion was smoothed on flesh, clothes were collected from the living room, distributed, and everyone dressed as if the sandman was trying to hold them down. We said lethargic good-byes to Kiki Sunshine. She was dressed, ready to go get her mother.

In the parking lot, I pulled my hair back, gave her a hug, her telling me to keep in touch, me saying that I would, knowing I wouldn't. We lived in two different worlds. It was time for me to go back to mine and leave her to hers.

Mark looked at me, checking if I was okay with him being close to Kiki Sunshine, then he kissed her on her cheeks. But she held his face, gave him her tongue. She went to Karl. Karl held her ass and gave her his tongue until she laughed and pushed him away.

I sensed that Karl did that for my benefit, to rile me, still in competition with his brother.

Karl would never want me in the way I would eventually want a man.

Yet he did things, said things, looked at me in a way that could create false hope.

Karl threw Mark the keys, told him to drive the first leg of the trip, maybe change at the Peachoid water tower or if we grabbed a bite to eat at Fatz Cafe, then he'd drive us to Atlanta's Hartsfield so Mark could collect his car from long-term parking. I crawled into the backseat, separating myself from being in reach of any man, removing myself from temptation and plea sure. But Karl eased in the backseat with me, which surprised me. Mark drove toward Big Tree Way and Kiki Sunshine faded from our world. She was gone. I felt her hand-prints on my flesh, her tongue and fingers inside me, but she no longer existed in my world. I leaned against Karl and yawned. He put his arm around me and closed his eyes.

Mark entered I-85 and drove us back toward Atlanta, the city formerly known as Marthasville. A city that had gone through so many changes before finding itself being called Atlanta, Georgia. We all went through changes in search of self. We all had our civil wars. Just like Atlanta. Named for the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which in turn was named for the Atlantic Ocean. And the Atlantic Ocean was named after the Titan Atlas, who was condemned to carry the world on his shoulders for eternity.

It felt as if I carried the same weight. Only mine was the weight of desire.

Jewell Stewark's face came to mind, so clear and filled with disdain as she scowled at Karl. I imagined a thousand reasons for her to look at Karl that way.

But only one made any sense. One that was rooted in jealousy.

That was my guess. I had no information to support my hypothesis; it was just a feeling.

In some ways I knew Mark and Karl. In many ways I didn't.

Maybe we were carnal versions of the fictional character Walter Mitty, escaping from intolerable reality into fantasies, our rampant sexual needs being a way of validating self, our free-loving and plea sure-sharing being the response to the stress of reality of four people who were a long way from senescence, but realizing we would slide in that direction if we lived long enough, and these memories would slide with us. This was physically satisfying, but in the end could become emotionally dangerous.

TWENTY-NINE.

The temperature remained near the century mark, humidity extreme, pollen count high.

As Mark drove, he adjusted the air conditioner, set it on high, pointed the vents toward his skin. Satellite radio was put on jazz. Mark looked at me in the rearview. And I looked right back at him.

Silence rested between us.

I wanted to be sexually adventurous without experiencing the emotional baggage.

I wanted to swim and remain untouched by water.