He cleared his throat, his eyes turning red. "I'm done. A man can only talk to a brick wall for so long before he realizes he's talking to a brick wall."

"It must hurt."

"Saying those things to you? Knowing I still love you. Yeah, it hurts."

"No, not that."

"What?"

"Realizing you can come at me from every angle and it still yields the same result. That must really hurt. A man like you, a spoiled brat who is used to getting what ever he wants, to come up on me, to not be able to have me, knowing I can't be bought, knowing I'm stronger than you, that I'm smarter than you, knowing that I have rejected you over and over, realizing you can't have me, that must hurt."

"Is that how you see it?"

"Tell me this, if I were anything less, would we be having this conversation?"

Logan swallowed. He sucked his tongue and rocked.

I tried not to let the tears fall from my eyes, but they were heavy, beyond my control. I cried. Not a hard cry. He had hurt me and now I was being defensive, doing my best to hurt him in return. Reciprocity of angst and misery. I tried to be still, tried to remain calm, but my tongue rebelled.

He nodded. "I know what I don't need. I don't need a woman who behaves like a whore."

My voice remained calm. "I'm not a whore."

"Right, right." He nodded. "Whores get paid. Maybe you're just a pro bono whore."

Nothing was said, his damnation being the soft, cruel words that filled empty space between us.

Whore.

His word had slapped me with scorn and ridicule, had put me into a pillory, the wooden circles tight around my hands and neck, boos and catcalls flying at me from all over the restaurant.

He had called me a whore.

His unmarried mother had seven children by three different men and he called me a whore.

He had an unmarried sister with four children by as many men.

I almost brought his unmarried mother and his promiscuous sibling into this conversation.

I had to remain better than him.

I refused to respond. Because it didn't matter.

I enjoyed the beauty of sex, the energy received and given. And his words were an attempt to cheapen that enjoyment.

He shook his head, wiped his eyes. "End up like your mother."

I gritted my teeth. "What was that?"

"You said you were your mother's child. Maybe that's the problem. I see her picture in Essence and Ebony. Read about her online. But magazines don't tell the truth. If she's anything like you, I bet your stepdad was glad to get rid of her. Bet she used him and tossed him after she had used him up."

Forks clanged against dishes. The hum of lunchtime conversations filled the restaurant. Waiters walked by. New customers were led to their tables. Customers left. Life moved forward for many.

We had digressed to the language of fools. Educated fools, but fools nonetheless.

I said, "Sex with you owned no poetry, never created all the euphoric accompaniments that would allow it to move from being a pedestrian encounter to something that could be regarded as profound. Your sex was commercial, never literary. Too predictable to ever become mythical. Your physical moves were empty of emotion. Sex with you was orgasm, but not love. Never erotic. Sex with you was like every one of your trite conversations-mechanical and redundant. Your touch didn't stir my major senses, and that meant it would never be capable of titillating my minor senses. It never inspired sensuality or disheveled my emotions. It was barely sex. It negated my fantasies. It left me feeling so small. It made me feel cheap and dirty."

He stared at me, now offended, now hurt.

I went on, the anger in my voice controlled, said, "When a woman lies down with a man she doesn't desire, then she is a whore. I stopped being a whore when I stopped sleeping with you."

He was hurt, but I wanted him destroyed, wanted him devastated by his own inadequacies.

My chest was rising and falling, yet my breathing was controlled, my pains hidden, still aching, stinging, enduring the sensation of a wounded animal. Wounded but refusing to flee. Holding my ground. Remaining in battle. I waited for him to reach into his low-level vocabulary and attack me with his vulgar words. If he insulted me one more time, if he once again tried to slaughter me with misogynistic words, my language would become misandrist, so nasty and profound that my words would violate so many Alabama laws, I would be incarcerated, tonight writing my very own Letter from Birmingham Jail.

But Logan said nothing. His chest was heaving, his words trapped inside his throat, so many phrases struggling to be freed, filling up his jaws, but he refused to open his mouth, refused them their freedom. The dark clouds of animosity didn't pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding didn't lift.

He frowned at me and shook his head, did that as if he was disappointed with himself, as if he was asking himself how he could have not only fallen for me, but asked a bitch like me to marry him.

Logan opened his wallet, took out a crisp hundred-dollar bill, slapped it down on the table, stood tall, adjusted his suit coat, and strutted away, didn't look back, his head held high, tears in his eyes.

He strutted away as if, this time, he was leaving me.

He left like he couldn't wait to get to his Range Rover and journey up Highway 78.

The door to the restaurant opened, Logan pausing to let a few women come inside first, his Southern hospitality in effect even now, then he went out into the heat.

Logan vanished.

Each insult had cut me deep, left open wounds, left undeserved pain.

I sat alone, in silence, invisible blood draining out of me, leaving invisible puddles on the table and floor. She was there. I didn't see her, but she was there. She was always there.

"I wept because the process by which I have become a woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality."

I heard Anais, her voice as clear as the Alabama sky, looked around, wanted to see her, but she wasn't here. Anais Nin wasn't here. She could never be here, not in the physical form. She was dead.

Anais was dead.

The voice I heard was my own. I always heard me talking to myself. I heard me comforting me.

Maybe I'd gone insane.

I waited for the check to arrive, paid my part, took nothing from Logan. I left my tip as well. The appropriate amount. No grandstanding by throwing C-notes on a table and walking away as if whoever had the larger denomination had the most power. No, like I had always done, I paid my own way.

At that moment I knew why I had come to meet Logan. I had come for acceptance. I had come because in the end I wanted him to accept me for who I was. For me that would have been a small victory, a small battle won on the way to becoming whoever I was destined to become. I had come because I didn't want to leave anyone in pain. Our last encounter had been horrible. I wanted that to be redeemed for both of us. That was not the last image of him I wanted in my mind. I didn't want to leave thinking of him as a monster. This image was worse than the first. His words had been spirit-damaging.

In his eyes, if I were selfish with him, then I must be selfish with the rest of the universe. Only a moron would rationalize that way. Those were the thoughts of the emotionally immature.

Before today he was aggravation, irritation personified. Now it was deeper.

I hated him.

I would forever hate him. I would never respect him.

Not for what he said about me, that was his right, that was his perspective.

For bringing my mother into this conversation, for being that low.

Tears flowed. Not many. Not a river. Not a lake. A small puddle, dammed by my tenacity. My intention had never been to hurt anyone. My intention had only been plea sure.

Yet hurt remained.

I was parked around the corner, had a space in front of the tattoo shop.

I went to my car, meter expired but no ticket on the window, acknowledged that Pyrrhic victory with the nod of my head, and rushed inside my heated car, left the area, shades on, air conditioner roaring. Tears remained in my eyes, each tear feeling like invisible blood trickling down my cheeks, body temperature up, head aching, sweat on my neck, I was one hundred and fifty miles from home.

Men traveled the world looking for the fountain of youth, were-wolves, and vampires. I only wanted peace, space, and plea sure. And in some eyes, that was a crime worthy of burning me at the stake for.

THIRTY-TWO.

Two hours and a million thoughts later I was home.

Logan was tethered to my mind. His egomaniacal attitude.

I mumbled, "Asshole. You've never met a woman like me. One who had her own mind."

I changed into shorts and a wife-beater, took the forest of flowers from my front porch, drove them all to the trash bin near the entrance, had to make two trips, arrangements so large I had to leave the top down for them to fit inside. Walking up and down my stairs with those heavy flowers, loading up my car, doing all of that in the late-afternoon sun, the heat beating down on me for ten minutes, that had left me sweating profusely. It was too hot to think right now. The thermometer was bubbling at well over one hundred degrees and there wasn't a beach within three hundred miles.

I showered, sat on the bed naked, putting on body butter, praying for the sweating to end.

My cellular rang again. Marvin Gaye sang "Sexual Healing." His ring tone.

It was Karl.

It was the ring tone of plea sure.

I tingled. The beat of my heart changed, its rhythm that of peace and tranquility. I felt open, senses alive, the sensation that went beyond simple arousal, the sensation that told me I was aware of every incoming feeling, a sensation that made me feel soft, fragile from outside down to my core.

He said, "Hello, Nia Simone."

"Hello, Karl."

"Feel like going for a short run?"

"You're skipping part of our greetings and salutations."

"How was your day?"

"It sucked."

"Too bad."

"What ever."

"Feel like going for a short run?"

"Define short."

"No more than four."

"A man after my own heart."

"Four miles of hills."

"I hate you."

Laughter returned to my world. Laughter and the promise of exhilaration.

Logan had angered and depressed me.

I struggled to discard all pessimistic thoughts, went to a drawer filled with new things from Victoria's Secret, went to my black file cabinet and packed a bag of satin and sensuality.

He remained inside my head. The scent of his cologne searing the lining of my nostrils.

The man who had stolen the soft words of a poet in order to shield his own inadequate language, to hide his shortcomings, the man whose words didn't have the value of a bottle of cheap wine, remained inside me. Logan refused to leave my mind. Refused to let me breathe, refused to give me peace.

THIRTY-THREE.

The sun was setting, smog thick and the pollen count high.

As shadows elongated, the heat wasn't direct, wasn't as torturous as it had been midday, but still the air owned a thickness, a humidity, remained stifling nevertheless. That humidity was the harbinger of another storm. Dark clouds were out in the distance, beyond East Point and College Park. I was riding with the top down, glasses on, a pink Atlanta Braves baseball cap on, hair pulled back into a ponytail.