"You get Charles drunk. I have to put up with his lechery. You toast someone I suspect you're having an affair with, and you want me me to apologize?" Lena stands in front of Randall, looking at him looking at her like she is crazy. His eyes say he doesn't get it, doesn't get her. to apologize?" Lena stands in front of Randall, looking at him looking at her like she is crazy. His eyes say he doesn't get it, doesn't get her.

The only way Lena had been able to fend off her tears was with the handkerchief Candace thrust into her hand. Now, Lena twists that handkerchief into a tight, skinny spiral and marches into the walk-in closet big enough to be another bedroom. Gucci, Vuitton, Prada, Armani, and more surround her. She grabs on to the built-in dresser to balance herself and gasps for air. Left foot then right, she kicks off her high heels and slips into her fuzzy slippers. Eyes blurry, she feels for the corner shelf full of carry-on totes and yanks at a black travel bag. She needs panties; one pair goes in. She needs a bra; five go in. The charger for her cell phone, a candle, jogging bra, sweats, jasmine perfume, a sweater, a c.o.c.ktail dress Randall gave her two years ago.

Lena emerges from the closet wrapped in a wool coat better suited to a winter freeze than this spring night. Her lipstick is smeared, her face wrenched as tightly as the handkerchief she still holds on to. "I would expect that my husband would side with me, not with his colleague colleague." She avoids Randall's eyes, his seeming nonchalance when she crosses in front of him and s.n.a.t.c.hes Tina's book from the nightstand drawer. "How can I sleep beside someone who won't stand up for me? Who gives me an ultimatum that could change my life but doesn't even bother to ask what I decided?"

"I take it the fancy gym bag means you've decided." This is the icy tone that makes Randall the great businessman sought after by corporations looking for more than just a black face to fill some arbitrary affirmative action slot. Lena shivers in the doorway, her back to Randall. Stay. That is all he has to say, and she will put down her bag. Get up from the chair and hold her tight is all he has to do, and she will stay.

"I'd think twice if I were you, Lena. You're the one who's got everything to lose."

"Maybe it all stops here."

"Maybe it all stops. Period."

Lena prays that her keys are in her purse, her purse in the kitchen so that she does not have to go back into that room or look at Randall. She pauses, then sets one foot ahead of the other in the same thoughtful way she did when John Henry walked her down the aisle, all the way down the stairs and to the garage to give Randall time to act. Night camouflages her car while she watches her bedroom window from the driveway. After ten minutes the bedroom lights darken, and Lena drives away.

Chapter 9.

At the grand hotel on the Oakland-Berkeley border a rosemary bush hedges the front of the building and releases its savory fragrance when Lena brushes up against it. Fresh rosemary is the herb she loves most, a pleasure for the tongue and the nose. Sure she looks like a hooker, all dolled up with no place to go, she hands the night clerk her platinum credit card and demands a room. He examines her from head to toe, this young man ensconced behind the well-oiled, wood-paneled counter in a pin-striped suit and gold badge, his name and place of birth engraved on it in two lines: Ali from Kenya. His eyes are shadowed by a furrowed brow as if she should be ashamed of checking in to his high-ceilinged, Oriental-carpeted hotel by herself at midnight, as if she should be ashamed of her fuzzy slippers, the pooled mascara under her light brown eyes, and her thousand-dollar designer tote.

Lena grunts from the doubt that cramps her insides; she has no place to go. She has no plan-her tote is evidence of that. Whether she charges this hotel for one night or a thousand, she cannot pay the bill. She has no real money. s.n.a.t.c.hing her upscale credit card back from Ali, Lena turns around and stalks out the lobby; her back dares him to say one more word to her so that she can scream, "f.u.c.k you and Randall, too."

When the valet hands Lena her keys, she sits in the car under the poorly lit portico until he goes back into his little booth. Lena picks through her bag and pulls out her book and lets it fall open to a random page for guidance.

"Some of these people read cards, some read the stars... Some of them weren't for real but others gave me something to hold on to, some insight into what was going on in my life."

Tina visited readers, psychics, for a hint that a better life was in her future. Images crowd into Lena's head of places she has seen without seeing when she is out and about. There is a reader on Piedmont Avenue, a familiar street where Lena gets her nails done, does her banking, and lunches on Kung Pao beef. The words Psychic Healer & Palm Reader Always Open Psychic Healer & Palm Reader Always Open are pasted in careful strips of preformed block letters on the sandwich board in front of the small house. She has walked by the sign a hundred times, more fearful than curious to drop in. are pasted in careful strips of preformed block letters on the sandwich board in front of the small house. She has walked by the sign a hundred times, more fearful than curious to drop in.

By the time she gets to Piedmont Avenue, the streets are still crowded. Who are the rest of these night-owl drivers, she wonders? Nurses on late-night duty, philanderers and bar-hoppers, singles on their way back home reluctant to spend the night in a lover's messy bed? Other wishy-washy women who cannot make up their minds what to do with their lives?

She swerves into the short driveway beside the clapboard house. Clay pots full of red and white geraniums line the four stairs and lead to the glow-in-the-dark stripes painted on the wooden porch. Tiny moths dance around the pale overhead light, drunk, perhaps, on the geraniums' gra.s.sy perfume. Lena presses the doorbell; the scratch of soft soles against a hardwood floor follows the strident buzz. A short, bald man opens the door; his complexion is swarthy, but clear. The line between the top of his upper lip and his neatly clipped mustache reminds her of old military pictures of her father. Lena steps away from the door.

"Come on in; I won't bite." His husky voice rea.s.sures. The older man extends a sunburned hand and introduces himself as Vernon Withers. Like the southern gentleman his drawl makes him out to be, Vernon leaves the front door open as if the geraniums, crickets, and fluttering moths could offer help, if she needed any.

"I'm Lena." Her mind hesitates where her feet do not as she approaches the front room where low flames crackle in the sooty fireplace.

"Chamomile tea, Lena?"

Her left, then right eyebrow arches at this first hint of Vernon's insight. Chamomile is the tea she loves to drink when she is tired or stressed.

"I know, you're wondering, 'Now how in the h.e.l.l does he know that's the tea I like?'" Vernon winks at Lena and waddles toward the kitchen looking more like a rascally elf than a man who is supposed to know about the future. "No need to answer, dahlin', just accept."

Unsure of the psychic process, Lena accepts Vernon's offer of tea and walks to a small wood-paneled area beyond the living room where two brocade-covered chairs face one another, a small round table between them. The room's walls are the soft yellow of fading daffodils; the house smells like lavender sachet and old people. Water splashes, the microwave beeps.

"You have questions?" Vernon sets a cup and saucer painted with red-lipped geishas by her left hand. "Ask the first thing that comes into your head."

"I'm only here because..." Lena figures if Vernon is true to his t.i.tle he should know why she's here and what her questions are. "I'm here because a friend recommended I see a reader."

"Reader is confusing. I prefer is confusing. I prefer psychic, psychic, like my sign outside says, it's more... specific. So?" like my sign outside says, it's more... specific. So?"

Questions are not her problem; they frolic like curious monkeys in her head. It's answers that have her stuck. When she entered the house, she didn't bother to check it out or ask if there was anyone else present. Lena squirms under Vernon's expectant stare and glances back at the door. He spreads her palms open, then rests his on hers. His touch fills her with a peace she hasn't felt in a long time. He stares at her eyes, in almost the same way John Henry did when she misbehaved as a child, then examines the jagged, interlaced lines across her palms.

"The palm, my dear, is simply a reflection of our lives. Yours are beautiful. Youthful." He stares at her left hand, pushes and presses the Mount of Venus beneath her thumb. "The lines on the dominant hand vary across the span of one's life, because of the changes in life's path. This section of your hand tracks midlife. See? A Y. The Y represents choice and change."

"Everybody has that." Lena wonders if this is what the psychics saw in Tina's hands.

"But, everybody everybody isn't here." Vernon opens his hands. His right hand is without a little finger. Any other time she would have asked the story of this missing digit. Better to see this odd injury instead of something, like a sixth finger, he claims enables second sight. She searches for the Y. Nothing on his palm resembles that letter. isn't here." Vernon opens his hands. His right hand is without a little finger. Any other time she would have asked the story of this missing digit. Better to see this odd injury instead of something, like a sixth finger, he claims enables second sight. She searches for the Y. Nothing on his palm resembles that letter.

"Say what you want, dahlin', but you're the one willin' to plop down your husband's hard-earned money in the middle of the night, fuzzy slippers and all, for me to tell your future. You rang my doorbell. This isn't the time to be indecisive. Look where that got you this evening."

Lena jerks her hands away from Vernon and pushes back from the table. "What would you know?"

"It's not what I know, but what I sense: you can't keep letting people push you around. Sit still and let me have your hands so you can get your money's worth." Vernon sips his tea and peers around the room as if to search for scones and crumpets. His face is playful and serious. He pulls a gold watch on a chain from his pocket and sets it on the table. "Now, take your watch and set it beside mine."

"You're pushing me around just like everybody else." pushing me around just like everybody else."

"Like I said, Lena, you rang my doorbell. Don't fight me; I'm not the one you need to show your strength to. Trust."

Lena looks around the room and through the open kitchen door. The house is quiet; the chirring of night insects outside the door is the only other sound she hears. She stares at her watch, another gift from Randall, another expensive gift from Randall.

The night he gave her the watch, he insisted that she stretch out her arms and look away. She flinched when the cold metal touched her skin but kept her eyes averted from her wrist. It was the same night she discovered she was pregnant with Kendrick, but not ready for a baby. He hugged her, held her there in the middle of their bathroom; convinced her she would be a wonderful mother. They would be wonderful parents. Trust.

"Dahlin'," Vernon's is a voice reserved for church. "If I was gonna steal from you, I'd'a conked you on the head by now, taken your watch, and that big ole diamond 'round your neck, and tossed you down the front steps. Give me your hands."

Lena picks at the double-locked clasp and puts her wrist.w.a.tch next to his, then her palms in his hands again while Vernon explains that the metals throw off their magnetic fields. The dimple in his chin-an uncanny resemblance to John Henry's, along with the same soft edge to his words-sinks deeper into itself when he laughs.

"I feel an energy surge coming from your watch. What's your husband's name?" Vernon reaches for a thick green book that resembles a Bible, a ribbon bookmark sewn into its gilded binding. "And his date of birth?"

"Randall's name is Randall. Birthdate: July 24, 1945."

Vernon shuffles through the pages. The gray hairs at the top of his head wiggle as he scans a lengthy paragraph. "Your husband is a dogmatic Leo. He is pragmatic. Is that the word? This is his approach to life. He doesn't understand any other way."

Lena shudders at Vernon's truth and inches to the edge of her seat. Pictures, books, furniture, and Vernon spin around her, a blurry montage of color and light.

The pitch of Vernon's voice raises for the first time since she arrived; he folds his stubby hands over Lena's palms and pauses, looking more through her than at her. Lena feels the emptiness of his absent finger. "These intertwined lines, see? Independence and forward progression. These movements clash with his. But, forget him. You're not a delicate woman, but convenience makes it easy to pretend. You are meant to be powerful. Follow your creativity."

Lena focuses on the small blood spot beside the iris of Vernon's right eye. She shuts her eyes and processes Vernon's words. His stare says that he is waiting for her; he will only guide not lead. Tina's psychics gave her a direct notion-that she would be successful; they offered direction and promise. "Tell me what to do."

"You have found the star who shines for you; she leads the way. Begin your journey with her. Reconnect with the past. Someone you closed yourself off from is waiting for you." Vernon beams and points to a bold line in her right hand. "As for me telling you what to do: you already know."

"Yep, I'm a fool in love." Lena leans back in the chair. "And I need to accept my life or move on."

"Don't indulge in what might have been. Delight in what can be." Vernon squeezes her hands; his grip is tingly and rough. "You're stubborn, and you don't always listen to advice: even your mother has something to offer. Just like the silver ball in a pinball machine spins, moves at the whim of someone else, you move backwards before you understand how far you can go with just a little push."

"Go ahead. Push me."

"You don't need me." Vernon releases her hands, pulls a monogrammed handkerchief from his shirt pocket, and pats his forehead where perspiration threatens to fall into his eyes. "Step into your power."

Chapter 10.

What smells so good?" Camille plucks a strip of sauteed chicken from a bowl and dips it in the peanut sauce beside it. She is a nibbler, like her mother, though the empty soda cans and candy wrappers in her room attest to her unhealthy choices. "And low lights, too? Hmm."

"Take this." Lena feigns a blush and hands fifty dollars to Camille. If only she could send the kids to bed early after a fast food treat of hamburgers and pasty french fries. Compromise with Randall was less complicated when the kids were young. "Dinner and a movie. And where's your brother?"

Camille tickles Lena's shoulder. "Glad you and Dad are getting back to normal."

"Out!" Lena flushes at her daughter's insight, shooing her out of the kitchen, even as Kendrick walks in to meet them. Lena doesn't have the slightest idea whether or not her son shares his sister's insight. Silent meals, Randall's late hours, her clothing piled in the guestroom for three days-her kids are no fools.

The tension between mother and son is palpable. She fans herself with both hands, a gesture meant to clear the air, and hopes that Kendrick gets her hint. "I do trust you, Kendrick, I hope you know that." She speaks as if their confrontation was moments instead of days ago and points to his keys on the counter with a wide smile.

"Thanks, Mom." Kendrick ruffles Lena's hair and then juggles his keys between both hands, like the metal Slinky he had as a kid. As nosy as his sister, he heads to the stove, lifts a lid from a saucepan, and dips a finger into the curry. "Food works for us, too, Mom, in case you forgot."

With one swift turn, Kendrick and Camille connect palms with a loud high five and slap a second one with Lena. "What's that corny old-school saying? Something about a man's heart?" he asks. Lena offers a thumbs-up to her son's obvious hint, knowing that if the timing were different-or more full of the happiness of the old days-that would have been her only intention.

Lena places small, square white bowls filled with curried carrots topped with fresh basil-for color and contrast-and strips of sauteed chicken fillets on the kitchen table. Mixed green salad and jasmine rice balance the Thai food; the proper mix of carbs, protein, and veggies. She stirs pa.s.sion and love into the tangy coconut soup in the hope that Randall will taste those emotions and daydreams of contentment while the lemongra.s.s stems soak in cool water.

The first time Lena cooked for Randall, it was a disaster. She called the New Orleans hole in the wall they had visited and begged the cook for his shrimp Creole recipe, then labored hours more than she should have, given how simple the recipe read. Once they sat down to eat, the shrimp were tough, the sauce salty, and the rice mushy. After two mouthfuls, Randall told Lena to get her coat. "I'm not the kind of man who'll suffer through his woman's bad cooking." He chuckled when she playfully twisted his arm. "You just remember those words when you you cook for me." She wanted to tell him that her feelings were hurt, that if the tables were turned she would have eaten his salty food. That was the first time she held her tongue with Randall. In that moment she learned his intolerance for error, and it bothered her, but not enough to stop seeing him. That was the first and only time he left her food on the table. In the end, her cooking snared him. cook for me." She wanted to tell him that her feelings were hurt, that if the tables were turned she would have eaten his salty food. That was the first time she held her tongue with Randall. In that moment she learned his intolerance for error, and it bothered her, but not enough to stop seeing him. That was the first and only time he left her food on the table. In the end, her cooking snared him.

Surely, she thinks, it will help her keep him.

At five minutes after eight Randall opens the kitchen door, his tie loosened from his collar. His lips are tight; his moves calculated like a boxer considering which corner is neutral territory.

"Truce." Lena helps Randall slip out of his jacket and leans close.

This night her neck and the dip between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, behind her ears and knees are covered with jasmine. Jasmine is the scent that mixes best with Lena's own. Randall gifts her with bottles, bars, and creams of the lavish fragrance every other Valentine's Day, though Lena cannot remember the last time she wore the perfume. Perhaps when malaise overtook her long before Randall's nearly month-long departure? Or after the Christmas holiday party and the argument, in front of Candace and Byron, over the best route to take home? Or last summer when she asked him not to take her car to the horrid, lecherous man at the flatlands automated carwash and he did anyway? Randall sniffs. The jasmine will do its work; help them to recall that first year of marriage, that first serious argument, and making up.

"Truce." He gave her a bottle of jasmine oil, and later, ma.s.saged it all over her. All those years, it stood for apology, if needed-his or hers-for romance and good loving. Now, a hint of prim satisfaction stretches across Randall's face, and Lena wonders if he remembers that first time she wore the perfume, much less expensive then, the scent still the same. Randall looks from the food to Lena and slides onto the upholstered bench. He sniffs. At the food. "Smells good." At Lena. "You, too."

Lena scoops a healthy portion of the made-from-scratch green curry sauce over his rice. This food comes close to what she thinks he experienced in Bali: spicy, thick, and rich. Once she settles in beside him, she takes his left hand in her right. They sit that way for a time that she does not count, the smell of her jasmine mixing with the curry, until he reaches for the remote control on the bench. When she grabs it first, he tickles her arm until the remote falls loose so that his fingers can now dance on its pad. The TV screen explodes like lightning in the darkened room. Even as she scrutinizes him, his eyes puffy from concentration and the long day, Lena knows he seeks solace in the inanity of TV.

"I'd like to talk about the party and about us. We need to clear the air and make a fresh start, and we can't talk if the TV's on." Lena catches herself and the sigh about to escape her lips. One. Two. Three. It took all day to concoct this exotic meal, to gather the ingredients, to select the right tiny red chilies to heat up their food and their marriage. "I worked hard today to make this evening... special."

"And I worked hard today so you can make fancy food. Are you ready to apologize?"

"I think we need to apologize to one another." Lena uncovers the tureen and hastily ladles chunky soup into Randall's empty bowl.

"I don't see it that way."

With exacting synchronicity, Lena's jaw twitches at each abrupt change of channel-the staccato of newscasters, commercials, random dialogue-and his casual acceptance, his expectation that all of his meals will be this grand, this tasty.

"Let's make a deal. A little food. We'll talk." Lena presses her hand to the back of his neck, and the spot at the base of his ear that usually makes him melt. "Then we'll watch the last quarter. Upstairs. In bed. That is, if you feel up to it." For Lena and Randall, makeup s.e.x has always been their best.

"But the Warriors play the Lakers tonight." Randall grins like a mischievous boy. "Last game before the playoffs."

Lena pushes thumb against the Y, Vernon's Y for change, on her palm while the basketball players on TV run up and down the court. Run, run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man. The urge to sc.r.a.pe sc.r.a.pe sc.r.a.pe the fragrant food down the garbage disposal, to flip the on/off switch again and again until the whirring is smooth and food, ground to pulp, washes down the drain, is strong. As are Kendrick's last words. She yanks away the remote from Randall's hand and turns the TV off. Winegla.s.s in hand, Lena pushes away from the table and goes to the sink full of the pots and pans and skillets she used to prepare the special dishes.

"You're acting like a spoiled brat." Randall clicks the TV on again.

"I'm sorry." Anxiety rushes to Lena's tongue, mixes with her spit, and swims over her taste buds. Maybe I am, she wants to shout, a spoiled, frustrated midlife woman unable to get her husband to accept her apology, her food, her sweet jasmine perfume, to understand she seeks change for the benefit of the both of them. In the instant she hurls her gla.s.s across the floor, Lena both intends and regrets the action. The gla.s.s shatters, scattering wet shards from the sink where Lena stands all the way to the table at the opposite end. Only the stem remains intact. The odor of wine mingles with the basil and curry, and the kitchen smells more like a cheap bar than home.

"Look, Lena. I don't know what more you want." Randall stands, a man on the verge of action, looking from Lena to the shattered gla.s.s to the louvered door that separates the kitchen from the hallway. The long, low sigh he releases is like, Lena supposes, the tears she fights with a barrage of rapid blinks. "I'm tired. And you're obviously irrational."

"Don't leave, Randall, we've got to do this sooner or later."

"I've done all I'm going to do tonight, Lena." The door swings hard and wide as he pa.s.ses through it.

If she were taller and huskier, if she were a man, Lena knows she would punch Randall, punch him hard until he fell, until he understood. She tiptoes around the pieces of gla.s.s and through the swinging door. Keeping a healthy distance between his body and hers, she points a trembling finger in his face. Randall backs away, hands clenched at his sides. He watches her hands, keeps his distance.

"I don't have time for tantrums. You're only p.i.s.sed because you think I'm having an affair with Sharon. Charles told me what you said."

"I don't doubt it, but this is about more than who you're f.u.c.king. This is about our life."

"I don't need drama at work and and at home." at home."

"No, you're the drama king, lover man. Like that little trick you did with your tongue the night you came home?"

Randall's face is motionless except for his pulsing, left eyebrow. "Stop." He grabs Lena's wrists. She yanks them away with a force that startles them both. The TV blares with the announcer's scream and the crowd's roar. He walks past the photos that mark their years together: wedding day, chubby Camille at six, Kendrick's senior prom, their first time in Paris. The frames rattle with the weight of his footsteps. Lena steps to the opposite side of the hallway. Is this how it begins?

"Is that why you're offering me ultimatums, Randall? Answer me!"

"What do you want me to say?" He holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. Once at the stairs, he takes them two at a time.

"Is this one of those decisions, like the lemon tree or what restaurant we'll eat in, what movie we'll see, that don't mean anything to you so it's left to me?" She wonders why what she thinks is not what she says. Power is powerful.

"I'm a businessman, Lena. I have to consider the pros and cons." Randall shrugs.

Footsteps clamber outside. Randall and Lena used to confine their occasional fights to their bedroom, used to close their door and m.u.f.fle their words, used to make up and apologize ignoring who may have been right or wrong. They stand stock-still while Lena searches for the right words, the most expedient way to say what's on her mind in the seconds before Kendrick and Camille come in and shatter this moment as cleanly as the winegla.s.s strewn across the floor. Lena loves her kids; lately, though, they appear at the most inconvenient times. It didn't matter when they were toddlers and they walked in on her naked or on the toilet. Now, she wishes fifty dollars bought more time.

"I won't go on like this. I have to consider my pros and cons, too."

"Don't threaten me, Lena." Randall heads for their bedroom and reappears within minutes, overnight bag in hand. "I was thinking about doing this anyway. I need a head start on tomorrow's work, and you need time to cool off. I'm going to the corporate apartment."

This is not the Randall she knows. Not the man who talks loyalty. She wasn't his first girlfriend, or his first wife, but he said she would be his last, that he would be faithful, take care of her, the opposite of what his old man had done with his mother.

Now, Randall's eyebrows are lumpy with frustration; Lena's emulate his-proof that married couples look and act alike after so many years together. In better times, if they were to see themselves in one of the many gilt mirrors Lena has placed around the house, they would tease one another over who was the original and who the copy.