What I Talk About When I Talk About Love

"Can you not do that?"

"Do what?"

"Flip channels like that. It makes me dizzy."

"I have to see what's on."

"Hello, it's called the TV Guide Channel."

"Yeah, but that just gives you the titles. I want to get the essence of the show."

"Oh brother. Hey, stop there! CSI!"

"This one time, I was on my way to work--"

"Yeah."

"--Minding my own business, walking down the street, when I turn the corner, and BAM. Cops, laying out the white sheet."

"No way."

"Way."

"You saw a dead body laying on the sidewalk on your way to work?"

"That's what I said."

"Did you CSI it?"

"I don't think the cops needed my help."

"Yeah. I don't like CSI Miami. I'm more a New York kind of girl. You can change it."

"I thought you didn't like it when I flipped channels."

"Eh, can't have everything. Oh wait -- What Not to Wear!"

"No!"

"Sex and the City!"

"Hell no....Yankees game!"

"Ugh, men. Although, is that Derek Jeter?... Wait, I was watching that!"

"I'll find something else. Movies, movies. Casino Royale?"

"Fine by me."

"'I'm Bond, James Bond.'"

"You wish."

"Are you going to talk the whole movie?"

"You're the one talking now!"

"Nuh-uh, you are!"

"Be quiet, you're going to miss the good part--when he falls in love."

"Women."

"Yes. You love us."

"Maybe."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Here we go again..."

"Oh, leave me alone."

"Can you stop sighing like that?"

"I'm not sighing, I just can't breathe over your cologne."

"You're funny."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you doing?"

"it's your turn to be remote commando."

"Awww, thanks. You're gonna love this episode of Sex and the City."

"Women."

Charlie

Charlie whistled softly to the music streaming from his iPod. The cart of books squeaked as he pushed it along the waxed floor. He turned down an aisle and shelved a book back in its proper place. He glanced back at the cart; only three rows left. He grimaced and pushed the cart onward.

A shadow turned around a shelf and met Charlie face to face.

"Oh, excuse me."

"I'm sorry," Charlie said.

The shadow, now in full form, smiled shyly. Her dark brown hair fell around her plump face as she looked down for a moment. She raked it back and peered up into Charlie's face.

"You work here, right?" She asked.

Charlie noticed her blue eyes next. Blue like...like the ocean or the sky or something like that. "Yeah," he finally said.

"Um, this is a little random but--"

Charlie's breath stopped two inches short of his lungs. He cracked his mouth ope to let air in, but closed it quickly.

The girl giggled a little. "There's a woman...praying in the reading room. She's being kinda loud and we're all trying to study...

His lips set into a line. He sighed inside. "Okay. I'll see what I can do."

He followed her swift stride to the reading room. Students, eyebrows furrowed and lips curled, sat at tables scattered around the room. Books and papers lay strewn in front of them, but their attention lay in the back corner. Charlie walked slowly to the kneeling woman. He ducted at times, dodging her rapidfire Arabic.

"Um, excuse me...ma'am?"

She continued her prayer, ignoring Charlie, or just unable to hear him.

Charlie looked around. The cute girl's eyes nudged him. He took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry but--" He yelled, just as the woman stopped. She sat up and rolled up her mat. She tucked it into her totebag by her table. She sat down at her open notes and resumed reading where she'd apparently left off.

Charlie looked around the room again. Everyone resumed reading. The cute girl shrugged and returned to her table, where both her notes and her boyfriend sat.

Charlie just blinked and left.

Reading Eve

Rain slid down the windows. We sat in dim light, with lamps shining down on our open books. I sat on the floor, watching Eve, reading her as if she were my history notes.

She lay on my bed, chin propped on her fist. She scribbled in notebook once in a while. Her black hair glowed in the lamp that shined on her like a spotlight. She kicked her feet back and forth slowly. She wore shorts, despite the cold outside. Her legs were long, with wispy hairs just along her shins. Her silhouette fell on the wall, curving more at her nose and lips.

"My dad died in Vietnam," I said, hoping she would turn to face me.

Eve didn't move. "Liar."

I shrugged and smiled. "I felt like talking."

"You should be feeling like studying," she replied, eyes still focused on her textbook.

"I'm just a little distracted, is all."

The eyelashes of her shadow blinked. "Do you want some tea?"

I shrugged again, then nodded. She set her pen down and climbed off my bed. As she stepped over me to my makeshift cupboard, her perfume found its way to my nose.

I sat up and leaned against my roommate's bed. "Is that Chanel?"

"Yeah," she answered, picking two tea bags from the box. "How'd you know?"

"My sister has it." Smells better on you, though, I thought.

She smiled. "How old is she?"

"A year younger, nineteen."

"She doesn't go here," Eve both asked and declared.

"Yeah, no, she goes to Spelman."

"Hm." She poured hot water into blue and black mugs and plunked the tea bags up and down. She left them in, the string dangling off the side. She handed me the blue mug. "You know, you shouldn't tell lies like that. About your dad."

I shrugged, taking a sip of the tea. I swallowed, and the hot water stung my throat. "I just wanted to get your attention," I confessed.

She sat back on my bed. She stared intently into her tea, jostling the bag. "You sure shrug alot," she said. "Tell me more about your sister."

I told Eve what she would want to know, that Courtney had graduated third in her high school class, and was accepted to Georgetown, Harvard, and NYU, but chose Spelman over all of them for "the experience that would most enrich her whole person." And I told her how she played soccer, tennis, and violin, and how I nearly gouged out a classmate's eyeballs for oogling her when she was in seventh grade.

"What does she look like?" Eve asked.

"Me, just shorter and with longer hair. And a girl."

"I think I would have to see her," she said. "My sister and I look nothing alike. We both took after our fathers."

"You don't have the same dad?"

She cut her eyes to mine, precise as a ruler's edge. "No."

Thunder hummed outside. Wind raked through the trees, sending rain splattering onto the window.

We sat in silence for a long moment, both of us drinking tea and me thinking about Eve.

"I bet I can read your mind," she said, setting her tea down on the floor by the bed.

"Really?" I smiled. "How?"

"I just can."

"Do it, then."

"Okay."

We stared at each other.

"You have to think about something first, duh."

I chuckled. I looked into her eyes, a brown made honey by the lamp.

"I believe you love me," she declared without a lull in her voice or a smile on her lips. "And you're not sure I feel the same way."

I blinked. I covered up my mind like a stranger had intruded on me showering. I gulped. "Do you?"

She shrugged this time, and lay back on my bed. "So that means you really do love me."

My ears grew hot in an instant. "I didn't say that."

She inhaled and exhaled visibly. "Were you going to tell me more about your sister?"

I sighed. "She's cool. You'd like her. She studies psychology. She's dating this kid from Morehouse."

"You're not gonna gouge out his eyeballs." She smiled.

"Maybe," I said. My head lightened when I saw her smile.

"I wonder if they've been...involved." She stared at the ceiling.

I'd rather not think about that, I meant to say. I could hardly think of Courtney kissing anyone, much less doing more. I wondered how many guys Eve had kissed. Or more.

"Two," she said, sitting up again.

"Huh?"

"Two. I've only ever kissed two guys."

I shrunk my eyes at her.

"I told you I could read your mind," she said.

"What makes you so sure?"

"I don't know. I just can. I can read you like a book I wrote myself."

She smiled wide, letting the words escape more easily from her lips. Her lips, which I could have lunged for at that very moment.

But she must have known that.

She shrank away, back onto my bed with her tea. "We should get back to studying," she said.

I pulled my textbook close to me. Reading history would always be easier than reading Eve.

Boom Town

It was Thursday night when a certain “boom” rang out on a quiet suburban street in Connecticut.

Mrs. Liberman shot up in bed.

“What was that?”

“What was what?” Her husband turned over, speaking into his pillow.

“That sound. That ‘boom.’”

“Probably nothing.”

“Won’t you go check?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“Helen, its 3 a.m. Go to sleep.”

“Fred, I’m frightened. Please check.”

“It's probably nothing, Helen. Now go to sleep.”

Silent now, she sat with her knees drawn up to her chin. She clutched the covers and pulled them up to her nose, solely revealing wide eyes and a head full of pink rollers. Her teeth chattered.

“It might not be ‘nothing.’ I don’t know why you’re so trusting. Not everyone or everything is out for your good.”

“Are you threatening me, Helen?”

“Of course not. Don’t be silly at a time like this. Why you can’t be my husband and protect me?”

“You only need protection from yourself and that imagination of yours. I can’t help you there.”

Mrs. Liberman sighed heavily.

“Fine. If we die tonight, it’s all your fault.”

“If you don’t go to sleep right now, I might kill you myself.”

Her eyes darted left. Her husband lay beside her, eyes closed and hands beneath his pillow.

Mrs. Liberman sunk back down into the sheets. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling and minding Fred’s hands til dawn.

The Carltons

“Ellington, please pass the corn,” Ms. Carlton requested, touching her pearl necklace femininely. The necklace’s creamy color melted beautifully with her chocolate skin.

“Sure, darling.” Mr. Carlton passed her the porcelain bowl, trimmed with golden-laced flowers. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose and cleared his throat. “Shall we say grace?”

Mrs. Carlton smiled a yes. I closed my eyes and bowed my head. I folded my hands in my lap, unsure of what else to do with them, until another hand reached across my leg. Smiling slyly, I opened an eye. Elliot grinned, his hand out, waiting for mine. I slipped my hand into his, lightly enough to not come off desperate, firmly enough to get the point across.

“Gracious God in Heaven,” Mr. Carlton started, “bless this food, the cook—”

Mrs. Carlton cleared her throat.

“—and the company.”

Elliot squeezed my hand.

“Amen.”

“Amen!”

We all lifted our heads and passed the identical plates and bowls of food back and forth, until heaping piles of hot, roasted vegetables and wheat rolls decked our plates. Mrs. Carlton had made spinach quiche, with cheese instead of eggs, as Elliot had requested for me. I dug in eagerly.

“So, Miss Audrey, what do you study?”

I looked up from the quiche. Mrs. Carlton stared at me with wide eyes, thirsty for my reply.

“Finance,” I said. “I plan to go into investment banking.”

“Whoa-ho-ho!” Mr. Carlton released, dropping his fork in shock. “We’ve got a smart one on our hands. Keep this one, Elliot.”

Elliot giggled softly in his deep voice, the same jubilant sound he’d make in the bend of my neck after candlelit dinners or in the back of jazz theatres. He smiled at his family, flashing teeth that cost as much as a new car.

“Sure will,” he grinned.

I smiled through thin lips; blushed, actually, though it wasn’t visible. I looked back down at my plate, where my quiche still sizzled slightly, beckoning my fork to pierce it.

“How did you two meet?” Mrs. Carlton inquired as I cut into the quiche.

“Psychology class,” I said.

“Social psychology, to be exact,” Elliot finished. “We did a project about attraction and, lo and behold, it worked!” He pecked my cheek.

His parents giggled identical laughs. I let out a smaller one.

“So, how—” Mrs. Carlton began again. My stomach rumbled. I had to beat her if I ever wanted to eat.

“How did you meet?” I forced, shoving a forkful of quiche between my lips as soon as the sentence parted them.

The elder Carltons glanced at one another, replacing their grins with satisfied half-smiles.

“Ellen worked at the performing arts center,” Mr. Carlton said.

“And Ellington played in the orchestra,” Mrs. Carlton resumed.

“Sax,” Elliot declared, filling in his spot in the script that they must have told a thousand times.

I nodded, my mouth still full of breathtaking quiche. The cheese melted into the crevices of my mouth and the spinach lay submissive on my tongue, missing my teeth by miles. It must have taken her years to make this, I thought.

“And then she said, ‘Sir, that’s for seeing eye dogs!’”

The Carltons laughed together at Mr. Carlton’s line. I chuckled, pretending to have heard the story. They all sighed as the wind left their laughter, and resumed eating.

I swallowed. “This quiche is incredible, Mrs. Carlton. It must have taken ages to make.”

Her lips spread into a long line that could have been interpreted as a hint of a smile. “Yes, dear. Not all us girls can be investment bankers, can we?”

I blinked at her, twice, in fact. I looked down awkwardly and began eating again, more vigorously, to replace the words that I had lost at her statement.

“So Audrey, are you a Democrat?” Mr. Carlton’s voice tweeted.

"What?"

He smiled as I looked up, like a mask against offensiveness.

“Um, well, I don’t really consign to either party—”

“Good, Elliot! She can be groomed! A great Republican she’ll make!”

Elliot chuckled. He turned to me. “Dad’s president of the Black Republicans Association.”

“Lifelong members, the Carltons are. We always have been, since 1865. Always will be.” Mr. Carlton beamed, as if he’d just won the Nobel Prize for modesty.

“Oh, how ‘bout that!” I said, trapped behind a fake smile that wouldn’t set me free.

“She can be in whatever party she’d like,” Elliot said. “I’d like her regardless.”

They all released that giggle, curtly.

“So what do your parents do?” Misses poked at her pearl earring as she spoke. I glanced at her plate; still full. Perhaps that’s how she’d maintained her slim figure. Only having one child and interrogating dinner guests.

I took a large bite of quiche, just as she finished the sentence. I chewed slowly, smiling shortly, hoping she’d forget what she’d just asked. But she nodded back at me, waiting for my jaws to relinquish my worth for her son.

Swallow.

“My mother is a homemaker,” I invented.

Architects make homes. While my mother built skyscrapers, it was possible that someone lived in one.

“And my father is a railway engineer.”

So he just happened to take a random train, abandoning my mother and me fifteen years ago. Same diff.

My false smile took me prisoner again, sealing my statements as true to the Carltons.

“Wow!” Mrs. Carlton’s eyes widened upon hearing about my blessed family. They even sparkled, outshining the Tiffany diamond that Mr. Carlton picked out himself twenty-one years ago. She turned to her husband. “She’s from good blood,” she declared. “She’ll make a great Carlton.”

I sat, mouth empty and soul escaped, as Ellen, Ellington, and Elliot Carlton’s identical grins branded me as one of their own.