52 - Slight Breeze

     The slight breeze did nothing to ease the sweltering evening.  Usually I
love the heat.
     I watched Connie sleep and let the events of the day play in my mind.  For
her twenty-first birthday her father bought her a 2005 525xi all wheel drive BMW
sedan.  She was floored. 
     "I've worked since I was 14 years old," she almost cried into her phone.
"He said the car is essentially mine but he's holding it for me until I'm done
with school next year."
     As we spent more time together I found out that her father had moved here
from Argentina when he was ten.  He watched his father work construction until
he had enough money to open his own restaurant.  As time passed he also worked
construction, helped to run the restaurant, and got into real estate in upstate
New York.
     By the time he was 45 he had two restaurants, a thriving construction
business, and had done very well in the real estate market even surviving the
crash of the nineties.  He was smart enough to buy cheap and then virtually
double his fortune when the housing boom struck again.
     Connie was actually the youngest of four, two brothers and a sister.  They
were all taught that hard work is the only way to achieve anything in life this
is why she was so caught off guard by the car.
     "I want you to be the first one to ride in it," she said.
     The evening started with a quick ride up old route 8 to Great Barrington
for some incredible sushi at this restaurant called Bizen.  We then danced and
kissed the night away down the alley at Club Helsinki.  This is the hippest New
York City club stashed in the hills of the Berkshires.
     "I want tonight to be perfect." She whispered as she rested her head, drunk
with expensive wine and sexual tension, on my shoulder and let that beautiful
curly black hair drape over my arm while we moved as one.
     As I drove the BMW through the night back to the apartment I felt her rub
the back of my neck.  The comfort was gone replaced with a passion and urgency I
hadn't seen in her before.
     In her bedroom there were no questions, no hesitation, just fire.  She was
of a single mind.  The intensity was overwhelming.  The fire burned for over an
hour and when it was over she cried softly in my arms.
     All good things must end.
     "He loves me." she said quietly, almost guilty she had to admit something
she and I both already knew.  "I can't do this anymore.  The more I'm with you
the more I want to be with you but you're so...so closed."
     There was nothing I could say.  There is only so much I can give.  Let me
rephrase that there is only so much I will give.  For me to hold her back from
someone that was willing to give her all that she needed would be selfish and
cruel.
     "Do you want me to leave?" I asked pushing the hair from her cheek and
looking deep into her brown eyes.
     "No, but you have to...I...just...I just wanted this night to be perfect."
     "I have an idea.  Why don't you kiss me one last time and then go to sleep.
When you wake up I'll be gone and you can pretend this whole thing was a dream."
     Her heavy wine soaked eyelids closed and she kissed me like I was dying.  I
held her in my arms until she fell asleep.
     I took one last look at her just before I left.  I took a solid drag of the
American Spirit Red as my feet hit the street.  To my surprise the slight breeze
did nothing to ease the sweltering evening.  Usually I love the heat but not
tonight.

That Beautiful Black Man