Between Lovers by Eric Jerome Dickey Read Free Book Online Page A

purse strap, balances the exotic coffees and still manages to check her watch. Her pace doubles and she struggles to whip out her cellular phone. She vanishes ten seconds before the jingle of her bracelets fade.
    I rewind my tape recorder; play back the sounds of us making love. The recorder was on. From time to time I use it to interview, to capture reality. Sometimes I sit in a room filled with people and steal what they say, steal what they talk about, steal what they care about. I’m a writer, and whether the others admit it or not, we’re all thieves. That’s what we do.
    This morning, I thought that Nicole and I would end up talking, hadn’t planned on making love, not the way we did. Not as long as we did. We loved close to forty-five minutes. Any longer and the tape would’ve clicked when it shut off. Maybe that would’ve upset Nicole, maybe that would’ve excited her. I don’t know. She’s changing, becoming unpredictable.
    I listen to our words, our sounds; sounds that tell me Nicole loves me. That this isn’t in vain.
    Then I erase it all.
    The taste of Nicole lives in my mouth, her liberal aroma smolders from my flesh, her sex rises from my stained white sheets. I close my eyes and sleep a restless, fitful sleep. Like my head is on stone.
    Life is not fair.
    Life is not unfair.
    Life just is.

4
    Two years ago, we were living ten miles below Los Angeles, just as many above Long Beach, in one of Los Angeles County’s best-kept secrets, the city of Carson. My engagement ring was on her finger and a three-bedroom house was in escrow. My plan was for us to jump that good old broom, write book after book, travel every spare moment, run races in as many cities as we could, collect those useless medals they give out, and grow old studying French and Spanish. And of course, write about it all. Vacation in Montego Bay. Stay in a beautiful villa at the Half Moon Resort. Visit Kenya, Morocco, and Egypt. In Hawaii, get our own timeshare on the big island of Kona. In Memphis we’d make love at the Peabody, then go see the ducks marching along red carpet to the Italian marble fountain. Stay at the Four Seasons in Georgetown and stroll the redbrick sidewalks in search of gifts for our friends and family. Leave the country when we became restless. Africa, Spain, Mexico, I wanted to see it all with her hand in mine. With money and health on our sides, we could move according to the season, and every night sleep in each other’s arms chanting out love songs that thank the heavens.
    My birthday. We broke into my piggy bank and went to Paris that June, put on our dark shades, strutted and sashayed every rue intersecting with the Champs Élysées until the sun went down at 10 p.m. Took pictures of Notre Dame, Lady Liberty, that arch of triumph Napoleon had built, made love twice every night, windows open and a cool breeze on our skin, our echoes of passion dancing out onto the avenue, then did it again every morning, ate at so many sidewalk cafés until we were about to burst. Hiked and sweated our way up the iron stairs to the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower and looked out over the city, her hand always in mine.
    So many smiles were on her face. So much love in her every word.
    And after all that, we’d lounge in the bed, naked in our own little Garden of Eden.
    She asked me, “What are you afraid of?”
    â€œWhat makes you think I’m afraid of anything?”
    â€œEveryone’s afraid of something.”
    â€œFailure.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œIf I fail, then everyone else is right.”
    â€œAbout doing like your brothers and being like your daddy.”
    â€œYep. Have to prove my point.”
    â€œThen you hate being wrong.”
    â€œThat too. I guess.”
    â€œYou hate to lose.”
    â€œHate to lose. I’ve always hated to lose.”
    â€œYou seem so together; so confident.”
    â€œEnough of analyzing me. What