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Adrienne sat up. “I won’t take her to the beauty parlor; she doesn’t need exposure to all those chemicals and that dust and noise.”
“I’m tired, Adrienne. Do it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday. The shop I go to will be closed.”
He sighed heavily. “Okay, baby.”
Adrienne got up and put her arms around his waist. He was so good to her. “Go on to bed, Mel. I’ll clean the house, cook some food, prepare the formula for the baby, and stay home until one. Everything will be fine, okay?”
Mel pulled her close. “What else will you do for me?”
Adrienne laughed and pulled away. “I thought you were so doggone tired.”
Mel didn’t answer. He took her hand and slowly eased her onto the bed, then flung aside the bedcovers. Adrienne wriggled out of her gown.
A low groan came from her throat as she easily placed her long, slender legs on his powerful shoulders with her toes pointing skyward. “Oh, Mel!” she moaned, with her strong hips moving up to meet his downward thrusts.
“Oh, baby!” Mel caressed her shoulders and gripped her back. They lay nude, their bodies intertwined, slick with sweat. Mel kissed her face and ran his hands up and down her bare back. Adrienne could feel the warmth spread down her spine.
Their cries of ecstasy had awakened Delilah, who started to whimper.
Mel untangled himself from Adrienne’s arms, slipped out of their four-poster bed, pulled on his robe, and walked across the cold parquet floor to soothe the baby. Delilah was his pride and joy. He would spend hours just gazing at her through the bars of her crib. The child looked just like him, too. Same dark skin, round eyes fringed with long lashes, dimpled cheeks, and wide smile.
Adrienne observed the tender scene from her spot on the bed. Tears came to her eyes as she thought of how much she loved her husband and child. She slipped her gown back on and joined Mel at the crib. Mel suddenly turned to her and said, “Every child should have two parents in the house.” At that moment, Adrienne wished that she could go back in time to Mel’s childhood and give him all the love that had been missing in his drab home. Adrienne knew that part of Mel’s attraction to her was the fact that she had grown up in a two-parent home, with a mother and father who provided the necessary material things and didn’t fight each other all the time.
By 1:00 P.M., Adrienne was on the road. She popped a Bessie Smith CD into the player and sang along as she drove. Bessie was crooning something about yella women having all the luck. Adrienne chuckled. She was light-skinned, slender, with high cheekbones. Her eyes had an oriental slant to them like Nia Long’s, and her lips were full and pink-tinged. Adrienne didn’t know about the women of Bessie Smith’s day, but it took more than light skin and a beautiful face to make it now.
Adrienne had once tried to make it as a singer. In fact, she had dropped out of college to join an all-girl group. They were getting regular bookings and, at one point, were close to signing a record deal. Then one girl ran off with a drummer from another band. The remaining girl and Adrienne became enemies soon after, their friendship ripped apart over a man. Once the group disbanded, Adrienne spent years chasing one deal or group after another, supplementing her income by working temporary secretarial jobs. Then she built a solo act and set out on her own. It was a disaster.
Back then, her love life fared no better. There had been Oswald, a bass guitarist who didn’t believe in monogamy. Jerome, a photographer whom her brother Dan had introduced her to, had been a nice guy but cheap as hell. He never wanted to go anyplace nice when they went out. She dumped him after three months.
Warren had lasted the longest. They met when she was working as a temp for an insurance company. He was a salesman. Smart, funny, and caring, but he’d been taken to the cleaners by his ex-wife. “I like you, Adrienne. We can date forever, but I’ll never get married again.” He was dead serious, and when the temp assignment ended, so did their relationship. Adrienne didn’t see anyone else until Mel came along two years later.
Sometimes she regretted giving up her dream of a career in entertainment, but it was too late to turn back now.
Traffic was light from Rosedale to Harlem, and it took Adrienne only forty-five minutes to reach Sharon’s House of Beauty on 125th Street. She had always loved the hustle and bustle of 125th Street. It was the commercial and cultural center of Harlem. She parked the car in a lot around the corner and headed for the shop. Sharon’s House of Beauty was nestled between a 99-cent store and a wig shop, which also sold loose hair for braiding. Older men in kofis sold incense and black soap on small card tables that were set up on the sidewalk. Other vendors hawked books by African-American authors at well below retail prices. Adrienne pushed the door open and was grateful for the blast of air-conditioning that greeted her. Her eyes met a row of booths filled with curling irons, straightening combs, and other hair utensils. The wall across the room was lined with hair dryers, and on one end was a desk where the manicurist plied her trade. Sharon kept the salon neat and clean.
The ladies who frequented Sharon’s House of Beauty rarely saw eye to eye on anything. They came to Sharon’s seeking braids, weaves, perms, twists, or a press ’n’ curl. Sharon and the stylists who worked for her provided exquisite hairdos along with the latest magazines and light refreshments. The ladies themselves furnished the heated debates, which usually started about men, wandered into politics, sashayed into the latest music and fashion, drifted into their personal lives, and ended up back on the subject of men.
When Adrienne arrived, Sharon was braiding another woman’s hair. “Hey, girl,” she called out cheerfully. She motioned Adrienne toward a chair. “I just got the latest Essence this morning. By the time you finish reading it, I’ll be almost ready for you.”
Adrienne waved hello to the few women she knew. “What do you mean, ‘almost’?” she asked, smiling.
Sharon pointed toward a middle-aged woman who was using the phone and threw Adrienne an apologetic glance. “I had to cancel on Emily last week, so I have to take her next,” she explained.
Adrienne couldn’t complain. The sh
op was crowded since it was already midafternoon, and she didn’t even have an appointment. She flipped open the magazine and started reading about a new singer who had just reached number one on the R & B charts with her first album. Adrienne felt a twinge of bitterness as she remembered the day a club owner told her more cruelly than necessary that there wasn’t enough “suffering” in her voice to make it as a blues vocalist. Adrienne couldn’t remember the woman’s name anymore, but she recalled limping out of the audition and sobbing all the way back to her Greenwich Village apartment. After ten years of struggling to make it in the music industry, Adrienne had decided that she didn’t have enough talent to become a star.
Mel had come into her life a few days later. When her bell rang and Adrienne had opened the door, she was surprised to see Mel standing there. He didn’t look like any phone man she had ever seen. He wore his tool belt hanging loosely off his hips, Timberlands, and a neat navy blue shirt that set off his smooth, dark-brown skin. He peered at her under the brim of a blue Yankees hat and smiled, putting her immediately at ease. She’d shown him the hall closet, where he found the network interface, and he’d kept her laughing, joking and telling her stories about some of his other customers. When he’d finally finished running the wire for the new jack, she didn’t want him to leave. Although he was a street guy, there was something about the way Mel looked up to her that soothed her broken spirit, and so she gave up chasing her dream. They married after a yearlong courtship and moved to Queens.
Mel had given up his rough, hard-drinking, trash-talking, card-playing, street-running ways for a life that he had never known. Though he was not a professional man, he worked hard. Most important, he was kind. His idea of a good time was spending the evening at home talking to his wife. They had been married for three years and still acted like newlyweds. It had hurt at first, letting go of a dream that had been so much a part of her, but she was happy with Mel—and he still made her smile. She rarely looked back at the years when she was singing solo in third-rate clubs and sending out demo tapes to recording executives who returned the packages unopened.
Adrienne spent another two hours in the shop, but the results were lovely. Sharon had washed, conditioned, clipped, dried, and styled Adrienne’s shoulder-length chestnut-colored hair into a sleek pageboy that framed her honey-brown face perfectly.
As Adrienne left the salon, she wondered how long her hair would hold up in the stifling weather. It was hot—the type of hot that was oppressively humid, a distinct feature of New York City in July. She started the car and hesitated for a moment, knowing she should go straight home. It was 4:30 P.M. now, and Mel had to leave for work by ten. Adrienne shrugged. I’ll be up all night with Delilah, she thought, I’m entitled to a little fun. I won’t stay at Dan’s’s house long.
Dan was Adrienne’s little brother, but people couldn’t tell by looking at him. He was over six feet tall and stocky. His beard, sideburns, and mustache also made him look older than his thirty years. He was a photographer who specialized in weddings and sweet-sixteen parties. Adrienne loved him and her sister-in-law, Charlene. The couple lived in a one-bedroom apartment on West Fifty-second Street.
