that was to be stirred in their direction. They were one against one against one. No teams. No alliances. Every girl/woman for herself. “So, where was the dance?” Mimi asked. “At the Hyatt on Wacker,” Nadia answered. “They had a hotel party for a bunch of high school kids.” “It wasn’t like that,” Tati blurted. “Then what was it like?” Nadia asked. “Tell us.” A grin revealed itself across Nadia’s face as she sat up on the futon and crossed her legs. Tati’s empty stomach dropped three feet to her ankles as she watched her mother’s grin dissolve into a smirk that played across her lips as delight danced in her eyes. Tati was caught. Hook in her gut, line protruding from her mouth. Everything Nadia had wanted to ask the night before when she noticed Tati came home wearing Xavier’s jacket was being asked, with Mimi presiding as mistress of ceremonies. But Tati delayed answering. Instead, she sang louder as she scratched akes of holding spray from Mimi’s spritz-laden hair and remembered how perspiration had beaded on her scalp when she danced with Xavier—a boy she’d known since second grade. Inside the downtown hotel ballroom where the Central City High School homecoming dance was held, Tati and Xavier traded lyrics from one song until the DJ faded Skee-Lo for Groove Theory. The switch from rap to R&B was enough to embolden the friends who’d known each other since they were snaggletoothed to maybe becoming something more. Xavier grabbed Tati’s hand, turned her around, and palmed her hips the same way he palmed a basketball. She wound her body into his as his hands ngered the hem of her red pleated tennis skirt. Her head against his chest, she relinquished control as his chin nuzzled the inside of her neck. On the dance oor, amid throngs of couples and groups of friends, they sang along with Amel Larrieux. The chorus and ad-libs. Every word and sound. All the o o h s and I w a n t y o u t o o s. “So, you gon’ really tell me what you want?” Xavier whispered in her ear. Before Tati could answer, the DJ’s voice—loud and obnoxious—cut through the crowd to announce the beginning of his slow-jam set. He encouraged
everyone to couple up as if they hadn’t done so already as a Boyz II Men ballad oozed through the speakers. Xavier turned Tati around to face him. Her arms around his neck, his hands at her waist, they swayed to the song, forehead to forehead. She lifted her lashes to peek at him through her bangs, and what she saw startled. His eyes, wide open, brown and imploring with soft attention. She saw the warmth that resided there. Tati simmered under the heat of his gaze. Her body pulsed as she closed the slim distance between them and laid her head on his shoulder. His muscles widened to envelop her as he wrapped both arms around her back and cocooned her into his sweet and spicy scent. A shiver sizzled down her spine. He felt it. “You cold?” Xavier asked, taking o his jacket. He wrapped it around Tati’s shoulders before she could answer as the duet between Subway and 702 urged them to play a game of their own. And they did, taking turns looking at each other when one had closed their eyes lost to the moment and the music. The song changed to Blackstreet’s “Before I Let You Go,” and they continued dancing their bodies hugged up against one another. Xavier ngered the ends of her hair. Tati admired the one dimple in his right cheek and the cubic zirconia studs that twinkled from his ears. “Tati, if you gon’ be down here with ya mama doin’ hair, you gotta learn how to ke ep up conversation,” Mimi said, interrupting her reverie. Tati rolled her eyes. “You ready for your wash?” Tati turned the water on, further delaying any answer she was expected to give. She tested the temperature before spraying Mimi’s head, making sure to splash her ear a little with water so that any sound was garbled. “Watch that water, girl,” Mimi admonished. “Sorry,” Tati mumbled. “So, tell me some more. Did you dance with anybody?” Tati recognized Mimi’s tone. It was sweet and enticing, like the open red mouth of a Venus ytrap, ready for someone to trip her triggers so she could swallow their simple asses whole. She answered through gritted teeth, “Friends.” “I know she danced with her friend Xavier last night,” Nadia o ered. “Who is Xavier?” Mimi’s voice piqued with curiosity.
“Just a friend,” Tati answered. “Is that why you came home wearing his jacket?” Nadia asked. “I was cold.” “How you cold if you was dancin’ all night?” Mimi asked. Tati increased the pressure of the water and rinsed out the conditioner. She didn’t answer. There was no need to. It wasn’t as if Nadia or Mimi were really looking for answers. Tati knew they had their interrogation duet planned just like the police. Two against one. Both of them bad cops. She understood why Mimi hadn’t questioned why she was doing her hair this morning instead of Nadia. She already knew. M a m a s e t m e u p . “Back in my day when a boy let you wear his jacket, that meant he was sweet on a gal,” Mimi said. “Though in my day... parents didn’t let they kids start courtin’ until they was eighteen.” “Is that why you came to Chicago carrying a baby at eighteen?” Nadia asked. “You don’t know what you think you know,” Mimi snapped, lifting her dripping head from the washbowl. “And what I was when I came to be with Eugene ain’t none of your concern.” Tati looked to Nadia as she slathered cholesterol into Mimi’s hair. The way she sat square on the futon, head bowed, clasped hands to her forehead looked as if she were praying for forgiveness. For what she had done or was about to do, Tati wasn’t sure. She placed a conditioning cap on Mimi’s head and tapped her shoulder. “You can go sit under the dryer now.” Nadia looked up. “You know, it ain’t my concern that you was pregnant at eighteen,” she began. “But it seems pretty hypocritical to me for you to be so hard on me and Tati when you didn’t even do what you been telling us to do.” “Nadia, you ever think that because of the life I’ve lived I was tryin’ to do better by you and your daughter?” “I was good and grown when I had Tati,” Nadia said. “Grown and alone because you was borrowin’ what you couldn’t ke ep,” Mimi said, peeking from under the dryer. “You live and you learn.” Nadia shrugged.
“Exactly,” Mimi said. “I’ve lived. I’ve learned. And I was trying to learn you, but I most certainly am gon’ learn Tati.” As Mimi and Nadia grimaced at each other from their respective corners, Tati busied herself with organizing. She put the shampoo and conditioner bottles back on the shelves where they belonged and sorted the rollers and end papers she would use to set Mimi’s hair. Every Sunday she insisted on a roller set, even though the curling iron would’ve been faster. Mimi insisted that a wet set was the only way her hair held a curl. But that wasn’t completely true. She had the texture of her grandmothers: wavy roots and limp ends. It never held a curl. Wasn’t meant to. But Mimi forced the issue anyway, just like she forced everything else. “So, Tati, nish telling me about the dance,” Mimi coaxed. “Ain’t nothin’ to tell.” “Well, who else did you dance with besides that one boy?” “Desirée.” “Mm-hmm.” Nadia and Mimi snickered together. “I’m sure you didn’t slow dance with her, now, did you?” Mimi surmised. “You do anything more than dance?” “He kissed me.” “You kiss him back?” Nadia asked. “What does that even mean?” “Just what it sound like,” Mimi snapped. “Don’t be gettin’ smart witcha mama.” Tati shrugged her shoulders and sighed as she tried to hold on to the moment when she and Xavier kissed. It had been the last song of the night. After an evening of East and West Coast hip-hop, reggae, and Chicago house, the DJ concluded with an R&B quartet from Charlotte, North Carolina. The unmistakable downbeat followed by the lullaby-like strings of Jodeci’s “Freek’n You” had crooned through the speakers. Students roared in approval as girls wound their hips around so their backs were to their partners’ fronts, hands rested on waists or below, and bodies rolled together. If ever there was a time for a chaperone to come into the dance with a ruler and pull students apart, that was it. But the three sets of double doors to the darkened ballroom never opened.
Undulating with the sea of bodies on the dance oor, Tati had tried to mimic the masses, but Xavier had held her still, pulled her closer. Forehead to forehead, nose to nose, Tati nearly sat on his upper thigh. They made their own circle. And for a moment, in her mind, they were alone and ying above the crowd like on the Navy Pier Ferris wheel. With her eyes closed, dancing with Xavier was as close to what she imagined it was to be suspended in air. Until she was kissed by clouds. Xavier’s lips, soft and pillowy, met her own in a surprise that forced her to open her eyes. He stared right back at her, his forehead never moving from where it pressed against her bangs. He smiled, said, “I’ve been wanting to do that for years.” Tati’s return smile would have turned into easy laughter had Xavier not kissed her again as the song moved into the bridge. Students around them sang along with De Vante Swing until the song faded and the lights came up. “Thanks for the dance,” Tati whispered as she pulled away from Xavier. “That’s all?” he asked. “I’ll see you around.” She pulled farther away, but Xavier’s ngertips lingered against her own for a moment longer. “See you, Tati,” he said, when he nally let her go. Not eight hours later, she was losing the feeling of his lips and ngers against her own as she leaned against the table where the curling irons and stove were set up, cold and wanting, much like her mother and grandmother. Nadia and Mimi reminded Tati of a proverb she’d had to write a response to in English class. There is no honor amongst thieves. Between the two of them, there was neither honor nor respect. “We waitin’ for an answer, Tatiana,” Nadia demanded. “I just said he kissed me. It’s not like I can reject it.” “You can do more than you think,” Mimi said. “You got the power until you give it away.” “We not there yet,” Nadia interjected. But Nadia lied. They were. When Tati had come in after the dance, she had found Nadia in the backyard leaned against the frame of the house in gray sweatpants, a ratty old T-shirt that covered her bare chest, and a peacock-printed scarf tied down over her freshly pressed and wrapped hair. A cigarette glowed
between the ngers of her right hand, and a bottle of beer rested on the ground beside her. The shop radio played the B o o m e r a n g soundtrack from the raised screen of the window. “Can I try?” Tati had asked once she settled beside Nadia. Her eyes bounced between the bottle and the glowing cigarette. “Try what? You start smokin’, you gon’ fuck up your lungs, and you can kiss all that runnin’ and track shit goodbye.” “Okay.” “You wanna sip of beer?” “Can I?” “G’on head. I’d rather you do it with me than sneak and drink. Here.” Nadia had handed over the bottle and watched as Tati took a short sip and then a longer one. When Tati gave the bottle back, Nadia took a long swig of her own as Toni Braxton sang in the background about how love should’ve been enough to bring a man home. Either tipsy on the chug of beer, or high from her kiss, Tati asked, “Is it good?” “Is what good?” “Sex?” “What the hell happened at the dance?” Nadia had exclaimed. “This the last time I let you drink with me.” “Nothing happened. I just wanna know. Is it?” “Sometimes it is. Most times it ain’t worth the heartache. And all men come with some kind of heartache and you, as a woman, have to decide what you will and you won’t do about it.” “Whatchu mean?” Nadia pu ed the last of her cigarette and then stamped it beneath a slipper- covered foot. She sighed. “Women do a lot of shit for men,” she said, words harder than her face. “Sometimes it’s love. Sometimes it’s lust. Sometimes it’s a little bit of both.” Nadia had been r eplaying the conversation in her mind for hours, but she wouldn’t tell her mother about it. There were some things she agreed that Gladys didn’t need to know. But Mimi railed on anyway.
“You don’t know where you at,” she snapped. “If you did, you wouldn’t have been on the phone with me late in the evenin’, talkin’ ’bout how you don’t know what to do with Tati growin’ up so fast.” She mimicked Nadia’s panic- stricken voice. “ ‘She doin’ her own hair, wearin’ makeup. She don’t think about the future or what she wanna be in life. I don’t know what to do.’ Well, I do!” Mimi said, coming out of character. She pushed the dryer o her head and marched back over to the washbowl. “Tati, c’mon wash this out. It’s conditioned de eply enough.” “This was a mistake.” Nadia hugged her knees and rocked back and forth on the futon. “I never should’ve called you last night.” “Especially not when you was drunk,” Mimi said. Nadia pushed herself o the couch and made her way out of the basement. Knowing her mother was going to smoke, Tati turned on cool water and rinsed Mimi’s hair. She took her time pulling her ngers through to remove the coating that softened the strands. If only there were a conditioner for the heart. A substance that made malleable the pugnacious and resistant. Tati sighed. She wrapped Mimi’s hair in a towel and tied it turban-style. “You can go sit in the chair,” she said. Tati adjusted Mimi’s seat for her height and went to work dividing sections and then parts for her to create a grid of rollers that would help Mimi’s hair fall the way she liked. Monica sang to them while she worked about what she wanted to make right. Tati rolled her eyes at the lyrics. Neither Mimi nor Nadia was interested in making things right. They were more concerned with proving each other wrong. Both of them more alike than they’d be willing to admit. “You doing a good job, Tati,” Mimi said. “Thank you.” “You know,” she continued, “you got to understand that me and your mama just want the best for you. Want you to make something of yourself. You know what you wanna be when you grow up? You ain’t got long.” “I like writing,” Tati answered. “That’s nice that’s what you like to do, but it don’t mean nothing unless it can pay some bills and put a roof over your head.”
Tati had heard the conversation before. Even Toya had droned on about what jobs would or wouldn’t pay for rent, light, water, gas, and groceries as she drove Tati and Desirée to the dance. And she would know. Working at Commonwealth Edison all these years, Toya had heard every sob story there was from folks who came into the 87 th Street branch, where she worked in the call center, on disconnection day. She was adamant that pictures and poetry wouldn’t pay nobody’s bills. Let alone those of two Black girls from the South Side. Who’d ever heard of such careers for kids with no money but the few dollars their mamas eked away by robbing Peter and Paul to pay themselves. If there was one thing Tati knew, and was tired of hearing, nobody was going to pay her for pretty words about her missing daddy. “What I’m trying to say to you, Tati,” Gladys started again, “is that we want you to learn from our mistakes.” “Are you saying me and Mama are mistakes?” It was a question she would never have asked on a normal day. She would have saved the inquiry for her notebook and come to her own poetic conclusion from the insults Nadia and Mimi had hurled at each other. But this wasn’t a normal day. Tati had to take hold of the opportunities as they presented themselves. Liberties Mimi hadn’t expected. She didn’t answer right away. An omission that signaled Nadia was her mistake as much as Tati was Nadia’s. Despite all the cycles and generational curses Mimi was inclined to curing at church, Tati recognized they had only continued. Theirs was a family born broken, not for the breaking. Mimi exhaled. “Tati, being with boys and having babies before you’re ready is a needless responsibility.” “It was j u s t a kiss,” Tati emphasized. “This time.” She turned around to face her granddaughter. “You understand what I’m tellin’ you?” “Yeah. Don’t get pregnant. Don’t worry, I don’t plan on it.” “We never plan on these things happenin’. Just ask me or your mama.” “Ask me what?” Nadia said, her voice echoing as she reentered the basement.
“Am I a mistake?” Tati asked. “Mimi said I need to learn from y’all’s mistakes about getting pregnant.” “Really, Mama!” Nadia st epped into the light of the salon. “I walk out for ten minutes and this is what you tell my child.” “Tati, come ’round here,” Mimi demanded. Tati dropped the roller and end paper she held and walked to face Mimi, who held out her hands. Tati studied the wrinkles and blue veins that coursed across the tops. A gold wedding band shined brightly against her sallow skin as if it had been recently polished. Tati stared at the bony ngers and manicured nails reaching toward her and st epped back. She wiped her hair-wet hands against her thighs as Mimi put her own back in her lap. “You were never a mistake,” she said. “You were a blessing.” “A blessing in a burden, right?” Tati r epeated. “That’s what you said.” “When did you tell her that?” Nadia growled. “I said no such a thing.” “You did!” Tati shrieked. “Tati, I’m sorry—” “Don’t be sorry now,” Nadia snapped. “You probably said it right to her face because you say it all the time. You just don’t know when to leave well enough alone. Tati, you are not a mistake.” Nadia turned toward Tati, her face a weathered stone, wrinkled and creased with the worries she never allowed her daughter to witness. She r epeated, “You are not a mistake. You are love. My love. Always have been. Always will be. I just want you to be pr epared for this world you goin’ into in all the ways you need to be. You ke ep your head in books and your journal so much, I worry you got the book smarts and not the street smarts and common sense you need.” “That’s why you set me up to do Mimi hair this morning?” “Yes. But t h i s was a mistake. Y o u are not.” “You say that now, but don’t act like your decision to ke ep Tati was all rainbows and roses,” Mimi interjected. “You struggled. Hell, I struggled, and me and Eugene was married.” Nadia shook her head and sighed, r epeated to herself, “You just don’t know when to leave well enough alone.”
Sorrow hugged her words. Spoken in despondence, it was normally Nadia’s go-to shutdown response. A shield of protection, like a layer of Vaseline, or long johns against the cold. But there was nothing to shield Tati. Nothing Nadia could bulwark between her daughter and her mother exc ept herself. She yelled, “Mama, you so quick to tell my story. You don’t even tell your own. You and Daddy was married when you had me, but I wasn’t the rst.” “Watch it, Nadia,” Mimi said, her voice cold as venom. “I ke ep tellin’ you, you don’t know what you think you know.” “Well, that’s what Daddy told me before he died.” “Eugene always did take up for you.” “The same way you always take up for Bryan and Terry—” “You don’t know what it took to have them!” “Whatever it was, they were your blessings. I was your burden, the same as you said about Tati.” “The only burden was that girl’s daddy.” Spit ew from Mimi’s mouth as the shock of her caustic words was absorbed by silence. The CD, not set to r epeat, spun ’round and ’round in the player. Its whirring, like a metronome, marked the minutes as they passed. No one spoke. No one moved. Tati and Nadia remained standing while Mimi sat back in the burgundy client chair. The scowl on her face converted to content. She was the clever teacher who’d outwitted the rowdy class. An iron- sted matriarch against her unappreciative children. Though she wouldn’t have been so satis ed had she known they were all cut from the same curse, just a di erent generation. The eternally marked heirs of an unoriginal sin. “What is his name?” Tati asked. Her own tone was foreign to her ears as she begged the question tugging at her heartstrings, completely dispossessed from the brain that knew better. Absent all manner of her common sense, she asked again, more forcefully, “What is his name?” The volume of her voice surprised. Louder and louder, Tati r epeated her question until she felt anger rise and heat sting. Blood boiled beneath her skin. Fingers damp with setting lotion clenched and punched the sides of her thighs. Lashes uttered, tears watered—more than stings—as she reached a scream.
“What is his name!” The sound bounced around the concrete walls and hidden heating vents. Tati had come undone. Years of questions, of writings, of poems, journal entries, and dreams of a faceless man at the head of the table, had led to this. Nadia wrapped Tati in her arms. Her silk scarf smashed against Tati’s raw hair as sobs shook both of their bodies. Pressed against one another, their tears bled and dripped in tandem. Tati turned and caught a glimpse of Mimi’s face. Haughty in the high chair, she looked down at them both as her half-rolled head dripped dry, her eyes as barren as the Sahara at high noon. “Roman,” she said evenly. “Your daddy’s name is Roman Brown.” “Really, Mama!” Nadia shrieked. She held Tati closer and spoke over her head. “You had to do this today?” “It’s about time she know. You for damn sure wasn’t gon’ tell her.” “She don’t need him,” Nadia cried. “We don’t need him. I’m enough.” “No!” Mimi bellowed. “ Y o u didn’t need him. But s h e does.” “ H e didn’t want her. I ’ m e n o u g h .” Nadia was like a CD with a de ep scratch. She couldn’t move forward. She couldn’t move backward. She was stuck in time in a one-sided, one-phrase conversation Mimi couldn’t break through. They’d stopped talking at Tati, even though she was still pressed to Nadia’s chest, feeling every one of her I ’ m e n o u g h s as they rumbled from her gut. Tati didn’t move from Nadia’s embrace. Despite the tingle in her feet and her notion to run, she didn’t st ep away from Nadia’s care. Her show of a ection. She lingered in the attention she longed for taking for herself, the same as Nadia took from Mimi. Exacted pound of esh after pound of esh, but it couldn’t trump Mimi’s hand of spades. The sharpened weapons of her verbal comeuppances stabbed through the body and cut to the bone. The marrow of their inner selves spilled all over the copper concrete oor. Racked with the dry heaves that come after full-body wails, Nadia released Tati and shu ed toward the futon. She collapsed on the worn cushions and covered her streaked face with her arms. But there was nowhere for her to hide. Nowhere for her to render herself invisible from Mimi’s masterful gaze. She sat in the big chair, her face as clear as a conscience before death. She wore neither
guilt nor apology, just the stern countenance of someone who believed they were in the right. Who’d done what she thought needed to be done. “Tati, you think you can nish Mimi’s hair before she go to church?” Nadia croaked. “Yeah.” Tati trudged back behind the chair. “But if you get a roller set, you gon’ be late.” “You can blow-dry it and do it with the iron,” Mimi said. Tati cleared Nadia’s station of the rollers, end papers, and setting lotion and instead plugged in the electric curling iron and at iron, not bothering with the hair stove or hot comb for Mimi’s roots. She blow-dried and shaped it then went to work parting, greasing, at-ironing, and curling section after section. Tati developed a rhythm and a pattern as she moved. Her hands ipped the irons and combs in time with the whirring Monica CD and their breath. Nadia’s was heavy while Mimi’s came in spurts as she winced, groaned, and grunted from the oil stinging her scalp, but she didn’t inch or say “ow,” no matter how much Tati wanted her to hurt. “You done,” Tati said. She pulled one last rake through Mimi’s hair with the feather comb, then removed her cape and necktie. Mimi stood and dusted herself o . “Walk me to the door.” “I’ll walk you.” Nadia sat up from the futon. Red eyes, pu y cheeks, and hoarse voice, she waved Tati on her way. “Go’n chill out. You did enough for today.” Tati headed toward the stairs. Nadia called behind her. “I’ll be outside if you wanna talk.” She didn’t want to talk. In her room, she covered her head with her pillow, craving the dark she was made out to be. A stain on both Nadia’s and Mimi’s lives. Despite her mu ed screams, her tears didn’t come. It wasn’t her sadness to hold. Her cup was erected with fury at Nadia’s crocodile tears and shrieks of “I’m enough,” as if it made up for a life’s worth of lies. She had subsisted on a diet of dishonesty and disinterest and now Nadia had the audacity to o er her sustenance. As if Tati didn’t remember everything and everyone being fed before her: the house, the clients, the business.
The front door slammed and then the back. Nadia had retreated to her sanctuary. S h e h a s h e r t h i n g . I h a v e m i n e . Tati reached for her notebook. Pen in hand, she wrote. D e a r R o m a n , I fi n a l l y k n o w y o u r n a m e . N o w a l l t h a t ’ s l e f t t o k n o w i s , “ A m I y o u r s h a m e ? ” O r A m I y o u r s h a m e t o o ? S e e m l i k e I a l r e a d y s h a m e d m a m a . W h a t a b o u t y o u ? I f u l fi l l e d t h e p r o p h e c y M i m i h a d f o r h e r l i f e G u e s s s h e s h o u l d ’ v e f o l l o w e d h e r B i b l e ’ s a d v i c e S o m e t h i n g ’ b o u t n o t s p e a k i n g d e a t h ... B u t a i n ’ t I l i f e ? A i n ’ t I a m i r a c l e , a b l e s s i n g , A l l t h e g l o r y w o r t h S u n d a y d r e s s i n g ? S e e m t o m e l i k e I w o u l d b e c a u s e t o r e j o i c e B u t I ’ m t h e r e a s o n n e i t h e r m e n o r m a m a g o t a r e a l v o i c e W e b e M i m i ’ s f e a r s T h e e m b o d i m e n t o f h e r t e a r s T h e s i n s s h e s h o u t f o r f o r g i v e n e s s T r a n s g r e s s i o n s t h a t d o n ’ t s e e k r e p e n t a n c e W e a i n ’ t n e v e r b e e n p e n i t e n t O r c o n t r i t e B u t I g u e s s l i k e s h e s a y U s t w o w r o n g s d o n ’ t m a k e h e r r i g h t S o , I w r i t e A n d m a m a s i n g A n d w e n e v e r , e v e r l e t o u r e y e s k n o w t h a t b r o k e n h e a r t s ma k e t h e m s t i n g . L o v e T a t i
P a r t 2 A n s w e r s
M a r c h 1 9 8 0 When Nadia met Roman, it was at the insistence of Toya and Lou. Unlike Nadia, Toya had dated hard from the time they were sixteen and still in high school. Her dating pool had only widened as they’d gotten older. From high school football stars to college students she met at parties from schools she didn’t attend, to colleagues and coworkers, Toya’s love life had been a re volving door of the many, the tragic, and the always unfaithful. That was until Lou, a CPA she met in line at the Marshall Field’s café downtown. He had co ee, a croissant, and, by the end of his meal, a slip of paper with Toya’s name and number that read, C a l l m e . He did, and then Toya called Nadia and invited her out to the bar at Seventy- Fifth and St. Lawrence after Lou suggested Toya bring a friend for his friend. “Is he single?” Nadia had asked while they were in line. “Not exactly,” Toya hedged before they were waved through the door. While Toya and Lou danced, Nadia nursed a beer at the bar, knowing she was there to play babysitter to the brokenhearted. “You want me to start a tab?” the bartender asked in a raspy voice. Nadia shook her head no. “This the only drink I’m buying tonight.” “Is that right?” The voice belonged to Roman. Nadia assessed him the same way he had given her ripped acid-washed black jeans, red shnets, and bodysuit the once-over outside, where he worked the door beside the bouncer, deciding who would get in and who wouldn’t. His dark skin peeked from the open buttons of his silk shirt along with a gold chain atop a pile of coiled chest hair. A be eper was hooked to the hip of his starched and creased mustard-colored slacks.