WHAT YOU NEED
A Short Story by
Janise N. Smith
Copyright 2015 by Janise N. Smith
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
“If you had one wish, for anything in the world right now, what would it be?”
For you to make love to me.
I watched her. I knew the answer. She might as well have held up a sign, passed out flyers, shuffled flash cards—she was just that obvious.
Vonda sat on my raggedy sofa in my too large living room after knocking on my door with polite knuckles. Her blue slip dress crept up her thighs as she wrapped her arms around my black leather jacket like she was trying to keep it warm. I could tell she wanted to come out of it—all of it. First my leather jacket that she borrowed last week, then the slip dress that could’ve easily been removed with a careless brush of the thin straps that rested on her honey-brown shoulders.
“Anything in the world?” she repeated. Her thoughts came out through her grin as she hugged herself, and my jacket.
Vonda lived upstairs on the eighth floor. We met on the elevator a few months after I moved into the building. Before I knew it, I was listening to the building gossip that included everyone from the ninth floor to the first. I even heard way too much shit about Vonda that I cared to know—all from her own pink painted lips.
She finally let herself loose from her own embrace and looked down at the jacket as if it had tapped her and reminded her that it wasn’t hers. Standing, she slid the leather from her shoulders and laid it down on the couch with all the care and gentleness she may have shown a newborn.
“Why are you at home on a Saturday night, anyway?” she asked, but she didn’t sit back down.
I told her. Saturday night meant nothing to me; it was just another night of the week. There was never anything good on television, except maybe one movie on a cable channel. I did the same thing I did every other day. I woke, showered, ate, read, and watched television. She shifted her weight from one hip to the other when I said the word “shower” but I pretended not to notice while I told her that the only thing different about Saturday was that I didn’t have to work. I think, ordinarily, that commentary on Saturdays would have bored most people. Vonda grinned and cocked her head to the side as if she had heard something in between the lines. If she had, I didn’t put it there.
I took a sip from the bottle of beer I was holding and her eyes followed it to my mouth. I leaned against the counter, picked up my cigarette and realized that she had answered my question with a question. I still wanted to know if she had one wish, for anything in the world, what it was.
Vonda’s breasts were standing out so far from her chest I was worried that her back would break. She sauntered to me, tried to keep her eyes on mine, and I witnessed one of the straps of her dress slide over her shoulder. I reached for it, felt her smooth skin on the tip of my finger and slid it back up for her. She suddenly stopped. I don’t think it was what she wanted me to do with it, but I knew too much about Vonda. I knew the names of the bastards that stood her up for dates, the assholes that were too cheap to let her order dessert in restaurants, and the ones that either called out another woman’s name or were gone when the lights came on. But Vonda didn’t know much about me. She knew that I was a single man in an apartment that was too big for my old raggedy furniture. She had offered to go with me to pick out new furniture when I told her I had planned to redecorate. If I let her do that, she might want to sit on it all the time, which meant she would have to come over more often. Vonda could be funny, nice and sometimes sweet. However, I wasn’t ready to see her more than I already did.
“Don’t you feel differently on Saturday nights than you do on others? It’s something mysterious in the air—even kind of romantic. Not the day, but the night. When it’s dark outside,” she explained.
She really didn’t know me. If I were one of her Saturday night specials, staring at a cute girl like Vonda standing in front of me in a slinky little dress, I may have put down my beer. I probably would have put my tongue down her throat and slid those straps off her shoulders. I would have grabbed her by the arch in her back and pulled those breasts to me. Her back would have hit the carpet and her legs would be wide open and wrapped around my waist.
“Has Saturday night ever made you feel like you need someone?” she asked me.
I put down my beer. I picked up my cigarette one last time before I smashed its orange glow on the bottom of the ashtray. I put my hands on her shoulders where the thin straps of her dress were waiting to ease down her arms, and turned her around to face the couch. I led her to it and guided her to sit.
I told her to close her eyes.
I told Vonda about the time my older brother took me to see the Nets play the Lakers. We almost drove into a bus trying to beat another car to a parking space. My brother spilled his Mountain Dew on the front of his paints, which made him look like he leaked something else less thirst quenching. Then I was trying to check out some girls on the way to our seats and managed to miss three steps, which gave my descent the invisible runaway skateboard effect. I heard Vonda laugh at the right times and her back soon disappeared into the flat cushions of the couch. Her breasts seem to shrink to their original size and I was no longer worried about her back breaking.
When I was through massaging her neck and shoulders, I walked around the couch, sat on the end and reached for her feet. She opened her eyes and stared at me before she finally let me take off her shoes. She carefully swung her legs around and laid her feet in my lap, all while keeping her gaze on me.
I told her to close her eyes.
She told me about her older sister calling and inviting her to Baltimore to visit for a few days. She said it had been three years since they had seen each other because she had grown tired of living in her sister’s shadow. Her sister was married with children, had two dogs, and only made sound life decisions that made sense. Vonda couldn’t compete. She missed her sister, though. I could hear it in her voice. She also missed being an aunt to her nieces and nephews the most. I offered to water her plants and feed her poodle if she needed me to. She opened her eyes. She was quiet for a long time before she smiled, saying that she would accept my kindness. Then she seemed to slip away under my touch. She was probably thinking about one of those bastards that stood her up for a date or left before the lights came on.
When she finally stood up to leave, her eyes told me that she had been thinking about how she had sauntered to me and purposely let her strap fall off her shoulder intending for me to see it. The look on her face revealed her revelation that she didn’t need to wear a dress that looked like a slip to return a leather jacket to a single man that lived on the floor beneath hers. The heavy sigh made it clear that she knew that Saturday nights were like other nights and that those mysterious romantic feelings had nothing to do with the night, but with whom she decided to spend the night with. And that I wasn’t like the others.
For once, in the few short months that I had known her, Vonda didn’t have anything to say. I smiled at her because I couldn’t believe it. I tried not to laugh as I pulled her to me. She hugged me back and I whispered in her ear,
“If you had one wish, for anything in the world right now, what would it be?”
Her grin was more girlish than seductive.
“Before I leave for Baltimore I’m going to cook you a big pot of jambalaya and bake you a sweet potato pie. You need some meat on your bones!” She patted my ribs before she opened the door to leave.
Her girlish grin remained on her face before she gently bit down
her bottom lip. Her eyes were ready to water her own plants, but a few quick blinks kept the rain from falling.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I watched Vonda leave. At that moment, if I had been granted one wish for anything in the world right then, it would have been to have some cornbread to go with that jambalaya Vonda promised.
I was starving.
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