I am in a bar with two couples some years younger than me, maybe in their twenties. They are hooked up already, one couple, one side of the booth, the other couple opposite; with me sitting on a chair, next to the second couple.
I fancy the platinum blonde with the long curly hair and would like to go out with her, especially now they talk about swapping partners.
Read moreShe’s a drinker rather than a smoker, whereas as the other woman, her hair straight, shoulder length and dark copper, she smokes but does not drink.
They are all going to another bar, one that is a bit rough and dark, they say, even though it is raining outside. And when they get up to leave, the smoker pulls out a large green golf umbrella and I think to get mine too. Only I have to hurry back to my flat to get it.
I leave the couples waiting at the entrance, and on my way to my flat I call Ricky G to describe what’s going on and which woman I should hook up with.
Then on my return I pass by the White Resort, pass through the side alley where all the workers bustle about, behind the view of the patrons. To my right are the tall white columns of the front entrance, and as I walk side by side with a Hispanic worker wearing the white tunic from the resort, the alley gets darker. I explain to him that I am going to the rougher part of town, a black neighborhood where it isn’t so safe.
And then upon my return I see the couples are still waiting for me by the old bar. The blonde sees me, holds in one hand a flagon half filled with red wine, holds it up with a finger hooked through a small circular handle at the neck of the bottle.
“You have the same umbrella!” she says and indeed I have the same matching dark green golf umbrella.
The smoker peels off. “I have to get something first,” she says. And I suggest to go with her, because it is not safe.
Her hair is darker than I first thought and I go with her to a local supermarket, black owned, with dark wood paneling and an empty feel.
I follow her in as she walks through empty aisles with low wooden counters that would normally have goods for sale; until she arrives in a new room, at a corner where a black man closes in on her. The man hems her in between a brown wooden counter that lines the wall and another counter that stretches out perpendicular.
I see him adjust his shoes so that she cannot move, so that he can further close in on her.
I think he is going to threaten her but then she turns away from him where, the other side of the counter, sits another black man on a stool. He’s older with a greying Afro.
And in the bright voice of recognition she cries out to him. “Hello!”
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