The porch light was off and Barry knew he was in trouble, as the light was always left on. The house was colder than normal. On the kitchen table, a large candle sat on an old stone plate. The three wicks flicked with the drafts from outdoors. A note lay on the clean Formica table top near the candle.
Honey,
Electricity went out about 10
Leftover plate in the oven
Should still be warm
Milk in fridge
Kara is in our room tonite
Love,
Barry ate quietly, by the light of the candle: a plate of cold roast beef, dab of brown gravy, cold redskin potatoes with onions, milk from the carton still cold in the fridge.
He soaked the dishes in water; carried the candle into the downstairs bathroom, where he showered. He checked his watch on the way up to bed: 12:55.
The bedroom seemed warmer to Barry, yet utterly dark without the glow of the digital clock. His calm child slept in her crib, and his wife, soundly in their bed. The two of them breathed soft and patterned in unison as he did everything not to wake them. The quilt his mother-in-law had made by hand had emerged from its seasonal retreat. Barry pulled himself so softly into bed. His wife spoke in half-sleep as she stirred to face away from him.
“I was worried,” she mumbled. A long second passed, then another. “Couldn’t stay awake though,” she said. A moment drifted by and Sera asked with a sleepy concern, “What time is it, baby?”
“It’s not too late,” Barry whispered as he pulled up next to her. “Eleven-thirty.” He repeated, “Not too late,” and mimicked her shape while nuzzling in search of what was still good in the world. He listened for some time expecting something, anything, but heard only the tiny signs of patterned life en-gulfing the small, dark room.
Night coming
by Desiree Cooper
Palmer Woods
Why doesn’t the key fit?
Nikki hesitated for a second in the early dusk, wondering if she was at the right house — whether the hundred-year-old, rambling Tudor was really where she lived. She put down her briefcase, and looking around nervously, laid her black leather purse down beside it so that she could try the key with both hands.
Nikki had left work early hoping to avoid just this kind of meeting between herself, a locked door, and sundown. The spiral topiaries flanking her front door stood mute. She flinched as a squirrel darted across the damp cedar mulch.
“Damn!” she said out loud, jiggling the key impatiently in the swollen lock. “Damnit all!”
It was stupid, she knew, but suddenly she wanted to cry. Maybe it was the tension that had built up during the desperate rush home to meet Jason, only to see that he hadn’t made it there yet, the house disappearing into blackness, the porch cold and unlit.
Maybe it was because she didn’t really want to go with him to the Diaspora Ball after all. They went to the benefit for African American art at the museum every year. She was tired, feeling nauseous. Couldn’t they skip it, just this once?
Stemming easy tears, she gathered her things and clomped to the back of the house, her sleek pumps crushing the brittle leaves in her wake. The motion-sensitive lights along the side of the house blinked on, holding her startled in their beams.
Entering the backyard, Nikki scanned it quickly: the brick barbeque pit, the teak outdoor furniture, the star-white mums offering a last bloom before frost.
No one was there.
Of course no one’s back here, she thought, sniffling courageously. This neighborhood is safe.
It was as if the house had been waiting for those magic words, for her hands to turn the key with patience, for her clammy palm to push open the door, for her feet to tread cautiously into the warmth of the kitchen.
“Whew,” Nikki blew, immediately flipping on the light and locking the door behind her. Putting the briefcase down, she kicked off her pumps and rolled down her panty hose, which, of late, seemed to be even more confining.
Hungrily, she opened the refrigerator. It was typical of DINKS — couples with double income, no kids. Leftover Chinese, a bottle of Fat Bastard Chardonnay, fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt, Diet Coke.
Nikki eyed the wine but thought the better of it, slamming the door. Instead, she took out a box of Cheerios from the pantry and munched to quell her nervous stomach.
Just a few handfuls, she promised herself, glancing at the clock. Jason will be home soon and we’ll eat dinner at the party.
She dialed him on his cell, but got his voicemail. Shrugging, she picked up her purse and briefcase and went to the front of the house to turn on the lights.
5:30 p.m. It wasn’t like Jason to be late without letting her know where he was — especially these days. Nikki paced before the leaded glass windows of the living room, her mind racing.
Maybe there’s been an accident, she thought. Maybe he’ll never walk again. Maybe he’s …
“He’s just running late,” she said out loud, her voice echoing around the vaulted ceiling. She tried Jason’s cell again. No answer.
Making her way across the marble foyer to the den, she turned on the lights in each room as she passed. The quivers returned to unsettle her stomach. Her muscles drew taut like a cat’s. Placing her briefcase on the coffee table, Nikki plopped on the leather sofa. She tried to concentrate on the paperwork she’d brought home, but stopped after only few minutes. It was futile. The words had no meaning. She felt like an actress, improvising busyness for some invisible audience.
Every once in a while, Nikki touched the back of her neck where her short black hair lay in soft curls against her chai tea skin. Had she imagined that swift puff of air — a stranger’s warm breath?
She thought about Jason’s bottle of wine chilling in the refrigerator and was tempted to dash back through the empty house to take a sip. Instead, she picked up the remote, turning on the design channel. But soon she found her attention shifting from the flat-screen TV to the neighborhood security truck outside, its yellow patrol lights splitting the night.
“You’ll love it in Detroit,” Jason had said about his hometown.
That was five years ago, only weeks after they’d graduated from Emory’s business school. Nikki remembered the wide grin on Jason’s handsome chestnut face as he’d flapped open his offer letter from General Motors. She’d thrown her arms around him, her heart clutching. Her mediocre grades had left her without similar options.
Nikki’s mother had cried when she’d found out her baby girl was moving from Atlanta to Detroit, of all places. Nikki had cried, too, as she’d followed Jason to the Motor City, red-eyed and rudderless.
The newlyweds had sublet a loft in the Cass Corridor next to Wayne State University that first summer. Jason had convinced her that it would be a hip place to live, a place where the hookers coexisted with organic bakeries and socialist bookstores.
For Nikki, Detroit had been her first real adventure. Raised by a black middle-class Atlanta family, she’d walked on the debutante stage at sixteen and graduated from Spelman University at twenty with a marketing degree — the third woman in her family to attend the historically black women’s college. She’d applied to Emory to assuage her parents, who’d kept asking, “What are you going to do now?” Her performance at Emory was lackluster, reflecting both her ambivalence to business school and her waning interest in marketing. But when she’d met Jason Sykes, a well-heeled Detroiter who had a way with numbers and women, she decided that her investment in graduate school would pay off in one way that she hadn’t predicted. She married him after their first year.