Going on an elbow, he stared at the clock on the bedside table. It was after eleven in the morning. “Yeah. I had to get up early this morning to drive my mother and her friend to the airport for a six o’clock flight to Puerto Rico.” Frank had given him permission to use his car during his absence.
“How long will be they be away?”
“A week. Why?”
“Do you want to come up to Riverdale today and hang out with me?”
Kenny fell back on the pillows. He liked Larissa, and thought of her as the three B’s: brilliant, beautiful, and brazen. She achieved a near-perfect score on the SAT and earned scholarships to Brown, Spelman, and Yale. She’d decided on Spelman, because her mother had graduated from Howard University, and she also wanted the experience of attending a Black college.
“Maybe another time, Larissa. I’m planning to stay in today.”
“Do you want company? You don’t have to answer that, because I’m coming.”
Before Kenny could tell her no, he heard the dial tone, indicating she’d hung up. He tried calling her back, but after counting off ten rings, he placed the receiver on the cradle and then swept back the sheet.
Today he wanted to sleep in late and spend the rest of the day listening to music. Frank had given him two checks for graduation. One to purchase a turntable and speakers he’d been talking about, and the second to purchase books and what he called “ancillary things” to ensure a smooth transition from high school to college. Between his mother and Frank, Kenny had learned to budget his earnings, purchasing only what he deemed a necessity. And that necessity was adding to his record collection.
Twice a month, after his shift ended at the restaurant, he’dwalk across town from East to West Harlem to stop at the Record Shack on 100 Twenty-Fifth Street to purchase records. His taste in music ranged from R&B, to soul, to pop. He’d purchased a few jazz records featuring Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Eddie Palmieri, and Vince Guaraldi. His mother had teased him, saying he was too young to have cultivated a taste in jazz when he should’ve been listening to popular Motown artists like the Temptations, Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
There were a few times when he’d caught his mother dancing and finger-popping whenever he played Motown, and Kenny wondered if she had missed going to school dances and house parties because she’d married right after graduating high school. That was something he vowed to avoid at all costs. He planned to enjoy going to college while earning both baccalaureate and master’s degrees to become a certified social worker.
Kenny made up his bed, then went into the bathroom to shower before Larissa arrived. There was something about his former classmate he hadn’t been able to figure out, because although they’d shared several classes, she hadn’t indicated she was interested in him until six weeks before the end of the school year. She had sought him out in study hall and asked if she could copy his analytical geometry notes; she’d missed two classes because of a cold. He gave her the notes, and they exchanged telephone numbers with a promise to share notes whenever the other missed class. There were times when she stood a little too close for comfort, but Kenny hadn’t thought much of it until he talked to Frankie and Ray during their monthly breakfast meeting.
Ray had asked if there was something wrong with him, because the girl was sending out signals that she liked him. Frankie agreed with Ray and told him that if she was willing to put out, then he should take her up on the offer. Kenny was reluctant to sleep with any of the girls at his school andhad learned to ignore their flirtatious overtures, but Larissa wouldn’t allow him to ignore her.
When he attended the barbecue at her parents’ home, Larissa had clung to his arm as if she were an extra appendage. It had become so uncomfortable and embarrassing that he took her aside and asked her to stop hanging onto him. He’d regretted chastising her when her eyes filled with tears, but it worked when she didn’t come near him again until Frank and his mother came to pick him up. She called him the next day to apologize, and they ended up spending more than an hour talking on the phone. It was the last week in July, and in another two, she would prepare to leave New York for Atlanta, Georgia, to move into her dorm at Spelman.
Kenny would continue to live at home and take the subway nine stops to and from City College. It was 1969, and City College of New York was a free public university; he’d promised Frank he would continue to help out at the restaurant every other weekend. He planned to take twelve credits his first semester, then sixteen or eighteen in subsequent semesters to graduate within four years. He knew it would take his mother as a part-time student much longer to graduate, but he also knew she was rooting as hard for him as he was for her.
He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt when he opened the door for Larissa. Smiling, she held up a shopping bag wafting mouth-watering aromas, reminding Kenny that he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before.
“Hey, handsome. I brought lunch for us.”
Kenny opened the door wider. “Come in. It smells like Chinese food.”
“I decided on Chinese because you said you eat a lot of Italian.”
“Come into the kitchen,” he said, staring at Larissa, who’d brushed her curls and secured them in a topknot, adding at least an inch to her petite frame.
“Your apartment is nice,” she said as she followed him into the kitchen.
He wanted to ask her if it was nice for the projects, since she lived in a large single-family home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx with six bedrooms and bathrooms. Her father owned several car dealerships in the Bronx and New Rochelle.
“My mother tries to make the best of living in public housing.”
Larissa stopped in the middle of the kitchen, setting her small purse and keys on the table. “Did I mention public housing, Kenny?”
He squinted, knowing he should’ve put on his glasses. “No, you didn’t, but it did sound a little condescending.”
“Please don’t try to psychoanalyze me, because you really don’t know me,” she snapped angrily.
“And you definitely don’t know me, Larissa. If you did, then you wouldn’t have come here without an invitation.”
Her eyelids fluttered. “Do you want me to leave?”
Kenny stared at her in what had become a stalemate. “No,” he said, his tone softening. “You can stay, and thank you for bringing lunch.”
She smiled. “Good, because I didn’t drive all this way just to turn around and go back home.”
