Fair Exchange - Part II
Last week in Part I, Bíbí attends a party with Steven, where she meets the magnetic and attractive Deckland. Steven proposes he and Bíbí open their relationship, and the couple fights about where things stand. When Bíbí receives an invitation from Deckland to come over for dinner, she feels a rush of excitement and accepts.
In the last five years Bíbí hadn’t been to anything more formal than faculty parties and evening lectures, so she stared at the row of sleeves in her closet, trying to remember what fit, what was still in fashion, and what, if it could not rival, could at least appear to be appropriately matched in a room with Deckland and his expensive-looking shoes. She imagined a house styled with tasteful artifacts: replicas of Goma masks and protest posters from the Civil Rights movement. Or, like she once saw in a white history professor’s remodeled Victorian, an old water fountain with a “For Colored Only” sign nailed above it.
“Drink,” he said eagerly. “It’s a working fountain.”
She declined.
Bíbí settled on a bright blue cable-knit sweaterdress; it was baggy, but short enough to show off a peek of leg above a pair of thigh-high stone-washed boots. Denim can be casual but chic, she reasoned. She pinned her twist-out into a French roll, then grabbed the wine from the kitchen table. Steven was supposed to be at the library studying, but she turned off her thoughts of him as she locked their front door. He didn’t deserve space in her evening, especially not when she was going to be sitting across from a gorgeous couple. Because of course, Deckland’s girlfriend would be beautiful—there was no doubt about that. And the only thing worse than being a third wheel is being one who gives off the air of being lonely. Even if it’s true. Even if it had been true for a long time.
*****
In some ways, Deckland’s house was exactly as she imagined it. In others, not so much. When she knocked, a small woman answered the door. She was brown-skinned with wide-set eyes and red sister locs tied twisted into a high bun. She looked sleek even in the jeans and oversized hoodie she was wearing. She was slender, not like Bíbí, who, at the moment had to remind herself that she liked the way her own body filled out during graduate school. She was suppler now. Her thighs were bigger. Her breasts pooled into her armpits whenever she lay down, and it thrilled her. When Steven was away, she lingered in bed alone, running a hand along the curve of her hips and imagining a passionate lover looking on. But lately, the only faces she could conjure were men, and nearly all of them looked like Steven, who was as indifferent to her changed body as he seemed about sex in general. Bíbí had long suspected that the better she learned how to take care of him standing up, the more he saw her as a mother figure and less as a companion. Maybe that’s why he needed to roam.
“Ah, you must be Bíbí,” said the woman, stepping back into the foyer as she held the door. “I’m Dee. It’s nice to meet you. Please come in.”
Bíbí looked around. It was an old house, renovated, but with most of the woodwork preserved. This was a trend among younger faculty. No self-respecting academic in the humanities would buy the unimaginatively designed tall skinnies now popping up in this part of town. And the slightly less-new houses were still being occupied by the emeriti. So, it was late Victorians with new floors and de-popcorned ceilings. This one was filled with round, colorful furniture like a therapist’s office for small, anxious children.
“Deckland will be down soon,” said Delia. “May I get you something to drink?”
Bíbí hesitated, then offered the wine bottle.
“Oh, that’s a good choice. Deck will love it. I’ll pour you a glass. It might take him a minute to come down. Today was a writing day.”
Bíbí perched daintily on a yellow armchair shaped like a half-deflated beach ball. She looked around, taking in the walls, which were tastefully adorned with Black surrealist art. One piece stuck out to her: a large mixed media profile that was at least six feet wide. It was a fine sketch of an angular, blank-skinned woman on a button-mosaic background, whose large golden Afro was made from hammered doorknocker earrings.
Delia returned from the kitchen with a glass. “I thought that one might catch your eye.” She laughed. “Deck brought it back from a trip to California years ago. I didn’t think we had space for it, but it’s become one of my favorites.” She winked at Bíbí, then turned behind her toward the stairs.
“Deck! I’m gone! Everything is on the stove!”
She turned back to Bíbí.
“Have a good time,” she whispered, then left out the front door.
For a moment, Bíbí was dumbfounded. Wasn’t this supposed to be a group dinner? She’d decided against bringing Steven simply because she didn’t want to pretend to be happily in love while chewing. She might choke on something. Surely Delia shouldn’t feel the need to bow out too. She was exactly the kind of woman Bíbí imagined Deck would be with: poised, but friendly and confidently kind. She wasn’t trying too hard to appear fabulous, or eyeing Bíbí with suspicion. Bíbí wished she’d stayed. She would have liked the chance to get to know her, or at least keep looking at her. She was stunning, and that wink had sent a spritz of excitement across Bíbí’s collarbone. She missed having girlfriends of all kinds; they were hard to keep post-graduation and mid-relationship. What a waste of an opportunity, she thought. Now she’d have to pass the next few hours under the microscope of Deckland’s intense stare, trying to make herself sound as interesting as the look on his face would suggest.
*****
He was shy.
It was an observation Bíbí noticed with a touch of confusion, then tender amusement. You’d think a person who chose to wear creased tan slacks and an off-white sweater the consistency of kitten fur to a dinner where he had to pour red wine and ladle hunks of stewed brown meat, tomatoes, and strips of kale (“an African soup” he quipped when she asked) wouldn’t be the least bit worried about anything. Deckland filled her bowl and glass with nary a splash, but when he sat down across from her and picked up his spoon, it hovered shakily in the air while he smiled timidly at her from across the table. Then he launched into a breathless dissertation about patterns of urban renewal. He didn’t come off as proud or even self-deprecating like Steven. He was simply trying to fill the silence with something that sounded smart.
Fifteen minutes in, her bowl almost empty, Bíbí interrupted him.
“So…what’s your personality like when you’re not thinking about work?”
He seemed taken aback at first. To hide the shock, he dipped his head and took his first spoonful of soup. He shook his head, disappointed.
“I’ll bet that’s cold,” she offered. “You should nuke it for a bit.”
“No—it ruins the flavor. The rest is still warm on the stove. I’ll be back.” He glided his chair away from the table as gracefully as an ice skater. When he came back, he smiled at her, a bit more openly this time.
“Beauty,” he said, “is the only thing interesting enough to distract me.”
A cheesy line, maybe? Bíbí thought of Delia. Surely not. Maybe just friendly banter. Still, she redirected him.
“Like art?” She pointed behind her to the living room.
“Yes!” He raised an eyebrow at her. “What did you think of our statement piece?”
It was called “Blacklight,” something he’d spotted from the window of a ground floor conference room in Mission Viejo. There was an art festival downtown. He’d left in the middle of his own panel to see it up close.
“What drew you to it?” Bíbí asked as she got up from the table. She wanted to see it again too, and up close. She’d been afraid to do that while she waited. What would he have said if he’d jogged down the stairs and there she was, nose to nose with her doppelganger like a self-aggrandizing voyeur? She stepped back into the living room.
Deckland waited until she got as close as she wanted, then stood behind her, so close she could smell his cologne? Aftershave? It smelled like expensive cinnamon.
“What drew me was that I’d never seen anything like it.”
Bíbí took in the piece again, this time carefully, clocking every gilded button, every hammered hoop.
“That’s fair enough,” she said. “Me neither.” She chuckled.
When she turned around, Deckland took a step back from her and crossed his arms. He smiled.
“You,” he said. “What moves you when you’re not working?”
And maybe it was the wine, or Delia’s wink, or seeing herself not as herself on their wall, or the way Deckland placed his long fingers on the small of her back as a cue to wait as he pulled out her dining room chair, or his nervousness, or the way he’d looked carefully at her when he said he got distracted by beauty, or the fact that she couldn’t think of a single other moment of joy in the past half-decade that didn’t involve Steven, but Bíbí said the last thing she’d been thinking about before she’d crossed the threshold into that space. She looked straight at him.
“Touching myself,” she said evenly.
He looked back at her, still careful, then his face broke into a wide grin.
“Come back to the table,” he said. “I want to talk about that.”
*****
Bíbí wasn’t sure why she found herself telling Deckland about any of it: grad school and Steven and their love life and the request. As she rambled, she reasoned she was giving him time to eat, and he listened politely, saying nothing, taking sips of wine and spoonsful of stew as he watched her shake her head and spread her hands, mapping out her current life with eye rolls and raised palms. She was a mime, pawing at the invisible glass in front of her, trying to make sense of at least some of it to a man completely outside it.
The more she talked, the more Deckland relaxed in his chair, the wineglass stem now dangling between his cupped fingers. She could see the puffy roundness of his clipped cuticles, the faint slashes where his lifelines ended on the rims of his palms. What was it about him that made her pay such close attention? She was never that interested in beholding people, even though she interviewed them all the time.
Bíbí drank more wine and talked. Deckland continued to nod. When her chatter petered out with a sigh, he moistened his lips quickly and spoke:
“I have a question for you,” he said.
“Go for it,” said Bíbí.
“Do you want to do it?” he asked. “This thing he’s proposing?”
Bíbí crinkled her nose. Maybe he hadn’t been listening.
“Of course not. I don’t want to think about him being with other women.”
Deckland smiled slowly. “No,” he said. “I mean, for you. Do you want to be with other people?” He asked it in that way therapists might: not as a question, but as a statement she must confirm or deny.
Bíbí set her wineglass down and sat back in her chair. It had been two days since Steven had told her, and in those two days, she’d made a mental inventory of all the ways she’d tried to show him she was good at being the kind of woman he could see himself with. All the La Croix cans she’d stuffed into lunch coolers, all the steaming mugs of coffee, tea, and (at her insistence) maca root she’d placed noiselessly on end tables as he typed. The noodles. The homemade bone broth she made that time he caught strep. Steven’s mother passed away from ovarian cancer while he was still in high school, and his imagination about what a woman could be seemed stuck in that era along with his wardrobe. Bíbí knew this, and she’d played into it so well that not once had she even thought about anything other than the thing she’d been wanting for five years: for Steven to tell her that after all of that, she’d finally figured out the cheat code. She was finally enough.
Bíbí shifted in her seat and tugged at the hem of her sweaterdress. It had ridden up her thighs, and the sight of her wide legs aroused her when, normally, she would have been embarrassed in front of someone else. She looked up at Deckland and touched her neck, which she knew was flushed, even if her cheeks weren’t.
“I lost you,” he said softly.
“I’m sorry,” said Bíbí, flustered.
“It’s alright. Your lap is way more interesting than my face.”
Now her face was definitely turning red. She touched that too.
“Oh, goodness. What was I saying?”
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Deckland set his wine glass aside and put his forearms on the table.
“There are many ways to be together,” he said. “It sounds like your partner is offering you the opportunity to explore them.”
Bíbí cocked her head and then shook it. “But if we’re just…out here, dating whoever, what’s the point of being a couple?”
Deckland shrugged.
“We do it for the same reasons monogamous people do it: co-habitational companionship, shared financial responsibilities, in-house co-parenting—if that’s your thing.” He looked at her.
We. Monogamous people. Wait a minute…
“So you’re—” and Bíbí didn’t even know if she knew the word for what she was asking.
Deckland picked up his glass again but didn’t take his eyes off her. Heat crept up her face again. He took a sip and licked his lips, again.
“I’m free—yes,” he said.
“Ohhhh.”
“What?” he asked, smiling.
“I was wondering why your girlfriend left.”
“But you didn’t ask.”
“No.”
“Maybe it didn’t matter?”
Wetness announced itself with a bloom under her armpits, between her breasts, between her thighs.
“I just didn’t think to—it was none of my business!” Bíbí’s voice rose shrilly in a ploy to be defensive. She failed.
Deckland laughed. Then he stood up. “It’s okay if it didn’t. I asked her for privacy. We have an arrangement.”
He walked over to Bíbí and knelt at the side of her chair. Then he tapped her right knee so she would turn toward him.
“I think,” he said, putting his hands together like he was praying, “That up until this point, you’ve been asked for things you’ve wanted to give, so they’ve been easy to give. But now, he’s asking you for a thing you never thought about giving, and it’s hard. But if you thought about this as an opportunity for you to be given something, would it be as hard as it feels right now?”
Bíbí didn’t know how to answer that question. She couldn’t remember being offered anything by anyone recently, other than free trials for streaming services. She scoffed. Well, there was that one time Steven said he’d proofread her dissertation, but of course he kept forgetting, and one week before it was due to her committee, she had to pay an editor a rush rate to get it done.
“Stop thinking about him,” said Deckland, interrupting her thoughts. He held up his palms. “Can I?” he asked, and she wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but she nodded. He folded her dress back two inches, then leaned down and kissed the tops of her thighs. Now, perspiration popped out everywhere—why on earth had she worn a gigantic sweater? Where was Delia? She quickly grabbed his hands.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, pulling away. “I misread your signals.”
Bíbí shook her head. She wasn’t sure she could speak without sounding juvenile.
“Tell me what that means,” he said.
“I—” She blinked a few times and lowered her head, laughing nervously.
“Do you not want me to touch you? And please, answer me with words,” he said ruefully. His hands were hovering over her lap, waiting.
Bíbí thought about Steven, wherever he was, and what he might be doing to Tatia, maybe even in one of those rooms you can reserve for studying in the library. Why couldn’t she think about getting something for herself for a change? Why couldn’t she prioritize her needs for once, pursue her own myriad sexual desires, if she could find them again? She hadn’t thought about them in a long while.
“I—I don’t mind you touching me,” she said, her voice shaking a little.
“So, that’s a ‘yes’?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, nodding vigorously.
“Good,” he said. He stood up and held out his hand. “Come with me, then.”
*****
The bedroom he took her to didn’t look like a master bedroom (if they indeed have “a look”), but it did have a bed with a rectangular mirror above it in place of a headboard. In one corner, there were two chairs facing a tiny table. In another corner, a long bench. Across from the bed was a lowboy dresser, and on top of it, two candlesticks holding white candles. Deckland pulled out a matchbook and lit them both. Then he took off his glasses and placed them carefully between the candlesticks. He turned to Bíbí.
“You seem shy, but I don’t believe it,” he said to her. “And ‘shy’ isn’t interesting to me. People like you make this boring, because we always have to coax you to do what you were planning to do all along.” He took a step back toward her. “Please,” he said, “Feel free to do anything you want.”
Bíbí thought about all the nights she’d lie primly on the bed as Steven undressed while facing the wall. Then he’d ease in next to her and kiss one shoulder, his lips so dry sometimes they scraped her. Finally, he would turn her face to his, and they would kiss until he got hard enough to enter her. She understood what Deckland meant. It was the same way every time. But this time, she wanted…to be wanted? Was that even a thing to say?
“Talk to me,” he said softly. “You’re drifting again.”
Bíbí stood awkwardly on one leg, her right toe grazing her left calf.
“I want—” she said, then stopped.
Deckland nodded. “Yes! Let’s hear your want.”
Bíbí huffed and tried again. “I want you to…take me?”
Oh God, that sounded like a terrible movie. Inside, she cringed.
All evening, there had been a hair tie around Deckland’s left wrist. Bíbí hadn’t noticed it, or if she had, it meant nothing. Now, he took it and pulled his hair into it. Then he stepped over to her and leaned down to meet her at eye level.
“That’s a good want,” he said. Then he kissed her.
His tongue tasted peppery like the stew, his mouth rough but wet and not sloppily so. He pulled their bodies together and let his hands play with her dress hem. The backs of his fingers grazed her thighs. Then with one hand, he parted them and traced one finger along the gusset seam of her underwear.
“Take these off,” he told her. After she pulled them down, he dropped to his knees.
To be continued…
Destiny O. Birdsong is a writer whose work has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, Poets & Writers, African American Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, Negotiations, was published by Tin House Books in 2020. Her debut novel, Nobody’s Magic, was published by Grand Central in 2022, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. It won the 2022 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. She earned her BA in English and history from Fisk University, and her MFA in poetry and PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. In 2022, she was selected as the Hurston-Wright Foundation’s inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University-Newark, and served as a 2022-24 Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She is a contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine.
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