In His Arms

“Okay. I’m past my rage against the future. You may go on.”

“I’m not sure I should. I work for a web design firm, so everything we do is for the computer. But there are graphic designers in a variety of fields. I took to web design because I had to learn how to do one for a project, and I got hooked. It’s great bringing an organization to life on the screen. I guess I like what I do.”

“You’re very lucky.”

“And you?” Rashad asked. “Why advertising?”

“I love the artistic side of it,” Michelle said. “I don’t know much about the business side of it as yet. I don’t like the idea of fooling people or luring people with false promises. I want to produce art, and advertising is what I want to do because it’s art that everybody sees. It’s art without the hundred-dollar ticket price for the orchestra seat.”

“So you’re a Marxist revolutionary about art—art for the masses!”

“In a way. And don’t knock Marxism. From what I’ve read, Marx was quite brilliant. That’s my way of saying he’s dense as hell.”

Both laughed.

“He was damn near incomprehensible sometimes,” Rashad agreed. “I’ve dabbled, as well.”

“Kudos to us for trying,” Michelle said. “High five.”

Michelle raised her hand, and Rashad met it.

“Are you sure you’re not a sports fan?”

“Absolutely sure.”

They were at Michelle’s car now and had paused. Rashad seemed as reluctant as she was about the end of the evening. It had felt like being on vacation to Michelle. Adult conversation with a handsome man, an hour in which she didn’t have to be anywhere, talking with someone who seemed to be genuinely interested in what she was saying, what she was thinking. It was like paradise.

Michelle unlocked her door, and Rashad leaned toward her and reached around her to open the door. But they still stood there.

Rashad leaned toward her in the dim light of the garage, and, for a moment, Michelle thought that he was going to kiss her. She held her breath and felt her heart begin to pound in her chest.

But just as quickly as it happened, the moment was over. Rashad straightened, and Michelle wondered if she had misread his body movements. She felt her face flush with embarrassment, wondering if he could tell that she’d thought he was about to—

“Follow behind me. I won’t run any yellow lights or anything like that. But honk if you start to fall behind.”

Rashad had turned and had taken several steps toward his car, but he turned back.

“How long have you been married?”

“Married?”

“Your husband is a lucky man. And you were married right out of high school, so that’s about...six years?”

“I’m not married anymore.”

“Huh? I thought...”

Michelle saw the confusion in Rashad’s crinkled brow.

“I was divorced a little while before I moved to D.C. That was one of the reasons I moved—to leave that past behind, so to speak.”

“But before I asked how long you guys had been here.”

“I thought you meant me and my son. We’ve been here two years. I didn’t know that you thought—”

“Wow. I guess I just assumed that you were married—still married.”

“I guess I wasn’t clear.”

There was a pause in which each seemed to be recalculating—tracing their conversations to detect the flaw that had led to the misunderstanding and reassessing what had just happened in light of the clarification.

Still, Michelle wasn’t sure what to think, and it was she who broke the silence.

“I had better get going. I have to get my son from the sitter.”

Her words seemed to awaken Rashad from a reverie, and he refocused his eyes on her. He stared at her a moment before he spoke. “Okay. Yes. Just follow behind me.”

He took a couple of steps toward his car and then turned back again.

“Next Wednesday let’s have dinner in Old Town Alexandria after class and window-shop along King Street—if you can get home late again.”

“Okay,” Michelle answered. “I’ll check and email you if the sitter doesn’t mind.”

“Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

Michelle followed Rashad as far as Beltway Plaza on Greenbelt Road, wondering all the while what had just happened.

When he turned off Beltway Road to the street leading to her apartment complex, Rashad stopped and waved her past him.

There was no traffic, so she pulled up alongside him.

“Can you get home from here?” he teased.

“Don’t you play with me when I can’t reach you to strangle you. The real question,” she said, “is whether or not I can find my way from class again.”

“Can you?”

“No.”

They cracked up.

Michelle waved, passed him and continued on as he made a U-turn and headed back to Beltway Road.

She picked up a sleeping little Andre from two doors down and carried him home to put him in his own bed. Once that was done, she started to change. She had to get to bed right away because she had to be at the coffeehouse early the next morning. She would get Andre ready and drop him off with Mrs. Miller, who would walk him to school.

She cherished Mrs. Miller. It mattered more than anything having people around whom she could trust, especially with her child. She paid Mrs. Miller, of course, but what Mrs. Miller did for her couldn’t be counted in money. She took Mrs. Miller grocery shopping and had her over for Sunday supper sometimes and did whatever else she could, but it didn’t seem like enough. Mrs. Miller and her cousin Nigel and his wife, Regina, and her boss at the coffeehouse allowed her to do the things she hoped would get her life back on track after that fiasco of a marriage.