she thought. She noticed first, then, what she’d learn in stages later. Shame only looked like himself when he moved or when he spoke. And his voice sounded exactly like he looked; it was uncanny. When he sat still, pieces of his face and body pulled against each other. Then, she’d learn later, there was his life: his before-work vacant-self; the with-kids dude; the chef-Shame; and the piano man. In his life Shame was a kaleidoscope. He changed into a third, fourth, fifth person altogether. “One, two, three,” he’d say sometimes, “which Shame you want me to be, which kind you want from me?” He said it was a quote, or almost. She asked from where and he didn’t say. Her first, zero-sum impulse was to wonder where were the people whose faces he’d stolen, pulled apart and put back together. But she cut herself short before that. She was still on that whole “give it a chance to happen” thing.
Still in the street, she replayed his voice from the night they’d met: “Gosh, I guess every day is Wednesday, right?” And she: “What?” And he: “If I’m not mistaken, you just said hello to me and looked at me with both eyes at once. That’s rare around here, that’s all.” And she: “If you say so, but—Wednesday?” And he: “The Mickey Mouse Club, you know, Wednesday: Anything Can Happen Day?” She: “Oh, OK. That’s cute.” And now, outside Earlie’s Café, she thought, “There he is,” and, seeing her reflection walking in the window behind him, “There you are. There you both can stay. Here can sit this one out.”
When they shook hands she felt the thick skin of his palm again. He said, “Thanks for coming, I like your ride.” His open tone left no room and less need for her rehearsed, frustrated, CTA mass-transit-hell excuse for being late. Shame led her by the hand through Earlie’s as if the place was a tight, dark cave. In fact, the space was the opposite of cave-like, tall windows and high ceilings. Ndiya’s first impression, however, had been a kind of softness about everything in there. She followed closely. Shame’s right shoulder interrupted her view of palm trees, bushes, and shrubs of every size. She quickly forgot her trip over there, crazy-always-guarding-the-door-ass Wanda, her lateness, and her neutral corners rationale for asking him to pick a spot near where neither of them lived. She’d even forgotten the silly day-of-the-week thing about Wednesday.
The softness came from what the music at Earlie’s did to the space she felt around her. At first, she didn’t hear anything. The sensation was that she had entered through a door in the wide hip of an upright bass. She heard Shame’s voice and saw his head gesture this way and that. He didn’t turn around. “I come here for the plants, the wood, and the sound. I can’t really hear the music anymore, but it’s good to know it’s there.” He continued while she followed thinking, “Maybe this corner isn’t quite neutral enough.” Shame said, “This place always makes me feel like ordering a Scotch so old you can’t even drink it, you have to just tip the glass, close your eyes and inhale it into your lungs.” He continued, “It’s the same with the sound. Do you know an amphibian hiccups to breathe under water?” Strangely, she did know that. But she let it blow by.
Maybe Shame was nervous. He went on, “Do you know who Reggie Workman is? Red Garland? Wynton Kelly? Otis Spann? Errico Beyle?” “Ah, musicians?” Ndiya managed. He said nothing in response. He might have nodded but that could have been a way to silently say hello to someone at one of the tables. They came to a corner table between two windows looking out at a small garden, a courtyard. On the table stood a white card with “S. L., 7:30” written on it in black marker. The time had been crossed out and “8:00” had been written in; the “8:00” had been crossed out and, this time in red marker, “8:30!” had been added. Ndiya winced.
Immediately after they arrived at the table, Shame sat down, swept the card into his back pocket, reintroduced himself and, before she could sit, asked if she had a tissue. Ndiya thought to herself how glad she was that he hadn’t made a big act out of pulling out her chair, etc. She asked if he had a cold and he said the tissue was for his glasses though he wasn’t wearing glasses. She rummaged around at the bottom of the bag. Playing off her surprise at feeling the slim plastic packet without having to go in after it headfirst, Ndiya assured him, “Of course, sure, here you ar—”
Then the scene dropped like if she’d stepped backward off a ladder she didn’t remember climbing. When her hand emerged from her bag with the pack of tissues, a Velcro patch from her brother’s busted-open house-arrest ankle cuff caught her sleeve. The ruined hunk of plastic and wire leapt as if it had hurled itself out and landed on the table. It bounced once and turned over the sugar bowl and toothpicks spiraled across the dark grain of the floor and through the aisle coming to rest strewn about the feet of the couple at the next table.
Shame sat looking at her with one hand on the table-top. His other hand was extended toward her to take the tissue. He hadn’t flinched, he hadn’t moved at all. Judging by his relaxed posture, nothing strange had happened.
Ndiya’s ears reduced the room to the sound of the flat-line, we’re-losing-her tone. The jolt triggered a kind of survival mechanism she had employed many times in her life but knew nothing about. Her body leaned into the immediate present, her brain snapped back and became surgically abstract. It all happened without her intending, and it worked. It was kind of the way her brothers and their friends used to discuss running from the police. You never run in the same direction. They called it fifty scatters. They described it all in comic, managerial tones: “Now, police show up, we out, fitty scatter on they ass. Meet up later and assess the situation.”
Ndiya felt her body fifty scatter. Her mind abstracted, analytical: “No matter the length, all instants are exactly the same size. It’s the shapes that never repeat. Some twist and recede, some gape and come right at you, others, furtive, listen around corners.” She took account of the instant. The objects before her eyes on the table made no sense. She thought perhaps the place had been bombed. Maybe the toothpicks were splintered wood from the roof? Her mind a-twirl, the room somewhere bent and concave in the chrome mirror of the still-revolving sugar spoon. She couldn’t recognize the broken-open cuff of plastic on the table. Obviously, she had no idea Malik had hidden the damn thing in her handbag. As if laying down cover, her brain told her that it wasn’t a bomb. Her eyes recognized the torn blue flag with its four red stars, of the CPD. Her mind filled the instant with Malik’s milky-eyed, laughing, beautiful face.
Ndiya watched her vision like a foreign film as it hopped from the broken cuff across the toothpick-strewn tabletop and landed on Shame’s face, Ndiya watched her vision like a foreign film. Then he did react. Ndiya’s mind backed away and took in the scene as if it was printed in subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Shame’s eyebrows lighted into an asymmetry of pure surprise and sheer pleasure. Ndiya watched as her mind leapt in to abstract the anomaly of Shame’s expression. She decided it was actually wonder and that, for Shame, at least, wonder must be a subset of pleasure. “Or maybe vice versa?” her brain asked itself. “No,” she thought as Shame’s expression replaced Malik’s face in her mind, songs pinned all over it, like a depth-chart of Lake Michigan with no water in it, “Definitely, Shame’s wonder is inside pleasure.” Ndiya’s mind continued on: “Pleasure’s the wider circle. Wonder is the deeper blue.” It concluded, “Shame’s wonder gets deeper as its surface area gets smaller. That’s about pressure. So the formula: wonder equals pleasure under pressure.” Then her brain gave up its finding: “In other words, this man is trouble.”
Her analytical brain circled the wagons. Tactically, she could feel that retreat wasn’t an option. So, Ndiya’s body stood its ground before the absurd scene. The absurdity was her brain’s problem. The rest of her was right there. To an observer it might have appeared that showing up late and tossing a busted-up house-arrest bracelet out on the table was how she usually began a conversation with a man she’d just met.
Ndiya heard Shame laugh in words, “Well, hey now!” And she felt his extended hand take hers, lightly, and guide her down to the chair beside him. She wasn’t blind, exactly. There were bowls of light playing
