Rooibos

We left Adele in a precarious circumstance. Trapped in a tangle of chairs, she has to answer Mercy’s invitation to come up to her apt and have a cuppa.

Oh boy! Or, I should say, Oh girl. This is tough. It would be consorting with the enemy. But hadn’t she already done that by coming here? Her very presence gave the opponent points. Her side lost points just by being interested.

She hesitated. Then she decided to make the most of it. Isn’t this what she wanted? To find out who Mercy Alexander is? She put on her glowing smile, and said, “Sure, why not?”

Usually there are a lot of good answers to that question, but nobody’s listening. The query goes unanswered.

The two women left together. Nobody saw them leave; everyone had already gone. They looked quite a sight, the queen in her golden gown and her lady’s maid in the grey uniform of the sweating class.

Mercy lived right there in town. A very nice town, full of sophisticated stores with quaint slogans. One of the dentists, an openly gay man, had a sign hung out his window that said, “The Tooth Fairy.” The optometrists were “The Eyes Guys”.

Mercy had walked through the streets on her way to the meeting. People stepped out of the stores to see her and say hello. Now they drove in Adele’s car past an Indian, a Chinese, an Italian, a Greek and a Thai restaurant, each decked out in its cultural symbols.

There were music stores, candle shops, antique sellers, book nooks, coffee houses, bars, clothing boutiques, chocolatiers, wine merchants… it appeared to be a town totally devoted to pleasure.

There was a small apartment house at the end of one of the blocks. Small for an apartment house. Big for this scenic town. A block of bricks, six stories high.

“The Artists’ Hive,” Mercy says as she puts her key in the main door. “An endowment of the arts. And I, who am totally against such things, take advantage of it. You can report me to your people if you choose to. It’s disgraceful of me.”

There’s a small lobby with an elevator, and apartment doors on corridors leading to the left and right. Like a hotel.

“It’s not much,” Mercy says as she punches 6, “but it’s home.”

They get out and are facing a pitch black door. “Darkest Africa,” Mercy says pointing to it. “Be prepared.”

She opens the door. Adele was not prepared. A black face with red and white curving lines painted around its perimeter, lunged out at them, then jumped back into the vestibule. This was lined with fabric renditions of large-leafed plants, primary-colored parrots, twining snakes and had a huge elephant trunk descending from the ceiling.

“Sorry, Sweetie. I hope it didn’t scare you. You’ve probably never been to darkest Africa.”

No, she hadn’t. A few of her friends went on a safari five years ago, but she was involved with a doctor who was afraid of the shots.

“I haven’t been back in years,” Mercy said, waving her into the room at the end of the hallway. Adele walked suspiciously through the arch, and into a glisening red heart. At least she thought it was a heart. Maybe it was something else. The walls formed an irregular red cave.

“Plaster of Paris”, Mercy said. “It’s all built up on chicken wire, then painted. Sculptor down the hall did it. This is just a regular room – don’t be alarmed.”

The floor looked like hard-packed dried blood. Like the oxblood floor of a South African native hut – a color not unlike that of Phoenix Wagman’s hair. Thrown down on it was a huge zebra rug.

“Faux fur,” Mercy said. “Everything here is artificial. No animals have been harmed in this production.”

She faced Adele. “I’m the only real thing,” she said. “I like it that way. No lover, no pets, no friend. No competition.”

There was a glass table on the zebra rug, and little black leather stools on the oxblood floor. Mercy waved her to one of them, and disappeared behind a curtain of big black feathers. Adele heard another door close farther along in the apartment.

The room was hypnotic. The walls seemed to hug her in, and the top of the cave felt very far away. Mercy came back with two big tea cups. Aromatic steam poured from them. “Tea,” she said. “The coffee offer was just a come-on. I don’t keep coffee.”

“What kind of tea?” asked Adele, coming alert.

“Just tea. There’s only one kind of tea where I came from.”

“Where is that?” Adele woke up. Here comes information.

“Deepest Africa.” Adele thinks she has found out something, but Mercy continues. “As did we all. Not just black people either. All the other colors. They all started in Africa. Africa is the birthplace of humanity.”

The steam wafted up Adele’s nostrils. She couldn’t quite put words to its sweet yet pungent nose. She took a sip. Flower-like. And another.

Mercy continued talking. She’s an entertainer, after all. This is her art. It is for this that she is subsidized by you and me. Let’s let her ply her trade.

“We are the mother of all races. Our rambunctious children think they have grown wiser than we. We must show them they are wrong. But we don’t want to hurt them in the process; they are our offspring.”

Adele wanted to ask her if she had any offspring of her own. But it seemed rude to interrupt.

“We all have offspring,” Mercy continued, as if reading her mind, a talent of most good performers. “All God’s children are our offspring. We are responsible for making them all the best that they can be. Surely you agree?”

Of course she did.

But Adele wanted to take care of everyone at once, while Mercy thought the focus should be on each child. Mercy thought individuals, loosely bound by laws, made the society. Adele thought the society came first and molded its members to fit. Adele liked fitting in first and being herself within the framework.

Mercy presented herself as an African, Adele as an American. They couldn’t have been less alike. Yet they got along fabulously together.

Adele slid off her stool and sat on the zebra rug. Finally, she stretched out there and Mercy put on some music. African, of course. Drums. Adele could see tall, dark, angular half-naked people dancing. What with being tired, drinking the exotic tea, and looking up at into the deep red heart of the cave, it took her a few moments to realize that Mercy was caressing her.

Gently, lovingly, moving her big hands down Adele’s sides, cuddling her sweat suit close to her skin, making her feel dreamy and relaxed. It was more like a massage, than an amorous prelude. Hard to tell whether she should object. It was ambiguous. Not worth making an inter-party scene over. Besides, she knew Mercy was gay. Everybody did.

Adele rolled over, thinking that by changing her position and presenting her back, she would convey the message that she was not interested in anything further.

It had the opposite effect. Mercy’s hands went down to her hips, and then each one cupped a buttock and began to knead it. Adele was instantly aroused, though she didn’t want to be. She was adventurous, yes, but she was definitely heterosexual. Hanging out with the boys was her thing, but she did not want to be one of them.

She fought down the desire to open her legs and welcome someone in. She wasn’t sure what could happen, but she didn’t want to find out.

Adele extricated herself from a surprisingly strong grasp and squirmed away. She scrambled up, said, “Thank you very much for the tea. I enjoyed the evening,” and rushed out of the heart, through the fabricated leaves, past the mask, and back to her car.

She raced home, wondering how responsible she was for what had happened, and trying to figure out why she felt elated rather than violated. She’d had a good time with Mercy Alexander, and it certainly wasn’t because of her ideas.