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Sunday, February 9, 2025
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Port Authority

Fingering my bracelet like worry beads, I wondered what I would do if we were alone, if we’d have sex, but no, we can’t. Not now. It would be hard not to though. If he wanted to. He’d been good that way. Better than Tom. Better looking. Sexy. I closed my eyes, breathing to fill up a withering under my breastbone. Was I feeling future guilt? But no, nothing would happen except a laugh or two, a quick reunion between two friends.

***

“Why do you need to go?” Tom wasn’t happy.

“It would be rude not to. He’s here from the other side of the world fergodsake. His family hosted me and my brother in Kano. Niiigeeeria.” I waved my arm over my head. It was good manners to rendezvous with an overseas acquaintance. 

“Invite him here.” 

“He’s only in New York for a day or two.” 

“But…” 

“And he needs to stay in the city to do business with his father.”

My blaze of righteousness backed Tom off. 

The thirty miles to the city took forever. I wished Tom had shown some backbone. Relieved and pissed off at the same time, I hung onto anger. It might be useful later: you could’ve stopped me….if you’d only been… I would’ve stayed….

I tried to read but stared out the dirt-flecked window at the carved green of Rockland County. The hills, the trees, looked sedate compared to the generous foliage in West Africa. I’d fussed with my appearance: brushed my hair into an electric field and picked a hand-dyed tunic I’d brought back from Nigeria. I fastened the bracelet we bought together in Kano around my wrist. Maybe he’d recognize its bright beads.

I walked from Port Authority, checked street signs from my scrawled directions—ears blasted from honking and radios, a siren, nose filled with exhaust—like being on the streets of Ibadan. I pictured characters in a romantic movie scene running towards each other—wait, he isn’t my boyfriend, not now. And, really, had he been? We reveled in a two-week fling, the back seat of his Mercedes our only privacy. His house was a multigenerational home, where I slept on a comfortable pallet lined up with female family members. Each night, I stepped around their sleeping bodies in the dark.

Here in New York, Sami would be out of context, like I’d be for him. Would he be wearing his flip-flops, shirt untucked, faded jeans? His dark hair messy. I couldn’t imagine business wear. 

Staring up at the hotel’s façade, I paused. I’d expected something grand. I pushed open the front door and recalled the delight of my eight-year-old self. Even after eleven years of traveling to and from Dad’s overseas posts, I wasn’t blasé about staying at a hotel or eating in a restaurant.

A clerk appeared. In a few moments, Sami was at my side. He looked exactly the same; I was back in Nigeria getting off the bus and into his Mercedes. 

“God, it’s good to see you.” My cheeks big with a smile.

“Yeah.” He pulled me to his side. He grinned. “How are you? You look good. Let’s walk around.”

“Great.” 

We turned towards the front door when a bell dinged, and his father walked off the elevator.

He’s still here? I thought he’d be out doing business. 

Sami’s father’s look shrank me, his eyes dismissive. Did he think I was a threat to his eldest son? That Sami would run away with me, or bring me back to marry? I hadn’t had much contact with him when I’d stayed at their house. 

I said, “Nice to see you.” 

“Dad,” Sami said when his father ignored me.

He gave Sami an address. “Meet me at four.”  His disapproval lingered.

For a moment, I felt chastened. 

Screw him

We bought a coffee. We bumped shoulders and chattered. Sami touched my back.

I touched his arm. “Let’s go back. Can we?”  

He turned right around.

Two queen beds and a dresser, a chair and desk, a door opened into a bathroom.

His bed was luxurious compared to the back seat of a car but the sex was over too quickly. Maybe he was a little nervous. What if his father came back? Clothes pulled back on, we leaned against the headboard; Sami handed me a cigarette. 

I could see myself in many places doing many things but living in northern Nigeria in a communal Muslim household defied my imagination. Not that he’d asked. 

“Would you move away from your family, the business?” I asked, curious. 

“I might.” 

I didn’t think so.

He continued. “I still have things to learn.”

“Maybe you could work out of New York?”  

For a minute, I let myself hope. If he were older, wealthier on his own and independent, would I step through that door?

“I don’t know.”

I didn’t know either. “What’s your father buying, anyway?”

“Selling. Diamonds.”

Sami lit another cigarette. The tang of the fuel from his lighter. It reminded me of the smell of gasoline when my mother filled up the car at the pump on the farm. My grandparents’ dairy farm was only two hundred miles from here, but it seemed as far away as Nigeria and even farther from the girl I’d been.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going.” I lifted my hand from his thigh, the bracelet clicking, Why had I thought he’d notice?  

Sami walked me downstairs and into the shock of daylight and traffic. I’d snatched a reminder of a life I doubted I’d have again; a treat to savor.

“I’m surprised you came to see me when you’re getting married.” 

I wished I hadn’t told him. “Not for a while.” As if sixty days before the wedding changed anything. “I wanted to see you. I wasn’t sure we would, you know, I’m glad though.” 

“Yeah, me too.”

I missed the bus; an hour wait outside the pit of Port Authority. My stomach gurgled. I bought a hot dog from a Sabrett cart and loaded it with ketchup, mustard, sauerkraut; the thing so buried with condiments I couldn’t taste it. I threw it away unfinished, eyes stinging. It’s only a stupid hot dog. But something shifted. A father’s judgment? Fuck it. 

Walking away from the trash bin, I felt a tinge of remorse. What else had I thrown away?

On the trip home, I chewed gum until my jaw ached, gave myself a headache. I was late. Tom would be even more pissed off. He wouldn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to think.  

Crossing into the territory of cheating hadn’t been hard, and I didn’t feel too bad except for the grind of placating Tom when I got off the bus. He’d believe me, but he’d wonder. 

The glue of sex wasn’t there, but maybe matrimony would fit like magic. Could there be a picket fence in my future? A garden with perennials, a hammock in the shade. Somebody’s American dream.

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***

Silence is not an option

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Jill Johnson
Jill Johnson
Jill Frances Johnson grew up overseas in Jordan, Nepal, and Nigeria. These formative years were leavened with American culture from her Quaker family’s roots in South Jersey farm country. She earned her MFA after graduating from Smith College in the Ada Comstock Scholars Program for nontraditional students. Her work can be found in Under the Gum Tree, Clockhouse, and Solstice, where she is the Associate Nonfiction Editor. Her current project, Waterskiing in Kashmir, is a memoir about expat life and crossing boundaries.
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