The Blackbirds by Eric Jerome Dickey Page B

feet.”
    Ericka asked, “Since we’re doing girl confessions, and I know my husband did at least one while we were married, which one of you sneaky freaks has actually done a three-way?”
    No hands went up; they looked at each other, wondering, waiting, and anticipating.
    Kwanzaa asked, “Okay, who has had a one-off?”
    Ericka groaned.
    Destiny said, “No, you did not have a one-off. You’re my saint. You were a preacher’s wife. You used to be my babysitter. I look up to you. Please, please, please, don’t let me down.”
    Ericka groaned again. “I had a moment and gave a stranger five seconds of summer.”
    â€œWhen you were married?”
    â€œNah. Before I married. I was out of the country. Met an exotic man.”
    Kwanzaa, Indigo, and Destiny harassed Ericka until she started to talk.
    Ericka told them the one-off had happened when she had gone to Buenos Aires when she was twenty-one, fresh out of university, right before she had met her ex-husband. She arrived there on a Monday, had eaten a steak empanada and gone to an Internet café in the affluent section of the city named Recoleta, an area that was as busy as Times Square, with miles of shopping. She was having trouble with the keyboards because they were configured for Spanish and South America. This local guy had come to help her, an Argentinian who was about twenty, a few inches taller than her, hazel eyes, soccer player legs, and Channing Tatum’s abs. They walked through the Recoleta cemetery, saw Eva Perón’s tomb, had lunch at McDonald’s, browsed a bookstore, went to the movie theater, went to Floralis Genérica, then kept strolling down Libertador Avenue, passing embassies, and sight-seeing in the cultural center of the city.
    Kwanzaa said, “Will you just get to the good part?”
    Indigo said, “Let her tell her story.”
    Ericka told her girls that they ended up near the zoo, but didn’t goinside. Ericka said that by then the jet lag had kicked in, so she told her new friend that she was tired, did that more with body language than actual words, and he escorted her back to her hotel. He held her hand the entire way. He was attracted to her, and she was attracted to him. It was strange being attracted to a stranger, a man she knew nothing about. She had never been with a non-American. The mystery was the attraction. She had never been with a man who wasn’t categorically black. She was in a place she couldn’t be judged. Back at her hotel room, they made out, then showered together. He went down on her, and she regretted all the years she had spent learning everything but Spanish as a second language. He didn’t speak much English. And the middle school and high school Spanish she had learned sounded nothing like the Spanish he spoke. But they met in the middle and worked it out.
    Ericka said, “Don’t judge me. I was barely twenty-one. I was supposed to explore life and love. We spend most of our lives trying to figure out who we want to be when we grow up.”
    Indigo said, “Same day you met him you had a one-off?”
    â€œTwo hours nonstop, then a short layover, followed by another hour flight.”
    Destiny said, “That was slutty.”
    â€œGood and slutty. He started with the tongue, and ended with the tongue. His tongue wrote the sweetest essay, was as detailed as a dissertation.”
    Kwanzaa asked, “Why didn’t you bring your
se habla español
marathon man back to California? I bet you and him could’ve made some real pretty babies.
Porteños
are mad sexy.”
    â€œIt was what it was, nothing more. It was amazing. Was being wild and carefree.”
    Destiny asked, “You used condoms?”
    â€œOf course. And was still nervous and had myself tested when I made it back home. I had wanted to go to a clinic there, but I was too ashamed to be an American getting tested for STDs.”
    Indigo