Commodities

She’s telling that story we agreed to not tell anyone about, the one from two years ago, about that club on the other side of town that everyone tries to get into now. Everyone is listening, clutching imaginary pearls, clutching real glasses filled with basic cocktails, and clutching her every word. She has always been a good storyteller, better than me even though I’m the one in the creative writing program. I clear my throat, lean back into the emerald sofa of the cocktail lounge.

“Two weekends after opening night, and we heard nobody showed up over there, so—”

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” the one in the big, black boots says. “Nobody showed up on opening night, so they were doing another opening night.”

These are her friends, not mine. We’ve come to celebrate her birthday so I don’t snap at her, scold her for breaking concord, for sharing shameful realizations that should be buried. I am thinking how it has rained again today, a thunderstorm that shook my house a little. After three years in the States, I am still not used to the wooden houses, how they sway to the strong Florida winds, tremble to the booming thunder up here. Because of today’s storm, the night sky is gray in that way which reminds me of the Ghanaian wet season; softer thunder and whips of lightning, flooded drains, impatient traffic. I am in an even grayer sweatshirt, and when I sink further into the chair, I listen to the soft chatter, the even softer pop music in the background. Everything is emerald and dark. A woman rubs her lover’s back at the bar counter behind us. Someone giggles at the fountain that flickers an orange light on and off. I’m the only one with my complexion in here.

“Yeah, I think it made it into The Alligator,” the one that has shaved the sides of her blonde hair says.

They take a detour into the fall of the local newspaper. Black Boots says, “Journalism is dead. It died even faster in the littler cities.”

Side Shave says, “Agreed. I believe it died when Obama’s tan suit made the news.”

“No, no, I believe it’s when influencers took over the news. Both ways,” the one with the bleached, curly hair says. She has finished five drinks already, will be the first to begin stumbling and slurring I think.

Black Boots says, “But influencers don’t write for The Alligator.”

Bleached Curls agrees. “True. That’s just the price of being in a boring, little city.”

They talk some more about journalism, but she doesn’t join in, tapping her forefoot under the short table, waiting for her moment again. I’m hoping this detour will lead to new conversation, but I’m already remembering it had rained that night. Not like tonight when a zephyr floats across the city, chilling the stale May air, rousing goosebumps on those like me who chill easily.

That night, the rain had roused the earth’s trapped heat. The new club was trying again, hopeful to become a hot commodity in the middle of northern Florida, find its place amongst the underaged students before it locked them out when older, richer patrons would come in.

“Lucky,” my friend told me, “We’re twenty-three.” Waved her ID at me.

She was celebrating something again—losing five pounds, not that it meant much to me. They liked their women thicker, more voluptuous, fleshier in Ghana. I’d never shaved my limbs. She was skinnier than I was, bald everywhere I could see. She always argued she did it for herself. I disagreed. We agreed to disagree for the sake of our friendship. I said, “Different cultures, but we’ll make it work.”

So that night of the club’s reopening, I’d gone with her, to that other side of town where students lived in apartments instead of hostels and university complexes. Me, in a little black dress, hoping it would merge with my dark skin and make me invisible. She, in a sparkling brown top and leather shorts. She’s telling the story again. No one—neither Black Boots nor Side Shave, not Bleached Curls—has appropriately used the detour, maximized the segue.

“The first red flag should’ve been when her car wouldn’t start,” she says.

They all look at me and I smile politely, nibble on the edible paper butterfly on my drink, then say, “Yup.”

“We’re determined. It’s free entry and drinks for ladies. We’re broke graduate students, not a chance in hell we’re missing that.”

I want to correct her, say that she was the determined one. Not me. That I said, “I have a seminar paper to start, and I have assignments to grade.” But I sit and listen, don’t interrupt her.

“So we order an Uber, scary looking guy by the way. He has all these tattoos, remember?” She looks at me.

“Yeah,” I say, but I laugh because she is right. “I think there was a bright lamp we drove under at some point, and swear, there was a swastika on his forearm.”

Everybody gasps and Bleached Curls says, “No way.”

“That should have been the second red flag,” my friend says.

A waitress asks if we want our glasses refilled, reminds us of the spring specials, their more expensive offerings. Everyone orders something new, but I want more of my edible butterfly drink. The waitress leaves.

“We get to the club, okay? There’s a long queue there. I’m talking as long as the Barnes & Noble opening queue near the Trader Joe’s, okay?”

“Wow,” Side Shave says.

She says, “Exactly! But there’s a lot of guys in that line, so we move up quick. We think this club’s brought back the age of gentlemen. Half expected them to start speaking in British accents.”

Black Boots and Bleached Curls laugh. I tickle the stem of my glass. Side Shave shakes her head.

“Guess what?” my friend says, “When we’re inside, it’s too dark. Flaming red lights, green lights, blue lights, but too fast to see much. We head to the bar, down a couple of shots. And there’s so many men joining us over there, yelling conversations to us over the loud music, trying to take us home with them. We get tired, so we want to head out. I say, ‘I know we’re cute, but this is a little much, right?’ Then at the door, the lights shine a little longer and we realize: there were only about seven of us girls in that sea of men the whole time!”

In that same instant, as we attempt to ruminate over her story—ours, if I wish to claim it, and rightfully so—a man, about 32, slips into the only empty chair around our short table, smiles widely with crooked front teeth. “Hey, ladies,” he says. His voice is an unnatural pitch, a false baritone to coerce himself into feeling more manly. We stare into his face. “How are you doing tonight?”

“No,” my friend says.

The man blinks, flinches without realizing it. I hope he’ll leave. He opens his mouth to say something new instead, maybe be aggrieved at his rejection.

Bleached Curls says, “No.”

Side Shave shakes her head again. I stare into the man’s plaid button-down shirt, clutch the stem of my glass. I’m thinking of Ghana again, of that story my grandmother’s old maid told me, the one about the man with the scar on his cheek. She said he rode a bicycle, would stop a foot ahead every time she was to run an errand—buy a Maggi cube from the neighborhood grocery, pick mangoes from the compound house in the next neighborhood, any errand at all. Then he’d reach into his pants, and tug and tug, looking into her face the whole time. My grandmother told her to just walk faster.

The man looks into my face, scoffs, mutters something about bitches under his breath. He walks into the back of the cocktail lounge, disappears into the men’s bathroom. We sit in silence for seconds, minutes, letting everything sink in—the story, the man, our own private thoughts. I’m thinking of the disgust in his face when he looked at me, realizing he’s left behind a faint scent of burnt cigarette and sandalwood. A sheen of tears is blurring my sight.

Then Bleached Curls bursts into a laughter. Side Shave joins, Black Boots too. They laugh, individual laughs that merge into one cacophony of mirth and fury. They get it, so they laugh, and me and her, we just look at each other. Likely different understandings, but we’ll make it work. And the pop music goes on and on, softly, something about hot girls in Los Angeles. But we’re not in Los Angeles, just a little city in Florida where journalism died.