Betrayers

1


TAMARA


The tests came back negative.

He hadn’t given her AIDS or any other STD.

Her first reaction was relief, naturally, big relief. The way Vonda and Ben had talked about Lucas Zeller, Tamara had started picturing him as a walking germ factory capable of infecting the whole damn city. Scared, all right. More scared than she’d ever been in her life during that endless two-week wait for the test results.

When the relief wore off, she got mad all over again. At herself to begin with, for having unprotected sex with a virtual stranger. Only once out of the six times they’d got it on, but once was one too many. Stupid. As stupid as you could get in a city like San Francisco, where STDs were rampant, where thousands had suffered and died in the AIDS scourge.

No mystery about why she’d rolled over so quick and easy for somebody she hardly knew. Almost a year since Horace had deserted her, almost a year since she’d last gotten laid, and Lucas had seemed all right, intelligent, cool, nice quiet eyes, gentle way about him, and he hadn’t come on strong when they met at Vonda and Ben’s wedding reception or when he called her up the next week. She was the one who practically dragged him into her bed that first night. Lord, she’d been horny . . . but that was no excuse. She should’ve known better. She did know better. Fool!

Then she started thinking about the phone conversation she’d had with him, the day after Vonda told her he was part of one of those secret little fraternities of black men, most of them married, who got together now and then to drink, maybe smoke some weed, and have casual sex with one another. Closet bisexuals who refused to admit they had a gay side. If the AIDS scare hadn’t been enough to bust up her brief relationship with Lucas, him being on the down low would’ve done it. That and the phone conversation. Thinking about it made her even madder. At him again, this time.

The only phone number she had for him belonged to his creepy mother, Alisha . . . if she was his mother. And he hadn’t given it to her; she’d gotten it from the redial on her home phone, after he used it to check in with Mama the second night she slept with him. So she’d called up, mad and scared, and he’d been there, and she’d slammed into him, hard. Didn’t faze him a bit. He came back at her all cool and offhand and slick as grease.

“You shouldn’t jump to conclusions, Tamara. None of it’s true.”

“Oh, so you’re not on the down low.”

“Of course not. Even if I was, don’t you think I’d be very careful, take precautions?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know you, man.”

“Rest easy. I had myself tested not long ago, but not for that reason. I’m sexually active and mistakes happen. You ought to know that. You’re the one who was ready and eager to do it that once without a condom.”

“You wanted it as bad as I did.”

“Come on, now. Lighten up, quit worrying. Everything’s cool.”

“Yeah, sure. James swears you tried to get him into a switch-hitters’ club.”

“Wrong. A sports fan club, that’s all.”

“He says different. He says you came on to him.”

“He’s either mistaken or lying.”

“Why would he lie?”

“I don’t know. Grudge thing, maybe. He didn’t like it that I went to his sister’s wedding reception. Claimed he didn’t invite me, but that’s a lie, too.”

Vonda’s ex-gangbanger brother James was a lot of things, including a racist, but he wasn’t a liar. And the only grudges he’d ever held were against other gangbangers and white folks.

“I don’t believe you, Lucas,” Tamara said.

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah, too bad for both of us if my test comes back positive.”

“It won’t.”

“It better not. Or I’ll damn quick report you to the Department of Health.”

“So I guess this means you don’t want to see me anymore.” Real casual, as if he’d said it through a yawn.

“You better believe it. Sex was all we had, and no way I let you dip your dumbstick in me again.”

His creepy mother was listening. Tamara heard Mama say something in her deep, scratchy old voice but couldn’t make out the words.

“Oh, hell,” he said, “I know it. You were right as usual.”

Talking to Mama. Then, to Tamara, “How’d you get this number?”

“What? What do you care how I got it? I run a detective agency, remember?”

“Oh, I remember. My bad. I shouldn’t have taken the chance with you.”

“What the hell does that mean?”