A Gentleman's Agreement Read Free Page A

chicken, and another meat she couldn’t readily identify, tasted
more like a blend of sea salt and cardboard than any gumbo she’d ever eaten. “It’s
okay.” When his spoon slid across the table and into her bowl, the brazen move stunned
her speechless.
    “Let me give it a taste.”
He scooped up a spoonful of the slop and shoveled it into his mouth. “Mmm-mmm,
that shit is good. Your taste buds must not be working tonight.”
    As he helped himself to
another heaping mouthful, Eunice couldn’t decide if she was more shocked by the
fact he’d stuck his spoon into her bowl or that he’d actually enjoyed what was
in it. The more she thought about it, they equally appalled her.
    “I’m glad you like it.”
She pushed the bowl across to him. “Why don’t you finish it off?”
    “Damn,” he said. “I
spilled some on my jacket. I just had it cleaned, too.”
    Clindon lifted his
lapel and licked the spot in the same manner a kitten did to clean itself. She
gagged. Was this really happening? A quick glance to her right revealed she
wasn’t the only one displaced by the man’s actions. The only thing to bring her
a minute amount of comfort was the notion that no one in this grungy hole in
the wall knew her, or could ever remind her of this experience.
    “This is why I wear
dark colors to restaurants,” he said.
    The man resembled a
chocolate leprechaun in the clover green suit with shiny gold pinstripes. “Are
you a sloppy eater?” she asked with mock in her tone.
    “You damn right,” he
said with gratuitous pride.
    The leprechaun grinned
slyly, revealing a gold-capped front tooth with a cutout of a star in the
center. She cringed. What had her aunt been thinking? Eunice groaned to herself
again. Have I really become this desperate ? At thirty-four, shouldn’t
I have a husband, kids, a house with a white picket fence, a dog named Spud or
some other ridiculous doggie name? Why am I still sifting through the city’s
rejects?
    “I am a slop...py eater,” he said, wetting his plump lips, before reaching across the table and capturing
her hand.
    The unwelcomed intimacy
caused her to stiffen and her flesh to crawl.
    “I like to get all into
it.” He sucked at his bottom lip. “I slurp it like a cherry slushy.” He winked.
“I push it…” he added, then flicked his tongue like a rattlesnake.
    Eunice snatched her
hand away when it finally dawned on her what the leprechaun was implying. You
disgusting bastard . As if she would let his dry, cracked lips anywhere near
her pu—”
    “Push it real good,” he
continued. He leaned in as if to whisper a secret, but started to sing instead.
“I’ll lick you up; I’ll lick you down...” He apparently forgot the next verse
of the Marvin Sease song and paused briefly. “I’ll be your candy licker, girl.”
    The only thing more
atrocious than the smell of the chitterlings wafting from a nearby table was
the man’s breath, which was comparable to the smell of the pig intestines.
    “I used to sing in an
R&B group. Can’t you tell? I almost opened for R. Kelly.”
    She was sure she would
regret asking. “Almost?”
    “ One of my kids
got sick, so I had to fly back home.”
    “One of your kids...? How
many do you have exactly?”
    “Eight...nine. Nah,
eight. I don’t think one is mine, but I ain’t got the DNA results back yet. He
ain’t got my forehead. All my kids got this forehead. He brushed his hand
across his receding hairline.
    Eunice sat erect in her
chair. “Eight—?” She sucked in a deep breath, the tainted air she captured
strangling her. She coughed ferociously. This date was going to be the death of
her.
    Concern pinched
Clindon’s expression. “Here. Drink this,” he said, pushing her glass to her.
    Eunice took a sip of
the pungent liquid that had been peddled as “the best sweet tea in the state.”
It was an insult to quality sweet tea everywhere. “Eight kids,” she said more
to herself. “So, you’ve been married