Page 37

Kia watched Sullivan take the call, hating Miss Brenda for the interruption. Sullivan tapped her lips nervously as she spoke.

“That’s not a little problem. No, it’s—yes, that’s—” Finally she interrupted the speaker. “If it keeps raining, you’re going to have leaks in every corner of the restaurant. I’m coming over.” She hung up the phone. “I’m so sorry. I have to go.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Miss Brenda, you remember my grandfather’s friend, owns the Biscuit Box, and her green roof is flooding again.”

“What are you going to do?” Kia tried not to sound sullen.

Sullivan was already getting up. “Bail her out. Literally.”

For the first time in Kia’s life, she was not in favor of supporting a small, Black-owned business.

“I’m so sorry, Kia. This”—Sullivan gestured to the gallery—“was the best date anyone’s taken me on.”

Sullivan had referred to their afternoon like a real date . There were no implied quotation marks around the word. And Sullivan had just asked her to have sex. Had Sullivan asked her if she wanted to have sex? God, Kia wished she were better at this stuff.

“Miss Brenda had her nephew install it,” Sullivan said, gathering her coat from the floor. “Jersey is a sweet kid who watched a lot of YouTube videos. But you need horticulture, engineering, ecology. You can’t get that just by watching YouTube. Fuck. Miss Brenda should have hired a professional.”

Yes. Miss Brenda should have. Kia had wanted Alice Sullivan since she was twenty. Twenty. She couldn’t even drink the first time she’d fantasized about Sullivan. And they’d had a moment, and now Sullivan was fumbling with her phone.

“I’m so sorry. I have to go. These roofs. If it gets to the point it’s at now, it can collapse. Shit. Miss Brenda could lose everything. I’ve got to get up on the roof and pull oak tree sprouts out of a clogged drain.”

What if pulling oak trees out of drains cooled Sullivan’s ardor? What if she decided sleeping with Kia would be too complicated? What if she came back from Miss Brenda’s roof and pretended that they hadn’t had a moment?

“I’m coming with you.” Kia began packing up the picnic stuff.

“It’s going to be a mess up there. You are too pretty and too glittery for drain cleanup.”

“I am offended, Chef Sullivan.” Kia put her hands on her hips.

“Do you know how many times I emptied Old Girl’s septic tank before I could afford an incinerating toilet?

I bailed water out of the Diva in Florida because everyone said, The hurricane isn’t going to hit inland .

If I’m going to bail that much crap, I want to get credit for bailing crap. ”

Sullivan stopped her light-speed departure, her face hovering on the edge of impressed.

“You’re on, Jackson.”

“And by the way,” Kia said as they headed out, “I am too pretty for bailing crap.”

Back at the house, Sullivan changed and grabbed tools. Kia donned green striped overalls and colorful rain gear. Bad weather was no reason to wear industrial navy. Outside, Sullivan headed for her sedan.

“Sully,” Kia called out. “This is not a sedan situation. It’s time for an all-American”—Kia dropped her voice to a masculine drawl—“truck.”

“You’re cute, Jackson,” Sullivan said, and she headed to the truck.

“Tell me more about Miss Brenda,” Kia asked as Sullivan pointed directions.

“You remember the elegant Black woman with my family at graduation? That was Miss Brenda. She was my grandfather’s younger friend . They always helped each other with their restaurants.”

“So there’s a history of seducing younger women?” Kia quipped. She glanced at Sullivan to see how the comment landed. Hopefully Kia hadn’t misread their conversation in the museum.

Sullivan looked like she was going to say something. It came out, “Turn left at the light,” but she was fighting a smile.

Kia turned back to the rain splashing off the windshield.

A few minutes later, they arrived at a bustling storefront on an oak-lined street.

Colorful flower boxes adorned the windows.

The words BISCUIT BOX were painted in a whimsical font on the door.

A crowd of people stood on the sidewalk watching water pour off the roof of the two-story building and inappropriately, Kia thought, eating biscuits.

“This place looks popular,” Kia observed.

“Miss Brenda is an amazing baker. You should try her signature sugar-stuffed sweet potato biscuit; it’s to die for. And don’t worry. She’ll feed you more than you can possibly eat.”

“You eat Miss Brenda’s sugar-stuffed biscuit, and you mock the tursnicken?”

Kia parked in front. An older woman in a flowered apron burst out of the front door, hugging Sullivan.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said in a Virginia accent.

She kissed Sullivan on both cheeks. “And this must be your bride. You must tell me all about yourself, darling. I am so happy that Little Sully finally found a decent woman. I like her already. Look at you all ready to work in those pretty overalls.”

“Little Sully,” Kia whispered as Miss Brenda led them to a fire escape that went to the roof.

“Call me Little Sully, and I will never speak to you again,” Sullivan said.

“Little Sully.” Kia put her arm around Sullivan’s waist.

Sullivan shot her a murderous glance, which softened immediately. She paused just long enough to kiss Kia on the forehead.

“I’m calling your father and getting embarrassing baby pictures.”

The marriage was fake, but teasing each other in the rain and the smell of biscuits… that was real. You learned that when you moved every week. Special moments didn’t last, but that didn’t mean they weren’t real.

The next real moment included climbing a fire escape under a waterfall of slime.

Ahead of her, Sullivan leaned back to avoid the water, but there was only one way to make the turn on the fire escape, and that was through water pouring off the roof. Sullivan pulled up her hood. She glanced back at Kia.

“You still in?”

This was the universe teaching Kia a lesson about showing off to impress hot women.

“Absolutely,” Kia called over the sound of rain and slime falling.

Sullivan closed her eyes, then stepped through the sheet of water.

“Fuck me!”

Kia couldn’t help but laugh.

“That water is like thirty-two point one degrees,” Sullivan screeched, her voice going high into the treble range.

Kia stepped through. If you were going to show off, you had to go all the way.

“It’s not that bad.” A string of urban seaweed slipped down her neck toward her collar, and she screamed and flailed every muscle in her body to get it off.

Now it was Sullivan laughing.

“You got another one.” She picked a bit of greenery out of Kia’s hair.

The building created a pocket space out of view of the crowd of onlookers eating biscuits below.

Sullivan put her hand on the back of Kia’s neck. Kia jumped.

“Do I have more slime on me?”

“No. I was just thinking you looked good in rain gear.”

No amount of rain gear could have kept them dry. By the time they reached the roof, they were soaked. They climbed over the retaining wall that surrounded the roof, keeping them from slipping off and also holding four or five inches of water.

Sullivan took a tentative step. “Erosion and uplift. It’s bad.” She reached into the water and pulled out a handful of juicy-looking weeds in one hand and dark green leaves in the other. “See?”

“Yes and also no. What is it?”

“Sedum that you want. And oak tree saplings, which you don’t.” Sullivan nudged something with her foot.

Under the slime, a canvas hose lay like a bloated boa constrictor after swallowing an alligator… or a small woman with a big Afro.

“So are green roofs ever a good idea?” Kia asked.

Sullivan tipped her face skyward, eyes closed to the pelting rain. Kia couldn’t tell if Sullivan was enjoying the rain or repenting ever having praised the green roof concept. But when Sullivan looked at Kia again, she was smiling.

“Right now, they are a terrible, terrible idea.” She shook her head slowly, looking bemused despite the rain.

“In general, they can be great. They save energy, reduce temperatures in the city, manage water runoff. If every building that could have a green roof did, we wouldn’t get urban heat islands.

” Sullivan rattled off more facts, then stopped herself.

“Sorry, you didn’t want to know all that. ”

True, Kia had not planned on a lecture about green roofs in the pouring rain, but now that she knew, one question burned in her mind.

“If they’re so good, why are there so few of them?”

Kia guessed the answer before Sullivan spoke.

“They cost more.” Sullivan shrugged. “And if you fuck them up, you get this.” She gestured to the lake of sludge. “Shall we get to work?”

Troweling and scraping and throwing baby oak trees over the side of the building with nothing to shield them from the rain and the wind should have made her hate Sullivan, her own pride, roofs, plants, and life, but a half hour in, they were laughing so hard they were crying.

“You know that painting of George Washington crossing the Potomac… Delaware? That’s me.” Sullivan struck a pose, her chin held high and her hands on her hips.

“You look very—” Sexy. Adorable. Wonderful. Silly. “Washingtonian.”

Sullivan pulled up some stringy vegetation. “Why can you not live in a garden?” she asked the plant. “In the river? But nooo, you have to get up on the roof, because you’re sooo special.”

Sullivan talked to most of the greenery, the conversation getting more and more irate and more and more for Kia’s entertainment.

Every time Sullivan pushed her hair out of her eyes, she smeared mud on her face.

When Kia tried to wipe it off, she made it infinitely worse.

And everything was funny. A heavier gust of wind.

A particularly slimy root ball. The crowd eating biscuits below.

Finally, Sullivan stood up, shivering and triumphant.

“The water’s going down!”

They’d loosened the vital root ball. Suddenly the water was draining like a bathtub. They heard someone below yelp.

“Serves them right for eating biscuits down there,” Kia said. She slogged through the diminishing water and threw her arms around Sullivan.

Sullivan hugged her back and tried to kiss her, but all she did was get mud in their mouths, and it was almost as good as a mud-free kiss because they were in it together.

“Is there one part of you that’s not covered in mud?” Sullivan said, laughing.

“There is,” Kia said.

Sullivan opened her mouth and then shut it.

“Look who’s blushing now,” Kia said, although to be fair, it was hard to tell if Sullivan was blushing or just flushed from the cold.

Even with the rain pounding and urban seaweed splashing around them, Kia felt warm all the way through.

“Let’s get you home, Ms. Jackson. I owe you a hot shower.” Sullivan trailed her fingers down the front of Kia’s raincoat. “And a whole lot more.”