All the Trouble You Need: A Novel - Hardcover

Tervalon, Jervey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743422384 ISBN 13: 9780743422383

Publisher: Atria, 2002

Synopsis

Torn by increasing feelings of dislocation from his heritage and the world around him, a young African American professor embarks on an affair with one of his students, until another student challenges him to reassess his life and values.

About this title

About the Author

Jervey Tervalon's acclaimed debut novel, Understand This, won the 1994 New Voices Award from the Quality Paperback Book Club. His second critically acclaimed novel, Dead Above Ground, is available from Pocket Books. Also an award-winning poet, screenwriter, and dramatist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Details magazine, and other publications. Born in New Orleans, he lives in Altadena, California, with his wife and two daughters, and currently is the Remsen Bird Writer-in-Residence at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

City lights shot toward Jordan as he slammed on the brakes. He hit oil or water or something and slid out of the turn at the top of that steep hill on Carrillo doing fifty at least. Burning rubber and fishtailing, the back of the Triumph started coming around and for an ugly second he was sure he was dead, that the TR-6 would smack up against a curb, flip, and go bouncing down the hillside and explode like in some silly-assed action movie.

He got his wits about him, yanking his foot off the brake and steering out of the spin. The Triumph sputtered to the side of the road.

He sat there, engine idling, getting his head clear. Santa Barbara twinkled like colored glass below him.

It was a sign. He needed to turn around, go back home to bed. No good would come of it, but he put the car into gear and continued on.

Jordan arrived, but he lingered behind the steering wheel, straining to see if he had the right house. Sometimes he parked a block away because all of the houses on Carrillo had high hedges or walls to ensure their privacy, but it also made finding the right address difficult, and when he did find the house it unnerved him to head down steep, narrow steps to the ornate wooden door that looked too much like the entrance to a tomb. Something seemed diabolical about that door and the Spanish-style house in general; it played on his secret fear that Mary might eventually get so mad at him she'd slip some arsenic in the wine, or a knife in the ribs.

Theirs wasn't a wholesome relationship; Jordan regretted it for many reasons, but even more so now that he was interested in Trisha. He rang the bell half hoping Mary had given up on him and had gone to sleep. He turned to leave.

Too late -- he heard quick steps; the door opened and there was Mary smirking at him in a tight black slip that revealed her ample cleavage to its best advantage; but it wasn't her breasts he paid attention to, it was that smirk. Mary wasn't a bad-looking woman -- she had a nice shape and a pretty enough face -- but that damn smirk drove him nuts.

"Why are you so late?"

"I'm late?"

"Two hours late!"

"Two hours? How do you figure?"

"Ten, that's when you said you'd be here."

"You want me to leave?"

She paused to consider his offer, fingers twisting her thick brown hair as she thought it over.

"Yeah, go home. I don't need the aggravation."

"Neither do I," Jordan said, turning to head back up the stairs, but before his foot touched the first step Mary jerked him into the house.

"You asshole! You're staying. I didn't wait all this time for you to walk out!"

She pushed Jordan ahead of her through the dark hallway, almost causing him to fall flat on his face.

"Serves you right," she muttered from behind him.

She rented a room on the ocean side, from the weird-ass owner. Jordan had only seen him a few times but that was enough. So blond he looked bleached of color, dressed like a shaman, leading a workshop of loser New Agers, burning incense, chanting endlessly and purifying themselves by night swims in the frigid ocean water, all of that going on below the bluffs while he and Mary were angrily screwing their brains out.

Mary pushed him once more into her bedroom and onto her big bed.

"Get undressed!" she said.

"I'm leaving my shoes on," he said, to piss her off.

"Not on my bed," she said, and slid on top of him before he could unbuckle his pants.

"So what's it gonna be, a dry hump?" she asked.

That did it. Whatever self-consciousness he felt with her was gone. She got his fly open and before he could rip open a condom she tossed it aside and worked him in.

"I'm back on the pill; you don't need that."

He didn't feel right barebacking, but he gave in without much of a fight.

"Put your hands on my ass!"

"No, your tits," he said.

He held her breasts, but she pulled his hands off and forced them to her cheeks.

"Grab my ass!"

He did, hard; wanting to squeeze her cheeks until she stopped with the smirk.

"Oh, yeah! That's the trick!" she shouted.

He wasn't giving in.

She couldn't make him come. Not this sex-crazed white girl. She didn't have the power.

"Do it!" she shouted.

He came so hard it hurt. As fast as he came he wanted to go, go so fast she wouldn't notice he was gone until she heard the roar of the Triumph burning out.

She rolled off him, sighing and rubbing herself.

"Man, you pounded me. Guess you couldn't find someone to give it to, horny bastard."

"Yeah," he said, feeling that if she said another word he'd jump right out of his skin.

"You're not going to start with that post-fucking depression. That I don't understand. Why can't you enjoy yourself without making everything such an issue? It's just sex."

"I'm not depressed."

Suddenly modest she pulled the sheet over her breasts and propped herself up with a pillow and stared at him.

"Why are you covering your eyes like you're facing a firing squad?"

"I'm thinking."

"You better not be thinking about leaving. You leave, that's the last time you leave. You don't fuck and leave."

"That's not what I'm thinking."

"What are you thinking?"

She was right. He wanted to leave more than anything he had ever wanted in his life.

"Mary, I got to go. I have to prepare for my class tomorrow."

She began to cry.

"I'm not going to argue. I'm not going to get mad at you. But you know you can throw everything we have away if you walk out on me."

God, he wanted to go.

"Why don't you face it? You're scared to admit we have a relationship. So, you run."

"What are you talking about?"

"You don't want to admit you have feelings for me."

"I admit that. I have feelings for you."

"But you're not serious."

"I can't be serious. I explained that."

"What, that you can't be serious about a white girl?"

He couldn't bring himself to respond. Instead he pulled the pillow over his head and unexpectedly started to drift off.

He woke later that night feeling her ass pressed against his crotch, grinding slowly, so slowly he suspected she might be sleeping and the grind was a horny reflex. He twisted a bit until he was inside of her. He did her slowly, hoping, fantasizing that she'd sleep through it and he wouldn't have to listen to her rant about their relationship. The women he had the best sex with were the ones he wanted to run the fastest from. He was doing her comfortably and effortlessly, rapturous without the effort. No weight of responsibility, just the pleasure of luxurious carnality, but at the peak of the pleasure curve he thought of Trisha and her virginity; twenty-one and still a virgin.

How did that happen?

Christian family? The isolation of being a black girl in a very white world? The idea of her having that kind of restraint appealed to him, not because she was fresh or he'd be the first. It was that he imagined she had to be more uncomfortable about her sexuality than he was self-conscious about his own. They'd be perfect together. It had to be better than sleeping with people who make your stomach churn.

Fully awake, Mary slammed into him harder and harder, a piston of passion.

It was almost like magic; as soon as he came, the feeling of being trapped like a rat returned.

"Did you like that...?" she whispered, turning her head for him to kiss her.

"It was great. . . ."

"Every night. You can come over every night and have me all you want."

"That sounds great," he said, without conviction.

A long moment passed.

"Are you still seeing that sorority girl?"

Jordan had forgotten he had mentioned Trisha to her.

"I'm not seeing her the way you think."

"What...you're not fucking her?"

"She's a virgin."

"Oh, a challenge?"

"It's not like that," he said, regretting ever mentioning Trisha to Mary.

"You t

About this edition

• Publisher: Atria
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743422384
• ISBN 13: 9780743422383
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224