Randall Hollis was a strikingly good-looking man, and most folks swore it was his downfall. His skin was a rich coffee-brown, and he had a squarish chin edged by high cheekbones, a gift from his Ethiopian grandmother. His lips were full, sensual, and curled as easily with arrogance as pleasure, depending on to whom he was talking. He was built like a quarterback, with broad shoulders, and a tight belly that tensed or softened depending on where it was touched. His hair had been through various styles in the last few years: a fluffy Afro and wild dreadlocks in the eighties, a bad-boy baldy in the nineties, but had recently settled into a close-cropped, conservative cut that suited him well. He had a Duke Ellington elegance brushed with a rakish charm, and Medora Jackson knew she would be in love with him until the day she died.

It was the morning of her thirty-fifth birthday, and they had just made love for the second time that day. She gazed at him for what she promised herself would be the last time, and whispered, "It's time for us to let this thing go."

Time for me to let it go. Me! Me! Me! she said to herself. She kicked off the forest-green sheets wondering if the color was at fault (strong colors affected her physically) or if she was having a premature hot flash.

"Well?" She scowled at him.

"Well, what?" His face was blank.

"We've been doing this since we were in our twenties, and it's time to stop."

"Teens," Randall corrected her, as he reached for the pitcher of mimosas standing on the night table that he'd mixed earlier that morning, poured some into a flute, and gulped it down, while keeping his eyes on Medora. "You were eighteen. I was nineteen. How could you forget something like that?"

"Nineteen, twenty—however long, it's too goddamn long. For both of us," she added, although she was talking about herself. "I'm thirty-five years old, Randall. Thirty-five!" Her voice rose dangerously close to a wail.

"And more beautiful with each year," Randall said in a fawning voice that made Medora roll her eyes and pretend to gag, but then she turned serious again.

"You'd keep this going on forever, wouldn't you? Coming up here, sleeping in my bed, eating my food—"

"Eating your food? What about Jezebel's last night?"

"You know what I'm talking about. There's nothing between us,except sex and my work. Nothing. And not even sex half the time." She stood up as if preparing to leave, then slumped back down on the edge of the bed. "We're not going anywhere with this."

"We're always going to be a part of each other's life. Why don't you just accept it for what it is?" Randall's expression was solemn.

"And what the hell is it?"

"It is what the hell it is!" He smiled, not so differently, Medora realized, from that first time he'd charmed her, at her cousin's graduation party, kissing her with an awkward passion that still made her stomach quiver when she thought about it. But that was a long time ago, and she was thirty-five now and sick of the way her life was going. The Randall Hollis era was over.

"So you're kicking me out?" His smile broke into a grin that was at the same time mischievous and seductive.

If I were my aunt Tillie, Medora thought, I would smack that grin right off this man's face. But she wasn't her tough aunt Tillie. She was her dear, dead mama, who had put up with mess from her charming, philandering husband until she died at fifty of a broken heart.

"Yes," Medora said, as the image of her weeping mother crossed her mind. "Yes, Randall. I'm kicking you out!" She narrowed her eyes to show she meant business.

"You need some more champagne. It's a shame to mix Dom with orange juice, so let's drink it straight. I'll make us an omelette as soon as—"

"Out!" Medora stood up and slipped on her green cotton robe.

Randall shook his head in mock seriousness. "Seduced and abandoned! You've got what you want from me and now you're kicking me to the curb. A used man, even my dignity gone!" He put his hands over his face and pretended to weep.

"Oh, stop acting like a fool!" Medora walked to the other side of the small bedroom and settled down in the rickety bentwood rocking chair across from him. "Look at you! Look at us! Most people our age have roots, kids, mortgages, and we're still fucking around."

Randall sat up in the bed, and the deep-green sheets draped themselves over the lower half of his nude body. Medora, who never failed to notice the beauty of colors played against each other, studiously looked away, gazing instead at the mahogany bureau on the opposite side of the room, the antique mirror hanging above it and finally at the red chenille rug on which she stood. She picked up a pillow that had fallen to the floor and tossed it into the bentwood rocker near the door. Randall sighed, his voice was serious when he spoke.

"I'm not acting like a fool, Medora. Well, maybe I am, but you're the only person in the world I can act like a fool around. Doesn't that say something?"

"Not very much, and frankly that surprises me. With all your women." The corner of Randall's lip twitched slightly, which made her smile. The women who floated in, out, and through his life were one of the unmentionables. Like his hairstyles of the past few decades, his women fell into categories: models and boho culture-freaks in the eighties, investment bankers in the nineties. Because he routinely confided everything about them to Medora -- usually after the relationship had soured -- she's always considered herself above the fray. Until now.

He squirmed. She smirked. "I thought we got over that a long time ago. You know how I feel about you, and, well...uh...you know, Medora, we have a special—"

"Oh shut up!" Medora said, and he did with a sigh. She stole a look to see if the sigh was real; it seemed authentic.

"But you've always known that our...relationship...was special." He sounded sad.

"Well, those are two euphemisms if I've ever heard them: 'our relationship' and 'special.' Let's face it, Randall. I see you three, maybe four times a month, we talk about my work, old times, then we make love and go our separate ways. I want something more from a man I have a relationship with." She emphasized each syllable of the word, but also thought: As if eligible men wanting a relationship with a 35-year-old mostly broke artist were making bee-lines to my door.

"We have more than just that." He looked genuinely hurt.

"Like what? Our annual birthday?" She waved her hand dramatically towards the bed where they had just made love. "I'd rather just go to the Diva Lounge and pick up some truck driver." To avoid looking at him, she poured herself what was left of the mimosas and without a glance in his direction began to rock in the bentwood rocking chair, and the squeaking of the chair was the only sound in the room until Randall broke the silence.

"Have I ever stopped you from getting involved with somebody else? I've even gone out and looked for you. Remember Joe Lucas? Hand-picked! What about Wally Jackson? What was wrong with him? These were two good brothers. Your problem is you're too damned picky."

"My problem is you, and we both know it." Randall looked surprised and hurt, but Medora continued. "You're too damn selfish and greedy to really get out of my life, so I have to do it for you. Have you ever really loved anybody except yourself?"

"I thought we had an understanding."

"Understanding?"

He looked genuinely confused.

Medora sighed and let her tender side show. "I'm not really blaming you, Randall. I love you. Unfortunately, I will always love you, which has ended up being my problem, not yours. But this is the last time, the very last time that we will be together like this."

"You really mean it this time, don't you?"

"Yep."

He gulped down the last of his mimosa, put the glass back on the night table, and gave a sigh. Another authentic one.

"What about the other stuff?" he mumbled.

"I don't know yet about the other stuff," she mumbled back.

The "other stuff" they were referring to was her work. Randall Hollis was the best independent art dealer in the city, and in the casually racist world of contemporary American art, it was nearly impossible for a black artist to find a dealer committed and powerful enough to promote and protect her work. He had sold Medora's work successfully ever since she started to sell, building his reputation along with hers.

Medora gathered up the empty pitcher and glasses and took them into the kitchen. Then she went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and tried not to think about what she was feeling. A sense of desperation swept her.

Was she doing the right thing? Why stop things now?

"Because I am too good for this," she said to herself in the mirror. "I am too good to love a man as much as I love this one and get so little back. Because I am deluding myself, and I won't do it anymore!"

She smiled at her attempt to muster up strength, and as she rubbed moisturizer on her face she thought about her mother, another woman who had handed a man her heart and pulled back a stump.

People told her she looked like her mother, whose beauty those who knew her talked about still. Sometimes she could see her mother's face when she looked at her own: The perfectly oval face and almond-shaped eyes. The full lips that broke easily into a delightful smile or stubborn pout. The hair, with a mind of its own, that grew to her chin and framed her face in wild abundance. As far as Medora was concerned, her mother's looks hadn't gotten her much except a man who didn't stay home and an early death, so she gave them short shrift. She'd gotten her father's talent, which was worth much more. But her skin was definitely her mother's, she decided, as she spread the lotion on her face. It was as clear and smooth as a child's and the color of raw, dark honey. Wildflower honey, according to Randall. Despite her determination to cut him out of her thoughts, thinking about Randall and honey at the same moment made her remember Valentine's Day last month, when things had started out innocently enough over Red Zinger tea.