Urban romance - excerpt - fiction

This month love is in the air. And on the pages. Some of this season's best books by Black authors pay tribute to the timeless subjects of love and romance. We offer excerpts from these four hot new books:

* Urban Romance, a first novel by journalist-producer Nelson George, chronicles the loves and lives of several Black couples. The story is set in New York City in 1982.

* Changes: A Love Story provides an intimate look at modern love in Africa. Written by Ghanaian-born Ama Ata Aidoo, the novel also examines upward mobility, the changing role of African women, polygamy and friendship.

* Just As I Am explores a different kind of love. Written by E. Lynn Harris, the book is a sequel to Invisible Life, his novel about e, secrecy and AIDS among Black bisexuals.

* In her first novel since Daddy Was a Number Runner, Louise Meriwether offers Fragments of the Ark. It is a sweeping epic, a tribute to those who survived slavery.

Jacksina entered the courtroom, went up the center aisle and slid into the third row. The Judge didn't look as youthful up on the bench with his reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose and the weight of the job creating creases in his brow. Yet, to Jacksina, he seemed sexier up there on his "throne" than he ever had at the gym.

Jacksina had been with men who weren't willing to risk anything--cute Buppies who didn't challenge her or themselves. They'd left school determined to fit in. Cool and handsome her men had been.

Yet when she met the Judge, Jacksina was struck by the contrast between the young men she knew and the grown man he was. The Judge was middle-aged, yet engaged in life in a thrilling way. He was a connection to a past era of Black masculinity and class. The men her age had profited from the work of the Judge's generation. The man she loved was, in her mind, defined by his integrity.

Well, even she had to admit "integrity" was a relative term in the Judge's case. She couldn't avoid the fact that Mr. Integrity was carrying on a lusty affair with a law student, namely herself.

As usual they ate lunch in his chambers--takeout food from a bodega on the Grand Concourse. The Judge looked at her dreamily and said, "I love your hair."

"Tell me why."

He reached over and cupped her head in his right hand. "Because it's all yours. It's thick and kinky and short and it's yours."

"You saying you wouldn't love me if I had extensions or a wig?"

"No," he replied, "I can't imagine not loving you under any circumstances." He spoke with his heart but Jacksina wanted more.

"Your wife wears wigs, doesn't she?" A mischievous look passed across her face. She could feel the Judge's hand tense.

"You", he said with his grave Judge voice, "believe in your own beauty. You don't worry whether your hair is long or wavy or big and bouncy. You don't spend hours at the hairdresser and God knows bow much money. You love yourself, which makes it easy for me to love you."

The Judge never invoked his wife's name around Jacksina. He was, in her estimation, too classy to dog his wife in front of his mistress. The Judge leaned over the desk, wrapped both his hands around her head and kissed her with a college boy's enthusiasm but a grown man's skill.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group