Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love Read Online Free PDF

to concern Dutch.   He, in fact, was a little saddened that neither one of them had yet to come to him or Gina for advice.   But what could he do about it?   He wasn’t about to interfere in another man’s marriage.
    He leaned back and sipped from his glass of wine.   He was dressed casually, in a light green polo shirt, a pair of shorts, and sandals.   He had one of his nicely tanned legs crossed over his thigh as he listened to the Calypso beat on the loudspeakers and continued to watch his unhappy daughter.
    “She’s lovely, Dutch,” Robert said as he sat next to the president.   He still wore his seersucker suit from earlier in the day, as he knew firsthand just how cool those night breezes in the Caribbean could become.  
    “That she is,” Dutch replied, looking at Jade’s short, slender body, her smooth brown skin, her dark-green eyes that reminded him so much of her mother.   She was the product of a one-night stand he’d had over twenty-three years ago with Samantha Redding, an African-American   woman he knew at Harvard and who was now a bookstore owner in North Carolina.   It had been less than six months ago since he found out that he even had a daughter.   But she was now as much a part of his life, of his heart, as Gina and Little Walt.  
    “Who’s that guy bugging her?” Robert wanted to know.   With his bunched-up blond hair and those bewildered-looking big blue eyes, Christian looked to him to be out of place among this high octane crowd.
    “That guy,” Dutch replied, “is her husband.”
    “Her husband?   That kid?”
    Dutch smiled.   “He’s older than her.”
    “In years, perhaps, but let’s put it this way: he ain’t older than her.   Okay?   If you get my meaning.”
    Dutch nodded.   Because he got it.   It had been a concern of his when Christian first asked his permission to wed.  
    “I take it you approve of that young husband of hers?” Robert continued.
    “Christian?   Yes.   Absolutely.   He’s a good kid.”
    “Kid being the operative word.   Can you imagine him handling that beauty?”   Robert shook his head.   “I don’t see it.”
    Dutch didn’t respond, he just sipped more wine.
    “But really, how does it feel?” Robert asked him.
    “How does what feel?”
    “To be surrounded by blacks?”
    Dutch hesitated.   Had he missed something?   “I’m sure I don’t get what you mean.”
    “Your family,” Robert said grinningly.   “In case you haven’t noticed, they’re all black.   Your wife is black, your son is black.   Well, half-black, but he looks black.   Your daughter looks black.   You’re the only pure white in the whole bunch.   The only pale face in the entire crew.   The only milk in the entire stew.   They can dance, you can’t.   They can run and jump, and high-five, you can’t.   They can scratch their heads way better than you’ll ever be able to.”   Robert said all of this with an enormous grin, as if he was a stand-up comedian catching his stride.
    Dutch, however, didn’t see the humor at all.   Not in such ludicrous stereotyping that undoubtedly was rooted and grounded in old-fashioned bigotry.   He had to sit there, literally sit still, to compose himself.  
    But Robert, thinking he had an attentive audience, wouldn’t let it go.   “I mean, honestly,” he continued.   “You’ve got yourself a blossoming basketball team up in here.   Or some future gangsta rappers.”
    Dutch stared at his friend. “I like you Robert,” he said.   “And I know you enjoy the odd joke.   But right now you sound like a fool.”
    “A fool?”
    “A got damn fool,” Dutch said, not taking a word of it back.   “What the fuck does a person’s skin color have to do with anything at all?”
    Robert was stupefied.   He didn’t expect to be called out.   In his world nobody dared be offended when he made his little ethic jokes.   He meant no harm and they knew it.   But Dutch wasn’t letting him