by Vivek Shraya
When we both slowed down, she added, “I really think she will . . . reach out in time . . . you’ll see.” We stumbled on the sand and past the empty outdoor pool towards my place. I was already looking forward to morning laps with Kasi when it reopened next summer.
“And if she doesn’t?” I asked.
“And if she doesn’t?” Kasi repeated, swinging her arm around my shoulder.
And if she didn’t reach out, I knew that one day Rukmini would be unable to resist the lure of her favourite café. I wasn’t delusional enough to believe we would be friends again, but someday I would apologize in person.
After a month as a server, I started getting calls from an unknown number. I refused to answer. The last time I made that mistake, I ended up having to talk to Bart Gold. The caller continued to phone for three days in a row, and eventually hope implored me to pick up.
“Rukmini?” I stammered, as I locked myself in the staff washroom.
“Hi Neela, this is Hayley Trace!” The voice sounded like a teenager at her sweet sixteen birthday party.
“Oh. Hi.” I should have said, “Bye.”
“I hope you don’t mind me calling. Bart gave me your number.”
“I’m just on a coffee break at work. Is there something I can help you with?” I put her on speaker phone and held the phone away from me, tempted to drop it into the toilet.
“I sure hope so,” she squeaked. “Do you have time to meet tomorrow?”
“What is this about?”
“It will be so much easier to explain in person.”
“Fine. Why don’t you come by my work? My shift ends at 4 p.m.” If we had to meet, I knew I would feel better if it was around my work hours, like a job.
“Perfect. Text me the address? Looking forward to meeting you. Ciao!”
* * *
What did Hayley Trace want from me?
Throughout my shift the next day, especially during the brief solitary moments of wiping the tables after my customers left, I tried to guess. Had Rukmini asked Hayley to deliver a message to me? Perhaps a response to my letter? Or was Hayley going to inform me that Rukmini had some kind of illness or was leaving the country?
The previous night, I had debated whether or not to text her the address. I convinced myself that she would bail once she Google Mapped the location and decided she was too famous to come to a small neighbourhood café. But as soon as I texted her, she followed me on Twitter and Instagram and liked all of my recent photos. I started to regret suggesting we meet at Grapefruit Moon. Picturing her there felt like an intrusion, a corruption.
Hayley Trace arrived at the restaurant at exactly 4 p.m., wearing a white slip dress that looked like a doily, with no jacket, even though it was autumn. Never enough attention.
“Neela Devaki, at last,” she declared and leaned in to embrace me.
I leaned away and said, “Why don’t we sit at the back.” Though it probably seemed like I was being respectful of her privacy, especially since customers had definitely noticed her when she had walked in (as she had intended) and reached for their phones, I mostly didn’t want her anywhere near the table I had once shared regularly with Rukmini. I also worried that on the slight chance that Rukmini finally decided to come in today, she would see me and Hayley together and assume we were now friends or, worse, that we were conspiring against her.
“This a cozy place,” Hayley observed, pressing her lips together a few times as she checked her lipstick in one of the large mirrors hanging on the white brick wall next to our table. I had always thought mirrors were eccentric choices for décor. Who wanted to watch themselves eat? Now I had my answer.
“It’s hard to imagine you working here.”
“Why, because it’s not some fine dining bistro?”
“No, because you are a rock star,” she said with what sounded like reverence and flipped her phone onto its front side to show me how focused she was. “I just assumed that you wouldn’t need to be working a day job after Selfhood.”
“You’ve listened to Selfhood?”
“Of course! Marcus and I have it on repeat when we go to the gym.”
“You and Marcus know each other?
“We’re dating,” she gushed. “We met backstage at the Orion Awards.” I tried not to roll my eyes. Of course they did. I could easily picture them together in matching white doily attire, his fashioned into an Asian-inspired tunic, having high tea at the King Eddy or taking her poodle into posh Yorkville boutiques.
“Well, Selfhood is not exactly workout music.” Hayley Trace was a liar. Hayley Trace had definitely not listened to my album.
“I prefer not to listen to dance music when I work out. I find hard beats kind of distracting. Your music grounds me. Keeps me focused.”
Wow, she was good. I could understand why Rukmini and Kasi had stayed on tour with her for as long as they did. But I wasn’t them.
“I suppose you need to remain focused when you are planning who you are going to use next?”
Hayley drew her head back. “Use? What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. What you did to Rukmini.”
“I think you have me all wrong. I never set out to use Rukmini. Never.” The sweetness in her voice started to fade. This shift only encouraged me. Come out and play, Hayley. Let’s have this out, one bitch to another.
I crossed my arms. “Is that what you tell yourself?”
“You don’t understand. I was . . . am a big Rukmini and Malika fan. That’s why I did it.”
“That’s why you booted Rukmini off your tour? That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
Hayley didn’t respond right away. She widened her shoulders and scanned my face. Did she expect that I would just fawn? I took a breath and surveyed the restaurant, starting to fill up for the happy hour rush. Even though I was off the clock, I couldn’t afford to be seen yelling at a pretty white famous woman in my workplace.
“Wait. Did you know Malika?”
Hayley looked away and then nodded.
“How? When?”
“In university,” she whispered and glanced behind her. My co-worker who was rolling forks and knifes into napkins at the bar counter met her eye and waved sheepishly.
“You knew Malika in university? You studied in Toronto?”
“I was born here. I just don’t advertise that because it’s kind of the kiss of death in the music industry,” she said, still in a hushed tone. Did she think I was wearing a wire?
“So, were you friends?”
“Classmates. Rukmini’s classmate too.”
“She never mentioned you.”
“She didn’t remember me. I was just another brown haired, big-rimmed-glasses-wearing white girl with a passion for feminist theory. We kind of all look the same.” I wanted to laugh but she laughed first and formed two circles with her fingers over her eyes, trying to show me her nerdy past. “I also wasn’t ‘Hayley Trace’ then.”
“Who were you?”
“Stacilyn. Stacilyn Hallestein.”
I snorted. “Stacilyn Hallestein? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“See? You would’ve changed your name too.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said, momentarily feeling guilty. Then it hit me. “Holy shit. You saw the Subaltern Speaks presentation.”
“I did!” she exclaimed as though she had been waiting for me to guess. The couple sitting at the table behind Hayley turned their heads in our direction.
“What was it like?
“Incredible. Think of everything that has been said about Hegemony and multiply it by ten. I was there, right in the front row. Hollywood agents talk about . . .”
I rolled my eyes.
“Hollywood agents,” she repeated and tossed her hair, “talk about the moment they see a star come to life. That’s how I felt watch
ing Rukmini and Malika. I was haunted by their performance for years after we graduated. Their rare combination of innocence and power. They inspired me to move to L.A. and make music myself.”
“How novel. Another white pop star’s career built from the inspiration of artists of colour.”
“Exactly,” she said eagerly, with no defensiveness in her tone. “That’s why I did it,” she said again, leaning closer. Her breath smelled like watermelon gum.
“Did what?”
“That’s why I leaked the album.”
“What? No. It was a random . . .” My mouth hung open.
“A random classmate? That was me. I set up a fake Twitter account. Took half a second,” she bragged.
“Why would you do that?”
“Oh, you know. My white guilt. There I was, my music career skyrocketing, but I still couldn’t stop thinking about Subaltern Speaks. How much they deserved what was basically being handed to me.” She paused politely, waiting for me to take another jab but also confident she had beaten me to it. My mind pinged between all the content I’d absorbed since Hegemony had leaked, trying to compile an accurate history.
“Not that I didn’t work hard out there,” she continued, pulling a loose strand of hair off her shoulder and rolling it into a ball with her thumb and finger. “But it’s not the same for me as it is for you, right? Anyways, when I heard Rukmini’s cover of your song, I didn’t recognize her name, but I recognized that voice. That voice that I had been listening to for a decade.”
“So, you leaked their album . . .”
“I did. It felt necessary. Like my small way of creating balance. Equality.”
“Oh, you think that’s all it takes?”
“No, of course not.” She chuckled and now rolled her eyes at me. “That’s why I also anonymously sent the album to all the digital outlets and my press contacts. That’s why I had Bart reach out to invite her to open for me.”
“Why didn’t you just share the link to the album from your own account? Why all the secrecy?”
“You know, I thought about doing that.” She leaned her hand on her fist, pondering her choice. “But I thought that would look too ‘white saviour-y,’” she said, using air quotes. Startled that a white person could easily expunge any criticism with four bunny ears folding up and down, I pulled back but was careful not to lean too hard, remembering the stairs descending behind me. I should have sat on the other side.
“Why are you telling me all of this? Does Rukmini know?”
“I never told her. I actually kept my distance from her on the tour so that she wouldn’t recognize me face to face. And I’m telling you because I thought you might want to know? It also feels really good to tell someone. Someone close to all the players.” Then she shrugged and said, “Or maybe I want you to see that I’m not a bad person,” making direct eye contact with me. For a moment, she almost seemed sincere.
“So, this is why you asked to meet? To unburden and absolve yourself?”
“Oh no, not at all. I didn’t actually plan on telling you any of this.”
“Aren’t you worried that I’ll share this information?”
“Not really. I think you’ve probably learned your lesson about sharing too much,” she said and checked the time on her phone. “Besides, you were the one who subtweeted me about wanting the real tea at Grapefruit Moon.”
“Do you think everything on the internet is about you?” I hissed.
“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but can we get a selfie?” asked the young woman from the couple behind Hayley.
“Of course!” Hayley said. She took the woman’s phone and held her arm in the air. “Actually, my good friend Neela will take it for us.” She handed me the phone. I considered telling all three of them to fuck off, but I was still at my workplace.
“Everyone say, ‘Hey! Hey! Hayley!’” she ordered, which they did in unison, along with some of the other patrons in the café who were making peace signs, trying to photobomb.
How many times had Hayley put her “good friends” Rukmini and Kasi to work like this? After I returned the woman’s phone, I put my hands on the table and prepared to stand up.
“Okay, what did you want to tell me?”
Hayley Trace put her hands on top of mine and said, “I’m having a show in Toronto in a few months and I’m hoping you’ll open for me.”
Sumi
The last thing Sumi wanted to do was go to a Neela Devaki show.
She was tired of seeing, and of typing, her name. Not just hers. Rukmini’s name too. And Hayley’s name. Maybe even her own name.
You are going to cover this, right?
That was the message her editor sent her with a link announcing Hayley’s show in a month.
Sumi responded, I think this story is officially overplayed.
Are you kidding? Neela Devaki and Hayley Trace at the SkyDome? Together? This has clicks and Sumi Malhotra written all over it!
After years of carefully curating a portfolio of cerebral reviews of underrated bands, her writing was finally being consumed — widely. With that one article about Rukmini, she had become not just a respected music critic but a popular one. But these recent stories were not what she wanted to be known for.
Later that night, as two skinny white boys with long hair and nose piercings banged on their bass and drums respectively, Bart Gold yelled into her ear, “Sumi, I gotta tell you, you inspired this new direction for me.” The lead singer screamed into a mic plugged into a distortion pedal and pumped his fist in the air as though he and his band had invented sound. She wondered how many private music lessons these boys had received and how much of the gear onstage had been paid for by their parents, who were probably at their cottages at this moment, reading back issues of Toronto Life.
“Do I have you to blame for this déjà vu?” she barked back at Bart, ignoring his compliment and tilting her head at the stage. When Sumi had received his invitation to meet at the Drake, she had assumed that he would try to charm her into profiling one of his hot new artists. She said yes to the meeting because she wanted the chance to contradict what Rukmini had once said — to prove that it was, in fact, possible to say no to Bart Gold.
He winked at her. She almost gagged but, eager to move the night along, she asked, “So, what’s this new direction?” She now suspected that he was going to ask her to assist him with diversifying his artist roster. She swallowed the last of her scotch, preparing to deliver an emphatic NO.
“Gold & Platinum is dipping into rubbishing!” Despite the low lighting in the bar, his yellow stained teeth glowed. Suddenly she craved a smoke.
“NO,” she declared, as planned. The straight couple in front of them, who had been making out throughout the show and during the breaks, turned around and glared at her. She glared back and forcefully puckered the air, imitating them. Then she backtracked, “Wait, what the fuck is rubbishing?”
“Publishing!” Bart yelled, enunciating more carefully this time. “The interest in your stories has confirmed that there’s a healthy market for incisive music writing. Bloomsbury was ahead of this trend with their 33 1/3 series.”
Sumi recoiled from the mention of 33 1/3. Years ago, she had pitched a proposal for a book about Tinashe’s debut mixtape, but it hadn’t even made it past the first round of cuts. She pushed her index finger over the ear he had shouted in. “So what does this have to do with me?” She lifted her bomber jacket hanging over her arm and put it on.
“We haven’t figured out the details,” Bart explained, following her out of the venue.
Once they had escaped into the less noisy hallway and were moving up the staircase to the main floor, he continued at a regular volume, “But we are thinking of publishing a collection of two to three boundary defying music-related books a year for the discerning reader. We would love for you to be the editor.”
“Fuck,” Sumi blurted and stopped on the steps. She hadn’t expected Bart Gold to offer her the Dream Job.
“Did you forget something in the bar? Your purse?”
“Bart, I don’t own a purse.”
“Well, agree to be our editor and I can help you with that.” He winked again. “And if you don’t like that idea, I have a backup plan.”
She felt obligated to smile but resumed climbing. “I bet you do.”
Bart slumped down on the distressed leather sofa in the back of the lobby and patted the cushion beside him, summoning Sumi. She stayed standing.
“Well, maybe you see yourself as more of a writer than an editor?” he continued. “If that’s the case, we can explore that path instead. I could imagine you writing a book on Subaltern Speaks or even on Neela Devaki? Or both? It could include some of the articles you have already written if we can get the rights from Toronto Tops?”
“Fuck,” she repeated a week later, still weighing her options. She had hoped she would have made a decision by now, so she could quit her job and skip the concert. But quitting would mean saying yes to Bart Gold (though she would definitely say no to writing a book about any of those women). And saying yes to Bart would make her a fucking hypocrite.
So for now she focused on the task at hand, opening up Twitter on her unscratched gunmetal laptop. She knew the key aspect of the story she had to uncover was motive. Why would Neela do a joint show with Hayley Trace after basically condemning Rukmini for opening for Hayley? As part of her preparation for writing this piece, she examined the responses to the announcement online, trying not to respond.
Just scored tickets for @NeelaDevaki’s comeback show! #NeelaStan
(Hey kid, Neela never retired?)
Maybe @NeelaDevaki will bring @RUKMINI onstage for some kind of reunion? Maybe that’s why she is doing this?
(Doubtful. This isn’t fucking Lilith Fair.)