No, duets work differently. What makes a good duet is the intertwining of the man and the woman’s voice. Never a slam-dunk beat, always a constant rhythm, always gentle, but hard passion hovering just below the surface—so thick that you can feel it spike against your hand like static electricity.
Music mimics life.
I think you know what I’m talking about here.
-5-
There are two types of fearless people. Those with nothing to lose, and those who don’t care. A week ago, I had nothing to lose, and I certainly didn’t care.
Imagine where I fit on that scale now.
Right. I’m shittin my ass off.
-6-
In the morning, I try and act strong. But I’m freaking out. Not about me. I’m not freaking out about me at all. A dude just threw a Molotov Cocktail into my building, trying to kill Deck. Or was he just scaring us? Deck’s father was murdered barely three days ago, but the psycho-chick who did it was aiming for Declan’s best friend. And once aimed that same gun at Declan himself!
In his lounge, Deck brings me coffee. He goes over to a tablet PC in the corner (all I know is it isn’t an iPad) and soon music is pouring out from the Polk SurroundBar below his TV.
He sits next to me. “Skate will spend the day with you today, Blaze. We just need to be careful until things settle down. For both of us.”
“But what about you?”
“I’ll be with Trev all the time.”
“So? What if this dude packs a gun?”
“Blaze...” He sighs. “...it’s gonna be cool. Trust me.” The quaver in his voice betrays that he doesn’t believe his own words. “There’s nothing we can do about it. The cops are out looking for him—”
“They haven’t found him?”
“Uhm, no, the officer from yesterday called me to let me know that Dino wasn’t at home and nobody knew where he was.”
“Yeah right!”
“Blaze, don’t get yourself worked up about it. Look, material stuff we can replace. I assume you keep your music in the cloud anyway, right?”
“All of it.”
“So, then it’s your decks and your books you’d have to replace...uhm...if something happened?”
I’m a little shocked at how he says it. “I know, it’s not much. But it’s everything I have and everything I am.”
“Blaze, chill. Look, I’m not trying to put anything down. I know those things have value to you beyond the cost. I’m just planning. Boy Scout motto, you know. Be Prepared.”
“You were a boy scout?”
He cocks an indignant eyebrow. “No, but they have a good motto. Look, what’s most important right now is that you make it into the big time. I’ve told you I will help you. So I’m just trying to figure out what you’d need to be able to do that. Like, if I lost everything, I could still make it if I had a truck—any truck. I could still work. Know what I mean? Bare necessity.”
“I never thought things would get this bad when Mamah—”
“Blaze!” He grabs me by the shoulders. “Focus! Bare minimum. What is it?”
“Uhm, bare minimum is...depends. You can hire decks and sound. Big clubs provide their own. Absolute bare minimum is my music library, and my MacBook. That’s if I’m gigging at clubs that have speakers and amps and the whole setup. For local parties—which is my livelihood—I need my own decks. And sometimes even my own speakers.”
“So what does that stuff come to? I mean, to replace it. What would it cost?”
“A few grand.”
“Fine. Then we’ll make it. I can do that—”
“Deck, I can’t let you—”
“Blaze. That’s it! Now look. We’re somehow in this together. Now, you have two choices: Leave me—which I can understand if you’d like to—”
“I don’t want to.”
“Yeah, but I get if you’d like to because your building just got damn near burned—”
“Deck! I’m not leaving you!”
He stops, searches my eyes. Inhales. “OK. OK. Good. I’m glad to hear it.” He rakes his fingers through his hair. “Glad to hear it. So, having established that... Look, I’m responsible for this shit. And if it affects your livelihood, well, I gotta make good for that—”
“I can’t—”
He stands up, enraged! “Motherfuck! Blaze! Please!”
“You’re scaring me.”
He sits. “Sorry. I just... OK, let’s try another tack: Would you accept my help as a loan? Like, if I loaned you the cash to replace your equipment, just so you could keep producing and making income.”
“Well, if you ask politely like that, sure.”
He stares at me incredulously. “You’re kidding.”
“No. The difference here is that you asked. Before, you were acting like a drill sergeant. I like being asked things. Not told things.”
He tries to stay serious, but his lip tugs up involuntarily.
I point a finger at his lip and say, “Aha! You’re laughing, tough guy!”
Then he does laugh. Loudly. “I’m no good with women. But, fine, I guess I got a lot to learn. So, deal, I’ll ask you if you want my help in future. And, worst case scenario, if we lose everything because one of my psychotic past enemies comes and takes it from us, then I’ll loan you the dough to get back on your feet.”
“It’s a deal.” I stick my hand out to shake his. When he grabs it, he tugs me toward him so that my lips land on his. It actually cuts the inside of my mouth.
But I don’t care.
“Deal,” he mumbles.
His hand slides into my pants, over my pubis and then—“Oh man that’s incredible”—inside me. We don’t move from that position, but he plies me to climax.
“That’s my way of telling you I’m sorry for losing my cool there for a second.”
I smile, but I’m too mellow to make my mouth move and tell him I forgive him; so I just fall back on the couch, sigh out loud, and hope to myself that he loses his cool and apologizes like this a lot more in the future.
-7-
He takes me through his lounge, explains how he went for the SurroundBar because it was “the best possible compromise between a home entertainment setup—surround sound—and a good hifi system—stereo. “I like music, a lot,” he says. “But I also like surround sound. Getting a top-level home entertainment system was expensive as it is. And then, when I discovered that the sound wouldn’t be great for music, well, I started looking, and I found the SurroundBar.”
I check out the tablet (which I’ve since discovered is an Asus Google Nexus), then look at the speaker. “Bluetooth?” I ask.
He smiles. “Does it sound like Bluetooth?”
“Definitely not.” He gives me some technical jargon about how the tablet links up with the speaker using some new super-duper communications technology that maintains the sound quality far better than Bluetooth.
“Impressive,” I say. “You really know your music.”
“You think I was moved only by your looks?”
I do my best to flick my hair back seductively. “I was hoping.” Then I flutter my eyelids as best I can.
He prowls over to me. An inch from my lips, his eyes locked on them, he says, “Like I said last night, You sing to me.”
We decide to do a little more “singing” right here and now. On the couch again. So it’s equally awkward physically. And that’s equally as unimportant when the waves of pleasure slam into me—blissful waves of stinging satisfaction.
I hope with every cell in my body that the moment can last forever. But Trev and Skate are soon at the door. Deck’s going out with Trev, and Skate’s hanging out with me.
My fear eases a little when I see Skate’s angry eyes. Gray-blue and raging. “Blaze!” he says. “You OK?”
“Uhm, yeah, yeah. Sure. They got the fire well under control.”
I can see that a hot hatred burns inside Skate’s head. Same for Trevor. Frowns darken their faces. “Deck,” Skate says. He
and Deck touch fists, then shoulders. Same with Trev.
They come in, and the heat of fury raises the temperature a few degrees. Skate speaks again, “Well, if that motherfucker had hurt either one of you.” Now he points at us. “Either one of you! He’d be fucking dead now. Dead!”
Trev and Deck look at each other, like they’re sharing some secret language. Trev says, “Skate, it’s cool. NYPD’s on it.”
“I don’t give a fuck who’s on it! Either one of you! Blaze, you sure you’re fine? No scratches or bruises?”
I wanna tell him I have a few, from Deck’s grip on my shoulders while we...uhm... “No, really, I’m fine.”
“OK, well, you don’t worry about anything. Graffiti don’t pay for shit, so it’s not like I’m needed anywhere. I’ll stay with you as long as you need me to. I believe there are also a few other punks on the radar?” He looks at Deck.
“Yeah,” Deck says, “uhm, Blaze, how much can I tell him?”
I decide to tell him myself because I don’t want too much info about Xavier being given to anyone other than Deck. “Well, two ex boyfriends, basically. But I only think one of them is dangerous. The other one, well, I’ve known him a long time.”
“Can I tell him who it is? Just so he knows who to look out for.”
“Sure.”
Deck tells Skate it was “that dealer from House Market” and nothing else. Tolek, unfortunately, introduced himself to everyone on Wednesday. “And we all know Dino,” says Skate. Then he goes quiet.
“She knows,” Deck says. “She knows everything.”
“Everything?” Skate’s eyes go wide.
“Everything.”
Skate smiles. “Damn, welcome to the family, Blaze!” He hugs me tightly. And it’s the first time I feel like I have an older brother. A real older brother.
Two of them.
Trev gives me a wink as they exit the door. And throws me a thumbs-up.
When the door closes, Skate asks me, “So, what’s on the cards for today?”
“Fancy hanging out with two girls for the day?”
“Is the other girl hot?”
I shrug. “Remember the singer from Red Lipstikk on Friday?” He smiles widely, and his eyes go into a sort of stupor. “I take it that means you think she’s hot.”
“Extremely.”
I laugh. “You and I are gonna get along just fine, Skate. Just fine.”
I call Viktoriya to see if she has time to hang out today.
In a thick Russian accent, she says to me: “Of course! And if you can bring sexy boy wiss you, is even better.”
I can’t help but smile. Then I say, “Skate, dress in something that shows off that sexy body of yours.”
-8-
Before leaving to meet with Viktoriya, I decide to take the bull by the horns and call Randy Dhawan directly to see if my gig is still on for this coming Saturday. Although Gavin would be the more direct option to call, him being the owner of the Sacrament club and all, Randy just struck me as a lot more approachable. And if the gig is off, he’d know. Besides, of all the vultures I’ve been dealing with, there was an air about him that I liked more than any of the others.
A “good luck” person, as Mr. Bernstein would call it? Dunno, but at least not a Totally Shit Luck person. Of that I’m relatively certain.
When Randy picks up, he doesn’t even say hello. Instead, he says this: “Blaze, the gig is still on. No doubt about it.”
“Uh—uhm—er—”
“Blaze? That’s what you were calling about, right?”
“Uhm, yeah. Yes. Wow. How did you know?”
“The gash on Xavier’s stupid head is too easy to miss. Blaze, before you say anything else, keep in mind that this is a cell phone line. Ya dig?”
In other words, don’t talk no shit about drugs and Xavier’s chosen profession. Because that goes against the unspoken rules of intermingling in this crowd, whether you partake of the lethal shit or not. “Yeah, I dig.”
“Look, Blaze, you got talent, girl. And we all know Xavier is a fucking shit-head when he’s with his mujer”—when he’s high on Coke—“and I heard about what that motherfucker did to you. There were several witnesses. It’s not like the punk can bullshit his way out of this one. He laid out the shit and then stepped on it himself. Look, I don’t care what people do for recreation, but you just don’t hit a woman. No fuckin ways. And nobody’s gonna disrespect you for doing what you did. In my opinion, you should have hit him twice wit dat fuckin mug. Punk is lucky you didn’t press charges. Why didn’t you, Blaze?”
“We go back. A long ways.”
“Well, he and I don’t. I mean, if dat shit happen in Sri Lanka— Well, we wouldn’t take it lightly. Look, he’s got one chance with me. He’s...uhm...the resident Thoroughbred”—the resident dealer of The Good Shit—“at the House Market parties. And Gavin wanted to offer him a residency at Sacrament as well.”
Ahhh, so Xavier’s intentions with me might not have had to do with the music, but sneaking in to deal for one of the biggest clubs in Brooklyn.
“Anyway, he’s got one more chance with me. And Gavin, well, he got these chains and BDSM shit in the back room of his club, you know. Well, you gotta understand that stuff’s all consensual. Gavin knows about punk-asses. It comes with the territory: Almost every week, some punk gets frisky with a woman in that part of the club. Or vice versa. Last week, some dude had his cock whipped by an over-eager dominatrix. Anyway, Gavin’s seen how ugly this shit can get: Violence between the sexes. He wasn’t as forgiving as me. He told Xavier he wasn’t gonna accept no woman-hitter into his club. Never mind a residency, Xavier’s lucky if he ever gets into da fuckin club for a drink!”
“I see.”
“Blaze, I told you you got talent. You do. Your way is guaranteed. That I can promise you. If you don’t screw it up with powder or any of the other shit all these other punks get into, no one can get in your way. You hear me? You must never forget that.”
“Wow. Uhm, thanks, Mr. Dhawan.”
“Randy, Blaze. Randy.”
“Th—thank you.”
“No need to thank me. Look, I know you and Xavier go back. I mean, I know a little about it. But just keep in mind that people change when they’re with their mujer. You understand?”
“Clearly.”
“Good. Now you take it easy. Nothing’s changed. I’m gonna text you some login details for the Members Only section of Sacrament’s website. Gavin’s making a big deal about your show. And the buzz you created last week Saturday at House Market has moved up into the levels where it matters—behind the curtains, where it counts.”
“But I’ve been checking out the forums. Nothing much is being said about my set anymore.”
He laughs. “Like Gavin told you on Tuesday, Blaze, there are quite some influential people that visit the underground section of his club. It doesn’t matter what’s being said publicly. It’s more important what’s being said privately. The folks who come to Sacrament’s underground room are purists. They talk about House as if it were fine wine. Connoisseurs. Log in to the site. You’ll see for yourself. But, look, don’t tell nobody I gave you these details. Gavin has his ideas about ‘insiders’ and all dat crap. I don’t even think any other DJs have these details themselves. So, we keep it between me and you, OK?”
“Yeah, of course. Uhm, th—thanks.” I also want to ask him why he’s doing this for me, but I don’t.
“No need to thank. Look, Blaze, about Xavier again, uhm, you know he packs— Never mind.”
“I’m OK, Randy. I have...some cool people looking out for me.” I look at Skate who’s on the couch eating Doritos dipped in guacamole, and watching some football-thingy show on Deck’s ginormous LG Plasma Screen.
“Good. Good.”
“Actually, uhm, Deck—Declan Cox? He’s watching out for me basically.”
It’s as if the heavens themselves part. “No shit! Now there’s a good team—he and that Trevor—if I ever seen
one. Good for you, Blaze. Good for you. Send him my regards. You know, he’s very highly respected amongst us. He never let ‘the stuff’ take over his life. Always kept it under control. It says a lot for someone who can do that. Not like the rest of us sorry fucks.”
This statement saddens me deeply, and you already know why. But in addition to thinking of Savva, I think now of how many people I know right this minute who are important to me and who either drop or smoke weed. Savva and I also had it “under control.”
And what about Skate?
What do you do? What do you do when these people are your friends? Give them all tough love? How far do you let it go? I know that, to people reading about this, who’ve never experienced it, the answer might be simple.
And to the Moral High Ground Hypocrites, even simpler.
But, alas, life is neither simple nor morally black and white.
“I hear you, Mr. Dhaw—Randy.”
“OK, Blaze. Looking forward to your set. Nothing can stop you now, girl. You need to keep that in mind, No matter what happens, that is the only truth about your music. Dis I can promise you. OK, I’m gonna go before I get even more sentimental. Come by the store some time and say hi. See ya, Blaze.”
“Later, Randy.”
The store—DJ equipment and speakers galore. Only the best. I park that as another option if things crash. Maybe Randy would be willing to loan me some equipment in an emergency. Be Prepared.
The whole conversation makes me feel better. It makes me feel a glimmer of hope, a shining light at the end of the sewer. Even Skate notices. “Good conversation?” he asks.
“Yeah, very good.”
“So, when are we gonna meet with the hot Russian blonde?”
“Let’s go, Big Bro. I wanna get there early. Oh, and Viktoriya seems to also be looking for some male companionship. Just FYI.”
He grins even wider than earlier. I swear I even think I see him drool...
-9-
Skate—aka Sebastian Kade Darby II—drives a red Dodge Ram. A real boy-toy. Thing’s so big I have to lean on his hand to climb up. When he gets inside, I ask him: “Aren’t these supposed to be like really expensive?”
Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) Page 8