Can't Stop the Shine

by Joyce E. Davis

  “Like a drunk bull in a china store,” joked Elaine.

  They all burst out laughing.

  Kalia hadn’t really thought too deeply about the Fire contest in several weeks when she’d gotten a letter in the mail from the officials saying she needed to come down to the offices with her parents and sign some waivers because she was under twenty-one and the final contest was going to be televised on a local channel. Kalia had also not thought about being on TV because she hadn’t really expected to make it to the finals. Now it was all she could think about during the drive down to Fire with her mother.

  She was so happy that her mother gave her advice about how to forget the cameras and the hundreds of audience members and just concentrate on performing, but she wondered if she could follow it. Thank God there was nearly two months until the show, she thought, walking into Fire. Just as she and her mother had finished signing several documents, Kalia spotted Asha and her mother being escorted past the doorway to the waiting room.

  All of the anxiety she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in more than a month rushed back to her. She wished she’d been able to see what Asha was wearing. All she caught was some high-heeled cream boots and some kind of fitted leather cream coat. On the way out of Fire, she started planning her attack. She was going to study Asha at the upcoming rehearsals and find out what her opponent had that her own performance was lacking. Something about Asha made the audience give her a standing ovation. She’d study Asha’s outfits, her vocal style, the way she spoke and carried herself—everything.

  While Kalia was studying her opponent, Mari was setting her sights on her prey. She walked slowly to the mailbox. She had only seen Dewayne a couple of times since she’d spilled her guts to him a few weeks back, and it was always in passing. They’d caught each other in the driveway a couple of times. They really hadn’t had a chance to talk at all. She thought maybe if she lingered enough around the mailbox, he’d come home or come outside for something. It would be nice if that something was her. She’d even considered calling him, but quickly changed her mind when she realized she couldn’t remember having ever talked to him on the phone before.

  Realizing she’d been outside for fifteen minutes checking the mail, Mari gave up, hoping nobody saw her dawdling so long at the mailbox. She walked inside, dropped the mail on the kitchen table and headed upstairs, intending to do some homework. She stopped as she approached Kalia’s door and knocked. Maybe she’d seen Dewayne.

  “Come in,” said her sister.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Not a thang. What’s up?”

  “Hey, have you seen Dewayne lately?”

  “Yeah. I saw him a couple of days ago,” said Kalia, bending down to plug in her keyboard. “He caught me in the yard. I tried to give him the slip, but I guess the Chosen One was just too quick for me. Oh my God, I’m starting to call him by that ridiculous name.”

  Mari chuckled.

  “As a matter of fact, that’s what he was trying to talk to me about,” Kalia continued. “He’d found some school where he could major in computer animation, and there was some guy teaching there who’d been some big shot in Japanese animation and Internet comic strips or some nerdy techie mess he was talking about.” She bumped her head and turned the whole set of keyboards over trying to get up off the floor.

  “That does sound kind of interesting, though. You are so clumsy,” said Mari, helping her sister set the keyboards back up.

  “I know, right?” said Kalia, rubbing the top of her head. “I really wasn’t trying to talk to Dewayne about that stuff. I had stuff to do myself, and he was holding me up.”

  “Well, it’s kinda strange that he’s not over here a lot anymore,” said Mari.

  Kalia looked at her sister. “I never expected to hear you say that,” she said.

  “Oh, I was just saying, you know, he’s usually around here bugging you and stuff, but I guess you’ve cut him back ’cause you’ve got a man of your own now. So how’s Mr. Malcolm?” she asked, praying Kalia would take her lead in changing the subject. All she needed was for her sister to think she had some kind of interest in Dewayne. She’d never live it down.

  “Oh, Malcolm’s cool. He’s got some big secret he won’t share with me or something, but you know it’s all good,” said Kalia coolly.

  “Maybe he’s going to take you to another one of those hot parties, like the one y’all went to New Year’s Eve. I sure wouldn’t mind you taking me with you next time,” said Mari, dancing around.

  “Hmm, I don’t know if I want to go to another one of those with him,” Kalia mumbled, hitting a couple of keys to see if the keyboard was damaged.

  “Huh?”

  “Nuthin’. Me and Malcolm are good,” she said again.

  “Okay,” said Mari, making her way to the door, trying to escape before her sister started wondering why she was asking questions about Dewayne.

  When Mari left the room, Kalia started humming a tune to herself that had been in her head since the girls and their mother had had their strategic planning meeting for the Studio of Peace, Love and Soul. She loved the creative energy and calm spirit in the lavender room that day. She had been playing some notes to go with the tune in her head and writing them down in a notebook for about twenty minutes when her cell phone rang.

  “Baby, baby, baby, baby, baaabaaay,” she heard Malcolm screaming into the phone.

  “What?” she said, immediately lifted by his excitement and even more thrilled that he’d called.

  “Guess what?”

  “What? What?”

  “I got it,” he said triumphantly.

  “Got what?” She thought she was going to die of anticipation.

  “A deal. A deal. I signed with Fire today.”

  “For real?” screamed Kalia, standing. “Oh my God. I am so excited for you.”

  “Yeah, baby. I went down there with my lawyer and my agent, and we signed the contracts and everything today,” said Malcolm exuberantly. “They want me to start going into the studio like next week.”

  Kalia almost jumped out of her skin as her door flung open and Mari rushed in the room.

  “What happened? What happened?” she yelled at Kalia, who put her finger up, telling her sister to wait while she tried to get the whole story from Malcolm. She mouthed, “Malcolm signed to Fire.”

  Mari’s eyes grew big. Kalia nodded.

  “So when do you think you’ll have a CD out?” she asked Malcolm.

  “I don’t know, maybe the fall or something,” he said. “Right now I’m just happy I got the deal. But look…”

  “I’m happy you got it, too, baby.”

  “So how much money did he get?” Mari asked. Kalia smashed her finger into her lips. Mari sat down and didn’t say another word.

  “I’m sorry I cut you off,” she continued to Malcolm. “Now what were you about to say?”

  “Well, things are gonna be a little different now. I know we haven’t seen each other in a minute, but I’ve been kinda caught up in all these meetings and stuff.”

  “Oh, of course. I completely understand.”

  “And to tell you the truth, I don’t really think it’s going to get any better. I mean today they were telling me how I have to meet with a publicist and the marketing people, and I need to get an accountant and—”

  Kalia cut him off again and turned away from Mari. “No, really, you don’t have to explain,” she said. “I know you’ve got a lot of stuff to do.”

  “I just want to be up-front with you, you know, and actually I kinda have to go right now,” he said. Kalia heard a couple of women’s voices in the background. One said, “Come on, sweetie. We’ve got to take you out to celebrate.”

  “Who was that?” Kalia asked.

  “Oh, that’s one of the people who works here at Fire…. Look, I gotta go for real…I’ll call you back, okay?” He hung up without waiting for her to say goodbye.

  Kalia stood with her back to her sister, trying to
decide how she felt. “Okay,” she said to the dial tone. “That’s cool. I’ll talk to you later. Bye, baby.”

  When she turned around, Mari was lying on the bed with a curious smile on her face.

  “What?” she asked.

  “So what happened? Is my sister’s boyfriend about to blow up?”

  “I guess,” said Kalia, sitting in her desk chair. “He got a deal—a recording contract with Fire.”

  “You sound like you don’t believe it.”

  “It’s just very surprising. I didn’t expect it. I didn’t even really get a chance to get used to the idea that it might happen,” she said. “And we’ve been kinda going through it lately. He’s been acting strange.”

  “I guess you know why now. So?”

  “So what?”

  Mari sat up straight on the bed. “So how much money did he get? Didn’t he tell you what his deal was worth? Are you about to get your neck and wrist blazed up? He needs to be getting you some baguettes.”

  “What? You’re talking crazy. Get off my bed. You’re wrinkling the spread.” Kalia got up and nudged her sister in the back.

  “Excuse me. Your boyfriend gets famous and you get the attitude,” said Mari, sliding off the bed onto the floor.

  “He’s not famous. You’re trippin’. He’s not even going to the studio until next week.”

  “Ooh…can we go to the studio? I’ve always wanted to push all those buttons and stuff like you see when they interview Pharrell and Diddy in the studio.”

  Shaking her head, Kalia stepped over Mari to straighten up her bed. “Calm down, groupie. You hardly even know Malcolm, and you’re turning into his stalker. You can’t go to the studio. I probably can’t even go.”

  “I’m not the type of groupie you need to worry about,” said Mari, getting up off the floor and leaning against Kalia’s closet. “I read this one story in Vibe, where a groupie showed up in one of those NBA player’s bed.”

  “Okay, well that’s sports.” Kalia vigorously fluffed pillows.

  “And do you think that the music industry is any better? All that touring, staying in different hotels, all those industry parties and clubs. Women are going to be throwing themselves at your man all over the world and you could be here in Atlanta in high school.”

  “Shut up, Mari,” said Kalia, standing with her hands on her hips, looking for something else to straighten. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Malcolm…he’s not like that.” The image of her boyfriend whispering in the ear of laughing Sasha the Breast Monster from New Year’s Eve burned in her mind.

  “Uh…all men are like that. They just don’t act on it unless they get too much temptation. When you’re in the entertainment business, women are throwing sex at you all the time. I don’t know how long your deejay man is going to be able to resist.”

  Kalia really wanted Mari to stop talking. She didn’t want to hear one more thing from her sister about Malcolm. “Mari, I said shut up.” She walked over to her computer and turned it on, staring at it while it booted up.

  Mari kept talking. “I’m just saying, Malcolm ain’t really hard to look at, and they’re probably going to give him a funky wardrobe and—ooh, ooh, ooh—he’s gonna do a video with girls in bikinis and—”

  Kalia whipped around in her chair, cutting her sister off. “You need to shut up because you don’t even have a boyfriend!” she shouted at her sister.

  Mari’s jaw dropped, then she squinted, and a look of confusion crossed her face. The last look Kalia saw on her sister’s face before she turned and left the room was one of complete hurt.

  As the door closed, Kalia just stared at it. She couldn’t believe what had just come out of her mouth. She wanted to get up and go to Mari, but something wouldn’t let her. She sat there with her pride and her uneasiness about Malcolm’s good news and surfed the Internet for the next three hours.

  She didn’t talk to Malcolm again for three more days, and it felt like their conversation lasted three minutes. By the time they’d said their what’s ups and he told her what he was up to—meeting with his lawyer, talking with producers, dropping by the video shoot of another Fire artist—he had to get off the phone to go meet with his lawyer, talk to a producer and drop in on a video shoot.

  And that’s how the next couple of weeks went for Kalia and Malcolm. She’d wait as long as she could to call him and he’d talk to her for maybe five minutes.

  After text messaging one day, she called and caught him. He said he had a few minutes to talk before he had to meet with his lawyer. After he began telling her that he was going to be working with Fire’s hot new artist, JD, on some tracks for his album, Kalia just cut him off and asked him when they were going to see each other. He told her soon, but he’d need to check his schedule and get back to her. Two days later they decided to meet three days after that, and he had the nerve to leave her sitting in a restaurant, except she wasn’t really by herself because she’d let Mari tag along after her sister had begged her to death.

  They sat at a window table at the first white-tablecloth restaurant Mari had been to without her parents. Kalia was in a worked-hard-to-look-like-I-just-threw-this-on outfit, and so was Mari. They ordered fried calamari and water with lemon and patiently waited for Malcolm for forty-five minutes before Mari brought up that fact that they had been waiting too long and maybe they should call him. He didn’t answer either of Kalia’s next two calls, but made one of his own about ten minutes later.

  “Baby, I’m so sorry. I just…I got a really late start this morning…probably because I had such a late night or should I say an early morning this morning…see we were at the Verve Lounge…oh, you don’t know what that is, do you, sweetie? It’s this after-hours spot where, you know, the industry people who can make shit happen, kick it. JD was there and Mike Nice and Rachel Anders, the chick who shoots those videos for Dap Records. You know, we had some Martell, fired up some stogies…Anyway, so yeah, we were there until…shiiiii…until…what time did we get out of there, Dub?…Naw, naw…it was much later than that…Teanna hadn’t even shown up by then and she came ready, you know? Wooo. Anyway, baby, what was I sayin’? Look, the deal is that I’m really just getting to what I needed to get today, and it’s about to be tonight, so I just…I can’t make it, okay? You haven’t left home yet, have you? I mean we said six, and it’s like seven now. You know I’m always at least an hour off. Where are you? In the car? Kalia? K?”

  Kalia looked at the phone like it was an alien. She didn’t know what to say or how to feel. She heard Malcolm still calling her name, but she had absolutely no desire to hear anything else he had to say, so she hung up the phone.

  “Well, what did he say?” asked Mari.

  Kalia picked up her cloth napkin out of her lap, put her phone in her purse and got up from the table, leaving a twenty-dollar bill. “Come on.” She walked right out of the restaurant before Mari even knew what was happening. In the car, she was silent, not saying anything, just playing Alicia Keys’s “When You Really Love Someone” over and over, all the way home. When they pulled into the driveway, Dewayne was sitting on their front steps.

  “I was just about to leave…Dang y’all lookin’ good. Where are you coming from?” he said, rising and walking toward the car.

  “Oh, we just went to dinner,” said Mari, eyeing Kalia, who still wasn’t talking.

  “What’s up, Kalia?” Dewayne said.

  Kalia slammed her door and brushed passed Dewayne. “Hey. Bye,” she threw over her shoulder as she trotted up the steps and into the house.

  “Okay, what’s up her butt?” he said, turning to Mari.

  “Well, she just got…kinda…stood up.”

  “Oh…by that Malcolm dude?”

  “Yeah. So now the way is probably getting clearer for you to roll up on her,” said Mari, slightly annoyed. She walked around the car, passed Dewayne and was about to go up the steps when he grabbed her hand, stopping her.

  “Look, I came here to see you
.”

  Mari looked closely at Dewayne. “For what? Dewayne, you’ve been in love with my sister for, like, forever, so don’t act.” She yanked her hand out of his and walked up the steps.

  “What is it with you Jefferson women? Why do y’all make it so difficult?” Dewayne asked, looking up at Mari with his arms outstretched.

  “Oh, so now I’m difficult, just like Kalia? Well, I’m not Kalia. I’m Mari, and you need to recognize the difference or stop coming around here,” she said. Not even waiting for him to respond, she stepped through the door and closed it behind her. She leaned against it and wondered why she had gotten so angry with Dewayne. He didn’t do anything to her. Then she realized she was pissed with her sister for being mean to him, but she’d just done the same thing.

  She flung open the door and ran down the steps, but he was gone. She was kind of relieved he was because had he still been standing outside, she wouldn’t have had any idea what to say. It was clear that there was something going on between her and her sister’s best friend. She felt something for Dewayne she’d never felt for a guy before, and she was scared to death for anyone to find out about it, especially him.

  Chapter

  12

  Mari danced around her room, talking to Colby on the phone while JD’s new song was blaring on the radio.

  “It’s hot, ain’t it?” she said.

  “It’s got that fire,” said Colby.

  “I’ve been singing it all week.”

  “Have you seen the video for it?”

  “It’s out already?” asked Mari.

  “Yeah, and I heard it’s tight. I think your sister’s boyfriend is in it.”

  “What? Malcolm’s in the video?”

  “I think that’s him I saw with this girl with a blond weave in his lap.”

  “Ooh, I wonder if Kalia knows,” said Mari, lying on her bed. “He’s been calling her, and he even sent her some roses, but she ain’t really trying to hear it.”

  “She’s that mad?”

  “I guess. I know she still likes him though. I think she was just embarrassed that I was in the restaurant when she got stood up. It would have been different if she was there by herself and nobody had to find out, but you know at least it was me and not anybody else she knew, and you know you’re sworn to secrecy. You can’t tell anybody.”