“Ma. Please. Don’t. I’m marrying Jake in five minutes, in my living room, in front of our parents. Wearing a dress that Josephine Bennett made for me last year. And that’s it.”
“I saw Z and Beth down there.”
“Really? Why didn’t you tell me?” Kipenzi asked, jumping up from her bed. Her mother pushed her back down.
“Let me finish this bun, chile.”
Kipenzi grabbed her hair where her mother left off and dashed to her bedroom door and flung the door open. Without stepping into the hallway, she threw her head back and yelled.
“Beth Saddlebrook, get up here right now!”
Kipenzi could hear laughter from downstairs and then the sound of heavy footsteps and Beth’s slow gait coming down the hallway. As soon as Beth approached the door, Kipenzi grabbed her and hugged her tight.
“You came! I didn’t know if you would. I miss you, girl.”
“Of course I came. I didn’t have a choice! Y’all barely have any guests.”
Beth leaned in to kiss Kipenzi’s mother on the cheek and then sat gingerly on the bed while Kipenzi sat back down at her vanity so that her mother could finish her hair.
“So what made y’all decide to do this today?” Beth asked, her hands on her belly and her back propped against the twenty pillows the cleaning woman used to make up Kipenzi’s bed.
“I’m retired.” At this, Kipenzi’s mother closed her eyes and groaned. “And I’m ready to move on to the next phase of my life: marriage and babies.”
“You can’t sing and have marriage and babies?”
“I could. But I don’t want to.”
“You ready?”
“For what?”
“For marriage.”
“I’ve been with Jake since I was eighteen.”
Kipenzi’s mother closed her eyes and groaned again.
“That means nothing,” Beth said. “After tonight, he’ll be your husband. Not your boyfriend. It’s different.”
“I’m ready.”
“Y’all sign a prenup?”
Kipenzi smiled. “What do you think?”
Beth looked up at the ceiling. “I’m gonna say no.”
“You’re wrong.”
Beth struggled to sit up straight. “He made you sign a prenup?”
“Please. I’ve got more assets than he does.” Kipenzi cackled. Her mother and then Beth joined in.
“But that can change at any time,” Beth said. “This industry is very unpredictable …”
Kipenzi caught Beth’s eye. “You wouldn’t call me back, Beth. Because of the show.”
“It was just weird,” Beth said. “Z was saying Jake purposely told the promoter to let him close out the show—”
“He wouldn’t do that!”
“But do you know for a fact that he didn’t?”
Ian appeared in the doorway and rapped on the door with just his fingertips.
“Ms. Hill? Your betrothed awaits.”
“What are you going to call me tomorrow, Ian?”
“I assumed that professionally you would still use Ms. Hill.”
“I’m retired. I don’t have a profession.”
“I’m sure when Madonna retires, she’ll still be referred to as such.”
“I’ll bet her assistant calls her Ms. Ciccone.”
“I’ll bet she hasn’t had the same assistant for seven years.”
“Point well taken. Call me whatever. Are you here to walk me down the aisle?”
“Your father is downstairs. I can bring him up.”
“Is the air on?” Kipenzi asked, wiping her brow. “I’m so hot all of a sudden.”
“Kipenzi, get down here and marry me!” Jake yelled from downstairs. Kipenzi, her mom, and Beth all laughed.
“Come on, y’all,” Kipenzi said. “Let’s go together.”
As soon as Kipenzi hit the top step and looked down into her living room, she felt her eyes welling up. There was Jake, wearing the custom-made suit he’d worn to the Grammy Awards, his hands entwined and resting comfortably in front of him. His head was held high and he was looking up at Kipenzi with a serious but somehow still relaxed look of pure determination. It was the same look and posture she’d observed whenever he waited just offstage before a big performance. It was the same look and posture he had when he gave his mother away at her wedding in the Bahamas to her longtime boyfriend. It was the same way he stood before the judge when he was on trial for assault three years before. It was Jake at his most earnest and his most serious. It was when Kipenzi loved him most—when she felt like he would take a bullet for her without unfolding his hands. Jake watched her walk down the spiral staircase, behind Beth, her mother, and Ian, who held her hand and helped her navigate the steps.
It was warm for early November, but Ian still had the fireplace going, which gave the room a wintry vibe. Kipenzi dabbed at her eye with the side of her pointer finger and looked down as she walked so that she wouldn’t fall apart before the ceremony even started.
On one side of Jake, her father stood, tears in his own eyes, his chest puffed out and his hands behind his back. Next to her father was Z, who winked at Beth. He was wearing dark blue jeans (his version of dress pants) and new Timberland construction boots. In a true nod to the seriousness of the occasion, Z had his usually wild afro neatly edged up. Kipenzi made a brief mental note of Z’s body language. He was still and calm, not twitchy or weird. Hopefully, he wasn’t back on drugs.
Standing just behind them were Jake’s mother and stepfather, former Black Panthers from Brooklyn who were now animal rights activists. Both had lithe, tight bodies and slim faces from their vegan diets.
On the other side of Jake was Ona, Kipenzi’s yoga instructor and spiritual guide. Ian had found out that she was licensed to officiate at marriage ceremonies and had gotten her to take an earlier flight home from a conference in Atlanta.
When Kipenzi reached Jake, he took her hands into his and they both turned to face Ona.
“Jacob and Kipenzi have decided to become a union today,” Ona said, opening up a Bible and flipping to a marked page. “And we are honored to be here to witness this intimate act. The Bible says, ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh …’ ”
Jake squeezed Kipenzi’s hand and she squeezed back.
“Excuse me, Ona,” Jake said. “Are we allowed to talk right now?”
Kipenzi yanked Jake’s hand and gave him a look.
“Well, not really,” Ona said. “But it must be important. Speak your mind.”
“I want to kiss her now.”
A ripple of laughs went around Kipenzi’s living room.
“I’m not planning on the ceremony lasting more than ten minutes, Jacob.”
“I can’t wait that long.”
“Then by all means …”
Jake placed his hands on either side of Kipenzi’s face and pulled her in close. He whispered something in her ear that made her body rock with sobs. He held her steady until she was composed and then kissed her on the cheek and took her hands.
When the vows were exchanged, Kipenzi and Jake stared straight into each other’s eyes for every word.
“By the power invested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Jacob, you may now kiss the bride.”
“Do I have to?” Jake said, as Kipenzi threw her head back and laughed out loud.
“I mean, I kissed her earlier and I think she had onions for breakfast.”
Kipenzi continued laughing as Jake wrapped her up in a tight hug and she pretended to try to get away from him. The parents came over and for a moment all the women and Ian were hugging each other and crying while the men gave each other pounds and slapped Jake on the back.
They all had dinner in the living room. Ian had ordered five large pizzas, Caesar salads, and sweet tea. It was four a.m. before Jake wrapped a glass in a linen dishcloth and stomped on it, signaling the end of the pa
rty. The sun was coming up over the Hudson River by the time Kipenzi and Jake had the apartment to themselves.
“Hello, husband,” Kipenzi said, as she broke down pizza boxes and wiped off the counters in her sleek kitchen stuffed with stainless steel appliances that she never used.
“What up, wife,” Jake said, pulling a chair to the island in the center of the kitchen.
“Now what?” Kipenzi said, leaning on the island and stroking his arm.
“Now we make babies.”
Out of habit, Kipenzi crossed the room to check the bench in Central Park. Jackson Figueroa, her personal paparazzo, was there fiddling with his camera. Waiting.
“How long will it take for this dude to move on to someone else?”
“A long time. Especially when I start knocking you up. Let’s go make some babies.”
“Now. Like tonight?”
“No better time than the present.”
“Where are we gonna live?”
Jake looked around Kipenzi’s kitchen and then out into her living room, where the fireplace was still blazing.
“This place is a little low-budget for me.” Jake shrugged. “But if you’re okay with slumming, we can live here.”
“You’re not into the whole triplex-penthouse-at-the-top-of-Trump-Tower thing?”
“Eh. It’s so Diff’rent Strokes,” Jake said, wrinkling up his nose in disapproval.
“Read me your pro and con list,” Kipenzi said, her arms crossed.
“Nah. We’re on our honeymoon.” Jake sidled up to Kipenzi and kissed her neck.
“Read,” said Kipenzi. “Now.”
Kipenzi grabbed Jake by the hand and led him up the spiral staircase to her bedroom suite on the top floor of the triplex. They got in bed together, with their lists, but they never got around to reading them.
ON THE Q TRAIN FROM DEKALB TO THIRTY-FOURTH STREET, ALEX began to transform. While the train chugged through Brooklyn, she was still Lexi, as Birdie’s daughter called her. She was a woman planning a wedding. She was a soon-to-be stepmother, helping her boyfriend raise his child. She was the daughter of a man who spoiled her. By the time the train stopped at Union Square, Tweet and Birdie were slipping further and further from her mind. She stopped looking at children on the train and comparing their outfits and hairstyles to Tweet’s.
Her mind was revisiting all the stories she had to do. A Chrisette Michele review for soul.com. A short profile on Jake for the New York Times, a Q&A with Quincy Jones’s son for People; a Q&A for Teen Vogue on Bunny Clifton, a new pop act from Jamaica who had serious buzz. And, of course, she was ghostwriting the memoirs of Cleo Wright, who was outing every man (and a few women) in the industry whom she’d slept with in a two-year career as a video model.
Chrisette’s ballad was swimming in her head on repeat, Cleo’s quotes were typing themselves out on the inside of her eyelids, and in another corner of her mind, she was coming up with questions for Bunny Clifton. She opened her cell and looked up Port Antonio, the city in Jamaica where Bunny Clifton was from. Scanning news articles, she came up with a few questions and then scribbled them in her notebook.
Alex mumbled to herself as she followed the herd off the train, through the station, up the elevator, and outside into the world. As always, Alex stopped and stood on the sidewalk, facing Macy’s, and took a deep breath. It was late fall, her favorite season, when the air smelled like football games and first-day-of-school outfits. She mentally ticked off the things she was grateful for: I’m getting married. I love Bird and Tweet. I have a wonderful house and I fucking love my job. She opened her eyes, adjusted her messenger bag across her chest, and marched down Thirty-fourth Street.
At least once every six months, Alex did what she called the pop-in. As a full-time freelancer, she got most of her assignments by emails and phone calls. There were many editors she wrote for consistently whom she’d never met in person. And then there were some magazines, like Vibe, that were like satellite offices for Alex. She wrote for the magazine so often, and for so many different editors, that she could get away with pretending that she was in the area and just wanted to say hello. Any number of staffers would buzz her in, and after making small talk, she’d prowl the floor, popping into a few offices and getting some face time. Every time she went to a magazine for the pop-in, she left with an assignment.
After print journalism became a contact sport in ’06, it became more and more important for Alex to get her face seen if she wanted to get work. She couldn’t sit on the third floor of her brownstone and wait for the phone to ring. When Blaze and XXL and The Source were all fighting to have the hottest cover on the newsstand, Alex’s phone rang off the hook. Then King came out, a splashy men’s magazine with half-naked women on the cover. Even though a good friend had founded the magazine, she sniffed past it each month on the newsstand, vowing not to support the T&A publication. And then the editor called her, offering to double her usual rate and let her do investigative pieces for the magazine. Those were the good old days. She made nearly six figures in 2003—solely from freelancing.
Those days had ended with a heavy thud.
Blaze: gone. The Source: a shell of its former self. (Alex had even stopped listing it on her resume.) King: shut down abruptly while she was on the phone with the editor in chief, outlining an investigative story into the suicide of Shakir Stewart. XXL was still standing. And Vibe was in its fourth incarnation. It had shut down in 2009 only to resurface and then shutter again. An Italian conglomerate owned the new version. They contracted a group of former Vibe staffers to run it.
Alex could barely keep up with any of the print entertainment magazines. Many times she handed in a story and the magazine went out of business before it could be published. And trying to get a kill fee was laughable.
As Alex walked, she pulled her bag closer to her chest and thought about Cleopatra Wright. Fifty thousand dollars? How could she turn that down when the magazine business was so shaky?
She’d been meeting with Cleo twice a week to get her story down. And every time she left the woman’s presence, she had to rush home and take a thirty-minute shower to get rid of the heebie-jeebies. Alex had never met anyone like Cleo—someone who seemed hell-bent on ruining every man she’d ever encountered.
She tried to keep a straight face as Cleo ran down a story about the ménage à trois with the NBA player and the player’s father, the tryst in a synagogue with a rapper and his Jewish mother-in-law. It was all unbelievable. But Cleo always had proof: audio, video, still photos, mementos.
The last time they’d met, Cleo had told Alex about the welterweight boxer’s jockstrap she’d stolen and had framed. Cleo had gotten pregnant by him. He had told her to get an abortion and she had. He then abruptly stopped calling her. So now she was planning to send the framed jockstrap to his wife.
Alex shuddered as she pulled open the door to an office building on Lexington Avenue. On the elevator to the fourth floor, she shook her head back and forth a few times in the hopes of clearing Cleo from her mind, at least temporarily.
“Alex Sampson Maxwell. I’m here to see Celeste Marchado.”
The receptionist at Vibe, stereotypically surly, grunted and used a letter opener to stab the numbers on her keypad. She listened and then hung up.
“She’s on vacation.”
“Right. Okay, then can you let Julie Donovan know I’m here?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Not exactly. But it’s fine because—”
The receptionist took the headset off and swirled her chair around so that her back was facing Alex.
“Can’t help you,” she said, sorting through mail on her desk.
Just as Alex went to her cell phone to call Julie, the editorial director of Vibe, a noisy group of women stepped off the elevator and into the lobby. Alex turned to see Maria, the editor in chief of Vibe, flanked by Lorena and Erika, the features editor and the music editor. They were weighed down with cardboard cup holders from St
arbucks, loaded with coffee and pastries.
“Hey, girl,” said Maria, a striking Latina with wide eyes and an easy smile. She held her coffee to one side and kissed Alex on the cheek. “I would have gotten a coffee for you if I knew you were coming through.”
Alex followed the ladies in, sticking her tongue out at the receptionist as she did.
“I was just in the area, thought I’d stop in.”
“Good. Just in time for an idea meeting,” Erika said, holding the door open for Alex.
Alex followed the women through the maze of cubicles on the fourth floor of the building where what used to be the number one music magazine in the country was published. These days, Vibe had to compete with every zine, website, blog, and mainstream magazine that also covered urban culture. If Jay could be in Oprah’s magazine, did he need to be on the cover of Vibe?
None of that mattered to Alex. She loved the feel of print magazines in her hands and continued to write for Vibe in all its incarnations. Even though she’d been writing for the magazine for five years, she still felt like a newcomer whenever she stepped into the office. All the women were polished and trendy, wearing miniskirts and legwarmers and other combinations Alex would feel silly in.
Several people popped up when they saw Maria heading toward the back of the office and began grabbing notes and papers from their desks and dashing to the conference room. By the time they all arrived, the conference room was filling up quickly. Alex scanned the room, waving at familiar faces and looking for new ones. It was so difficult to keep track of who was who at a place like Vibe. The turnover was high. People were promoted—and demoted—often. And for Alex, knowing who did what was essential.
Maria—who had been the editor in chief for five years—was the kind of chief who prided herself on democratic rule. She met with the interns at Vibe once a month and encouraged them to be honest about their thoughts on the magazine. Her assistants were always groomed from the start to move up on the masthead, and she very often used majority rule to determine what image to use on the cover of the magazine. During idea meetings, she was silent. She sipped a macchiato and just nodded her head as she listened to the staff throwing out ideas. Alex looked down to get a glance at Maria’s sneakers. In five years, she’d never seen her wear the same pair twice. Alex kept a clean pair of low-top white Converses in her closet but that was the extent of her sneaker fetish. Maria was famous nationwide for her kicks. She had limited editions, throwbacks, and collector items. Years ago, Birdie had been interviewed by Maria and he came home telling Alex about how he wasn’t able to take his eyes off her Nike Air Jordan 4 Undefeated production sample sneakers. “Them shits are worth at least five thousand!” he’d said to Alex, his eyes wide. Alex stared at him, clueless.
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