“So you’re not dropping him from the label.”
“Me and Z have a long history of working together. If we were ever going to make any changes, it’s not something that would be worked out through the media.”
Alex stopped writing and looked up. “You’re not saying no.”
“Is this story about me or Z?”
“It’s about you. And Z.” Alex looked to her right. “And it’s about Kipenzi too. It’s about all of the people in your life who are influencing you.” She sat back in her chair and gestured just slightly in Kipenzi’s direction. “So, when are you two getting married?”
Jake laughed. Kipenzi did not. She cleared her throat and shrugged into her coat.
“Jake,” she said, lifting an eyebrow but saying no more. She walked past Alex’s chair and stopped, offering her hand. “It was nice meeting you, Alex.”
Alex stood up.
Kipenzi kept her eyes closed and tapped at the side of her head with a perfectly manicured index finger. “Few years ago, in XXL, you wrote, and I quote: ‘When Kipenzi Hill finds her voice, it will be an event. Until then, we’ll be forced to listen to her scream out the notes to petty pop songs that are unworthy of her time. For now, she’s full of all style and no substance. Hopefully she’ll learn that a true artist does it vice versa.’ ”
“I wrote that years ago …”
Kipenzi nodded. “Probably why I remember it so well. I barely keep up with what’s written now. But back then?” Kipenzi held her hand to her stomach. “Lines like that had me depressed for weeks.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’re welcome!” Kipenzi said. “I just buckled down and worked harder after I read that review. And by the way, you were right.”
She opened the door and her two bodyguards quickly enveloped her and led her down the hallway.
Jake’s assistant came into the office with a coffee cup. She placed it on Jake’s desk and then walked away. “Ten more minutes, Alex,” she said, before closing the door.
Alex exhaled and looked at Jake. “That’s not enough time.”
“Let me ask you something,” Jake said.
“I’m supposed to be asking the questions.”
“What does your editor want from you?”
“Perspective. They want me to give them a side of you they’ve never seen.”
A knock on the door. A tall young man with long, shiny cornrows came in with a stack of CDs and sat on the couch, sorting them into small piles. Jake raised his chin in greeting to the young man and then turned back to Alex.
“Give me an example,” Jake said.
“I ask you about the dad you never knew and then you start crying …”
Jake’s face went blank and he dropped his chin.
“Well, you asked!” Alex said.
Jake took a sip of his coffee and gagged. “What if I cursed out some chick who screwed up my coffee order?”
Alex shrugged. “Rapper with a temper? Nah, they know that side already.”
“That’s not how I get down.”
“I know. But that’s how they assume all rappers get down. Boring story.”
“My job is to give you something without giving you everything.”
“Exactly.”
“And the best-case scenario is for me to give you something without giving you anything.”
Alex smiled. “What’s your earliest memory?”
Jake rolled his eyes. “You can’t be serious.”
“You’re living in the Brevoort Projects with your mom and your two little sisters. What can you remember?”
“My mom coming home from work in the middle of the night. I always woke up when I heard the key in the lock. I would go into the kitchen while she warmed up her dinner. And she would keep telling me to go back to bed. But she knew I wouldn’t. So she’d tell me about her day but keep saying, ‘Go on to bed, boy.’ ”
Alex nodded, dropping her head to make sure her recorder was still running.
“That became our thing. Even when I was much older. Anytime I’d see her, she’d say, ‘Go on to bed, boy.’ And that meant, like, get out of here. Even though she didn’t really want me to.”
Alex looked up when she realized Jake wasn’t saying anything else. She opened her mouth to speak when the assistant opened the door again.
“Time’s up, Jake. Car’s waiting downstairs.”
“And before you go, I need to talk to you about these beats,” said the young guy with the braids.
“I know. Just chill for a second,” said Jake, who seemed to come out of a trance. He stood up and shook it off and then extended a hand to Alex.
“Thanks for coming through. Hope I was helpful.”
Alex stood up and shook his hand. “I’ve written about you before. Twice.”
“You used to work for The Source. You gave my second album four and a half mics.”
Alex gave Jake a weak smile and shrugged her shoulders. “The whole staff voted. I didn’t decide that by myself.”
“It was your name on that review.”
“It wasn’t a five-mic album,” Alex said.
Jake made a face like he’d gotten a whiff of spoiled milk. “You must be crazy.”
“The beats were hot,” Alex said. “But you got lazy toward the end. That one song? With the hook where you’re, like, singing or whatever? That was horrible.”
Jake sat back down and looked Alex over as if seeing her for the first time. “You thought so?”
“Yeah. I did. And it’s so annoying the way you always explain your obscure metaphors. You’ll say, ‘Get it, I’m always leaning …’ You need to trust your audience. We’ll figure it out.”
Jake nodded and smiled. “I’ll take that into consideration. You ever think about doing A&R?”
“Nah. I like what I do.”
“What else would you like to do? Write a book?”
Alex swallowed. “Maybe one day. I love trivia. I could do some kind of trivia book.”
Jake and the guy with the cornrows exchanged a look and they both chuckled. “Me and Damon have been arguing about the theme song to Good Times all week,” Jake said. “He swears they’re saying ‘hanging in and jiving.’ Which makes no sense. They’re talking about hard times. They’re saying ‘hanging in a chow line.’ ”
“But the show is called Good Times,” Damon said. “Hanging in and jiving is good times!”
“I’m telling you,” Jake said. “The line is hanging in a chow line. The show was set in the projects in Chicago. Chow lines. Trust me.”
“You’re wrong,” Damon said, still separating his pile of CDs.
Jake made a show of standing up from his desk, walking into the middle of his office, and digging his hands into the pockets of his oversized jeans. He lifted his chin high and leveled his eyes at Damon. “How much you putting on that?”
“Everything you got in your pockets right now—times five.”
Jake threw his head back and laughed out loud until he started to cough. He then abruptly stopped laughing and caught his breath. He pulled out a wad of neatly folded bills and began to peel them off the roll, slapping them onto his desk.
“. . . seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.”
Damon pretended to yawn and checked his phone for a new text message.
“. . . seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five.”
Damon looked up. “Why the fuck do you need seventy-five hundred dollars in your pocket?”
“You never know.”
“Don’t you got an ATM card?”
Jake laughed. “When the stock market crashes, I ain’t trying to fuck with no banks.”
Damon rolled his eyes. “If the stock market crashes, what the hell you gonna do with seventy-five hundred dollars?”
“Stop stalling. It’s ‘hanging in a chow line.’ I want thirty-seven thousand, five hundred dollars from you—today.”
“Whatever. Prove that shit.”
Alex cleared her throat. “It
was a husband-and-wife team that wrote it. The Bergmans.”
Jake snorted. “How do you know?”
“I wrote a story about them last year.” Alex sat down on the arm of Jake’s chair and opened her laptop. “Norman Lear, the creator of the show, hired them to do the theme song. The show didn’t even have a name yet.”
Jake smiled. “So they got the name of the show from the song they wrote?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, swinging the screen around to the story she’d written so Jake and Damon could see it. “And it’s ‘hanging in and jiving.’ Not ‘hanging in a chow line.’ ”
Jake and Damon looked at each other. Then they both started screaming at the same time.
“Ah, I told you! I told you!” Damon said, laughing at Jake.
“You said you wasn’t listening to this chick!” Jake said, laughing. He slammed the money down on the table in front of Damon and sucked his teeth in mock disgust.
“I changed my mind,” Damon said, licking his pointer finger and theatrically counting out the bills. “She’s a genius! She’s a trivia queen!”
“It was nice meeting you, Alex,” Jake said, shaking his head and still chuckling as he walked Alex to the door.
“You know,” Alex said, “four and a half mics is almost perfect.”
“Almost only counts when you’re throwing hand grenades.”
Before Alex could respond, Jake had closed the door.
“AND THAT WAS IT! THAT WAS THE WHOLE INTERVIEW!”
Alex was sitting across from Birdie, Tweet sitting in her lap. They were on the parlor floor of the brownstone, Birdie on a barstool, getting a haircut from Richard, his best friend.
“You got enough to write the story?” Birdie asked, holding up a hand mirror to inspect his hairline.
“Just barely,” Alex said.
“He say anything about the song I did with Talib Kweli?”
Alex hesitated. “No, he didn’t mention it.”
Birdie twisted his lips in disappointment.
“But that doesn’t mean anything,” Alex said quickly. “I told you I didn’t get much time with him.”
“Y’all talked about the music he’s listening to. If he was really feeling my verse, he probably would have mentioned something about it.”
Alex put Tweet down and directed her to a play area in the corner of the room. “When did this suddenly become about you?”
“I can’t ask a question?”
“While I’m trying to tell you about my day?”
“You interviewed a hip-hop celebrity,” Birdie said with a sneer. “So what else is new?”
“What’s new is your attitude. You can’t get a song on the radio, so you’re taking it out on me?”
“Yo, I’m done. I’ll see y’all later,” said Richard, throwing his equipment into his backpack. Alex and Birdie ignored him.
“You going way too far now,” Birdie said.
“You started with me! Why? Why can’t you just talk to me? Tell me what’s on your mind. The only time I know you’re feeling uneasy or nervous about something is when you start shit with me. It’s so unnecessary.”
Alex and Birdie were quiet. Richard closed the front door and they still didn’t speak. The only sound was Tweet, playing with a train set.
Birdie got off the stool and walked toward Alex. He put his arms around her waist and brought her close. “You’re right.”
Alex didn’t move. She was still keyed up from the interview. The last thing she needed was Birdie’s mess.
“I’m going into the studio with Ras Bennett tonight. I think I’m just nervous.”
Alex’s eyes widened. She put her hands on Birdie’s shoulders and moved him back so she could look him in the eye. “Tonight? Seriously? Shit, Birdie, that’s awesome.”
Birdie smiled. “Well, it’s not like he just decided that I’m the best thing ever. He’s only doing it ’cause of the story you did on his wife.”
“Whatever! It’s getting done. This is what you wanted!”
“I know. And what if it doesn’t work? What if I still can’t get radio to play it?”
“That’s not possible. Everything Ras Bennett does gets constant airplay, no question, and you know it. Baby, I am so happy for you!”
Alex nuzzled Birdie’s neck, soaking in his musky smell.
He rubbed the small of her back and sighed. “Why you want to marry me?”
Alex looked up at him. “I have no idea.”
Birdie tickled her on one side, holding her close as she laughed and tried to get away.
“Nooo, Birdie, stop,” she said between laughs. “You’re going to make me pee on myself.”
Tweet appeared near Birdie’s legs. She tapped him on the knee with a toy train.
“Let Lexi go to the potty, Daddy,” she said, which just made Alex and Birdie laugh louder.
“Nope, I won’t,” Birdie said to Tweet, while still tickling Alex. “She’s gonna have an accident right here.”
“Daddy, that’s not nice.”
Alex got out of Birdie’s grasp and dashed to the other side of the room.
“I gotta get my questions ready for my interview with Josephine,” she said, out of breath.
“For Vibe?”
“Yeah. The whole story is giving me a stomachache.”
“Well, you got something on Kipenzi from seeing her in Jake’s office.”
“Right. That’s a good thing. But I didn’t exactly get any quotes from Beth.”
“You will. You always do.”
“It’s not this story that’s bothering me. It’s the book.”
“The Cleo chick.”
Alex nodded. “I feel weird. I talk to her three times a week about all this crazy stuff she’s done with all these industry dudes. Some she names. Some she doesn’t. Drives me crazy.”
“So ask her.”
Alex grimaced. “I don’t even want to know. Just from researching these women for the Vibe story, I can’t even imagine how they would feel knowing their men are in this book. It’s horrible.”
“I think they know. It’s part of the business.”
“Sleeping with whores is part of being a rapper? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Birdie threw his hands up in the air. “Hey, I’m barely a rapper! Cleo wouldn’t even give me a second glance,” he said. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Oh. But once you get a song on the radio and you do become popular and she comes looking for you …”
“She’s dirty. And nasty. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole.”
Birdie put one hand on Alex’s cheek. He kissed her forehead. “I would never do no shit like that. Ever.”
Alex sighed. “Why do you want to marry me?” she asked.
Birdie grinned. “I have no idea. I gotta go to the studio. See you in the morning.”
Alex put Tweet to bed and then took her recorder into her office to download her Jake interview and start transcribing. She turned the recorder on and listened to Jake and Kipenzi. But before long, she’d drifted away. Her body was buzzing from head to toe and she felt light-headed and dizzy. With writing the Cleo book, researching the Vibe story, and seeing Kipenzi and Jake together, she’d had more excitement in a day than she usually had in a month.
But that night, as she prepared for bed, there was something else buzzing around her brain. This woman. Cleo. She claimed she’d slept with ninety percent of all the rappers with record deals in the tristate area. Did that number include Birdie? Birdie made it seem like it was absolutely impossible. But didn’t they all?
JOSEPHINE’S HOME OFFICE, ON THE FIRST FLOOR OF HER SPACIOUS home, offered a fantastic view of the backyard. When she was deep in thought, she often spun her leather office chair around so that she could look out at the kidney-shaped pool, lined all the way around with mature walnut trees and several well-kept gardens and koi ponds. The floor-to-ceiling windows behind her desk stretched across the entire wall, allowing warm sunshine to fill the sp
ace. Natural sunlight was always best for creating new ideas in her sketchbook or making the finishing touches on a gown.
The holidays had been difficult. She wasn’t up to traveling. So she and Ras ate dinner alone. There were more staffers in their house on Christmas day than family members.
Today, now that New Year’s celebrations were over, she was ready to get back to work. Beginning with another interview with Alex.
The original plan was to meet Alex at the office, but then Josephine and Ras found out that Marie Josef, the young woman carrying their child, had been having contractions and could go into labor at any time.
Which meant that Josephine would soon be a mother. For three hours that morning, she’d stared out into the backyard, envisioning her feeding her infant child, walking the grounds with the baby in a sling. She saw a child playing in the pool, arms wide and splashing …
“Ma chérie …”
Josephine jumped. She turned to see her husband in the doorway, his waist-length dreadlocks tied in an intricate knot.
“My love … I was so deep in thought,” Josephine said, holding a hand to her heart.
“You are a nervous wreck,” Ras said, leaning into the doorway. “You need a drink.”
Josephine giggled. “Ras, it’s eight in the morning!”
Ras walked completely into the room, his hands behind his back. “What time is acceptable to start drinking?”
“At least five p.m. And even then, just a glass of wine or champagne.”
Ras brought two glasses from behind his back. The stemware was a gift from his great-grandmother in Jamaica. The glasses were hand blown in France, sixteen inches high, with an elaborate pattern of roses with thorns snaking around the stem. Each glass had champagne with a splash of orange juice and a split strawberry perched on the lip.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” Ras said.
Josephine was normally ultracomposed. She always looked as though she were being held up by an imaginary thread coming out of the very top of her head. But when Ras handed her the glass, she slumped in her chair, pulled her bun down from the top of her head, and shook her hair out. She rolled her eyes at Ras, took the glass, and drained it.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Ras said, taking a sip from his own glass and then holding it up to toast Josephine’s empty one. Josephine held hers up, clinked it, and then let out a loud belch.
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