A Man Inspired

by Derek Jackson

  He roughly nudged her bare shoulder with his hand, causing a sleepy moan to come from her. He had met the woman, who said she was an actress (weren’t they all?), while at a party in North Hollywood earlier that day. After the third round of drinks, one thing had led to another and the next thing both of them knew, they were in bed together. For her, sleeping with the one and only Jermaine Hill was probably something she’d proudly retell with a warped sense of pride to all her girlfriends; for him, it had been just another way to pass the evening.

  “Hey, baby, you up?” He vaguely remembered her name started with a D, but he had forgotten what. Or more likely, he had never asked in the first place.

  “Mmm . . . yeah. Where’s my clothes?”

  “Think you left them in the bathroom.”

  “Okay. Mmm . . . yeah, that’s right. Thanks, Jermaine. Oh honey, you were . . . awesome.”

  Jermaine rolled his eyes and turned on his back as the girl slowly and somewhat dreamily made her way to the bathroom. She turned on the light and closed the door.

  He got up seconds later, stretched, and strolled to his balcony patio overlooking the vast, scenic Hollywood Hills. The small one-bedroom condominium was not much for size, but the enviable location made it the perfect bachelor pad for just about any guy in the world looking to have a good time whenever he wanted. Tonight, the ivory- and golden-hued moon high above the Pacific Southwest was just a half-crescent, though it still reflected enough light to brilliantly illuminate the rolling hills and coarse terrain of the valley. And it was at that moment, leaning against the wooden railing of his deck, that Jermaine was once again left to wonder what in the world he was doing wrong.

  What am I missing? Don’t I have it all? People would kill to be me . . . and I would kill . . . to stop being me . . . The thought was so unbelievably ironic that he would have laughed out loud if it hadn’t also been so frighteningly close to the truth.

  When he was a kid, his Aunt Bell had tended to be overprotective about which influences he was exposed to, in effect limiting his life to a strict circle of school, church, and some occasional sporting events. But talk about your reverse effects—all that had succeeded in doing was to create an overpowering thirst in his mind to truly see the world—a thirst to catch up on everything he missed while being raised under the iron grip of stringent religious doctrine, to experience all the thrills he could now squeeze out of the rest of his life. So he craved the fame. Sought the money. Romanced the girls. And by all accounts, he had been successful in all three categories.

  So why . . . am I still . . . not happy?

  “Jermaine?” D-whatever-her-name-was stepped out onto the balcony, clad now in the flimsy, red cocktail dress she had been wearing when they first met. “Honey, are you sure you don’t want me to stay longer? I don’t mind spending the night.”

  “No, I got some things I need to do,” he replied tersely, not even bothering to look back at her.

  She came up close behind him and touched him on the shoulder. “Well, alright then. Until next time . . .”

  Jermaine was sure there wouldn’t be a next time, but there wasn’t any point in telling her.

  AN HOUR LATER, as he slowly cruised down Sunset Boulevard with his tinted windows all the way up, the plan slithered its way into his mind again. It had never really wandered from his thoughts in the first place after disguising itself as a harmless little idea at Ronny and Eric’s funeral almost a decade ago. And given that many years to develop and fester, it now was an uncontrollable raging monster of suicidal tendencies. Through the distorted eyes of blinding grief, he had viewed his two friends as being in a place where there was no more hurt. No more pain. They had gone and left him behind all alone in this world, and for some reason, it had been an extremely appealing notion if he were to somehow join them.

  They say only crazy people contemplate suicide . . .

  If all the millions of people that listened to his show knew what he was contemplating at the moment, they would probably renounce him as a star motivational guru, or whatever it was they had dubbed him.

  That’s right, America. Call me crazy. Stark, raving, time-for-the-straitjacket crazy . . .

  Glancing at the speedometer on the Escalade, he wondered how fast he could push the expensive SUV if he were on an open road—one of those hilly, curvy California freeways that skirted the Pacific Ocean. That had become the new plan, because the idea involving the .22 was just too grisly. And too messy. Driving off a cliff at a hundred and twenty miles an hour sounded much easier, if indeed such things could be termed easy.

  He pulled off to the side of the road and turned down the volume on the radio, not caring to be entertained anymore by music. At the moment, the radio stations in Orange County weren’t satisfying his musical tastes, anyway. He had been a large collector and lover of jazz back in college, from the greats like Dizzy, Thelonius Monk, and Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker, Count Basie, George Benson, and the early Quincy Jones. Back then, life had seemed simpler, truer, freer. To be completely surrounded by great thinkers and creative geniuses at that time in his young adult life had been water to his thirsty soul. At no time before or since had he been around so many black folk who challenged him to excel in both the classroom and life.

  Two in particular, Ronny Mayfield and Eric Swann, he had met at a Greek party on campus during his freshman year. All of them had grown up in the D.C. area, Ronny from the Lafayette Courts in Baltimore and Eric from the Edgewood Terrace housing projects in D.C. Jermaine himself had originally been born in Brooklyn, but had been raised by his Aunt Bell in Baltimore from the age of three when his own crack-addicted parents couldn’t stay clean long enough to care for him.

  Ronny and Eric became the brothers he never had as an only child who had been reared by his old aunt. An aunt who, although she loved him dearly, couldn’t relate to him as a growing man. The trio had become inseparable during their four years at Howard, bonding like few men did anymore in modern society. Eric had been a political science major who had plans to graduate magna cum laude and head to law school. And from there, he had boldly declared, he planned to become the first black man to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Ronny had been an intellectual thinker in the mold of a young Cornel West, which was remarkable considering his impoverished background and humble upbringing. He had majored in philosophy with dreams of radically shifting those paradigms and ideologies that, in his mind, kept the majority of black America still enslaved in a poverty mentality.

  And Jermaine . . . well, he was the communications major destined to be a media star, what with a voice that rivaled the bass tones of Barry White, the smoothness of Billy Dee Williams, and the pronunciation and diction of Bryant Gumbel. “Golden” was what his voice had been nicknamed and aptly labeled by a reporter with the Washington Post who had heard Jermaine emcee a student NAACP fund-raiser during his senior year at Howard. The moniker had stuck.

  “Here I am, the man with the golden voice guaranteed to get you excited and inspired about life,” he stated aloud, laughing in derision as he mocked his own announcer. Truthfully, it would have been more realistic for him to think of Eric as still being alive and being elected president of the United States than to think he could provide inspiration for his own life just then.

  Tears rolled down his cheeks as he watched the stars twinkle and dance with each other in the moonlit sky above the city of angels. He was already feeling the numbing sensations of a hangover pushing its way into his brain even though it wasn’t even two o’clock in the morning. And he hadn’t drunk heavily in years; the last time he even recalled having a hangover was at a college party when it was still fashionable for brothers to sport flat-top haircuts.

  Shoulda been me and not you, Eric. That nostalgic thought was true about so many things. Shoulda been me in that car and not you. You would’ve had my vote to be president . . .

  Chapter three

  OKAY, XAVIER, I’M on my way. They held me up with the rental car bu
t everything’s fine now,” Myra shouted into her cell phone as she passed underneath an airport tunnel. The grating combination of the static and the phone’s poor reception was getting on her nerves, so she decided to put a quick end to this conversation. Besides, talking while driving was a habit she was striving to correct.

  “Remind me to talk to Cindy, though, about making sure the company credit card is current, okay? Peace and blessings.” She clicked off her cell as she headed west along the beltway, heading for Interstate 45. The first time Myra had visited the city of Houston, it had been on a business trip while she was still working for corporate America. Though that had been years ago, she had still remembered the city’s near-stifling summer humidity that had caused her to sweat in places she hadn’t thought possible. That unpleasant memory was blazingly brought back to life once she had stepped off the plane a few hours ago and felt a blast of furnace-like air that seemed to take away even the moisture in her mouth. Though she was Georgia born and raised and therefore accustomed to occasional high temperatures, she had a hard time believing that over two and a half million people would live in this kind of heat.

  “Maybe they know something I don’t,” she thought.

  An hour and a half later, she finally pulled up in the driveway of the plush two-story home in the southwest suburb of Sugarland. She had noticed that most of the homes’ yards were not that large in square footage, like she was accustomed to seeing back in Atlanta. The majority of the lots here seemed to be situated almost on top of one another, although that was not the case with the mansion sprawling before her. The white and beige brick house sat back a good ways from the street in the center of a large cul-de-sac, seeming to tower over the rest of the neighborhood’s homes in a stately fashion. Small azaleas, red tulips, and purple chrysanthemums lined the walkway and circled around the three large trees in a well-tended path to the front doors. The lush green grass was professionally trimmed and edged around the same path, reminding Myra of the landscaping normally reserved for golf courses at posh country clubs.

  You’ve done good for yourself, girl . . .

  She rang the doorbell twice, hearing the reverberating chime faintly echo throughout the house. The door opened not long afterward, revealing a slender, petite young woman wearing a light blue knit polo and khaki capri pants. Myra immediately recognized the writer from the photo inserts she had on file.

  “Hello, Miss Clark. I’m Myra Washington, editor-in-chief of Song of Solomon magazine.” After noting the somewhat blank expression being given off by Candace, Myra promptly continued. “Um, I arranged an interview through your publicist, Carl Daniels, but I—”

  “Oh, yes!” Recognition now came to the writer’s face. “Yes, I remember now. Carl sent me the e-mail on that but I didn’t get confirmation on the time.”

  “Oh, I see.” Myra fidgeted with the strap on her bag. She suddenly felt awkward, like a door-to-door peddler with out-of-date goods nobody wants. She cleared her throat and willed herself to remain confident. “Well . . . if this is a bad time, I completely understand.”

  “No, no. Of course not,” Candace answered, seemingly sensing Myra’s discomfort. With an inviting smile, she opened the door farther and beckoned for Myra to come inside. “The least I can do is get you in from that heat. It’s not even summer yet and already it’s humid enough to dry out a weave.”

  Myra self-consciously smoothed down her hair. “Girl, I know that’s the truth.”

  Candace led Myra through the foyer, past the den, and into the airy sunroom. “Please, have a seat on the couch. I’ll be ready in a sec—let me just run and forward my calls to voice mail.”

  “Oh, go right ahead.” Myra took advantage of the time to allow herself a long look around the sunroom’s decor and furnishings, especially appreciating the colorful painting of the woman with the Bible, gazing toward Heaven. The old woman sort of reminded her of her own grandmother, who had been a mighty woman of God in her own right. She smiled to herself as she thought, “Strong spiritual heritage runs in the family. . . .”

  She guessed correctly that the white leather couch would be luxurious to sit on, and while making herself comfortable, she refreshingly took in the aromatics of the room. The blend of French vanilla candles and assorted potpourri was pleasantly enlivening to her senses after braving all kinds of toxic smells at the airport. She opened her notebook portfolio, full of all the information Xavier had felt she needed to make her pitch to land a writer of Candace Clark’s talent.

  Okay, God, You’ve let me come this far. This is such an awesome opportunity . . . I’m just going to trust You now . . .

  Candace walked back in the room a few minutes later. “Myra, I’m so sorry—I just don’t know where my manners are right now. My mother taught me better than that, I can promise you. Can I offer you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

  “Oh no, thank you,” Myra answered. “I imagine our roles are kind of reversed right now. I mean, I’m sure that you’ve orchestrated a lot of interviews before. And it’s been a long time since I’ve done one; I usually just oversee the operations and production of the magazine.”

  “I admire and applaud you for that, you know,” Candace commented as she settled down in the large easy chair across from Myra. “Because we need some more women—black women at that—in management positions in journalism. And in media across the board, for that matter. Sure, all the large studios can hire pretty talking heads and fill their quotas all they want, but the job that you’re doing is where the real power lies—ownership.”

  Amen to that . . . Myra smiled graciously and twirled her Mont Blanc fountain pen around on her fingers, unsure of how to begin. She had never before considered herself to be an excellent seller of anything, but that was precisely what she was here to do.

  “Candace, this isn’t . . . oh, how can I say it? This probably isn’t going to be a typical interview.”

  Again, Candace offered an understanding smile. “I sort of realized that.”

  “You did?”

  She nodded, still smiling. “Well, you were right when you said that I’ve orchestrated a lot of interviews. Goodness, I’ve probably spent the better part of the last three years running around getting quotes from people. Girl, I could tell you some stories!” Her smile quickly turned into unabashed laughter. “Anyway, I guess I’ve done enough interviewing to know that nice fountain pen you’re twirling around may look wonderful, but a Mont Blanc is normally not the pen of choice for writing shorthand and taking notes. If you were also tape-recording, then using a pen like that might be alright, though I still wouldn’t advise it.”

  Myra placed her pen on the table in front of her and folded her hands in her lap. Now wasn’t that something, she thought to herself—being accurately and openly read like a newspaper headline by a woman half her age.

  “Well, just call me an amateur, then; I haven’t interviewed in years! You’re right, Candace—I didn’t exactly come to get quotes from you or take a lot of notes. The truth of the matter is that I came to make a . . . a pitch. I’m sure you know that Mario Jordan wants only you to do the upcoming feature on Jermaine Hill.”

  At that statement, Candace wearily shook her head like a girl who’s received one too many flowers from a boy she doesn’t like. “Yes, I’ve gotten more than my share of messages from Super Mario in the past week, so I guess I’m going to be the one to do this. But let me tell you, I’m not exactly falling over myself to write this piece.”

  “Really? Well, that’s news to me. Jermaine Hill is one of the hottest celebrities in the nation right now.”

  “Yeah, that’s what everyone says.”

  “But not you?”

  Candace shrugged and showed indifference. “I’m not saying that. I just don’t exactly see what makes him so hot.”

  “Candace, you do have to admit he does look . . . what’s the word nowadays? I know people don’t say handsome anymore.”

  Candace laughed. “Watch out now, Myra—you’re
telling your age! Yes, he is fine, as they say. But looks aren’t everything. And to me, the whole thing just happened overnight, it seems. Who even knew about him two years ago? Which goes to show that fame has a lot to do with opportunity and . . . well . . . a little bit of . . .”

  “A little bit of luck,” Myra finished. “Not that I put any stock in luck myself, just for the record. But I do believe in opportunity. That’s why I’m here, to tell you the truth. I’m here because of an opportunity. Candace, you’ve established yourself as a first-rate columnist, meaning you can write for any publication you choose. And like I said earlier, I’m here to make a pitch.”

  Candace raised her eyebrows a little and leaned back in her chair.

  “I’m not sure that you know a whole lot about the vision we have or that you even read our magazine, to be honest. This is just a little background info, all of which is in a portfolio I have for you, but in the past year we gained fifteen percent of the market share for our demographic. We’re also showing that we have a broader appeal to the readers of not only urban magazines, but also of mainstream publications that are not particularly African-American. In Atlanta, we—”

  She abruptly stopped, suddenly realizing that all she was doing was reciting and spouting out the facts and specs Xavier had provided for her. If this was the best she was going to do, she might as well just have faxed the data sheet and saved a long, hot, humid trip.

  Oh no, I’m not. I didn’t get my hair messed up in this humidity after driving almost two hours to not go all out for this chance . . . God, help me here . . . “Candace, I . . . I could give you all the facts, surveys, and studies showing that all we’re really lacking is the exclusive rights to one major national story that would take us to the front of the urban market share. That’s what I believe, at any rate. Because when it’s all said and done, it’s all about the readers.”

  “Absolutely. I can definitely agree with that.”