Relapse: A Novel

by Nikki Turner

  She called Don as soon as she hung up with Johnny. “Look, bring me some music up here. I have this guy that I want to send some music to, possibly get you a deal.”

  “That’s a good look, Beijing,” he said to her excitedly. “I really appreciate anything you can do.”

  “I’m still mad at you for that bullshit but at the same time, if I can help you I will. Come on now, because I got this guy waiting for me to email the music to him.” Within minutes, Don delivered the music.

  Beijing downloaded the songs to her computer and emailed them to Johnny. It had been a super-long day and it was already after midnight, so she wasn’t expecting Johnny Wiz to call back. She took a shower and dozed off to sleep, only to be awakened by Johnny. As soon as she answered the phone, there was no hello, no I’m sorry for calling you so late, no salutations at all, he only said, “How come you never mentioned to me that hidden among your many talents was a good ear for music?”

  “So you like it?” she questioned, still half asleep, but quickly waking up.

  “From the sound of it, he seems to have great potential and it helps that he has you on his side. He nor I can’t go wrong.”

  “So will you give him a deal? I’m asking you to give him a nice deal because he needs to take care of something that is important for me,” Beijing said.

  “Why don’t you understand my love and loyalty for you, Beijing?”

  “I do. You are proving it now, once you say yes about this deal,” she said with a light giggle to try to soften the moment up.

  “I will have him flown in tomorrow to do the preliminaries.” Damn, is my luck this good that I could possibly get Don a deal just like that? So easy? Am I really that good?

  “Tomorrow he has to open up a concert here in Charlotte.”

  “Okay, how about Monday, he’s on the first flight out of there. As a matter of fact I want you both here. I am flying you in as well.”

  “Thank you so much, Johnny.” It was Beijing’s turn to be grateful.

  “He must be special to you,” he said, glad to be able to repay Beijing.

  “It’s not like that, but he does have talent.”

  “Well, consider him a part of the Wizard Entertainment Group from this day forward. I got him, and I am going to play fair with him too.”

  “Thanks again, Johnny.”

  “You can thank me when he goes double platinum,” Johnny said. Then he chuckled. “After all, that’s what I do. I create superstars, baby.”

  Beijing smiled at Johnny’s cockiness.

  “Johnny Wiz at your service, baby. Now, is there anything else I can do to help make your life easier?”

  “No, you just did it all.”

  “Are you sure? Going once, going twice …”

  “Well, there kind of is, but I just didn’t want to ask for too much.”

  “I’m in a real good mood right now, so lay it on me.”

  “I mean, since he’s now your artist, I do need the Wiz’s credit card number for his room at my hotel because the card number the promoter has on file was declined. I can get a nice discount rate but I can’t get it for free.”

  “Done. Whatever it is, I will have my office take care of it.”

  “You are the best.”

  “Now, after this deal is done, we are going out to celebrate.”

  “Count me in, Johnny. I can’t wait.”

  When Beijing delivered the news to Don about who she was negotiating with he almost passed out. But this was only the beginning. There were still a lot of things to iron out.

  Beijing knew she had to make sure that Don had his ducks in a row when dealing with Johnny. She had heard that he was the king of fucking musicians with no Vaseline, and though Johnny was doing her a favor, and Don was anxious to make the deal happen, she knew she had to be smart.

  Beijing was thumbing through her Rolodex in search of an entertainment lawyer who could go through Don’s contract with a fine-tooth comb when Dennard Dunlap came to mind. He and Beijing had dated back in high school. An occasional phone call or card over the holidays had been the extent of their communication since. Between their two sets of parents, however, they had kept up with each other’s whereabouts. Dennard had moved to Atlanta and become a successful lawyer. He dealt with mostly people in the music business, mixed in with an actor or two here or there.

  Beijing was mildly surprised by how happy he sounded to hear from her when she called him.

  “Beijing, so nice to hear from you. You know I think of you all the time.”

  “That’s really nice.” Beijing didn’t know what else to say; she hadn’t really given him much thought besides when she ran into his mother every now and again.

  “As a matter of fact, I’m going to be in Charlotte this weekend, are you there?”

  “I am, and that actually works out for me, because I would like to enlist your services for a friend of mine. He has a contract that I would love to have you look at for me.”

  “Of course, anything for you. Shall we chat more over dinner this Saturday then?”

  “Only if you let me pay,” she suggested.

  “Well, we’ll flip over who will cover the tab afterward.”

  Beijing had still had the taste of the Vines restaurant cuisine in her mouth since earlier in the week when she and Don had planned to have dinner there, but because of their detour, they’d never made it. She made up her mind that she was going to enjoy tonight to the fullest. When she brought the brand spanking new Lexus to a halt in front of the Vines, the valet sprang up from under the huge black awning toward the driver’s side of the car.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he politely greeted. “Would you be using valet parking today?”

  He was a young kid who barely looked old enough to drive.

  Beijing gave the young attendant a once-over. “You do have a permit, don’t you?” she playfully queried, still holding tight to the keys.

  The boy shot her a youthful smile. “I sure do, ma’am, I get that a lot.”

  “Just be careful,” she said before reluctantly relinquishing the keys to the luxury sedan. Shouldering her bag, Beijing stepped toward the entrance of the restaurant.

  “Welcome to the Vines,” the hostess sang from behind the podium. “Do you have a reservation?”

  “Yes.” Beijing returned the girl’s smile. “It’s under Lee.”

  She checked the list and then led Beijing to a secluded table where her dinner companion was waiting.

  Dennard got up from the table and gave her a big hug. He still looked the same: a hair over six feet tall, Mr. Goodbar–colored skin, and perfect white teeth, although he was dressed a little better than back in the day. By the way his tailor-made suit clung to his body, Beijing surmised that he couldn’t have put on an ounce of weight since school.

  “Good to see you, B,” he said, after releasing his embrace. “You look even more gorgeous than I remember. Why,” he asked with a crooked grin, “did we break up anyway?”

  “It probably had something to do with all those other girls that were running behind you that you had such a problem saying no to,” Beijing teased, still blushing from his compliment.

  A few deep lines materialized across his forehead as if he was thinking, then he smiled again. “Oh yeah. I somehow forgot about that.”

  They both laughed as they sat down, shared a few stories, then ordered from the silk-clothed menus. He had the surf and turf and she had the crab salad while they shared a bottle of Merlot.

  After dinner, Beijing got down to business. She opened the compact briefcase that was on the floor by her feet and removed a small stack of papers, paper-clipped together in a pink folder. “This is the contract from Johnny Wiz that I want you to check out.

  “The contract is for a friend of mine,” Beijing continued as he browsed through the paperwork. “As you can see, it’s from the Wizard Entertainment Group. I just want to be sure everything is what it should be.” She watched his brow furrow as Dennard con
centrated on one of the pages.

  “That Johnny Wiz can be a sneaky bastard when he chooses to be,” Dennard replied after closing the folder and taking a sip of wine, “and from my personal experiences, that’s more times than not. He’s like the Don King of the music biz.”

  She laughed at his joke and said, “That’s why I wanted you to check it out.” She leaned a little closer and lowered her voice. “My friend has so many people trying to get in his pocket, I wanted to bring this to someone I know I can trust.”

  “I’ll be sure to take a good look at it,” he assured her, tapping the document with his fingertips. “Let me hold on to it for the weekend, and I’ll send it back Monday with any changes I deem pertinent. Okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Good, now how about another bottle of wine?”

  “If I didn’t know better, Dennard, I might think you were trying to get me intoxicated.” Beijing chuckled softly.

  “That’s what first attracted me to you, B. You almost always know better, but on those occasions when you see fit, you’re not afraid to throw caution out the window.”

  “And I always thought you were just head over heels in love with my body,” she said with a smile that was brighter than the four-foot chandelier hanging above the table.

  With the help of Dennard and because Beijing had Johnny by the balls, she was able to get Don an advance on his advance. They picked up the sizable check from Johnny’s Atlanta office.

  “You are so damn lucky,” Beijing said as they left the office and got into her rental car.

  “And now this. The day I met you, girl: that was my lucky day.”

  “You got that right,” Beijing said. I wish I could say the same, she thought to herself.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Boss Bitch

  “Sit tight, Don,” Beijing said before hopping out of the Lexus, “I’m going to go in and make sure this dude got the bread.”

  “You sure you don’t need me to go with you?”

  “Naw.” She shook her head. “I got this.” She reassured Don she had the situation under control and had all the backup she needed as she put her white pearl-handled .22-caliber in her bag.

  “Aight, gangsta boo. If you ain’t back in ten minutes, I’m coming in.”

  “You better not.” She shot him a look and reminded him, “You are the talent.”

  Don watched with an admiring eye as she sashayed into the back door of the Atlanta strip club to handle their business with the owner. Beijing had earned Don’s love and his trust. In his eyes, having her in his corner made him a privileged man.

  It had been a little over nine months since Beijing had come into Don’s life, and she had been a godsend. He had no idea what he did to deserve such an angel on his side. There was no doubt, he was a lucky man. Not only was she drop-dead gorgeous, but she had turned his life around. She had skyrocketed his career, taking his fame, bank account, net worth, and heart off to un-imagined heights. It seemed that she waved a wand and damn near fixed every situation in his life—all except for one demon, which was beginning to spiral out of control.

  What had started out as recreational weekend use of “heron” had now turned into a major habit. The truth was that habit had been in his life long before Beijing ever entered into his world. His addiction went back years, to a time when he was in his mother’s basement with Kim, his then girlfriend of three weeks.

  Things were getting kind of hot and steamy and he said to Kim, “Let’s get our freak on.” Don was rubbing his hands together smiling like a thief in an empty jewelry store. “My mother ain’t going to be home until eleven.”

  “Shit, you ain’t going to last no more than fifty seconds,” Kim declared. “That shit was kind of cool at first because I know my pussy be the bombastic, but you can leave that quick-draw-and-shoot shit to Billy the Kid and the rest of dem cowboys.”

  That hurt Don’s feelings. He was busy picking up his ego off the floor when he noticed that Kim had pulled a ten-dollar bill from her pocketbook and carefully unfolded it.

  “What the fuck is that?” Don asked trying to forget about the attack Kim had just made against his manhood.

  “Magic powder.” She smiled before scooping a little of the powder off the bill with her fingernail. Kim lifted her nail to her nose to inhale. “This is exactly what you need to keep yo’ shit hard. That is … if you really want to keep fucking this good pussy?”

  Ever since that day not only was Don’s nose wide open for what was between Kim’s legs, it was open for the magic powder as well. The funny part was that after a month and a half, Kim was out of his life but the heroin wasn’t. Though he just about broke his neck to keep the drugs under wraps, since his newfound stardom, the money and the ready availability of the drug caused his use to escalate. He could never share all of the details of his drug use with Beijing. Most of the time he stayed in denial about it, but Beijing wasn’t slow. She knew what was going on with him. She constantly reminded him of the rehab programs that she had researched for him, and he knew that it would make her happy if he pulled it together. He wanted to do whatever he could to make her happy, but something about that dope had a greater hold on him.

  Don saw Beijing making her way back over to the car. “So, I got the dough, and Wild-Bill said he’s only two minutes away.”

  He motioned for Beijing to look. “There he is.”

  Beijing redirected her attention to Bill. “You are late. I’m docking your pay.” She wasn’t intimidated by the big, burly dark-skinned licensed security guy. “It doesn’t make any sense, all those people in there and the people in the front of the club and I got the world’s hottest rapper out in the car, with no hired protection.”

  “Sorry, I had to stop and get something to eat.”

  “Nigga …” She playfully bopped him upside the head, and then said in a firm tone, “The next time you show up late and have me waiting on you, you are not going to have a job and you can take that to the bank.”

  “B, I apologize.”

  “Yeah, aight, but I still mean what I say.” Then she turned back to Don and said, “They got a lil dressing room for you to chill in until it’s time for you to go on. So, let’s go in.”

  “Aight baby, you da boss.” Don smiled because it turned him on how Beijing handled her business with him on the front line and behind the bedroom door as well.

  They entered through the back door of the club, and Beijing led them past the half-naked women running to their workstations. Before going to iron out details with the DJ, Beijing got Don settled in the back room, which had dancers’ outfits and shoes piled in a corner. Don couldn’t really enjoy his spliff from shooing off the strippers wanting to get to know him better, get his autograph or number, or give him some head. They had swarmed around him like gravy on a biscuit.

  He calmly and kindly rejected all the half-dressed women. “Baby, it ain’t that type of party. I got a girl, I’m cool,” he said in between pulling on the blunt.

  “Damn, leave the nigga alone. I swear, y’all bitches got a club full of paying motherfuckers, let the man finish his blunt so he can help us all get dis paper. Plus he don’t want no stinky, drunk Ecstasy-taking broads, no way,” one girl said.

  The other girls sucked their teeth at her outspoken comment while Don gave the dazzling beauty a smile and said, “Good looking.”

  “I dance before you go on,” she said. She was dressed in all-blue patent leather. She had on a thong and a bra that looked like a turtleneck with a bunch of splits in it. “Since I’m the feature dancer and rake in the most money here,” she boasted, “they want me to open up for you.”

  “That’s what’s up,” he said not really caring one way or the other. He was zoned out in his own world.

  “This is actually my dressing room that you’re using.”

  “Sorry for the inconvenience,” he said, “but I ’preciate the courtesy all the same, ya heard.” The headline stripper left to finish getting ready to do he
r set about five minutes before Beijing came in.

  “Coming to the stage is the dazzling Dazzle,” they heard the DJ call over the speaker.

  “Aight,” Beijing told Don. “Showtime after the next song.” He blew his smoke in the other direction, away from Beijing.

  “Cool, baby.”

  He put out the blunt, stood up, and followed Beijing. Bill was on both their heels as she led him to a spot on the side of the stage where he could see the crowd without being spotted. He and Beijing both watched Dazzle perform. She was five foot eight with perfect skin a shade softer than a chocolate Yoohoo. Her blue contact lenses and blue eye makeup sparkled under the ideal condition of light. Proportioned at 36-26-44, her body could drive some men to commit acts they otherwise wouldn’t dream of. Some said she was a gift from a higher power, perhaps stripper heaven.

  Dazzle contorted her thickness into all types of erotic poses. Her flexibility was amazing. The crowd was loving it. “Damn.” Both Beijing and Don looked at each other in amazement.

  Don had a group of horny, sexy, seductive girls preparing to get naked surrounding him crammed into the small space on the side of the platform. Not only the blunt he had smoked but the bass in the song that the DJ was fading into the end of Dazzle’s song had him feeling intoxicated.

  Beijing handed Don the microphone, and he took the stage. Don knew that in a strip club if a person didn’t have a fat ass on that stage, they weren’t going to get any respect. Within five seconds of touching the stage, the DJ used the instrumental of a bass heavy beat to momentarily jolt the crowd to life, forcing the attention of every single person to the stage. Don nodded a couple of times and began to spit with a flow that was a hybrid of Young Jeezy and Jay Z. Don eyed Beijing for approval. She gave him thumbs-up and a reassuring nod—and he ripped the club apart. Every table in the place was empty. All the people in the club were on their feet dancing while a small band of female strippers had surrounded the club for “the take-over,” forcing the fellas to make it rain on them with money. But by the time Don was finished with his performance, he had the club patrons making it thunderstorm with cash.