by Danyel Smith
Audrey was unimpressed. “He’s common. The strife, lies, bias, the sickness. It’s why we’re all the way we are, why it’s hard to bring the kids into this world. It’s hard to face them. We disappoint.” She gave a snorty laugh. “Bay kou bliye, pote mak sonje. Giver of blow forgets, bearer of scar remembers. I see the scars on you.”
“Scars?” Eva coughed. Audrey winced. “Please. Don’t go getting all supernatural on me.”
“Supernatural? Ha. Nat-u-ral. Us that have the scars can see them. You see mine.”
Audrey wasn’t speaking in her forged sage voice. She was like her brother, Édouard, for a moment, utterly without fraud. Eva had an urge to loop an arm through Audrey’s but repressed it, felt like she’d be rebuffed, even in what seemed a sudden sisterhood.
“You made a sacrifice in blood, no?” She laughed her stark laugh again. “It’s why you came here with him, the stories they sell in Nassau about Cat? The magic herbs that do the work? Get rid of a baby?”
Eva didn’t want to talk about that. Her karma, she felt, was bad enough. “Dart needs help. For his mania. He wanted a spell. A show, I guess. Something to believe in.”
“Mania. I like that word. Like a flower it sounds. So he had his mania. Made his own spell on Eddie’s night? All that foolishness. But for you?”
Eva shrugged. Be so good to have some Scotch. She tasted it in her mouth, thinking how nice it would be to have any whiskey when Dart took his herbs with Pepsi or whatever canned juice she’d gotten from the store on her walks with Audrey. He’d pass a few words and then sleep for fifteen hours. Eva sat with Dart in the dusky bedroom during lunchtimes, and sometimes during the evenings. He ignored her, sometimes dismissed her or feigned sleep, or put his head in her lap until he was truly snoring. Then Eva would sit on the patio, or go to Audrey and Benjamin’s to watch one of the mawkish romances Ben enjoyed seeing Audrey struggle not to cry through. Mellowed toward Eva because of her brooding pregnancy, Audrey’s contempt for Dart had hardened when she walked in on Eva feverishly asleep on the Rowe’s narrow couch two mornings before. Eva, for her part, felt effective, and duty-bound.
She let her head fall back, closed her eyes to the sun, and sighed.
“Oh, you are so complete. You have everything so much you won’t make one wish. Say right now what would you have in this world so unfit for your precious man?”
Eva looked Audrey in her face. “For everything to be even and fair and pure.” Eva pushed down the snot in her throat.
“You come to … Cat … for—” Audrey sputtered. “This is where it’s … fair and pure?” She looked like she wanted to spit on Eva and her free time and faraway home to go to. “You like your everything, anyway, for you.”
“I never would’ve been here, except—”
“Except what?” Audrey had no time for wishy-washiness.
“Except Dart needs somebody.” Eva wiped at her raw nose. “If it was me going crazy, he’d stay.” Of course he would.
“You are going crazy.” Audrey gestured forcefully toward Eva’s waist, then her leg, and then her face. “And Dart is where? We’re all sad, Eva. Dart makes a life of it while the rest of us work.” Audrey rose and took the few steps to check her vibrant, drying cloth.
“It’s chemical with him, Audrey.” Eva was pleading a case, not even sure it was hers to plead. “Physical! Not laziness.”
“There’s medicine for this sickness?”
“Yes.” Eva was weary as Audrey hit her with Eva’s own argument. “He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t take it. He takes herbs.” She thought the last would speak to Audrey’s sage-y sensibilities, but it didn’t.
“Ah,” she said from the trodden path to the back of her house. “He has you for his medicine. I saw it from when you got here.”
Eva didn’t know why Dart’s mood had turned. She didn’t know if he was faking or not. She didn’t know, even if he was faking it, if he didn’t deserve her support. It had come out of the blue—Dart’s cloud, and Eva’s cold. But Eva’s fever was breaking.
She gathered her things and went to the Rowe House, where Dart was silent behind a closed bedroom door. For the first time since she’d been on Cat, she picked up the house phone and was surprised and glad to hear a dial tone.
Eva got a U.S. operator and called depression hotlines in Manhattan. She tried six different numbers—all were in various states of not answering, or voice mail, or some other nonhuman, unresponsive bullshit. Eva ended up calling an 800 number for the Betty Ford Center, and a nice woman spoke to her for twenty minutes. The woman told her right away that Betty Ford didn’t treat manic depression unless it was related to alcoholism, but recommended some books, and said that Dart did seem like he was going through something that he should talk to someone about. Eva got sleepy talking on the phone to the woman, who finally asked her how she was dealing with it.
“Not that well,” Eva said.
She thought about all the Scotch she’d had, even knowing she was pregnant. But the Scotch had to do with Future Baby, Eva thought, and with Ron, and so Dart was not to blame for any of it. The Betty Ford woman talked about “intervention,” which Eva wondered if she had the energy for. In the end, the woman sounded so absolutely sure of Dart’s manic depression, Eva started to question whether she’d seen symptoms in Dart at all.
Eva went to the bedroom. Dart appeared to be asleep. She showered and then doctored some dried-out aloe vera gel and rubbed it into her peeling skin and lips. She searched for the first time since she’d been on Cat for mascara and shimmering lip gloss. The wound on her leg looked better, but still it throbbed as Eva rubbed coconut oil through her hair and looked without success for a cute, clean outfit. Dart didn’t stir. Eva sat on the bed, touched his cool shoulder. A sheet was wrapped around him precisely from armpit to toe. He looked ready to be laid in a sarcophagus.
Still, Eva had hope. “Hey, now,” she said. “Hungry?”
“I’m ’sleep.” He kept his eyes closed.
“You know what?”
“No.”
Eva was undeterred. “We have to go home at some point.”
“Maybe.”
“We gotta think about how different things’ll be. How we can do something that lets us live a little bit like we’re still here on Cat.”
“And how are we living?” Dart opened his eyes. They were dewy and alert. “Here on Cat.”
“More … free here, I guess. More relaxed.” Eva took a deep breath as best she could with her clogged lungs and nose. “We could do something big together,” Eva said to Dart in a charge. “Something businesswise.”
“It would be difficult if not impossible,” Dart said. Then he got up from the bed. He was unshowered and unshaven, but Eva took his verticality as a good sign.
“But how difficult? We could start our own thing.” Eva was making it up as she went along. It felt good. “A management company. We start off with Sun as a client and everyone else will show up. People hate me, but they love you. Perfect combination.”
“Who’s gonna deal with the clerical stuff?”
Clerical stuff? Eva was nonplussed.
“Answering phones,” Dart said, as if he had to define clerical for her. “The files that need to be kept.” He shook his head. “It would be a lot.”
No fucking way he is serious. “We could have him at work, Dart. The baby. Or I could work a lot from home.” Working from home was a baffling concept to Eva, like living abroad or having a baby or waiting on opportunity or all things being equal but she grasped at it. “I’d be stressed,” Eva went on quickly, “but not as much as at Roadshow. We could be superselective about who we take on, and we could superserve those clients. Charge a higher percentage for stuff beyond just old ideas of management. See what I’m saying? Do a lot of cross-pollination.” She covered her mouth for a big cough. “Everybody wants a clothing line now, wants to make movies. We’d set that kinda shit up. I can get out from under Seb’s thumb.” Maybe I’m dreaming but I think I can
have my son and have a life. I can be somebody’s mother. Women do it all the time.
“You know how to do that. Start a company.” It wasn’t doubt in Eva’s ability that made Dart’s tone so dreary and snide. It was his absolute faith in her.
“No! Of course I don’t.” Of course I do. Or I will. Eva was unfazed by his resistance. If it’s fear, okay. That can be overcome. If I need to tailor the plan more to his needs, okay. “But I know how to find someone who knows how. Come on!” she said like she was inviting him to chase down an ice cream truck. “It’ll be fun.”
“This is the kind of stuff you think about. Even here.”
Her leg hurt, but Eva’s blood was flowing fast, she could feel oxygen in her brain and heart, and Dart was erecting dams. “It’s what I’m thinking about right now,” she said, “what I should have thought about a while ago. And we can get Pritz. Pritz’ll be so down. With you and her on the international stuff—oh my God! What could we call it?”
“Call what.”
“Our company?” Duh!
“Call it Eva’s Party,” Dart dropped like a stone. “Call it Eva’s Big Idea.”
She was immune to his disdain. She saw a challenge. A game, a possibility of triumph. “Something better than that,” Eva said, unkempt eyebrows scrunched in brainstorm mode. Something that works on different levels. Like Sonrisa—sounds like “sunrise,” means “smile.” Sun was on point with hers.
“Call it ‘New,’ “Dart said with even less gusto. “New Management.”
“YES!” Eva screamed with the thrill of it. Then she coughed so much she had to run to the bathroom. Then she stood in the doorframe and said hoarsely, “Like, ‘under new management.’ Like, we’re brand-new. New Management!”
“Works on a few different levels,” he said.
Eva took his perception for collaboration, and she cleared her throat. “Gonna be so fly. Office in Manhattan? Or L.A.? Or do we do something crazy, like set up in Miami? Or San Francisco? Or Santa Fe?”
“Not New Mexico.”
Why the fuck not? She was caught up in a dream that seemed more real to her than Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Audrey and perpetual strolls along Fernandez Bay. “I’m serious. I used to live out that way.”
“I thought you used to live near Carmel.” Like he was catching her in a lie. Eva saw him looking at her with hawkish curiosity, searching for faults, for weaknesses, for a place to strike.
Eva was used to that, though. Lots of men looked at her like that, threatened by her when she was enthusiastic and brainy and pretty in the same moment. So she kept on. “I lived a lot of places. Lotta creative stuff goes on in the Southwest. Good spas, too. Outside of travel, cost of doing business would be very, very low.” Eva’s mind was clicking. The songs in her head were her own and without words.
“Who wants to go to New Mexico to see their manager?”
“Have you heard of phone? E-mail? FAX? And when clients do have to come, they’ll want to come. Desert’s beautiful winter and summer. Be a real getaway from the melee, to come to the home offices.” Eva loved the way “home offices” sounded. With her palm on her belly, she put a tissue to her nose and blew as hard as she could.
“Desert gets up to a hundred ten in the summer,” Dart said. “Even at night it stays in the nineties.” Like he was the Weather Channel.
What is he talking about? “No one says they have to trudge through it on foot, Dart.” His disinterest had curdled to derision, and Eva could taste it. He sounded like Audrey had at the beginning, leery of Eva’s self-possession. Mad at her for being her. Eva felt suddenly like she was talking too loudly, like her body and her self were lit bright and hurting his eyes.
So she turned herself down, spoke to Dart like she liked to in bed after sex—quietly, and like a sixth grader to a man. “It’ll be relaxing for people sick of L.A. and New York. You might like New Mexico, Dart. Your own hours, too. Freedom.” Eva was irritated, but she kept it under. “No beach, but swimming pools. Ranches.”
“You should do it,” Dart said.
“We’re gonna.” Eva’s voice stretched back to enthusiasm and brightness, but the eye contact between them was iced and set. “It doesn’t have to be Santa Fe, but damn, Santa Fe would just be so extra. Get a place with a few acres. Maybe some animals even, for the baby.” I’m tripping now, I know. Going from Abortion Queen to Farm Mom. But you gotta overshoot. You gotta imagine. It’s the only way I’ve ever gotten anything or anyplace. Picturing it. Mapping it out. Holding the bat right. Keeping my eye on the goddamn ball.
“You should do it,” he said again, voice lowered a semitone, like a perfect flat was what he was going for.
“By myself.” I heard you the first time. I got it now. Gotchyou.
“Everything you touch,” Dart said sharply, “turns to gold.”
Platinum, if you know my story, Hater. Platinum. She wanted to say those words to him in the coldest, slowest, Dart-like voice she could muster. Instead, she asked, still glaring at him, but like the question was incidental, “Is that how my life is?” Eva thought of the sound of his sotto voce in her ear when he was touching her body and it pissed her off.
“That’s what I see.”
“Because you don’t look,” Eva said, enunciating the k like she was trying to kill it. I thought you saw me.
“Maybe I’m so in my own shit, only your shiny days stand out.”
Take your fucking medication. “You know goddamn well I got my other days,” Eva said. Your real medication.
“No one sees those, though. And you’re already talking about leaving Cat,” he said like she was a traitor. “About work.”
About life. “I’m a heathen for that? I’m Evil Eva?” Her voice had graduated sixth grade and gone straight to associate general manager of Roadshow. Nigga, I live in the real world.
“Whatever you are, you’ll land on your feet. You’re built for this—shot callin’, big ballin’. Music. Business. Go, Eva! Stack your chips. Start your business. Hire your nanny.”
She stepped from the doorframe back into the bedroom. “Your point,” Eva said slowly, “was that no one sees me on my sad days. My point is that you have. I been sad the whole time I’ve been here. I was sad at Vince the Voice.” She coughed and wiped her nose and hated the imperfection and weakness of it.
“I spoke to that already,” he said, pulling on a T-shirt. “I know that trick—calm, courteous repetition. I know it from you. Don’t manage me. I don’t want to fight with you.”
Eva was angry now. “You don’t want to do anything.”
“I want to live.”
“On what?” Shit, Eva thought. For what?
“How I live’ll take care of itself.”
What are you? Nineteen? “I thought you wanted to do this with me—”
“I’m still glad about the baby. He’s a blessing of the most holy kind. But it’s not like you need me. To help you do your living, I mean.”
“Why would I bring all this up,” Eva said, earnestly searching, “talking about ‘we’?”
“You think you’re talking to somebody else, I guess. Some steamroller, empire builder.”
Eva stared at him.
“I’m saying, Eva—you know me.” Dart sat on the bed, and Eva took it as a softening.
She reached past her anger to her desire for change and her want for Dart to fit into her new plan. She sat next to him, picked up his hand. Eva was awkward and sincere. “But you’d be so good—”
He cut her short, his voice heartbroken and livid and low. “Was I good at managing Sun?” Dart pulled his hand from under hers. “I wasn’t even managing her—I was road managing her. Getting her here, getting her there. You damn near manage Sun, and you’re with the label. I book hotels. I wake her up for shows. Why you think she’s got Vic and Swan around her? Why does she have Hawk on payroll? Why you think you’ve been able to lead her around by the nose? Because no one is really handling her BUSINESS. I love my sister, but I was in it to see the
world. All the places I’ve been? I SAW those places, Eva. I EXPERIENCED them. It wasn’t about the money. That’s why I never took any. It was about the music. About Deirdre Addison. I feel blessed, when my head lets me feel blessed, to have been down for the ride. It’s all I want—to feel things. To try and have my mind right, so I can. You spin gold from straw, Eva. That’s your gig. You and Ron’s and Hakeem’s, Myra’s, and even Sunny’s. Me, though? D’Artagnan? I’m named for courage and loyalty, yeah, but know this, Superstar: I am not the one.”
Eva heard someone at the door, and she heard her cell phone ringing. She hurried toward both, and there was Édouard handing her the cell.
“I answered it,” he said apologetically. “It’s a man, says he’s your father.”
CHAPTER 18
Did you do it for love?
Did you do it for money?
Did you do it for spite?
Did you think you had to, honey?
—“THE LONG RUN,” lyrics and
music by Don Henley
“Sweetheart. Where are you?”
Eva was on the Rowe’s patio. She heard faint music from down the beach, then a Miami deejay announcing cash prizes and an all-expense-paid stay at the South Beach Marriott. Hits from the seventies, eighties, and nineties, the hysterical jock said. All hits, all the time. “I’m in the Bahamas, Dad.”
“The tropics!” he said, like he was confirming an old victory. Eva’s father had never been to “the tropics,” and it slapped her that he was speaking as though reminiscent. “Beautiful! Work or play?”
Good question. Neither. “Work.” It was what he understood best from her. “What’s up?”
“That’s my girl—to the point, to the point. I understand, yes I do. I need, though, for you to excuse yourself from your business associates. Find a place where you can have a personal moment.”
A personal moment? Eva slid closed the glass door. “Done, Dad.” The Miami deejay played a song Eva hated. Number one pop hit for Def Jam Records, went the computer in Eva’s mind: Montell Jordan’s 1995 “This Is How We Do It.” The radio was barely audible. You gotta get your groove on/Before you go get paid. It bothered Eva like a mosquito.