by iiKane
“My man!” Georgie chortled, as he and K.B. embraced.
“What up, my nigga! I see you finally cut that Miami Vice-ass pony tail off your damn head,” K.B. cracked.
Georgie laughed and ran his hand over his curly fade.
“I mean, your girl loved it, but since I left Philly, I ain’t been hittin’ that lately,” Georgie cracked back.
K.B. knuckled up.
“Shit, you might as well hit it. Jody got her now!”
They both laughed.
“Don’t worry, player, you’ll be back in no time. What you got, three more years?”
K.B. nodded.
“Three and a half.”
After a short pause, Georgie remarked, “Why you do it, K? You had it all. You could be about to go pro right now.”
K.B sighed hard and ran both his hands over his waves, then looked Georgie in his eyes and replied, “You know how fuckin’ mad I was with you when you left, yo? I went by your house and your moms was like, ‘he gone to New York.’ I felt like we was in a bar fight surrounded by muhfuckas, but when I turned around, ain’t no we, ‘cause you was gone.
Georgie dropped his head, but quickly lifted it to defend his decisions.
“Ay yo K…”
“Hol’ up, let me finish…let me finish. You asked why I did it. You know why? Because it was my excuse.”
“Excuse?”
“Excuse to fail,” K.B. spat, and Georgie could see the tears that he was holding back because he refused to cry in a prison visitation room.
K.B. chuckled to juggle his emotions.
“You said I had it all. You know what comes with ‘all’? Everything. The world on my back! All of Philly! If I went to Duke, all of Philly was goin’ to Duke! But if I failed…if I failed, I failed Philly, too! And I couldn’t do it Georgie, I couldn’t take that chance and go to Duke, fail and come back what? A loser? Fuck no. I’ll never be a ‘has been.’ I’d rather be a ‘could’ve been,’” K.B concluded then sat back, glad to have finally gotten it off his chest.
“You were scared,” Georgie surmised, not with judgment or contempt, but with understanding and acceptance.
“Damn right, I was scared. Scared to fuckin’ death. Crazy, right? I don’t know, but here I am in the State Pen instead of Penn State,” he chuckled, bitterly shaking his head at his own faulty logic.
Georgie looked at his own folded hands, then back at K.B.
“What can I do, Ock? I got a little somethin’ goin’ with Skye. So I ain’t hurtin’ for nothing.”
He looked at him skeptically, like Arnold at Willis.
“Skye who? That badass singer? Get the fuck outta here! You a bad muhfucka G, but you ain’t that bad!”
Georgie laughed hard, kissed his hand then held it up.
“That’s my word, K. That’s my lady!”
K.B. twisted up his lips.
“Send me flicks! I want lingerie back shots!”
“Nigga, fuck you; all I’m sendin’ you is ass shots of a fat nigga in a thong!”
They both laughed, letting the tears flow, camouflaged.
“On the real G, I’m proud of you, yo. I’m still mad at you though.”
“I know, K…”
“For not takin’ me with you.”
They looked at each other, smiles gone—replaced with solemn sincerity.
The visit ended and they hugged. They had last seen each other as boys, but had reunited as men.
Georgie returned to his mother’s house to the sounds of raucous laughter and loud music. He walked into the kitchen to find Skye and his mother huddled over a photo album, a bottle of Tanqueray and their cigarettes smoldering in the ashtray, side by side. He was relieved to see them hit it off, which was far from guaranteed, because they were both strong-willed women. When he had left, Skye was acting timid and his mother, politely cordial.
“Skye is such a pretty name. Is it your real name?”
“Yes ma’am. My mom was a sixties hippie.”
“I see.”
“My mom’s White.”
Now, they were acting like road dogs from way back. When he entered the kitchen, they both looked up.
“Hey, baby!” Skye chimed, with a look that said she was two steps from tipsy.
He kissed her and sat down beside her.
“How is K.B.?” Stephanie asked.
“Good,” he replied, grabbing the Tanqueray and drinking straight from the bottle.
“Georgie! Stop bein’ so damn ghetto! Get a glass!” Stephanie scolded him.
He chuckled and filled Skye’s glass up.
“I’m glad to see y’all getting to know one another.”
“Actually, I’m getting to know you, too,” Skye snickered, inhaling her Newport, then added as she exhaled, “I didn’t know your first girlfriend was plastic.”
“Huh?” he grunted, not catching on.
Stephanie flipped the photo album back to a page and pointed to a picture that he knew quite well. His eyes got big.
“Ma! Forreal?! I can’t believe you put me out like that!” He barked indignantly, but with an edge of humor.
He looked down at the picture. It was a picture of him at seven, asleep with his doll baby wrapped up snugly with him.
“Boy, hush. Many times I caught you humpin’ this thing, it should be a part of the family!” Stephanie cracked.
She and Skye laughed like schoolgirls. Georgie shook his head, trying to conceal his grin.
“Ma, you know you dead wrong for that.”
Stephanie waved him off as she gulped her Tanqueray.
“And speaking of dead wrong, Skye told me what you did to her when y’all met.”
“What I did to her?! She ain’t tell you about blowing smoke in my face, Ma,” he retorted.
The two women giggled, conspiratorially. Georgie was lost.
“What?”
Stephanie shook her head.
“Boy, don’t you know what it means when a woman blow smoke in your face?”
“She want her ass whooped?” he asked, only half jokingly.
Skye bumped her body against his.
“No.”
“What then?”
“Nothing,” Stephanie replied, winking at Skye.
Georgie looked at Skye with a slight scowl.
“What it mean, yo?”
“Why you lookin’ at me like that, like you a bully? I’m supposed to be scared?” Skye sassed.
Skye’s pager went off. She reached down and unclipped it from her purse on the floor and read it.
“Sound check,” she told Georgie. “You ready?”
“Naw, not until somebody tell me what it mean!”
Neither woman paid him any mind as they moved for the door.
After the show, Georgie took his mother back home.
“I like this. This is nice. It’s a Q45?” Stephanie inquired.
“Yeah,” Georgie replied. “Why, you want one? I’ma get you one.”
Stephanie chuckled.
“Boy, I don’t need no new car. I’m fine. What I need is a vacation!”
“Then I’ma send you to the moon, Alice!”
They laughed.
“I like Skye, Georgie. She’s a little quirky, but that’s the white girl in her. But she’s crazy about you and she got fire. You need that,” she surmised.
“She definitely got that,” he snickered, then added, “Now, are you gonna tell me about the smoke?”
Stephanie laughed.
“It’s voodoo.”
He glanced at her to check her expression.
“No it ain’t.”
“Oh yes it is. Trust me. When a woman blows smoke in your face, it means she’s trying to cast a spell on you,” Stephanie explained, then looked at him. “And from the looks of things, it worked.”
Georgie couldn’t argue with her assessment, as his mind imagined Skye blowing smoke at him—then winking.
On the elevator up to their hotel room, Georgie thought about what K
.B. had said about being scared of failure, so he failed on purpose. He wondered how many young Black men every day, over the years were doing—will do—the same thing. As he arrived at the room, his mind was on the unfairness of the game and the stacked deck that some people had to face, so he was totally unprepared to hear Skye say, “Look, Georgie!”
He looked as she held up an inflated fuck doll.
“Your dolly grew up!”
He fell out laughing.
Looking down from the 81st floor of the mammoth American Records skyscraper made Georgie feel like if he went to the roof, he could touch Cloud Nine. The height was almost mystical. The combination of altitude and cocaine made Georgie feel weightless. He halfway expected things to start floating.
He, Skye, and Guy were sitting on one side of a long, oval cherry oak conference table, while a music director stood by an easel that displayed the story board, and Ray Devers—the head of American Records—sat at the head of the table, hands tented, taking it all in.
“Believe me Skye, you’re going to love it!” the music director—who looked almost like Richard Dreyfuss—raved. “This video is going to make ‘Like a Tiger’ absolutely junglistic.”
He laughed, making Skye giggle at his excitement.
“We’re going to have live tigers on the set. Imagine that: big, thick jungle leaves, the tigers roar, the sun explodes! You come out of the lagoon like Venus singing ‘Like a Tiger,’” he sang.
“I love it,” Skye exclaimed, caught up in the excitement of doing her first video.
“Yeah, this is gonna be big!” Guy chimed in.
Georgie looked skeptical.
“Why does the sun explode?” Georgie asked.
“What?” the music director asked, his expression strained, impatient with the interruption.
“The sun. I asked why does it explode? What’s the point?”
“The point is, she is the sky and her energy explodes like the sun.”
“So why does she rise up out of the water?” Georgie countered.
Cornered and frustrated, the music director looked at Ray, while Ray was looking at Georgie as if he was studying him.
“Okay, who are you anyway? Aren’t you, like, the hairdresser?” the music director asked, attempting to sound as condescending as possible.
Georgie wanted to spazz on him, but he didn’t want to mess up anything for Skye, so he flinched his jaw muscles to fight back the urge.
“No, he’s not just the hairdresser; he’s my creative consultant,” she answered, looking at Georgie with a look that gave him wings.
Georgie turned back to the music director.
“I don’t like it. It sounds more like a Vegas show than a music video. This isn’t just about the song; it’s about exhibiting Skye as an artist. It’s to be her first impression. The video shouldn’t be like a tiger; Skye should be like a tiger!”
“Branding,” Ray added in. “You’re talking about branding.”
“Yeah…branding,” Georgie repeated, like he knew the word all along, giving Ray an appreciative nod.
Seeing the argument tilting to Georgie’s favor, the music director decided to lean, too.
“So how do you propose that we do that?”
Georgie sat back thinking, then he got up and walked around the table to the storyboard.
“I like the jungle theme…fuck that live tiger shit, ain’t no way Skye gonna be around no goddamn tiger,” he mumbled, more to himself but loud enough to make Ray chuckle.
When Georgie turned around, he was smiling mischievously.
“We’re going to may you a tiger,” he remarked, gazing at Skye. Instead of the sun exploding, the sun and the moon come together in an eclipse. Skye, in the jungle begins to turn into a tiger, transforming like the movie, Cat People, but sexier. She can wear those cat eye contacts, like in Thriller and we keep flashing back and forth between her crawling on all fours and a real tiger. Do that thing where you put her mouth on the tiger’s face, so it’s like the tiger’s singing the song,” Georgie envisioned.
“Now that, I really love!” Skye clapped.
The music director nodded, eyebrows raised.
“Hmph…that could work. We could CGI the tiger morphs…be a bit more expensive but…” the music director mused.
“She’s worth every cent,” Georgie said, winking at Skye.
“Especially since we’re paying for it,” Guy quipped, sarcastically.
“Scared money don’t make money, Guy!” Georgie retorted, but grinned to keep it polite.
Guy subtly bristled.
Georgie looked at Ray.
“There’s more.”
“More?” Skye echoed.
Georgie nodded, keeping his eyes locked on Ray’s.
“Change the beat.”
“Do what?” Guy exploded, feeling a need to show a modicum of presence. “Are you crazy?! The record is a smash; it’s why we got the deal in the first place! Skye baby, this is crazy.”
Skye looked at Georgie.
“Baby, Guy does have a point.”
“Skye, listen…the track is house music. Perfect for New York, but it’s too fringe for mainstream. You think about Madonna. All her early music is house, but when she went pop is when she became Madonna, you see? And Baby, believe me, you will be bigger, you’re gonna own the world, but we’ve got to expand the audience,” Georgie explained.
No one said anything for a moment. Finally, Ray said, “It makes sense. It makes a lotta sense. When we do a remix for a record, it’s to extend the life of rotation. But no one’s done it with a video format, so if it fails, we’ll know who to blame.”
Ray gave Georgie a knowing look with a suppressed smirk, and Georgie grasped the implication immediately.
“So, can we still use Andre?” the music director asked.
“Andre?” Georgie echoed. “Who the hell is Andre?”
“I am Andre.”
Skye and Georgie were standing on the stage at a small theater, with a man Georgie had to fight not to laugh at. He was dark skinned with a pompadour hairdo, wearing a leopard leotard and carrying a wooden staff as tall as he was. When Georgie first laid eyes on him, the first thing he thought about was Debbie Allen in Fame.
But for Skye, it was no laughing matter.
“I love you, you’re my favorite choreographer; I’ve admired your work for years. It’s an honor to work with you,” she gushed, extending her hand for a shake.
Andre looked at it, like it had shit all over it.
“Yes it issssss, but I don’t touch…people,” he sniffed, disdainfully. “So much negative energy in the world, which I must avoid from others.” He concluded, giving Georgie a subtle—but approving—once over, before turning back to Skye. “Shall we get started?”
“I’m ready!” Skye exclaimed, practically bubbling.
She kissed Georgie with a peck then followed Andre like a puppy with its tail wagging. Georgie chuckled and headed back into the seats. He sat a few rows back, one row behind Guy, who was talking incessantly on a mobile phone. Georgie watched Skye rehearse with the seven other dancers until Guy hung up and began to dial another number. Georgie leaned forward, resting his elbows on the seat back beside Guy.
“Hey Guy, I didn’t mean anything at the meeting the other day,” Georgie apologized because he could tell that Guy was still feeling a way about it.
Guy shrugged it off.
“No big deal kid, I’m a big boy, besides we’re on the same team, right?”
The words said one thing, but Guy’s tone said something else.
“Right,” Georgie replied, and leaned back in his seat while Guy made another call.
Georgie had begun to nod off when he heard, “No! No! No! What are you doing? My God, you are uncoordinated!”
He looked up and saw Andre berating Skye.
“It’s not bam, bam, step; it’s bam bam…step,” he ranted, demonstrating the move. “Now do it again!”
Georgie bristled at the wa
y he was talking to Skye.
“Who the fuck this muhfucka think he is?? Lydia?!” Georgie gruffed.
“He’s supposed to be the top choreographer. All the stars use him,” Guy explained.
“He’s gonna see stars if he don’t learn how to talk to people,” Georgie grumbled. Georgie stayed alert, hawkeyed and itching.
“You are terrible! How can you be this stupid?!” Andre shrieked.
“I – I’m sorry Andre, I’m really trying,” Skye replied, almost in tears.
Georgie was out of his seat and on the stage as soon as the light was reflected by her shiny cornea. He walked up to her, taking her by the arms.
“Baby, take a breather. Let me speak to Andre, okay?”
She nodded and walked off. Georgie turned to Andre with a smile so wide, it hurt.
“Andre, can I have a word with you back stage? Please honor me with your presence, un momento,” Georgie requested with a sugary tone.
Having already approved of Georgie’s “energy,” Andre deigned to accompany him backstage, looking like a lamb going to slaughter.
As soon as they were behind the curtain, Andre turned to Georgie, like the Queen of England and said, “What is—”
Wap!
Georgie slapped Andre in the face. He dropped his staff, his eyes got big and he took a flood of air, ready to bellow.
“Shh, shh, shh! Don’t do that. I swear – I swear to God, I’ll do it again! Calm down!” Georgie whispered feverishly.
Andre shut his mouth and let the air our of his nose, eyes trembling, following Georgie’s every move.
“Now listen, you fuckin’ faggot, that’s my lady out there, okay? Now I know everyone thinks she’s like Miss Invincible, but deep down, she only wants to be loved, you got me, and right now, she isn’t feeling any love,” Georgie growled in rapid fashion.
“But I was just—”
“No, it’s not your turn yet, okay? Just listen. Now this is what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go over there and be nice, right?”
Andre just nodded, remembering that it wasn’t his turn to talk.
“And put on the happy face, right? Put it on; let me see it.”
Andre smiled, a panicked smile, like Diana Ross in Mahogany, right before the crash.
“Oh beautiful, I love it. See? Positive energy,” Georgie remarked, pinching Andre’s cheeks. “One more thing. When I called you a fuckin’ faggot, I was wrong, okay? I respect your homosexuality; that’s why I’m back here, treating you like a bitch. By law, I’m supposed to be kickin’ your ass, okay? Okay, now, happy face… Perfect. Pick up your staff. There you go,” Georgie remarked, turned Andre around by the shoulders, slapped him on the ass. “Now, go light up the sky like a flame.”