by Tia Williams
the accidental diva
tia williams
Berkley
New York
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2004 by Tia Williams
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Berkley trade paper ISBN: 9780451215079
Berkley ebook ISBN: 9781101210314
The Library of Congress has cataloged the G. P. Putnam’s Sons hardcover edition of this title as follows:
Williams, Tia. The accidental diva / Tia Williams.
p. cm.
1. African American women—Fiction. 2. Periodicals—Publishing—Fiction. 3. Performance Artists—Fiction.
4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 5. Women editors—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.I566A64 2004 2003068913
813'.6—dc22
Cover design by Dominique Jones
Cover image by SWEENSHOTS & SHAYMONE / Stocksy
G. P. Putnam’s Sons hardcover edition / April 2004
Berkley trade paperback edition / May 2005
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
btb_ppg_c0_r1
For Adam, la luz de mi vida.
Contents
1. so media-genic
2. getting her culture on
3. clout, cash, and ass
4. accidentally sexy
5. i’m your pusher
6. the perfect september
7. come to jesus
8. the glamorous life
9. nobody puts billie in the corner
10. one big, happy family
11. the good witch
acknowledgments
about the author
1.
so media-genic
There’s nothing new to say about mascara,” announced Billie Burke to the adjoining cubicles that made up the beauty department of Du Jour magazine. She needed a headline for her mascara caption and was utterly tapped out.
“Read it out loud,” suggested Sandy Fuller, Du Jour’s associate beauty writer. She was one of those pink-skinned strawberry blondes who always looked on the verge of tears.
“‘The newest must-have mascaras plumpen, elongate, and sexify lackluster lashes. The result? Sinfully sultry bedroom eyes fit to make Ava Gardner wail with envy.’”
“Cute!” said Mary DeCosta, the plucky beauty assistant.
“But I’m not sure ‘plumpen’ is a word,” Billie said, unconvinced.
“Plump up?” offered Sandy.
“Hmmm. That’s so good,” Billie said, quickly typing in the change. She could barely suppress a grin. She knew there was more to life than lashes, but honestly, she lived for this stuff. Billie had almost forgotten how not to speak in hyperbolic, insanely descriptive beauty editor rhetoric. When her friends asked her for makeup and hair advice for parties or first dates, she’d wax on about “burnished blush, copper-kissed lids, dewy, sunlit skin—think Iman on safari,” or “disheveled, devil-may-care hair, and lips drenched in diva-red, Heart of Glass gloss…you know, a red so deeply divine you’ll want to bathe in it.” Billie was as moved by James Baldwin, nineteenth-century Gothic lit, and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” as much as the next English major, but something in her just delighted in the whole beauty thing. It was so entertaining and campy and intrinsically girly. Like Regis Philbin.
“Okay, now I need a headline,” continued Billie, on the cusp of panic. “The Azucena lunch starts in two seconds, and it’s way downtown. I can’t think, I can’t think!” Azucena del Sol, like all major beauty companies, launched new products with lavish events that it was Billie’s job to attend.
The events were always themed. Recently, for example, a line of wine-colored lipsticks had been launched with a wine-tasting. The same week, a more ill-received event had been a breakfast introducing a line of punky-bright hair dyes. It involved fluorescent dry ice and Day-Glo ribbon dancers who, at the climax of their performance, pelted the bleary-eyed editors with multicolored Styrofoam popcorn. It was 8:30 in the morning.
“How about ‘Lash-Out’?” asked Mary. “No, that’s the name of a L’Oréal mascara, shit. Hmm, ‘Bat Your Lashes’…‘Batter Up’?” Mary, who was from Staten Island, said batcha lashes and batta up.
“‘Batter Up’ is a little abstract, but not uncute,” said Billie.
“‘Lashes to Lashes’?” suggested Sandy.
“Morbid.” Billie stood up and yelled over the partition in the direction of the clothes-strewn fashion cubicles. “Somebody help me! I need a headline for a mascara caption, quick.”
“Ummm…‘Lash Gordon’?” a lanky fashion editor offered.
“How about ‘Lash in the Pan’?” Mary suggested, giggling.
“Why don’t you kiss my lash?” Billie said saucily. “Oh, wait, no, I got it, I got it. ‘Lash of the Titans.’ ‘Lash of the Titans’? Is that stupid or cute?”
“That’s so cute,” said Mary.
“Yeah, and it just screams major lashes,” said Sandy.
Billie crowned her caption “Lash of the Titans,” printed it out and dropped it in the in box of the oft-absent executive fashion and beauty director. Paige “Beige” Merchant was heavily tanned and heavily peroxided in a way that made her skin and hair color look indistinguishable, hence the nickname. Despite her eerie coloring, Paige was a ravishing beauty whose face and supermodel figure were frequently splashed all over society pages. She was old money, as a result of the chain of office supply stores her great-grandfather had started 150 years ago.
After fifteen years in the industry, Paige was over the whole “working” thing, so she was always on vacation—at the moment, in Capri. She trusted Billie, the senior beauty editor and her number two, to unofficially run the department; they’d worked together for five years, since Billie was a twenty-one-year-old assistant. Billie pretended to resent picking up the slack for her lady-of-leisure boss but secretly relished it.
“Okay, I’m gone. See you guys later,” Billie said, grabbing her bag and heading for the elevator bank.
“Take the train, you’ll never get a cab,” Sandy called after her.
“The Azucena people sent a car to pick me up, thank God. Bye!” Billie said over her shoulder before stopping abruptly and running back to her cubicle to retrieve her forgotten cell phone. She managed to make the elevator just as the doors closed. It wasn’t until she reached the forty-fourth floor that she realized she was heading up rather than down. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered, rubbing her temples.
She had a migraine that could’ve killed a horse.
* * *
• • •
The second Billie located the Lincoln Town Car with a card reading “Burke” in the window, her cell phone started to ring. It was Renee.
“Girl.”
“Hey,” said Billie. “Lemme call you right back,
I’m on my way to this thing—”
“No. I’m so excited. You have to listen to me.”
“Wha-at?” Billie said, climbing into the car while balancing the phone between her ear and shoulder. “This better be so important.”
“It is, it is! I found my next writer, and he’s so perfect I could scream!”
And her history was full of hunches that had turned into gold, which was why, at such a tender age, she was a full-blown book editor at Crawford & Collier Books. Starting as an editorial assistant, a college grad usually filed, typed, and read appallingly bad manuscripts from authors who weren’t even good enough to get agents. If an assistant actually found something publishable, she turned it over to her senior editor boss, who then immediately took credit. Even once you got an entertainment budget with which to wine and dine agents—who had the good manuscripts—you’d discover that they’d rather sip an arsenic spritzer than submit something readable to a junior editor. Success in book publishing was all about instinct, luck, and a boss who likes you. Renee Byrd had all three.
At twenty-four, she’d had her first success with The Women, a book of new essays on female identity in different decades by great women writers. It included chapters like “Is Love Ever Really Free?” and “Carol Brady Has Left the Building.” Sue Snyderman had fairly drooled at the idea. She was one of those civil rights–era Jewish women who considered black women special sisters in arms, and found tough-talking, brilliant Renee delicious. She knew everyone, and was able to convince Toni Morrison and Gloria Steinem to add essays to the project, then handed it back to Renee and allowed her to edit it, herself.
Renee became the darling of C& C Books. She followed up this success by discovering the “Black Jackie Colllins”—best-selling Amy Parsons—and publishing Sun, Moon, Water, You, a well-reviewed collection of short stories by a Rastafarian named Columbus that were serialized in The New Yorker. Just Columbus (his first name was Just, pronounced Yoos).
“Anyway,” continued Renee, “have you read New York magazine and the Village Voice yet?”
“Please, I’m still carrying around last week’s that I never got to.”
“Well, you saw The Times’s Sunday Styles section last weekend, right?”
Billie was embarrassed. “Fashion Week started last weekend! On Sunday, I was too busy memorizing the smoky eye at Marc Jacobs to be literate.”
Renee huffed impatiently. “Anyway, there’s this guy, Jay Lane. He has a one-man show called Nutz & Boltz, where he acts out these brilliant monologues based on five characters.”
“Uh-huh,” Billie said encouragingly.
“…and they’re being compared to Whoopi Goldberg’s early character sketches, and he’s getting major, major buzz. But in the Voice, he says what he loves most is writing the parts, not the performing! He’s fascinating. We’re talking about a twenty-seven-year-old orphan from the projects in Brooklyn, a former hustler—”
“Hustling what?”
“He doesn’t say. Crack? I mean, what else, really? Dave Mathews tickets?”
“True,” Billie said, with a chuckle.
“Anyway, he has all this shit against him, and he ends up at Columbia’s creative writing program? And now he’s getting fabulous reviews. And he’s so hot. He’s got this, like, dangerous smile and a scar and dimples and perfect cornrows. Oh Billie! He’s so mediagenic!” She paused for effect. “I must own him.”
“Then own him you will, goddammit.” Billie loved it when Renee got in “taking over the world” mode.
“I’m seeing the book as a series of stream-of-consciousness vignettes based on his show, and unseen material.” Billie realized Renee was not really talking to her, she was plotting her next steps out loud. “I have to see Nutz & Boltz right away.”
“You should, definitely.”
“Let’s go tonight. Come with me!”
“What? I can’t—I have to go to the Sam C. show tonight, and Vida’s going, too.” Vida was the third in their trio of friends. “What’s your boyfriend doing?”
“Moses?” It was as if Billie had suggested sprinting into oncoming traffic. Renee rarely gave him much credit. “No, you have to come. I need a trustworthy second opinion. What time’s Sam C.? Can’t you come after? And bring Vida, too, though God knows that girl has zero attention span.” Renee was the type of person who would relentlessly stalk a “no” until it converted to a “yes.” Billie agreed to meet her at the East Village playhouse at ten and hung up, pissed.
* * *
• • •
She let her head roll to the side and looked out the window. They were stuck on Fortieth and Broadway, with no sign of movement. Billie groaned, rubbed her temples, and closed her eyes again. She loathed not having control over her current situation.
Her entire life, she’d been on the go. Working, working, working. She’d blazed through her Washington, D.C., private school in a flurry of A+ essays, academic awards, and 4.0’s. From the time she was in kindergarten, she’d assign herself rigid, near-impossible demands to live up to, and accidentally coloring outside the lines was enough to set off a crying jag. She skipped the third grade, but was still at a higher reading and writing level than most of the other kids. While her fifth-grade classmates were reading Nancy Drew mysteries and Choose Your Own Adventures, she was knee-deep into Roots. She would stay up all night, trembling and torturing herself with visions of sadistic overseers and slave ships. In eighth grade she made herself sick to her stomach studying for the SATs, which she wouldn’t have to take for another three years. She insisted that she go to school anyway, and threw up every five minutes.
Billie’s parents thought she was an alien.
She was the antithesis of them. Billie’s mother, Marie-Therese LeSeur, was a Creole girl from Louisiana. When Billie was a child, the word “Creole” meant humid summer vacations on the bayou in terrycloth shorts sets. Mosquitoes and gumbo. Creoles were black people who looked Latin, but had French names like Jacques and Amelie, and enjoyed zydeco music and marinating things.
Marie was obscenely beautiful, a true Southern belle. She had mounds of black wavy hair that fell to her shoulders, huge dark eyes, and skin the color of crème brûlée. She smelled like lavender, and had a cleavage that would smother an infant. And she oozed Southern charm. Every morning she plucked a white carnation from her well-tended garden to wear in her hair. She called everybody “bey” (a diminutive of the French bébé). Billie’s mother never giggled or tittered, she laughed big and loud, with her head thrown back. She always sat with one leg tucked beneath her, absentmindedly twirling a curl. When Billie’s father was in the room, she looked at him like he was the last man on earth.
James Burke was a happy man with a mustache who grew up in Northwest Washington, D.C. The neighborhood was referred to as “the Gold Coast,” as it was filled with upper-middle-class black professionals. The story of how they’d met in 1967, when they were juniors in high school, had been told to Billie a million times. Marie and her boyfriend, Charles Chevalier, had traveled two hours by bus to Shreveport to compete in a cha-cha contest. They came in first place, and won a round-trip train ticket to appear on “Bop-a-Lu-La,” Washington, D.C.’s local teenage dance show. As it happened, young James and his girlfriend Paula were regulars on the show. When Marie and James saw each other from across the crowded dance floor, Charles and Paula became invisible. Doing the pony, they danced toward each other as if in a dream. The song playing was “I Say a Little Prayer” by Dionne Warwick.
They fell madly in love. After the taping of the show, James asked Marie to marry him. She said she “wouldn’t have it any uthuh way,” but she’d have to go back to Louisiana and finish high school. They promised to write each other every day until they saw each other again. They did, and when Marie was accepted into Washington, D.C.’s Howard University in 1968, the couple was beside themselves.
At Howard, Marie let her hair grow down to her waist, and James sported an enormous Afro. They smoked anything they could lay hands on, threw up Black Power fists and peace signs, and practiced free love. Marie studied painting while James majored in creative writing (he specialized in poetry about having sex with Marie). The two got married the day after graduation in a ceremony in Rock Creek Park. Neither wore shoes, and the wedding party consisted of Charles, Paula, and the naked Native American woman who married them. The union was not, by any stretch of the imagination, legal, but the blissful couple was unconcerned.
Marie and James decided that, instead of capitalizing on their creative talents for their own gain, they would open a community center for D.C.’s many underprivileged children. The kids were taught to express themselves through art, poetry, and interpretive dance. In 1973, their own little girl was born, and they loved her to distraction. They didn’t name her until she was eight months old, choosing “Billie” because the flower Marie wore in her hair reminded James of Billie Holiday, and Marie thought James looked like Billy Dee Williams.
Billie had grown up in a love bubble, with parents who talked a lot about self-esteem and smoked weed in the basement. They had sex all the time—loud, vocal sex. Marie frequently made breakfast topless.
No one was immune to Marie and James’s aura of glamour—the couple had scores and scores of friends and were tireless entertainers. They knew white people who said things like “indigenous” and “ethnic.” Between James’s expert storytelling and Marie’s infamously potent mint juleps, the two were liberal D.C.’s favorite hosts. And when the couple danced together, it was positively cinematic. The only thing in the world that frightened Marie was dullness.
Billie felt desperately uncool in her own home. It was so traumatic—going through the social hell of junior high and high school is hard enough without thinking your parents are hipper than you. At the same time, Billie was embarrassed by her parents’ pornographic love for each other. And she just couldn’t get down with being naked all the time—other people’s parents didn’t get high and fuck in the garden. She loved them, but they had it backwards: Kids were supposed to be crazy, and adults were supposed to be…organized.