The Accidental Diva

by Tia Williams

  Jay was totally perplexed. Tammy had a volatile temper, but he normally knew where it was coming from. Maybe it wasn’t about him. Maybe she had her period. Did she need money? No, Fresh Hair was huge. She was even talking about opening another one in the city.

  And a teeny, tiny part of him resented her for preoccupying him with her petty drama when all he wanted to think about was Billie.

  The phone rang and eagerly, he picked up.

  “Is this Jay?”

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “Your fairy godmother. No, the other one. It’s Renee. I hope you’re sitting down, baby, cuz I’m about to blow your fucking mind!”

  6.

  the perfect september

  At Fresh Hair, the phone was ringing off the hook. Tammy had just finished the aqua hair extensions of her last client of the day, an up-and-coming female rapper named Silky Sexxx. Silky had worn out her welcome hours before. When Tammy asked her if she’d like something to drink, the rapper requested a Pellegrino, only to become belligerent upon discovering it wasn’t champagne. Tammy was totally drained, and feeling miserable about the scene with Jay. For the first time ever, she felt like they were on shaky ground. What if she lost him to this random girl who was apparently too special to discuss? She was jealous, and what made it worse was that she didn’t even know who she was jealous of. She’d been driving herself crazy trying to imagine what this girl looked like, what power she had over Jay. What the girl had that she was missing. Was she prettier, sexier, smarter? Fighting back tears that had been threatening to spill all day, she plopped into a styling chair and continued to ignore the persistent ringing.

  “Look, you need to answer the phone and talk to that man,” Sabina said, swiveling around in the chair next to Tammy’s. The German cleaning lady, Bierget, clucked disapprovingly and resumed sweeping up frayed blue hair with the speed and agility of an arthritic mule.

  “I’m not speaking to him.”

  “What did he do to you, girl? It ain’t even like he’s your man. Not that you speak to your man, anyway.”

  “Pete and I broke up.”

  “Get outta here!”

  “It’s true. I felt like he was stifling my creative process.”

  “He was so boring.”

  “That too.”

  “Anyway, why aren’t you answering Jay’s calls?”

  “Because he disrespected me in my own home, which is a vessel of serenity and positivity.”

  “I hate it when you talk like a yoga instructor. Girl, answer the damn phone.” Sabina and Tammy stared at each other archly for a second, as the phone continued to ring. Then, in a flash, Sabina lunged for the wall phone above Tammy’s head. Tammy tried to grab her arm, missed, and landed on the floor. Bierget muttered, “Gott im Himmel,” without pausing her slow shuffling.

  “What, what, what?” Sabina growled into the phone, exasperated.

  “Um, yeah, this is Daisy Schwartz, Mariah Carey’s publicist?”

  Sabina grimaced. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I thought you were someone else.” Interested, Tammy brushed herself off and perched on the edge of Sabina’s chair.

  “No, it’s okay. I, um, wanted to talk to you about possibly working with Mariah?”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Very. She’s going in a, um, more urban direction on her latest album? And she saw your work on MTV and really fell in love. She’d love you to do her hair for her new video, ‘Playa Please.’ Should I book you through a publicist, or, um, how does this work?”

  “Okay, hold on. You want to talk to Pandora. One sec.” Sabina put Daisy on hold and favored her boss with an enormous smile. “Mariah Carey’s people want you to work on her next video.”

  Tammy’s mouth dropped open. Working with the honey-haired singer would send her career into the stratosphere. Between this and being covered in a Du Jour beauty story, she couldn’t imagine life getting better.

  Still, when she produced a smile for Sabina, it didn’t reach her eyes. The success wasn’t worth it without him. That fucker.

  * * *

  • • •

  For Billie, it was the one perfect September by which all others would be measured. She tried to memorize every moment, put them all away for safekeeping, in case all the rampaging joy couldn’t sustain itself. Billie and Jay had spent the past two weeks doing little else besides basking in the glow of each other. Billie felt she was likely to be crushed underneath her all-consuming need for him, but she didn’t care. Billie and Jay flung themselves at each other like pigskin-crazed quarterbacks from opposing teams—unflinching, unmindful of the outcome, and likely to suffer a concussion. They were ravenous love junkies.

  She hadn’t told Jay yet about her London offer. The only people in the world who knew were Renee and Vida. She was torn between feeling thrilled at the prospect and feeling terrified of losing Jay. The thought of being oceans apart was hideous, so she finally filed it under “to be dealt with later.” It was hard enough leaving him for Du Jour every day.

  For the past two weeks, Jay had basically been living with Billie. They stayed at her tiny studio as opposed to his huge loft because, well, the loft held as much warmth as a coffin. Every night after his show, he’d take the C train to Lafayette and squeeze himself into her apartment. They’d stay up all night watching AMC and eating takeout from Fulton Street restaurants.

  On the two nights Jay didn’t have his show, they traversed the city looking for new ways to amuse themselves. They spent hours getting all dusty and exploring the rows of used books at the Strand, Jay turning Billie on to Bret Easton Ellis (whom she loved until the nightmares began), and Billie forcing Jay to read Donald Bogle’s famous biography of Dorothy Dandridge. They dined at the Algonquin, just to see if they could catch some writerly vibes. Jay took Billie to Bayou, a Creole restaurant in Harlem, which Billie found to be astoundingly authentic. (Billie ordered crawfish, and Jay almost had a stroke watching her happily suck the meat out of the shell and lick butter off her lips.) They went to every art film house in Manhattan. They saw randy Almodóvar imports like Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! at the Screening Room way downtown on Varick Street. At Cinema Village on East Twelfth, they saw Romance, a wincingly explicit French film about a young woman looking for sexual fulfillment from random strangers on the streets of Paris. Besides Billie and Jay, the only other patrons were a sprinkling of tweedy professor types. Even though they missed fifteen minutes during their frantic fuck in the ladies’ room, they agreed that the movie was fascinating.

  Billie was in erotic torment. She was useless at work. All day long her heart ached and her pussy throbbed. She sat at her desk rubbing her thighs together and gazing cross-eyed into her computer. All she thought about was Jay—his mouth, his hands, what he could do to her. Brushing up against his arm could send her over the edge. Jay knew he could have her any way and any time he wanted, which was a dangerous thing. If he asked her to crawl naked across the floor in nipple clamps, singing “Have You Ever Been Mellow,” she would.

  One evening after his show, they met Vida and Git at Lotus. While Vida danced up a storm to Aaliyah’s “Try Again,” and Git smoked weed in a blurry corner, Jay and Billie sat at the bar for a drink. Locked in a shameless kiss (they’d become one of those couples), Jay reached underneath Billie’s multitiered peasant skirt and stroked her, steadily squeezing and letting go until she came in front of God and Lizzie Grubman and everybody. It was both thrilling and…daunting. He knew where she lived. Jay could practically make her weep with pleasure. He had taken her over.

  For Billie, the sex stuff was not instinctual. She was too self-conscious to go there. She followed his lead, absorbing his energy as they went along. If he was rough, she was rough. If he was slow and deliberate, she was, too. And this dynamic spilled over into the rest of their relationship. Billie willingly and trustingly gave
herself over to him. She was a skittish, trembling Question, and he was the Answer. When he experienced her first real “Give my daughter the shot!” migraine, he knew what she needed. He entered Billie’s pitch-black studio to find her lying on the futon, stiff as a corpse, with an icepack on her head. She was miserable—floating on a Percocet high, but still in throbbing, insistent, unreasonable pain. Jay knelt beside her and whispered in her ear.

  “Baby. Let it go. You’re trapped in there and just let it go. Give it away. Give it to me.” He gently kneaded her neck, her forehead, and her shoulders until she slowly began to release tension. She un-clenched her teeth and hands and unfurrowed her brow. “Let whatever it is out. You’re safe, baby. You’re safe.” Billie began to cry. He did this for an hour, until impossibly, she fell asleep.

  When she awoke, the pain hadn’t gone away completely, but something was released in her. Jay managed to get to her, to open her up.

  Who was this guy?

  She didn’t know. All she knew was that she had a new purpose—to shower this man with boundless love and affection to make up for the harrowing, broken nonchildhood he’d suffered. All she wanted to do was love him, and take care of him, and make sure he was okay. Of course, wild horses couldn’t have dragged this out of her. Billie went to great lengths to pretend that his past didn’t affect her that much. The truth was, if her thoughts lingered on the image of his parents jumping to their deaths, she’d burst into tears, but she didn’t want him to think she was a cheesy, “un-down” naif who couldn’t handle the reality of the mean streets. Even though she was.

  But they had more in common than they thought. Both were heartily ambitious and fiercely proud of each other’s accomplishments. In the middle of the night, giddy and sticky with love, they’d fantasize about taking the publishing world by storm. They’d be the black Tina Brown and Harry Evans.

  Billie was unbearably curious about Jay’s book but never pried. She could’ve chosen to be hurt that Jay wouldn’t show her his manuscript until he was finished, but as a journalist she knew how it felt to have people read your stuff before you were ready. And to Jay, the writing ran deeper than the performing—it was his life force and he was sensitive about it. Billie understood.

  Their one dark moment occurred one evening after Nutz & Boltz. Billie met him at the Public Theater, and they walked to a nameless hole-in-the-wall sushi spot on Ninth. Seated at the rickety, pale green linoleum café table, the two launched into comfortable conversation about the beauty industry’s shameless bribing. As Billie reminisced over last year’s Salon Selectives–sponsored press trip to Anguilla, she noticed that she’d lost him. He was right in front of her but not at all present. Too much sake?

  “Helloooo,” Billie started, sucking the salt off an edamame bean. “You okay?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s wrong? Did you have a bad experience in Anguilla?”

  Jay paused. “I feel guilty.”

  “For what?”

  “For being with you instead of writing.”

  Billie’s stomach hit the floor. He was looking right through her, like she wasn’t there. “You mean, you wish you were somewhere else right now? Am I…I mean, do I keep you from your work?”

  Jay looked at her and slowly realized the gravity of what he’d said. “No, no, no,” he started, frowning in frustration. “You know I love being with you. But this book deal is real, and I’m so caught up in you that I’m acting like I don’t have to work on it. I ain’t written a word in, like, a week.” He scratched his head and sighed.

  Billie was quietly destroyed. “If you think you need some space…”

  “No, baby. It’ s my fault. I’m just stressing.” He smiled at her, held her face between his hands, and kissed her. He was back. “Clearly can’t stay away from you, so I just gotta manage my time better and shit. That’s all.”

  Billie managed to smile and nod, but she was hurt. The last thing she thought about when they were together was work. She decided to file this moment away with the London thing.

  And so they moved on with their glorious September.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was noon on Saturday, and they were lying in a tangled heap on Billie’s rumpled bed. Billie was sound asleep, but Jay hadn’t slept a wink all night. The night before, the two of them had stopped by Jay’s loft to pick up a chapter of his manuscript, so he could work on it at Billie’s if he suffered one of his bouts of insomnia. He noticed the red message light flashing on his phone, and he checked his caller ID. It was Tammy. He immediately got sweaty and uncomfortable and wanted to leave. Any suggestion of the two women in the same vicinity gave him a panic attack. Billie could tell there was something wrong.

  “Was that the other woman in your life?” she asked, joking.

  “No, it was, uh, my boy…he’s…he’s locked up.” It just came out. He knew she turned to mush at all matters hood-related.

  “Oh.” Billie immediately looked concerned. “And you’re sad you missed his call.”

  “Yeah. Damn.” He pounded his thigh with a fist, for emphasis. To hell with this writing shit, Jay thought, I need to pack it up and move to Hollywood.

  “Oh, baby, I’m sorry. Can you call him back? Are you allowed to do that?”

  “No, but I ain’t gonna stress. He’ll get at me later, don’t worry. Let’s go.”

  And that was that. But Jay felt horrible about lying to Billie. He hated it. He wished he could just tell both of them the truth, but he didn’t know how. And so he’d tossed and turned all night, with a guilty knot in his stomach. He decided taking Billie around his old neighborhood might alleviate some of the guilt. Somehow, keeping such a huge part of his past hidden didn’t seem so bad as long as he showed her the rest of it.

  This is what he’d told himself.

  He kissed Billie gently on the mouth and whispered in her ear to wake up.

  “Today I’m gonna be your tour guide.”

  “What?” Billie was cozy-groggy.

  “I’m showing you Fort Greene today.”

  “Honey, I live in Fort Greene.”

  “You live in Disney World Fort Greene. Did you know Disney World was built on a swamp? Today we’re going to the swamp.”

  “I’m not sure I’m equipped for the swamp.” Billie had a sheltered, suburban girl’s fear of the projects. She could see them from the window of her tiny studio, looming beyond her gentrified immediate surroundings. The projects made her nervous, which made her embarrassed. Why was she nervous? What did she think was going to happen? This wasn’t New Jack City, for God’s sake.

  “You gotta get over that Huxtable shit,” Jay said dryly.

  “I’m kidding!” She cleared her throat. “So, are you going to show me where you grew up and stuff?”

  “Yeah…if you want. I gotta go holla at Yellow Andre over at Whitman. I want you to meet him.” The infamous and curiously named Walt Whitman projects were right off Fort Greene Park, on Myrtle Avenue. Today, the park hosted peppy Rollerbladers and horn-rimmed lesbian couples overdosing on Evian, but when Jay and Yellow Andre had been kids, it was littered with crack vials, violent drug deals, and hookers.

  Jay had been paying visits to Yellow almost every weekend since his early release from Rikers the year before, just to make sure he was surviving. Yellow had come home different, sort of glazed-over and jittery, like a shell-shocked Vietnam vet. He’d been living with his wildly manipulative and charismatic mother in the apartment he grew up in, and working at White Castle. It wasn’t a good scene, and he wondered how Billie would react. Jay had never brought anyone from his clean life into his childhood. Mostly because everyone was locked up or dead, but also because he compartmentalized his people into “back in the day” and “now.” And never the twain shall meet.

  She could hardly mask how flatter
ed she was. Darryl, K, and the two Andres were like mythological figures to her. “Really? I feel like I’ve known him for years. What should I wear?”

  Jay grinned, kissed her mouth and each of her nipples, and hopped out of bed. Billie watched him walk across the room to the refrigerator, stark naked and beautiful.

  “Will you tell me colorful stories about the old days?” Billie playfully put on a wide-eyed innocent face.

  “Uh-huh.” Jay opened the fridge and took a hearty swig of red Gatorade. Billie crawled out of bed and slinked over to him.

  “Will you introduce me to all the big bad gangstas you used to know?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll even tell them you’re my bitch.”

  “You better tell them you’re my bitch,” Billie said, dropping to her knees in front of him.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later, Billie and Jay headed out for Walt Whitman. Despite Jay’s suggestion that she wear a do-rag and a sneer, she went with low-rider Marc Jacobs jeans, a lacy Chloé T-shirt, and kitten-heeled Jimmy Choo ankle boots. This was Billie’s casual, just-kicking-it-on-a-Saturday look. It was a clear, bright, sixty-five-degree day, and they were in no particular hurry. They held hands as they walked, loving the feeling of being a couple, of sprouting a fabulous new appendage. They took the scenic route, strolling happily down the idyllic, brownstone-lined streets.

  They perused a couple of stoop sales, had an Italian ice, and stopped by Carol’s Daughter, the super-trendy organic beauty boutique off the park. Here, Billie recognized three sleek UPNs (a Renee-coined term signifying Uppity Negresses) who had been a class behind her at Duke. She could tell the Coach-bag-carrying lawyers were utterly shocked and intrigued by Billie’s sexy, roughneck boyfriend, who was wearing baggy jeans, Timberland boots, and an XXL T-shirt emblazoned with Che Guevara’s image. It was like she was dating an exotic foreigner. Billie bristled with pride at their obvious envy.