“Yeah, that was really smart,” Ava said warily, unsure where this was headed. “Can’t pull anything over on you. Did you get an early release? I thought you had at least five more years.”
“Yeah, you ain’t the only bitch who knows important people.”
“Well there you have it.”
Looking around the elegant room, Lyrical asked, “You got anything to play music in this joint? I brought you one of my demos. I put that rap that I did for you on it.”
The very thought horrified Ava. “I think so, but I don’t know how to operate it.”
Ava had to think fast. She knew the way Lyrical operated, and it was best to nip things in the bud before they got out of hand. She had heard enough rap music during her prison stay to cover her for a lifetime.
“Let me take a look at it. I can figure that shit out.”
“Just leave the disc with me and I’ll listen to it a little later. You know in private. That will be better.”
Lyrical nodded in response. She had more street smarts than Ava did. “Okay, that’s what’s up. You got anything to drink in this motherfucker? A bitch be thirsty like a motherfucker.”
“Yeah, I think we got something to drink. What would you like?”
“You got any malt liquor?”
“I doubt it.”
“What about some fucking Red Bull?”
Ava gestured to the kitchen, leading the way. “What’s that?”
“Damn, Ava, I thought you’d learn a little bit from me while we was in the joint. It’s an energy drink. My brother Conroy—the one who I told you was a truck driver but I think he’s doing some illegal shit ’cause the nigga always got a pocket full of cash. Well, he turned my ass on to them. He said they give you energy and keep him from falling asleep when he driving that big-ass rig of his. Now, I don’t drive no trucks, but I like to stay up late because that’s when my inspiration for my beats come. You remember, don’t you, Madame Ava? Are you still gonna help me with my music? You know, help me get a deal with some of the people ya know.”
Ava neatly evaded the questions. “How about some lemonade or sparkling water?”
Lyrical reeled back. “Lemonade? Are you serious, bitch? Just forget it if you ain’t got no beer or Red Bull.” She leaned her arm on the refrigerator door. “So what we gonna do first?”
“About what?”
“When you gonna call some them motherfuckers you know in the music industry? When they hear my shit, they gonna want to sign up a bitch to a multirecord deal. Don’t you think, Ava? That’s what you told me.”
It was rare for Ava to be caught so off guard. Lyrical was a wild card whom Ava had to play carefully. “Of course, just like I said in the joint, but I haven’t had time to call any of my contacts yet. Why don’t you write your number down and I’ll give you a call when I get in contact with them?”
Lyrical looked suspicious, but finally she backed off. “Okay, but this time don’t lose it. And give me your number so I can lock it in my phone.”
Ava gave Lyrical her number as she tried to think of an excuse to get her out of the house before Yancey returned. She thought about what her probation officer said about the type of people she associated with and wondered if Lyrical had been told the same thing by her probation officer.
“Lyrical darling, it’s been so good seeing you. Wow, look at the time,” Ava said with a quick glance at her watch. “I’ve got to meet one of my gentlemen friends for drinks before the theater tonight.” To make her point clear, Ava gave Lyrical a quick peck on the cheek.
“That’s what’s up, Ava. I need to get to the studio my damn self. Oh yeah, when are we going to start our classes?”
Ava could feel her jaws clenching like iron. “Did I promise some kind of classes too?”
“Damn, bitch, you forgetting everything we talked about in the joint. Remember, you said you were going to teach me to be more like a bitch, or how you say it, more ladylike. I don’t know how my nigga gonna like that, but shit, he might dig it.” Despite her masculine looks Lyrical was definitely heterosexual, a fact that surprised Ava, who wondered if Lyrical was fooling herself about her sexuality.
“So you’re back with your boyfriend after what he did to you? What was his name again?”
“You remember. And Donnie Ray swears he didn’t know that there were drugs in the bag when he asked me to take it to Jersey City. Funny thing is, he asked about you and I told him I was going to find you. His name’s Donnie Ray Johnson. He lives up in the Bronx and most of the time I’m with him at his place, but his motherfucking bitch-ass mother moved in with him. Old granny don’t like my ass, but who gives a fuck what she thinks. I ain’t got to sleep with the wrinkled-up bitch. Maybe that old bitch needs some dick. She reminds me of my old mean-ass granny. But I ain’t going anywhere as long as Donnie Ray is laying the pipe like he do.” Lyrical let go a big smile. “He also makes sure a bitch got a few coins in her purse and a blunt every now and then.”
It occurred to Ava that Lyrical might be useful after all. “Do you think he knows where I might be able to buy some weed if I need it to calm my nerves? My daughter is still a piece of work.”
“Hell yeah. Donnie Ray can get anything you need, Ava.”
Ava led her guest to the door. “Well, tell him I said hello. Okay, Lyrical, I will call you soon. I need to start to get ready. Bye-bye, sweetheart,” Ava said as she opened the door.
“Maybe I’ll bring Donnie Ray with me the next time. You know, I’m going to let him manage me when I get my record deal. What do you think about that, Ava?”
The last person Ava wanted to meet was Lyrical’s drug-dealing boyfriend. “That’s fine. Have a nice evening, Lyrical. Take care of yourself.”
“Okay, but give a bitch some love,” Lyrical said, wrapping her long arms around a very surprised Ava. After a few moments Ava gave her a few gentle pats on the back as she wondered , How am I going to get rid of this crazy bitch?
CHAPTER
4
I sat in the 112 restaurant, a popular steak house that used to be an old hotel on South Beach. The lights were dim, and the music was up-tempo jazz, loud enough to be heard, but not so loud as to intrude on people’s conversations. Suntanned beautiful people sat all around.
I sliced another corner from my filet and popped it in my mouth. The tender meat practically melts like butter. The lobster that comes with my meal is succulent, and the California Merlot is superb. I heard about this restaurant but didn’t have the clout to get in, never mind afford it, so when S. Marcus called me out of the blue and said he wanted to fly me via private charter to Miami for dinner here, I jumped at the chance. “But don’t tell me you want me to come all the way to Miami just to have dinner at 112?”
“I got a little surprise for you. Someone I want you to meet.”
“Who?” I said. I love being surprised and had a feeling this would be a big one.
“Pack a bag and get your beautiful butt down here.”
Excited, I trusted what S. Marcus told me. Anything for S. Marcus, especially if it means getting my own reality show.
The person he wanted me to meet was sitting across from me now, enjoying baby back ribs. He wore a beautiful blue lightweight Sean Jean suit, with a white shirt that hung perfectly off his broad shoulders. I can’t help but smile as I watch him with that napkin stuffed into the front of his shirt as he attacked those ribs. He ate them with his hands, and the sauce covered his fingers, the napkin and his cheeks.
S. Marcus introduced Jeff Porter as his business partner and best friend. I’m kind of surprised that S. Marcus’s friend happens to be a white man. But this wasn’t your everyday, proper-speaking, button-down, Polo shirt and penny loafer–wearing white guy. He has nicely chiseled, European facial features, and would be considered by most women, white or black, to be quite handsome, almost GQ handsome. Two diamond earrings pierce Jeff’s ears, one in each lobe. He sports a short-cropped Caesar cut, and I can see a tattooed name on his neck,
written in cursive, peeking up over the collar of his shirt. When he extended his hand to me, I noticed another tattoo of the head of a snake, slithering out from the cuff of his sleeve and stopping on the back of his hand.
“What’s up, baby girl?” Jeff said, taking my hand and kissing me lightly on the knuckles. “My boy S. has told me a bunch about you, and best believe it’s all good, girl. And my boy wasn’t lying when he said you were all that.”
I smiled, looking at S. Marcus, trying to decide if this is a joke or who Jeff really is. A combination of K-Fed, Puffy and Eminem all rolled into one, his speech filled with ebonic flavor.
“How did you two meet?” I asked.
“Our dads were in business together when black and white men didn’t do that type of shit,” Jeff said.
“What type of business?”
“Now, come on, Yancey, stop grilling my man. We didn’t come here to talk about our parents,” S. Marcus said in a somewhat nervous tone.
I tried to laugh it off. “Oh, I’m sorry. Well, I guess we’ll have to go back to talking about me.”
“Yeah, that’s better,” Jeff said.
In the middle of the dinner, S. Marcus explained another reason for the meeting.
“My man Jeff here is a producer and the main investor for a number of people in the music industry. He’s the one who discovered Lil’ Max and put together the reality show that brought together the girl group Dynasty Girls.”
“That was you?” I asked, sincerely impressed.
“That’s me, love,” Jeff said as he sucked the rib sauce off his fingers and thumb.
“Both of those acts went platinum,” I said.
“Double platinum, babe,” Jeff said and he picked up another rib bone.
“I’ve been telling Jeff about your background and how you see the reality show going, and I think he likes what he’s heard.” I look at Jeff and smile, noticing the large diamond-encrusted Rolex on his wrist and the band ring loaded with small diamonds. He nods at me in approval. I suddenly realize that all of the other meetings had been building up to this one, and Jeff will be the one to make it happen. But I also had a dilemma on how I should handle Jeff. Should I treat him like the white businessman he is, or the brotha from the ’hood he aspires to be? I suddenly wished S. Marcus had warned me, but now there was no time for that.
“So Yancey, you got any kids?”
“No,” I said, quickly wondering why he’d asked the question.
“It would be cool for the show if you had some bratty kid,” Jeff explained. “Wouldn’t matter if it was a girl or a boy.”
“Sorry I can’t help you there,” I said quietly, raising my hand to my lips. “No children living here.”
“You sure? Those look like child-bearing hips to me, baby girl. Maybe we can rent a kid from central casting,” Jeff said with a laugh.
Seeing how uneasy I was, S. Marcus jumped right in. “We can still make this thing work without kids.”
Jeff nodded, burping lightly from the ribs. “So tell me about yo peeps, Yancey. Who you hang with?”
“What do you mean?”
Jeff continued eating without pausing to look up from his plate. “Who are your girls you hang with?”
“I don’t really hang with females. They deal too much with petty jealousy.”
“My boy here told me about your mama, and she sounds like she is off the chain.”
So this is where he was heading. “Yeah, but I told Marcus that I don’t want her in the show,” I said quickly. There was no way in hell I was going to let Ava anywhere near the camera once we started shooting.
Jeff shrugged. “Okay, we don’t have to have her, but you got any fags or, excuse me, ‘gay boys’ you hang with?”
“Fags?” I asked. Jeff’s charm was wearing thin quick. I didn’t consider Dalton a fag.
“Don’t pay him any mind, Yancey,” S. Marcus said with a slap on Jeff’s shoulder.
“What’s the politically correct term these days? Meat packers?” Jeff asked. “I know they don’t like homo.”
“I know some gay guys from some of the shows I’ve done and a couple who do my makeup. I have a gay friend Dalton but he won’t do the show because his boyfriend is on the low.”
“That’s cool. But who’s your BFF?”
“My what?”
“Your best friend forever, Yancey,” S. Marcus said with a smirk in Jeff’s direction.
I thought about Jeff and S. Marcus’s question and realized I don’t have an answer for them because I don’t have a best friend. Damn, I don’t even have anyone I can call a friend. I was suddenly confused for a moment by the feeling of loneliness, but I know I can’t let those feelings last long. I might need to go into the rest room and give myself another pep talk. But if I need to have a best friend for the show, I will get one.
“Well, I guess you could say I’m a loner, but there are some girls and gay guys from the cast of the show that I was just in that I hang with. I don’t know if I would want them in the show but let me think about it.”
“What about your personal assistant?” Jeff asked.
“I don’t have one.”
“You need to get one. We got to show you living large. Nobody wants to watch somebody living like them. They want over the top. The higher we can take you from the common folks, the better. We’ll make it seem like you got paid back in the day and you held on to some of your coins. We gonna make those women from Atlanta and Orange County look like welfare moms,” Jeff said.
My heart sank at the callousness of his unthinking comment, but I kept up a strong front. “That may be tough. Some of those women seem to be doing pretty well.”
“They just married well,” Jeff responded in a blink.
“So you think we should do this?” S. Marcus asked Jeff.
He stared at me for a few moments like he was sizing me up, and I pasted a confident smile across my face. I decided to play it cool to go along with his playfulness. “So what’s it going to be, Jeff? Am I going to be the new it girl of reality television?”
Jeff looked lost in thought. He turned to S. Marcus and said, “If we going to make it seem like our girl here got funds, then she should have two residences. Let me check and see if I can get Kat, my real estate boo, to find us some furnished place on the beach. I’ll tell her we’ll give her lots of free press if she gives us a good deal.”
“Yeah, my nigga, I should have thought of that. That would make everything look real chill,” S. Marcus said.
Am I hearing things? Had S. Marcus just called Jeff a nigga and had his own dialect suddenly gone street? What happened to the clipped, prep school voice he used to order five-hundred-dollar bottles of wine?
“That why we a team and nobody can beat us, S. man. ’Cause you my nigga for sho. I think we got us a hit with this lovely lady you discovered,” Jeff added with a wink.
I could barely contain myself. “Great,” I said, clapping my hands in delight.
“I think this deserves some champagne to celebrate,” S. Marcus said.
Jeff turned and snapped his fingers in the air and suddenly two waiters were standing front and center at our table. I am back to living the high life, and it feels good all over.
CHAPTER
5
Madison felt like she was basking in her own success, literally, as a bright beam of sunshine shot like a spotlight through the warehouse-style windows of the midtown studio. And her voice teacher’s eyes, sparkling with so much pride, only intensified the feeling that Madison was on her way to becoming a superstar.
“Great job, Madison,” said Nicole Springer-Stovall, whose words sounded so smooth and deep as they echoed off the golden brown hardwood floor of the stark rehearsal room. “Your voice is lovely and strong.”
“Thank you, Ms. Stovall,” Madison said, enjoying the down-to-earth warmth that she felt from her teacher. Now that their first session was over, Madison realized that for the past two hours, she’d felt like her instructor reall
y cared about helping her learn and reach her highest potential. “You were very helpful.”
Madison caught a reflection of herself with Ms. Stovall in the mirrors behind the ballet barre in the enormous room. As they sat on the bench behind the gleaming black baby grand piano, the whole scene made Madison feel like she was at the center of the best that New York could offer young talent.
And hearing compliments from this elegant lady whose upswept black hair, satiny-smooth voice and ageless, deep caramel complexion reminded her of Diahann Carroll only made Madison grin with the thrill of it all.
For that, she could thank the producers of American Star. They had suggested Nicole Springer-Stovall to Madison’s father as one of the best voice and acting coaches in the business. They felt that private lessons would help Madison adjust to the rigors of using her voice every night once she went on tour.
“Now I see why you won that show,” said Ms. Stovall, wearing all black, from her high-heeled sandals and slim-fitting slacks to a sweater with shimmery beads around the neckline. “By the way, my kids are big fans of the show and you. They thought I was big time when I told them I was going to be working with you.”
Madison suddenly liked this lady even more, now that she was bringing kids into the mix. “You have children? How many?”
“I have four,” Ms. Stovall said in a regal way that made her raise her chin slightly, like a queen. “My oldest is fourteen and I have one twelve and twins that just turned eight. One boy and three girls.” As Ms. Stovall beamed proudly, Madison admired her teacher’s beautiful and sophisticated profile. Her skin was smooth and tight. Her cheekbones and chin were sculpted and sharp. She sure didn’t look like a woman who had borne four children.
Madison tried to imagine all those kids around her teacher. “It must be cool to have so many brothers and sisters.”
Ms. Stovall turned to face her with eyes that radiated a caring, motherly softness. “You must be an only child.”
“Yeah,” Madison said, wondering what it would be like to have a woman look at her like this every day. “It’s just me and my daddy.”
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