by Nikki Turner
Isis was only a few feet away from Fonz. If she’d turned around and looked behind her from the couch she had gotten comfortable on, she would have seen him and his entourage at the bar.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Isis said to herself, staring down at her phone as she got Fonz’s voice mail. Calm down and take a deep breath, girl, she coaxed herself. He probably just didn’t hear the phone ring or couldn’t make it to the phone. He’ll call my number back once he sees it on his caller ID. After a few moments passed and Fonz hadn’t called Isis’s phone, she decided to try calling him again. Remember, this is your dream. Other people don’t make dreams happen. You got to make it happen. Isis replayed Logic’s words in her head
“Damn, this ho is relentless,” Fonz stammered, after looking down at his vibrating cell phone at Isis’s number showing up again. “Let me send this bitch on her way, ’fore she fuck ’round and blow my buzz.” Fonz accepted the call, “Yeah, what’s good?”
Isis was expecting a warmer and more welcoming greeting than the one she got. She didn’t trip, though, because with him being an athlete, she figured he was used to groupies puffing him up. Chances are he had mistaken her for one of them. Not taking it personally, she returned his greeting. “Hello, Mr. Cottle, this is Isis, Logic’s girl,” she said in a professional tone. “I’m supposed to meet you today at eight PM to discuss the jewelry proposal.”
“And?” he replied.
Shaking off his still nonchalant tone, Isis continued, “And I’m here.”
“Is that shit so?” Fonz was talking to Isis as if she were a trick. In his inebriated mind, that’s exactly what she was—Logic’s trick.
“Yes, that’s so, Mr. Cottle.” Isis remained passive and professional, the same way she had been her entire life.
“Then where are you?” Fonz said, downing another shot and rising up out of his seat scanning the area. “I get wit y’all niggas in a minute,” he said to his entourage, and then headed out of the bar and toward the lobby.
“Right here in the lobby,” Isis answered, standing up from the couch, searching for him as well. Then when Fonz saw her, his entire demeanor changed.
Isis stood there in her Roberto Cavalli white jeans hugging her in all the right places, a matching blinged-out wife beater, and a pair of funky four-inch stiletto heels. Her hair was up in a big Chinese bun with one piece of hair dancing over her right eye. She looked like a superstar.
He looked her over a couple of more times, thinking that liquor was playing mind games with him; she couldn’t be this fine. When he looked into her face, he became mesmerized by her beautiful round eyes and thick eyelashes. Logic’s having sent her didn’t change the asshole that Fonz was. He planned on keeping his word, letting Isis use his name to pilot her line. But just as with any other ho who got what she wanted out of him, he was going to fuck her first. “I see you, mamacita,” Fonz said, hanging up the phone and walking toward her.
“So you want to design some jewelry for me, huh?” Without waiting for a reply, Fonz walked around Isis and boldly checked out her ass.
“Uh, yeah,” she stammered. All of a sudden that confident stance she had used to strut across the lobby floor in hopes of fulfilling her destiny began to melt into a messy puddle at the feet of her Cavallies. “Yes.” She feigned confidence and control as she turned around to face him. “Actually, I have a few things that I brought for you to look at.” Isis cleared her throat and tapped her bag, indicating to him that that was where the pieces of jewelry were.
He smiled, licking his lips this time. “How bad?” he said.
“Excuse me?” she replied.
“You heard a nigga.” Fonz took his index finger and gently rubbed the bottom of Isis’s chin. It was gross, almost like he was caressing a woman’s clit. “How bad you want it?”
Isis could smell the liquor on his breath, he was so close to her. “Look, Mr.—”
He cut her off. “Fuck all that formal shit. Call me Fonz. I know you here about business and trying to be all professional and shit.” He pressed his lips against Isis’s ear, “But I know what’s up in those jeans of yours; the same thing that’s up under every other bitch’s suit that want a piece of the good ole Fonz-A-Freak.”
Isis could have sworn that on completing his sentence, he quickly slithered his tongue in and out of her ear like a snake’s. She’d had enough of the Fonz. She felt as if she were standing in the hotel lobby butt-ass naked and Fonz was the culprit who had torn her clothes off of her. And although Mr. Cottle was displaying the decorum of a potbellied pig, she still tried to remain professional. She stepped away from Fonz. “Listen, I think we should reschedule this meeting for another time, when you haven’t had so much to drink.” She gripped her case tightly and stormed out of the hotel, barely making it to the door before tears of anger flooded her eyes.
She was crying hysterically as she sat on the bench outside. She felt the same way she had felt that day in the courthouse when she stumbled on Bam’s double life, as if she was having a panic attack. The deep breaths she was taking made her choke, causing her to feel as if she was about to vomit. Racing over to the trash can, she did just that. After she had thrown her guts up, one of the bellmen handed her his handkerchief. “Thank you,” she said, just then realizing that some of the vomit had gotten on her shoes. Fuck!
Isis took off her shoes and left them right there in the puddle of puke. After all, they were no good to her in that condition. The thing that pissed her off the most about the shoes was that she wasn’t going to get the chance to wear them when she went to visit Logic. He’d bought them for her before he got arrested. Maybe she would buy another identical pair.
Sitting there waiting for the valet to bring her car around, Isis began to think how Fonz made her feel, how much of an asshole he was. When the valet arrived with her car, she put her designs in the trunk. The bellman said, “Ma’am, we can refer you to a really good shoe place right here on the beach. They’re amazing. Would you like for us to put your shoes in a plastic bag?”
“Sure,” she said. “Can you watch my car for a couple of seconds, also? I’ll be right back. I forgot something really important.” And that she had. This would be the first time in a long time that she didn’t remove herself from the situation.
Isis rushed back in to the hotel barefoot. Once the sweat on her feet made contact with the already slippery floor, she almost fell, but that didn’t stop her from storming into the lounge, heading right for Fonz, who was standing up telling a story to his friends and some bystanders. He spotted Isis. “Oh, baby, you changed your mind, huh?”
Everyone turned their attention to her as if she was putting on a performance, so she didn’t disappoint. She walked straight up to Fonz with as much grace as she could muster in bare feet, and then leaned in as if she wanted to whisper something in his ear. When he leaned his long torso in her direction to meet her halfway, he got something he wasn’t looking for. Isis caught him square in the nuts with a hard knee lift. It folded him in two. “You fucking asshole,” she screamed as she picked up a drink off the table, dumped it over his head, and stormed out of the hotel to her car.
“Miss, I managed to get some slippers for you as a courtesy of the Loews Hotel,” said the guy whom she’d asked to watch her things.
“Thank you again,” she said calmly, reaching into her pocketbook. She came out with a twenty-dollar bill. “This is for all your troubles.”
As she pulled onto Collins Avenue her mind began to race. What am I going to tell Logic tomorrow when he asks how things went? That I acted like a placekicker and used his homeboy’s nuts for the football?
While she was still stuck in thoughts of the day’s encounter, her cell phone rang, startling her. It was one of Smooth Breeze’s boys, Tony, confirming that her pass was at the hotel. She was so frantic that she didn’t know what to do, but there was one thing she knew, if she hadn’t learned anything else, and that was that she wasn’t going to allow herself to be in that s
ituation again. On that note, she programmed her car’s navigational system to the nearest Best Buy. From that point on, she would record every conversation that she had with any of Logic’s people in case she needed to play it for him to analyze it or in case someone was lying on her to him. She would always be protected and have all the evidence she ever needed.
Chapter 19
Smooth Breeze
On Isis’s drive back to her hotel, she wondered if Smooth Breeze would do what he said he would do or if he would be a jerk too and bullshit her because Logic wasn’t there. As soon as she made it back to the Ritz, she went straight to the desk. “Do you have something for Isis Tatum?”
The young lady who was working the desk checked her notes and looked around. “I don’t see anything. Can you tell me what I’m looking for?”
“It should be an envelope. Someone was supposed to drop it off just a little while ago.”
“Do you go by any other name, Isis?” the clerk asked, trying to be helpful.
“Well, some of my friends call me Ice, but”—and then it hit her that her name was no longer Tatum—“Wiseman,” she said. “Isis Wiseman. I was just married a few weeks ago. It takes a little getting used to.”
“I understand,” the clerk sympathized with her. “We do have a package under Wiseman, but I’m going to need to see some ID that at least has your first name on it.”
After the woman was satisfied with the identification Isis had given her, she handed over the package. Just as Smooth Breeze had promised her, it contained an all-access VIP pass for the event. It didn’t take Isis long to head up to her room, shower and change clothes, and then make her way to Ft. Lauderdale.
Once she got there, she saw that the arena was packed. People were everywhere: some just hanging out, some with tickets waiting to get in, but most of them were trying to get tickets to the sold-out event. People were looking so desperate, Isis was afraid to pull out her VIP pass. It felt like all eyes were on her when she strutted to the front of one of the lines.
When she reached the door, a security guard asked, “Who do you think you are?”
She flashed a Hollywood smile and pulled out her all-access pass. “Ms. Ice, darling” was her reply.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the guard apologized, “just doing my job.”
Before, it had felt as if people were watching her; now, she was sure—people were staring. The groupies who stood around wishing that they were her rolled their eyes as the red-carpet treatment was given to her.
She pulled out her phone to call Tony, as Smooth Breeze had asked her to do when she arrived. Tony showed up and escorted her back to Breeze’s dressing room—or dressing rooms, because he occupied three of them. One just had a few folding chairs set up in it, and to get into the next room, one would have to go past a 300-pound bouncer. As the bouncer moved to the side, Isis noticed that the room contained refreshments: Hennessy, Grey Goose, Patrón, orange juice, sodas, and ice. There was a table in the corner that must’ve been designated solely for rolling, because the punch bowl that was sitting on it was filled with strong-smelling weed. And there were two guys sitting at the table methodically wrapping the trees up in cigar paper, along with about seven more dudes sitting around shooting the shit at a room full of groupies. The chicks laughed at the corny jokes, trying hard to be noticed.
“Breeze will be out in a minute to get you,” Tony said to Isis. “Meanwhile, just make yourself comfortable.”
Two chicks in particular were giving her more eye attention than was required. “You here for Smooth Breeze?” one of them asked Isis, while the other looked on.
“Yes. Actually we have a meeting set up,” Isis informed her.
“What kind of meeting?” the other skeezer asked.
She could still feel the ice daggers that they had been giving off at her since she’d stepped foot through the door. “Business,” she said.
The first one spoke up again. “Chrissie, leave that girl alone. Look how she’s dressed; you know good and well Breeze don’t want her ass no way.”
Isis looked down at herself. She knew that she looked cute. She was now wearing blue jeans—designed with pink stones—a white halter top, and $700 Emilio Pucci shoes. No, she wasn’t dressed like a hoochie, but she definitely had her grown and sexy going on, unlike Chrissie, who was rail thin and dressed like a hooker trying to get a come-up on dollar day. Her friend really wasn’t a bad-looking girl. She was actually rather cute with the one dimple and beauty mark on the left side of her face. But the outfit she wore was a different story altogether. The short, black spandex micro-miniskirt with no panties underneath was a bit over the top and tacky. And she had the nerve to sit with her legs gapped wide open. She could have at least invested in a razor, Isis thought.
“Well, boo,” Chrissie announced to Isis, “I’ma tell you like this: I’ve been here since six o’clock waiting to give him some of the best brains south of the motherfucking border, okay?” Then she stood up so that she could look down on Isis. “And you or no other bitch gonna fuck that up for me, ’cause once I put my lips around his dick, baby, you gon’ see my face in the tabloids with the words Mrs. Smooth Breeze printed under my shit.”
Most of the dudes in the room started laughing. “Y’all bitches is crazy as shit,” one of them said.
“Ladies, ladies,” another said, “no fighting backstage.”
Just then Smooth Breeze’s boy peeked out the door and called Isis to the back.
“Remember what I said,” Chrissie snarled as Isis stood up to walk in. There was no need for Isis to respond to the trifling ho, because she was where Chrissie wanted to be—in the dressing room! And she didn’t have to get naked to do it.
The thick cush smoke gushing out of Breeze’s dressing room almost knocked Isis down as she entered. He was sitting in a leather love seat sipping a drink with an ashtray close by. His dark chocolate complexion, black wife beater, diamond rings, and necklaces blended in with the black furniture like a chameleon.
“What’s cracking, Ms. Ice? You want something to smoke?” Smooth Breeze asked, his bloodshot eyes beaming in on her as he patted a place beside him for her to sit.
She shook her head. “I don’t smoke,” she said, declining the marijuana and getting right down to business, just in case his attention span wasn’t very long. “But I do want to help you step your jewelry game up.”
Breeze took a long pull off one of the blunts, held the smoke in for what seemed like forever, and then exhaled. “You don’t like my jewels?”
“They’re”—she looked at them again, trying to find the right words to use so that he wouldn’t feel insulted—“beautiful…for an upcoming rapper. But surely not for a big star like you.”
He defended his style. “I paid a nice piece of change for this shit.”
“The most expensive isn’t always the best quality,” she explained. “I can get you more bang for your buck; plus, the pieces will be one of a kind. A man of your status shouldn’t have to share the same jewelry options as a kid on the block moving work.” Isis knew that she was giving his overweight ego a lightweight workout, but he needed it. Or maybe she just wanted some get-back on somebody for the way Fonz had treated her earlier that night. “Your jewelry should say to your fans, ‘I’m that nigga,’ and to your peers, ‘Step your game up or step out the game.’” She could tell by the gleam in his eyes that she had him interested.
“That’s what’s up!” He smiled. “If your work is as good as your sales game, I’m one lucky mu’fucka.”
Now it was her turn to smile. “Then let me show you some of my work.”
“Ain’t no need.” He put up his hand. “I believe you can turn straw into gold, or else Logic wouldn’t be allowing me to spend some of the interest on his money with you to set it in motion.” Somebody knocked on the door.
“We out of yak,” one of the guys from the other room announced.
She reached for some of her designs, and just then, Breeze began to t
ry to straighten out the situation.
“Yo, Tony, call that bullshit-ass promoter and tell him to get some fucking Rémy in this bitch or we’re leaving.” He then looked to Isis. “Work on something real fire for me and call me when it’s ready.” Then he noticed the wedding ring that she had designed for herself. “Goddaaamn.” He covered his mouth in awe. “I see why they call you Ms. Ice.” The ring was at least ten carats. “Yo shit is cold, Ma.”
She laughed. “Thank you. Now, you want to see what I had in mind for you?”
He waved her off. “Surprise me when it’s done. But I hope you stick around for the show.”
Tony interrupted by poking his head in the door again. “Breeze, you got a couple of these groupies that’s stuck on stupid until they see you. Ms. Ice, do you mind waiting in the other room for a sec?”
While she was getting her bag, Breeze went on to say, “I ain’t really trying to see nobody else. I just want to do this performance and bounce.”
“These bitches been out here since the doors opened,” Tony said. “They beat the sound man here.”
“I can give those hos an autograph and a picture, but after that, they got to get the fuck out of here.”
Tony opened the door for Isis to leave, then called Chrissie in. “But my girlfriend is in the bathroom,” she informed Tony.
“Well, you can go help the bitch wipe herself or you can go in and take a picture with Breeze.”
“I’m going in.” She looked back at one of the other guys to whom she had been talking. “Can you tell my friend to knock on the door when she gets back?” Then she rubbed the palms of her hands down the front of her outfit, trying to smooth it out, and waltzed in like a Naomi Campbell on crack.
Isis looked at Chrissie and chuckled to herself at the thought of Chrissie actually thinking that Smooth Breeze would marry her. Wishful thinking, I guess.
Chapter 20
Embracing Who You Are
Samantha was there to pick up Isis from the airport thirty minutes before the flight was due to arrive. Isis had told her that that wasn’t necessary, that she could have taken a cab or rented a car, but Samantha wasn’t having it. She hadn’t seen her only niece in two months. The least she could do was pick her up.