“Uh, you can come back in a couple of days when Ritz is feeling better,” Tracee said.
Randolph was a bit stung, but he got the message. The answer was no.
“Okay. But I still want to go to church if you're going. That's all about Jesus. You wouldn't want to keep me away from the Lord, now would you?” He feigned a pout.
Tracee laughed.
“If I go, I'll definitely call you.” She could really dig this guy. A lot.
20
The day had taken its toll on Delilah. She got up at five in the morning after an evening of tossing and turning. She didn't really sleep well the night before. A lot was riding on this. It might be her last chance to get back to the top perch she once held. It might be her last chance for a comeback.
There was the hour and a half in makeup and hair. The microdermabrasion treatments, Botox, and electrolysis took care of the blotches, the wrinkled forehead, the lines around her mouth and eyes, and the unwanted hair above her lip and under her chin. She had really let herself go.
But she knew she had to snap back quickly. Delilah had three weeks from the day her agent told her about the screen tests at CNN to shed fifteen pounds and get back into the shape she was in before Ritz Harper had taken her out, where she had been reduced to spending days on end in bed— eating microwave pizza, Dove bars, peanut butter right out of the jar (without a spoon)— and plotting revenge.
She did a week of absolutely no carbs. That was good for knocking off five pounds. It made her bitchy as hell, but it didn't matter. Delilah didn't have any real friends to be bitchy around, and her agent, business manager, and accountant were used to her ways. They could tolerate her. It was business for them.
The second week, Delilah took it up a notch and did the Master Cleanse— a fast of lemon juice, distilled water, and maple syrup with cayenne tincture. She learned about this fast one day while watching one of the talk shows. Actor Danny Glover, “Mister” from The Color Purple, was talking about his campaign against cabdrivers in New York City who would not pick up blacks. It happened to him, and he was determined to let the world know that racism still existed in America. But what interested Delilah was how great he looked. Danny Glover was pushing sixty, but he had the body of a thirty-year-old.
“And he hasn't had any work done,” Delilah muttered to herself. “He looks fabulous.”
Delilah, a television junkie who studied everybody on the screen, could tell what kind of plastic surgery or other procedures a person had done by just looking at them. She even knew how long ago they had it and when they would need something again. The interviewer asked Glover about his great physique and he mentioned some fast he was on. He was doing it for forty days, and he said it gave him so much energy that he never felt better.
“He's crazy with that forty days of no eating stuff,” said Delilah, who had grown comfortable talking to the television. “But it sounds interesting.”
She went online and looked it up.
What the hell, she thought. If it kills me, it can't be worse than the life I'm living now.
Delilah never knew how dependent she had grown on being a star. It wasn't her career, it was her life. She was The Delilah Summers, the best in her business, the go-to person for any major interview with any major public figure. Delilah loved everything that went with being Delilah Summers. She liked the chauffeur-driven cars, the star treatment at every fancy restaurant in Manhattan. She never needed a reservation, and at certain spots, she even had a special table no matter when she came in. She was Delilah Summers. People wanted her autograph. Clerks at department stores fawned all over her on the occasions she went to Saks or Bloomingdale's to shop. She had her own special room and her own special shopper, who brought her any item she desired.
She got free champagne and finger sandwiches when she shopped. She got the star treatment because she was a star. She got to walk around with her head in the air, because she was Delilah Summers.
Her fall was hard. It wasn't long before all the star trappings disappeared. Now, if she wanted a stupid finger sandwich, it would be for cash only, up front. Even the way people looked at her changed. That was the hardest part, realizing that all of the attention was phony. People only liked her because she was a “star.” They didn't like her for who she was. The realization that she didn't really have friends, just sycophants and yes-people, was hard to take. For most of her life, Delilah Summers was surrounded by people— whether they were men who wanted to sleep with her, or girlfriends who wanted to be like her, or agents who wanted to make money off of her, or moochers who wanted to sponge off her. Now she was really alone. Even her agent was there only because he knew she could make a comeback, and that would be fifteen percent of a seven-figure deal in his pocket.
She was going to be different this time around. Delilah was going to be more sincere, less self-absorbed, less caught up in herself, more willing to do the small things. She did the screen test, even though she was insulted by it. She got over that and knocked them dead.
The crash diet made her suits fit perfectly. She looked fantastic. She never lost her talent to deliver the news with punch and verve. She even displayed something she never did before— a self-deprecating humor.
“Hell, if I can't laugh at myself after what I just went through, I might as well hang it up,” she said to the producer of her screen test after she nearly fell out of a broken seat right in the middle of her delivery. The old Delilah would have demanded someone's head on a platter after such a
“humiliation.” The new Delilah simply said, “Now, if I had fallen on my behind on the air, that would have been great television!” And she kept it moving.
Delilah wasn't surprised when the call came in at 1:35 in the afternoon. She was flipping the channels between Charlie Rose on PBS, CNN, and Jerry Springer. She loved Jerry and Maury and the judge shows. They helped her feel better about herself. Seeing all of those dysfunctional people let Delilah know that her little scandal wasn't that big of a deal. That she could definitely rise above it all. She was a daytime show junkie. She even grew to appreciate the magic of Oprah. Before her fall, Delilah was a big-time Oprah Hater. She couldn't understand how that “fat, phony bitch” had become such a huge star.
“Huge star” was kind of an understatement. She was the richest woman in the goddamned world. And the money was hers, all hers— not like other “richest women,” like the Queen of England. Queen Elizabeth couldn't just buy the Crown Jewels and give them to Prince Philip as a Christmas present. Her fortune was in name only.
But Oprah could buy the Crown Jewels if she so chose, then give them to Stedman as a stocking stuffer!
I have more talent in my upper lip than she does in her whole big body, Delilah used to think.
But sitting home, watching Oprah— more to criticize, at first, than to actually see— she began to understand why Oprah was Oprah. Oprah really did want to make a difference on this earth. Oprah wasn't fake, and people knew that in- stinctively. Oprah, had she not been real, would have been gone and forgotten twenty years ago, like Morton Downey, Jr., and the hundreds of others who had tried and failed at the talk-show game.
Delilah wanted to be like Oprah, too. Could she be?
Shoot. Why couldn't she be? What did she have left to lose? She had already lost everything!
Since the screen test, she didn't do much TV watching. She started going to the gym, started reading more, surfed the Internet, and started keeping a journal.
And remarkably, as time passed, she spent less and less time thinking about Ritz Harper. Before, she'd been fueled by revenge. There wasn't a happier person in the world than Delilah Summers the night Ritz Harper was shot. And when she found out that Ritz had lived, she seethed, trying to figure out how she could get someone to kill her for real the next time. She wanted to see Ritz dead, or in ruins, or preferably both.
The diet and the exercise were starting to show their effects. She was feeling so much better, both in body and in min
d. She was healing. She was becoming a new person, a better person. Did she have Ritz Harper to thank for that?
Now, when she thought about Ritz Harper, the rage wasn't as hot as it had been. The rage used to be white-hot. Now it was down to red-hot.
Now, when she thought about Ritz Harper, she always remembered a proverb she had to memorize when she was in grammar school, a proverb she hated because she didn't know what it meant: To understand all is to forgive all.
Delilah still didn't get that. No. There are certain things that can never be forgiven, like having your life ruined for some Arbitron ratings.
But still, it was food for thought.…
When the phone rang just before 1:30 P.M. it was her agent, telling her that not only did CNN love the screen test but they were also prepared to give her a show starting in the fall, and that they were thinking about her as a replacement for Larry King, in case he ran off and got married again. Or maybe permanently, because next to Barbara Walters he was the oldest person on television.
“Delilah, you're back!” Frank Baker said. “I would suggest signing a one-year deal, because in one year you'll be back on the network scene and, I predict, even bigger than you were.”
Delilah had a lot to prove to the public, and even more to prove to herself. Would it be better the second time around? Would it be different? Could she be as successful? Did it matter?
Delilah had so many questions, but only one answer: “I have nothing to lose!”
21
Randolph got the hint— Tracee didn't want him coming by every day, but he wanted to. He felt that she didn't really mean it, but he would honor her wishes. He couldn't stop thinking about her— her warm, girlish smile, those eyes, so big and bright that he swore he could literally see right into her soul. He smiled. She had him.
Pull the strings, and I'll sing you a song,
I'm your puppet…
Make me do right, or make me do wrong,
Some folks found the Word in the Bible. Randolph found his word in 1960s R&B. All the answers were there.
Of course, Tracee had a beautiful face— without makeup, no less. And yes, she had what looked like a banging body.
But there was a purity about Tracee that he hadn't seen in a woman in a long, long time, not since the woman whose name he still couldn't say. Tracee didn't have any pretenses or hang-ups. She had a confidence that didn't need to be advertised. It was just there.
Some women wear their confidence like a slinky red dress. They want you to know that they're something. Tracee just was. Randolph knew that there was so much more to her, and he wanted to know it all. When he checked into the hospital every morning and got his men working on whatever project they were going to tackle for the day, he would walk by Ritz's room, thinking, hoping that he would bump into Tracee outside.
But on this morning, Randolph ran into Maddie and Cecil on the floor. Cecil had his arm around Maddie. They looked so bonded, so together, so as one. Randolph could feel it. Here were these two old folks, but they emitted a power— a power that was as strong, and eternal, as sunlight.
“Good morning!” Randolph said.
“Hello, son,” Cecil said. Cecil called every man under the age of fifty “son.”
“What are you two up to?”
“We're just about to go out and get some air. Sitting around a hospital all day can make you sick,” said Maddie, who did look pale and sick. “Um, you're a friend of Ritz's? What did you say your name was again?”
“Randolph. Randolph Jordan.”
“Jordan?” Maddie said.
“Um, yes, ma'am,” said Randolph, shifting from one foot to another. He didn't like the tone of Maddie's voice, and he suddenly realized that he was afraid of her. This was not a woman whom he could dazzle with his smile, and his good looks, and his glib tongue. This was not a person whom he could fool, like he had fooled so many women earlier in his life. He was looking at power— real power. He couldn't believe it, but his knees started to tremble.
“Where are you from, Randolph?”
“I was born in Richmond, Virginia, ma'am. But my parents moved up north when I was two.”
Maddie looked at Cecil.
“Cecil, doesn't this boy remind you of somebody? Forget the rest of him and look at his eyes. You can always tell by the eyes.”
Cecil squinted his old eyes and looked hard at the young, deep-mocha-complexioned man who stood in front of him, six feet two inches tall, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest, perfect teeth and bulging muscles.
Then he remembered what Maddie said and he looked into Randolph's eyes.
Yes.…
He knew those eyes. He had seen those eyes before. But where? Where?
Then, suddenly, he knew:
He saw those eyes years ago, at their house. Years ago, when Gina was there. Years ago, when he had called someone “Richie” and that person had said, “No, it's Ritchie, with a t.”
“Is your daddy Ritchie Jordan?” Uncle Cecil could barely get the words out.
“Yes,” said a startled Randolph. “Do you know him?”
“Oh my, oh my,” Maddie said.
Randolph could barely speak. “Please,” he said. “What do you mean?”
Uncle Cecil put his hand on Randolph's arm, and Randolph felt like he had been touched by an electric current. This man, like his wife, had power— true power, the power that is never seen unless it chooses to be seen.
“If your father is Ritchie Jordan,” Uncle Cecil said, “you are Ritz's brother.”
22
When Jamie first came aboard the Ritz Harper Excursion, she was a bright-eyed, excited student, eager to learn everything she could from a woman who was what Jamie thought she wanted to become. There weren't many women in the radio game, and there weren't any women commanding the kind of attention and money that Ritz Harper was. Jamie figured she could learn at Ritz's knee, go to a smaller market, get some experience there, then come back to New York and take out a washed-up, semi-senile Ritz.
In this culture, a woman was considered to be a “hot babe” between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, tops. But Jamie was realizing that didn't apply to women of color. Black don't crack. J-Lo, who was pushing forty, was still being written about in the tabloids as “bootylicious.” Janet Jackson, who was in her early forties, was still getting her rhythm nation on, appearing on magazine covers with her eight-pack showing. Halle Berry, fortysomething. Nothing more need be said. Madonna, who was Italian (and you know what they say about Sicilians), was still holding it down, pushing fifty.
Jamie knew that while she didn't have much time to make her mark, she had more than enough time.
She had her plans all mapped out. She knew she was smarter than Ritz. But brains never mattered. The most successful were rarely the most intelligent. Intelligence is one of the least important traits to success. Guile, craftiness, having the right connections, and being cutthroat were way more valuable tools for success than intelligence.
Jamie watched her dad work his game in the corporate world. And while he made enough money to keep his family in a nice-sized home, in a beautiful, well-manicured neighborhood, and was able to send all of his children to college, he was not wealthy.
He was not the kind of wealthy that Jamie wanted him to be. On some level, her father was living a lie. He had to tuck his penis down and stick it between his butt cheeks, like a transvestite, and smile as he did it. He had to keep his mask on tight. By the time he came home, he was worn out. His job wasn't fun. Jamie never heard her father say that he liked what he did.
What's the point in going to school and working hard to spend twenty to thirty years doing something you absolutely hate? Jamie often thought.
The world of radio and entertainment was stressful, but the games and the characters, the wealth and excitement, and the unpredictability made it fun. Just thinking about it would get Jamie's adrenaline flowing.
But she was about to blow it all because she couldn't keep
up the facade of being a good team player on the Ritz Harper Excursion.
Ritz was hard to work for before the shooting. She barked orders, she undermined and belittled everyone in the studio, including Chas. But she seemed to be doing it by accident, like some little four-year-old who lets fly with whatever is on her mind.
Only those who truly knew her understood that Ritz was not the unfeeling, nasty, horrible bitch that many thought she was.
Ritgina Harper was just a grown-up, big-boobed, big-wigged little girl who said whatever came to her mind. She spoke before she thought.
That was okay with little girls, but little girls who blurted out whatever came into their little heads did not have an audience of millions, like Ritz did.
There was a different edge to Ritz now, a more purposeful edge. She was not just mean and bitchy. She now seemed like she was on the prowl, like she was determined to destroy everything in her path. She would not be denied. Ritz was preparing to come back the following week. The station was setting up a studio in her home. They asked Jamie to help make the transition smooth.
She talked to Ritz in the days before her “comeback broadcast,” and Ritz was bitchier than ever.
“I want you to make sure that I have everything in place. I want to be better than before I left, so I need you to cover every little fucking detail, you got it?!” Ritz was talking to Jamie as if she were the most incompetent intern Ritz had ever worked with, bar none. Ritz spoke to her like she was some dumb-ass, snot-nosed kid who didn't know what the hell she was doing. Jamie resented the tone.
Jamie resented Ritz.
“Oh, and Jamie? I'll set up a room for you in my house. I want you to be there twenty-four/seven to take care of anything that may come up. That won't be a problem, will it?”
“No, Ritz” is what Jamie's mouth said. Oh hell no, who the fuck does she think she is? was what her mind was saying. That bitch wants me to be her nursemaid? I know she just got shot, but is she crazy, too?
Is the Bitch Dead, Or What? Page 10