Fiasco’s show, drowned out with chants of his new nemesis’s name.
“Holeup, y’all. Yo. Holeup.”
He tried to stop the Yung Chit nonsense.
Yung Chit, Yung Chit, Yung Chit.
“Holeup. Yo. Holeup.”
His mic was invisible and speechless. Like it wasn’t even turned on.
Yung Chit, Yung Chit, Yung Chit.
He was in the Dirty South. Yung Chit country. Chit was religion down here. Chit was currency. Chit was health. Chit was everything that mattered.
Yung Chit was killing hip-hop. Killing it dead.
And Fiasco couldn’t save hip-hop.
The chant grew louder and louder.
Fiasco didn’t even get to perform one song. He gave up trying. Made a gesture to the crowd that would embarrass him later when it got played all over YouTube. Then he dropped the mic on the stage, didn’t even place it back in the mic stand. Dropped it like a temperamental rock star throwing down a guitar. Straight up Mick Jaggered the mic. Stepped off the stage without having even really started his set.
Yung Chit, Yung Chit, Yung Chit.
“This is dangerous,” Toya said.
“Feel free to keep it moving,” Fiasco replied.
“Don’t be hateful to me, please.”
“Just saying I’d understand if you want to move on,” Fiasco said. “Maybe Yung Chit has some room on his bus for you.” He touched his temple, focused his eyes like he was really thinking. “Or does he even have a bus? Probably has a leisure jet.”
He was upset, and Toya could understand. She wouldn’t add to it, despite the fact he was talking to her like she was less than zero. “This is turning into something serious,” she said.
They were back in the dressing room. Fiasco sipped a Vitamin Water, half listened to Toya. “Ain’t nothing I can’t handle,” he said.
“This is getting dangerous. I’m scared.”
“It ain’t nothing,” he repeated.
“This is Power 103, the home of hip-hop and R & B. I’m the voice of your choice, your girl Joosy. If you’re just tuning in, I have Yung Chit on the line. Chit?”
“Yo, yo, yo.”
“Before the break you said some tough things about your situation with Fiasco. We definitely don’t want another Tupac versus Biggie situation. The community can’t deal with that. You didn’t mean that, did you?”
“Dude has disrespected me on several occasions, Joose. My fans go in. I gotta go in, too.”
“I’m all for some healthy competition, Chit. Just keep it on wax. You’ve said some reckless things this afternoon. Can you guys keep it on wax?”
“Real n-----do real things.”
“Fiasco’s been quiet, Chit.”
“He better be. He’ll get rocked if he opens his mouth. Ever. I ain’t playing wit’ this.”
“It’s that serious, Chit?”
“It’s that serious, Joose.”
“Come on, Chit.”
“I heard homeboy’s down here in the Dirty touring. If he knows what I know, he’ll get on that gay bus of his and head back North. I got gunners everywhere. Ya heard?”
“Chit, come on. That’s reckless talk.”
“This a reckless game, Joose.”
“Chit, come on.”
“I’m out, Joosy.”
“Chit…Hello, Chit. Damn. We’ll be back y’all. Gotta pay the bills.”
Fiasco powered off the radio.
“Okay?” he said. “I heard it Tone.”
He was back on the bus, headed to South Carolina. Toya was asleep, finally. Just past two in the morning, Fiasco couldn’t shut his own eyes, restless. Tone apparently couldn’t, either. But then Tone never slept more than a couple hours a night. He was a hustler, always on the grind. He’d called Fiasco’s cell just minutes before. “If you’re on wheels,” he’d said, “get to the radio and turn to Power 103. Now.”
“I didn’t like the tone of that, no pun intended,” Tone said now. “Sounds like this is getting serious.”
“It’s okay,” Fiasco said.
“It might not be a bad idea to do like he said, come back North. No need leaving yourself in harm’s way down here.”
Tone hadn’t even heard about the fiasco at the club, no pun intended, and Fiasco wasn’t about to share.
“Got four more cities to do, Tone, and I’m doing them.”
“You my dude. I don’t want to have to bury you.”
“I got this, Tone.”
Tone sighed through the phone lines.
“Four more cities,” Fiasco said. “Plus the benefit concert at that college in Georgia.” For Eric’s big sister, Kenya.
“And Chit’s gonna be there, too,” Tone said.
Fiasco nodded, cracked his knuckles.
Yep. Chit was gonna be at the benefit concert, too.
Fiasco was looking forward to it.
“We outta here baby,
We outta here baby,
We outta here baby…”
Kanye West, “Barry Bonds”
Chapter 19
Eric
“How much longer, Eric?”
I looked over my shoulder. Endia was moving around my room, picking things off my shelves, getting a handle on what made Eric the Great tick. Just a year ago I would’ve donated an organ to have a girl as beautiful as Endia in my room. Mama was at the hospital, would be leaving straight from there and going to work. Hollywood was working until late. I had the entire house to myself.
And Endia to myself, as well.
“Just a minute longer,” I said. “Let me finish this post.”
“Maybe I can help.”
I shook my head. “You wouldn’t find this interesting.”
“Let me see.”
She was at my side before I could object further. I had one of Benny’s old laptops open on my desk. I was logged into my MySpace page. Writing a blog entry. I was going to publish the blog post as a bulletin for all of my MySpace friends to read, too. A double dose of hate spewed at my least favorite rapper.
“You don’t like Yung Chit?” Endia asked.
“Can’t say I’m a fan. No.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust, and then looked deeper at my screen. “Eric, what’s an anathema?”
I didn’t dare tell her.
I clicked the Submit button, sent my post into the cyber universe.
“You really don’t like Yung Chit?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t have any talent.”
“I like him.”
“I forgive you,” I said.
She punched my shoulder.
“Let’s do something,” I said. “What do you want to do?”
It wasn’t a loaded question, I swear.
But Endia got a look in her eyes that I recognized from late-night movies on HBO and Showtime. I had the run of the house. And she knew it. I thought about what that meant.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Thinking.”
She pinched my cheek. “You’re so cute when you’re thinking.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yup. I can always tell when you are, too. You get this intense look.”
“And you like that?”
“Love it.” Her voice was syrup.
She liked me thinking. It turned her on.
I started doing multiplications in my head.
Fractions.
The Periodic Table of Elements. H for Hydrogen.
Ran into some trouble as I tried to reconstruct Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech. Judge me not by the number of friends I have on MySpace but by the content of the comments they leave on my page. Something like that.
“Eric, you hear me?”
“What?”
“I was talking to you.”
Oops. Thinking too much, I guess.
“Sorry. What?”
“I figured out what we can do.”
“What’s t
hat?” I said in my James Bond voice.
A wide smile covered her face. I stood up, looked down at her.
Might have even winked, I’m not sure.
She stood on her tiptoes, kissed me softly on the lips.
My insides rumbled like a subway.
“You had an idea of something we could do?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her eyes widened.
“Yes,” I said.
“I haven’t even told you yet.”
“Yes.”
She gave me another kiss. “I think I have an idea of what it is,” I said.
Her hand came out from behind her back. “Scattergories.” she yelled.
“Then again, maybe I didn’t,” I said.
Chapter 20
Kenya
I’m watching an infomercial on television for P90X. Rock-hard abs, lean muscle and the best body imaginable in just ninety days. I don’t believe it, but I keep watching. This is pretty much all I can stomach watching. Used to be able to watch the judge shows: Judy, Joe Brown, Mathis. But I can’t anymore. Too many of their cases involve auto-accident damages. I used to watch CSI on the low, though I’d never admit it to Lark. Not anymore. Too much of a risk of a car chase that ends badly. Can’t do Maury. Too many broken relationships that are beyond repair.
So P90X.
“Bet that don’t even work.”
I’ve learned that life is full of surprises.
Nothing catches me off guard anymore.
But her appearance by my door is beyond anything I could’ve ever anticipated. I blink my eyes a few times to make sure they’re focusing correctly. I open my eyes. She’s still here. Standing in the doorway. She looks unsure. A first.
“You can come in,” I say.
Don’t ask why I do.
She steps into the room.
Skintight blue jeans, a cutoff T-shirt with Nasty Girl stenciled on the front, fake Steve Madden boots.
This girl is a one-trick pony.
“How are you, Kenya?”
“Oh, you do know my name?”
She nods.
“How did you get in here?” I ask.
She looks back over her shoulder, then returns her gaze to me, a sheepish smile on her face. “Wasn’t nobody at the nurse’s station. I kinda just walked on in.”
“How did you know my room number?”
She shrugs, pops a bubble with her gum. “I’ve got some fam up in here. Work down in the kitchen.”
I roll my eyes.
“I ain’t come to give you no drama, Kenya.”
“What did you come for?”
“Talk.”
“Pull up a seat. Let’s get to it.”
I don’t mean that literally.
But she moves to the corner of the room, grabs hold of the chair Hollywood usually sits in when he and Mama visit, slides the chair across the floor, parks it right next to my bed. She fingers the petals on some flowers in a colorful bouquet I have on my side table.
“Nice flowers,” she says.
I swallow. “From a friend.”
“They all that.”
“What did you want, Melyssa?”
I don’t have the patience to deal with her. But I’m curious.
“Female to female?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
She went through the trouble of moving that chair by my bedside, but she doesn’t sit in it. She hovers over me in a position that forces me to look her in the face. So many other things I’d rather do.
“I saw Donnell the other day,” she says.
“And?” If they check my vitals anytime soon, my blood pressure will be off the charts, I’m sure.
“I said hi,” she says. “And he answered back.”
“What would you expect? You two were intimate.”
Melyssa chuckles. “Gotta love how you talk, Kenya. But, nah, me and him just did it. You two were intimate.”
“Why are you here?”
She looks away from me. “He spoke but wasn’t any feeling in his voice. Donnell’s a good dude, so he wasn’t ’bout to straight diss me. But it ain’t been a month since I laid down with him, and he don’t feel nothing toward me.”
I swallow. “You care about him?”
She looks at me. Hazel eyes. I’d never noticed that before. “Probably more than I put on. Yeah.”
For some reason, that hurts.
“He’s a free agent,” I say. “Go for yours.”
“You know that ain’t possible, Kenya.”
“And why not?”
“Donnell caught up already. And not with me.”
I feel a lump in my throat, the rush of my quickening pulse in my ears. “Caught up?” I whisper. “With who?”
Melyssa snickers. “You serious?”
“With who?” I repeat.
“You, Kenya. Don’t be stupid.”
Me.
For a second, I feared the worse. Feared that he’d moved on and the whole world knew about it except for me.
“Me?” I say.
“You’ve got a real problem if you don’t know how much Donnell loves you. Everybody knows it around the way.”
“Loved,” I say. “Past tense.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“You came here to stir up bad memories?” I ask.
“Nah. Just wanted to talk to you. I had a dream about you. No homo. I just wanted to let you know something. Had to come tell you.”
“I’m listening.”
“You asked me…” She pauses. “That day.”
Day of my accident.
“Yes?”
“You asked me that day if I wanted better for myself?”
“I remember.”
“I ain’t gonna get into all that,” Melyssa says. “But I had that dream.”
“So you came to tell me you weren’t gonna answer a question you already didn’t answer once?”
Melyssa laughs. “Hear me out.”
“Go ahead.”
She eyes me. Hazel eyes. “In my dream, I asked you the same thing you asked me.”
“Did you?”
“We ain’t ever gonna be friends, Kenya.”
“That’s a newsflash.”
“But what you asked me was…was something a friend would ask.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“And I feel bad you got hurt.”
“That makes two of us,” I say.
“So I had to return the favor. Had to come ask you that question.”
“To ask me if I want better for myself?”
“Exactly.”
“Injuries aside, I’m aiight, Melyssa.”
“You think so, huh?”
I don’t have an answer for the judgment in her voice.
Chapter 21
Fiasco
“You’re awake?”
“Yeah.”
Toya moved outside, settled beside Fiasco. Her legs were bare, her top covered with one of Fiasco’s shirts. She’d awakened from a pretty sound sleep, discovered the spot next to her in bed was empty and cool. He’d done what he’d done with her. But he hadn’t slept with her afterward, really slept. He didn’t cuddle with her, either.
“Couldn’t get to sleep?” she asked.
“Didn’t try.” He brought the brown bag in his fist up to his lips, kissed the lip of the bottle inside the bag and swallowed some liquid happiness. It burned his throat but warmed his soul.
Toya nodded at the bottle. “What you got there?”
“Kool-Aid.”
“Kool-Aid? Doesn’t look like Kool-Aid.”
Fiasco looked at her with hard, reddened eyes. “Yoon is dead and gone. I don’t need this. Stay in your lane, Toya.”
“Yoon?”
He took another sip, then nodded. “My mother.”
“Oh.” Toya looked off into the distance. It was a cool evening. The M and O on the motel sign weren’t illuminated. Place still had vacancies. “HBO needs to be free. This place is a dump.”
Fiasco leaned
against the bus. They’d had engine problems, another inconvenience. The bus had just gotten repaired and returned to Fiasco that evening. In the meantime, he’d holed up with Toya in the motel. A dump, for sure.
Fiasco was wearing shorts and a wifebeater, his usual of late, no socks or shoes on.
“You should be careful, don’t step on any glass,” Toya said. “Broken bottles all over the place.”
Fiasco eyed her, said nothing.
“Yoon? What is that?” Toya asked.
“Told you that was my mother.”
“You know what I meant. What was she?”
“Toya? What are you?” Fiasco felt like being difficult.
“My family is from Barbados.”
Fiasco softened some. She wasn’t a bad woman.
“Korean,” he said.
“Father’s black, I take it?”
“Was.”
“Sorry to hear dat.”
Fiasco shrugged. “I was young. I ain’t miss a beat.”
“Oh, no?”
“Nope.”
“Why are you so angry, Fiasco?”
“Ruben.”
“What?”
“My name. Ruben. How come you’ve never asked?”
Toya smiled. The sadness in her eyes betrayed the smile. “Would you have told me?”
“Probably not,” Fiasco admitted.
Toya blinked. And blinked some more. “South Carolina is nice.”
“Think so?”
“Yeah. This is the farthest south I’ve ever been.”
“Farthest you’re going for now.”
“What?”
“There’s a Hilton. I’ll put you up there.”
“What about Georgia?”
Fiasco swallowed. “Nah. I don’t want anybody with me in Georgia.”
Toya didn’t argue.
Wasn’t any use.
Chapter 22
Lark
Lark sat down at her desk and compiled a list of items she’d need for college:
Alarm clock
Small storage trunk
Extralong twin sheets (80”)
Fan
Toaster
Shower bucket/Shower shoes
Desk lamp
Comforter/Pillows
VCR/DVD player
Coffeemaker
Toiletries
Iron
Umbrella
Radio/Headphones
Hair dryer
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