“If I go back there I’ll definitely not leave,” she thought to herself as she walked down the stairs to the street.
Jamie called him when she got home and every day after that.
14
Ivan opened the door to his hotel room and was pleased with his clean, modern surroundings. He had stayed at several upscale hotels during his trips to New York—from the Plaza and the Waldorf-Astoria to the Four Seasons. He hated old carpet and what he decided was the gaudy and stuffy decor of both the Plaza and the Waldorf. He also hated the heavy ornate drapes that made all the rooms he checked into seem heavy and dark. It was as if the old furnishings had absorbed the sad feelings of all the guests throughout the years.
The Four Seasons on East Fifty-seventh Street was perfect, but the five-hundred-dollar-a-night rate for the kind of room he wanted was too steep even for Ivan’s fat pockets. He didn’t know how long he was actually going to stay in Manhattan, and throwing away that kind of money went against his frugal grain. Watching his grandmother work so hard and die with nothing made him keep a careful eye on his finances.
Ivan settled on an out-of-the-way spot in SoHo. Discreet, reasonable, and trendy. His room boasted a small balcony. There was only room for him to stand out there alone, but when the French doors were open and he pushed back the curtains, it provided a wonderful view and made his room come to life with the craziness of New York City. It felt more like a small apartment than a musty old hotel room.
Ivan opened his suitcase on the couch facing his bed at the other end of the room and began hanging up his clothes. He immediately realized that he had forgotten to pack clothes to work out in. Ivan was part of the beautiful-people pack. In the midst of his heavy work schedule, he made sure every day to take at least an hour and half to either get in a run or find a gym and a treadmill. He also lifted weights and was proud that under his Brooks Brothers suits was a body to die for.
He knew he would be staying in New York long enough that he would need to work out. Ivan decided he would finish unpacking later. It was already three in the afternoon, and he needed to buy some sneakers and some workout gear. He headed down Eighth Street off of Sixth Avenue in the Village in search of a sneaker store. He decided that running would be a big part of his workout. He checked out the hotel gym; the equipment left a lot to be desired. He scoped out Washington Square Park and the surrounding areas and decided that it looked like a decent place to run.
Ivan was in New York to have fun. It was Miami-squared in terms of opportunity and nightlife. His last visit to New York taught him how wild things could be. While he wasn’t looking for wild, he was definitely looking for excitement. As he headed past West Fourth Street and the cage that was filling up with ballers, he was bombarded with flyers for a “hot” party or the best place for a piercing or tattoo.
After walking about three blocks, Ivan finally found a store with a huge selection of running shoes. The salesman asked Ivan to take a seat. Ivan loved to shop. He got a euphoric feeling whenever he was doing it. That coupled with R. Kelly’s “Happy People” blaring from the sound system put a real bounce in his late afternoon. The salesman returned and Ivan held up the Nike running shoe he wanted and asked for a size twelve.
The store had on a radio station, not the normal Musak or XM Radio. The woman’s voice on the radio was intoxicating. He had no idea who she was, but it sounded like she was loving life and loving what she was doing. Ivan decided that he was exactly where he needed to be—New York City. The Big Apple. Land of dreams. He was thirty-four years old, relatively wealthy, and out of touch with his youth. He was tired of wondering where P. Diddy, who was pushing forty, found the energy to party as much as he did. He ran up to the register and asked for a pen.
He heard the lady with the intoxicating voice talk about a party the next evening at Club Red that she was hosting. It sounded like the spot. Ivan took the address and knew that tomorrow would be the first night of getting back his groove. “That’ll be $134.96, sir,” the store cashier said. “Would you like a pair of socks to go with those?”
“In fact, I’ll take five pair,” Ivan said. “And please tell me what station we’re listening to.”
“Oh, that’s WHOT, Hot-9—99.9,” the cashier responded while handing Ivan back his platinum AMEX.
“Who’s that lady talking?”
“You must not be from around here.” The cashier got sassy. “That’s Ritz Harper! She’s off the hook. They call her the Queen of New York. She has the lowdown on everybody.”
Ritz was in the middle of a great blind item about a movie star whose wife caught him in their swimming pool banging some TV magazine host. She said she had to go to commercial break but would have more details when she came back. Ivan found himself hooked. He was disappointed that he wouldn’t be hearing the rest. But he had to get back and get prepared for tomorrow. He needed his beauty sleep.
15
Chas got to the club around midnight. He liked to get there before Ritz to scope out the spot. Since her heightened fame, Ritz also liked Chas to check the exits and make sure that everyone in her surroundings looked copasetic. He often thought she was paranoid, but he would never let Ritz know that he thought she was overreacting.
Ritz was set to arrive around midnight to host a bash at Club Red. Chas was certain that she would be late; it was getting more and more difficult to get her to come to appearances. She was feeling herself.
“What stars still have to make appearances?” she would complain.
“Ritz, they’re apart of your contract,” Chas would reason. “Besides, it’s the one time when you get to be with your people and they get to see you.”
“Fuck that!” Ritz said. “They don’t need to see me. Those thirsty bastards will tune in whether I’m hosting a party or not. In my next deal, I’m not doing any more appearances unless it’s on my very own television show!”
While Ritz hated doing appearances, she loved the money. She could pocket anywhere from two thousand to ten thousand in cash depending on the event. And while Chas was always there, Ritz never shared a dime with him. He never let show that he minded her stinginess, but he did.
But it was Ritz who people showed up to see. She was the star attraction. She was the star—dressed to impress in Rock & Republic jeans, a beaded Luca Luca top, Ferragamo sandals, and lots of hair. Chas knew his role and his place.
Club Red was packed with people waiting in anticipation for the arrival of “the diva.”
Everyone looked fabulous—including Chas. He always looked fabulous. He took his own advice on always being “runway ready.” He had on a new Ryan Kelly shirt, simple black slacks—no need to overdo it there—and black Gucci loafers. He also had on a black Gucci watch, which you had to look at real hard to notice that it was Gucci. Chas liked that.
“Ritz thinks she’s a diva,” Chas thought. “But she could never be a real diva. That takes some of the subtleties she has yet to master. If she ever will.”
Chas felt at home in the club. He loved when Ritz had appearances at clubs. He loved the energy of the people, the music, the lighting. It was like being in a dream. Lately it was also fodder for the show. He would get to the club and pick up some gossip. There would always be a few celebrities at the club. When they drank too much, someone was bound to do something that would be worthy of a blind item, at the very least. During Ritz’s last appearance, Majita, Tracee’s former artist, was looking suspiciously skinny and jittery.
Chas took his post near the bar and began scanning the dance floor and VIP section for anyone famous. All he could see were shapes as the strobe and spotlights moved around the floor. But one figure stood out. Perhaps it was because it was a solo figure dancing its ass off all alone. Perhaps it was the striking physique that was so well defined that every move looked like music itself.
When the song was over, the man walked over to the bar where Chas stood, sipping on a glass of Martell XO or Louis the XIII Cognac—two hundred dollars a snifter. C
has didn’t want to get drunk; he just wanted a nice, smooth buzz.
“Hello, stranger,” said Chas, turning up his charm more notches than should be legal.
“Chas?!” the man said, sweat dripping from his face. “What are you doing here?! Don’t let me find out you’re stalking me.” Ivan gave Chas a warm but masculine hug as the two laughed.
“You wish I was stalking you!” Chas said, shouting over the music. “When did you get town? And what happened? Why didn’t we ever keep in touch?”
“You should be asking yourself that question,” Ivan said. “The phone rings both ways, last I looked.”
“Well, you know how I feel about going both ways,” Chas said, leaning in to Ivan’s ear and then rearing back to let out a howl of infectious laughter.
“You are still crazy,” Ivan said. “Hey, you want to get out of here and catch up?”
“I have to wait for my girl to show up,” Chas said. “She’s hosting the party.”
“Ritz Harper? That’s your girl?”
“More than that. I produce her show!”
“Get out of here!” said Ivan. “I am only here tonight because I heard her on the radio earlier. I like that lady. She is something else!”
“Yes, she is! Yes, she is,” Chas said. “You still never told me what you’re doing in the city.”
“Well, I thought it was time for me to have some fun and put a little spice in my life. I have an old friend here, too, who I haven’t seen in a while. I am thinking about checking him out.”
“Checking him out?” Chas asked. “Hmm. You trying to make me jealous?”
“Oh, stop! It’s kind of complicated.”
“I specialize in complicated,” Chas said. “Ritz better hurry up, so you and I can really catch up.”
Ritz did finally breeze in around one-thirty in the morning after which Chas and Ivan left the club and did a little more than catch up.
16
Tracee hired a limo to take her to the Orlando International Airport for her four o’clock flight. She filled up her iPod with sermons by Pastor Edwin Lakes, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, and a bunch of gospel music.
She decided to take a sauna and then get ready for the trip. Tracee sat in her sauna and opened her Bible to the book of James. It was her favorite book, and she began her day reading the short but powerful five chapters. She was one of the few people in Florida with a sauna. Hot tubs were big. Everyone seemed to have a swimming pool. But saunas in Florida seemed almost redundant when temperatures were in the eighties in the winter and over a hundred degrees in the summer.
Tracee, who was from New Jersey, discovered the healing power of saunas and became addicted. She had a portable one in her Manhattan loft and decided to build one in her huge bathroom in her Winter Garden home. Her sauna could seat three but no one had shared that space with Tracee—not yet. She liked to sprinkle a little eucalyptus, peppermint, or grapefruit oil on the hot rocks before pouring distilled water over them, releasing a fragrant steam that seemed to pierce her bones. She couldn’t take more than twenty minutes at a time. But that’s all Tracee needed to get her head straight for the day. With each breath of steam she inhaled, she was building up her immune system and her defenses.
“This is like spiritual vitamin C,” she thought with a chuckle. “I better stay in here an extra ten minutes just to be sure.”
Tracee didn’t need a lot of time to get ready. She could pack light because she still had her Manhattan loft where she kept some clothes. Whatever she didn’t have, she would buy. She had more money than she could ever imagine spending.
She would have to buy something to go with Ritz to the Grammys. This was a big time in Ritz’s life, and Tracee wanted to be there for her. The last conversation they had, Ritz sounded funny. She needed to talk—not on the phone. The phone was phony conversation. There was a study done that showed that people could be easily deceived over the phone. Relationships between people that started on the phone rarely lasted, and if they did, they were rarely real. There’s nothing like looking into a person’s eyes and seeing where they are really coming from, what is really on their mind.
Tracee looked forward to looking into Ritz’s eyes. Over the last several months Tracee had been dropping kernels of truth on her friend. But she really wanted to get in there and talk to her about her spirit, about her life. Tracee had changed so much. And as much as Ritz had to share, Tracee had just as much to share, too. She was compelled to, before it was too late. There were things Ritz had to come to grips with, had to deal with, had to know.
For nearly five years, Tracee Remington rode the wave of success as artist after artist on her label sold millions and millions of records and won Grammys and MTV Music Awards and People’s Choice Awards. Her label became almost a conveyor belt of platinum CDs. But her artists didn’t have longevity. As soon as they hit, it seemed like they dropped off just as quickly.
Christopher “Hardcore” Harris seemed to be on a different path—one leading toward longevity. His first CD sold more than three million copies. His second one sold that many in just the first month.
Tracee liked Hardcore. She got to know him during a month-long promotional tour through the Midwest and West Coast. She discovered that his thug act was just an act. He rose to fame as so many did on a harsh street life that included being a former drug dealer—which wasn’t new. He claimed to be a protégé of Tom Mickens aka Tony Montana from the Merrick Boulevard area in Queens. That was big time. But it was a big time or image play. Unlike rappers like 50 Cent, who bragged about being shot, Hardcore talked about the “niggas he shot.” He even alluded to actually killing someone. That set him apart. He had a persona that people didn’t cross. He didn’t wear a bulletproof vest, didn’t travel with an entourage; he had a steely glare and a deep voice that he didn’t use often, and he rarely smiled. His image worked like a charm. Inside, however, he was quite the opposite.
That image was completely manufactured. He practiced the icy stare and didn’t talk much because he was constantly talking to himself inside his head trying not to be overwhelmed by everything that was happening.
Tracee got to see the vulnerable side of Hardcore, and she even let down her guard a bit—which she never did with her artists.
Around the fourth stop on their West Coast tour, Tracee and Hardcore had a heart-to-heart while on an hour-and-half drive to an appearance at a radio station in Las Vegas.
“Tracee, I’m glad you’re on the road with me,” Hardcore said.
Tracee wished that she could say the same. She couldn’t. It wasn’t him. She just hated being on the road. But she didn’t want to insult him. He was making an attempt to be deep. Hardcore was thirty-two, playing tough and pretending to be in his twenties.
“I’m tired, Core,” she said. “I hate being on the road. But I must say, the company isn’t half bad.”
Hardcore smiled. He had beautiful teeth that few rarely got to see. “I hear you. I never expected there to be this much attention on me. I mean, I wanted to be a big hit, but this is ridiculous.”
“It’s only the beginning, so you better get used to it,” Tracee said.
Hardcore stared out of the window and didn’t respond.
They arrived at the radio station, a rundown studio in the middle of the desert. Hardcore gave his interview, which amounted to four or five words. He dropped a promo that the station would be using ad nauseum, then he and Tracee hit the road back to Los Angeles.
“What comes next?”
“Well, we have five more radio stations to hit and then you have a couple of club dates, an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, and then back home to cut your next CD.”
“No, I mean what happens next—after the fame and money?”
It was a question Tracee had never been asked, and she had no answers.
“I’ve been reading a lot of financial books—David Bach, Suze Orman, even Napoleon Hill—and they talk about exit strategies and plans,” Hardcore said. “I don’t h
ave an exit strategy or a plan. After I sell all of these CDs and collect all these checks, then what?”
“I don’t know, Core. That’s a damn good question.”
“Could I just walk away?”
“Why would you want to? I mean, the sky’s the limit for you. You can be the biggest rapper ever—the biggest performer ever. You can break records.”
“And then what? I already don’t have privacy. I can’t go anywhere or do anything without being mobbed. People spying on me, even wanting to kill me.”
Tracee spent so much time crafting and maintaining images and playing traffic cop for artists that she never stopped to consider the consequences of their success or the images she helped to foster. There was a reason why so many artists from Billie Holiday to Elvis, Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix, got strung out on drugs and ended up basically killing themselves. Tupac’s and Biggie’s murders didn’t happen in a vacuum, nor were they coincidences. Groundwork was laid that led up to them. Was Hardcore on the same path?
As they pulled in front of the Doubletree Hotel in Los Angeles, Core got out and extended his hand like a perfect gentleman and led Tracee out of the limo. Tracee smiled and walked toward the entrance of the hotel where a beautiful waterfall splashed into an exotic koi pond.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Hardcore said, looking at the pond. “I want to have shit like this in my home.”
“In another two weeks you will be getting your first real royalty check and you can buy all the fish you want!”
In the music world, the illusion of money supersedes the reality. Most artists get little more than a per diem—enough for daily meals, car service—and an advance that many blow in the first few days on perishables like cars and jewelry. The real money doesn’t come until after the first hit CD.
“Yo, I’m real excited about that,” he said. “I’ll be able to buy my first home. And you don’t have to worry about seeing my ass on Cribs, either. Hell no! I don’t want no niggas knowing how I’m really living.”
Drama Is Her Middle Name Page 10