The Takedown

by Nia Forrester

  His shoulders sagged. He was hungry as hell, and now would have to order something, and wait about an hour for it to arrive. And on top of that, he had to contend with a stranger in his house, making it impossible for him to shed his clothes and walk around in nothing but his boxers, the way he preferred to do after a stressful day.

  “I really hope you don’t mind that I’m here,” Claire said again, perhaps having read his body language. “Makayla said it was fine, and I thought it made sense, rather than schlep this binder all the way home, and then back again tomorrow.”

  “Nah, it’s cool,” Jamal said. “Make yourself at home.”

  He turned to leave the kitchen and then paused to glance at Claire again. She gave him a brief smile and tossed her raven hair over her shoulder.

  “I’m depending on you, Claire. No pink tuxedos. And no white either.”

  “I’m on it,” she said, winking at him.

  In the den, Jamal dialed Makayla’s number, and after three rings, she finally answered.

  “You’re home?” she asked, sounding surprised.

  “Yeah. Thought I’d come have dinner with you for a change. What’s up with the chick in our kitchen?”

  “Claire. The planner. She’s still there? I left hours ago. Sorry, was that weird?”

  “Nah. But you don’t even know her like that. You can’t just leave people in our house. We have a lot of expensive shit lyin’ around.”

  “Jamal … she’s bonded and has great references. She’s even worked for people in other sort of high-profile businesses before.”

  In the background, Jamal heard voices, the sounds of people having a good time.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I went with Devin to check out a place where he’s going to be playing next weekend. We figured we’d stick around and eat as well.”

  Biting his tongue, resisting the urge to tell her he would prefer she come home and have dinner, with him, Jamal instead said nothing.

  “I won’t be out too late,” Makayla added, filling the silence. “And this place is dope. You should come see it sometime. It’s decorated like an old-fashioned supper club, and they even have …”

  “Hey,” Jamal said, remembering something. “Did you have the planner sign an NDA?”

  “Ahm …”

  “Makayla.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I forgot. I’ll have her sign one tomorrow. It just seems so ridiculous.”

  “Yeah. It’s ridiculous until she opens a piece of mail and what’s in it winds up on the cover of the New York Post.”

  “Why would the New York Post care about what’s in our mail?”

  “Makayla, have her sign it as soon as you can. Tomorrow.”

  “I will. I said I will.” But she still sounded noncommittal.

  “Do I need to do it while she’s here?” Jamal asked. “If you don’t want to …”

  “I said I’d do it, baby. Tomorrow.”

  “A’ight. Well let me go, I have some calls to make.”

  She ended the connection and Jamal looked at the receiver for a minute, trying to squelch his dissatisfaction at how his day was turning out. After that lunch with Madison, he was looking forward to coming home and forgetting it all. At least for a few hours.

  Makayla was the only person who could help him do that. Even in the very beginning, before their relationship was a relationship, something about being with her took him back to a simpler time, before the money, the power and access afforded him by this world he lived in.

  Being with her was like being on the block, chillin’ with a girl you were feeling, who you were pretty sure was feeling you. Flirting, laughing, talking and having moments of complete silence that were still a little bit thrilling, and laden with a million possibilities.

  With Makayla—after a day of talking about multi-million-dollar contracts, artists who were looking to be bailed out because they’d blown it all on a yacht, or car, or a pay-off to a stripper—Jamal felt grounded again, in something real, and true. He understood Chris’ attraction to Robyn even more now than he ever had. It wasn’t just about her being beautiful, or smart, or anything like that. It was also about her being genuine.

  The hell with living with a fantasy. He and Chris both had more than enough of that on the job. What a man wanted to come home to was something real.

  Reaching for the landline once again, Jamal dialed a number that had been committed to memory over many years of use. The housekeeper answered, but before she could head off to get the person she rightfully assumed he was likely to be calling, Jamal asked for someone else.

  “Hey! Everything okay? What’s going on? Why didn’t you call my cell?” Robyn’s voice on the other end sounded slightly out-of-breath, when she picked up the receiver.

  “I dunno. This phone was closer, and I don’t remember your cell number. So, look, I have a potential situation I want to get your thoughts on.”

  “Okay…”

  Jamal spilled the story in exactly the way Madison had shared it with him, waiting through the silence on the other end while Robyn absorbed it all.

  Finally, she sighed.

  “First of all, I’m kind of disappointed Madison would present something like that to you,” she said.

  “I was, too. But according to her, it’s not her client.”

  “Then she should have advised her associate to put the fear of God into the kid, and send him on his way. Used words like ‘extortion’, ‘blackmail’ … whatever it took to send him packing.”

  “I ain’t arguin’ with any of that. But that isn’t what happened.”

  “At the end of the day, though, Devin Parks is not on our roster. He’s not our responsibility, Jamal. As hard-hearted as that sounds, we can’t go around paying off people on behalf of talented artists just because we wish we’d signed them.”

  “I know. And you’re right.”

  A few moments of silence passed.

  “But you still want to help him,” Robyn said. “Because of Makayla.”

  Jamal said nothing.

  Robyn sighed. “You could do that. But you know it would have to be from your own personal funds. Unless …”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless you sign him,” Robyn said. “Sign him, and then he would have the weight and assets of SE behind him. Devin would have access to every bit our legal resources. And with all that?” Robyn paused, and Jamal could picture her shrugging. “With all that, we would figure out a way to crush this little jerk in Atlanta who’s looking to ruin his career.”

  Jamal considered for a moment. He thought about his first attempt to sign Devin. To say it had been a shit-show was an understatement. But Robyn was right. He, and SE, were not in the superhero business. The only way to justify intervening financially and legally in Devin’s emerging problem, was to make him one of SE’s artists.

  “Jamal?”

  He looked up. Claire was standing at the door of his den, leaning in. Her long ponytail hung to one side, swinging a little. All he could see of her was one long, jean-clad leg, her ankle boots, and half of her upper-body. She seemed reluctant to enter.

  “I was about to leave, but wondered whether you wanted me to order you some dinner or something before I did. I heard your voice and figured you might be still working, so …”

  “Yeah. Nah. I’ll take care of that in a minute. You can go ahead and go home. Thanks, though.”

  “No problem. See you … whenever, I guess. G’night.”

  When she was gone he realized that there was now only silence on the other end of the line.

  “Robyn?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here,” she said. “Who was that?”

  “Wedding planner.”

  “And she’s ordering you dinner?”

  “She was offering to. Because Kayla’s not here.”

  Robyn said nothing.

  “She’s like a personal assistant as well, or something,” Jamal added.

  “Oh. Well … anyw
ay. So, about this Devin thing …”

  “Yeah,” he said, resuming the business at hand. “Tell me what you recommend.”

  ~9~

  “You stoppin’ through tonight, or no?”

  “What’s tonight?”

  Harper held in her exasperated sigh. He never listened to her. Unless they were talking about music, or were screwing, it was like she wasn’t even there. Hell, sometimes even while they were screwing, it was like she wasn’t there. Devin had sex the way other men masturbated. As his sex partner, she was a means to relieve a purely physical end; and afterwards, was as irrelevant as the wad of tissue he used to clean up.

  He was digging through his jeans, crumpled on his bedroom floor, probably searching for his phone. It had gone off in the middle of their bout, when Harper was on top of him.

  Even through the clouded pleasure in his eyes, she felt his attention shift, like he was expecting to hear from someone. After that, he just wanted to finish, so Harper had moved more energetically, getting them both past the finish-line and falling limp on top of him. She lay there until he shifted, urging her to get off him.

  “I told you,” she said. “Me, and my roommate have some folks coming over to watch some movies and chill.”

  Devin glanced over his shoulder at her, and Harper’s breath caught for about the hundredth time. He was so damned beautiful; beautiful enough to be a model. With those eyes, that wild, wavy hair, dark-brown but streaked with auburn. He looked kind of Spanish. Castilian, almost. Not Spanish like they meant it in New York, which was pretty much Puerto-Rican, or Dominican.

  “What kinda movies?” he asked, sounding distracted. He had located the phone and was now reading through text messages, or email.

  “Does it matter, Devin?” she asked tiredly. “The movies aren’t even the point. We’ll order some food, drink some beer, play cards … smoke. The movies are just background noise, for real.”

  He seemed to think about it for a minute, then shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. I don’ know,” he said, walking out of the room.

  Harper let herself fall onto her back again, unsurprised by his response. It didn’t matter how many times she tried. At first, she thought it was because of her reputation, which was basically that she was easy—she knew that, and a lot of it was deserved. But that wasn’t Devin’s issue. His issue was that he was a loner. Like, a legitimate, ‘I-genuinely-don’t-give-a-shit-about-human-companionship’ kind of loner.

  Except when it came to Makayla. As far as Harper could tell, she was the only other person Devin seemed to even see.

  If Harper didn’t like her so much, she would have had a much harder time with it. If she didn’t know for a fact that Makayla was crazy in love with Jamal, she would be suspicious of it. But no, Makayla was just a friend. But even that didn’t quite encompass what Devin and Makayla were. What they had wasn’t covered by the word ‘friendship.’ What they had was some whole other thing.

  All Harper knew was that she couldn’t compete. And if that wasn’t uncomfortable enough, it was even more uncomfortable to admit to herself that she wanted to.

  Sighing, she sat up and pulled on her leggings, not bothering to look for her underwear. Maybe part of her was hoping that some other chick—because there were bound to be other chicks when a guy looked like Devin Parks—would find it entangled in his sheets, and leave in a huff, never to return.

  She found Devin in the kitchen. He was making himself coffee with a French press, still looking at his phone.

  “I just knew he had her all hemmed up. She wouldn’t have just canceled on me at the last minute like that if it wasn’t for him.”

  She knew without asking who the ‘she’ was. There was only one ‘she’ in his life that mattered. And the ‘he’ in question was probably Jamal Turner, who used to be Harper’s boss when he was head of the department she worked in at Scaife Enterprises. Before he became President and CEO, Harper worked with Jamal, and even with Makayla briefly, around the time she and Jamal became an item.

  Not that anyone knew they were an item for a long while. And if they had known, they probably wouldn’t have taken it seriously. Jamal was not averse to screwing around with his co-workers, at least back then. No one would have believed that quiet and unassuming Makayla, brought in from the communications department, basically just to help sign Devin Parks, would become Jamal’s fiancée.

  Well, life was funny that way, because Makayla and Jamal were together, and Devin never did sign a contract to become one of SE’s artists. And now, unbeknownst to most, Harper was hooking up with Devin on a pretty regular basis. One of the only people who knew was someone she would rather not know. Her colleague DeJuan had run into her and Devin at a club once, standing too close to each other for anyone to mistake their relationship as anything other than personal.

  “What did he get her to cancel?”

  “I’m moving,” Devin said, grabbing a mug from his kitchen cabinet. Harper noted that he didn’t get one for her, nor did he ask whether she wanted coffee. “Going to come look at some furniture. I signed a new lease last weekend. She almost canceled on me that time too.”

  “I could help you,” Harper said, trying to sound casual. “I don’t have anything planned ‘til later.”

  “Nah. That’s a’ight. She canceled but we just rescheduled. We’re about to meet up.”

  “Oh. Well … cool, then,” Harper said.

  Looking around, she tried to remember where she had kicked off her Chucks. As usual, her hookup with Devin had happened while they were both a little impaired. She’d taken two trains just to get to his gig the evening before, because she had grown a little bit obsessed with watching him onstage, and now was following him all over the Tri-State area like a groupie.

  Sometimes he didn’t even tell her where he was playing, and she had to stalk his website like everyone else. Devin’s style in the several months they’d been getting together was to keep her at arms’ length. It was kind of weird, the way he pushed her farther and farther away, the longer they knew each other. He had been friendlier, more forthcoming when they just met and were practical strangers, than he was now.

  Last weekend, when he’d played a set that was instrumentals only, he’d kissed her, right there just offstage in view of the audience and everyone. Everyone, including Jamal and Makayla. Jamal hadn’t mentioned it, but she could see in Makayla’s eyes that—just as Harper had long suspected—she had no idea that she and Devin were hooking up.

  Earlier, that same evening, she had run into Makayla at a launch party for a new brand of tequila, and she’d toyed with the idea of telling her about her and Devin. But then they’d been interrupted, and it was too late. And besides, what was she planning to say, exactly? ‘I don’t know if you know, but I’m screwing your best friend’?

  She couldn’t claim to be anything approaching a girlfriend. Not when her time with Devin was generally just like right now—they would have some raunchy, raw, crazy sex, and then he would dismiss her without actually speaking the words of dismissal.

  “They’re over there by the couch,” Devin said, not looking up while he poured his cup of coffee. He’d spotted her looking around, and guessed she needed her sneakers.

  Harper ignored the ping in her chest. He really couldn’t wait to get rid of her, could he? Call her crazy, but after she took him over to see Prentice, she felt like they’d bonded or something.

  They both felt the vibe in that Queens basement, when he had connected with another musician in a way that was almost magical. Prentice and his crew practically wanted to adopt Devin right now, and Harper was almost certain the feeling was mutual. That was no small thing, not for Devin, who was notoriously as jealous a guardian of his musical talent as he was of his time, and his emotions.

  Harper’s plan was to wait for the right time, and then present Devin with a proposal that he do a few shows with Prentice. If he did, Prentice would be more favorably inclined toward SE, and maybe even consider signing. It wasn’t out
of the realm of the possible—after all, Prentice and Devin were two-of-a-kind: insular, talented and with no fucks to give about the business side of music.

  The first time Harper had gone to one of Devin’s shows, it was out of curiosity. DeJuan and Makayla had gone on a promotional tour with him and Jamal, and when they got back, DeJuan hadn’t stopped talking about how much Devin blew him away.

  ‘Yo,’ Harper remembered him saying. ‘Dude is gon’ be like … next level. I mean, you ain’t never seen no talent like this up close.’

  But for whatever reason, Jamal Turner, SE’s consummate closer hadn’t managed to close this one. Devin had walked, and so had Makayla, moving back to the communications department after a brief few months in development. The rumor was that it was a love-triangle. Harper thought that was probably only part of the story, because she couldn’t see Jamal throwing away a deal just for a woman.

  But maybe it was true, because now Jamal was engaged, something else that Harper would never have thought in a million years she would live to see. And Makayla and Jamal’s relationship obviously got under Devin’s skin, so who knew? Maybe there was a love-triangle.

  But anyway, it was because of DeJuan that she’d gone to see Devin perform after the deal with SE fell through. Everyone was still speculating about what could have gone wrong, and Harper was curious because folks were acting like they had lost out on a deal that could have been truly huge.

  That night Devin was performing at an old joint in the Village that used to host only hard rock acts, but had recently begun putting on indie artists with unique sounds, the ones who were difficult to slot into any single genre. Devin performed with a band that night. His set was last, and by then the crowd was thick, and the air clogged with the humid sweat of too many bodies, in too close a space.

  Harper had a bottle of Corona in hand, and it was warm, and flat. She had been flirting with some guy a couple tables over whose date was a blonde girl in skinny jeans. She clearly wasn’t enjoying the scene, but probably wanted to look cool for the guy. Harper had already decided that if she went to the ladies’ room, she would slip the guy her number or tell him to ditch the blonde, and meet up with her later.