I'm Your Girl

by J. J. Murray

  It can’t be considered ironic if it’s expected. You aren’t the only one who has ever lost a spouse and child. This is all part of the process.

  The process sucks.

  Only for a little while. But when you’re done with this part…

  And when I’m done with this part…

  Don’t think too long, now. Do something fun.

  And when I’m done, I’ll…

  Think sunny thoughts, now.

  I’ll make Stevie a snowman.

  7

  Diane

  Instead of going into the library on the day after Christmas, when no patrons come to the library anyway because they’re all out standing in lines at the mall, I use my last remaining sick day. And since it’s snowing—okay, it’s not really snowing like it used to in Naptown—I don’t want to drive anywhere.

  “Too much partying last night, huh, Diane?” Kim “Prim” says when I call in to tell her I’ve developed a nasty cold.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I say. Why spoil her stereotype of me? At least she thinks I have fun. Somebody should be thinking I have a fun life.

  “See you bright and early tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay.” I’ll be early, but I doubt I’ll be bright.

  I hang up and blow my nose into an imaginary tissue. Then I pick up the next book, P&Q, by J. K. Growling. What kind of name is “Growling”? I can only hope for the best.

  1: Venus Dione

  Oh no she didn’t!

  I clutch the latest copy of Maxim and see Psyche’s flawless body glistening with sweat on the cover, one scrawny towel barely covering her unnaturally natural “yes-they’re-real” breasts, one scrawnier towel lying along her caramel thighs, toned to perfection by daily aerobics, her stomach so tight lint would bounce off of it.

  So far, I hate Psyche. This is so fake. Venus has an interesting voice, though. But what’s up with these names from Greek mythology?

  I hate her beautiful ass, I hate her blonde highlights, I hate her perfect uncapped teeth, I hate her darker-than-Mississippi-mud brown eyes, and I hate that trademark orange and black monarch butterfly tattoo on her arm.

  I still hate Psyche. She’s too perfect. This might be lucky to get one star, though I like Venus’s attitude. Maybe I’ll give it two stars for Venus hating Psyche, too.

  Psyche was only supposed to be quoted, and she was only supposed to be inside the magazine in a pictorial on all of Aphrodite Incorporated’s models, including me. I barely get a black-and-white head shot on page 128 in a sidebar.

  Here she is on the goddamn cover.

  Bitch.

  “Bitch,” I say with a giggle. Oh, like Psyche really exists. But here I am, yet again, echoing a fictional character. I hate it when this happens. I start talking back to a book, and the book hooks me. I’m curious about Grandpa Joe-Joe’s jungle, but…I’ll keep reading this one for now.

  Nearly two million men of all ages and races will be drooling and jerking off over Psyche, and where is my latest full-body shot? On page seventeen of the latest JC Penney fall catalog. Not many men check out hot black women in itchy-ass wool blazers and turtlenecks on page seventeen of the JC Penney fall catalog, and if they do, I don’t want to have anything to do with them.

  Neither do I! They’d have to be perverted to get their “pleasuring” that way. Even Mama would agree with me. But was the phrase “jerking off” absolutely necessary? Is the author a man or a woman? I can usually tell. If the women’s voices sound authentic, it has to be a woman. I’ll bet J. K. Growling is a woman.

  This has to stop! I knew ten years ago that Psyche would be trouble when she was only Ginger Dane, skinny brown wench with high cheekbones and a perfect smile from Athens, Ohio, sister to Rosemary Dane, another skinny brown wench whom I let model for me because I felt sorry for her. I have tried to snap Ginger in two on many occasions, giving her shitty shoots near the equator, where I had hoped she would turn black as night or get yellow fever, but the bitch came through with flying colors—and fame. That damn Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue catapulted her to glory. I never should have let her do that. And when I wanted her to get sleazy in a rap video to damage her holier-than-anyone image, she flipped the script on those rappers, dressing in a formal white gown instead of some coochie-cutter hip huggers—and sent that single platinum. And last year I thought I could ruin her for good by rumoring her into a tasteless affair with that fat, sloppy comedian, what was his name? Fat Daddy? Pudge Daddy? Whatever. No one believed the rumor at all, not even Jay Leno, who said Psyche was just too “pure to be with a porker” on The Tonight Show. Damn, the bitch is giving supermodels a bad name, being as pure and healthy as she is. She isn’t high-strung, isn’t anorexic, isn’t popping pills, doesn’t drink, and she somehow manages to stay out of most of the tabloids.

  Pure and beautiful.

  But her purity and beauty will be the end of her.

  A main character has to be flawed in some way, right? So far, Psyche is the all-American black girl with…with…a conscience? This is an interesting twist. Or is this book supposed to be a satire on the modeling industry? If that’s the case, Psyche is going to get hers in the end, proving, I guess, that purity isn’t chic in American society.

  I am still Venus, I am still head of Aphrodite Inc., and I am still the world’s delight. I am a classic beauty with bronze, luminous flesh. My beauty is intoxicating and suffocating. I still do four, five covers a year, and I’m nearly twice that wench’s age. In other words, for a middle-aged sistuh, I am still da bomb. I am a weapon of mass destruction, atomic, neutron, and hydrogen bombs all rolled into one.

  And since I sign Psyche’s paychecks, Psyche is about to have a bomb go off in her trifling little life.

  Yes. Psyche is about to realize that I am ugly to the bone.

  And now I hate Venus. She sounds straight off some soap opera, like some Texas matriarch on Dallas. So one-dimensional. And jealous? Hasn’t jealousy been overworked as a basic conflict in women’s fiction?

  And when I want things to get ugly, I call on my wayward son, Q. After I buzz him, I’ll only have to wait a few seconds for him to come into my office. Men, as a rule, obey me, and my boy is punctual. I’ve had that boy on lockdown since the second he was born. He’ll do anything for his mama.

  Mainly because I sign his paycheck, too.

  Hmm. What kind of a name is Q? If “P” stands for Psyche, “Q” has to be the main love interest. His name sounds wimpy, like some name from a James Bond movie, and we’re not about to talk about those ridiculous movies.

  2: Quentin “Q” Dione

  Mama’s buzzing me again.

  Hmm. A new voice. This could be a challenge after all. Let’s see if the author can give Quentin—and who on earth would give any child this name?—more than one dimension.

  Must be time for a little mischief.

  I smile at the little mirror on the back of my office door and see my white daddy, a male model named Adonis from way back in the day, staring back at me. It’s unmistakable. Adonis, who now raises show dog Alsatians, gave me good hair, gray eyes, a straight nose, and perpetually tanned skin. Yet Mama swears I’m Festus’s boy. Not a chance. My “daddy” Festus is blacker than coal dipped in Hershey’s syrup plastered with tar and covered with dirt, and I’m light skinned as a feather.

  More intrigue. Q is mixed. He’s rare in literature, and I don’t know why. This country has been the melting pot for a couple of centuries nearly everywhere except in novels.

  Not that I’m angry, you understand. Being in between has its advantages, particularly with the ladies. Yeah, being mixed lets me mix with all shades of beauty, and no one grits on me when I have, say, an Asian doll on one arm, a fiery redhead on the other, and a dark chocolate bunny in front of me beckoning me with her silky brown finger. Because I am a rainbow, I can talk to and taste any flavor of the rainbow.

  And the rainbow tastes good. America: the melting pot that melts in your mouth.

  I don’t like
his “player” attitude at all. Why can’t he be a normal man? I hope Psyche, even though I can’t stand her yet, puts him in his place. If she does that, I might like her a little bit.

  I fly by Grace, Mama’s third replacement secretary this month, and open Mama’s greenish blue seafoam door. Mama has this thing about seafoam that borders on the psychotic because some “certified fashion color consultant” once told her that she looked good in seafoam.

  She doesn’t, but no one tells her that.

  I see Mama looking over Manhattan through her seafoam contacts past some roosting pigeons while sitting in her seafoam chair behind her seafoam desk, one finger curled around some seriously dark extensions tied up with a seafoam scarf. A few pigeons roost outside her window as if readying to fly her chair out over New York. Mama is still fine as hell, but I know her age is taking its toll on her. If it weren’t for Botox, collagen treatments, and cosmetic surgery, she might look like someone’s hot, gray grandma.

  This is sick! “Mama is still fine as hell”? And what’s up with the seafoam? My own mama has a thing for dark blue ducks, but…seafoam contacts? Grandpa Joe-Joe is sounding more functional the longer I read this.

  “Q?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “I have a job for you.”

  “Yes, Mama.” Who are we firing today?

  She tosses a magazine over her head, and it flutters like a butterfly into my hands. “Check out who’s on the cover.”

  Daa-em, Psyche is looking finer than fine, as usual. And on Maxim. I always knew she’d be a crossover hit with the white boys since that Sports Illustrated cover. Psyche’s been playing hard to get with me for ten years and barely gives me the time of day, but when that girl smiles at me…shit, she’s the finest woman on earth right now. Luckily, I have a subscription to Maxim so I don’t have to sneak this copy out of Mama’s office.

  “Not much left to the imagination,” I say, trying to remain noncommittal, my arms folded.

  I have learned never to compliment one of Mama’s models in her presence. I once said that a model was “cute,” and that’s all I said, though she did have this ass, ooh, that would make you smack your mama with a stick. The “cute” model went from Cover Girl commercials and a bit part in a James Bond flick to posing with a “neck massager” on the back pages of some smut magazine almost overnight. Mama ruined her cute little ass big-time simply because I said she was cute. I cringe at where she might have ended up if I had said what I was really thinking about that ass. She’d probably be in the maternity section of the next Sears catalog, flaps down with a lost look on her face.

  That is so true! What woman in her right mind would pose for those kinds of pictures? What is she thinking? Is she thinking, Well, I’m pregnant, so I’d guess I better go get my picture taken with a flappy bra?

  Mama spins around in her chair, her fingers knitted together, her elbows on her desk. “I want you to fire her, Q.”

  I try not to blink, but I can’t help it. Psyche has been the flavor of the month for nearly ten years, ever since she was sixteen. She is the hottest hottie on the planet, billboards and ads everywhere, even a doll marketed by Mattel. Mama must be trippin’. I mean, Psyche is responsible for at least 30 percent of Aphrodite Inc.’s annual revenue.

  “Um, fire Psyche?” I manage to ask.

  “I don’t stutter.”

  This is serious. The board of directors, a bunch of wrinkled old men and women Mama uses to rubberstamp her ideas, are going to freak out. “Um, the board of directors—”

  “Fuck ’em.” She spins around. “She is to be fired by the end of the day today, a copy of her pink slip in my mailbox by six sharp.”

  Too much profanity. Proper ladies of color should never use the F word, especially foxy femme fatales who sleep around and wear seafoam contacts. I know it’s part of her character, but…it’s so unnecessary and a waste of ink. Now I know black women do curse. I just don’t want to “hear” them curse in books. It’s so…permanent in the reader’s mind.

  I could argue with her, but it won’t do me any good. When Mama gets just a tiny bit mad, whole departments lose their jobs, and security puts them and their shit out on Madison Avenue for the entire world to see.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Mama flips a Rolodex card over her head, and I snatch it out of the air. “Those are her home and cell phone numbers, and when you’re through with that card, burn it.”

  After I memorize those numbers, of course. “Yes, Mama.”

  I take one more look at that Maxim cover. Damn, Psyche is fine, and I bet she’d put a hurtin’ something fierce on me.

  And if I’m lucky, that’s precisely what I’ll get her to do. A hurtin’ so good.

  And then I’ll fire her.

  I have to. I’m a mama’s boy.

  Oooh! I hate him and his mama and Psyche and—I flip to the back and don’t see a picture of J. K. Growling. I keep forgetting that most advance review copies don’t have pictures like real books. Shoot. I wanted to sass her to her face. How can you write a romance where the reader despises every character in the book? I mean, it’s funny at times, I’ll grant that, but it’s dysfunctional, trifling, and totally sensationalized. Venus is a model. Q sounds like a model. Psyche is a model. What, models represent 0.0001 percent of the population, and here they are hogging all the pages of a romance? How ridiculous! If I wanted to have this stuff fill my head, I’d watch Entertainment Tonight or read The National Enquirer. I’ll give this book one more chapter, and if it doesn’t improve, I’ll have to write my famous “I couldn’t even finish this book and I got my money back” review…even though I do get these books for free. Who’s going to know? Get ready, Grandpa Joe-Joe. We may have a date in your jungle in a few minutes.

  3: Ginger “Psyche” Dane

  The phone is ringing, but I am not answering it.

  Only a few people on earth have my unlisted number, and I don’t want to talk to any of them. If it’s Mama, she’ll be asking about my love life. If it’s Daddy, he’ll be asking me why I don’t talk to Mama—about my love life. If it’s Rosemary, my hopeless sister who married for money instead of love, she’ll be asking when she can get away from her ancient, dusty husband for a visit—so she can ask me about my love life.

  The fact is, I don’t have a love life, but they don’t want to hear that. They all want to hear that their Ginger has found the man of her dreams and is going to move from the Upper West Side to a house on Long Island with a picket fence, a bidet, a three-car garage, 2.5 children, and a dog.

  Hey now. I might like her a little bit after all. She doesn’t seem to like being a model any more than I like her being a model. And her mama pestering her about her love life? I know all about that.

  The phone rings on, so I bury myself in my down comforter.

  I’ll bet they saw the cover. No, Mama and Rosemary don’t read Maxim. It’s probably Daddy. He’ll tell me how I shouldn’t flaunt what God gave me, that he can’t show his face in church this Sunday, that he wished I had worn more clothes. But I know he’s proud of what he helped create. He has to be. He didn’t have any sons, but he did have two beautiful daughters, and I’m his baby. Rosemary did some modeling, too, but she quit looking good once she married and gave birth to the requisite male heir to the fortune two years ago. Her marriage is in trouble, but when I bring it up, Rosemary brushes me off with, “You’re not married, Ginger, so you cannot possibly understand.”

  I may never get married. Oh, sure, I’ve been rumored into an affair or two on the pages of People and Us simply because I’m seen walking with or talking to some movie star, pro athlete, or entertainer, but love has never found me. I haven’t exactly had the time for love, what with shoots 300 days of the year on up to five continents. Maybe I should give love my unlisted cell phone number so I’ll be easier to find.

  It’s hard to feel sorry for her, but I do. I mean, I have a cell phone…that no one ever calls, not even Mama. Not that I’ve ever given out m
y number to anyone. I have only put five telephone numbers into the memory, and three of them are for the library. I sometimes call my own cell phone from inside my house just to make sure it still works. I even leave myself reminder messages sometimes.

  I’m pretty pitiful sometimes.

  The phone rings on.

  Maybe it’s an emergency, though emergencies, as a rule, aren’t emergencies at all in my family. Rosemary will tell me that something’s wrong with Shizzy, her Shih-Tzu: “Shizzy has intestinal distress, Ginger, so could you please come by to hold my hand at the vet?” Rosemary even fainted the last time when the vet removed a single tick from Shizzy’s neck. If Shizzy isn’t falling apart, then Rosemary will try to impress me with her husband’s wealth: “Ginger, I’m going to send the driver to pick you up so we can go spend Fuller’s money.” As far as I can tell, money is the only thing she gets from her husband since he’s pushing seventy. Daddy will tell me about his roses then plead with me to talk to Mama, and Mama, well, Mama will still ask me about my love life: “Ginger, girl, you aren’t getting any younger, so you’d best find a man now who will love you when your titties hit your knees and your behind drags on the floor.”

  HAAAAAA! Another somebody’s mama uses the word “titties”! J.K., you’re on a roll. Don’t blow it.

  I should have turned off the ringer before I took my nap.

  I crawl out of my comforter to the nightstand and turn over the base of the phone to slide the ringer button to “off,” but as I do, the phone falls out of the cradle to the floor.

  Gee. What a coincidence. I know it happens, but it happens far too often in books. Why not just have her answer the stupid phone?