The Art of Deceit

by Fabiola Joseph

  She was making this harder than it was, so I reached out and hugged her.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but it is over.”

  “Please don’t do this, Tangie. I love you. I’ll give all of this up for you. Let’s just leave and not tell anyone where we’re going.”

  I tried to pull myself away from her, but she wouldn’t let me go. After several attempts, I finally managed to pull away from her embrace, even though I wanted to be in her arms forever.

  “There’s nothing that we can do. This is the end of us. I’m sorry, Amira.”

  I left her dressing room before she got ahold of me again. As I took Black’s hand, her dressing room door flew open.

  “Will you just watch my show? Just do me that one last favor. Please, Tangie. I am going to be performing for you tonight.”

  “Sure, A. I’ll watch your show, but also remember what I told you in the limo. No matter what I say, and no matter where we are, just remember that I love you, and my feelings for you were always real.”

  A slight smile spread across her face. Then she went back into her dressing room.

  As Black held on to me, I felt like I was going to collapse. I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke down right there in the hallway, and Black had to carry me back to Tay’s dressing room.

  “Come on, Tangie. Get yourself together. Tay’s set will be over soon, and I know that you don’t want him seeing you like this.”

  “I need some coke,” was all that I said.

  He looked reluctant but went back to his stash and brought me back another bag. I put it up to my nose, and I took one big sniff.

  “Damn, Tangie, slow down with that stuff. What are you trying to do, kill yourself?”

  The way that I looked at him seemed to send chills down his spine. He looked as if I had let him know that he had hit the nail right on the head. It wasn’t that I really wanted to die; I just wanted to kill my feelings, to kill the hurt. He went to grab the bag away from me, but I pulled it away.

  “Give me the fucking bag, Tangie.”

  I put it up to my nose again and sniffed up as much as I could before handing him the bag.

  “Wipe your face off. You got that shit all over yourself,” Black said before he left the room.

  I wiped my nose and reached for one of the blunts that Black had rolled up for me. Tay walked into the room, sweaty and in a slightly better mood.

  “God damn, Tangie. You look fucked up. What have you been doing tonight? Shit, can I have some?” Tay joked, but I didn’t answer. I just lit up, took a long hard pull, and walked out the door.

  “Where in the hell are you going?” he called from the doorway.

  “I need some air. Is that okay, or do you want to beat my ass for doing that too?”

  Tay just looked away. He couldn’t even face what he had done to me. I walked down the hallway, bumping into the walls on my left and right sides. I made it to the side of the stage, and I asked for a chair. Amira came walking by and stopped once she reached me. She leaned down and kissed me on the lips, and I let her do it without pulling away. Everyone around us looked on but said nothing.

  “You asked me to remember that no matter what, your love was always true. Now I want you to remember this. This is and will always be for and because of you,” Amira said, then walked out onstage.

  The music to the song that she had written for me came on as she hit the center of the stage. The people in the audience could clearly tell that she was drunk, and waited to see what would become of this performance. She was not even singing the words to the song. It was more like she was saying them to herself. It was so sad. The audience was stunned, but no one booed her. They just looked on with pity and curiosity. Toward the end of the song, she looked over at me and told me that she loved me. Then she started to climb up the background to her set. No one stopped her, although we were all wondering what the hell she was doing. She climbed so high that I could no longer see her from where I was sitting.

  “As I am up here looking out at the crowd, it feels so good that you all came to see me tonight, but I must tell you that my heart is torn. I know that a lot of people think that I have it all, but you don’t really have anything if you don’t have love. Tangie, baby, if I can’t have you, then none of this is worth it. Life is not worth living without you.”

  Everyone was silent. All we could hear was her crying. I got up and walked out on the stage just as Tay was coming out of his dressing room so that he could find out where I was. He saw Black, who pointed him to the stage. He got there just in time to see Amira jump headfirst from the very top of her background design. As soon as I saw her jump, I knew that it was all over. It was too high for her to survive. You could hear a penny drop, it was so silent. Suddenly, an outburst of screams was heard, once everyone registered what was going on. As soon as she hit the stage, her head split open. Then the screaming stopped. Everyone was moving in slow motion toward me. I could see their mouths moving, but I couldn’t hear them.

  I sat down next to her lifeless body, and I put my hand in the blood that was surrounding her head and moving down to her body. I knew that she was dead, but I still tried to make her wake up.

  “Amira, come on, baby. Stop playing. You’re scaring these people, who paid good money to see you. Just wake up. We can work this all out.”

  I picked up her cracked head and placed it in my lap.

  “See, what you did to your neck? Even your head is bleeding. Now we’re gonna be in the hospital all night, trying to fix that shit.”

  I was still trying to wake her up. I even tried to hold her skull together, hoping that this would stop some of the bleeding. Black, Tony, Carl, Tay’von, and even Shamika formed a circle around me. They all looked like someone had died, but I still wouldn’t let myself get it. I refused to believe that it was true.

  “Black, she doesn’t want to wake up. Tell her that it’s okay. Tell her that no one is mad at her anymore. Tell her Black. Tell her,” I begged.

  No one said anything. I looked out at the audience, and the security was walking everyone out.

  “Damn, Amira. You’re fucking up. Everyone is leaving because you won’t get up. You’re going to make them give you a bad review.”

  She still did not move. Tay bent over and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Baby, she’s not going to wake up. I think that she’s—”

  “Don’t you say it, Tay’von. Don’t you dare. She’s just scared that you’re going to hurt us if she wakes up. And don’t you fucking touch me. This is all your fault, you fucking bully.”

  He stood back up and asked Black to talk to me.

  “I think that we need a doctor. I can tell that she has hurt her neck really bad. Maybe that’s why she’s not getting up,” I said as I tried to pick her blood up and force it back into her head.

  The more I spoke, the more I started to sound like a terrified child who had lost her mind.

  “Okay, Tangie, I am about to call him right now, but you’re gonna have to let go of her. Why don’t you come with me and we can both call?”

  “It doesn’t take two people to call a doctor, Black. Now please hurry up. The sooner she gets there, the sooner I can tell her that I have changed my mind. I do love her, Black. You are right. I do have a choice. My choice is you, Amira. It’s you. Wake up and tell me that you can hear me. Wake up!” I screamed and sobbed all at once.

  In that moment Tay’von said he realized that I would never love him the way I loved her. He wanted to pull me off her and hold me until I felt the same way about him, but it would never happen. I loved him in a different way and for a different reason. He became full of anger and hurt because he knew that my heart would always be with the now dead Amira. Although he knew this, he still couldn’t and wouldn’t let me go. He didn’t know if it was his selfishness or maybe his pride. He had to have me, and he would try anything to make me love him. He might not ever get me to be this in love with him, but he would even settle for half.r />
  Black told everyone to just let me be. I held her and sang the song that she wrote for me until the ambulance came. The paramedics put her on a stretcher and checked her for a pulse. She had none. She was dead. They pulled a white sheet over her head and went to zip her up in a body bag.

  “What in the fuck are you doing? She won’t be able to breathe if you zip her up in that thing!” I yelled at the paramedics.

  Black grabbed me before I could run up to the stretcher. Tay’von walked over to the paramedics and told them to leave her face uncovered right up until they got outside. Black held on to me as I watched them wheel her out.

  “We have to find out what hospital they are taking her to. We should be there when she wakes up,” I told Black.

  “Sure, Tangie. We can do that,” Black said as he tried hard to hold back his tears.

  “Let’s go to the car. We can find out where to go from there,” Tay said as he started to walk me off the stage.

  The last thing that I remembered about that night was falling asleep in the car. We never made it to the hospital. Tay later told me he thought that it was best to take me back to the hotel. I fell asleep thinking that Amira was still alive.

  * * *

  I woke up the next morning in a fog, and my head was pounding. I sat up in the bed, running the dream that I had just had over and over in my mind. I kept dreaming that Amira was jumping from a high building to her death. I shook my head, trying to clear it. I got off the bed and opened the curtains. It was dark and rainy outside, and the weather matched my mood perfectly. I looked at the clock, and it read two o’clock. I went into the bathroom and drew a hot bath as Tay came in and checked on me. I told him that I was hungry and asked him to order lunch for me. After spending almost an hour in the tub, I got out, dried myself off, and slipped into a robe.

  When I got out to the living room area, Black and Tay sat watching TV. They turned it off once they saw me. I sat down at the table, and Tay came over and put some food on my plate.

  “How are you feeling, baby?” Tay asked as he sat down beside me.

  “I’m fine. It’s just one of them days. You know how I get when it’s dark and rainy out. Plus, I kept having this crazy-ass dream.”

  “Oh yeah? What was it?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t tell him that I kept dreaming about Amira, I thought to myself. He might go crazy again.

  He watched me hesitate, then said, “It’s okay, Tangie. You can tell me. Was it Amira?”

  “Yeah, it was. I am so sorry for bringing this up, Tay.”

  “No. Tell me what your dream was about.”

  I went over every detail of the wild dream that kept repeating in my sleep the night before. As I ate and talked, I saw Tay and Black looking at each other like I was crazy.

  “I know that this must seem a little off to y’all, but it’s only a dream,” I joked, but they still had this funny look on their faces.

  “Tangie, don’t you remember anything about last night?” Tay asked as he reached over and held my hand.

  “Now, why would you bring that up? Don’t you think that I remembered when I looked at my lip and eye in the bathroom this morning?”

  Tay lowered his eyes from mine and didn’t bring them back up. Black got up and poured himself a drink at the bar, then came and sat with us at the table.

  “Look, Tay, I know that you have the right to be mad about Amira, but when I see her, I am still gonna talk and say hi to her. I just want you to understand that.”

  He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Baby, I have something to tell you. I find it odd that you don’t remember, because you were there. Maybe you were too fucked up, or maybe you’re just blocking it out. But—”

  “What is it, Tay? Did you give me something? Am I sick? Did you call off the wedding?”

  Tears streamed down his face. My mind was racing as I tried to remember what had gone down the previous day, besides him finding out about the Amira situation.

  “Tangie, last night at the concert, um, at the show last night—”

  “What is it, Tay? Just tell me, already.”

  Tay said nothing. He looked at Black, and Black understood that Tay didn’t have the heart to tell me, so he did it for him.

  “Tangie, what Tay is trying to tell you is that Amira died last night.”

  My mouth fell open as he talked.

  “Yeah, um, she jumped from one of the background designs at the show last night. When she hit the stage, she broke her neck and cracked her skull. She died instantly.”

  Now I was pissed. Why would they tell me such a lie? Why were they taking my dream and turning it into a mean joke?

  “This is so fucked up. I really did think much more of you, Black. What, do you think that what you just said was funny?” I couldn’t stop my body from shaking. “This just can’t be true,” I repeated over and over again.

  “Tangie, it’s true. Don’t you remember any of it?”

  “Oh, fuck you, Tay’von. I know that you don’t want me to fuck the girl, but this is going too far.”

  Tay got up, turned on the TV, and put it on CNN. I saw a picture of Amira, and at the bottom it had the date on which she was born and then the previous day’s date. What in the hell was going on? Then a caption ran across the screen that said that she had jumped to her death at the show last night. I lost my hearing for a moment. But when it came back, I heard the newscaster say that the network had a tape of her last moments.

  My eyes were glued to the television as I watched myself holding her head in my lap. She must not be dead, because I looked like I was talking to her. The tape cut off as fast as it came on. The last words that I heard were, “Rest in peace, Amira.” I couldn’t hold my food down. I got up and ran to the bathroom just in time to throw up my breakfast. Tay and Black came running after me, but I was able to get in and lock the door before they reached me. After I rid my stomach of its contents, I went to the sink and rinsed my mouth out. I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn’t handle what was looking back at me.

  I must have been going out of my mind, because I picked up one of my bottles of perfume and rammed it into the mirror. The mirror glass shattered, along with the bottle that was in my hand. I watched the blood that was running from my hand land on the floor. I wanted to be drained of everything that I had left in me. I wanted to be emptied of all the evil that I knew would never leave my soul otherwise. I closed my hand over the broken pieces of the bottle and started to scream. It was a deathly shriek that pierced the ears of anyone who heard it. It was the cry of a broken woman who could never be pieced together again.

  I let the blood drain from the deep cuts on my hand and made up my mind. I just had to make sure for myself. Again, I took off running, with Black and Tay hot on my heels. I left the suite and headed straight for the elevator, vowing not to let anyone stop me. I jumped in, and the doors closed right before Tay and Black caught up to me. I went down to Amira’s room and damn near kicked in her door, but no one answered. Okay, maybe she was out, I told myself. So I went down to the front desk, bloody hand and all. The clerks looked at me funny, but I thought, Fuck them. I was on a mission. I didn’t have the time to stop and read their asses right then.

  “Hi. I need to leave an urgent message for Amira,” I told one of the female clerks, but she just stood there looking at me. I looked at her name tag, telling myself to remember her name. I was going to make sure to get her fired.

  “Don’t just stand there. Do your job and take down my message and make sure you deliver it!” I yelled. But she just continued to look like she didn’t know what to do.

  “I am sorry, but Miss Cortez passed away last night,” she finally leaned in and whispered.

  I looked at her blankly and became infuriated. This joke was being taken to the max, and I didn’t find it funny. So I reached over the front desk and pulled her hair as hard as I could and continued to yell. “You better take down my damn message, bitch! Take it down for her. Take it down
for her. Take it down for her!” I screamed over and over.

  By the time Carl got down to the lobby, my robe was open, my hand was bleeding profusely, and I was now banging her head on the desk. He tried for five minutes to get me off her, but that just made me swing at her more wildly. He used his walkie-talkie to call Tony and tell him what was happening. Black, Tony, and Tay came running into the lobby, and it took all four of them to pull me off the clerk.

  “Let me go. She won’t take down my message, so I’m gonna fuck her up!” I yelled as Carl picked me up and held me in his arms.

  “Take her upstairs,” Tay yelled as he helped the desk clerk.

  Carl did as he was told, and Tay’von went into an office to talk to the hotel manager and the girl I had damn near killed.

  I found out later he walked out fifty thousand dollars poorer. Twenty-five to the hotel and the other half to the clerk. He also made sure to make a call to his lawyer and had him fax a confidentiality agreement and papers stating that he had settled everything with the hotel and its employee. Tay may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t dumb enough to walk out of that office without both signatures.

  Carl still held me in his arms as we rode up to my room.

  “Why would they tell me that Amira’s dead, Carl? That’s so mean of them.”

  “Why are you talking like that, Tangie? You sound like a kid.”

  I hadn’t even noticed that my voice had changed.

  “Just tell me what’s going on. Why are they saying that to me?”

  Carl stood me up and looked me straight in the eyes. “Tangie, this is not a joke. Amira is dead. She’s gone, baby. Everything is true.”

  That was when it finally hit me. It was like a rush of pictures flashed in front of me, and I remembered everything. I stopped breathing and started to gasp for air. No matter how hard I tried to breathe, I just couldn’t get any air. I couldn’t hold myself up anymore, so I dropped to the floor. Carl picked me up, and I rested my head on his chest. Amira invaded my mind, and all I could think of was her death and the absence of love that it was sure to bring.