“This your girl?”
I nodded my head, not really knowing anymore if Amelia was “my girl.” Her last visit had ended with us screaming at each other across the table.
“Which one of your boys you think is fucking her now?” I bit my lip. She saw my eye twitch and laughed. “
Manslaughter?
You’re gonna be here awhile, Antoine. You might as well get used to things.”
The picture of my Lac, she balled up and dropped on the floor. Amelia’s picture, she slowly ripped in half before letting the pieces fall as well.
“Oops,” she said with a shrug. “You better pick that trash up. You know we don’t allow littering.”
I was putting the pieces of Amelia together when I heard, “Close five!”
“97.9 The Box. Can’t stop, won’t stop. You’re on the air.”
“Yeah. I wanna hear that new song from Natalia.”
“Well, we’re giving it to ya! That new joint from Houston’s oooooooown Natalia!”
I was trying to get to my waitress job at Mirage, but when I heard it, I focused on nothing else. The cars honking on the 610 Loop went silent. The construction crews hammering away on the latest expansion project disappeared. All that was there was me and the voice, the voice of my best friend.
“Yeah!” she screamed frantically as she emerged from the ballroom that day. It was as if the Holy Ghost had jumped inside her and wouldn’t let up. She was crying uncontrollably and the cameras were eating it up. I was so happy for her; I ignored the number pinned to the front of my blouse and began jumping too.
“You did it! You did it!” I screamed as I ran, embracing Natalia hard enough to crush her.
“I’m going to Hollywood, Amelia! I’m going to Hollywood!” She then went into another fit, which made the other
U.S. Icon
contestants either nervous or happy, depending on their mental state. It didn’t matter to her because she’d made it past the preliminaries. Hollywood and all that TV exposure awaited. It didn’t matter to me because she was my best friend . . . and my time to shine was coming up. At her mom’s house the night before, we’d discussed how we would handle it when we were the final two contestants on
U.S. Icon
. We were going to handle it with dignity and class. No catfighting or backstabbing. Yep. Represent for H-town. Beyoncé had already gotten hers. Both me and Natalia remembered running into her and the rest of them girls at talent shows around town. She had the looks and her momma ’n’ ’em behind her, but we had the voices. We were on the come-up now.
Natalia wiped her eyes as she came down to Earth. She’d quit hyperventilating. A lady behind us who’d been rejected was pitching a fit and now stealing the show. The cameras rushed with great zeal to cover every single curse word. Natalia rolled her eyes. “Girl,” she said as she tried to put her matted hair in place, “they’re going to be calling you in there soon.”
“How were they? How did they act? What did they say?”
She laughed at my bombardment. “Well, that one guy, the asshole from Europe. He kept a straight face the whole time. I know I blew him away, but he tried to play it off.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, girl. We’re going to Hollywood!”
I felt uneasy when she included me. I hadn’t gone before them yet. They might have reached their quota of fine young sistahs from the South. Well, they were just gonna have to make room for one more.
One of the production people called out my number to let me know I’d be going before the judges soon. Natalia had been holding her pee all morning and ran off before she burst. I felt a case of nerves coming on and tried to breathe.
Bodie promised he’d be there, but he wasn’t. Just like him.
Either high or sleeping off a high,
I thought. He’d let me down so much, but I was stupid enough to get involved with him. One of them Northside knuckleheads he was—dangerous and with plenty of money I never asked about. He treated me like a princess whenever he was trying to make up. I was finished with making up. He wasn’t here when I needed him most. It was time to move on.
The contestant just ahead of me was called into the ballroom. I watched her give her parents a final hug. On the wall above her, the Four Seasons hotel had a TV monitor affixed to keep us hostages entertained and off the show’s back. I noticed KPRC interrupting for late-breaking news.
The scene switched from
The Golden Girls
to a shot from their news helicopter as police cars chased a black man on foot. Other than a white T-shirt, I couldn’t make out a thing about him other than his quickness. He did
something
stupid, I thought. It would’ve been easier on him if he just quit running. The scene was a replay from earlier and was just being reaired. Losing interest, I looked around for Natalia again. She was still in the bathroom or maybe on the phone with her boyfriend.
When I looked back, the details were scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Someone had tried to rob a pawnshop. Somebody had been shot. The production assistant signaled me that it was time to go to staging. I lingered a second longer to see the suspect. His arrest photo flashed, filling the entire screen.
Antoine “Bodie” Campbell
was the name displayed beside his image.
“
Ma’am
, you’re up next,” the production assistant repeated with emphasis.
Natalia’s new song ended, bringing me back in the now. She’d called me from Miami last week wondering what I thought of her new CD. I lied to her and said I thought it was the bomb. I hadn’t bought it. I was gonna have to get it soon, but couldn’t bring myself to just yet. Besides, I was late for work . . . again. I sped up, but knew I could never outrun the thoughts running through my head.
Don’t Get It Twisted
“911. How may I help you?”
“I need the police!”
“What’s the nature of your call, ma’am?”
“Can you please just send the police! And an ambulance too!”
“Ma’am, please stay calm. I just need to get some information from you. Is someone hurt?”
“Yeah, you could say that. A couple of people.”
“What happened?”
“What happened? Lady, will you fuckin’ hurry up! People are hurt and bleeding!”
“I’m dispatching them to your location in Long Beach as we speak. I need for you to remain calm, okay?”
“Okay! Okay! I’ll try.”
“Now, I need to ask you a few questions. Do you know who is responsible for this?”
“Yeah. Me.”
“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you still there?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“I need your name.”
“Isrie. Isrie Walker.”
“Hello?” I said into the receiver. Nothing. The caller ID showed a blocked number. Should’ve known it was nothing but trouble.
I called out again and was met with still more silence. As I went to hang up, I heard laughter—a woman’s laughter. I would’ve hung up—no,
should’ve
hung up—but now I was curious. “I can hear you on the phone, so you might as well say what you have to say.”
There was a click as she put her phone on speaker. Blocking out everything, I could now hear a man’s steady breathing. There was a rustling sound as if sheets were sliding around. The woman groaned, not from pain, but from pleasure. He was fucking her. Ryan was fucking her and they had the nerve to call me to hear.
I can’t believe this shit,
I thought to myself.
“Oh, yes! Get that shit. Get that shit, daddy,” she urged him. Damn. I knew he would get it too. That was never my problem with him.
Ryan and I had been seeing each other for the past five months.
Had
is the operative word. I’d dumped him last night. Tonight, we were supposed to see that Denzel Washington movie. Instead he was fucking the girl who thought she’d won the ultimate prize and I was on the phone like a fool.
“Ooh!” she gasped, startling me out of my funk. “No, no. Don’t do it like that. Ryan, you’re gonna make me scream.”
I knew what
that
was and had had enough. “You’re welcome to my seconds, bitch!” I was about to click my phone off, but raised it back to my mouth. “And for the record, I dumped him!”
Rebelling against my parents’ nagging to find a man and settle down, I’d met Ryan. He was my date on one of those television dating shows where they pay you to go out with a complete stranger. Turned out Ryan was no ordinary date, but a flashy record producer out for some publicity.
I was extremely skeptical when I met him, but those dreamy green eyes and peanut-butter-smooth skin had me ignoring the obvious. Ryan was a bad boy. The good that came with that in the bedroom . . . and on balconies . . . and in a restaurant bathroom once also came along with the paternity tests and threats from crazies like the one on the phone. Ryan had too much ego. It was that ego that caused me to let him go last night after complaining I was fed up with the loose ends, or as I preferred to call them, tired-ass hoes. His ego lost, but why was I the one feeling so ripped up over it? I was never one to depend on a man to define who I was, so I decided to brush my shoulders off like the pimp that I was.
I dumped the pint of Ben & Jerry’s in the sink and went to change. Some Italian mules, a pair of my favorite denim jeans, topped off with a black long-sleeved tee, and all that was left was my grille. I went into my bathroom, turned on my makeup light, and went to work.
When finished, I was dressed and made up with nowhere to go. I still could have gone to the movies without Ryan, but decided to have a drink at a local spot. I wasn’t one for drinking alone, so the call went out.
I speed-dialed a number, then waited. My girl, Deja, was always working late on her photo assignments, and it was easier to page her and let her get back to me. Five minutes later, my phone rang on cue.
“Hello?”
“What’s wrong, Isrie?”
“You know me too well, D-Square.” Ms. Deja Douglas got her nickname from both her initials and her cup size, although she was actually a large C or small D.
“I thought y’all were going to the picture show tonight.”
Picture show
. Deja always had to be different.
“No. I’m about to go have a drink, though. Want to come?”
“On a Monday?”
“Look, I’m dressed up and don’t feel like staying in the house. Are you coming or what?”
“All right. I’ll keep you company, but I’m not drinking anything heavier than water with lemon. I have a shoot in the morning. Look, I’ve got one more roll to develop. How about in thirty minutes?”
Gets No Love
The smell of gunpowder burned my nostrils while I tried to stop the bleeding. “Shhhh. Don’t worry. I got you,” I whispered as tears streamed down my face. I didn’t know if my words were being heard, but it didn’t matter. Saying them was all I could do to make myself feel sane at the moment. The sirens were getting closer, but the screams from everyone in the park drowned them out as the reality of what had just occurred set in. Some people wouldn’t be going home from today’s picnic. A Saturday, of all days.
“Nooooooo! Please, Lord! No! Not another one!” It was Mrs. Dumas’s familiar, crackly voice screaming frantically. I pulled myself out from my haze to watch her slowly inch herself out from under the large limp body that draped her.
“Lance?” The woman I held gasped. Her voice was faint.
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“Am I going to die?”
“No,” I replied, looking down into her vacant eyes and at my shaking bloodstained hands. “I won’t let it happen.”
“Y-you can’t always save everyone, Lance.”
“I know,” I said, glancing around at my many failures. One, in particular, would go down as my greatest failure. His eyes, finally at peace, were still open and boring into my soul as Mrs. Dumas cradled him to her bosom.
Rest in peace, dear friend,
I mouthed silently.