For the Love of Money (43 page)

“Well, who said that I wanted to stay in television anyway?” I snapped back at her. “I'm just having fun right now writing these scripts.” My real mission was to write feature films, but I kept that to myself.

Yolanda got real quiet over the phone. She said, “All right. You're gonna go right ahead and fuck up your career messing around with these little
cliques.”

“They're
all
cliques out here,” I told her, “and everywhere else. So which one are
you
connected to?”

I was tempted to ask her if she really went to Howard University in Washington, D.C., because she damn sure wasn't down with Black Hollywood. I wonder if Kendra knew how anti–black business Yolanda was. I don't believe that she did know, because they didn't really talk about business like we did. Kendra wasn't in the business.

I planned to spend my twenty-sixth birthday hanging out with my two main girls on the West Side, Kendra and Susan. They got along together, too. At first I was a little nervous about mixing a Hollywood Jew with a Baltimore “sistah,” but we all related on a human level, and Susan liked how “real” Kendra and I both were as opposed to the “fake” Hollywood girls (her words, not mine) she grew up with in California. I guess you could say that
Susan was “crossing over” to us, but after a while, I began to wonder if she had a man, or was even interested in men, because she never talked about them like Kendra and I. Susan never seemed to have any opposite-sex dates either.

“Hold on, it's the telephone. Turn the stereo down for a minute,” I told them. We were all at my place getting ready to go out while listening to the Roots, the Philadelphia hip-hop band, on CD.

“Hello,” I answered.

“It's Coe. Happy birthday, Tracy! Do you need me for anything?”

“Not tonight, but I'll let you know.”

“I know you will,” he said with a chuckle. I hated to admit it, but I had to turn Coe Anawabi into my little sex slave. It was better than sleeping with new men that I didn't particularly like just to satisfy my intimate needs. The only problem was Coe's age. The boy turned out to be twenty-one. I found that out in a past photo shoot he had taken for
Vibe
magazine earlier that year.

Kendra looked toward the phone and got suspicious. She had witnessed my woman power over Coe when she arrived back in California in mid August. Susan met him too, but I don't know if she suspected anything. I just introduced him as a friend. Maybe Susan did suspect, but I didn't really care. Coe was still fine, young, and mine, or at least for the meantime, because I couldn't delude myself into keeping a younger man.

I said, “I'll be calling you soon. Just stay on standby.”

“On standby?”

“That's what I said,” I snapped at him. Coe still tried to assert himself every once in a while, but it wasn't working. I had him firmly under my spell.

When I hung up the phone, Kendra stepped near me and whispered, “What did you do to that boy, Tracy?”

I played innocent and asked her, “What?”

“You know what I'm talking about.”

I don't think Kendra thought that Susan knew from the way that she was talking in code, or maybe it was a black thing to keep the brother talk to ourselves.

“No I
don't
know,” I told her.

She looked at me sternly and said, “We're gonna talk.
Later.”

I looked over to Susan and watched her dancing to the Roots. She had this stiff shoulder move with her fingers snapping to the snare drum with no body or leg movement to the bass. I shook my head and started to laugh at her.

“Susan, what's up with the legs, man, move your body.”

She tried to move her body and legs and it only made the situation worse.

“Oh, my God! I'm gonna have to give you dance lessons,” I joked with her.

Kendra started to laugh too.

Susan said, “Kendra doesn't move all that much either.”

Kendra stopped and said, “Don't go there, okay?
I
can dance when the music is right.”

“No you can't. You think too much to dance,” I teased her.

“Whatever,” Kendra responded to me. “Who made
you
the dance expert?”

“The rhythm,” I said to both of them, “I know how to follow it.” I rocked it for them, real smooth and whatnot to show them how it's done.

“Well, isn't this a Philadelphia group?” Susan asked. “She has an advantage over us,” she said to Kendra.

“That doesn't mean anything. I can dance to Dru Hill better than Kendra, and they're from Baltimore, and I can dance to Snoop Doggy Dogg better than you, Susan, and he's from Long Beach.”

“I'm not from Long Beach,” Susan responded with a chuckle.

“It's close enough,” I told her.

“Are we just about ready to go now?” Kendra asked me.

I said, “Yeah.”

“Well, let me use the bathroom before we leave then.”

Kendra went to use the bathroom, and I had this crazy thought on my mind to get the scoop on Susan and her love life.

“Susan, do you have a boyfriend or anything who you never talk about?”

She smiled at me and shook her head as if I had caught her off guard.

“I'm serious,” I told her. “You never even talk about guys. You don't like girls, do you?”

Sometimes my damn mouth needed a zipper on it, I
swear!

Susan looked at me and said, “
No,
I don't like women like that! I just keep my personal life to myself. Besides, I'm not serious about anyone right now anyways.”

I tried to joke it off with her.

I said, “Okay, because I know I look good, but I like
brothers
to tell you the truth, Susan.”

Susan was stunned with this big old smile on her face that she couldn't seem to erase.

“You can be very vain sometimes, okay, Tracy.
Very
vain,” she told me.

I smiled and said, “Well, thank you. Do I measure up to the other Hollywood girls you know?” I was referring mainly to white girls with loads of A-list money, and I was still far from it. Even Susan had a BMW to my Toyota, and despite my moderate success in scriptwriting, I had still not gone crazy with my income.

Susan shook her head and answered, “Not quite. You may be vain, but you're still very practical. The girls who I know, they're vain
and
impractical, and those are two
very
bad combinations to have.”

I said, “Yeah, because I can't
afford
to be impractical.
Yet,”
I added with a grin.

Kendra stepped out of the bathroom, and we all made our way to a club off of Beverly Boulevard in Susan's midnight blue Beamer. Who the hell wanted to ride in Toyotas? We wanted to show up in style.

The party was jam-packed that night with a mixed crowd and a New York DJ who must have been really popular, because the crowd was loving him!

“Wow!” Kendra said. “I haven't been to
anything
like this over here.” She was referring to California parties.

I said, “Me either,” because the whole place was dancing for a change, and that represented the power of the DJ to pick quality songs that made you move. He couldn't miss with Lauryn Hill and the Fugees.

“Have you been to a party like this before, Susan?” Kendra asked.

Susan smiled and said, “Yeah.”

I looked through the crowd and spotted rappers Yo Yo and Mack 10, with a posse of other West Coast rappers in the house that I didn't recognize as readily. I wonder what they all thought about the New York DJ playing the New Jersey–based Fugees for a California crowd. I guess it was all love, though. Everybody wasn't mixed up into the East Coast–West Coast feud.

Kendra spotted Yo Yo and said, “I remember girls at Hampton back in the day who used to
love
themselves some Yo Yo. That ‘Pass It On' song was their
anthem.”

I laughed and said, “I know just who you're talking about. Those girls got high like every other day. I wonder if they ever graduated.”

Kendra said, “Yeah, they graduated. It just took them an extra couple of years.”

She asked Susan what school she had attended.

“Stanford.”

Kendra nodded. “Pretty good school, and good sports teams.”

“Yeah,” Susan said with a pumped fist and a smile. “Go Cardinal!”

I smiled myself.

“Hey, you wanna dance?” someone asked Kendra.

She looked and smiled at me before going to get her groove on.

“It's me and you next, Susan,” I said. “Don't get nervous now.”

“Hey, Tracy,” someone called me, tapping me from behind. I turned and met eyes with Richard Mack.

“Hey, Rich.”

“Let me talk to you for a minute,” he said.

I looked at Susan. Before I could open my mouth to her, she said, “Go ahead, I'm fine.”

I stepped aside with Rich. He said, “Remember I was telling you about that project in the spring?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, I just sold a pilot to UPN for thirteen episodes in mid-season. I was wondering if you wanted to write a couple of the scripts. I wrote four of them myself already. And do you know Juanita Perez?”

I grinned. I didn't hold a grudge against the sister or anything.

I said, “Yeah, I know her.”

“Well, she's working on a couple of scripts too.”

“So, what's the pilot about?” I asked.

“It's called
Brothers and Sisters,
about a group of Hollywood blacks all from different walks of life who rent a house in Beverly Hills, while they all try to make it in the business.”

I smiled. “That's pretty clever. Why didn't you tell me about that before, you were afraid that I might steal your idea?”

He chuckled and said, “I trust no one until I have the paperwork signed, and now I have it.”

“So, what is it, three guys and three girls, a black version of
Friends
?” I was only guessing.
Friends
and
Seinfeld
were the talks of television that season.
Friends
was coming in and
Seinfeld
was going out.

Rich smiled at me again. “You know how Hollywood works by now, Tracy; copying a successful show is
always
the bomb.”

I said, “Well, yeah, you can count me in on that.” A few extra dollars and more script credits wouldn't hurt me at all. That was what I was out there to do, to put my thing down.

“You're not signed with
Conditions
for the season?”

I frowned. “No, they have a new producer so I didn't feel it was comfortable for me. But they'll still look at my spec scripts, and my continuation
from last season kicks off the show, so they'll be calling me; they just don't have me under contract.”

“Have you ever thought about developing your own show?”

All of a sudden, the party became secondary. Rich and I were talking business in that place like nothing else mattered.

I said, “I haven't even thought about a show idea, but thanks for asking me. Maybe I
should
think about that.”

Rich nodded with a big grin. “It pays well. You become the show creator, and you just sit tight, write a few scripts here and there, and start working on creating another show.”

He said, “I read about writers who make their living that way, whether the shows are successful or not.”

“Black writers too?” I asked him. I couldn't see that idea working so well for a black writer. The success rate of every show was too important to us.

“If you're good enough, they'll pay you to do next to nothing just to keep you away from the competition,” Rich told me with a greedy grin.

Once I thought about it, I didn't know if I liked the idea of developing shows just to make a quick buck and then dropping everyone who put their hard work and effort into it. That's what had so many Hollywood types scrambling on their last dollar to make the ends meet as it was, especially in
Black
Hollywood.

“Do you think that's right?” I asked Rich candidly. “I mean, we both know how hard it is for black people to keep a show on the air. Developing new shows just for the money seems really irresponsible to me.”

I just had to tell Rich like it was because I didn't agree with it.

He said, “Tracy, it's not like these people are going to run out of money. They'll get over it, and they'll find some new black show to exploit next year. It's all about the money out here.”

“I'm not talking about the shows themselves, Rich, I'm talking about the people who play a part in making the show happen; the actors, directors, writers, extras, wardrobe people, and the fans who watch.”

I was beginning to think that Hollywood had already gotten the best of Rich. He was still cool and everything, but the money seemed to be pulling him by the nose.

He nodded and said, “I see what you mean.” After that he smiled at me. “I had no idea that you would be that type.”

“What type?” I asked.

He said, “I finished reading your book
Flyy Girl,
and I thought that
you
would be the
first
one to chase the money.”

I just shook my head, but I wasn't that upset about it anymore. I had to get over it. I said, “Rich, my flyy girl days are over with, okay? I'm a grown, responsible black woman now, who cares about the images of her people. Now if
you
don't, then that's
your
problem.”

“So are you still interested in writing for the show?”

I paused, not wanting to commit to something that I may have regretted later on. “Only if it's good,” I answered. I grinned to let him know there were no hard feelings between us.

He said, “That's fine with me, and if we get to keep the show, then that's even better.”