Bliss (19 page)

E
va was onstage. There were no rising tiers of seats in the small amphitheater. Not so much as a concrete step or anyplace to sit, except for a few rusted folding chairs. The venue’s walls were an olden mix of sand, burned lime, and ash, and seemed to have grown, blotched and flaking, from the ground.

Might’ve been contests here in ancient times
, Eva thought.
This
is
Italy. Not Rome, but still. Who knows what Rome’s boundaries were back then. Could’ve been races here, or third-rate gladiators battling starved lions
.

“You don’t see this many stars from the city,” said Eva’s guide. Her name was Giada, she was from Sardinia, and she was an assistant from the label’s London office. Giada with short dark hair bobby-pinned behind her ears. Giada in jeans and a plain blouse and plain watch. Giada with her acrylic clipboard, plainly honored, with Madonna’s new
Erotica
blasting from the van’s stereo, to squire Eva and her groups around.

Eva worked for an indie label that had just been purchased by a conglomerate. Her coworkers complained about the “product” being watered down, and about the new corporate dogma, but Eva’d been
promoted to senior product manager, her salary raised by half, so she didn’t grumble at all. Hampered with only minor, typical, girlie doubts about her clothes and hair and her ability to say precisely what she meant in the moment she meant it, Eva was 90 percent certain she could make happen whatever she put her mind to.

“Sweets,” Eva said to Giada with a smirk. “The stars came out for me.”

Eva had been at the venue for six hours, but it seemed like six minutes. Hours went by like handclaps to a backstage babel of Italian, Italian-accented English, Spanish-Spanish, English-English, and American English. Finally, the audience bounced loosely into the open place that still smelled of night blooms and cigarette smoke and Euro beer.

In a micro denim skirt, a California Angels T-shirt, and loose-laced work boots, Eva moved shoulders-first through the thickening crowd of crew onstage, and then through artists and rambunctious entourages backstage. Giada at her side, she ducked under rickety scaffolding, stepped nimbly over cables and toolbox-size batteries on her way to check in on her rap girl group (Lo-Note, Hi-Note, and Coda were “establishing an international base”) and her boy duo, Imperial Court (they were midlist rap idols already). Sectioned off by a dirty canvas drape, Eva’s three girls sprawled on the cement floor with stuffed totes under their heads. The group was called Trix, they were from Dallas, and they had passports for the first time in their lives.

“These people ain’t gonna appreciate us,” said Hi-Note.

“They already do,” Eva said, soothing and silencing. “Or they wouldn’t have come out.”

“Shut up, Hillary,” Lois said as Eva looked on approvingly. “Eva handles hers. Radio’s been playing our shit every day out here.”

Hi-Note/Hillary rolled her eyes toward Coda. They were equally bored with Lois’s sincere pursuit of success.

Eva felt large. She’d walked her groups through convoluted office politics, and now she was walking them through a country she’d already been through twice. Trix and Imperial Court were billed right beneath headliners PeaceLove&War. PL&W were a thriving, unpretentious
New York trio recently become an even more successful duo due to the specter of a dead DJ for all to invoke and pray to.

“Peace and Love are playing themselves,” Lois said. “Since War shot himself.”

Eva nodded.
War would want them to go on like this. Make money while there’s money to be made. Who knows how long this rap shit is gonna last? Staying paid, blowing up even bigger, that’s the respect
.

Boyz II Men’s woeful “End of the Road” trickled from the headset around Eva’s neck, followed by Stereo MCs’ frantic “Step It Up.” The contrast freaked Eva’s mind.
The mix
. She listened to the local station wherever she traveled, so as to be up on trends, bubbles in airplay and disc jockeys with influence. Eva crept back onstage, this time with a path cut for her by Giada’s Italian. The Italian radio station played MC Hammer’s “Let’s Get It Started,” and whenever she heard that song, Eva also heard in her head Hammer’s “Ring ‘Em” galloping 120 beats per minute over frantic cowbells. Every hip hop song took Eva to another song, then another. She stayed fascinated by the links between songs and artists and what about them made certain melodies or loops or phrases stick to her brain. Eva was fired up by Hammer. Her head nodded to the bells. Eva wanted to dance.

But she was working, so she took the temperature of the room.

The promoter had obviously oversold the event.

On the floor, bodies pressed against other bodies cloaked in coats too huge for the weather and in pants too big for the wearer. It was hard to tell who was wiry or husky, who was boy or girl, who was buddy or bandit.

Clothes could camouflage weapons, too, but Eva didn’t think about fear enough to acknowledge that she didn’t have it. She’d been moving up in the music business for four years and was certain she knew the secret order in the disorder. When her stepmother asked her about the “violence” at hip hop shows, Eva told her that hip hop was a culture where you always might get your ass beat.

From her tiptoes on the stage, Eva saw PeaceLove&War’s manager knocking through the audience like a mallet. The guy had a partner trailing him valet style, cradling a shoebox.

“Lil’ John gets it
done
,” Eva admiringly said to Giada.
He steps it up. Gets it started
.

Lil’ John didn’t have his usual bodyguards. Since War’s death, whenever Eva’d seen Lil’ John in the States, he always had two burly brothers clocking the room, daring fools to step up. Wearing that bodyguard face, eyes like soldiers’ eyes, set at ten paces. Face that says I’m
not just a friend
I’m not
crew or posse
. I’m not some nigga from the neighborhood—the Neighborhood meaning any neighborhood where pickings are slim and escape chutes as real as Scotty’s transporter—
not
a nigga just happy to be put on. I’m not bonded, or licensed to carry, but I’m carrying anyway, and word is bond: I’m watching you, and don’t think—
please
don’t think—that because I’m black and because you’re black or Puerto Rican or whatever form of not-white you are, that I won’t keep this white boy safe as gold bars. Safe like he’s a baby. I have his back. The pussy I get is always free, and always new. Rent is paid. I act unafraid. Step
up
, fool. Step the fuck up if you think you got it like that.

Lil’ John didn’t need those bodyguards in Europe. It was mostly in L.A. and New York that a fatwa had been sown and grown, the thorny act of War’s suicide trimmed down to White Man Is Responsible for Black Man and Black Man Is Now Dead. Forget the fact that Love had gone on record—BET and MTV—to say with pragmatic sadness that War had “issues,” that he had problems “outside the industry,” and that War had loved Lil’ John, that in fact they all did. Lil’ John had shown them “mad respect,” always, Peace said, and had seen them through “mad drama.”

On MTV, Peace said, “It was like, for my boy War, him just ponderin’ that”—he’d stopped short of the words
killing himself—
” it wasn’t enough.” Lil’ John had been beaten and stomped soon after, and he wore his beatdown like the dented badge of honor it was in hip hop, all the while pimping the ghost of War with the composure of an old-school player.

Eva had known War. He was Trent McAllister, who used to spin at parties under the unavoidable nickname of T-Mack. He had two daughters by Min-Hee, a Korean girl with hair she could sit on. Everybody
called her Minnie, which evolved over time to Money, and, finally, to Money Min
(You know, War’s gangsta Chinese chick)
. War was a crate-troll too kidlike for kids and the tragedies and to-do lists of family life. Too gutted by glory and a gory adolescence to do much of anything but keep his vinyl dusted, keep his turntable case plastered with promotional stickers from groups and record labels from around the world and from back in time. His case was an atlas of hip hop—coded colors, ideals for living up to, neighborhood notions, and names heavy with history and irony and in-jokes and pun.

War didn’t know the difference between North Korea and South Korea. Didn’t know there was a North Korea and a South Korea. Loved his daughters, though, learned to like soy paste stew and shrimp chips, and though Money Min supposedly came up with his new name—Min hated “T-Mack” because it was so common and obvious and high
school—it became a point of contention later, when suits were filed and counterfiled. Lil’ John said he’d come up with Peace, Love,
and
War, and that the group would have never been a group without his introductions and direction.

“Little John is a dick,” Giada said in an official tone that made her opinion seem fact. “He plays with fans’ emotions, treats War as a commodity. War was the soul. They should have put down their microphones, out of respect.”

Leetle
John. Eva tried to keep a smile from her face. Giada made him sound like a cockroach.

“Eva!”

Trix needed massaging. Eva looked to Giada to administer because the opening act, local boys with an Ethiopian front man, stepped onstage to the mikes and turntables. No one to master the ceremonies, so no emcee to announce the MCs. The room was chockablock with cats in gray and black and deep green, all stamped with swooshes and stripes and pumas. The crowd was pumped until the DJ stumbled, chose two wrong records to warm up with, then chose two more, worse. Homeboy was rushing, dropping sleeves, flustered. Eva thought the DJ was a disgrace.

Trix and Imperial Court stood in what passed for the wings. Peace and Love stood opposite. When it was their turn, they’d play a DAT of War’s work. They’d roll down a bedsheet-size poster of War mixing and scratching, fingers light on an LP, head cocked low to the right, fat mug of a headphone between shoulder and ear. Eva saw Money Min in the wings, too. Broad cheeks like raw pancakes, her hair matted like she was still mourning. A ruby-eyed Buddha rested on her shallow cleavage, and WAR 4 LYFE was blackly tatted under her left collarbone.

Eva didn’t see Lil’ John. He and Money Min kept space between them—unless, as they’d been many times in the months since War’s suicide, the two of them were floodlit in tribute.

They say your party wasn’t pumpin’ and your DJ was weak
. MC Hammer lyrics licked her brain again. People hated on him, but Eva believed Hammer to be a showman extraordinaire. She loved a pop hit.
Eva loved a winner.
I know Hammer’s DJ wouldn’t be dropping records at some no-pressure show in Italy, I know that much
.

There was no consistent music, so the crowd began to meld. In a seemingly choreographed way Eva’d seen many times, fools pressed toward the center of the room and flailed forward.

And the flygirls who came with the beat in mind, they all up against the wall like a welfare line
.

Arms thrashed. Snails were sucked down and stomped. The crowd heaved, juiced with desire to confront what had failed them.

The opening act bolted. There were grunts and yells. Equipment toppled.