Bliss (2 page)

In walked Ron. Eva liked that Ron was gruff and clever and that he didn’t care that people knew he was a sneak. Eva liked his wide, firm body. He was president of urban music at one of the major record labels. Properly late and properly dapper, Ron had his palm on the back of a former MC, a pretty girl who’d had one regional hit and then faded from the public eye, but not completely from Ron’s. That she was his choice for the Bahamas made sense, as the girl was from nearby Tampa. Eva’d heard the girl was teaching elementary school, and a recent Where-Are-They-Now?-type radio show had mentioned that the Tampa teacher had “renounced music and the business that was killing it.”

Yeah
, Eva thought.
Right. More like mad that her singles never hit outside of Florida
.

Tampa homegirl was thick and pretty. Hair pinned in an elegant bun, she had on an ill-fitting, expensive orange dress.

Blocky sandals, probably from Macy’s. Nails done by Koreans. Tacky
.

Ron guided his date to a choice table. She wore the tetchy face of a sister who’d be happier laid up in front of a movie on her suite’s pay-per-view.

A bartender was trying to catch Eva’s eye. She knew he wanted to offer her something special.

Ron nodded sharply at Eva, face tight because he knew the situation called for it. Once Tampa MC’s face was turned, Ron glanced at Eva conspiratorially

No doubt
, Eva thought.
I’m in on it
.

Ron walked to Eva at the bar, ordered a cognac and a champagne cocktail. “You got the stuff?”

“Stuff.”

“Don’t fuck with me.” He was breezy, watching his drinks being made. “That champagne basket. For later.”

“You look busy, sweets. Doing the most, as usual.”

“Huh? She’s been here. Got her over at the Hurricane Club. Away from all this bullshit.”

“Away from me.” It was a slipup and Eva felt it, like she’d tumbled off her heels.

“You? Oh I know you don’t trip off … me … girls, women, whatever. I’m talking about … all these people. She hates it.”

“She thinks it’s fake.” Now Eva wanted her something special. “She’s real.”

Ron picked up his cocktails, turned to walk back to his table. “She don’t understand it.”

And she doesn’t want to
. Eva finally looked directly at the bartender. “What you got for me?” She toyed with the snarl of yarn and bead bracelets on her left wrist.

“Little gin with coco water,” the man said, smiling. “Good for you.”

Eva shook her head. “You got a nice single malt?”

“He’s got whatever you want,” Hakeem said, knuckle suddenly, softly on the outside of her thigh. “And pour me a vanilla rum. Same as before.” Hakeem was a consultant, an old-school music impresario, and Eva’s boy from way back.

Six years ago, Hakeem had been accused of mishandling funds and was asked to resign. He retained boisterous lawyers, and went to the urban and the white press screaming about “the plantation system,” and the “Jim Crow setup” in the record business. He detailed salary discrepancies between the “pop” and the “urban” departments for jobs with the same titles and tasks. Until he was called on the carpet, Hakeem had never complained. So his own staff only vaguely supported him when he went Al Sharpton. The theory everyone operated from was that Hakeem was sitting on $15 million. It was 1998, though, and he still wore linen like the DRY-CLEAN-ONLY status symbol it had been for brothers in the eighties—stiffly pressed to a sheen.

“Where you been?”

“Looking for you,” Hakeem said. “Smoke with me.”

Unsmiling, the bartender put both drinks on the bar.

“Evey! Baby!” Myra strolled up, laughing. A tiny tape recorder dangled from a rhinestone strap at her wrist. Sunny’s brother D’Artagnan was with her, and it looked like he was holding blood in his mouth.

Dart seemed taller. Less heavy. Eva hadn’t seen him in four months. She talked to him on the phone all the time, business, but their curt conversations had revealed nothing of his transformation. The last time she’d seen him—
In Toronto
, Eva thought,
for some meeting with some producers
—he’d been his usual bulging self, in decent sprits, but always watching the door, or for a gap in conversation, anything through which he could escape his job as Sunny’s manager.

Fixed to Dart’s slab of a back was a tangerine shirt, wet and glued to a wetter sleeveless white undershirt. Sweat wept at his temples. Sweat dripped from the top of his flat nose.

Crybaby
, Eva thought.
Control yourself
.

“I’ve been searching all over for you,” Myra said, wagging her recorder at Eva like it was finger. “D’Artagnan’s trying to get me drunk! Ha! He don’t know the blocks I been around.”

“Miss
Myra
,” Eva said with open arms. “Queen of All. In the house to see my girl set shit off.” Myra’d been running her own so-called marketing company for eleven years. But she didn’t have clients. Mostly she hosted cocktails—little in-things at which attendance was required in order to gain her good graces. Her clout rested in a gossipy, preachy weekly column—“Square Biz”—mass-faxed to everyone in urban music. Myra had long-standing associations with the United Negro College Fund,
Soul Train
, and the Congressional Black Caucus. She was petted and patronized and often paid as a consultant by casting directors and potential corporate sponsors. Myra led them toward trendily yet completely clothed artists who lamented in interviews about the state of the youth and the injurious, embarrassing nature of gangsta rap. Myra’s faves publicly craved “positivity” for the Community, so, after Chevrolet or Budweiser phoned Myra for a high sign, Chevy or Bud called the artist’s manager:
You want to be a part of our concert tour? We’d like to use a song of yours in a commercial for our new sedan
. Then glasses clinked. Myra clocked her dollars and her power points. Eva would sit back at these buttery post-contract-signing lunches and calculate how much authenticity her artist was trading. She’d figure out from which pile her own money would be made.

At the showcase, Myra was sparkly and important. “Yes,
sweetums
. Here strictly for Sunny. And my expectations are
high-high-high.”
Myra gave a little cackle, and then looked at Eva more directly. “I know you’re not nervous.”

“Never that,” Eva said. Eva liked Myra, but hadn’t trusted her for years.

“You all right? You look fabulous as usual.”

Eva squared her shoulders, resurrected her game face, and showily hitched up her already high breasts. “I am fine, sister. I know you know how
I
do.”

Dart slid up to the bar next to Eva. Got the bartender’s attention, asked for tonic with lime. Dart looked at Eva with hazy interest. She was the busty cover of a how-to he’d half-read.

“
Good
boy,” Eva said to him after a sweet wink good-bye to Myra. “Keeping your mind on the job.”

“What job?” Dart said.

“Taking care of Sun.” Eva took a swallow of Scotch as Hakeem and Myra discussed the details of their earlier weed purchase. “If you’d ever do it.”

“This ain’t the place to discuss.” Then Dart pressed Eva’s wrist, as if to convey that what came next was an authentic request, apart from the mise-en-scène. “Talk with me about my so-called job,” D’Artagnan said, “later.”

Eva finished her drink.
I’m probably giving the baby defects
. She looked again to the bartender. “Tall glass of still water, please?”

Ron came up behind Eva, put a bearish hand on her back, and reached out the other to shake Dart’s. “How’s Sun?” Ron said as greeting. It was usually the first thing people said to Dart.

“She’s doing her thing,” he said. “Like always.” Dart returned Ron’s handshake in the robotic way it had been offered. Dart watched Ron move his hand to the top of Eva’s ass, watched as Eva, seemingly untouched, looked with weary eyes into the door-size mirror over the bar. Dart pushed Eva her water, looked at her with his brows in a frown.

In the mirror, Eva saw a huddle of young guys hustle up to seer-suckered Ron, urging him to go with them.

The looks on their faces
, Eva thought.
They want to be him so badly they’d eat shit. They are eating shit. But at least they’re eating it in the Bahamas
.

After a meaningful pinch to Eva’s waist, Ron made his way, handshaking all the time, backstage. He kissed Myra grandly, full on the lips. Hugged Hakeem like he was a long-lost cousin. Ron was to go onstage, introduce his already successful new act, and talk about his plans for them.

It was also time for Eva to check on Sunny. As Eva rose, Dart said, “I’ma stay with Myra for a minute.”

Myra turned when she heard her name. “Yes,
babeee
, see me to my table. I know Sunny’s got me someplace
nice
.”

Eva zigzagged through the crowd with as few Hollywood hugs as she could manage, and it still took fifteen minutes. Amid the jump and jabber of backstage, Sunny spoke to Eva from behind a paper screen attached to the ceiling. “Yes, I’m dressed,” Sunny said, annoyed with the rough setup. “Yes, I’m ready.”

Eva hated that Sunny could hear the loud applause for Ron’s group as they left the stage. His trio shouted out Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., “We all gotta come
together
now. We gotta do it for hip hop!”

How about we all gotta be not quite so wack? How about we all gotta stop biting ‘Pac’s style? How about we gotta realize—just like jazz, just like grunge, just like punk, just like what fools still call “rock”—hip hop is over, dead, finished, and we’re still in costume, in denial?

Then Myra and Dart came backstage. And Hakeem. And then Ron was nearby, backslapping. Eva barely heard him, but she heard him mutter to someone, “Tie-dye … rose petals, yoga. Same … barefoot Sunny shit. Played out.”

Fuck him. I got his tie-dye
.

“This is gonna work, right?” Sunny asked. Before Eva could answer, Sun said exactly what Eva would have: “These fools, they’ll see.”

So Eva left Sunny’s side to boss the crew’s placement of the yoga stuff. It was Sunny’s thing—to do, and to command audiences to stretch into yoga positions from the stage. In her heels and white
dress, Eva rearranged ropes and rolled mats. Pushed forward the microphone stand. Dart was spacey, as he could be sometime.
But he could at least help me make sure the set is right. Is this what it is to be associate GM?
It was all Eva knew: to do. To overdo. To keep her bat high and her eye on every ball in the vicinity. She dusted her hands on the back of her outfit.

Sun’s small band trudged onstage, bulky and uncomfortable looking in baggy black pants and huge work shirts. For the giant cones of incense Sunny usually burned, tall white urns were placed onstage. All this was done, purposefully, with the stage lights up.

The convention chairman came over and told Eva it was time. He was a spry eighty and owned a tiny, trendsetting soul station outside Cleveland. Eva looked at Dart. He got it, and with his biggest voice, began to clear backstage.

“EVERYBODY
out.” Dart was even louder than usual. In his regular tones he said to Eva, “Giving it my best ‘cause it’s my last time around.”

But Eva barely acknowledged Dart’s usual escape plans because her ears were tuned to Myra’s voice. “Drama queen Sunny,” Myra cooed to a colleague. “Behind that paper like the Queen of Sheba.”

“Sunny needs backstage
CLEAR. NOW.”
The audience could hear Dart, which was a large part of the point. His bottomless voice was such that even Myra and Hakeem scuttled off.

Sunny’s band silenced their tune-up when Eva stepped onstage to catcalls. It took only two flashing camera bulbs to get her mind right.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Eva said coolly into the microphone, “I give you Roadshow Records’ number one artist for the last two years in a row. I give you one of the best singer-songwriters of our time. I give you a two-time Grammy winner. I give you a two-time
Soul Train
Award winner. I give you an American Music Award winner, and an MTV Music Video Award winner.” Swingy and confident, Eva delivered her spiel like the pro she’d become after thirteen years in the record business. Plus she’d seen her father perfect pitches for everything from juicers to desert real estate.
Don’t convince anyone of anything
, he used to say.
Say it like you’re saying grass is green. Say it half-exasperated, but like you’re gracious enough to remind them of the
obvious. Then they’re indebted
. “I give you an artist,” Eva continued after a contrived sigh, “grateful to all her friends at urban and Top Forty radio, grateful to MTV and BET, grateful to the urban press and the pop press.” Eva took a big, exaggerated breath.
“Ladies
and
gentlemen
, I give you the woman who showed you the way to a
Bliss Unknown
. Who introduced you to
Poems on Various Subjects
. A young woman, who, after a debut that remained in the number one slot for fourteen weeks, remained in the top ten for another
forty-three
. A singer-songwriter who has sold
thirty-seven million
albums worldwide. Ladies and gentlemen of radio, I give you a—”