Bliss (35 page)

Still, Eva had hope. “Hey, now,” she said. “Hungry?”

“I’m ’sleep.” He kept his eyes closed.

“You know what?”

“No.”

Eva was undeterred. “We have to go home at some point.”

“Maybe.”

“We gotta think about how different things’ll be. How we can do something that lets us live a little bit like we’re still here on Cat.”

“And how are we living?” Dart opened his eyes. They were dewy and alert. “Here on Cat.”

“More … free here, I guess. More relaxed.” Eva took a deep breath as best she could with her clogged lungs and nose. “We could do something big together,” Eva said to Dart in a charge. “Something businesswise.”

“It would be difficult if not impossible,” Dart said. Then he got up from the bed. He was unshowered and unshaven, but Eva took his verticality as a good sign.

“But how difficult? We could start our own thing.” Eva was making it up as she went along. It felt good. “A management company. We start off with Sun as a client and everyone else will show up. People hate me, but they love you. Perfect combination.”

“Who’s gonna deal with the clerical stuff?”

Clerical stuff?
Eva was nonplussed.

“Answering phones,” Dart said, as if he had to define
clerical
for her. “The files that need to be kept.” He shook his head. “It would be a lot.”

No fucking way he is serious
. “We could have him at work, Dart. The baby. Or I could work a lot from home.”
Working from home
was a baffling concept to Eva, like
living abroad
or
having a baby
or
waiting on opportunity
or
all things being equal
but she grasped at it. “I’d be stressed,” Eva went on quickly, “but not as much as at Roadshow. We could be superselective about who we take on, and we could superserve those clients. Charge a higher percentage for stuff beyond just old ideas of management. See what I’m saying? Do a lot of cross-pollination.” She covered her mouth for a big cough. “Everybody wants a clothing line now, wants to make movies. We’d set that kinda shit up. I can get out from under Seb’s thumb.”
Maybe I’m dreaming but I think I can have my son and have a life. I can be somebody’s mother. Women do it all the time
.

“You know how to do that. Start a company.” It wasn’t doubt in Eva’s ability that made Dart’s tone so dreary and snide. It was his absolute faith in her.

“No! Of course I don’t.”
Of course I do. Or I will
. Eva was unfazed by his resistance.
If it’s fear, okay. That can be overcome. If I need to tailor
the plan more to his needs, okay
. “But I know how to find someone who knows how. Come on!” she said like she was inviting him to chase down an ice cream truck. “It’ll be fun.”

“This is the kind of stuff you think about. Even here.”

Her leg hurt, but Eva’s blood was flowing fast, she could feel oxygen in her brain and heart, and Dart was erecting dams. “It’s what I’m thinking about
right now
,” she said, “what I should have thought about a while ago. And we can get Pritz. Pritz’ll be so down. With you and her on the international stuff—oh my God! What could we call it?”

“Call what.”

“Our company?”
Duh!

“Call it Eva’s Party,” Dart dropped like a stone. “Call it Eva’s Big Idea.”

She was immune to his disdain. She saw a challenge. A game, a possibility of triumph. “Something better than that,” Eva said, unkempt eyebrows scrunched in brainstorm mode.
Something that works on different levels. Like Sonrisa—sounds like “sunrise,” means “smile.” Sun was on point with hers
.

“Call it ‘New,’ “Dart said with even less gusto. “New Management.”

“YES!” Eva screamed with the thrill of it. Then she coughed so much she had to run to the bathroom. Then she stood in the doorframe and said hoarsely, “Like, ‘under new management.’ Like, we’re
brand-new
. New Management!”

“Works on a few different levels,” he said.

Eva took his perception for collaboration, and she cleared her throat. “Gonna be
so
fly. Office in Manhattan? Or L.A.? Or do we do something crazy, like set up in Miami? Or San Francisco? Or Santa Fe?”

“Not New Mexico.”

Why the fuck not?
She was caught up in a dream that seemed more real to her than Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Audrey and perpetual strolls along Fernandez Bay. “I’m serious. I used to live out that way.”

“I thought you used to live near Carmel.” Like he was catching her in a lie. Eva saw him looking at her with hawkish curiosity, searching for faults, for weaknesses, for a place to strike.

Eva was used to that, though. Lots of men looked at her like that,
threatened by her when she was enthusiastic and brainy and pretty in the same moment. So she kept on. “I lived a lot of places. Lotta creative stuff goes on in the Southwest. Good spas, too. Outside of travel, cost of doing business would be very, very low.” Eva’s mind was clicking. The songs in her head were her own and without words.

“Who wants to go to New Mexico to see their manager?”

“Have you heard of phone?
E-mail?
FAX? And when clients
do
have to come, they’ll
want
to come. Desert’s beautiful winter and summer. Be a real getaway from the melee, to come to the home offices.” Eva loved the way “home offices” sounded. With her palm on her belly, she put a tissue to her nose and blew as hard as she could.

“Desert gets up to a hundred ten in the summer,” Dart said. “Even at night it stays in the nineties.” Like he was the Weather Channel.

What is he talking about?
“No one says they have to trudge through it on foot, Dart.” His disinterest had curdled to derision, and Eva could taste it. He sounded like Audrey had at the beginning, leery of Eva’s self-possession. Mad at her for being her. Eva felt suddenly like she was talking too loudly, like her body and her self were lit bright and hurting his eyes.

So she turned herself down, spoke to Dart like she liked to in bed after sex—quietly, and like a sixth grader to a man. “It’ll be relaxing for people sick of L.A. and New York. You might like New Mexico, Dart. Your own hours, too. Freedom.” Eva was irritated, but she kept it under. “No beach, but swimming pools. Ranches.”

“You should do it,” Dart said.

“We’re gonna.” Eva’s voice stretched back to enthusiasm and brightness, but the eye contact between them was iced and set. “It doesn’t have to be Santa Fe, but damn, Santa Fe would just be so
extra
. Get a place with a few acres. Maybe some animals even, for the baby.”
I’m tripping now, I know. Going from Abortion Queen to Farm Mom. But you gotta overshoot. You gotta imagine. It’s the only way I’ve ever gotten anything or anyplace. Picturing it. Mapping it out. Holding the bat right. Keeping my eye on the goddamn ball
.

“You should do it,” he said again, voice lowered a semitone, like a perfect flat was what he was going for.

“By myself.”
I heard you the first time. I got it now. Gotchyou
.

“Everything you touch,” Dart said sharply, “turns to gold.”

Platinum, if you know my story, Hater. Platinum
. She wanted to say those words to him in the coldest, slowest, Dart-like voice she could muster. Instead, she asked, still glaring at him, but like the question was incidental, “Is that how my life is?” Eva thought of the sound of his sotto voce in her ear when he was touching her body and it pissed her off.

“That’s what I see.”

“Because you don’t look,” Eva said, enunciating the
k
like she was trying to kill it.
I thought you saw me
.

“Maybe I’m so in my own shit, only your shiny days stand out.”

Take your fucking medication
. “You know goddamn well I got my other days,” Eva said.
Your real medication
.

“No one sees those, though. And you’re already talking about leaving Cat,” he said like she was a traitor. “About
work
.”

About life
. “I’m a heathen for that? I’m Evil Eva?” Her voice had graduated sixth grade and gone straight to associate general manager of Roadshow.
Nigga, I live in the real world
.

“Whatever you are, you’ll land on your feet. You’re built for this—shot callin’, big ballin’. Music. Business. Go, Eva! Stack your chips. Start your business. Hire your nanny.”

She stepped from the doorframe back into the bedroom. “Your point,” Eva said slowly, “was that no one sees me on my sad days. My point is that you have. I been sad the whole time I’ve been here. I was sad at Vince the Voice.” She coughed and wiped her nose and hated the imperfection and weakness of it.

“I spoke to that already,” he said, pulling on a T-shirt. “I know that trick—calm, courteous repetition. I know it from you. Don’t manage me. I don’t want to fight with you.”

Eva was angry now. “You don’t want to do anything.”

“I want to live.”

“On what?”
Shit
, Eva thought.
For what?

“How I live’ll take care of itself.”

What are you? Nineteen?
“I thought you wanted to do this with me—”

“I’m still glad about the baby. He’s a blessing of the most holy kind. But it’s not like you need me. To help you do your living, I mean.”

“Why would I bring all this up,” Eva said, earnestly searching, “talking about ‘we’?”

“You think you’re talking to somebody else, I guess. Some steamroller, empire builder.”

Eva stared at him.

“I’m saying, Eva—you know me.” Dart sat on the bed, and Eva took it as a softening.

She reached past her anger to her desire for change and her want for Dart to fit into her new plan. She sat next to him, picked up his hand. Eva was awkward and sincere. “But you’d be so good—”

He cut her short, his voice heartbroken and livid and low. “Was I good at managing Sun?” Dart pulled his hand from under hers. “I wasn’t even managing her—I was
road
managing her. Getting her here, getting her there.
You
damn near manage Sun, and you’re with the label. I book hotels. I wake her up for shows. Why you think she’s got Vic and Swan around her? Why does she have Hawk on payroll? Why you think you’ve been able to lead her around by the nose? Because no one is really handling her BUSINESS. I love my sister, but I was in it to see the world. All the places I’ve been? I SAW those places, Eva. I EXPERIENCED them. It wasn’t about the money. That’s why I never took any. It was about the music. About Deirdre Addison. I feel blessed, when my head lets me feel blessed, to have been down for the ride. It’s all I want—to feel things. To try and have my mind right, so I can. You spin gold from straw, Eva. That’s your gig. You and Ron’s and Hakeem’s, Myra’s, and even Sunny’s. Me, though? D’Artagnan? I’m named for courage and loyalty, yeah, but know this, Superstar: I am not the one.”

Eva heard someone at the door, and she heard her cell phone ringing. She hurried toward both, and there was Édouard handing her the cell.

“I answered it,” he said apologetically. “It’s a man, says he’s your father.”

Did you do it for love?
Did you do it for money?
Did you do it for spite?
Did you think you had to, honey?

—“THE LONG RUN,” lyrics and
music by Don Henley

“S
weetheart. Where are you?”

Eva was on the Rowe’s patio. She heard faint music from down the beach, then a Miami deejay announcing cash prizes and an all-expense-paid stay at the South Beach Marriott.
Hits from the seventies, eighties, and nineties
, the hysterical jock said.
All hits, all the time
. “I’m in the Bahamas, Dad.”

“The tropics!” he said, like he was confirming an old victory. Eva’s father had never been to “the tropics,” and it slapped her that he was speaking as though reminiscent. “Beautiful! Work or play?”

Good question. Neither
. “Work.” It was what he understood best from her. “What’s up?”

“That’s my girl—to the point, to the point. I understand, yes I do. I need, though, for you to excuse yourself from your business associates. Find a place where you can have a personal moment.”

A personal moment?
Eva slid closed the glass door. “Done, Dad.” The Miami deejay played a song Eva hated.
Number one pop hit for Def Jam Records
, went the computer in Eva’s mind:
Montell Jordan’s 1995 “This Is How We Do It.”
The radio was barely audible.
You gotta get your groove on/Before you go get paid
. It bothered Eva like a mosquito.

“Your mother has died, Eva.”

Stepmother
. “How?”
Damn, Gayle’s dead?

“I’m not a hundred percent certain. A … friend of hers called, someone given my name and your name, and told to—”

Eva walked to a chair and sat on it. She put her hand on her belly in what had become, so quickly, a reflex.
Oh. My mother has died
.

“—reach out to one of us if anything happened to her. I guess the man felt it was best to call me. ‘Laine’d kept up with my movements, such as they were. She kept up with yours, too.”

At the sound of her mother’s name, Eva coughed and tears rolled down her face. She spit snot on the ground next to her. Eva thought her father must have much more to say, so she remained silent. It was a trick she’d learned from spying on the better magazine journalists as they interviewed her artists. Just let the open space hang. Most times, the artist would fill it, and that’s from where the best, most damaging quotes would be pulled. Eva almost always checked in on Sunny’s interviews. She was too open with writers, too often saying or doing unsuitably revealing things.

But all her father said was “Sweetheart?” again. This was how he’d begun referring to Eva. With every upward move she made, with every thousand dollars Eva wired to the town—Laughlin, Nevada, aka Las Vegas Jr. for seniors—he and Gayle had finally settled in, her father treated her with more deference and less familiarity, with a pleased but complete bewilderment at her breezy autonomy and casual references to people whose songs were on the radio and whose bodies were (as her father put it) “two threads away from naked on the cable.”