Boss Lady (13 page)

When we finally climbed into the limo, Jasmine said, “Oh my God, I'm loving this. This is how life is supposed to be.” Then she joked and said, “Tracy, can you adopt me? You can carry me around like luggage and I'll just sit on the floor or in a corner and stay out of your way. I promise.”

We all laughed at her crazy behind as we drove off from the airport.

“Now, I'm not even gonna comment on that,” Maddy told us.

Tracy ignored it and got us all situated.

She said, “Now, I hate to give you girls a curfew, because I know you think you're grown and everything, but while I have you out here
with me, I don't want to be looking for any of you. So I want you to all stay together, no matter what. And when I call Vanessa's cell phone, somebody better answer it.”

We were all older than eighteen, but Tracy had a point. We were on her time, doing a job for her that we all wanted to do. So we had to agree to her rules.

Sasha was the oldest at twenty-one, and she spoke up first.

“You're the boss. I'm just happy to be working with you. But I do want to visit my family in Delaware.”

“And you'll probably take Jasmine with you, right?” my cousin asked her.

“If she wants to come, yeah.”

“Oh course I want to come,” Jasmine told her. “You've been talking about Delaware ever since I first met you.”

I looked at Alexandria to see if she would go, but she shook her head and declined.

“I'll probably just get some rest tomorrow. I'm feeling jet lag,” she told us.

Tracy ran with that and spoke to Sasha and Jasmine. “Well, you two just let me know when you're going and when you're getting back,” she told them. “And keep that cell phone working.”

Sasha nodded to her. She said, “We'll probably go tomorrow morning and get back by the afternoon.”

“Wait a minute, how early tomorrow morning?” Jasmine asked Sasha.

We all laughed again. Jasmine was not a morning person.

Tracy looked at Alexandria for about the first time and spoke to her individually.

She said, “Well, this is it, girl. Can you handle Philadelphia?”

Alexandria looked my cousin straight in her eyes and said, “Who, me?”

“Do you see me looking at anyone else?” Tracy asked her.

Alexandria laughed it off and looked a little unsure of herself.

She said, “Yeah, I'm ready.”

“Okay,” my cousin responded. “I'll say no more.”

Then she got on her cell phone and started making calls regarding our arrival at the hotel. Tracy had a New York–based casting agent
and camera crew that would be joining us at the hotel, and we all planned to set up for the casting calls that would go on that week at Freedom Theater.

*  *  *

We arrived at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Philadelphia at 7:32
PM
, and Tracy's New York team was already waiting there for us.

“Hey, Tracy, are you ready for all of this?” an ebony brown sister in short dreadlocks asked my cousin. She was wearing the rust-colored Flyy Girl Ltd. shirt with blue jeans and brown leather sandals. By then, Charmaine had come up with various different styles of shirts, but they all had the same summer color schemes with rust as the wild card.

“Hey, Robin. I'm as ready as I'm gonna get with this monster,” Tracy told her.

“Well, I love these Flyy Girl shirts and hats you're working,” Robin stated. She spun around to show it off. She said, “You're gonna make a
killing
with this line. I wish I had thought of it first.”

Tracy laughed and began to introduce us.

“This is my cousin Vanessa Tracy Smith, who's been living with me in L.A. since her last few years in high school. And if it wasn't for her bothering me about this damn thing, I definitely wouldn't be here right now.”

“So, you're the one who finally pushed her into doing it?” Robin asked me with a handshake and a smile. Robin Antoinette was the casting director who would be running the show with Tracy that week, to select all of the possible stars and extras.

“I figured it was gonna happen sooner or later, I was just pushing for sooner,” I spoke up and told her. I wanted to back down from taking too much of the credit though. It could be a real headache for me if things didn't work out in the end. But there I was in the middle of things.

Tracy introduced Robin to my crew, and Robin introduced us to hers. They were mostly personal assistants and film students who were still in film school from New York.

Tracy said, “Okay, first thing first. Let's get all the girls up to their rooms, let them sort out their outfits for the week, and then while
they run along to South Street to play, we can go over our game plan and run it down to the girls for tomorrow.”

“Sounds like you got it all covered,” Robin stated.

“Well, let's jump to it then,” Tracy told her.

We all received the keys to our hotel rooms, dragged our luggage up on the elevators, picked out our Flyy Girl Ltd. shirts for the week, and got ready to go out to South Street to enjoy the sights and sounds of Philadelphia.

“Philadelphia, here I come,” Jasmine yelled into the night air as soon as we walked out of the hotel that evening.

“Yeah, so everybody get ready to cover your ears,” Maddy joked.

We giggled like the girls we were and started walking toward the weekend excitement on South Street.

F
irst thing Monday morning, Tracy had me accompany her to the radio station at Power 99 FM. But she had my girls report straight to Freedom Theater for instructions from Robin Antoinette and her casting crew. I was decked out in my Flyy Girl Ltd. baby-tee, the lime green one, with the matching hat and matching lime green pants. Tracy wore the rust-colored tee with black jeans and no hat.

“So you're finally doing the
Flyy Girl
movie?” Golden Boy was asking Tracy at the station. We were inside the live recording booth with the Power 99 morning team, minus Wendy Williams, who had moved on to her own syndicated show in New York.

Tracy answered, “First we need to find the right people to put in the movie.”

“You got a cameo spot for me?” the comedian Dee Lee asked her. “I can play a drug dealer with a sense of humor. Only I don't sell no drugs, I sell jokes all day. And my jokes are so hot on the street, that they're addictive. Hell, you can do a whole movie off of that. Let me write that down for my own first movie.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” my cousin humored him.

I had never seen the Power 99 morning show team in person, but Dee Lee was as light as I was with tight curly hair, and Golden Boy looked just like his name. He had golden brown skin and brown eyes. There were also two young women on the show since replacing Wendy Williams, but I didn't know who they were.

“So you're having a casting call today at nine o'clock?” they asked Tracy.

“At the Freedom Theater on Broad Street,” my cousin filled in.

“And just any old body can come and try out for the movie?” Dee Lee asked.

“Anyone can come, but we're seeing agency actors and actresses first, and then it's first-come first-serve with everyone else.”

Dee Lee nodded. “So if you're not represented by an agency, then you could be standing there in line for like two hours.”

Tracy answered, “Do you want to be in a movie or not? I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do. I have to be there all day long. And when you're actually shooting a movie, you're there on the set for months. So you might as well get used to waiting now.”

“I heard that,” they all responded.

“I see you're also starting a Flyy Girl clothing line,” one of the young women on the show commented. They had already commented on it when we first walked in, but now they were bringing it up on the air.

Tracy smiled and pointed to me. I had a few of the Flyy Girl Ltd. shirts in a large carry bag.

She said, “Yes, I am, and we brought you guys a few samples to sport for us.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you. Freebies are always nice,” the women hosts responded with smiles as I handed them the shirts.

Tracy said, “We'll have shirts and hats for sale at the casting calls, but we only have a limited supply, so get it while it's hot. That's why it's called Flyy Girl Ltd. We're not into the one-size-fits-all bag. We're going after the tailor-made audience who like one-of-a-kind apparel.”

“So you're still on your hustle,” Dee Lee stated. “Oh, I know you're from Philly now, girl.”

“You know that's right,” Tracy responded with a chuckle. She said, “But a lot of my hustle now is coming straight from my little cousin right here, Vanessa. And she's straight out of North Philly.”

Dee Lee said, “Oh, that's my neck of the woods. What street?” he asked me.

I was nearly ready to faint. I was in there just to assist my cousin, not to be put on the spot like that.

I stepped up to the big black microphone with my heart racing and said, “Twenty-second and Girard.”

Dee Lee started smiling wider. He joked and said, “I probably

passed you standing at the bus stop in the cold a hundred times and didn't even offer you a warm ride.”

He had us all laughing in there.

I said, “That's all right. I wouldn't have known who you were anyway. I just know your name and your voice,” I told him.

He joked again and said, “Yeah, I could have been some light-skinned maniac. Your momma wouldn't let you jump in the car with me.”

“Probably not,” I told him.

“So, outside of
Flyy Girl,
are you working on anything else right now, something you can give us the scoop on before you film it?” they asked her.

“Well, to tell you the truth, my last couple of Hollywood films were not all that much to talk about,” Tracy told them.

Dee Lee jumped all over that. He said, “Well now, I wasn't gonna say nothin' about it, but since you brought it up. What the hell were you thinking? What were you trying to be,
Sheena of the Urban Jungle
? I saw that
Road Kill
movie at the dollar screen and couldn't believe it. I mean now,
Led Astray
was good. That was good. But
Road Kill . . .”

“I kind of liked that movie,” one of the female hosts spoke up. “We don't have to always be the damsel in distress. We can kick butt, too.”

Dee Lee said, “You know what, I really think we need to leave that kicking butt to the Asians, or
The Matrix
movies.”

To make a long story short, we did our thing on Power 99's morning show, and got out of there to make it down to Freedom Theater.

*  *  *

“What do you think?” Tracy asked me after the show.

I was still thinking about her giving me so much credit for what she was doing. I mean, I was flattered by it, but it was really not expected.

I said, “I didn't know you were gonna put me on the spot like that?”

“Why not? I'm only telling them the truth. You did push me into this.”

“Yeah, but . . .” I didn't know what else to say, so I thought of a way where I could make her think twice about it.

I said, “So, since it was my idea, what percentage of the profits do I get?”

I felt for sure that my cousin would change her tune after I said something like that. But she surprised me again when she said, “Name your price.”

I looked at her and was stunned, but Tracy didn't appear to be joking.

“Are you serious?”

“Name your price,” she repeated.

I took a deep breath and thought of a fair number for a minor producer.

“Ten percent.”

“Of what?” she asked me next.

I was stunned again.

“Of what?” I thought it was obvious. I said, “Of the movie.”

“And what about the clothing line?”

I thought about it and said, “Yeah, that too.”

A lot of it was my idea. I mean, Tracy had finally decided to run with things, but . . .

“And the television rights?” she asked me.

I wasn't even thinking about all of that. She was far ahead of me.

She said, “If you're gonna play the role of power, then you have to understand what you're getting into. You have to think about everything. Now, I'm gonna hook you up, Vanessa, but only because you're my little cousin, and I want you to do well. But in real-life business, you get everything that you need to get on paper before you press any
GO
buttons. You hear me? So I'm glad we're having this conversation. Because I really believe that you have what it takes to be a real power broker. Even Susan noticed that in you.”

She said, “You're a lot like me in some ways, Vanessa, but you're totally different in others. Like, you're not really a show-off like I was at your age, but you definitely want to be in control. And you're much more pushier than I was. I would beg and scheme for a lot of the things that I wanted, but
you
 . . . you just make your own way. Even how you gathered your group of girlfriends. You're
younger than most of them, but you can't tell, because you always know what you're doing.

“So yeah, I give you a lot of the credit for this,” my cousin told me. “Because you deserve it, and I see something in you that I want to work with. So this is really more about me developing you than it is me. Now don't get me wrong. I'm gonna get mine. You can best believe that. But at the same time, you're family, and I want to build you into someone powerful. Then you can continue to help me in whatever it is that I need to do, just like Susan and her family do. Black people don't do that enough. And that was one of my main reasons for finally deciding to do this. I want to get
you
ready.”

I was speechless. I sat there feeling all clammy and good inside. But I was scared, too. I mean, it was one thing for my cousin to do what she was doing with me as her sidekick, but once she made it known that she was watching me, that seemed to change everything. Because now I
knew
that she was watching.