Boss Lady (15 page)

I answered, “You never know. The next one may be the one.”

“Please,” Tracy commented. “But you're right. That's why we have to make time to see every last person.” So we got right back to work until we had seen them all—we finally finished at nine o'clock.

“You mean to tell me we have to get back up tomorrow and do this all over again?” Maddy asked. We were all helping to clean up the facility.

“Yup,” my cousin answered. “But you knew that already. Otherwise, we wouldn't have booked the hotel rooms for a week.”

That was all she needed to say to shut Maddy's mouth. We were all there to take care of the business of
Flyy Girl,
and that was it.

“So, you're actually gonna do it, hunh? You're gonna make a movie out of our lives?” someone asked Tracy from behind.

I turned and spotted Mercedes. I figured it was her. I knew her voice from her phone calls to L.A., but I had never actually met her before. She had cut her hair into a short bob, but you could tell that it could grow long. It was straight and soft with no perm needed. And she still had a look of distinction in her face, although it was a little rough around the edges. Her hardened eyes proved that she had lived a serious life, yet she had remained attractive in her brown skin.

Tracy asked her, “How long have you been here?”

“For about the last hour. I heard it was crazy crowded in here though. I didn't want to come in the middle of all of that.”

Tracy nodded. “Yeah, it was.”

Mercedes said, “I like the shirts and hats. Who designed them?”

“My girl Charmaine from L.A.”

All of my girls were watching and listening in silence. I think they
already knew who it was. They were putting the pieces together from Mercedes's grand entrance, her life story comments, her jaded personality, and her physical appearance. We were all sizing her up against my cousin's book. Mercedes was the high-stakes girl we had all read about, and she was standing right there in front of us. She wasted no time in getting my cousin's attention either.

“Can I talk to you for a minute, Tracy?”

It sounded so obvious that it was surreal. I could just imagine Mercedes asking Tracy for money to do a film that revealed painful parts of her own life. And they were indeed painful. But after Tracy had agreed to write Mercedes a check for the down payment on her house in Yeadon, how dare she extort her for more money?

I didn't have any proof of this as they spoke in private, but I was surely planning to ask Tracy about it afterward.

“Is that who I think it is?” Alexandria whispered to me.

“In the flesh,” I told her.

“It is?” Jasmine whispered to Alexandria. Sasha and Maddy were standing close by her as we all prepared to take the limo back to our hotel.

Alexandria nodded her head to them. “Yup.”

Tracy broke away from her private conversation with Mercedes and said, “Okay, we'll talk later then.”

“Aw'ight,” Mercedes mumbled as she headed off.

We were all itching to ask Tracy what had been said, but none of us dared to start that conversation.

Everyone helped to wrap up the camera equipment and lug everything back to the vans. Then we took the limo for the ride back down Broad Street toward downtown. Robin rode in the limo with us, and she was the only one with enough guts to ask Tracy the big question out in the open.

“So, that was the infamous Mercedes?”

We all looked on in curiosity for an answer to the obvious.

“Her character speaks volumes, doesn't it?” Tracy answered with a question. She seemed to be staring into the multicolored night-lights of the limo.

“What did she ask you?” Jasmine asked before I could. However, I had planned to do so in private.

Tracy didn't even look at Jasmine.

She said, “Some things are better left alone.”

“That's what she said about the movie? So, she doesn't want you to do it?”

Jasmine was asking the very questions racing through my head.

Tracy told her sternly, “I'm talking about
you,
Jasmine. Now let it be.”

That was answer enough for us. Whatever Mercedes had said, it had definitely gotten under Tracy's skin.

So we rode the rest of the way down Broad Street in a whisper.

W
hen Tracy called me to her hotel suite that night, I knew she was pissed before I entered the room. So I prepared myself for a solid ear drumming. I was aware that she may need someone she could trust to vent to, and I was the one. But when she let me into her room, she was already on the cell phone letting her steam roll all out.

“Look, I've been away before and it hasn't caused you this much of a problem. So why are you acting like this now?”

She shut the door behind me and paid me no mind. So I quietly walked in and took a seat in the comfortable black leather chair behind her executive desk. There was a beautiful skyline view of downtown Philadelphia from her room. And I must say, it was very nice to be there.

I looked around the floor trying to preoccupy myself while my cousin argued over the phone. She had boxes of bios, photos, and attached notes to the talent she liked. On top of the desk, she had a box of tapes from the cameraman's casting footage that she was still watching on the room's nineteen-inch color television set. So I went ahead and watched some of the tape.

“So it's over, just like that?” she asked into the phone.

I wasn't really trying to listen, but how could I not? Tracy was right there in the same room with me, and I was shocked by her conversation. I realized by then that she was talking to her friend out in L.A., but I didn't believe that he would be that serious about breaking up with her that soon. He had to have planned it all along.

“Now you know that's out of the question. Dalvin, what kind of ultimatum is that? You know how much this project means to me.”

Tracy paced the room in front of me while they spoke.

Was she giving up her man for the
Flyy Girl
movie? I felt bad
again. But what kind of man gives up a woman just because she has the drive to accomplish the things she wants to do? I don't think I would have liked a man like that for myself. I know I wanted to do a lot of things in life, and no man was going to stop me from doing them.

“Okay, well, let's just discuss this when I get back to L.A.”

Now she sounded like she was trying to compromise.

“Well, there's really nothing to talk about right now, because I'm going to be here for a week. And you know that already. I just can't up and leave. How would that look?”

She made sense to me, but her friend made no sense at all. I didn't even have to hear his argument. It sounded like your typical male ego tripping. He wanted his woman home, barefoot, and naked.

The next minute, Tracy looked at the phone and then over at me without ever saying good-bye.

“He hung up?” I asked her. The question just slipped out of my mouth.

She said, “Of course he did. And he's being a complete asshole about this.”

I didn't want to add to anything so I held my tongue. It sounded like she had the right assessment to me. I didn't want to break up my cousin's relationship, but her friend was not my friend, and Tracy was not married to the man. Therefore, I had no loyalty to him.

She shook her head and said, “Anyway . . . I'll deal with him later.” Then she took another minute to gather her thoughts.

“I can't believe that damn Mercedes today,” she commented. “That's why I didn't want to get any of my friends and family involved in this thing yet. I wanted these first few days to be just us looking at talent.
Period.”

She took a deep breath and said, “In the process of making every film, there are a million different challenges to overcome. You try to predict most of those challenges, but you still end up improvising due to things you can't control.”

She was speaking from experience. I had already been around the process with her last two films. They may not have done well at the box office but they both got done. So I was perfectly poised in my role of assistance and support.

I asked my cousin, “Do you mind if I ask you what Mercedes said?” I was still curious.

Tracy slowly nodded to me. She said, “Well, you know she never liked me writing about her asking for a down payment check for her house in Yeadon in
For the Love of Money.
She said it was embarrassing. Now she's saying that a movie that may show her drug addiction days as a teenager may not only get her fired from her job, but may also inhibit her from getting other jobs in the future.”

I joked and said, “Halle Berry's career blew up after portraying a crackhead in
Jungle Fever.”

It was bad taste in the present situation, but it had slipped out of my mouth anyway.

My cousin looked at me and said, “This is not a fictional portrayal, Vanessa. Mercedes has some valid points.”

“So, you just take out her drug and tricking scenes, and just have your characters talk about it,” I suggested too quickly.

Tracy said, “And then I'd lose one of the most dramatic character arcs in the script. That scene affects everybody. You can't talk about something like that. You
have
to show it. But that's really not the point, Vanessa. Mercedes knows I can't take her scene out. She's trying to use her concerns to get more money out of me. If anything, people would see how she's changed her life around. I did a lot of crazy things, too. We all did, and we'll all share in the risk, pain, joy, understanding, et cetera in this movie.”

“You won't all share the money though,” I blurted out. I don't know what the hell was wrong with me that night. I was really being insensitive. Some assistant I was.

But instead of getting upset with me for telling the blunt truth, Tracy smiled.

She said, “That's always the dilemma in doing a real-life project that affects more than one person.”

“They get away with it in these reality shows,” I commented.

“That's not real content,” Tracy responded. “Those shows are as phony as they wanna be. And those people are all sacrificing their privacies for a few thousand dollars and a magazine article.”

Tracy hit the nail right on the head.

I was supposed to be in there listening, but I guess I was just too
damn tired at the moment. That's when you start yawning and rambling on at the mouth—and I was doing both.

My cousin noticed it and said, “Okay, I think you're a little tired now.”

After all, it was approaching midnight on the East Coast, which I was no longer used to, and I had been up since six o'clock in the morning with no time for a nap. I was wondering how Tracy could do it. I guess that's why she was the Flyy Girl and I was only the little cousin. We could all relate to some of her drive, energy, passion, and flair, but only she possessed it to use on a regular basis.

I said, “I'm sorry,” and tried my best not to yawn when I said it. But it didn't work.

“Go on and go to bed, girl. You gotta get up early tomorrow morning and do it all over again anyway,” she told me. “And make sure those girls of yours are in bed, too.” Then she grabbed me by the arm and escorted me back to the door.

*  *  *

When I got off of the elevator on my floor, I spotted Maddy talking to one of the camera crew guys from New York. They were standing in the hallway outside of her room, two doors down from mine.

“Speak of the devil,” the New Yorker commented to me.

He was a short and stocky Columbia University student named Shamor.

“So who was talking about me?” I joked to him.

“We both were,” he answered.

Maddy only smiled in my direction.

“Good things or bad?” I asked them both.

Shamor spoke up again before Maddy could. “Only good things, of course.”

“So I'm not a devil then,” I told him with a grin.

He shook it off and said, “It's only a figure of speech. Don't take it personal.”

I didn't plan to shoot the breeze with them. I was already tired. So as soon as I reached my door and pulled out my key, I let them know.

“Well, I'll see you guys tomorrow. We have another long and early one,” I commented.

Maddy finally spoke up. “Don't we know it.”

“So, we'll see you bright and early tomorrow then.” Shamor sounded extra chipper for midnight. I guess it was a New York thing. They slept much later than everyone else.

As soon as I walked into my room, I heard a good amount of noise coming from my girls in the room beside me. I was still tired, but then I got curious. I heard male voices in the room with them. I debated about letting them be, but Tracy had told me to look out for my crew. So I took a deep breath, gathered an extra tank of energy, and walked over to their room to see what was up. Maddy and Shamor were out of the hallway by then.

I knocked on the door.

Jasmine looked through the peephole and said, “Oh, it's your cousin Vanessa.” I could tell it was her from her voice and her quick steps to the door.

She opened the door, wearing a long, gold Los Angeles Lakers jersey as her nighty.

I looked at her Lakers jersey and said, “Good idea. We should do Flyy Girl jerseys like that.”

“I'd wear that,” she promised.

“Of course you would,” I told her.

I walked into the room and spotted my infamous, girl-chasing cousin Jason sitting up in the sofa with one of his boys. They both had freshly braided hairstyles.

“What, did y'all just get your heads done?” I asked them. The braids looked very much intact, like they jumped straight out of the braiding chair.

Jason's small-eyed friend said, “My hair stays done.” That's all I needed to hear from him to know that he was another skirt-chaser. He just had the look. However, two brown pretty boys up in my girls' room at close to midnight when we had work to do in the morning didn't sit well with my conscience. And the fact that it was my cousin allowed me to be bolder about it than I would have been had I not known them.