Boss Lady (38 page)

Charmaine was being bluntly honest about using my cousin's popularity as a figurehead for the company, while declining Tracy's attempts to be a true businesswoman. I didn't know how I felt about that. I still respected my cousin as a businesswoman. She had the stuff of an owner. There was no question about it. Tracy got things popping.

I said, “So, you don't think it's good for Tracy to be too involved. You make it seem like she's going to be in the way.”

Charmaine looked at me a minute and collected her thoughts before she spoke.

She said, “Vanessa, you have to understand that your cousin is more of an artist than anything. Her whole life has been about getting things started. She jumps into things with both feet on fire. And fortunately,
a lot of things have gone her way. So she has been able to make a lot of things happen seemingly overnight. But that's not the way most businesses are run. Real business is about an everyday grind. Does Tracy have an everyday grind mentality for business? Honestly? No. But that doesn't mean she can't learn it. I just don't know if she's ready or willing to do that right now.”

She said, “Even now, if you notice, Tracy's decision to finally do this clothing line was all of a sudden. I mean, she just called me up out of the blue and set up this office, after I had been asking her to do this for two and a half years. And I believe that had more to do with you than anything else. So it's ironic that you and I are the only ones still at work over here. And I was just waiting for this conversation to happen.”

I just listened to her and heard her out.

She looked me in the eyes and said, “Now, do I consider Vanessa Tracy Smith an everyday grind kind of businessperson? Yes I do. And you have what it takes to run a company. Will you ever be as popular as your cousin? Probably not. People love Tracy's passionate flair. But not everyone can run a business like Donald Trump or P. Diddy, where they're out in front of the band blowing their horns. And that's actually not a good thing for most strong companies, because that lead horn becomes the focal point of the business and not the business itself.

“Like Sean John,” she mentioned. “It's a good, long-lasting clothing line because it's not called P. Diddy or Bad Boy. So it gets a chance to breathe away from the man's antics and public personality. That's what Flyy Girl Ltd. will need to do to survive from Tracy. So we have to remain strong whether she's successful with a new film or not. The clothing line will then become a real source of income, power, and stature by her allowing it to do what it needs to do away from her.”

I said, “So you're telling me that my cousin will benefit more by not being involved in the company?”

Charmaine said, “All we need is her launchpad and her capital, and we can run the business the way we need to on our own. And it will be better for all of us.”

I understood what she was saying, and it all made sense. But at the
same time, I was loyal to and respectful of my cousin, so I decided not to say any more about it until I had a chance to talk to Tracy about her own plans.

*  *  *

A few days after my conversation with Charmaine, I finally caught up with my cousin long enough to talk to her about everything. Tracy seemed to be running around and staying away from me on purpose for the majority of that first week back. But I caught her in the living room watching one of the reality shows on network TV. She was in some kick-around clothes with her feet up, eating ice cream, so I knew it was a good time to talk to her.

I sat beside her on the sofa and asked her how she was doing.

She nodded to me. “I'm good. I'm good.”

She sounded like she was trying hard to convince herself.

I hated to bug her about the progress on everything, but I needed to know that all of our excitement and hard work on the
Flyy Girl
projects were not meaningless.

“So, have any meetings been set up for you and Susan to talk to the studios about
Flyy Girl
?”

She nodded her head but didn't face me.

“Yeah, we, ah, have a few meetings set up for next week.”

She sounded too nonchalant for my liking.

I asked her, “Are they strong meetings, or just meetings?”

“There's no such thing as a strong meeting until you have them,” she answered me. “You could go from hot to cold from one meeting to the next. That's just how things go out here.”

“Well, you had a lot of hot meetings when you first moved out here,” I reminded her. It was all documented in her sequel book
For the Love of Money.

Tracy finally looked me in the eyes. She said, “No, I had hot and cold meetings then, too, but no one remembers the cold ones after you accomplish your goals. They only remember the winning meetings. But I had plenty of losses as well.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

She took a breath and answered, “I'm not
trying
to tell you,

Vanessa, I
am
telling you. Getting a movie made is all a process, and a very tedious one at that.”

I changed the subject and asked her, “What about the clothing line?”

She said, “It's a good idea. But I have to find more time to make it work. The movie would really launch it though. So I'm trying to tie the two of them together.”

“What about before we do the movie?”

“We keep the clothing line small and move forward.”

“You're not trying to have the clothing lead into the movie? That could be an idea that could get the movie deal done faster,” I told her.

Tracy said, “Vanessa, you don't sell merchandise before you shoot a movie, you sell it after the movie is in the tank. Your favorite guy, Spike Lee, is the king of that. He'll promote whatever other product he's selling while he's getting attention for his films, or whatever other artistic controversy he's involved in.”

“So, what, we shut down Flyy Girl Ltd. until the movie happens? We just sold a bunch of stuff at the casting call with no movie,” I reminded her.

“And that was a very successful test run of what will happen if the movie deal gets done,” she responded. She looked at me a little harder and said, “So I'm gonna say it again, we'll keep the clothing line growing small until we have the movie as a true launchpad for it. That's the way all smart businesspeople do things. It's just like staying away from the media until you have a new project you're pushing. That way you maximize all of your goals.”

She said, “You don't just throw money into marketing and promoting a product that you haven't properly maximized your attention on. That's good business 101. You kill two or three birds with one stone. You don't use three stones to kill one bird. Because before you know it, those three stones will become twenty. And that damn bird will still be sitting there.”

She continued, “That's how so many athletes and entertainers end up going broke. Everybody wants to use your damn money for their own pipe dreams. So you need to take a few business classes while you're over there at UCLA to really study how business works.”

“Good idea,” I responded with a half grin.

I was really getting confused. Charmaine made a lot of sense, but so did Tracy. In the end, I understood that I was going to have to be patient to see how things played out. I had no choice.

I watched a little bit of the reality TV show with Tracy in silence before I stood up to retire to my room.

Tracy studied my sullen mood and said, “You have a lot of great ideas and enthusiasm, Vanessa, but you're gonna have to learn to have patience and poise, too. I've already gone through that phase where I'm running around like a madwoman out here, and that can make you old real fast. So learn to relax a minute and enjoy your fun while you can. Because once you step into this business for real, you won't get a lot of time to drop your guard down. You're always protecting yourself while looking out for your next meal.”

She said, “My book and first film royalties gave me the chance to do what a lot of Hollywood types don't get a chance to do: relax,” she told me. And she looked like she meant it.

Hot, creative / lava / boils in my brain / searching for an orifice / to erupt on nature / violently / burning the old soil / and terrifying the settled creatures / who have gotten used to things / as they were / so they run, shriek, and squeal / as my lava rolls / quickly down on them / from up high.

But when it is over / I cool off in fresh ashes / raising those old things / to higher levels / so that the creatures can return / enlightened / and start again / while the earth awaits / my next / eruption.

“Volcano,” by Tracy Ellison.

My cousin still had a few tricks up her sleeve, and a lot left for me to learn from her. A lot of people still underestimated her, but I didn't. And each time I confronted Tracy about something, she always had a logical and reasonable response to my concerns. But that didn't mean there weren't more tests to come.

My girls had fallen back into the fold of things, and were in and out of our Inglewood office as we continued to move small units of Flyy Girl Ltd. clothing around the retail stores of L.A. and Philadelphia. Then my girls began to ask me what progress had been made on the film. It had been a month since we'd returned home from
Philadelphia, Tracy had bought me a new car to get around in, and I was maintaining my poise like she had advised me to do. But then I went to another one of those Hollywood party functions with Tracy, and that changed everything.

Evidently, Susan Raskin had some connection to the Marriott Hotel chain, and she was having a party inside their ballroom at the airport location. We were all dressed to impress, with Susan and her man, Kendra and her husband, Tracy and her friend, and Yolanda Felix and me, when Susan's long-term boyfriend popped the question in front of the crowd.

He held her hand and pulled out the diamond to put on her finger. Then he sank down on one knee and asked, “Susan, will you marry me?”

The crowd gushed and waited for her answer.

But first she teased him. “What if I said no?”

Yolanda screamed through the crowd, “You better not tell that man no.”

We all laughed as Susan prepared herself for her answer.

“Of course I will, honey. I love you,” she told him. He rose to his feet and kissed her on the lips, while the crowd went crazy.

I looked over at Tracy to see how she was taking it. She was smiling and clapping next to Dalvin, who was following her lead. I couldn't read her response through a look. She was doing what was expected of her. But it didn't look good for the
Flyy Girl
film from my perspective. I understood that most of the studio deals would most likely run through Susan and Yolanda, and if Susan was busy getting married, while Tracy and Yolanda were running out of time on their own biological clocks, then our
Flyy Girl
movie could very likely be pushed off the immediate to-do list.

The crowd dispersed after the big announcement, and I found myself coupled up with Yolanda Felix again.

“So, how did you like your big Philadelphia excursion? I heard you guys had a blast,” she commented.

I nodded to her with a spiked drink in hand. It was red fruit juice with some kind of alcohol added.

I said, “We did what we had to do out there, now we have to do what we have to do out here.”

Yolanda looked at me curiously. She had already had a few strong drinks. I could smell them on her breath.

She said, “And what is it that you're supposed to get done out here?” she asked me.

I answered her frankly, “Find the studio that will green-light the
Flyy Girl
film.”

“You mean find the right players who will want to combine in an effort to get the film made,” she corrected me.

I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Whatever.”

I really didn't feel up to having a discussion with Yolanda about getting films made. I already realized how jaded she was about the whole film process. Her philosophy was to get in where you fit in and leave everything else alone. However, that philosophy didn't leave much room for any out-of-the-box creativity. And most of our urban ideas were definitely out of Hollywood's cute little, whitewashed box.

“It's gonna take you guys a lot of work and time to get this film placed at a studio. You do know that, don't you?” Yolanda asked me.

I was already looking around the room for Tracy, Kendra, or even Susan to bail me out of another conversation with Yolanda. I didn't feel like being bit by her poisonous teeth that night. I had already decided to ignore her.

Then she said, “Tracy wrote a damn good script though,” and that got my attention.

I turned and faced her. “You think so?” I asked.

Getting anything positive from Yolanda Felix was a godsend. I wondered how she and Mercedes would get along, two serpents from separate sides of the street.

Yolanda said, “In fact, her script is a little too good for its own good. Had she written something trite and ghetto, she could have done a straight-to-DVD movie and made a killing off of it. But Tracy wrote a thirty-million-dollar script, with no stars in it. That all but kills the project unless you get some major players to back it.”

She said, “Black, urban American films is not where the major players' heads are at right now, unless it's a comedy. And
Flyy Girl
is nowhere near a comedy.”

I cut through the bullshit and asked her straight out, “Do you think
Flyy Girl
would be a good movie?”

She surprised me when she nodded. “I would love to see Tracy's story told on the big screen. And yes, it would be a good movie if cast correctly. Nevertheless, unless you can get white girls your age to be interested in it, the audience just won't be big enough to make it. At least not for the theaters.”