Commitment (2 page)

The lounge was crescent-shaped and painted a deep cranberry, the walls lined with plush, overstuffed benches curved to fit the shape of the room. At one end, thankfully there was a bar. There were only about fifty people; some standing by the art deco style bar drinking or watching one of several oversized televisions mounted on the walls playing K
Smooth
videos.

Riley could no longer hear the music from the main club at all.
It reminded her of the backroom in mob movies where the head of a crime family might hang out with his henchmen.

She smiled at the thought. Maybe she could write that in her article, because these days, frankly, the similarity between some rappers and crime bosses was a little too close to reality to be scoffed at. According to
Newsweek
though, K
Smooth
was not that kind of rapper – he had a “message”. Rappers with a message were, as far as Riley was concerned, just another marketing ploy. When you
looked
just a little deeper, the same crap came tumbling out of their closets – guns, the girlfriend who claimed to have been beaten
up, the tax debt and assorted
BS
that ultimately proved their emotional development had come to an abrupt halt somewhere around the age of sixteen.
 

As Riley looked around, it was immediately and ridiculously apparent where K
Smooth
was even though she couldn’t exactly see him. Of all the groups of people in the room, one seemed to have attracted the lion’s share of women. Penetrating that crowd would be like breaking into Fort Knox. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he was sitting or standing somewhere in the center of the phalanx of beautiful, eager women who looked as though someone had served them up like so many pretty canapés.

This was where Tracy would have come in handy. Having a spectacularly beautiful best friend was not without its drawbacks
,
but tonight
,
Riley was not above using her to bag an interview with a rap star.
Since that plan was out, she instead made her way over to the bar and ordered a glass of wine.

Riley turned her attention to one of
the television screens
.  In the
video playing
, K Smooth
was wearing an immense pair of black jeans and as usual, no shirt. He swayed rhythmically to the bass beat and gestured dramatically with his hands as he rhymed. His face was angry and
passionate, every word he was saying utterly convincing and surprisingly powerful.

Riley pulled out the notebook she’d brought along and began scribbling her impressions. There was no story at this point but maybe if she just wrote everything down something would come to her later as she slept, when most great story ideas were born.
She bit into the tip of her pen and took a sip of wine. 

“Are you press?”

She looked up and into the eyes of a guy
well over
six and tall. He had refined
,
chiseled features like those of a model, and a haircut and goatee so flawless, they almost appeared
painted
on. 

“Yup.”

“Who are you with?”

“
Power to the People
.”

“For real?”

“Uh huh.” Riley turned back to her notes and tried to ignore him.

“You writing about
Smooth
?”

“Yes I am.” She opened her backpack again and found her Amex card, sliding it to the bartender who promptly pushed it back.

“Drinks are on the house,” he explained.

“
I’ll have another white wine.”
Riley looked up, and her uninvited guest was still there.

“So are you writing about the concert or about
Smooth
personally?”

Riley looked up at him. “What concert?”

“Last night,” he said. “At the Garden.”

“Oh. I wasn’t at the Garden. I’m just doing a story about him.”

“Without talking to him?”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

He held out a hand and smiled winningly. “I’m Brendan Cole.
Smooth
’s manager.”

Riley blinked. In another two minutes, she would have told him to get the hell out of her face.

“Oh. Hi. I’m Riley Terry.”
She shook his hand briefly.

“Nice to meet you, Riley
Terry
.”

Brendan Cole nodded in the direction of the crowd of women. “So you want to meet
Smooth
, or what?”

“If he has time to talk to me that would be great.”

“Maybe I can work something out. He has a radio interview in about a half hour and then he’s free for the rest of the night. Let me ask him if he’s into it. We’re all about
Power to the People
,” he winked at her.
 

Riley watched as Brendan Cole walked over to the group of women and they parted like the Red Sea. She could only just make out the top of the head of the person he was talking to but could clearly see a white shirt, jeans and heavy
soled boots, mustard-colored like the kind construction workers wore. She sipped her wine and waited, glancing at her watch. It could not have been this easy. She’d only been inside for about thirty minutes, and already she’d hit pay-dirt. Of course, she was probably conspicuous as the only woman in the room not looking to drape herself across the man of the moment. 

Riley pulled out her
cell
and
tapped out a message to Tracy.
A
little gloating was in order.
If her luck held, she w
ould be out of here in no time.
When she looked up
, a self-satisfied smile still on her face,
Brendan Cole had stepped aside and was looking right at her, but now there was another pair of eyes
focused on her as well
.

While
at the magazine, Riley had quickly learned that people constantly in the public eye were often disappointing when you met them in person. When no longer in the glare of the camera, they cou
ld seem so small, so ordinary.
But this guy was by no stretch of the imaginati
on small, nor was he ordinary.

Staring directly at her, his gaze did not falter even when she looked right back.
W
hen their eyes met he tilted his head slightly as though surveying a painting in a museum and trying to decide whether he liked it. K
Smooth
’s photos didn’t do him justice. Not even by the barest approximation of a long
-
shot. Riley looked away, focusing instead on Brendan who was beckoning her over. She set her glass of wine on the bar and walked toward them.

“This is Riley
Terry
,” Brendan said. “Riley, this is K
Smooth
.”

He held out a hand to her and she took it briefly. His fingers were long and tapered, almost graceful, but his grip was firm.

“Call me Shawn,” he said. His voice was deep and somewhat raspy. 

She already knew from the
Newsweek
article that his real name was Kendall Shawn Gardner
.
And
that he hated the name Kendall so people who knew him personally called him Shawn. The moniker K
Smooth
was something his friends made up when he was a teenager because he’d lied so
convincingly to t
he multiple girls he was always dating
at one time.

“We have to leave for that interview in a few minutes,” Brendan said.  “You can ride with us to the hotel and do your thing there when he’s done.”

“I thought it was a radio interview,” Riley said, her eyes narrowing. Riding “to the hotel” did not sound like the best idea she’d heard all evening. 

“The radio station is in California.” Brendan seemed to sense her reluctance. “So the interview’s by phone.”

“What’re you drinking?” Shawn asked her, setting his empty beer bottle on a nearby table. He seemed either not to have noticed – or cared about – the exchange between her and Brendan.

“Chardonnay.”

He raised a hand and called over a waiter, ordering himself another beer and a glass of white wine.

The waiter brought their drinks and Riley sipped her wine self-consciously. It was her
third
glass – time to stop if she wanted to be on her toes for the interview. Brendan had left them alone and all of a sudden, though she had the perfect opportunity to begin cultivating rapport with her target, she couldn’t think of single thing to say.

They were standing almost in the center of the room and most of the women who’d been hanging around earlier were scrutinizing her, some of them whispering among themselves, probably dying to know what she had done to merit K
Smooth’s singular attention
. 

“
Where’d you get a
name
like
Riley
?”

“My
mother loves the
blues,” she explained.
“B.B. King’s real name is Riley B. King.”

“Didn’t know that,” he said.

Riley shrugged.
“Little-known fact.”

“So what made you guys want to interview me?”

“I guess it was the
Newsweek
article,” she admitted. “My editor saw it and
hit the roof because
they spotted the story before we did.”

“
And
they’re a
. . .
white magazine,” he finished for her.

“I don’t know that I’d characterize them that way, but yeah, I guess we see you as one of ours.”

K
Smooth
smiled. “One of yours, huh?  I like that.”

“And it isn’t as though we weren’t interested in interviewing you at some point,” she lied.

“
D’you
how many requests for interviews I got since that cover? Seventeen. Most from people that were never interested in me before.”

“That’s how news works sometimes,” she said taking a sip of her wine. “We wind up covering each other instead of covering the story.”

“I said
‘no’
to most of them.”

“Then how’d I get so lucky?”

“My manager reads your magazine,” he said. “And I like your nose-ring.”

Riley smiled and stood motionless as he reached out and gently touched her diamond-chip piercing. 

“C’mo
n, man,” Brendan Cole was back.
“It’s go time.”

Two enormous security guards wearing black muscle tees had joined them and Riley realized that they’d come to usher K
Smooth
into the main club.
He turned to look at her.

“I’ll be right back. You’ll wait?”

He smiled at her again and Riley nodded, feeling for a split second, the full force of whatever it was that made women
act
like idiots around him. As he left the VIP lounge, flanked by security and Brendan in the rear, the energy in the room changed. The women who before were on high alert, hoping that he might notice them, seemed to deflate.

The images on the televisions flickered for a moment and then they were all watching as K
Smooth
made a triumphant entrance into the main club. The room erupted as he made his way to a small stage near the dance floor and picked up a mike with one hand, gesturing with the other for the crowd to simmer down.

“How many of y’all made it to the Garden last night?” he asked.

The crowd began screaming again.

I’ll be right back
, he’d said.  Just have to go perform in front of two hundred people – no biggie.

“
For
those of you who didn’t make it out, this joint is
all
you right here.”

Then the music started and he rhymed,
swaying
to the music, his eyes closed
and movements subtle.
His
audience was shouting the words out along with him so his voice was almost obscured in the din.
Riley grappled with her bag, reaching for her pen and notepad again.
She tried to focus her attention on what she wanted to say but it was difficult not to watch him.

And before she could collect her thoughts, he was done.
His entire performance had lasted perhaps ten minutes long, and yet no one seemed
disappointed.

He tossed the mike into the crowd and during the ensuing
mêlée
, turned and left the stage, leaving security to the task of ensuring a riot didn’t break out. R
iley turned and looked around.
The lounge was almost empty now. Everyone else seemed to have departed for the
main
club. Just as she decided that K
Smooth
had probably given her the slip, Brendan
Cole
stuck his head in the doorway.