Commitment (40 page)

“I’m not
sure I
. . .”

“Entertainme
nt circles,” Greg said flatly.
“Particularly the 
. . .”

“Hip-hop community?”

“Yes.
And it occurred to this person – and to me – that if
Power to the People
is to stay current and fresh, maybe we should pay more attention to that segment of our readership.”

Riley
waited, saying nothing.

“You could do a series.
Let’s call it a trial run.
A column that deals with different aspects of hip-hop culture, or youth culture in general.” He stopped, probably reading something in her face or manner that told him she wasn’t exactly thrilled at the suggestion. “Do you know what the numbers were for the issue with your article on, ah, your ah
,
your husband?”

Riley
shook her head.

“Well, let’s just say they were more than fifty percent higher than our next best-selling issue, which – to give you some perspective – dealt
with the O.J. Simpson verdict.
That tells us there’s an audience out there that we haven’t be
en reaching.
And we think a series like the one you did could help us reach that audience.”

“Greg.
With all due respect, I don’t want to be an entertainment
writer
.
If there’s a
questionable
police shooting I want t
he option to write about that.
If a Black woman beat
a white
man
to represent South Carolina in a
Senate race, I don’t want to be stuck writing about a
Mariah Carey
concert.”

Greg smiled.
“
Understood
.
And th
at’s why I give you free rein.
Make
your pieces
as hard-hitting as you want.
I’m sure there’s a dirty underbelly ou
t there waiting to be exposed.
But we want
it all
grounded in a certain demographic
if you know what I mean
.”

“I’m not gett
ing the sense this is optional
,”
Riley
said.

Greg pursed his lips.
“I would like you to consider it very seriously,” he said finally.

Riley
said nothi
ng, leaning back in her chair.
Unless she was a complete moron, that meant there was no option.

“I’m not asking you to take notes at parties,” Greg
smiled at her,
attempting to lighten the mood.
“But you, more than anyone else, may have the opportunity to see
emerging
trends and issues
.
B
efore they wind up on
the cover of
Newsweek
,” he added
, alluding to how she’d wound up interviewing Shawn
.

“How much of a trial run is it?
Like two issues, three?”

Greg cleared his th
roat.
“We’d like to give it a fair chance
and
allow you to find your voice
.”

“I feel I already have,”
Riley
said, surprising herself, as well as Greg with her confrontational tone.

“Well,
in invest
igative pieces and social commentary
certainly
.
But this would be somewhat different
, I think you’ll agree
.
So an
yway, we were thinking a year.
Twelve issues minimum.”
He waited for a reaction, and when he saw there w
as none forthcoming continued.
“
Riley
, I wouldn’t have given this
assignment
to you just because of your husband if I didn’t also think you were a fine writer with the potential to make an incredible success out of this.”

“Thank you,”
she said without feeling.

“Well,
” Greg cleared his t
hroat and glanced at his watch.
“It’s almost thr
ee.
I’d appreciate it if you don’t discuss this with anyone else until
you’ve made a final decision.
Naturally, if you refuse we’d offer it to someone else and I wouldn’t want them thinking they were handicapped by being my second choice.”

“Of course,”
Riley
said dully.

“So
,
” he stood and
smoothed
an imaginary
wrinkle
in
his pants.
“I’ll see you in there.”

He left without closing the door and
Riley
sat staring at her desk.
She couldn’t refuse.
That much was clear.
If she did, he would never forget it and no matter what she produced from then on woul
d be judged with harsher eyes.
She twisted her
rings
back and forth
.
Her mother was right.
Wedding bands may as well
be yokes about a woman’s neck.

Greg, Dawn, the fucking mailroom girls
;
no one seemed to be able to look at her and see just
Riley
anymore.
Now they saw ‘
K
Smooth
’s
wife’ and whatever sign
i
fican
ce they attached to that label.
Riley
picked up a notepad and gathered her
notes for the slumlord piece.
She would have to kick ass with this story because the way things were looking, it might be the last piece of serious journalism she produced for a long while.

Just when she thought her day couldn’t get any worse, on the subway ride uptown after work
Riley
wound up sitting next to an old man who alternately coughed and blew
his nose into his bare hands.
She could feel herself
inhaling
his germs, and knew even before she got to her stop that she was
probably
going to get si
ck from that little encounter.

Ed
was as cheerful as ever opening the door for her, but she couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm necessary to
smile and return his greeting.
In the mailbox there were two more guaranteed accept
ance credit card applications
.
She rode up to the apartment leaning on the rear wall of the elevator, guiltily hoping that
Shawn
wasn’t home
, so she could process
everything on her own
.

As soon as she walked in
Riley
could
hear
the
thumping of the bass beat
coming from the second bedroom
suite
.
They’d made
it
into a den where all of Shawn’s ‘toys’ were - the oversized television, the state-of-the-art stereo equipment, the video games and misc
ellaneous electronic gadgetry.
When he was home, he spent most of his time there, headphones on, listening to music, picking samples
.
It
was his space,
into
which
Riley
se
ldom intruded
. 

The master
suite
was her personal sanctuary.
They had lined the walls with bookcases
that
Riley
filled with
her favorite
texts, novels and volumes of poetry she had collected since
she was a teenager
.
Shawn
joked that
it made him feel like he was sleeping in
the Brooklyn Public
L
ibrary.
Apart from the bookcases, there was very little furniture besides the bed - just the
matching
dressers and a comfortable overstuffed armchair where
Riley
did most of her writing. 

After her initial resistance, she’d gone along with getting a
decorator for the condo and
had watched with amazement as a stranger – after only a few conversations with her and Shawn, and a couple consultations about textures and color palettes – managed to put together a living space t
hat suited them both perfectly.
It was calm and soothing, the colors a combination
of
browns, beiges and mossy greens
; the furniture had simple, clean lines interspersed with more durable, su
bstantially upholstered pieces.
It was beautiful enough that she still frequently stopped in the doorway of e
ach room, just to enjoy the décor, not quite believing she was in her own home.
Tonight though, she didn’t want to be here.

Now
she stood in the foyer
contempla
ting
,
and was still standing there when
Shawn emerged
from his den.
He stopped in his tracks when he saw her.

“
Hey.
What’s the matter?” he asked, noting the look on her face.

She was still holding her messenger bag
and had only made about a four-
foot incursion past the front door. 

“I
. . .
I think I forgot something at work,”
she lied before she stopped to think about why.

“Do you need it tonight?”
Shawn asked. 

She
gave him a brief
kiss on the cheek and turned to head out again.

“Yeah, I do.
I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“
Send a messenger service
.”

“They wouldn’t be able to get into the building
this late
,”
Riley
pointed out, her
hand already on the doorknob.
“Or
know where to find it in
my office.”

Without stopping to first think about it, she called Brian from the corner and arranged to meet him at Luke’s, a diner near his house, then
took the train back downtown.

g

Riley
waited in
their regular
booth, drinking stale coffee, arranging and rearranging the utensil
s on the table in front of her.
What
was bothering her most was directly connected to Shawn himself
, and so she couldn’t tell him.
Not without making it seem as though she was
blaming him for her problems.
And the truth wa
s, he just wouldn’t understand.
Pe
ople in the entertainment business tended to forget there was another world out there besides their own, and in that r
espect Shawn was no different.
He wouldn’t get why she thought writing about entertainers and glitz and
glamour
was not only boring but
might possibly ruin her career.
And she was in no humor to explain it.

Brian came about fifteen minutes after she sat down, wearing a gray Columbia Law School shirt and sweatpants, looking like the qu
in
tessential college student.
He
’d recently gotten a haircut, and was flushed
from the cold.
H
e kissed her on the cheek before sliding i
nto the seat across from her.
Riley
smiled, thinking not for the first time how
happy she was that in spite of everything that had happened, he was still in her life
.

“Career crisis,” she said.

Brian signaled for the waitress and started glancing through th
e menu.
“What, they want you to interview another rapper?”

Riley
heaved.

“I’m sorry.
”
He touched her hand.
“Tell me
what’s going on
.”

“Well actua
lly you’re not too far off
. . .
” she
admitted.
She
related her
conversation
with Greg as close to verbatim as she could
remember and then leaned back.
“What
d’you think
?
Could I refuse him and still keep my job?”