Commitment (49 page)

The door had burst open and Darryl was standing there, blunted out of his mind,
pupils dilated,
eyes unfocused and wild.
That was his pre-show ritual.
Herb, herb and more herb.

“Just chillin’
.”

“
We got wall to wall honeys, we got Sambuca, we got . . .”

“I can’t get down like that before the show.”

Darryl shook his head. “You sure, man?
I
’m tellin’ you, i
t’s off the hook up in . . .”

“Later.”

Shawn
shut
the door
in Darryl’s face
and was alone again.
Moments later, Brendan came in and handed him
the phone.
It was
Riley
, calling to wish him luck, babbling
on about a rug she’d bought for the bedroom
(
did he like burgundy for the floor
just outside his dressing room
?
)
and the call she’d gotten from a magazine asking her to do an interview
(
wasn’t that weird, people wanting to interview her and she wa
s a reporter?
)
and on and on.

He waited, but she didn’t mention her interview with Chris. 

“So you
’re
seeing Chris tomorrow.”

She sighed.
“Yeah.
Can you believe that?
Me interviewing Chr
is who you know I can’t stand.
I don’t even know what to do with th
e interview once I’ve done it
.”

“So why’re you doing it?”

“Because look what came of it when I interviewed you
.
”
There was
a
moment’s silence
while she absorbed that he did not find the comparison amusing
.
“
Why? D
o you
not want me to do
it?”

“No.
Not really.”

“
Anyway.
Yo
u’re going to have a great show.
C
all me
when you get to the hotel.
Love you.
”

She hung up before he could respond and Shawn knew it was because she didn’t want him trying to talk her out of the interview, which he’d fully intended to do. Tomorrow Riley would s
it
in
Chris’
office
being fed a line of bullshit.
Not too many people knew where
he’d
had gotten his start
-up capital, but Shawn did and
it wasn’t pretty.

And now
Riley
would be walking into his domain with her little pad and pencil thinking she was getting the real deal on a superstar record producer.
Chris could be a charming fu
cker too, that was the thing.
He played that “little boy lost” thing to the hilt, having women thinking they could save him from himself . . .

“You want to come watch the set?”

Brendan had stuck his head in to remind him that Mike and Darryl were onstage doing their
thing.
Shawn could hear the crowd and the music gaining momentum and his
own
adrenaline
rush began
.
He
followed Brendan to
the closest wing
where he got a good view of
Mike and Darryl
tearing
it up, stomping and jumping
around onstage as they rapped.

The
show’s producer had managed, against all odds to channel them into a kind of organized chaos that capitalized on t
heir wildness and indiscipline.
It would be near impossible to watch these two an
d not have your pulse increase.
And the
ir voices were good together.
Mike and Darryl
had
that
perfect balance
that was difficult to find with two male voices
.
Th
ey weren’t just going to be big
they were going to be huge.
Y
oung bl
oods were taking over
the game
.
Their energy was different, t
heir message was different and
it played well with
the
fans
. H
e
was riding
a
crest
that was enviable by anyone’s yardstick
but
in
eighteen
to twenty-four months
max, he would have to come out with a brand new
sound
or step aside for Glock and others like them. 

By the time he went on, Shawn was pumped up from the music and the people a
nd the anticipation of it all.
The crowd went crazy when he got onstage, screaming and yelling for a
lmost a
full minut
e before he could get started.
But when it did start, it was like going into a
higher plane
of consciousness. H
e moved and rapped like this was the last, the only a
udience he would perform for.
Then halfway through the set, he noticed i
n the front row,
about a half dozen
girls who looked like they were barely teenagers
.
They
were screaming his real name, calling him ‘Shawn’ instead of
Smooth
and it was
so
distracting
that
he shifted his focus to the other side of the stage and hung out there for awhile until h
e could find his groove again.

Soon he
was dripping with sweat, so he removed his sweatshirt, and then the t-shirt underneath to screams from
women in the audience.
No one believed it, but he never took his cloth
es off just for that reaction.
Nobody except for
other performers understood how hot it got up there, and short of coming out with no
shirt
to begin with, he had to take
it
off during the performance.
Usually he dropped
it
to the side
, and someone from backstage
retrieved
them to stop some crazy
chick
from climbing up a
nd trying to score a souvenir.

He continued until he could feel his voice about to break,
then
thankfully
and almost unexpectedly,
the houselights went down.
Once in awhile he
found himself in
a place that was almost sacred
,
like an out-of-body experience – he was almost completely unaware of the noise, the c
rowd, the lights and the music.
Th
ere was just him and the mike.
When he was done, t
he crowd kept up their relentless roar
until the music stopped
.

g

He woke up with
a headache and sore throat.
The hotel rooms were always too cold
which was a killer
for his voice.
He usually shut the air off, but
last night when he came in, he wasn’t thinking about too much more than
Riley and her interview with Chris
. 

She picked up after the very first ring, and sounded disappointed when she heard his voice.

“I thought y
ou were Tracy,” she explained.
“
But what’s going on with you?
I was
so out of it
when you called me last night.
Had
a good show?”

“Yeah, it was a’ight.
”

“
So you
’re
interviewing Chris today, huh?”

“Ten
a.m.
sharp,” her voice sounded wary.
“
That’ll be the
highl
ight of my day,
interviewing the most interviewed man i
n Black America.
I don’t think I’ll get anything new, so I don’t know why I’m bothering.”

“You want somethin
g no one else has?” Shawn said.
“Ask him about his sister.”

“Why?
Is that like i
nside information or something?
What about his sister?”

“Just a
sk him.
He has a twin sister.
Audrey.” 

Shawn felt a little like a snitch, but it wasn’t as though Chris thought of
his sister as a secret exactly.
Just a subject
he didn’t talk about publicly.
Audrey
was
just about
the only topic of conversation guaranteed to expose one glimmer of genuine emotion from Chris Scaife.
It might even knock him off his game, and if he was going to be spending any
time at all with Riley, Shawn definitely wanted him off his game.

“You have to tell me more than
that, otherwise I won’t do it.
I mean, I don’t want to
bushwhack
him with something
he would never discuss.”

“When they were like ten, his sister was in a car accident.”

“And died?”

“Nope.
She’s alive.”

“Disfigured, then.”

“Something like that.”

“Jesus, Shawn.
Enough
of
the guessing game.
What’s the matter with her?”

“She’s brain-damaged.
Sh
e stays at his house in Jersey.
He’s got 24-hour nurs
ing c
are of her, even flies her all over the world on vacations
.
Treats her like a queen.
But sh
e’s like a little kid mentally.
Like a six-year-old or something like that.”

“
And he looks after her?
Oh my go
d.
You mean I might have to actually
like
him now?”
Riley
asked.

“If you ask about her, I think he’ll tell you.”

“So how’d you hear about her?
Somehow I don’t see you and Chris Scaife sitting down and having a heart-to-heart.”

“Because of my grandmoth
er,” Shawn said.
“He
drove me to Baltimore one time.
I told him she had
Alzheimer’s
and th
en he told me about his sister.
To let me know he understood what I was feeling.”

“Really?”
Riley
sounded wistful.
“That’s sweet.”

“C’mon now.
Don’t be startin
g that stuff.
We’re s
till talking about Chris here.”

“Yeah, but somehow I’m starting to think I may have misjudged him.”

“No one’
s
just
good or
just
bad, Riley.
So maybe you shouldn’t judge at all.”

g

Riley
was waiting in the reception area
of
Chris Scaife’s office.
It
could just as easily have been a law firm, complete with impeccably groomed, conservatively-dressed receptionist, tasteful corporate art, and obviously expensive
modern waiting room furniture.
The people she saw walking about were dressed in clothes that tended toward the trendy but were still more professional than
not
.
And maybe most notably, the office s
eemed to be completely silent.
None of the music, laughter or party atmosphere she’d expected
to surround a hip-hop mogul
;
no sign that anything other than serious work was going on.
Maybe Shawn was right – she’d
definitely had some stereotypes in mind that were not accounted for here.

“M
r
s. Gardner.”

Riley
looked up at the receptionist, who was smiling at her.

“Mr. Scaife can see you now.
His is the office all the way at the end of the hall.”