Bliss (20 page)

Eva climbed nearby scaffolding until her view was clear. The orangey metal rods were shaky, but Eva was above the churn. She saw the tour’s Mutt & Jeff main roadies, Vic and Swan. She spotted Imperial Court. They were hyped by the massive energy, pissed at the possibility of not rapping after having flown, under the scrutiny of first-class stewardesses, all the way to the outskirts of a city in another country where you have to ride bucket in a Peugeot for thirty minutes to find a McDonald’s.

When a knife finally materialized, Eva was relieved. The show couldn’t continue until that pin had been pulled, until everyone got stoned on the steep, life-affirming sensations that surge right before someone not you was hurt or killed.

The knife was up high.

Let’s get it started
.

“Man up! You ain’t supposed to pull out your shit unless you gon’ use it. Fucking man up! Use it! Or you shoulda stayed your ass at home. Let Lil’ John know he shoulda come with security. He shoulda been rolling deep. Fuck! Don’t y’all got some shit to be mad at?” It was Money Min screeching from the wings. She’d pawed her way up onto some guy’s shoulders and was ranting. “Man
up
.” The usually droll hybrid of
be a man
and
grow up
, Min hurled at the audience like a fiery superball. She kept them hot in her pocket. Had hit War with them,
people said, dead in his face. There was no feminine counterpart for “man up.” Then the thought crossed Eva’s mind:
Maybe it was a onetime thing for girls—Ah, so you got your first period
.

The knife reminded Eva of a potato peeler. It careened down into packed, padded bodies, and the audience imploded. Oval within oval of jumping in on, swinging and grabbing. A few girls screamed. Some guys formed an outer oval and lackadaisically pulled fighters by their coats from the continuous collapse inward. Lil’ John was looking at Min, but Min scrambled from her perch, and then Eva couldn’t see her anymore.

She teetered on the scaffolding, looking for Min, and took again the temperature of the room. Legs steady, Eva saw Imperial Court scuffling with their own security, wanting or wanting to seem like they had to be a part of the melee. On the relaxed fringes, Lil’ John made a beeline for the harangued promoter.

Going to get his money
, Eva thought.
Smart
.

For all his hard girth and know-how, there was an ugly anxiety about John. It froze his eyebrows, and sometimes forced a crooked set of his mouth. Even when Lil’ John smiled his hundred-toothed smile, when his thick arms hung from short-sleeved shirts and his ring-heavy hands hung loosely curled and he had on the right sneakers with the right laces and the right jeans with the perfect amount of sag and drag, even when his goose-gray eyes were focused and unblinking, even then Lil’ John looked awkward where he stood. He thought he was at peace about what was all right to have taken in the course, as a matter of the fact of doing business, but depending on his company, and on his blood alcohol level, John was either pompous, mortified, or defiant about where he was from and by what he’d gained, by what he’d created, and by what he secretly worried he stole.

Brothers were known for loving Lil’ John and bigging him up, known for using him, guilting and taunting him with
You a white boy in this, John, baby
, and for trying to take what they felt Lil’ John had—money, juice, white-boy keys to white-boy doors—but more than that, take what was equated with his manhood. More than one brother had been known to say that somebody needed to fuck John in the ass, show John who he was in this hip hop shit.

He can’t be him without us being us.

That’s what was said.

Fuck that cracker.

We started this shit.

Lil’ John looked up, all around. He saw Eva, raised his eyebrows in approval, then walked over and stood directly under her and ogled her panties.

Men in uniform showed up. “
Diffusione! Vada a casa! Nessun rimborse!
” Disburse. Go home. No refunds.

Eva didn’t know if they were cops or military. And still she had no fear. Police were starring characters in hip hop. Their presence neither added nor relived tension. That somebody might get arrested or shot was a given. That there’d be fury if that happened was a given. Everybody had a part, and everybody fell into character—a tragedy staged so many times already, every movement was reflex.

Whistles screamed. One boy stumbled, his palm in a tight crescent, clutching at where his kidney lived. A few people jogged toward doors and vanished.

Where’s Money Min?

The stumbler finally straightened, gingerly unzipped his coat, and looked at his torso. Whistles shrieked again. Lil’ John shook Eva’s scaffolding with his hands and she had to clamber. She was scared for the first time that night, and looked down at John with a scowling question on her face.
What, motherfucker?
she mouthed. He didn’t look bothered. He shook the scaffolding again.

A uniform snatched the injured boy by the arm and the boy’s face twisted tight, then opened up slack and wet. Eva looked for blood on the injured kid, in the dirt, on his boots. There wasn’t enough light. The uniform walked the boy out while another officer tried to corral people toward doors. Only a few exited. Eva heard music.

It was Public Enemy:
Here come the drums
.

Money Min was on the wheels of steel. Changing the course of the night. Giving it a different, dancing ending. People started to move again, together, to PE’s “Can’t Truss It.” To jump up, up, and down.

Min flipped through the Italian DJ’s abandoned records, fishing for a mix. She found House of Pain. Two Irish-Americans and a Latvian type, rapping over terse base and a roiling drum loop. Left fingers on the fader, right fingers slow-twirling the LPs, Min wore her dead husband’s headphones like a thinking cap. Public Enemy’s horns thundered like elephants charging into House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” The song had sirens like Public Enemy was famous for, so the mix sang on multiple levels. Eva rode each current, her knees bent and locked like behind a woolly mammoth’s flapping ears.

Jump up/Jump up jump up and get down
.

Jump
.

Jump
.

Jump
.

Min was rocking. The sound was hypnotic. Eva didn’t have the space in her head to wish she were jumping on the floor. All she was aware of was the mix, the beats, the wave of kids jumping beneath her, rising up and down, a riptide she could joyously dive into. On the shaky scaffolding, Eva bounced.

Jump
.

Jump
.

Jump
.

It was like War had given Min the skills when he was alive or had sent them to her from wherever he was because she was leaned over the tables like her name was DJ Jazzy Jeff, and she was a gifted boy from Philly whose name would always be, to hard-core hip hop heads, ahead of the Fresh Prince’s for a reason.

Jump
.

Jump
.

Jump
.

I’ll serve your ass like John McEnroe
.

The amphitheater’s ancient walls seemed to shudder in the moonlight.

Then Min went to Kriss Kross’s “Jump.”

Eva gripped the horizontal pole in front of her, braced her feet, and shook her ass to beat the beat. “Jump”—from thirteen-year-old Atlanta
rappers who wore their clothes backward and rhymed over the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”—had come out a few months before “Jump Around.”
Nineteen seventy. Motown, post Holland-Dozier-Holland
. In her soul, Eva felt Michael Jackson’s mute
Now. That. I. See. You. In his arms. I want you back
over
The Mac Dad’ll make you/Jump/Jump
. She felt the chimes and harmonies of Motown, the immortality of a number one hit, the glory of two number one hits within the same song. Eva shook the scaffolding harder than Lil John had.
These shits were number one for a reason
.

“That’s your song?” John called it up at her, and Eva could barely hear him over the music, so she incorporated a nod into her dance as her mind shouted at him,
How can you not just
see
that it’s my song? Can’t you feel it?
And that thought took her straight to the Jacksons’ 1980 “Can You Feel It?” and the whole amphitheater scene connected and worked on too many levels to count.
Every breath you take/Is someone’s death in another place
. The song made Eva think of a 1981 night with her father at the Forum in Los Angeles, the Jacksons’ Triumph Tour. Thirty-nine U.S. cities, began in Memphis, ended with four sold-out nights at L.A.’s Fabulous Forum. Michael, Marlon, Tito, Randy, and Jackie came out to
Can. You. FEEL. IT???
At the Forum, in the rafters with her dad, Eva had
jumped/jumped
. On the Italian scaffolding even she tried to
jump/jump
. Eva was in a world. She was every place she had ever been, hearing every song she had ever loved.
Yes
, her body’s every twist and pop said.
Yes, I can feel it. This is my fuckin’ song
.

Lil’ John shook the scaffolding again, and when Eva looked down at him, he held out his arms like he’d catch her if she fell.

He looks strong enough. I should let him be my angel
.

Lil’ John put his hands on the poles again, smiling. The crowd around him bubbled and whooped.

It doesn’t count if the person makes you fall so they can have you in their clutches
.

John climbed the lower level of the creaky scaffolding. He said
something to his valet, who passed Lil’ John the shoebox, and then ran off toward the stage, toward Money Min.

From the shoebox, John passed Eva a stack of glossy flyers and a handful of cassettes. Boys in the audience bounced and pointed to the sky as if it were the origin of the beat. The valet jumped on the stage.

Eva reached down and took the flyers. Saw that the cassettes were the remix of a new single from Peace&Love, with “lost” tracks from War, and a bonus debut track from “DJ Money Min.” Just then, at the hands of the valet, a poster of War unfurled, heavy as a dictator’s, or one from The Gap. It was a new poster, this time of War with arms raised in victory, Peace and Love beside him, saluting their DJ with homely scepters of microphone. War with the look of wanting to fly away, of having been pressed into a service he was built for, but had been used against him.

The crowd was out of hand. The uniforms by the doors with their stern faces and long guns were trivial and small. There was nothing in the dirt bowl to tear up, or it would have been wrecked. People were starting to stomp and get stomped again.

Can’t truss it
.

Public Enemy number one! ONE one ONE one!

Money Min had gone back to PE. Lil’ John hit at Eva’s boot, but she knew what she was in a great position to do. She tossed the flyers up, and they fluttered down like giant confetti.

I drop jewels like paraphernalia/I’m infallible, not into failure
. Eva tossed shrink-wrapped cassingles into the air one by one, then by the twos, and people grabbed for them and snatched them from each other, and picked up flyers to retoss them or stuff them into pockets.
Not into failure
. Eva loved that line.
Gang Starr featuring Nice & Smooth. From Smooth B’s verse. The hot shit from Chrysalis right now. “Dwyck,” the hottest shit out, period
.

“¡Sopra qui!
”

“Over here
!
”

“
¡Mas aqui!
”

Lil’ John handed Eva more and she threw them up and out, and
she was ecstatic. He gazed at her like she was a half a mile from heaven. When Eva looked down again, Lil’ John gave her a thumbs up, and then twirled his index fingers around each other as if to say,
Wrap it up, enough. Don’t want to give away too much
. Then he pointed his thumb at himself, at Eva, and over his shoulder, saying they should leave.

She pointed at her groups, and then held up her own index to say,
One minute
.

Lil’ John pointed across the stage to the promoter, and nodded, like he needed the same minute. This mute exchange gave them both the feeling that they’d much in common, and that the road to sex and mutual respect would be easy.

Trix was beneath her, scared and ready to go. Giada stood there, too, disappointed. The crowd hooted for more prizes, but Eva climbed down.

“You coulda fell,” Lo-Note/Lois said.

Eva frowned at her. “That’s the kinda shit goes through your mind?”

She and Lil’ John’s individual minutes turned into an hour, but when Eva got back to her hotel later, tired and needing to pack for the drive south to Ravenna, Lil’ John was at the bar on his third lemon liqueur and soda. He saw her, pulled a wad of lire from his pocket, looked at it for a second like he might attempt to figure out the exchange rate, then placed all the money on the counter, walked over to Eva at the elevator, and stepped on with her. She pushed a button, and he didn’t.

“Imperial Court,” Lil’ John said, “didn’t even go on.”

“Neither did Trix.”

“You don’t care?”

The doors opened with a
ping
, and Eva stepped off.

“I care,” she said, looking at him from the quiet hallway. “But shit happens.”

He took this as a summation of her personality and as such, an invitation. Lil’ John stepped from the elevator. “That attitude’ll get you far,” he said as they walked.

It’s gotten me this far
. “You don’t know what my attitude is.” Eva unlocked her door. He followed her in.

“I think I do,” he said, plopping down on a chair. “You’re glad I came up here.”

“You’re glad you came up here.”

“Sit by me.” He flushed pink, but didn’t look bashful.

“You got that chair,” Eva said, “pretty well filled out.”

Lil’ John stood, paused, and then sat on the bed. “Then I guess I’ll move over here.”

She sat next to him. “You’re smooth as hell,” Eva said dryly, feeling nice and smooth herself.

“First time you had somebody up here?”

Guys. Always checking their place in line
. “I’ve been here one night.”