Bliss (5 page)

At the Coral Towers party in 1998, the Studio boys didn’t dance with the girls in snug jeans with strong bellies behind their snug shirts. The boys stood in ciphers like it was 1991, clung to beats like they sensed, as Eva did, even more betrayal. It wasn’t just that Tupac Shakur
was dead, or Biggie Smalls. It was that they were dead and the world kept spinning. The game hadn’t been called on account of rain. The interns who’d rushed Ron at the showcase offered Eva purple marijuana and warm beer. Weak tributes. It wasn’t what Eva wanted.

“You look right as hell,” said a sweaty boy with nails bitten so low Eva didn’t understand how dirt could be under them. “To have been in the game so long.”

Girls peeked with envy at her superior dress and shoes and crossed bare legs. Girls decided then and there that they’d be home with kids or at least with a man at a fly-ass spot by the time they were as old as Eva. Definitely not, they thought disdainfully, getting put on a pedestal by grimy wannabes. Even the most ambitious girls thought these things, as they exchanged inky new business cards and dates of self-improvement seminars. They thought they’d be the same as Eva, except totally different from her, when they had Eva’s kind of job and responsibility and dough.

Girls wanting to be large in the game. Girls wanting to make a loud statement with their look, to serve up prettiness and power. Eva could feel the hot, anxious, hating vibe.

Hmmmm
, Eva thought to herself
. I am the vibe
.

So she left the smoky room and walked, still solo, to Ron’s penthouse for the party with everything that everybody had seen one time on
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
, the things that must mean rich and famous or else why would it be a cliché? The green bottles of champagne, caviar on the tiny pancakes, giant striped shrimp, and the coke on the table in the back bathroom where the biggest wigs sniffed while talking about how they’d stopped last year for a few months because shit was getting out of control. Eva moved easily among huddles and sprawls of people she knew and people she knew of. The same men always, the same women always, and always a new bale of girls whose reps centered on a few choice video frames, a new crew of boys who swore they were the Berry Gordy of St. Louis or the Quincy Jones of St. Paul. Eva wandered through swamps of intoxicated industry couples, each with the wistful look of being enclosed in a thin bubble—her turn, now, to look on people with envy and pity:
One step
beyond the weak morals and morale of this business, and your relation-ships’ll end in a fire of truth and consequences. When it isn’t about how you can help each other move on up, when it’s about just you two, and your life, and a kid—
for Eva, for a change, Ron’s party was stifling, and his bar too crowded and too far away.

She saw no sign of Sunny, or Vic, or Swan. Usually, after a big night, Sunny loved to sit in a corner and bless people with her presence.
She must really like Vic, if she’s laying up with him alone, missing out on glory
.

On a beeline for a drink, Eva breezed by Min-Hee, a former performer she’d toured with once who now worked for a cosmetics company. Min-Hee with her tatts hidden now; Min-Hee who hooked safe pop stars like Sunny up with eye shadow endorsement deals.

Then Eva saw Lois, who was from a hip hop trio Eva used to work with. Lois was chatting up Myra. Lois had been the only one of her crew to save money. She’d started a hip publicity company, and the theory was that Lois had been paying one former partner’s rent for two years, and that she paid the other a salary for coming in daily to a modest office and saying,
Trix Public Relations—how may I direct your call?
After a cheek-to-cheek air kiss-kiss for Myra, Eva surprised herself, Lois, and Myra by embracing Lois tightly and telling her she looked beautiful.

Eva stood back a step. Lois had found something else to do. Had become somebody else, and had the calm, bright-eyed face of a person who’d found the right place on the way to someplace different. Eva felt good giving the sincere compliment, felt open, and kind of square, for feeling anything.

“You feel good, Eva?” Lois searched Eva’s face for evidence of joy. “Sun did real good.”

“She did,” Eva said flatly, wanting to escape Lois suddenly. “Thanks. And good luck to you.” Eva gave Lois a last quick hug. “Anything I can do,
ever
, let me know.” Then Eva walked toward the long balcony with a flushed face.

Dart saw her through the doorway and stepped out. “You look tired,” he said.

“That’s what I like to hear. Where’s Sunny.”

“Sunny’s grown.” He was holding a bottle of water.

“What are you doing here?”

“It’s dark in my room.”

“Turn on the goddamn lights.”

“I see. You’re in this”—he took a glance around the party—”kind of mood.”

There was no dancing in this room, either, weighted down as it was by melted butter and heavy-bottomed bottles. Like stock vases at a florist’s,
Make use of me
, the bottles seemed to say, and the response was long kisses and caresses to glass necks from open-shirted hip hop execs, double-breasted pretenders, queens requesting Prince, dykes in business-lady drag, and wise chicks like Eva held together with earned sweat, $100 pressed powder, and the kind of masochism necessary to undergo Brazilian bikini waxes. The various factions, more apt to explode among themselves than in an integrated group, churned to a mild froth. Eva knew the currents. She knew the rocks, and the fallen trees, too. Eva wondered if she’d ever have the babies she’d aborted. If, somehow, some part of them had remained. She’d seen a pale-brown baby with pretty lips at Miami International. The infant was in a pink jumper. It had been sleepy and pouting. Eva had smiled at the baby and it looked at her blankly, like Eva was benign, but alien.

“Can you get me a drink?”

“Tell Ron to get you a drink.”

“Dart. Can you get me a Scotch, please.” Eva needed a sting on her lips. That hot menthol on her throat.

“Yeah,
Dart
,” Ron said as they trudged by each other. “Can you get her a Scotch,
please
.” He dangled a green bottle by the neck like a chicken he’d killed. Ron no longer had the bodyguards that had attended him for a few years. As hip hop had moved from the political eruptions of bands like Public Enemy and Poor Righteous Teachers and Arrested Development and Boogie Down Productions, there were fewer ideological reprisals. People still got stomped, but the beatdowns—which in the past had seemed more spontaneous and emotional—weren’t over message as much as they were over money. With the exceptions of the murders of Biggie and Tupac, even the
newer, more financially planned brawls were sporadic. Gangsta and dance rap was keeping everybody paid and much more chill.

“Don’t,” Eva said to Ron, “start.”

The fact that he was king of the room wasn’t enough. Ron was jealous of what he imagined to be a metaphysical bond between Eva and Dart, and he was mad that Eva had swung Sun’s bright night. Almost drunk, Ron fell back on mockery. “Congratulations, Evey! Sunny blew up the spot tonight.” His eyes were damp and angry as a hungry baby’s. “You had that shit down to a
science
, didn’t let
nothin’
get out beforehand. And then“—he crouched a little—” just when everybody thought the show couldn’t get any better, you had your boys come out with that
boomin’
-ass set—” Ron’s eyes were sour and laughing at the fiascoes he saw in Eva’s future. Dart returned and handed Eva her Scotch.

“Can you walk me to my room?” she said to him.

“You got fools walking you to your room now?” Ron shook like he was amused, but no laughter came out. He tilted the champagne to his lips.

Eva walked toward the door of the suite, thinking Dart was behind her.

“Keep fucking with me,” Dart said, still near Ron. His voice thundered under the party buzz like a bass line.

“Walk Eva to her room. That’s what she told you to do.” The three of them were back in the suite, in front of everyone.

“You think I won’t fight.” It was more a realization from Dart, than a question. “I don’t need to fight you. You’re killing yourself. Smell like doom.”

“Fight me.” Ron snorted. “Wow.” He watched Dart’s face. The champagne bottle went from dangling between Ron’s fingers to being enclosed in his fist. He was flushed more with fear, though, than liquor. “You don’t wanna do that.”

There was no puzzled or uneasy halt to the partying. There were those, like Min-Hee, who baldly watched, others who looked on with an irritated hopefulness, wondering why Ron and Dart couldn’t enjoy the party or take their beef elsewhere. There were the oblivious, too, but mostly people were calculating the potential brawl, adding and
subtracting with quantities based on what they knew of the neighborhoods Ron and Dart were raised in. Factored in was race, as well as whether either of them had ever been arrested, as well as to what degree Ron and Dart were more than normally (for the record business) egomaniacal. People calculated how much either man had to gain or lose in terms of being sued by the other, and in terms of reputation. They gauged each man’s history of viciousness, diagrammed in algebraic detail the business dealings between Ron and Dart, and, of course, the women they had in common. The calculations happened so instantaneously, and so subconsciously, the partiers had no idea they were doing math. In a blink, sums were considered. To a person, it was decided that the worst case would be shoving and cursing.

“Dart.”

“Momma’s calling,” Ron said.

“Ron,” Eva said with a death glare. “Shut. Up.” She looked at him like he should feel lucky he was at his own party.

Dart looked past Ron’s bulk at Eva. Wary, his intensity cracked. Eva seemed to be on his side.

The instinct to go over, get between them, was the kind Eva could resist. She knew Ron was radiating belligerence to give the impression that he was not down, let alone out.

Ron knew, as most did, that Dart was impulsive, and Ron wanted Dart to embarrass himself—and so Eva and Sunny as well.

Eva didn’t get in between the two of them because she’d busted up enough fights at parties. Been called every bitch possible.

“Go on, Dartan-
yan,”
Ron said, sounding almost authentically hard-core. “‘Fore you get your nose broke.”

And with another shift of his eyes and a surge of his shoulders, Dart was back in the scrap. Ron stood fast. He had to in front of the room, and in front of Eva.

“What y’all doin’ over here? What’s the tension, children? Jeeeezus. Jeezus, Mary, and Joseph!” Myra tipped over on the balls of her feet, grabbed Ron’s wrists in her hands and swung them. “Somebody peed in the sandbox? Ron, come with me, baby. Your Myra needs some more of this good wine you got up in here. Where’s your people?
Have ’em call for some more of those fritters and things. Ev
aaaaa
,” she sang out, “take Dart.”

Myra was sure she knew who Eva was. And Myra liked her. Eva was renowned for liking sex. She had her own cash. Any observable need for a man’s guidance and support, Eva’d have to manufacture and work to maintain. Eva could and did fuck men in the same set. She seemed to snicker at the contempt of women and men who judged her. Myra’s educated guess was that Eva’s fantasy included marrying someone who was paid. Maybe the guy would be in love with Eva, but maybe not. They’d have a friendship, though, a partnership through which they’d have one child. Eva and her husband would divorce when things got tough or boring, or when one of them, high hopes in a new, truer love, yearned to marry another. The only thing Myra envied of Eva was youth. Myra had been beautiful herself. And in the
Oprah
-sanctioned adventure that was her middle age, Myra thirsted for her thirties like she did for bourbon.

At Ron’s party, Myra, flat-footed, turned to Eva—eyes clear with compassion. She thought the girl folks called Evil Eva was a throwback to a time when women and men had sensible expectations. Still holding Ron, Myra wasn’t as drunk as she seemed. “I said take him and
go-go-go
, sweetums,” came Myra’s trill. Merrily, she swung Ron’s champagne jug. “Put Dart to bed.”

Walking back to her suite, Eva was working a problem at her own blackboard. Just when what Ron needed was to mark himself a clear winner in at least one Lost City battle, the spat he started had been stopped by a referee, and a woman—and scandalmonger Myra, at that. So even with the splotch of Vic and Swan, the convention was almost over, and back in the world, the phoenixlike rise of Sunny would be the only tale worth telling. Eva knew Ron wouldn’t sleep until he could chalk himself up, in some way, as one of the night’s champions.

E
va met Sunny in Monterey, California, at a music festival on Cannery Row called Innovative Music for Innovators. Two hundred miles north of Los Angeles, right on the peninsula. Eva swooped down the Row in her leased SUV, bumping old Niggas With Attitude so loud the dash trembled. It was 1994.

She wore cargo pants to the event, some work boots, and a short, sheer shirt. Along with a web of rubber bands and dollar bangles at her wrist, Eva wore what she thought of as her hippie-dippy sterling and garnet jewelry. Except for the diamond studs—near colorless, set in platinum—she sported no real jewels to alienate the hippie-dippy crowd. No bright gold to give the targeted artist a clue to her newly acquired tastes for glittery, affirming bangles. And, so as to seem extra down-to-earth, Eva left her designer tote under the seat of the car. She tied a black hoodie around her waist, figuring no one would know it was cashmere.

Mostly lightweight freaks here
, she thought,
smoking way too much weed
. Lugging army-green canvas knapsacks.
And not using quite enough of that crystal deodorant rock
. Eva was in familiar territory. While she was in the fourth and fifth grades, Eva’s parents had rented a groundskeeper’s bungalow in Carmel, a few miles north of Monterey. Vehicle neatly parked, Eva hopped out and began walking toward the pier. She tapped her pants pockets for credit cards and passport and beeper, and the unfussy, mannish gesture made Eva feel free. Monterey, Eva remembered with a tremble, was where her father made her mom go for better grocery deals.