Boss Lady (27 page)

“Well, what does it have to do with you?” I asked Maddy. I wanted to get it all out in the open before we even started our day.

Maddy said, “All I'm saying is that we're not fucking kids. And I don't appreciate being treated that way.”

I said, “Well, why beef with me about that? I said the same thing to my cousin last night. I was defending our right to make our own decisions.”

“Well, what happened last night?” Jasmine still wanted to know. She was left out in the cold.

Alexandria told her, “None of your damn business, girl. You're always running your fucking mouth about something.”

Before I knew it, Jasmine had mugged Alexandria into the hallway wall.

“You think you're the shit. You're not the fucking shit, you whore!” Jasmine screamed at her.

Maddy jumped on Jasmine's back and yanked her head by her ponytail.

“Owww!” Jasmine yelled.

I jumped on Maddy to try and pull her away from Jasmine. Alexandria then caught her balance and rushed at all of us.

“You fucking bitch!” she screamed at Jasmine with wild, flailing arms.

Jasmine got loose from Maddy and rushed Alexandria into the wall again with a loud thump.

Boom!

Maddy turned and faced me. She said, “Oh, I've been waiting for this.”

Sasha pleaded, “What is wrong with you guys?”

But it was too late for that. Maddy was ready to attack me, and Alexandria and Jasmine were already throwing down in a full-fledged fight in the Marriott hallway.

Maddy tried to reach out and claw my face with her nails, but I backed up and slapped her arms down. Then I threw a left-hand cross to her face and knocked her backwards. That only seemed to get Maddy going stronger. She was a lot thicker than I was, so I had no ground to give.

When Maddy rushed me in the hallway a second time, I must have thrown about ten lefts and rights at her face like a Mexican boxer. I didn't even know where I hit her, but I do know that she didn't get a chance to hit me. I wasn't going for it that morning. I hadn't done anything wrong to them. They were acting like damn fools just because we had caught them with my cousin.

“Hey, hey, hey!” someone yelled out from behind me.

I turned and noticed an older white man with his wife behind him. He was attempting to break up the fight.

Maddy tried to rush at me a third time, and the older white man restrained her.

She screamed, “I'ma fuck you up now, bitch! This ain't over with! Get the fuck off of me!”

“Someone call security!” the white man yelled as he struggled with her.

Sasha was shaking her head saying, “I don't believe we did this.”

I guess she was embarrassed by it. Sasha was the only one who wasn't caught up that morning.

I was too on edge to be embarrassed at the moment. But there we were, acting like uncivilized, ghetto girls in the hallway of the Marriott Hotel in downtown Philadelphia.

*  *  *

The next thing I knew, the hallway was filled with hotel guests who were peeking out of their rooms to find out what the hell was going on so early in the morning. Someone else had managed to pull Jasmine and Alexandria apart. Then the hotel security showed up, followed by police officers with guns, all for us.

“What's the problem here?” the officers asked us.

They were both black cops, dark brown males in their thirties.

Sasha answered, “It was just a catfight that escalated into . . .
this.”

I wasn't much for words at the moment either. I was still in defense mode I guess. Then my cell phone went off. It was Tracy calling us from the limo downstairs. She had no idea of the mess we were now involved in.

“Who are you all with?” the officers were asking. They were filing a disturbance report and everything.

I answered my cell phone and told my cousin, “You're gonna need to come in and get us.”

Tracy was pissed again. After everything had been settled, she got me alone outside the hotel and asked me, “So who started this shit?”

I didn't want to dime on anyone. So I asked my cousin, “What did you say to them in their room last night?”

“I can't remember,” she answered too quickly.

“Well, whatever it was, I don't think they liked it too much,” I told her.

She calmed down a bit and put things together.

“So they started this shit this morning?”

I still didn't want to answer that question. I said, “All I know is that I had to finish it. But I don't know how they're going to feel about me now as their friend.”

I liked having a crew of girls to support me. I can't lie about that. So I felt empty after the fight. It wasn't a win for me. I had lost my peace with my friends, if I still wanted to call them that.

Tracy shook her head. She was still trying to figure out what to do.

She said, “I guess I'll just have to put them in separate cars until they all cool off. And you're still coming with me. But now we're running an hour late.”

At first, I was actually surprised that my cousin was sticking to her schedule. But then I thought about the movies she had made, and the determination on the set to finish each day of work, and I realized that nothing would stop Tracy from doing what she had to do once she decided to do it. She was used to jumping over, and piling through, unexpected roadblocks, and our fight that morning was no different from any other technical difficulty. The show had to go on.

We walked back over to the second limo and I climbed inside while Tracy had a few words with Robin.

“The chauffeur has my list of locations, and you just keep these girls apart until they get it all out of their system,” she said. “Vanessa is going with me.”

Robin nodded to her. “Okay. I got you covered.”

Tracy hopped inside the smaller limo with me and took her seat across from mine. And as we pulled off, headed for Germantown Avenue, she began to smile and shake her head.

I had no idea what was so humorous to her, so I sat silently and didn't respond to it.

She said, “So you finished it, hunh? And busted Maddy's face all up. You're from North Philly all right. Madison didn't know who she was dealing with.”

It wasn't right, but I cracked a smile with her. I didn't even see Maddy's face. I wasn't thinking about it.

I said, “So, we're still going to meet with Victor this morning?” just to change the subject. I felt awkward viewing my friends as adversaries.
And I still considered Maddy and Alexandria to be my friends.

Tracy looked at me and answered, “No doubt about it. You should have known we weren't leaving Philadelphia without seeing him. That's a given,” she told me.

I grinned and shook my head.

I asked her, “What is it about him that gets to you?”

Tracy shook her head back to me.

She said, “He's a dominant black man. He's the one white men are the most afraid of, and in awe of.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked her. My cousin would speak in poetic riddles every once in a while. I needed more straight talk. Not that I couldn't understand her deeper meaning, I just wanted to make sure.

“Victor makes and lives by his own rules. That's what all dominant men do. They follow the rules they want to follow, and bend or break the rules that they don't.”

“What about you?” I asked her. She did the same thing.

She caught on to my logic and smiled. She said, “I'm a dominant woman. And so are you. That's why you're living with me now. You refuse to be the victim. You refuse to be oppressed. You seek what you want. And you map out how to get it.”

She said, “That's dominant theory in itself. And that's how you have to be.”

I nodded to her. It all made sense to me. And I was growing closer to my cousin every day. So if she connected so well to me, I wondered why she was so adverse to connecting to Alexandria. What was it about my friend that turned her off?

“So what do you really think about Alexandria?” I asked her.

I still knew what I knew about Alexandria, I just wanted to hear more of my cousin's views on her.

Tracy's eyes narrowed into slits. “Like I said, I just don't trust that girl,” she told me. “And if I got Mercedes around her, Mercedes would pick her ass apart. She's a pro at reading people. It's a part of her survival mechanism.”

I said, “How do you think Mercedes reads you?”

“Oh, she suckers me all the time,” Tracy admitted with a laugh.
“Mercedes always knows that I still look up to her as that big sister. So she'll continue to use that angle whenever she needs to. But she'll protect me, too. And she'll fight for this movie whether she's concerned about her role in it or not. Because if it's a bad role, she knows she can squeeze me even more for it.”

“What do you think about Bruce as a grown man?”

I was intrigued by what my cousin thought of people, so I just kept it rolling.

Tracy said, “He seems bitter. He's a loser. But that doesn't mean he's not right in what he says. He has a lot of valid points, but when you're a loser you tend to have less optimism. You just don't believe in good things happening. So he didn't believe in Kiwana.”

“Do you believe in her?”

“Of course I do. She's my girl. I have to.”

“Did you call her back again and ask her about the movie yet?”

“Not yet, but I will.”

*  *  *

We arrived at Germantown Avenue near Victor's store, and I became nervous again.

“Are you nervous around him?” I asked my cousin.

Tracy smiled at me. “I get nervous right before I see him, but that's only because I still want him to look good. I mean, I'm not nervous to talk to him or anything like that. I'm too grown for that, and I've known him for too long. But I do get nervous when I think about whether he'll still be attractive to me or not.”

“How do you think he feels about seeing you? How do you even know he's gonna be here today? Did you call and tell him you were coming?”

She said, “I have people who check in at his store for me to make sure he still works in and out of the store. So I know he's going to be here. And no, he doesn't know we're coming. That's a part of the nervousness for me. What if I catch him on a bad day?”

I smiled and shook my head. She seemed to be very superficial about him.

“I know you don't only think about his looks,” I stated rhetorically.

She said, “Oh, of course not. I was just answering your question about nervousness. Victor's a brilliant man, no question about it. He's really grown into his role as a grassroots-type leader, and he can speak on every issue through experience.”

I said, “It seems like he could run for politics or something. He has a lot of likability.”

Tracy agreed with me. “Yeah, he does.”

Our black limo pulled up to the curb of the commercial storefront property of Germantown Avenue near Chelten, and we both took a breath before we climbed out to approach Victor's store.

“Well, here we go,” Tracy commented.

As soon as I stepped out of the limo and walked toward the store, I didn't feel nervous anymore. My nervousness was wiped away as we approached our goal.

It was an everyday store with a plate glass window, health foods on counters to the right, drinks inside of freezers to the left, and a tall order counter toward the back center where you ordered hot and prepared foods from their menu.

An attractive honey brown woman was behind the counter in a white headdress. All we could see were her face and hands behind her clothes, but her skin, eyes, nose, and lips were as perfect as you could get. I was nearly staring at her.

“May I help you sisters?” she asked us. She looked to be in her late teens or early twenties. I was guessing early twenties. I believed she only looked like a teenager because she was so naturally attractive. No makeup or additives were needed.

Tracy said, “Actually, we were wondering if the owner Qadeer Muhammad was available this morning.” It was after eleven o'clock by the time we had arrived. The plan was to arrive closer to ten when the store first opened. The fight at the hotel with my girls ruined that plan.

The sister nodded to us and said, “You're Tracy Ellison Grant, aren't you?”

Tracy nodded back to her. “And you are?”

“I'm Felicia,” she answered. She extended her hand to Tracy over the counter. That's when I noticed that she was pregnant.

“Pleased to meet you,” Tracy told her.

She nodded and smiled. She said, “I'll go back and get him for you.”

As soon as she left the counter area to slip into the back, I looked at Tracy.

“Who do you think she is?” I whispered.

Tracy said, “I don't even want to think about it. But I know she's not his wife. Victor has two sons that are nearly ten years old by now, and I know she's not old enough for that.”

I said, “You saw that she was pregnant though, right?”

“Of course I did.”

I had some ideas, and I'm sure that my cousin had hers, but before either of us could get out another word, Victor “Qadeer Muhammad” Hinson walked out from the back to greet us.

He grinned and said, “I figured it was only a matter of time before you made your way back over here. I heard all about the film you're about to shoot.”

Tracy smiled at him and said, “Not yet. We're just in the preproduction stage.”

Victor was clean-shaven and a healthy dark brown, wearing a basic gray sweat suit with white sneakers. He was still wearing his white apron from the back kitchen area and plastic gloves.

He nodded and said, “It'll happen. It's only a matter of time. But let me finish up what I'm doing back here and I'll be right back out.”

“Okay,” Tracy told him with a nod.

Felicia, the sister behind the counter, continued to smile at us.