Can't Stop the Shine (23 page)

“I hope so. Naw, I know I'm changing—for the better. I'm becoming a real artist,” said Malcolm, leaning back as the waitress brought him a carnivore's delight—a plate piled high with ribs, steak and chicken wings. Kalia's eyes grew large as she watched Malcolm dig right in and start devouring it like a ravenous animal. “Mmm. This is good,” he said, smacking on a rib. “This is even better than the ones I had at Daddy D's the other night. Dub was there, too, with Renisha and Stephon. You're never around when Dub is around. I gotta introduce y'all. You'll like him. Maybe we can hook up after one of my sessions next week. I don't know, I usually hang with one of the producers after we get out of the studio, but there are always women around…. Aw, damn. Who's calling me now?”

Kalia watched and listened to Malcolm check his Blackberry, then his cell phone, then go back to talking with his mouth full, shoveling more food in every time he was about to speak a clear sentence. He was disgusting. She was about to excuse herself from the table when a tall, shapely Hispanic girl walked up. She removed her Gucci shades and leaned over to kiss Malcolm on the cheek.

“Happy Valentine's Day,
papi,
” she said through black cherry-colored pouted lips, eyeing Kalia.

“What's up,
mami?
” said Malcolm, cutting his eyes at Kalia and wiping the lipstick off his cheek.

“I don't know why you're wiping that off. You know my kisses are good luck,” she said, looking at Malcolm like she wanted to eat him alive.

“
Heh, heh, heh
…girl, you so crazy.” Malcolm laughed, slightly uncomfortable. “Jasmine, this is Kalia. Kalia, this is Jasmine. We do some work together.”

“I thought we were all meeting up here later,” said Jasmine, barely acknowledging Kalia with a thin-lipped smile. Kalia started to say hello, but lost her train of thought hearing Malcolm's reply.

“Oh well, I had some dead time on my hands, so I thought I'd hook up with my girl here and then we could all meet at the studio later. I told Dub to get with y'all. I knew I shouldn't have trusted him. You know how he is.” Malcolm laughed.

Jasmine laughed along with him. Besides being angry that she was just Malcolm's dead-time filler, Kalia felt she was on the outside of an inside joke.

Jasmine waved at someone across the restaurant. “All right, I'm out, sweets. I'll catch you later,” she said, blowing a fake kiss at Malcolm. “Oh, and that ‘Just Us' track is so hot. Those lyrics are fire. You can write your ass off. Okay,
ciao.
” She smiled at Kalia and tiptoed off in ridiculously high black suede boots, twirling her shades in her hand.

“Cool.” Malcolm threw up the peace sign and resumed eating.

“I know she wasn't talking about the ‘Just Us' that I wrote,” said Kalia.

Malcolm kept his face in his plate.

“I know you hear me talking to you,” Kalia said, raising her voice.

“Calm down, damn,” he said, putting down his fork. “Look, I was gonna surprise you, but I sold your song, and one of the Fire artists is probably going to sing it.”

Feeling mixed emotions, Kalia frowned. “
Okay…
thanks, I guess, but why did she say you wrote the lyrics?”

“Well, I didn't think they would even look at it if I told them that my girl wrote it,” said Malcolm, getting exasperated. “Don't worry about it. You'll get your cut as soon as I get the check.”

“Money is cool and all, but I want the credit. I wrote it.”

“All right, fine. Damn. You don't know how things work in the music business.”

“Well, if stealing is involved, I don't want to know.”

“You're really getting on my nerves,” he mumbled between bites.

“What did you say?” Kalia asked. Not getting an answer she went on to her next question. “So what kinda work do you and Jasmine do
together?
” asked Kalia, watching Jasmine leaning over another guy at another table with another pissed-off girl looking at them both.

“Aw, here we go. She just does some backup stuff. She's cool.”

“I'm sure she is. Do all these women you're talking to do backup work, or are they just trying to work on you?”

“Give me a break, Kalia. Actually, it's a good thing that these women are coming up to me.”

“What?”

“The label says it's good for my image if I'm kinda on the scene with a few different women—you know, the right kind of women. I mean you understand, don't you? It's just some image stuff. They want my fans to see me as—”

“Your fans? Who the hell knows you?” Kalia asked, cutting him off. “You don't even have a single out yet. All these people seem like fakers, and you're starting to seem like one, too. I mean you talk about being a real artist, and I haven't heard you one time say you were at home working on some mixes, putting together some new beats like you used to say. You used to be up all night working on your music. Now it's all about the lawyers, the label and these backup singers, I guess.”

Malcolm put down his fork and wiped his mouth. “Kalia, you don't know what you're talking about. Wise up. The music business is a business, and all that creativity and stuff is cool, but that's not what really sells albums. It ain't just talent,” he said. “Your talent might be what gets you in the door sometimes, but sometimes it's your look and what they can make you into.”

“But why do you wanna be made into something? Why can't you just, you know, do you?”

“'Cause they can make me sound better, look better and sell more albums,” said Malcolm, giving a nod to an executive-looking man with a diamond pinky ring.

“And that's what's important to you, selling albums?” said Kalia. “I thought it was about spinning some good music and using music to take people to a place in their soul that they couldn't reach any other way. That's what you told me when we first met.”

“Well, K, I'm not the buster I was when we first met,” said Malcolm. “I'm on the come-up, and I'm learning some things that I didn't know from some important people I didn't even know I needed to meet. If you win this Fire contest, you'll see. You'll see what I mean.”

“What do you mean
if?
You don't think I can do it?”

“I do, but you know you gotta do something about that stage presence. I mean the dead fish act ain't gon' work.”

“Shut up, Malcolm. When I tried to talk to you, get your advice about this weeks ago, you were too busy. Now you wanna give me some advice 'cause you think you know so much from being signed for a few weeks? Please.”

“Go on then. Be a fool,” he said. “Don't listen to me. I bet I know one thing. I know what a true artist is, and I know what it takes to go eight times platinum like Nelly, and that's where I'm going. Not back to Morris Brown, not back to deejaying in those hole-in-the-wall spots. I'm 'bout to release some albums and blow up.”

“Right, right,” said Kalia sarcastically. “You've really got the big head now.”

“I know what I'm talking about. And you can roll with all that ‘I'm talented' crap all you want. But that ain't gonna get you far 'cause it's a lot of talented people out there who never get past their church choir. It's the game you play that gets you in the right circle to meet the right people to get you to the next circle, and you gotta look the part,” he said, pulling his earlobe, which she just noticed had a small stud in it. She wondered if what looked like diamonds in it were real.

“You're certainly not the same guy I met months ago,” said Kalia, pushing her plate away, her appetite gone.

“Why do you keep saying that? I know that, and I'm happy about it. You should be, too. Hold up, is that?…That is Keith,” said Malcolm, getting up from the table. “I'll be right back, baby.”

Kalia sat at the table, cursing herself out. Feeling around in her purse for her cell phone, her hand brushed against the condom.
I must be an idiot,
she thought, scrolling through her cell phone book, wondering who she could call.
There's no way in the world Malcolm will ever get in these pants. How could he treat me like this on Valentine's Day of all days?
Emotionally overloaded, she needed to talk to somebody, was ready to get out of there and felt as though she was going to burst into tears any minute. She needed a friend. She needed Dewayne.

Dialing his cell, Kalia prayed he answered. It had been weeks since they'd had a nice long chat.
He's probably not doing anything anyway,
she thought,
just working on those silly comic book drawings.
She was surprised when he didn't answer. She didn't bother leaving a message and dialed his home number as she saw Malcolm slide into a booth already filled with four women. Dewayne's home number was ringing, Malcolm was leaning into the ear of one of the women, and Kalia's anger and frustration were escalating toward uncontrollable.

Where the hell is he?
she wondered, slamming her phone shut. She looked around the restaurant and realized no one was paying her one bit of attention, not Malcolm, not other diners—the waitress hadn't even bothered to come back to check and see if she needed something. Kalia threw her phone in her purse, got up from the table and walked quickly out the front door. Thank God she'd taken her mother's advice and always traveled with twenty dollars just in case she needed to catch a cab home. She walked to the hotel across the street and jumped in a taxi. It was her first time in one by herself, so she was a little nervous, but she told the driver her home address and gave him specific directions in the most authoritative voice she could muster.

 

“Isn't that your phone ringing?” Mari asked Dewayne.

“Yeah, it's just Kalia. I'll call her back later. Do you wanna finish watching this movie or what?” He leaned back on the sofa. They'd been watching
Drumline
at his house, which she wasn't really that excited about, since she'd seen it at least a dozen times.

“I guess,” she said, getting up and walking around the living room, looking at pictures of his family. “Y'all look so much alike.”

“Who?”

“Everybody in your family,” she said, picking up a photo of Dewayne, his parents and his brother, Spencer, and sitting back down on the sofa. Dewayne took the picture from her and stared at it intently.

“Wow. I haven't really looked at this picture in a long time. It's gotta be about ten years old. See that scar on Spence's chin?” he asked, pointing to his deceased brother. “About two weeks before this was taken, he'd gotten in this big fight at school, really because of me and this kid named Victor.”

“What happened?” Mari asked, curling up in the corner of the sofa.

“Okay, now, you can't laugh if I tell you,” Dewayne said, putting the picture on the low table in front of them.

“I promise. I won't.” She grinned.

Dewayne told her how much he loved Halloween as a kid because he was able to dress up like his favorite superhero, Blade. When he was in second grade, he won his classroom contest for best costume, and he thought that because all the kids loved him so much as Blade that he should be Blade every day, so the next day, he stuffed his costume in his book bag and changed into it in the school bathroom. The kids in his class were so excited about his costume that he lied to his teacher, telling her he didn't have any more clothes into which to change. Everything was going great until lunchtime. When he strutted into the lunch line in his tight black polyester shirt and faux leather pants, with the tails of his pleather trench coat flapping behind him, the older kids on the other side of the lunchroom burst into laughter. His brother, a sixth grader at the time, took him to his teacher and made him change his clothes, which were stuffed in the bottom of his book bag. The trouble came after school when all the kids were waiting for the bus and Victor, a classmate of Spence's, spotted Dewayne and started clowning him.

“I kept sticking my tongue out at him and of course Spence stood up for me,” said Dewayne, smiling. “He probably wouldn't have gotten into a fight at all if I hadn't called Vic's mama an ugly crackhead.”

“Woo-wee, no you didn't.”

“I didn't even really know what a crackhead was. I'm sure it was just something I'd heard on
In Living Color
or something. You remember that show?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Mari, barely able to stifle her laughter.

“But he was really mad because his mama really was a crackhead. How was I supposed to know that?”

Mari laughed so hard she fell off the sofa and rolled on the floor.

“You said you weren't going to laugh.” Dewayne chuckled, helping her up off the floor.

“Okay, now you know that was funny. You called somebody's mama a crackhead and she really was. How could I not laugh? Ooh, I'm sorry,” said Mari, cracking up again. “So how did he get Spence into it?”