Joplin's Ghost (26 page)

Phoenix knelt and hugged Max close to her face, allowing the dog to lick her with his warm, velvety tongue. She didn’t know when she would see Max again, and she missed him already. “You keep your daddy safe,” she whispered, hugging the dog’s sturdy neck.

Ronn didn’t offer Phoenix a good-bye, nor even a gaze.

Phoenix watched Ronn walk into his War Room, greeting the four near-silent men now huddled inside its doorway with handshakes and quick, one-armed embraces. Ronn’s first meeting was over, and a new one was underway. The four strangers spoke so low she couldn’t hear them, but their faces and eyes were armor. Ronn and these men were a marshal and his counsel.

Phoenix remembered the last scene of
The Godfather
—Michael Corleone accepting the destiny he’d fought so hard against, gathering his capos around him—as Ronn followed his friends into the War Room and pushed the door closed.

C
arlos’s apartment wasn’t the same one she’d seen in Miami, but his decor was unchanged in so many ways that she felt she’d been there before. Even the framed concert posters on the walls and potted palm trees looked the same. The living room walls were an imaginative golden color, but to her glutted eyes his rooms looked cramped, and there were none of the fine touches and detailing she had seen at Ronn’s. The only view through the glass sliding door leading to his small balcony was the apartment building across the street. But Carlos had his walls of CDs in his living room, his own riches on display.

“Where did you tell your father he was dropping you off?” Carlos said. He offered her a glass of white wine he’d poured in the kitchen, but she shook her head. He sipped it himself, taking a seat across from her at the Rooms To Go pinewood table in his dining area, a table that might be from a dollhouse, built only for two.

“I told him it was you. I’m sick of acting like I’m still in high school.”

“What did he say?”

What had been more unnerving was what he
hadn’t
said. Sarge had barely blinked when she told him, and his silence worried her more. “I guess he’s just happy you’re not Ronn,” she said. In retrospect, it was obvious Sarge had told Ronn to keep away from her, and Ronn had agreed. She couldn’t be mad at either one of them, but her nausea from Ronn’s house had not entirely left. “I think he’s just glad I had somewhere to go. He didn’t want me to be alone.”

“Today has been crazy for you,” Carlos said, his eyes mournful. “What can I do?”

Phoenix smiled. “You’re doing it. I didn’t want to go back to my haunted apartment.”

“I can do more,” he said, rising from his seat. He stood behind her, and his palms found her shoulders, kneading. She instinctively tensed, pulling forward.

“Relax,” Carlos said. “I’m good at this.”

I’m sure you are,
Phoenix thought, but she surrendered her muscles to Carlos’s plying. Her bones melted beneath his touch, a fluidness that streamed from her shoulders and traveled the length of her body. She slouched, closing her eyes, her head dangling backward. Her head sank against his taut stomach, but she didn’t move. From this position, so close, Carlos’s cologne was a feather bed she could sink into and sleep.

“I just got out of a relationship,” she said quietly. “I’m having ghost issues, and I could have been shot today. You’re not going to get the wrong idea about me being here, are you?”

His magical fingers plied on. “You need a friend. That’s the idea, no?”

“Thank you,” she said, her eyes still closed. The truth was, wine or no wine, if Carlos slid his hands to her breasts and pinched her nipples with just the right pressure, she would be helpless. Her body felt starved for touch, her nerve endings chafing inside her clothes. But she’d tried sex as an antidepressant before, and it didn’t work for her. “I’m just worried that…”

“Shhhhh,”
he said.

“I’m not gonna lie, Carlos, I’m stressed out. I’m singing on
Live at Night
Tuesday, and I’m not ready. My voice sounded like shit at my lesson today. I need to start singing on a treadmill again and get in shape. And I have to figure out my hair. I look like I’m supposed to be the opening act in a coffeehouse, and this is
television
.”

“Your hair is beautiful. Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, sifting a few strands through his fingers, like gold dust. “You’re talking too much. Relax, I said.”

While Carlos massaged her, Phoenix felt her consciousness drifting. She imagined a man’s dark hand giving her a rose, and she snapped to alertness, her eyes open. Away from the shooting and its aftermath, last night’s dream disconcerted her again. She didn’t remember all of it, but she could remember images. A rose. A black man in a formal black suit.

She noticed a stack of sheet music and books about Joplin and ragtime on Carlos’s table. Phoenix hadn’t recognized the pieces she’d played in her sleep when she’d studied them that morning, and none of the pieces had been “Weeping Willow” or “Bethena” again. They certainly hadn’t sprung from
her
mind, that much she knew.

“Did you tell that curator guy to look out for our package?”

“He said he’ll keep his eyes open for it. I mailed it to the Joplin House.”

“That dream was the ghost’s way of visiting me last night. I’m sure of it,” Phoenix said.

“I agree,” Carlos said, as if it were nothing, a discussion of the weather. “By the way, Heather says she sends you a hug. She heard what happened today. I hope you don’t mind, but I told her about your dream and the music. She just laughed. She said Scott Joplin definitely wasn’t interested in talking to anyone but you.”

“What’s going on, Carlos?” Phoenix felt a shudder wind its way across her shoulders, coiling down her spine to her tailbone. “Why did he pick me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think it’ll happen again? Do you think he’ll follow me here?”

“If you’re worried, I’ll sleep beside you. If anything happens, I’ll be there. If you start acting weird, I’ll wake you.”

His offer seemed magnanimous. Phoenix never would have asked a grown man who was attracted to her to sleep beside her with no expectation of sex. “You would do that?”

“Of course, Phoenix. Anything you want. Come—I’ll show you.”

Phoenix hesitated, wary, then she took his extended hand. They moved from his dining area to his living room, where he reclined on the sofa and pulled her against him after putting on a safe CD, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He had told her once that he thought South African harmonies were the most beautiful on the planet, and hearing the tenderly blended voices, she had to agree. Under the music’s massage, Phoenix fell in and out of wakefulness. True to his word, Carlos only hooked one arm around her waist and let her lean across his chest. He did not press his lower torso against her, keeping a pillow between them. Each time she opened her eyes, the sky was darker outside, but Carlos didn’t move to turn on the lights, not wanting to disturb her. The room began to turn gray, as if a new morning was already beginning.

She would be able to sleep if she could get that gunfire sound out of her head, the crackles that had sounded like a string of fireworks and the explosions that had shaken the windows. She couldn’t stop thinking about Ronn, worrying for him.

“What do you think of G-Ronn?” Phoenix asked Carlos finally.

“I’ve never met him.”

“His music, I mean.”

Carlos sighed, shifting his position beneath her. “I
loved
rap when it first came on the scene. I memorized The Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ and Run-DMC blew my mind with ‘The Jungle,’ then ‘Walk This Way,’ since I liked Aerosmith, too. And Ra-Kim laid it out with those great rhymes. Tupac’s ‘Keep Ya Head Up’ is still one of my favorite rap songs. And I’ve got nothing but respect for Public Enemy.”

“Hell, yeah,” Phoenix said, smiling. “‘Fight the Power’ is
the
song. I love that cut.”

“Dancing is in my blood on both sides of my family, and I used to love the message in rap, too. The rawness. But something’s happened. To tell you the truth, I was reading through those books on ragtime today, and you know what I thought? A lot of the stuff G-Ronn does isn’t so different from a kind of music they called coon songs.”

Phoenix sat up, gazing back at him incredulously. She expected him to be smiling, messing with her, but even in the dim light, she could see he wasn’t. “OK, that’s way too harsh. You sound like my mother now.”

“But you
did
ask,” he said gently. “Just hear me out. Spike Lee talked about that in
Bamboozled,
how so much rap has become a minstrel show. I don’t blame the young brothers trying to get by. If there’s a choice between rapping about selling rocks and selling rocks for real, I choose the rapping, I guess. But in Joplin’s time, the country was crazy for these songs about blacks acting foolish and violent, slicing each other up. Songwriters got rich churning out that crap. G-Ronn’s doing the same thing, Phee.”

Carlos sighed. “Listen, I know he’s close to you, and I
hate
what happened today. It’s tragic, and I pray for his nephew. But I’ve been listening to G-Ronn’s music since ‘Playa Dayz,’ and it hasn’t changed. He’s still slinging, fighting, and fucking up his enemies. Now it’s ‘Don’t Fuck With What’s Mine’ and ‘Funeral Party.’ Come
on
. You can’t tell me there’s no relationship between that and someone trying to blow his head off. He shouldn’t be surprised someone got hurt, and that someone could have been
you
. That makes me mad.”

The gunshots came back, the memory so visceral that Phoenix flinched. She touched the arm Carlos had wrapped around her. “Ronn told me whatever happened with DJ Train goes back before his music,” she said. “The music doesn’t make it happen.”

“But his music
celebrates
it, Phee. I cried all night when Tupac died. I’d met him, back when he was doing publicity for that first movie he was in,
Juice
. We talked for an hour about shit that had nothing to do with the movie, the state of the world and black America. I walked away thinking, ‘Damn, that kid is going to set the world on fire.’ And instead, the world set him on fire. As bright as he was, he’d been through too much to break free. So, yeah, I understand these guys enjoying their power, expressing their anger. I
get
that black men here haven’t had the chance to say whatever the hell they want before. But in South Africa, the superstars are rapping about AIDS prevention. I’m waiting for G-Ronn to stop lining his pockets playing dress-up for America’s wildest fantasies. They’re
coon
songs, Phoenix, and he should know better by now.”

Phoenix felt a flare of pain in her chest. The man had been shot at today, and Carlos didn’t have an ounce of compassion. “You’re one cold-sounding SOB, Carlos.”

“Maybe so. I know I love our music, or I used to. Mostly, my heart is broken.”

While they weren’t paying attention, the room had gone dark, with only the cool blue display from the stereo to show them their shadows. The South African singers in Ladysmith Black Mambazo were praising the rain in harmonies so pure they were fierce. Phoenix understood why Carlos was heartbroken. Too many kids in the ghetto heard G-Ronn’s rap persona as a beacon, not a warning. Where was
their
beautiful music?

“He’s not rapping anymore after this CD, he says,” she said, a TSR secret. “And the label is experimenting with new stuff. That’s why he’s doing R&B. It’s going to be different.”

“Good. I hope so.”

Across the room, Phoenix’s cell phone rang inside her purse. She jumped up to grab it, thinking the curator might be calling about the faxed music. She moved so quickly that she dizzied herself. But Gloria’s number, not Van Milton’s, was on her green-lighted Caller ID. Damn. She should have called Gloria a long time ago.

Phoenix’s cousin didn’t return her cheerful greeting, speaking in a no-nonsense tone: “I only want you to say seven words, Phee.”

“‘I’m sorry’ is only two words,” Phoenix said softly. “But I’m sorry.”

“Not good enough. I want you to say you were wrong, and I was right.”

Phoenix smiled. “You were wrong, and I was right.”

“Very funny, but I’m not kidding. I bought myself a plane ticket today—yes, with my own money, since I’ve been mooching—but before I come, I want you to say those words. Some freakazoid was stalking you in your hotel room, and I was right to speak up about that kid Kendrick, even if it turned out he wasn’t the one. You know I was. I’m sorry about the fallout with G-Ronn, I really am, but we knew something like what went down today could happen. I was trying to protect you, cuz. I was just doing my effing job.”

Phoenix couldn’t remember all of the things she’d shouted at Gloria that night in St. Louis, but it had been bad.
Fuck off and go home,
maybe. “I know you were, Gloria.”

“Great. Now, say those seven magic words. And speak up so I can hear, because your cell phone signal still bites.”

Instead, for the first time, Phoenix told her cousin about her visits from Joplin’s ghost.