Joplin's Ghost (40 page)

Yes, Scott. I hear you. I hear you, Scott. I’m ready.

“I need paper,” she said.

A notebook appeared in front of Phoenix, graph paper. Carlos had pulled her tray table down for her, and he slipped a pen in her hand. “A message from him?” he said.

Phoenix barely heard Carlos, because her hand was no longer hers. Her fingers were growing numb, as if she were dipping her fingertips into a cold gel, one joint at a time. Phoenix watched her hand grasp the pen tightly and carve out five horizontal lines nearly perfectly spaced an eighth of an inch apart on the page. Startled, she tried to make herself stop. When she curled her fingers, the numbness flushed away, replaced by warm blood. Her pen stilled in midstroke.

NO. You’ve been waiting for this. Don’t be afraid of him. Don’t be afraid.

When Phoenix relaxed her hand, her pen flew again. This time, she drew a skillful treble clef with its rounded belly, and dots, dashes and numbers—6/8 time, it read. Then, Phoenix watched herself draw the first string of lively quarter-note chords, like clusters of grapes. As she drew, the music played itself in her head, much faster than her hand could capture it, but her hand was racing to try. Phoenix was skydiving, a cold wind rushing against her face.

“I didn’t know you could write music by hand,” Carlos said, across an impossible gulf.

“I can’t,” Phoenix said, and made herself forget Carlos, everything except her hand.

I’m doing it. I’m really doing it.

Phoenix Smalls and Scott Joplin flew together.

N
ew York was always a homecoming for Carlos Harris.

He’d lived in the city his junior year at Stanford when he interned at the
New York Times,
and even with his fortieth birthday looming in six hundred days, Carlos was convinced he might still move to New York one day. It was never too late. He’d almost fled here after the nightmare in Miami, when his bosses practically branded him a child molester. (Some reporters at the
Sun-News
still believed the lie that he’d gotten a sixteen-year-old girl pregnant). Los Angeles had won him because his business partner was there, but New York was Carlos’s first choice, always.

Carlos had enough work and family to bring him back at least four times a year, and that was enough for now. He had relatives in New York on both sides, and he’d helped his parents make their calls after the planes hit on September 11—Tia and Tio had still been asleep in the Bronx; his cousin Pilar had been riding on the N/R line to meet a friend for breakfast in SoHo; Aunt Josephine had been on her way to work at Hue-Man Bookstore uptown in Harlem; and his cousin Darnell had been late to his early meeting at One World Trade Center because of a parent-teacher conference at his daughter’s school. Darnell had collapsed in tears when he heard Carlos’s voice. Over the next few days, two dozen of Carlos’s friends had shared their chorus of wonderment and grief. New York lived in Carlos, and he lived in New York. Just not yet.

This time, it felt strange to be back, surreal. Carlos felt like he was walking through an absurd dream crammed with fascinating elements: Life. Death. Music. Love. All the essentials. Phoenix was at the center of Carlos’s dream, creating miracles at will, shattering and rebuilding him in alternating breaths. He hadn’t had time to regain his balance since the first night he heard her voice on the phone, when she called to tell him she had just run into a ghost.

Me, too,
he’d wanted to say. And now he was sharing her hotel room, her bed—and something bigger than anything he knew how to manage. But he didn’t have to wonder, because for once, he
knew:
He loved Phoenix, and she was only the second woman to hear those words from him since he was nineteen.

Today, Carlos barely recognized the woman he loved.

Phoenix’s modernist suite at the Bon Maison Hotel on Forty-Seventh and Broadway was being transformed into a miniature television studio. A technician from the cable show
New York View
switched on two bright floodlights, erasing the color from Phoenix’s face except for her makeup, which Carlos thought looked like a clownish veil over the beautiful woman underneath. Phoenix sat waiting on the love seat with her eyes half-lidded, her lips moving to silent music in her head.
She looks like a drug fiend,
Carlos thought. Carlos had seen enough young performers implode under the weight of sudden celebrity to make him wish fame came with an antidote. Too much work, privilege and bullshit were a predictable combination.

No wonder Phoenix’s label had sent both its publicity director and a bodyguard to practically camp in Phoenix’s room. Manny—who was a
boriqua
from a family of musicians in San Juan, it turned out—and the huge man named Kai sat across from Phoenix, sharing Krispy Kreme doughnuts and coffee, just out of the camera’s range. The room was so crowded that Gloria and Phoenix’s sister had retreated to the bedroom, but Carlos wanted to keep Phoenix in his sight. He was worried about her, too, but in a different way. Different, and deeper.

Carlos wasn’t sure Phoenix had slept. Their flight had arrived at JFK late, he had helped her find a pad of blank white paper and a ruler (no easy feat at midnight, but God bless CVS), then she’d sat up drawing staffs and writing scores until Gloria’s 6:00
A
.
M
. wake-up call. He’d fallen asleep without her, and he was sure Phoenix had never joined him in the bed.

Whatever had happened to Phoenix on the television stage had reappeared with more power and clarity, creating a waking channel between Phoenix and Joplin for hours on end.

This was what they had hoped for, of course. Phoenix’s union with this ghost reaffirmed Carlos’s faith in God every day. Sometimes when he was alone, he found he was crossing himself like his mother, thanking the Virgin and saints for choosing him to witness it. Last night, Phoenix had channeled at least twenty full-length Scott Joplin scores. He’d counted the pieces while she was in the shower, and he’d felt his joints shudder while he marveled at the heavy, purposeful writing that was not Phoenix’s, that had plowed its way through time and death to come to his hands. God’s work. God’s hand.
Precious Lord, Take My Hand. El mano de Dios.

But hoping for it and watching it unfold, as it turned out, were very different. Watching it frightened Carlos more all the time. This morning, Phoenix had made an effort at sleepy conversation as she dressed and Serena labored over her makeup and hair, but Carlos hadn’t seen Phoenix eat anything since they’d left L.A. It was all there in her eyes: She was an ecstatic still in the throes of her rapture. Carlos didn’t mind Phoenix going away with Joplin, as long as Joplin let her come back.

“And we’re ready,” the reporter announced with a megawatt smile.

Phoenix opened her eyes, alertness seeping in. Manny and Kai were leaning toward Phoenix like lifeguards waiting to rescue a swimmer.

Carlos didn’t know the reporter, a tall, sharp-jawed sister with memorable lips, dressed in a white jogging suit and a B-boy style baseball cap. She was too attractive and talented for this job and she knew it, her eyes said—someone should be interviewing
her
—but her voice quivered with cheer: “I’m here with Phoenix Smalls, an R&B newcomer who’s already burning up the airwaves with her first single, ‘Party Patrol.’ She’s here for Friday’s Hip-Hop R&B MegaJam, which promises to be the H-O-T,
hottest
party of the summer, if ya’ll ain’t heard.”

Phoenix wasn’t smiling for the camera yet, listening impassively. Carlos knew what was in her mind, the only thing that had been on her mind since the plane landed: She wanted to go back to her notepad. She wanted to go back to Joplin.

“So, Phoenix, we gotta cut to the chase—your relationship with G-Ronn. First we hear you hooked up, then there’s a tabloid story about you and another man on the down-low, and now rumors say you’re through. What’s the 4-1-1?”

That question had come up in every interview Carlos had heard all week, but usually the reporters were savvy enough to save it until last. At the mention of G-Ronn’s name, Kai shot Carlos a look, hot disapproval. It was just a shift of his eyes, but it hit Carlos like a blow. Carlos fidgeted in the entryway, wondering what he’d done to piss off G-Ronn’s personal bodyguard, except maybe sleeping with his boss’s ex. Was
that
it? Life with Phoenix was a gauntlet. Carlos had never been so self-conscious in a woman’s presence, bracing for disapproval everywhere. God, he hoped Phoenix wouldn’t mention him in her interview.

Phoenix didn’t blink, gazing at the reporter. “Next question,” she said in a monotone.

“Is that a ‘No comment’?” the reporter said.

“G-Ronn is one of the best people there is, but my personal life is my own business. So, like I said, next question,” Phoenix said. That was good. If Phoenix could manage this much diplomacy, maybe she had been plucked away from the ghost music in her head. Carlos hoped so.

“Phoenix, tell me: Are any of the Three Strikes artists like you, Bing Boyz or Kamikaze worried about getting caught in the vendetta between G-Ronn and DJ Train? Since DJ Train is based right outta Brooklyn, some people might say you’re in enemy territory.”

“Those people would be ignorant,” Phoenix said. “I’m here for a concert. I leave all that hype to the media.”

Carlos glanced at Kai from the corner of his eye. The man’s face was vacant, and Carlos didn’t dare let himself get caught looking. Carlos’s friends in the Brooklyn club scene thought Kai
positively
had killed DJ Train’s cousin and bodyguard last month, a man named Gerard Houston. There were allegedly at least six witnesses, even though none had come forward to police.
Come on, Carlito, he’s hard to miss,
his ex-girlfriend, who tended bar at Clubhouse, said. Just like in the Tupac and Jam Master Jay shootings, the people who knew weren’t talking. Carlos did not feel safer with Kai near Phoenix. The rumors could be wrong, but they could be right.

“I see you’re a tough cookie,” the reporter said, her smile turning icy.

“I’m just keepin’ it real,” Phoenix said.

“Were you keeping it real on ‘Live at Night’?” the reporter said. “You got cut from a recent show after you sang a song you said you channeled from Janis Joplin.”

Phoenix’s eyes flashed. “
Scott
Joplin. The Pulitzer Prize–winning composer.”

The reporter pursed her lips, unfazed. “O-kay, then…Scott Joplin. What was
that
about? Were you looking for a little extra publicity for your single?”

Phoenix hesitated, and Carlos saw her glance toward Manny before she answered. “That was just a onetime thing. At the concert, I’m singing ‘Party Patrol.’” She couldn’t have sounded more rehearsed if she’d been reading from cue cards.

“You believe in ghosts?”

“Yes,” Phoenix said, just when Carlos was hoping she would lie.

“And…you believe a ghost is sending you music?”

“Yes, as we speak,” Phoenix said. “I’ve been meeting with a musicologist who specializes in Scott’s music. We’re salvaging the music I channel, and I’m going to record an instrumental CD so I can share Scott with the world. Death is not the end. My real hope is that Scott Joplin can have another day, through me. I’d love to create something like the Scott Joplin revival in the seventies, after
The Sting
.” For the first time, she sounded wide-awake.

The reporter looked confused, her plastic smile fading. “You mean…
as we speak,
you can hear Scott Joplin music? In your mind, you mean?”

“Yes,” Phoenix said, and Carlos groaned inwardly. Gloria was right; Phoenix sounded like a nut. Until now, Phoenix had trained herself to avoid the question of her
Live at Night
performance as well as she dodged questions about G-Ronn, but she was talkative today.
That’s enough, Phee. Let it go.

“And will you record that Scott Joplin CD for Three Strikes Records?” the reporter said, wheedling. Manny mouthed the words
FUCK no,
mostly to himself.

“I’ll record Scott’s CD myself, on my own,” Phoenix said. “After
Rising
.”

The reporter leaned forward, forgetting the camera. “Wait…For real, you think a ghost—”

Manny clapped his hands. “We’re out of time,” he said. “Phoenix has a busy schedule.”

As if Manny had flipped an on-off switch, Phoenix’s eyes glazed again, half closed.

The reporter pursed her lips. “But I wasn’t…”

“Sorry,” Kai said, his voice an octave lower than Manny’s. “No time, yo.”

That was the end of the conversation.

While the video crew packed up, Kai gave Carlos an unmistakable look again—
WHAT, nigga?
Carlos remembered that look from black boys on the basketball court when his family moved from San Juan to Atlanta when he was ten. Carlos had always been fluent in English because of Dad, but his accent must not have been quite right, and the sound of his voice provoked the kids he’d hoped to befriend.
What you lookin’ at, nigga?
In San Juan, Carlos had never heard that word, except in music. Carlos’s mother was as brown as a Zulu princess, but she said she’d never thought about her skin color until her parents filled out U.S. Census forms and no one knew which boxes to check for race.
We just thought we were Puerto Ricans,
Mami said. Things were different on the mainland, with its categories, so Carlos had fucked up on sight.