The Company We Keep (3 page)

I
t had been an hour since Teri had spoken with Nicole. While Nicole was still in her apartment stewing over her latest face-off with her ex-husband and trying to decide what to wear, Teri was still at the office, stomping out fires with both feet.

“Look, Paul, I have to get back to the other line. I am trying to finalize some arrangements for one of our artists. One of our A-list stars,” she said proudly. “I’ve been playing phone tag with his tour promoter for days, so I really need to take his call. I promise we’ll talk later in the New Year.” She didn’t wait for a response from Paul Bailey, the high-strung realtor she’d met at a party a month ago. Since he couldn’t get her to go out with him, he was determined to sell her a new condo. She clicked back to the other line. However, before she could announce that she was back, she heard the loudmouth tour promoter, Ronnie Thigpen, complaining about the fact that she was involved in the tour arrangements for one of his most important clients. The tour that she was so committed to. That punk!

Teri held her breath as she listened. “That uppity bitch is with the fucking record company, not the artist. Young Rahim is the artist. Compared to him, she ain’t nobody! I don’t know why, but he trusts that woman to make sure all the details are correct.
Why? There is no reason in the world we need her help! Hold the line a minute, man. Let me get my beer.”

Ronnie had recently recovered from throat cancer, and it had taken three surgeries to save his voice. However, he would sound severely hoarse until the day he died. Under normal circumstances, Teri would have felt sorry for a person who had to live with such a condition. But in Ron’s case, his voice was particularly irritating because of the harsh words coming out of his mouth about her. She bristled but managed to remain composed as he continued.

“We’ve got our own people that can get the job done.” He paused again to take a long, loud drink from his beer can. Then he belched, coughed, and sneezed for almost a full minute. “Excuse me! That shit went down my windpipe. Anyway, how hard is it to hook up a goddamn tour, anyway? That bubble-butt heifer likes to meddle as much as she can just so she can get more money. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear she was kissing Rahim where the sun don’t shine. Either that or he’s heard how she can suck a mean dick and wants to get him a few blow jobs before he goes on his tour this summer. Ha! If it was up to me, I’d tell her to kiss my black ass and bark at my asshole!”

Teri exhaled quietly. She had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing; she wondered what Ronnie would say if he knew that she hadn’t even seen a dick in six months, let alone sucked one.

If there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was having somebody disrespect her, even when it wasn’t to her face. But since it was the holiday season and she was planning to get loose before the night was over, she let Ronnie slide this time.

She cleared her throat to make sure she could be heard. Without hesitation, she directed the tour promoter’s attention to a list of eccentric items that his artist had demanded to have on his tour.

“Ron, I’m back,” she announced. “I apologize for leaving you on hold for so long…”

“Oh! Well, let’s talk business, honey. I was just telling Jake about how much I enjoy working with you.” Ron’s voice was so
sweet and gentle now; it was hard for Teri to believe that it belonged to the same man who had just trashed her. “Now, where were we, T?”

“As I was saying, Rahim wants several cases of Cristal, several cases of Jack Daniels, and several cases of Jose Cuervo tequila.”

“Now, when you say several cases, are you talking about three or four or what? Several is a vague word,” Ron told her.

“Last count was five cases each. Before that it was three. I don’t know what it’ll be the next time I talk to him,” Teri said.

“All right, consider it done. Is that all?”

“He wants
several
dozen lambskin condoms, several cases of Evian water, his own manicurist and barber, somebody to take care of his dogs, and the phone numbers to the most exclusive brothels in each of the twenty-two cities on the schedule,” Teri revealed with a grimace.

“Is that all?” Ron asked again, holding his breath.

“That’s all that I’m aware of,” she replied in a stiff voice.

“Well, if any of this is going to be a problem, you need to let me know and you need to let me know now so I can deal with it. We can always get our people to do what you can’t do.”

“I can do whatever he wants, as long as it doesn’t involve standing on my head,” Teri said, trying to make the conversation less painful.

“But I bet you could do that, too, if you had to, Miss Teri,” Ron muttered.

“There won’t be any problems. At least not on my end,” she promised.

“Uh, I hope you’re right. I need to know that a job can get done the way it’s supposed to get done.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Teri said dryly. She had been flattered and annoyed at the same time when the artist in question had insisted that she help organize his tour. She could have turned him down but she liked adding feathers to the many caps she wore.

“All right now. I’m counting on you. I’ve heard a few good things about you. If anybody can take care of business, it’s you.”

“That’s good to know,” Teri said, her voice dripping with sar
casm. She was surprised that they were able to reach an agreement without a fight. “Well, uh, how can I get the contract to Rahim ASAP?”

“How ASAP?” Ron asked gruffly. His voice was beginning to sound like a frog croaking for his dinner. “After all, it is New Year’s Eve.”

“Like tonight? I know this is short notice and all. I’m sure you must have plans for later tonight, so I apologize in advance for the inconvenience.”

“Uh, Teri, I do appreciate all your hard work. You make your company look good,” he offered. “In more ways than one, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Thank you.” That was all she said before a long pause.

Ron gasped and blinked. His eyes were burning almost as much as his throat. What the hell was with this woman? Couldn’t she tell when a man was trying to show a little interest in her?

“Messenger a copy of the contract to me,” she said, pausing to look at her watch. “Within the next hour. I’ll see Rahim later tonight.”

“Oh? I wasn’t aware of that. Will you be visiting him at his office on Melrose?”

“No. I received an invitation to attend his New Year’s Eve party at his place. I will give it to him there.”

There was an excruciating moment of silence before Ron responded. “Oh. I…I see,” he stammered.

“Will you be there?” She knew he wouldn’t because he would have mentioned it by now.

“Uh-uh. My brother’s home on leave from the air force so there’s a family thing I have to attend…” Poor Ron. He didn’t want to admit that he didn’t even know about a damn party until she brought it up. That was bad enough, but not receiving a party invitation from one of his most important clients made it even worse. And he was too embarrassed to admit it.

“Well, that’s a damn shame,” Teri said. “You’ll be missed,” she added, trying to think of other ways to rub it in. But he refused to give her that satisfaction. Without another word, he hung up.

Teri shrugged her shoulders and looked at the telephone, talk
ing to it as if it had a brain. “He could have at least wished me a Happy New Year.” She chuckled.

With a loud sigh, Teri whirled around in the soft leather chair that had begun to feel like it was glued to her butt. She wasted no time getting up, turning out the lights in her office, and calling it a day.

T
eri didn’t know that it had started to rain until she drove out of the enclosed garage beneath the building she lived in. But minutes after she’d pulled out onto the street, it stopped. She was glad she didn’t have to haul an umbrella around with her, too. She felt like she was dragging enough already. But it had been a productive year for her, and she had to admit that ending it at one of the most anticipated parties of the year, an invitation-only party at that, suited her just fine. She had already begun to perk up.

It had been a while since she had attended a party. And even longer since she’d attended one on her own. Well, she was not exactly going to the party alone. The engraved invitation that she had received by messenger a week ago had indicated that she could bring a guest. Other than her secretary, Nicole—or executive assistant as Nicole liked to be called (as the metal nameplate on her desk said)—she couldn’t think of anybody else whom she could tolerate socially to invite to another one of these music people parties.

Teri picked up Nicole about twenty minutes past eleven o’clock. When Teri saw Nicole exit her apartment building dressed in black from head to toe, she did a double take. The black turban wasn’t so bad. But the black woolen poncho, the black leather
pants, and black boots were a little too much. Teri had on a simple green silk dress, matching green earrings shaped like four-leaf clovers, and a pair of low-heeled black pumps. A pale beige shawl lay across her shoulders.

“You spent hours on end trying to decide what to wear and that’s the best you could come up with?” Teri teased as Nicole climbed into the front passenger seat of her BMW. Nobody would have guessed that Teri was Nicole’s boss. The truth of the matter was, they’d been best friends for more than twenty years.

“What’s wrong with what I have on? A lot of people wear black all the time,” Nicole protested.

“Yeah, and that’s fine if your name is Johnny Cash. But we are going to a party, not a wake. Black is too depressing for a party.”

“But it goes with everything,” Nicole whined as she brushed lint off the front of her poncho.

“So does white.”

“Well, all my bedsheets were dirty.” Nicole gave Teri a playful tap alongside her head and laughed. “Let’s roll. I hope you didn’t forget to bring that contract to give to Rahim,” Nicole said, looking at Teri’s small black suede purse on the armrest.

“I didn’t. If I didn’t want to get this damn thing signed so badly, I’d be on my sofa with a glass of wine and a bowl of popcorn.”

“Well, I’m glad you decided to come out tonight, Grandma. I know I sure needed to get out tonight. Even if it is just with you…”

“Well, you don’t need to pout about it,” Teri said, glancing at Nicole. “You didn’t have to break your date with what’s his name. I didn’t beg you to come with me tonight.”

“It’s not that,” Nicole admitted.

“Oh. I forgot Greg was coming by to pick up Chris. Was he in a good mood?”

“Yes, if you can call acting like a rabid rottweiler being in a good mood. I tell you, Teri, men are such chameleons. Don’t you wish we had other options?”

“We do. But licking another woman’s pussy doesn’t quite appeal to me,” Teri said with a shiver.

It was a smooth twenty-five minute ride. The streets were wet
and slick so Teri had to drive carefully and more slowly than she normally did when tooling around L.A.

She kept her eyes on the road and bobbed her head along with the music on a jazz radio station she had discovered by mistake one night.

Nicole was tired. It was hard for her to keep her eyes open. Dealing with her ex-husband had worn her out. But she was not about to let that stop her from enjoying herself tonight. She leaned back, glad that she had a turban on her head. It hid her hair, which was in desperate need of a touch-up and some tightening up assistance.

Teri’s silver BMW, a year old but still exuding that new car smell, moved through an intersection in the direction of an exclusive neighborhood near the Hollywood Hills. One that also happened to be predominantly white. Nicole could always tell a white neighborhood from a black or Hispanic neighborhood. White neighborhoods had yogurt shops and delicatessens and quaint little churches all over the place. The black and Hispanic neighborhoods had their share of churches, too, for all the good it did them. But the liquor stores, the overextended funeral parlors, and the pawn shops ruled the minority neighborhoods. Nicole glanced from one side of the street to the other, admiring the expensive homes.

“Now this is what I call my kind of neighborhood,” Nicole said in an eager tone of voice and a look of envy and awe on her face as she scanned the neighborhood.

“I am definitely hearing that, girl,” Teri agreed with a vigorous nod. “I wouldn’t mind living in this zip code myself.”

“Well, you’re a lot closer to it than I am,” Nicole reminded with a loud, exaggerated sigh. There was a bail bondsman’s office on the ground floor of her building with a steady stream of losers in and out every day. There was a garishly decorated Korean nail shop, the same one that Kim Loo was working in when she stole Greg from her, on one side of her building. There was an open-all-night, dollar-a-load Laundromat on the other. It also served as a makeshift motel for some of the homeless people who patrolled the block. A deserted school bus with no wheels squatted near the corner of a vacant lot across the street. Homeless people
avoided the bus because it wasn’t as clean and warm as the Laundromat.

“Being close to it and being in it are two different things. But socially, these folks have their own ’hood problems. Did you see that derelict stretched out on the ground a couple of blocks back? Or those well-dressed white kids huddled in a corner in front of that office building sharing a joint?” Teri asked.

“No, I didn’t. I was too busy admiring all these gorgeous homes,” Nicole replied, still looking out the window with the wide-eyed awe of a child. “So what’s your point?”

“My point is, this is still a small world. No matter where we live, or who we are, we’ve all got some of the same problems on some level.”

The party was in full swing by the time Teri and Nicole arrived at the rapper’s house. Handsome young black and Hispanic valets were parking cars and greeting guests. They all wore stiff red jackets and sharply creased black pants. Fake smiles were plastered on their faces. They knew that the friendlier they were, or appeared to be, the bigger the tip. The scene outside was a media frenzy with ambitious reporters hopping around like rabbits and rude paparazzi waving cameras like weapons.

The only things missing from this frantic scene were a red carpet and Joan Rivers. Nicole took all this in with a stunned expression on her face. From her body language, you would have thought that she didn’t know which way to turn.

“Smile for the cameras and stop drooling. You’ve been to these things before,” Teri reminded Nicole, something she’d done on dozens of similar occasions.

“Yeah, but each time seems like the first time. I just saw two of the world’s biggest stars going inside!” Nicole stopped talking long enough to whip out her compact to check her makeup. “I don’t know if I will ever get used to all this,” she admitted.

“Well, you’d better. It is part of your job,” Teri warned Nicole in a low voice as they walked up onto the front porch of Young Rahim’s eighteen-room white mansion. It was as outlandish as it could be. A large Greek-looking statue of a naked woman hold
ing a bowl of fruit stood on one side of the double doors. On the other side was a life-size ceramic lion with his mouth opened in a menacing yawn. The white draperies covering the front windows displayed large, green dollar signs. “People who can afford to live like this are no better than you or me,” Teri added.

A scowling, portly man dressed like a penguin opened the door and waved them in without a word. He ignored the invitation Teri held out to him. Shaking her head, she slid it back into her purse, wondering why Young Rahim’s assistant had advised to bring it in the first place.

“No better than you or me? That’s easy for you to say. But if I were you, I wouldn’t let them hear that,” Nicole replied, looking around the spacious living room, trying to price the expensive furnishings. On one wall there was a large cheesy painting of a man who looked like James Brown but was supposed to be an illustration of a black Jesus in dreadlocks and silver earrings. Nicole had a cheaper and much smaller version of the same picture on her living room wall that she had picked up at a flea market in San Jose when she visited her aunt Bertha last year. Who needed three couches in the same room? And they were the loudest colors in the spectrum: one red, one orange with green leaves jumping out, and one yellow. Each had clawlike feet and arms wide enough to hold a large baby. Had she not already known that this all belonged to a black man, she would have guessed it anyway. She had learned a long time ago that when black folks got their hands on some money, they made sure everybody in the world knew about it. Then they spent it as if it grew on vines in a backyard garden, buying ten or twelve of everything they didn’t need or appreciate. She gasped at an antique vase sitting in the middle of a brass leg glass-top coffee table. What did an ignoramus like Young Rahim know about antique vases? Other than his music, what did he know about anything else?

Young Rahim moved about the party room, strutting and looking more like a peacock than a rapper in his red suit jacket, yellow silk pants, and white Panama hat. He was not a bad-looking brother by anybody’s standards. As a matter of fact, except for the shoulder-length dreadlocks, he looked like a younger version of Denzel Washington. He had nice white teeth, capped no doubt.
But at least there wasn’t a gold one among them. That pleased Teri and Nicole. In their business, they saw enough gold teeth to replenish Fort Knox. If nothing else, Teri found these glorified dog-and-pony shows entertaining, to say the least. She was glad she had come.