Throb (Club Grit) (13 page)

“It is.”

As Jason and I sat together at the table, talking about our weekends, eating the spaghetti he’d made from scratch and taking our macarons on small plates into the living room, to be enjoyed with some white wine spritzers he’d made from scratch, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked Jason out earlier. Nothing had changed but that’s exactly why I should have: I never wanted my life to be any different than it was right now, just being with Jason in our apartment, enjoying ourselves with simple pleasures.

As Jason did the dishes (he insisted!), I went to the bedroom. All my stuff was still packed in bags, as if I was going to leave, but that wasn’t an option any more. I hadn’t been scared to commit to Jason when it had finally come up, and I was going to make this space mine. At least, I was going to, until I was distracting by the faint shadow of gauzy curtains floating in a gentle breeze, the curtains over the bedroom’s large pane window.

I pulled aside the curtains to let in the natural light which had been slightly muted before by the sheer white panes. The light orange and pink lights of the setting sun, reflected and refracted by buildings and windows, burst into the room, in the way that made you wonder, for a second, whether it was sunrise or sunset, whether you’d woken from sleep or from an afternoon nap. Squares and tetrahedrons and kites and rectangles of pale white light scattered across the wall like a thousand shattered prisms, some edged with colors, some plain. Even in the middle of Los Angeles, the tender touch of California entered the fifth story bedroom, and more importantly, it entered our story.

T
HE CAR CAME AT NOON, JUST LIKE KEANNE PROMISED. I guess he could keep a promise, when it suited him. I just had no idea how much he thought this meeting would be rewarding to him, after I’d refused his advances in the plane. A job was a job, though, and I wasn’t about to let personal feelings get in the way of my professional life again. I knew that I couldn’t fall for Keanne, after having my heart broken by him before, slowly and over the months in which he hadn’t bothered to contact me, but I also knew that being his right hand woman would open up many doors for me.

Sitting in the black Lincoln on the way to the Beverly Hills mansion Keanne had been staying at, I found myself feeling more alone than ever. This was so sterile, so quiet, nothing like being with Jason in a cab from Club Grit to his apartment, chatting with each other, with the driver who we always tipped well, and I resisted the urge to get my phone out and text Jason. I didn’t know how he’d react to knowing I was seeing Keanne today. I didn’t want him to worry or to be ashamed of me.

Surprisingly, once I arrived, there was no butler to let me in. I thought Keanne would have hired one, but no, he greeted me, in just black basketball shorts and a white tank top. “Hey, girl, I was just getting in some hoops before our meeting,” he said, leaning in to give me a side hug, leaving a wet sweat stain on my cardigan. Typical Keanne. “Let me give you the tour.”

I wanted to roll my eyes, but instead, I smiled. “Sure, you have a lovely home.” He laughed and just led me to the large kitchen, where he poured himself a large glass of water (without offering me one as well), then to the dining room, the living room, and a plethora of other rooms most people didn’t have, including a dedicated spa room, before heading upstairs, to see his large black walk in closet, filled with designer goods.

From ceiling to floor, there were racks, shelves, and islands filled with luxury goods, from white cotton shirts that looked like a Hanes tee but costs hundreds times more to fur coats that were definitely not from a thrift shop. On the walls were mounted heads of exotic animals like rhinos and elephants, and on the floor, rugs from exotic Asian countries and bear pelts. Although the rest of the house had a modern look, the dark wood walls made this look like some Victorian opium den, but the only drug that was currently out was that of excess, not ecstasy. There were items in that closet that cost more than my entire wardrobe combined, bags that cost more than my yearly tuition. I didn’t find myself impressed, though. I knew Keanne had money. I knew he had the means to buy these items. Did he have the means to earn back my trust? That’s what mattered, and that’s what I didn’t have an answer to.

Finally, we just ended up at the entrance to this manly version of a boudoir. There were a few articles of women’s clothing lying around, probably from another drunken orgy the night before, and I didn’t think anything of it. Keanne had a reputation and I was no longer going to allow myself to be affected by anything that was tasteless or classless that he did, because I knew I was worth more. My parents had raised me to have a strong sense of self-worth and if Keanne didn’t see that I was worth a certain level of dignity, well, the worst thing I could say, that I could possibly say, was that we weren’t compatible.

“So, what do you think?” he asked as we sat on one of the sofas.

“It’s...it’s something else,” I lied between my teeth, because just like all the other mansions, it was just another display of excess. Just a few miles away, there were people that wouldn’t make as much money as Keanne made in a month in their entire lifetime, and he wanted to know what I thought? I knew I couldn’t say anything or else I’d risk losing the summer job. It was too late to find anything else, and I found my “dream” job becoming my only option for the summer. Even though I’d be graduating in a few weeks, I didn’t want to be a burden to my parents. I was 21, and at my age, it didn’t make sense for be to living at home, on their dime. I wanted to make them proud and if that meant I had to bite my tongue and smile when guys like Keanne tried to show off, then I was willing to do it.

“Do you want something like this, eventually?” he asked, and even though I didn’t want it to happen, my heart started to pound more heavily. Was this Keanne finally admitting some feelings for me? Was it him actually talking about wanting a future with me, about wanting something more real? Something more than the assistant-boss relationship that we had?

“Honestly, not really. I just want a medium sized house big enough to raise a few kids, but not that big.”

“You grew up in Compton, right?” he asked gently. I was honestly surprised he remembered, given that it had seemed like he’d forgotten about me for the last year.

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said.

“What was that like? I know it’s not the easiest place to grow up in.” Keanne sounded more normal, more human, and more sympathetic than I’d hear him be before. As stupid as it sounds, I’d kept a Google alert active for Keanne the summer before and had never “bothered to turn it off”, so I received every news item about him, whether it was from the New York Times or Radar Online, and every time I read an interview with him, an interview that had conflicting information or something that just didn’t make sense given the time I’d spent with him, my heart had fallen. Why couldn’t he be honest with the press? Why didn’t he let anyone in emotionally?

And why did his behavior remind me of mine?

I hadn’t seen this side of Keanne before, but I’d also never really let other people into my life. Maybe it had started as a defensive maneuver, because I’d been taught by my family that if I was weak, that if I shared too much, I was giving people the tools to bully me, to make my life a living hell.

They’d warned me about guys like Keanne, guys that seemed seductive and charismatic, but that’d leave you with a baby and no child support, like one of my female cousin who, after a few years, finally realized that “her man” wasn’t going to come back, that he’d never loved her the way he’d loved the woman he settled down with and had another baby with, and who was only just starting to get her life together. They’d warned me that, in this fucked up country, the fact I was born into what basically was a caste system, that I was born black, female, and relatively poor, I would have a harder time getting what other people had, people who were born into a lifestyle that as a younger child, I’d envied.

They’d also believed in me, and told me that if I worked hard, I could get what those people had, and more, but that men were a distraction. So were feelings, so were emotions, and so was weakness.

Dad had always told me that I shouldn’t start fights at school, and I hadn’t, but that I needed to have the skills to defend myself in case somebody had a problem with me, and so he’d taught me, in the basement, multiple times a week, how to spar, how to defend myself, because we couldn’t afford karate lessons but dad had checked out books from the library to learn how to teach me how to defend myself, even given my, at the time, short stature and rather bilious physique.

Mom had taught me how, even though I might not be interested in the same stuff as other girls my age, because I wasn’t allowed to watch the same TV shows they watched, or the same movies, or go to the mall every weekend, I needed to be able to be able to fake it to fit in. I needed to know when to laugh, when to roll my eyes, but she never taught me how to feel and how to be emotional, how to embrace the feminine side of myself.

“Well, I’m an only child. My mom and dad both went to community college, which is where they met. They were both the only people in their families to go to college, and they thought that maybe the reason was because their parents had too many kids, so they weren’t able to give them all the sort of guidance they needed. It’s hard, though. It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just, living in Compton isn’t easy.”

“Tell me more about that,” he said, taking my hand in his. Was this real? Was Keanne actually showing a real interest in my life, after all that had happened?

“My mom and dad raised me well. Dad worked at factories and saved up to go to a trade school so that he could work as a mechanic before proposing to my mom. My mom worked as a secretary and goes to night class, she’s on her way to getting her nursing degree. We lived in Compton because my dad’s uncle, who had no kids, left my dad the house, and it was better than the small apartment we lived in. My parents were always around, and they planned their hours so that someone would always be home. Even when they were dead tired, they helped me with my school work,” I explained. I felt like I was babbling, but Keanne didn’t try to interrupt me. In some ways, I thought maybe he understood what I was talking about, stuff that I thought Jason might not really understand. I pushed that thought out of my head. Jason wouldn’t even understand why I was here, with Keanne. He had his job at Club Grit. He had a nice apartment, he had no worries, at least none he shared with me, and he didn’t have to struggle. Neither had Keanne, but at least he was familiar with the narrative of people outside the Beverly Hills, and at least he didn’t pretend that everyone in Southern California lived our lifestyles.

Keanne took my hand and gripped it tight. “It sounds like they did a great job, Becca. Really. I can’t imagine how hard it was in Compton. I never had to really struggle. My parents have sort of taken care of everything. I didn’t have any risks recording my album, no problems booking shows or the tours, and the necessity of success has always been an afterthought. If I’d failed at music, I always could have done something else. Maybe fashion, maybe acting, maybe underwater basket weaving, it didn’t matter. But it sounds like there was a lot of pressure on you.”

I gave him a smile, to let him know it was okay, but I knew that I couldn’t really convey all that with just a look. “My cousins, well...a lot of them weren’t so lucky. My parents didn’t coddle me, though. I remember being just twelve and visiting one of my cousins in juvie, juvenile detention...he was only three years older than me but he’d started rolling with the wrong, or rather, “banging”.”

“You mean...” I head the apprehension in Keanne’s voice, heard how he was scared of saying the words that we both knew applied to my cousin, because he didn’t want to offend me.

I tried to break the ice with a laugh and rolled my eyes at how corny I sounded. “That’s right. He was in a gang. They’d tried to rob a bank, after seeing some crime movie about gangsters, and they’d failed...but they shot a few people, who died. He was put in for manslaughter, and he didn’t get parole. He kept up his violent ways even behind bars.”

“That must have been rough for you to watch,” he said, squeezing my hand hard.

“Yeah, it was, and – ”  I started, but Keanne cut me off as he started to get up from the sofa.

“Let me go get some paper,” he said.

“Paper? What?”

“To take notes. This’ll make great material for my next album,” said Keanne, sitting back down, and I tried to pull my hand away, but he held onto it.

“What the fuck, Keanne? I open up to you, and it’s just a ploy to get rap material? What do you think I am, just some girl that exists to spill out ‘secrets of the hood’ or something? Life in Compton was not easy, I’ll be the first to say it, but I’m not about to let you try and exploit me, or the memories I have of people close to me, for a quick buck. What the fuck is your problem?”

“Calm down, jeeze, you’re being such a stereotype. Don’t be ratchet,” he said, trying to soothe me as I finally managed to get his hand off of mine.

“You’re calling me a stereotype, when you’re the one doing the stereotyping? I never thought I knew you, Keanne, but I always hoped I misunderstood you. I always hoped that maybe, just maybe, I was wrong about you, and that there was more than met the eye. But, I guess I was wrong.” I was about to get up from the sofa to leave when I saw a shadow of another person in the entranceway.

“Who the fuck is this ho?” asked the woman in the doorway, a woman I recognized all too well. Curvaceous body? Long, pink and blue hair? Printed leggings and ridiculously high heels that cost a fortune?

It was none other than Lana Minashian. The woman Keanne had been linked to in the tabloids, the one he’d told me was “just a friend”, the one he said he wasn’t that into, the one he said was really just a friend with benefits, but that he said was his girlfriend for publicity purposes, so American audiences would like him more.

“Babe, I can explain,” started Keanne, but Lana shut that shit down.