Bliss (10 page)

“You should have signed with him back in Carmel, then,” Eva said. “Asses get the job done.”

“He seemed to know everybody.” Sunny shrugged again, her default gesture. “Seemed like a good guide for all this.”

“And then here comes effervescent Eva.”

“Yeah. My savior!” Sun put her arms straight in front and clapped her palms hard. Eva thought of a trained seal. “That night in Carmel—”
Sunny hugged herself with the memory. “You, me, and Dart were gonna go to the movies. I wanted to stay at the hotel, soak in that
giant
tub.”

“So me and Dart left.”
The story’s old
Eva thought.
And been told
.

“Ron beeped me, though,” Sunny said, dropping new info casually, “talking about meeting them in the lobby—”

“Who’s ‘them’?” Any other time, Eva would have hidden her ignorance of the details. Figured out a way to let Sunny fill her in.

“You don’t know? It was him and
Hawk
,” Sunny said. She focused on the middle distance like she could see her beginnings there in 3-D. “They wanted to buy me a drink. ‘Just come down,’ Ron was saying. ‘They got mineral water by the bucket.’” Sunny looked directly at Eva, and spoke dreamily. “You’d been so nice that day, though. Talking to me about my
style
, what I was trying to
do
. Talked about your mom.
Listened
when I told you about Wheatley, why I like her poems, why I wanted to name an album after her. Plus, you and Dart got along. You got us those rooms … at that place … by the ocean. I was curious, though—”

“I want to know what Ron was saying.”

Sun got matter-of-fact. “That you were dope, but you didn’t have the connections he has. That he has relationships with everybody—from the CEO of This to the CEO of That, to the guys who pay the PDs to program the songs at the big radio stations. Even the truck drivers who get the CDs to the stores.”

Eva reached for her water.
Sounds like him
.

“He said that what I could really count on you for—”

“—was I’d fuck who I had to, to make your shit hit.”
And what? He says
that
to
me.
Though he knows sex don’t work quid pro quo. It’s a stupid way to even try and do business. Sex is for … depends on who’s it’s with, what sex is for
. “You’re telling me this now, why?”

Sun wasn’t surprised by Eva’s knowledge, but by her candor. It softened Sunny, momentarily. “Ron talks about you behind your back.”

“If I started x-ing out people for talking about me, I’d be talking to no one at all.”
I talk bad about him, too
.

“Hawk didn’t defend you,” Sunny said. She was hardened and hopeful again, about presenting a scenario Eva hadn’t considered.

“He was supposed to?”

“Yeah he was
supposed to
, Eva. Jesus. For five seconds you sounded like a human being—”

“As opposed to?” Eva liked her rhyme—
supposed to
and
opposed to
.

“A bitter bitch.” Sunny said this without smiling and without looking at Eva.

“You like that bitch when she’s riding for you.”

“You got me clocked, Evey.” Sun faced Eva now. “Feel like you know me. What’s funny is I thought I was going to love you like a sister. And you knew it. But it’s cool. I’m not stupid anymore.”

Eva didn’t like to hear Sun call herself stupid. She didn’t like it when any woman said that about herself. “You weren’t stupid, Sun.”
You were innocent
.

“Maybe not stupid. But new enough to fall for old tricks.” Sunny began to taunt. “I didn’t see back then how you
know
so much about everyone. Know each and every move people make. What their agendas are. You
know
the game ‘cause you’ve been
in
the game. Whatever anyone does was already seen by you from a mile away. That night in Carmel, I thought you had more of a good spirit.”

Eva tilted the bottle back, took gulps of cold water. “A guide for all this doesn’t usually come with a good spirit.”

“You didn’t guide me to Sonrisa. I asked Ron and Seb and them for their little input. But don’t get it twisted—
I
did Sonrisa.”

“Their little input.” Eva chuckled, angry.

“Because even a little from you is negative. In terms of real stuff. Beyond the next single. The next video.”

“I’m negative,” Eva said like she was noting the nature of characters in a skit. “And you’re funny.” Eva said
funny
like she was saying
not worth this conversation
.

“I was real funny when I mentioned Sonrisa to you like six months ago. Remember what I said? Remember what you said?”

Eva took more slow swallows of water. She’d no recollection.

Sun lifted her feet from the lounge chair and placed them on the
smooth cement. She leaned toward the associate general manager of Roadshow and spoke like she was spitting. “You said,
Eva
, for me to concentrate on the
here
and
now
. Said to keep my eye on the ball and the future would take care of itself. You told me to write the arrangements for the cover songs. I hate covers. I hate this album. If it sells twenty million, I hate this album.”

“No,” Eva said, unfazed. “You won’t.”

“It was you who told me that, a long time ago, anyway. You told me in Carmel.”

“Told you what?”

Sunny bloomed cool red. She wanted to know Eva better, to trust her more, and to team up. Sun didn’t have many girls from which to choose her friends, and she had the celebrity craving to be near those who’d known her when she wasn’t. “Told me to choose liquor, Eva. Go onstage fat, you said, and people are disgusted. Go onstage drunk, and people stay to see what you’re gonna do.” Sunny was angry with Eva and she was empathetic and Sunny wanted to shake her.

Eva was about to say,
And I was right
, but her cell rang. It was Eva’s assistant, Piper.

“It’s Eva,” she answered. Then she said, as if they hadn’t been arguing, “Sun, give me just a minute, please.”

Sun placed her feet back on the lounge.

“There’s other stuff,” Piper said through the phone, “but on the personal tip, your mom called. Oh, and your girl Pritz called. Said she was in transit and would find you.”

Stepmom
. “What else?” Eva got up from her chair, walked fifteen paces from Sunny. Eva was hotter than the morning sun would have her, and she felt a little vertigo.

“Just interoffice,” Piper said, chirpy as usual, and officious as Eva required. “Except, are you still coming here tomorrow? Your ticket says to L.A., but Seb was saying—”

So it’s “Seb” now
. “Sebastian don’t know my plans. I’ll call you tonight with those. Tell me how it’s moving with Sonrisa. Sunny have everything she needs?”

“I’m, um, I’m not working on that.”

“But you know about it.”

Beat. “Yeah.”

Eva said, “Do I know about it?”

“It … seems like you do. You’re asking me about it.”

“Did I know yesterday?”

“I don’t know,” Piper said.

“Did you know yesterday?”

“I knew a little bit. I—”

“Did I know a little bit? Yesterday?”

“I thought you—”

“What did you think?” Eva was pissed, and wondered if she was truly pissed or just absolutely sure that she ought to be. If there were instincts at play that she could override. The doubt made her angrier. The doubt was new.

“Why’re you mad?” Piper whined. “I know I’m supposed to tell you everything that happens—”

“Everything you hear, everything you see, everything you know. What’s changed?”

“Nothing’s
changed. You haven’t been here. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“What’s changed?”

“It’s just—”

“You know I don’t like the
word just
in an answer. Trivializes anything that comes after it.”

Eva could feel Piper trying to get her mind steely, her voice tight. Eva could feel Piper trying to be more like Eva. Piper huffed, then said, “I thought—”

“That you think whatever it is you’re about to say is implied by you saying it.”
But you ain’t me, Piper. Not yet
.

“I tell you everything. I—”

“Just handle my travel, my flights and shit. My phones, give to an intern. I can’t trust you to have my back.”

“That’s not true, Eva.” Piper’s voice broke. “Why’re you saying that? Eva—”

“Little sister, what’s changed?” Eva was patronizing. “Why am I
out here in the Bahamas hearing shit I should’ve heard from you? Hearing it for the first time in front of a crowd of people?”

“Eva, Eva, I’m sorry. One second, hold on. Seb’s buzzing me. Hold—”

Hold on? Hold on?!?
Eva pressed OFF.

She looked up, and hated Piper, literally, out of the blue. Hated her keenly, and because Eva didn’t imagine Piper’s life to be anything but ingenue-perfect, Piper’s uterus anything but hollow and unscratched, Piper’s day and future days anything but filled with opportunity and loud sex and expensive shoes worn only in the season in which they were new. Eva had liked Piper from the first interview, thought Piper bright and organized and driven and gorgeous. It was why Eva had chosen her. Piper had reminded Eva of herself.

From behind a wide desk cluttered with CDs that bored her, digital audiotapes she’d not listened to, promotional stickers still on their peel-off backs, glossy invitations to which she’d not responded, and inch-thick stacks of memos, Eva should have seen it when young Piper shook her hand to seal the hire. Though it had been 1995, and hip hop was cresting—Tupac and Biggie quietly becoming the artists who would create the albums and personas that would transform and then obliterate the landscape—Eva felt, as she shivered in the Bahamian sunshine, that she should have been wise enough then to see the beginning of the end.

“E
va!”

Stop calling me, Gayle
.

“Awake?”

“If I wasn’t, I would be now.”
It’s 1989
, clicked Eva’s mind to an inner blare of brand-new Public Enemy.
Another summer. I hear the sound of the funky drummer
.

Eva’s stepmother stepped into the room stuffed with the queen-size bed. Eva was sitting on the edge of it, had just hung up the phone with an airline. “Made Cream o’ Wheat,” Gayle said.

I’m up. I’m out. I’m twenty-three. I’m grown
.

“And,” Gayle said brightly, “you’re not going
anywhere
. They won’t miss you one more day.”

“Was off yesterday and the day before. I have stuff—”

“Yeah, stuff.” Gayle leaned in the doorframe. “Stuff envelopes. Type phone numbers, run around for folks’ lunches.”

“I got a flight.”
I’m about to feel strong again. It’s only two hours from Portland to Los Angeles
. It was Portland this year, but had been Silver Spring, Maryland, for Eva’s dad and Gayle for eighteen months before that. On the plane from L.A., Eva’d felt glad for their proximity, thought she needed support after the procedure. But she didn’t need it. She didn’t feel like a murderer, but she did feel like an unprincipled, selfish slut, and there was no outside help for that. Eva wished she’d stayed in her own apartment, in her own head, so she could work and do the things that reminded her who she was and why she’d so quickly and firmly made her decision.
I have
, Eva said to herself as Gayle looked on kindly,
a life. The choices I make are the choices
I
make
.

“You’ll need a ride to the airport,” Gayle said like she wasn’t about to give it.

Don’t make me ask. Because Dad’ll take me. And I know you don’t want him to come back in before your hair is combed
. Eva’s stepmother had married Eva’s father because he encouraged her consoling ways. Gayle got her jollies, and made friends easily, telling people how things would work out fine, especially when it was clear that things wouldn’t. It’s what she’d chanted like a new Buddhist to Eva’s father, when he was suddenly single again. On the rare days Gayle was sad, being embarrassed about it made her sadder—and Eva’s father didn’t tolerate moping. But he and Gayle got along well.

“You like all this … with the music. Working at that place.”

“I understand it. I have responsibilities.” Eva was a radio promotions assistant at Warner Bros. Records and was about to be upgraded to coordinator. She’d interned at Warner Bros. while at UC-Santa Barbara. Her grades were Cs because she worked so hard for the label (driving back and forth fifty miles to Los Angeles three times a week) and at UCSB’s radio station. Eva partied and worked so much, she had to quit the track team and intramural softball. She graduated,
but skipped the oceanfront ceremony so as to work advance promotion for the southern leg of the Fresh Fest tour.

Gayle took a brush from a bureau and methodically pulled her hair back from her forehead. “What do you understand?”

“That people like music. Want to buy it. Somebody has to make it.”
It’s everything to me, you weirdo. It’s all I hear. Have you even seen
Do the Right Thing
?

“Manufacture it. That’s the side you’re on.”