Bliss (14 page)

Nassau Family Planning Association. Right nearby
.

Dial the number
.

“’Tis Malinda. How can I help you today?”

State the situation. That you took the test. That there are two pink lines. Like welts on a tiny palm
.

“There’s been mornin’ sickness, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Sleepiness?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been working, so—”

Radio in Malinda’s background. Buzzy as a shortwave in a war movie.

“The possibility, ma’am, is that you could be more pregnant than you think. First day of your last period?”

Period. Yes. Count. What’s that song on her radio? It’s one of Ron’s groups? Or that other, sad one that Myra pumps all the time?

“Ma’am?”

“Forty-four days ago.”

“Forty—”

“Little over six weeks.”

“T’was normal?”

“Yeah, I think.” Eva hated her answers to Malinda’s questions. “I mean, no. Shorter, maybe, than usual.”

“You could be pregnant … for nine weeks or more. Some bleeding, especially around the time of what would ‘ave been your regular, most recent period, ‘appens to a lot of women in their first trimester. Ma’am … Ma’am?”

“Yes.” Formal now, in the face of her world folding in.

“Are you staying on New Providence with us for a while? Or ‘eadin’ back to the States soon? Did you want to come over? Make an appointment? S’what we recommend.”

The static from Malinda’s radio overtook the song. Eva wanted to curse her. Order her to adjust the damn dial. Eva could hear the song, but she couldn’t hear it. Eva could hear everything else—the hum of the minibar, the weight in the hem of the curtain brushing the base of the sliding door. Eva half-heard two men exchange pleasantries in the corridor, heard their shirts brush against the other’s, the press of shoes into the carpet, the skirl of a luggage cart. Eva wanted to hear the song on Malinda’s radio.

“No,” Eva said. “But thanks. I’ll see a doctor at home.”

“Best wishes to you, then.”

No awestruck belly-touching.

No Scotch-sipping.

There was the getting dressed, and the dodging of the gospel brunch.

Eva didn’t reach for her sundress or her newest lambskin purse with the ostrich-skin pockets. Instead she grabbed her passport, flipped through it, and then stuffed shorts and tees in her Nike pack, slipped into a bathing suit and a stretchy yellow lace skirt she considered as all-purpose as dungarees. Grabbed her woven bag,
toothbrush, and the coconut oil. It was a typical gift from Sunny—FedExed from someplace far, customer service calling to correct the transposed address, or the zip code, only thing intact being Eva’s name and her cell number and what Eva liked to believe was the sweet spirit in which it was sent. The present was Philippine virgin coconut oil with “miraculous” fats, the label said, like the fats in breast milk. The printed label made to seem casually handwritten, as if a cheery Filipina, after a walk through her garden, had pressed the oil herself and passed it corked in green glass to a deserving friend.

Eva walked back into her bathroom. She had to pee. Again. Still on the toilet, she wrapped the pregnancy test stick in tissue and placed it in the lined wastebasket.

I am pregnant. Again. I’ve always known what to do. I always go to the clinic. Go to sleep. Wake up free. Solo
.

Get up. Go
.

Eva placed her bags near her on the bed. She looked hard at her portable disc player and earbuds and CDs. She had enough music in her head. She thought of Malinda’s radio and wished she could beam over to the Nassau Family Planning Association if only to twist the dial, make things clear. Eva hated noisy half-sounds, the itch between stations. Just remembering Malinda’s calming, half-congratulatory voice made Eva pick up the phone and put her thoughts into action.

She dialed Dart. To him, and to her reflection in her vanity’s oval mirror, Eva said, “We going? Or what?”

The plan was to meet Sunny, get her to the gospel brunch, then to get to Cat Island.

Eva walked in the open door to Sunny’s suite. She and her brother were arguing. Dart had a nylon do-rag tied around his head. Hanes white Beefy-T and long denim shorts.

“Don’t DRINK,” Dart bellowed. “Unless it’s tea, Sun.” He looked at Eva. “Hullo. Doing what you said. No alcohol. See me doing it.”

“I drink too much now?” Sunny looked at Eva. “This is the type of conversation you and him have?”

“Not that you drink too much,” Eva said soothingly “Just that it’s not cool for you. On singing days. That’s all. And you have to do ‘Lift Every Voice’ at the brunch.”

Sunny drained her pillar. Then she used it in the small bar like a shovel for more ice chips.

“Let’s keep it movin’,” Eva said to Sunny. “We came down here for a reason.”
The conventioneers distrust you
. “Every director from every urban station is still here.”
They think you treat fans and radio as afterthoughts. They feel taken for granted. They didn’t invite you here. I cajoled them
. “They love you already. Especially after last night.”
I wined people on two coasts
, and
in the boring-ass middle of this country. I lied about how you love them. Apologized for shit you don’t know you did, and for shit you did and reveled in. Told them fictitious sad stories about your childhood
. “So, it’ll be an easy crowd today.”
I told some you were mid-breakdown, told others that you were on the comeback from one. Turned you into an infant so they’d feel like devils if they chose not to em-brace you
.

“Then why do I have to do it?” Sunny poured cola and rum into her glass.

Because what else are you going to do? These people know the game. They are the game. They know how and why I lie. And they don’t give a shit. By coming to the showcase last night, and to the brunch today, they’re paying me back for my effort. They’re paying me back for the wine
.

“BECAUSE,” Dart said. His eyes looked bigger and set deeper, his jawbones sharp and burned. Sunny and Eva paid him no mind.

“Because the album’s in eleven weeks,” Eva said. “These people need to hear you sing about marching on until victory is won.”

“Three months. And I’m only doing the one song.”

With her nip, Sunny flounced to her bedroom. From behind the almost-closed door she said, “I heard you can get real goosefoot down here. Amaranth, and lemongrass. From the rainforests. Supposed to be good for the voice. The whole body. I want some before you all do whatever it is you’re about to do. ‘Cause I know you ain’t going to this brunch.”

“Sun—” Eva started.

“That’s in BELIZE,” Dart said, geographic homeopathy being his strong suit. “Goosefoot is in
Belize
. We’re in the BAHAMAS. NORTH of the equator. In the ATLANTIC Ocean.” It was like he was saying
south of HELL. In the ATROCIOUS Ocean
. “They DON’T HAVE rainforests here.”

Sunny looked from the door of her room, pissed. “As a matter of fact, I’ll get to the brunch with Vic.”

“Sun, you have to—”

“Take Dart, please. I’m going to the shit no makeup, my own hair. So I’m fine. Go on.”

Any other time, Eva would have babysat. But she and Dart had places to go. They walked from the suite, picked up their bags from where they’d dropped them in the hall, and jogged to the elevator.

W
e could go to a bar. No. Doesn’t strike me as a drinker
.

Eva knew what was better than food, or a natural gas ride: a crisp, swanky spot to lay your head. So after the 1994 Innovative Music for Innovators festival in Monterey, Eva’s assistant had quickly booked rooms for Eva, Sunny, and D’Artagnan at a sprawling golfers’ hotel in Carmel, just up the road from Monterey. Eva’d ditched Hakeem. Said they’d meet him for dinner, had no intention of showing. Eva suggested the three of them go to a movie, but Sun looked at the big bed and big bath and big fireplace and told Eva and Dart to go on ahead, she’d see them in the morning.

Eva drove Dart slowly down Carmel’s main strip. The Pacific bordered it, but all else in Carmel’s four-block downtown was Lilliputian and neat. Between mute bistros and bars, there were jewelers’ displays bare but for blue velvet cases. A petite public library rose from squared bramble. Galleries featured green granite dolphins, Dali prints, and big blank-eyed black figurines playing saxophones and wearing jazzy suspenders—art that spoke to Eva about introspection and aspiration.

She parked. Eva and Dart walked a bit, then paused before Realtors locked in full flower. Eva was mesmerized.

This written in hurried, leaning blocks, as if announcing a noon bargain of monkfish, not typed in IBM Selectric, like

This suggested a kindly, old-fashioned manner or at least an older way of doing business, suggested a moment in time at which the agent had been on top of all things modern, but had peaked there in Selectricville, happily and retired from newfangledness to quiet, rich Carmel.

Eva read and reread the ad until Dart gently pulled her, but then she stopped in front of a tiny Saks Fifth Avenue, its windows alive with headless ivory mannequins. Eva coveted their creamy satchels. Even before she had money, Eva’d been a brand loyalist. Commercials for places like T.J. Maxx made sense to her: why buy no-class, no-name clothes, when you could just search around a bit and get brand names for less? Eva paused before Saks a long moment, fondling clunky buckles in her brain, visualizing the pride in ownership.

She and Dart sat on a bench on the parklike lane divider. An island-oasis flanked by pristine asphalt rivers. SUVs chugged by sporadically and Eva thought of L.L. Cool J’s “Boomin’ System”—
Twelve o’clock at night with your windows down—
but the trucks were silent as sentries.

Her cell rang. She flipped it, saw it was Hakeem, flipped it closed.

Big wheels keep on turnin’
. That slow part of Tina Turner’s version is what her mind played then.

Sunny’s brother was plump. Puffy like he’d been beaten from within and swollen up. “Don’t feel like a movie,” he said. “Dark enough without going in a darker room.” He sat three feet away from her.

Eva slipped from her shoes, put her soles on the cool cement. It seemed an earthy thing to do, and she thought Dart was one who’d respond well to earthiness. To her surprise, it felt good.

“Tell me about you,” Dart said. “I can tell Sun likes you.”

“Tell me about you.”

“I’m not a musketeer, if that’s what you think.”

“Maybe you are.” She looked at his bloated, grim face, thought how cute he’d be if he lost weight and put on at least a better brand of knockoffs. It was a skill of Eva’s, to envision After through the depths of Before.

Her cell rang again. Eva flipped it, glanced at the caller ID, saw it was Ron, flipped it closed. “You sing, too?”

“Used to, sometimes, with Sun. But I don’t like singing in front of people. Get too worked up. Over the top.”

“Like in church?” Eva was thinking,
That could work. Like James Brown? Eddie Levert? Solomon Burke. We could take it black to the future
.

“Wears me out. Either kills me or has me on a weird, fake high. For days afterward.”

Eva was silent, still looking for the downside.
Brother-sister acts are corny. Who, besides the Carpenters? BeBe & CeCe Winans. The Wilkinsons? That’s father-daughter-son. And bluegrass
.

“So you’re a person who can sign her to a record deal,” Dart said. “How do you get that job?”

“By being a slave first,” Eva said, pleased to discuss herself and her experience. She felt solid and smart when she talked about the record
business, liked the sound of her words spilling boldly, lush with lingo and knowledge of the real deal. “And answering other people’s phones,” she said. “Eavesdropping. Finagling. Figuring out a way one thing about one act could be done better, then finding a master or mistress who’s lame enough not to take successfully credit for it. Then you either work really hard and have a few more successes, so people realize you need your own slaves, your own budget. Or you work really hard on your game, your ability to talk yourself up as a winner, as an executioner, and then people not only give you your own everything, they kiss your ring as they do it.”