Bliss (31 page)

Eva was pulled into these tales—especially the next ones, because they were the ones Ms. Exception told with face tight and lips thin around her Newport, her words pungent and smooth as the medicine Ms. Exception felt she was delivering:

“Negroes are the ones who’ll stab you in the back soon as you turn it. They’ll talk love and tell their boys how they laid you. They walk into a place of business,
my
place of business, with their basketball jerseys swinging like dresses around their knees. With guns in their belts, or the rumor of guns. They walk in with their knowledge of
da streets
, of what’s
hot
. They swagger in, wowing the whites with a stupid, a fake, narrow, supposedly black
authenticity
. They walk in with a so-called
ear
for
what’s real
.”

Ms. Exception was adamant She stopped to sip her Scotch. To inhale some smoke, to exhale it, to tap ashes onto the constantly exchanged ashtray, to check Eva’s face for signs of attention and comprehension.

“This brother,” Ms. Exception continued, “comes in for the
meeting that really he’s been vying for his whole life. He walks in cool and so sexy and sexual to them. And this brother’s sexy to you, too. He’s met you finally, right? A woman he thinks is smart and bred and who already knows about the things he craves. But he’ll shake you quick after you get him his goddamned deal, after you up his goddamned budget, after you take him around to all the goddamned parties—and I’m not saying that white boys won’t do the same, Eva, that they haven’t done the same. They have.”

“So what, then?” Eva said, sipping her drink and feeling righteously cosmopolitan. Eva sat back gracefully while wondering from where Ms. Exception had purchased her flawless gray silk jersey dress and gray ostrich sling-backs. Eva wondered, as she sipped her drink again, if she’d ever be so unflappable and generous and sophisticated all at the same time. She imagined the sweet day when a $1,000 bag would be tucked as casually as Ms. Exception’s—at her own hip. Eva wondered if she’d ever truly run things.

“Eva,” Ms. Exception said, like Eva had been running her mouth. “Little Sister. Listen more. Talk less. And get yourself some decent jewelry. Start with earrings. Good diamonds. Pay the fifteen grand—you’ll have them for life, and men’ll know what you expect.”

Little Sister
is what Ms. Exception often called Eva. Eva felt the love in the words, had yet to put her finger on the grandiosity. “I’m saying I expect—
I used to expect
—more from a brother. I never expected shit from a white man, was raised never to expect shit from him. So when a white man acts right, looks out for me, it stands out extra tall. Because in my mind, white boys start from under zero, anyway. When a brother dogs me—in this business, in life,
and the two are the same thing, Eva, make no mistake
—it stands out cold and short. So, for real, Little Sister, it’s about you.” Ms. Exception smiled then, and put out her cigarette. She put her bag on the table, placed her cigarettes and her sterling lighter in it, pulled out her coat check and tapped the tablecloth with it. “It’s about being wise. You don’t need to let people know who your allies are or who they aren’t. I see it in you, Eva. You’re motivated. You don’t talk from the side of your mouth. You’re a winner.”

So thrilled was she to be sitting across from her future, Eva didn’t pluck the shinola from the shit. She’d been around, but not enough to know Ms. Exception had, when the Commodores were still a band, been married to Eva’s friend Hakeem. Didn’t know that the spoiled child of which Ms. Exception spoke was by a white executive with whom Ms. Exception had carried on an affair for nineteen years before he finally left his Kingston-born/Bryn Mawr-educated wife and married Ms. Exception at a small ceremony on a cloud-dotted Nevis afternoon. Eva, who picked up the bill for the cocktails and conversation, reeled in what she considered to be Ms. Exception’s hard-core truth. Eva did wonder, but only fleetingly where other black women fit into Ms. Exception’s philosophies—white men and women and black men having been broken down at length. It was years before Eva realized that black women belonged across a slender table from Ms. Exception. But more truly at her feet.

I
t was with freshly tousled, oil-sheened curls and with dangling high-heeled sandals (a British designer’s, Eva’s stab at distinction) that Eva chilled at Kato’s bar. Her dress had a cinched waist and a filmy skirt, a snug bodice, and a deep, square neckline—the very definition of panache. Eva didn’t want a table at Kato’s. She knew Ron would soon be there to hold court as a new executive vice president of urban music at a label he was charged with resuscitating. Eva’d seen Ron’s promotion announced
in Billboard
, but she’d made her plans based on what she’d heard from her friend Hakeem, who knew everybody and everything.

Hakeem’s data was on point.

“Eva,” Ron said. “I thought you might be out here.” He was surprised, she could tell, but as unruffled as she’d ever seen him. Especially as he wasn’t wearing his usual promotional T-shirt and jeans and sneakers. Ron, in black pants and a light sweater, was a part of a long tradition—a white guy in charge of black music—so Eva hadn’t given him a Mr. Nickname. People Eva knew had begun to call him Ron more than Lil’ John.

“Duty calls,” she said. Eva’s plan had been to be beautiful, and to assault him with straightforwardness. She wanted to say,
I came here tonight because I knew you’d be here. I have something to tell you, but here’s not the place
.

“Wish you woulda called me,” he said. “Today, I mean. I got a table, but I got this girl coming by. She’s not
my
girl, she’s this rapper, outta Tampa, and she’s expecting my—”

“Attention.”

“You know the game.”

“My friend Hawk’s gonna be here,” Eva said brightly, “so—”

“Hawk? Somebody’s friend? That’s new.”

“You like Hakeem.” Eva knew this to be true.

“I keep him close.” Ron glanced up at the bar. No bartender. “Why are we acting, though,” Ron said, moving closer to Eva, “like we don’t know each other’s secrets?” He was sweet about it. Ron’s face fell into the startle-eyed, slight smile he could have when something other than new money and fresh triumph pleased him.

“’Cause we don’t.”

His face lifted back to false mellowness. The bartender had returned, and stood framed by neat rows of bottles. Bars had begun to seem glamorous and twinkly to Eva, havens lined with labels promising escape to Monte Cristo, Bombay, Belvedere, and Calvados. The bottles stamped JAMESON’S WHISKEY SIX YEARS OLD or GLENMORANGIE SINGLE HIGHLAND MALT stood out zaftig among bones. Eva identified with Ron’s hard gaze at them.

“So you sitting with Hawk?” Ron said. He got the barkeep’s attention with a glance. “Or with me?” Whether he was the issuer or the receiver, whether it was business or it was personal, Ron wasn’t one to hesitate before an ultimatum.

Eva stood. She relaxed one shoulder, challenged him a little with her chin.

Ron was charmed by what he perceived as her confidence, by what he considered only a slight style transformation. He was worried, as he tended to be around Eva, about his utter appreciation of her beauty. It made him raw.

“Sit with me,” he said, and when she continued staring at him, he added, with a twinge of awkwardness, “please.”

When a man appreciated Eva’s looks, and the effort she put into enhancing them, Eva heard her father’s voice, and knew he’d been right about everything. The bartender brought Ron a Scotch, and after a quick scissorslike gesture of Ron’s fingers, poured one for Eva.

She sat across from Ron at a table for eight. The Tampa rapper showed up in jeans and a too-big bomber jacket. Her predeal clothes made her uncomfortable and made Eva feel superior, especially when the girl, who was cute if a little rough around the edges, mumbled hellos to the industry luminaries and hangers-on at Ron’s table. The girl looked at Ron searchingly and then turned abruptly toward the door with her pink-haired manager. Ron jumped up and walked them from Kato’s, and the dialogue Eva imagined was one she’d have in the same situation—all assurances and affection and promises that when the rapper blew up, she’d walk into Kato’s and everyone would kiss her feet. That someone else told the tales she did was as much a comfort to Eva as her hazel iris of Scotch.

Ron got back to the table, didn’t sit, and said, “I’m out.” Then he
added, “No worries,” and it was understood that the bill was taken care of. To Eva, Ron reached out his hand and said, “Let’s roll.”

She was happy and confirmed by this—as she always was by public displays, however vague and abbreviated. Eva kept her attitude, scooted with assurance from the table. She and Ron got in his spotless car. He wanted to show her the house in Malibu he’d just purchased.

They inched onto crowded Sunset Boulevard, and Eva saw the Mondrian, the hotel at which she used to stay when in Los Angeles.
Limousines to hide the stars
, went the disco tune in Eva’s head,
tinted windows to hide the scars
. Then to
And in the city it’s a pity ‘cause we just can’t hide—tinted windows don’t mean nuthin’, they know who’s inside
. She was usually mesmerized by the Strip’s brutal billboards, had partied on its lamp-thawed plazas, grubbed at 3:00 a.m. at the pristine restaurants, overseen artists’ visits to the florid record stores.
Donna Summer
, Eva tagged her thoughts.
And Run-D.M.C
.

Ron and Eva rode along quietly. The Tampa rapper’s voice rhymed away through the speakers.
Ron’ll never clear the Steely Dan sample
is what Eva thought.
So it doesn’t even matter that the shit sounds good. And if Ron does get it cleared, it’ll be a zillion dollars
.

Ron sped through the part of Sunset lined with memorial parks and tall hedges hiding golf-worthy lawns and mansions with columns Eva connected with plantation houses of the South. Then through Brentwood and Bel-Air, the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, and a garden shrine housing the ashes of Mahatma Ghandi. Eva knew Malibu, and it seemed closer to Hollywood than usual. She was nervous as they rode north on the Pacific Coast Highway a short stretch, then turned away from the ocean and up a steep street lined with the garage doors of homes whose fronts mocked the tide with astonished faces.
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel
. That was the line, the unclearable snatch of song.

Ron pulled into a garage under what seemed a small house for the neighborhood. He switched off his car.

Eva did what she did in business meetings when she had bad news to pass on. She took a deep breath, tried to speak as if her news
was rosy, prepared to tell as much of the truth as she could while pretending to tell the full and exact truth.

Eva said, “I don’t know if you want to know this.”
Spineless
, she chided herself.
Get to it
.

“Not a good way to start a conversation between two people who’ve had sex like us.”

“Not that.”

“I didn’t think so. But still.” He paused. “You’re not pregnant.” Ron’s chest was still up near the steering wheel, fingers on the key in the ignition.

“No.”

“What, then? Damn. Work? Fired?”

“I was pregnant.”

“By me.”

“Yeah.” Eva’s hands had sweated a circle on her skirt.

Ron sat back in his seat. The keys dangled with a tinkle.

“You had an—”

“Mm-hm.” Eva nodded.
Dewar’s
, she thought.
Bushmills, Jamesons
. The warmth of the one drink at Kato’s had faded. She wanted its hollow heat.

“You didn’t feel,” he said, “like I should be in on it.”

“In on it to say what.”

“You coulda had it?” It was the first time Eva’d heard Ron sound actually unsure. He could make himself sound unsure. He could make himself sound almost any way that served his strategy or justified his end. But she’d never heard an unintentional waver in his voice. It made him sound fragile, and so to Eva, sincere.

“I’m nobody’s baby’s mama.”
They got a name for the winners of the world. I want a name when I lose
. Eva could shake the Tampa rapper’s voice. But Steely Dan was forever.