Commitment (36 page)

“Okay,”
she sang.
“Can’t blame a girl for trying.
Hey!
Was that who you called that night
?
”

“
Stephanie?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t call here again.”

Shawn heard her chuckle.
And then
the phone went dead
.
He
listened to the silence
for a moment more
then
glanced toward the bedroo
m.
He could hear
Riley
moving
about in the closet, oblivious.
Somehow he was going to have to convince her to
change the phone number.
Or accelerate their move to the new place.

“Baby
, could you come i
n here?” she called out to him.
“I need you to grab something from the top shelf for me.”

Normal life
calling.

g

They went out for dinner
at the Chinese restaurant three blocks away
from the apartment
.
Shawn ignored the stares he got from a table full of young Asian guys
, one of whom was
wearing
a
throwback
Wu-Tang Clan
t-
shirt.
He kept his head down in his lo
mein
, trying not to make eye-contact, h
oping they wouldn’t come over.
He
consider
ed
not going to the club at all, thinking how much more he would like to just stay in bed, watch a game on television,
Riley
somewhere
nearby
working on her laptop.
 

“We don’t have to go, y’know.”

She seemed to read his mind.

“Yeah I do.
We talked about this.”

And they had
; at length
.
The one thing he
made
sure she understood before they got married was that his time was
frequently not his own –
just
being K
Smooth
was his job in much the same way
that
going to
the magazine everyday was hers.

He had to cultivate
his brand, make sure he was seen
and talked about even when there was no new
music
to promote.
There would be more tabloid photos wi
th
captions that weren’t true.
There would be rumors
, blogs that claimed to know about his ‘secret love-child’ or assorted other crap like that
.
But it was part of the
gig
.
The key to every successful career in entertainment was
to make sure
the public alw
ays heard something about you
, so even the negative stuff had its role
.

You had to maintain a dull hum in their consciousness at all times; and amplify that hum to a roar only when n
ecessary to sell your product.
Some artists made the mistake
of maintaining a roar
and wound up overexposed.
Others let their hum dwindle to nothing, so that when they needed to, they couldn’t revive it
with all the hype in the world.
It was his challenge to
maintain
balance
between those two extremes
.

“I don’t understand what’s in it for you
,
that’s all
.
Hangi
ng out in clubs till all hours.
I can see why the club owners want you there, but other
than that
, I don’t get it
.”

“
Tha
t’s where the business is done.
And besides that, i
t’s free publicity.
We show up, people write about it.”

“A bunch of rappers in a nightc
lub is not exactly news, Shawn.
Unless someone winds up getting shot.”

Shawn laughed
.
“Oh, why’s it gotta be about s
omebody
getting shot?”

“You know
the love affair between
hip-hop culture and firearms.
Come to think of it,
th
at would make a good story
.”

“If you write some shit like that, I’ll divorce you.”

“You won’t get rid of me that easy.”
Riley
tossed a packet of soy sauce at
him
.
“Why don’t we go to Harambe instead?”

Shawn
rolled
his
eyes. “Poetry-reading?
No thanks.”

“
It’s slam poetry, not
poetry-reading
.
And besides, i
f you think about it, you do the same thing as most of the guys there
.
Wasn’t that the point you made that night I interviewed you, when you were trying to put me in my place? That poetry is
free-
stylin’
but without the music
?
”

“And if you think about it, rock-and-roll and
R&B come from the same place.
But today, one do
es
n’t have shit to do with the other.
And I wasn’t trying to put you in your place; I was trying to get you into my bed.
”

“I disagree,”
Riley
said, biting into a stalk of broccoli.

“That
I was trying to get you in
. . .
”

“No
, silly
.
About
slam-
poetry and what you do
not having anything to do with one another
.
The only difference is that rappers sold out and started rapping about money and cars, stopped rhyming ab
out things that really matter.

“
Like
, remember when rap was defined by
Public Enemy,” she continued.
“
And
that old group Digable Planets.
Remember when
hip-hop
used to be about struggle?
When it used to be about pain?”

“Riley, it’s always b
een more complicated than that.
It was also about going to parties and
macking
on the hottest chick there.
You’re idealizing it.”

“I don’t think so. I
t used to be an art form and we sold it out to crass commercialism.”

“So you think I sold out.”

“No.
”
T
here was some reservation in her tone.

“But?”

“But some of what you rap about doesn’t really reflect who
you are
and what you’re about
.
Some of it is so
. . .
”
she stopped herself and bit her lower lip.

“Go ahead.
Speak your mind.”

“It’s so
shallow
.
Beneath you.”

“That’s because it’s a fucking bu
siness, y’know what I’m saying?
Not a social
justice
movement.”

“Now you’re mad,”
Riley
put down her fork.

“I’m not mad,” he lied.

“You are.”

“Okay, fuck it.
Yeah I’m mad.
If my own wife does
n’t even respect what I do
. . .”

“
Actually, I have
great respect for what you do, and for how well you do it.
But wh
o cares that I’m your wife?
You should be more concerned that I’m a per
son whose opinion you value
.”

“Because you’re my wife.”

“So you only value my opinion because we’re married.”

“
Don’t try to
turn this around.
You just told me you don’t think my rhymes mean shit.”

“I didn’t say that
, Shawn
.
”
Riley
shook her head.
“All I’m saying is . . .”

Shawn leaned forward, r
esting his elbows on the table.

“
That’s what I heard you say,
Riley
.
”

“Then you weren’t listening very well.
”

“We better get home,
get ready for tonight.” he said, tossing down his napkin
and shoving away from the table
.

g

Shawn had been ready for almost an hour, sitting in the living room and glancing at his watch
and nursing his annoyance from the conversation at dinner
when
Riley
came out of the bedroom.
Still brushing her hair, she was
wearing a short white tube top in a
n
iridescent
fabric that stopped just abo
ve her waist, and a long, sleek, form-fitting
black skirt that
began
just beneath
her hip
bones
and
fell
to her ankles.
Long slits
on either side of the skirt
traveled from hem to mid-thigh.
On her feet were black strappy high-heeled sandals
that were sexy beyond belief.
She didn’t often dress this way, but when she did it blew his mind because she
had no earthly clue
how
damn
beautiful
she was.

Last year
when
he was
on the road
and could only stop in New York for a day or
sometimes
no more than a few hours
,
they would sometim
es meet at restaurants downtown
or the Starbucks in Herald Square
.
Shawn
always looked forward to the moment when he
would watch her walk in, wearing one of her tomboyish outfits, baggy overalls,
or
painter
’
s pants and motorcycle boots.
It
drove him crazy, knowing that beneath all of those
layers of completely un-
feminine
clothes, she was all
woman - gently
curved hips, round ass,
firm, gravity-defying breasts.

But those were the things any man loved about his
woman
or about women in general.
With
Riley
,
the
attraction was deeper and more subtle than that.
He
loved the slenderness and length of her neck,
the way it arched when they were making love,
its softness at her nape
when
he kissed her
there
;
he loved
the honey-toned translucence of the skin on her breasts
;
and her feet
,
the toes long and fragile
, the toenails
always
unpainted but still pink and perfectly formed like tiny seashells.

“Ready?” she asked him now.

“Yeah,
I have to call Chris.”

She turned to head for the kitchen, and Shawn’s eyes widened. What had looked to him like a tube top was actually bare at the back except for two spaghetti-sized strings holding it together. Practically the entire expanse of her back was exposed.
S
mooth, soft
skin – his wife’s skin – on
display for any dude who felt like looking. He weighed the odds that she would change her top if he told her he wasn’t comfortable with it and came up with slim to none. She would probably insist on principle.

“You’re going to be cold,” he tried.

“
I’ll wear my coat over this when we’re outside, Shawn, obviously,” she said
, rolling her eyes at him
. “So we’re
going with the
entire
poss
é
tonight?”