Endless Summer Nights (9 page)

Beats of My Heart

Grace Octavia

To my family, for your constant support and
encouragement in everything I choose to pursue.

Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part I

“Losing Love in Manhattan”

“O
h, Sunny Bear, when will you be back? You can’t go. You need to be here with me,” Kimya said.

She was whining. Oozing out every syllable with so much sugar it made my back teeth ache. Her voice sounded like she’d been eating Pixy Stix all her life and she was just six years old. But she’d just downed three glasses of Perrier-Jouët...and two Percocet...and she was nearly thirty-two....

“You’ll be fine, Kimya. I’ll see you in the morning. I just need to hang with my girls tonight,” I replied.

I knew my monotone response meant nothing to her. It was like white noise behind the track of her flimsy needs. I would’ve been silent, but I knew I needed to move my mouth so I at least appeared interested or she’d never release me from the ridiculous “emergency” meeting she’d called in her all-pink-everything
salle de bain
that looked less classic French than she and her MAC Lipglass-rocking interior designer Montrell planned for her Central Park West penthouse. While the goal was to compete with Mariah Carey’s posh pad up the street, the result was too tacky for kindness and looked more like a gold-streaked pool of Pepto-Bismol.

“What if something happens, Sunny? What if I neeeeeed you? What if my car is late or I can’t get into the studio to record tonight? You know I gotta have this album in by the first week of June. I only have two weeks,” Kimya said. More whining. But those were things I’d thought of; it was my job to think of those things. As the first assistant to the world’s longest lingering R & B diva, Kimya Lee, I couldn’t afford not to.

“Ron has the number to the second car and cash for a cab. I’ve double-checked your studio time. Everything will be fine,” I stated.

She looked up at me through her hazel contacts as if I was a man who’d broken her heart and run off with her bestie and a bag of her money in the middle of some honky-tonk country song. It was her trademark pouty face that had graced the covers of so many magazines—dejected eyes, a crinkling pink lip, sunken cheeks. I was supposed to feel bad. Cancel my one night off in forever. But I couldn’t. Not that night.

I looked away. Waited. It was the old standoff between me and Kimya. Nothing new. For five years I’d endured this mess of manic moods. I’d become what her therapists called Kimya’s “emotional pillow.” I’d originally taken the job in hopes of using the connections to birth my dream of hitting it big as a soul music producer—reimagining new classics, real music from my heart, from my soul, all about love—the music my father had introduced me to, the music he had loved. But babysitting Kimya’s whims actually derailed me from both that dream and any love I could know to write about, so there I was engaging in a tantrum tussle more native to two-year-olds than two grown women.

After two accusatory minutes:
“Fine, Sunny Bear. I guess we do need some time apart.”

A part of me couldn’t believe I was winning the standoff. That she was letting the “emotional pillow” go. I stepped back one foot at a time and looked at her insanely slender adult body sitting all helpless on the edge of the bathtub. Then I took a deep breath and headed for the door.

* * *

My friends are beautiful. Long brown arms and legs. Shiny hair, wild or coiffed. White teeth whose brace-trained neat appearance attests to a middle-class background. Neat nails polished with Ballet Slipper lacquer. Tiny pearls posted in their earlobes, or real diamonds, no smaller than pencil erasers, that chant in repetition to all ogling eyes mantras of good taste and sweet success in a city that can eat your soul.

With the vivacious lights of New York nights pulsating behind their heads in pictures from parties I couldn’t attend fed copiously to my cell phone, they look so much like a teenage girl’s fantasy of what life will promise once they escape home. Drinks everywhere. Men with muscles. Quirky poses. Stumbling to the last bar on a slick black street.

Because of that, most nights like this when I did make it out, I didn’t feel as if I even belonged in the pictures. I know my diamond studs are fakes, the small gap between my front teeth makes it clear my soul-singing single father couldn’t afford braces and I couldn’t spare three hours out of any day to spend in the beauty salon. And I’m not long, or brown. I’m short and thick and so red I can hardly sit in the sun for more than ten minutes without burning. And I’ll be too tired and too broke to stumble to the last bar. And Kimya will be calling.

Still, I made believe none of that would be my truth that night. It was my best friend, Leticia’s, partner celebration. After just six years at one of the top entertainment law firms in New York City, she was tapped from high up to be a partner. She was crying when she’d called to tell me this. First Clayton’s marriage proposal on Valentine’s Day. Now this to set off the summer? It was her year! I promised three times I would be there. But walking to the back of downtown’s Cipriani, where dozens of Moët-filled crystal glasses were held high midtoast in her honor, I wasn’t sure anyone would’ve missed me if I’d stayed away.

After the glasses came down following a speech and a few tears I witnessed from the back of the crowd, I was reminded that it was ironically impossible to be invisible in a city populated by, like, eight million people.

“Oh, my God! It’s Sunshine Embry! Risen from the dead like James Brown!” Candice Miller belted out when the toast was done and everyone had gone back to their sipping and schmoozing. The queen bee of my circle of friends, Candice was the stereotype of the perfect skin, the perfect body and the perfect life. She hadn’t gained a pound since college. But she had three kids and a husband and her own pediatric care clinic in a rich enclave in Jersey. Dressed in a beige turtleneck dress that left little room for Spanx or any signs of underwear, Candice was the perfect centerpiece in a circle of short dresses and high heels that made top boutique mannequins of my friends. When she spoke, all eyes in the bedecked circle of women turned to me.

“Yeah, I made it. Late, of course,” I said, smiling meekly and walking into a gauntlet of kisses and smiles from faces I’d known since freshman year at Howard.

“No probs, lovey! I’m sure you were doing something totally fabulous,” Candice said, clueless of my pre-evening debacle in the
salle de bain.
“I swear I wish I had your life.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” I said, feeling my cell phone vibrating in the purple leather purse under my arm.

“Sunny!” I heard a Christmas-morning-worthy greeting and turned to Leticia running toward me effortlessly in her black patent leather stilettos with open arms and a smile so big someone just walking by on the street would know instantly that this gathering must be about her. “You made it!”

“Of course,” I said, falling into her arms, and as our hearts touched I realized how long it had been since I’d seen her. I’d promised to take her out for drinks after Clayton’s proposal, but our cell phone calendars couldn’t sync. Then I was in Los Angeles the day of her luau-themed engagement party. “I couldn’t miss this for anything.”

Leticia kissed my cheek and pulled me into the crowd like the prodigal daughter who’d returned home.

Candice was standing to the side with two of our college buddies, Willow and Antha, obviously sizing up one of the white guys from Leticia’s firm who was talking to an aging, long-necked, white blonde in a perfectly tailored black suit that let everyone know she was the man in charge.

“Lettie, darling,” the blonde interrupted Leticia as she tried to introduce me to some of her colleagues sitting along the sides of the wraparound mahogany bar. “You must slow down. Enjoy your moment.” Her voice was fake British, but cute like one of those imported reporters on CNN.

Leticia dragged me to the woman and introduced us over a handshake, before explaining that I was Kimya Lee’s personal assistant.

“One of our biggest clients,” the Brit-blonde boss noted. She was holding a glass of Scotch that wafted aged, complex notes in the air.

“My
only
client,” I replied. “Thanks to Let—
Lettie
for getting me the job.” I had to keep reminding myself that Leticia went by
Lettie
at work. In college, she’d decided that the “icia” on her name would stop her from getting a high-paying job.

“Yes, our Lettie is something else, isn’t she?” she pointed out.

Leticia had actually signed Kimya to the firm herself when Kimya was being sued for assaulting a hotel maid with a curling iron before a concert in Memphis. Leticia had a knack for connecting with big names in entertainment right when they needed her services. Because of her, the list of clients on the firm’s roster included everyone from top hockey players to emerging rappers. All of whom, like Kimya, tended to need constant representation for this or that.

After pulling me around to a few more circles, where I was introduced as Kimya Lee’s personal assistant so often I felt as if it was my name, Leticia and I ended up back where we’d started in the circle of mannequins.

Candice, Antha and Willow were obviously already buzzed from the champagne and taking pictures of one another holding stemmed glasses.

“Let’s take a cab over to No. 8. One of my friends is having a party in the Rec Room. Cute crowd. Boys and good drinks,” Antha said to the glowing phone in her hand as she posted one of the pictures online. She was one of Candice and Leticia’s sorority sisters. They’d all pledged sophomore year, but I’d held out. I didn’t get the point. I went to Howard because Roberta Flack went to Howard. Donny Hathaway. Meshell Ndegeocello. Angela Winbush. Eric Roberson. My father... I wanted to write my music in the same hallways where they’d sharpened their notes. Not learn sorority greetings and cook for big sisters.

“Boys? I am not looking for a boy,” Candice joked in response to Antha’s suggestion.

“Looking for? Whatever,” Leticia said to Candice. “You’re all the way married.”

“I didn’t say anything about ‘hooking up,’” Candice pointed out. “I said ‘look.’ And after being married for seven years, Lord knows I need to look at something. Mr. Milton expects the fat fairies to come eat up the pork gathering around his stomach. I love that fool but his breasts are bigger than mine.”

“Stop it!” Leticia ordered Candice, laughing with us. Milton had gotten extra jolly since we’d graduated. “Sunny, you coming with us if we go?” Leticia turned to me.

One by one, each of the mannequins dropped the leftover laughter from Candice’s joke and looked at me. I’d already gone to the bathroom and saw five messages from Yves saying Kimya was asking for me and had managed to crawl to the wet bar in her bedroom to pour a glass of Moët she then spilled on Yves’s head. Yves was the third personal maid I’d hired for Kimya in three months...and she’d lasted the longest. I really couldn’t afford to lose her.

I answered Leticia uneasily. “Yes! I’m out for the night. It’s all about my bestie. Right?”

* * *

Antha was right about No. 8. There was nothing but cute boys and drinks everywhere. And while the boys looked a little young for me, the more drinks we had, the more possible anything seemed. The interesting thing about being single over thirty was that older men wanted to date women who were younger than me and younger men wanted to date women older than me. I didn’t have the tight body and thirsty eyes of a spring chicken and I failed to garner the deep pockets and settled stares of a cougar. I was right in the middle—still naive enough to fall for their lies, but too mature to stick around after I’d figured out the game.

We set up camp in one of the velvet-rope areas the manager cleared himself after one of the bartenders had whispered something in his ear while pointing at us. It was one of the perks of my job I seldom enjoyed. When people discovered who my boss was, I’d get the best seats, sites and service in hopes that the new relationship would lead to a connection with Kimya.

“What about you, Sunny? You’re being all quiet. What’s going on with you in your love life?” asked Willow, after we’d aptly drunk in the view and everyone was spilling the beans about their love lives. She was the sweetheart/pretty girl of our circle. She had a tiny blue-black afro that showed off her cherub cheeks.

“Nothing at all,” I admitted. I hadn’t been on a date in so long, I’d actually forgotten the last date I’d been on.

“Stop telling your filthy lies,” Candice demanded playfully over the music. “I know you have, like, a million dudes hanging around.”

“My life is so crazy with Kimya, I hardly have time to meet any men,” I complained, freeing one of the olives from the toothpick in my super dirty martini with my teeth and letting the salty matter settle on my tongue. Aside from not having enough time away from Kimya to actually get out there and meet people—beyond the odd mix of weirdos my online dating profile sent my way—I had realized long ago that most of the men I dated either wanted to get close to Kimya or use me as a way to get into the entertainment industry.

“Stop! You’re living the dream. Rich men. Hanging out with celebs. Weren’t you in Paris last month? You didn’t scoop up a Parisian garçon?” Candice asked.

“Nope. Paris isn’t
Paris
if you’re working for a maniac 24 hours a day,” I sulked.

“You couldn’t find just a little ‘me time’?” Candice asked.

“You’re missing the point,” I added.

“And that is?” Leticia pushed.

“I’m alone and I’m fine with it. I have other things to focus on.”

“I’m not convinced,” Antha whispered just loud enough over the music for me to hear. The crowd was thickening.

“Speaking of fine, what’s up with Marlo? I saw his delicious brown ass on the cover of some crap magazine in my mailbox. Have you sampled that sausage?” Candice asked, eyeing some guy who looked as if he’d just passed the club’s age restriction.

“First, you’re gross. Second, I don’t know what the hell ‘sample that sausage’ means—is that from one of those late-night Cinemax movies? Third, I wouldn’t know what’s up with that scoundrel,” I said. Marlo was Kimya’s older brother, who seemed the more arrogant and self-absorbed of the two. While Candice was correct in mentioning how delicious Marlo was, I’d had little interaction with him in my years working for Kimya. He seldom wore a shirt that didn’t accentuate his muscles, and never was without a rowdy entourage of goons and groupies. Like most men in the entertainment world, he seemed to have that old “Peter Pan” problem of never wanting to grow old. He was thirty-three and had never been married and had no kids. Still, he’d managed to date every skank in the industry.