Joplin's Ghost (30 page)

Carlos’s face looked sickly, and Marcus had to admit it felt good to have another conversation with Carlos Harris. Marcus was masterful at scaring people, but his skill was mostly wasted in polite society, aside from brushes with drunken clubgoers or hardheaded fans. This felt good, but it also felt
right,
a combination that was hard to come by.

“I didn’t have sex with her,” Carlos said softly, contrite. “We never did that, and we’re not now. I really am sorry about everything. I wish I could go back and fix it. We’re—”

“What the fuck good does an apology do me now?”

“Let go of me,” Carlos said, not blinking. With his apology spent, his options must seem thin, Marcus knew. Marcus tightened his grip on Carlos’s forearm, grinding muscle against bone. Carlos tolerated the pain, hiding it except in his squinting eyes.

“You disrespected me, Mr. Harris,” Marcus said. “You disrespected my family. You disrespected my daughter, playing doctor with a schoolgirl because it made you feel like you had a bigger dick. There’s no coming back from that, son. Phoenix is grown now, and I can’t give her the eyes to see through you, but you better know right now that you will
never
earn trust or respect from me or my wife. That door is locked, and you don’t have the key.”

“I understand,” Carlos said, his voice dull.

“Try, ‘Yes, sir.’”

“Yes, sir,” Carlos said.

Marcus finally let him go. “Now, what the
fuck
is so important that Phoenix is back here bullshitting with you instead of doing her damn job?”

And so Carlos told him.

P
hoenix heard her father licking his fingers as he ate from the order of tandoori chicken he’d brought in from Punjab House down the street. He sat at a barstool at Phoenix’s kitchen counter with his
Billboard
and a can of Red Bull. “So, what’s your plan, Peanut?” he said.

Everybody wanted to know her plan. Milton, Carlos, now Sarge. Her only plan was to try to find the sense in her life again. Phoenix was sprawled across her futon with a cold, damp washcloth over her eyes while her Mac played back its recording of the music she’d composed in her sleep, glibly showing her the face of a new world. The music was vivacious and wonderful—priceless, Milton had said—and she had rescued it. But from where? And how?

“I keep thinking about this poem by John Keats,” Phoenix said. She was so tired, she could only mumble. “He’s my favorite poet we studied in my AP English class. He was really young, but he was sick, always afraid of dying.”

“Marvin used to read Keats. Marvin was deep.” When Sarge mentioned Marvin or Diana or Smokey in his stories, no last names were needed. Like Huey and Malcolm and Stokely.

“He has this poem called ‘When I Have Fears,’ and there’s this great line:
When I have fears that I will cease to be / Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain
. I’ve never been able to forget that line. It freaked me out when I read it. Like, damn, this guy knew he was gonna die, and he’d never have the chance to write all the poems he had in him. Scott Joplin must have felt that way, too. He didn’t want his music to die with him.”

“Yeah, welcome to the club,” Sarge said. “Phee, you’re adding a whole lot of chaos to your life you do not need right now. You need to let this Joplin shit go.”

Phoenix pulled the washcloth away her eyes, stunned. Sarge cracked a chicken bone between his molars, gazing back at her.
Yeah, you heard me,
his eyes said.

“This is from the same man who sent me to the Joplin House?”

“I wanted you to pay homage. You’ve taken this to a whole new tier.”

“I see what this is about,” Phoenix said, disappearing behind the washcloth again even though her skin had leached away the coolness.

“Carlos is involved, so you think it’s bullshit. You don’t believe me about the ghost.”

After reading the full score, Van Milton had trailed behind Phoenix all day, asking questions when he could. He’d wanted to spend the night at her apartment, hoping for a musical encounter, but she’d sent him home with Carlos instead. Maybe the phantom piano would show up for him, at least. She’d noticed Carlos hadn’t invited her back to his place, but she didn’t mind. She didn’t need to sleep anywhere she didn’t have a toothbrush, because she didn’t belong.

“What if I do believe it?” Sarge said. “What if I believe you saw this ghost and he sent you all this music? Hell, I saw what happened when you were ten. I was there. I’ve been in the world long enough that you can’t surprise me. But it’s done now. You gave the music to the experts, and you can let it go.”

“Sarge, if you really believed me, you wouldn’t say that.”

“I’m not here to argue metaphysics, Phee. I’m living in
this
world. You missed an interview last night. Jamal Lewis felt dissed today. You’re messing up. If you want to break your contract with Three Strikes and go hunting for Scott Joplin, more power to you. Just let me know, so I can start spending what’s left of your advance on lawyers.”

Sarge had a gift for bringing the vitals into focus. Phoenix had committed a year of her life to this CD, maybe more, and now it felt like millennia. She was trapped and hadn’t noticed.

“What did you say to Carlos?” she said.

“Don’t change the subject. If you have a question for Carlos, you need to ask Carlos.”

“He’s been a big help through this, Daddy.”

“I didn’t say anything he shouldn’t have heard from you first.”

“He heard it, believe me.”

“He’s heard it now,” Sarge said, and licked his fingers again. “Katrice said something that blew my mind today, by the way. Thought you’d like to know.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Katrice said you got jacked by D’Real in the studio. Those were her exact words.”

“She said what?” Phoenix said. She sat up, grateful when no cannonball rolled between her temples. Her headache from this morning had erupted to a migraine, but she was feeling better.

“That’s right,” Sarge said. “Katrice said she wanted more of your vision in
Rising.
”

“She didn’t act like it.” Besides D’Real, Katrice had been the main one always pushing her to sound more commercial, more R&B, more urban—in other words, more like everybody else.

Phoenix heard Sarge walking toward her, heavy soles on her tiles. He sat beside her. “Appearances are deceiving.”

“Remember that about Carlos,” Phoenix said.

“You remember that about Carlos, too.” Sarge leaned over her as if he were telling her a bedtime story. “Next time you’re in the studio, fight harder. Hold your ground. Marvin started doing his best-selling stuff, like ‘Grapevine’ and ‘What’s Going On,’ when it was from the heart. People had to know him first, though. He didn’t just come from nowhere. After
Rising,
people will know you—but you have to take it from there.”

Sarge had done it. For nearly a minute, Phoenix had forgotten about her ghost and remembered her music. Sarge was a wizard, but his wizardry wouldn’t be enough tonight. She wasn’t going to be like Ronn, pretending her life was still in her control. Something had changed this morning, maybe when she’d seen the nape of Scott Joplin’s neck. Something had changed when Van Milton told her the magnitude of the gift Joplin had given her in her sleep. Sarge might not be able to see it yet, but she didn’t have a choice. Something had changed.

“I think I’m gonna get some rest, Daddy,” Phoenix said. Her yawn began for effect, but it became real once it was in motion, mined from deep in her lungs.

“If you want, I’ll stay here with you, Peanut.”

“No,” Phoenix said. “I’m fine by myself tonight.”

For the first time, Phoenix wanted to be alone with her ghost.

P
hoenix barely recognized herself in the mirror beyond the circus of bright lights. With a mortician’s care, the makeup artist for
Live at Night
dabbed Phoenix’s face with shine-resistant powder while Phoenix sat and stared, transfixed by her hair. Her forehead was bordered by tight rows of narrow, zigzagging cornrows, with her golden scalp glistening and radiant between them. Braids bound the front of her head, but the rest of Phoenix’s hair was liberated in an explosion of puffing hair like a halo around her. In this bright light, Phoenix could see the tinges of red hiding in her dark brown Afro, nearly the color of her eyes. Serena was a genius.

“Are you sure you want to go with the Macy Gray look?” Gloria said behind her.

In the mirror, Phoenix saw her cousin puff on a Newport and pass it to Serena. Serena had quit smoking two years ago, gaining twenty pounds in the process, so she must be nervous today. Serena was forty-eight, and despite her expertly dyed hair, this was the first time Phoenix thought her sister looked her age, more like she could be her brown-skinned mother. Serena looked so much like Sarge, they were often mistaken for brother and sister.

“Snow White’s got a point, Phee,” Serena said. “I’ve got you looking fly, don’t get me wrong, but you said G-Ronn wanted extensions. We should’a gone with that Italian weave I brought, and I could’ve had hair halfway to your behind. That’s how all the big stars do.”

Phoenix smiled. “This is the way I want it, Reenie. It’s perfect.”

“Yeah, that’s right, Aunt Phee,” Phoenix’s nephew Trey said from the back table, where he’d been popping potato chips and cheese squares into his mouth. “Aunt Phee’s keepin’ it real. She wants to look
black
.”

The makeup artist gave Trey a surprised glance over her shoulder, and Serena rolled her eyes. “Lord have mercy. Marcus made this child read
The Autobiography of Malcolm X,
and now he thinks he’s Huey from
Boondocks
. Stop trying to talk like you’re grown,” Serena said.

It had been two years since Phoenix had seen Trey, and she’d been startled to discover that her little nephew was already half a man. If Trey were Jewish, he’d be studying for his bar mitzvah the way Mom had forced Phoenix to go to shabbat school for her bat mitzvah. Mom had said she wanted to pass on her heritage, even though she ate bacon regularly and let Phoenix go to church with Sarge.
Baruch atah adonai elohaynu malech ha’olam.
The prayers she’d learned still came back to Phoenix, mementos of somewhere ancient and far away. Sarge was teaching Trey his own version of his people’s story.

“You look beautiful, Aunt Phee,” Trey said. “Like a queen in Africa.”

“Oh, she’s a little princess for sure, but not the African kind,” Gloria smirked in her best Long Island accent, and Phoenix gave her cousin the finger.

“Daddy? What do you think?” Phoenix said.

Sarge had been quiet today, sitting on the love seat in the back of the green room while he watched her prepare for the performance, occasionally snapping pictures for Mom with his digital camera. She was still the bridge between her parents, at least. “Trey’s right. You look beautiful, Peanut. Whether or not the label will like that look for you, I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”

Serena made a quiet
humphing
sound, gently shaping the edges of Phoenix’s hair. “Yeah, you figured out it ain’t all about ‘Black Is Beautiful’ no more, huh, Marcus?” Serena said. Her voice was teasing, yet it wasn’t. Serena had always called her father by his first name, maybe because he had been only seventeen when she was born, and it seemed to grant her license to say things Phoenix never would, like a scolding old friend instead of his daughter.

“Right now, it’s about legacy and surviving the marketplace, Reenie,” Sarge said. He stood and walked behind Phoenix’s chair, wrapping both arms around her neck so he wouldn’t muss her makeup or her hair. Phoenix felt self-conscious, since she never saw Sarge hug her sister this way. “You’re beautiful, you’ve worked hard, and this is your moment.
Rising
is your
Rhythm Nation,
Phee. Two million people will see you tonight. After this, the charts are gonna be yours to take. Enjoy yourself out there.
Own
that stage.” He kissed the top of her earlobe, and the rough stubble on his cheek brushed against her, tickling.

Gazing at their faces framed together in the mirror, Phoenix remembered seeing her parents’ portrait on the wall in her dream, when she’d been preparing to leave home. An unnameable sadness welled in her. “Thanks for getting me here, Daddy. I love you.”

“Love you, too. I’m gonna go check my messages.”

That was Sarge’s all-purpose escape from any room, and Phoenix wasn’t surprised. Sarge always found ways to avoid being near Serena too long, even if he couldn’t admit it. Serena was the only person with that power over him, because Sarge never backed away from anyone else. Sarge had told Phoenix he and Serena had been very close before he went to prison—she was fourteen when he was sentenced—and Serena had told Phoenix that she refused to visit him in prison, so she didn’t see Sarge again until she was twenty-two. When Sarge and Serena were together, their missing eight years yawned between them, unspoken, even when they smiled.

Phoenix couldn’t understand how Serena didn’t hate her for getting everything from Sarge she hadn’t. Her half brothers were happy to pretend Phoenix didn’t exist, although Serena had told her that when she was famous, she’d see enough of Malcolm and Junior to last a lifetime. But Phoenix didn’t miss her brothers today. All the people she cared about most were here, except for Mom, but Mom was everywhere in spirit.

He
was here, too. But no one knew it except her.

Phoenix could see him. He was in the upper corner of the makeup mirror, where the lights converged to create a blazing, glowing ball too bright to stare into. That was him. Phoenix was tempted to point him out, but it had taken a lot of concentration to learn how to see him, and she’d learned after frustrating moments with Gloria that not everybody could.
(“What? So the light burned out. Big deal, Phee.”)
He was everywhere. A piece of paper had floated to her feet as she passed the receptionist’s desk when she arrived for the taping, and that had been him again, invisible. Maybe he had always been following her, and she had just learned how to notice.

Serena hummed a few bars of “Party Patrol” under her breath, and Phoenix smiled.

“Sing it with me, Serena,” Phoenix said. She’d been asking Serena for three days, but this was her last chance. “You’d tear it up out there on TV.”

When she heard the word
sing,
Serena’s head shook violently back and forth. Phoenix remembered when she’d felt that nervous about performing, when Sarge used to coax her onto the stage the way he’d coaxed her through physical therapy after she almost died. But Phoenix didn’t feel nervous today, of all days.

“You’re
such
a chickenshit, Serena,” Gloria said. “You’re the best singer in this room.”

The makeup artist looked taken aback, but Phoenix only smiled. “She is,” Phoenix told the woman. “You should hear her.”

“How would I look, almost a fifty-year-old woman out there tryin’ to be an R&B singer? And fat as hell, too? Please. Ya’ll are trippin’.”

“Who’s fat? You ain’t fat. Big is beautiful,” the makeup artist said. She was bigger than Serena, but not as tall. Serena had height from Sarge’s side of the family, so she was five-ten and solid, hiding her weight evenly across her frame. She looked good, except that Phoenix could remember how she had looked before her marriage to Trey’s father broke up. To Phoenix, Serena’s fifty extra pounds looked like a coat of sadness.

“Hey, listen here, ya’ll,” Serena said, “I don’t know if
big
is beautiful, but Mickey D’s fries and Dunkin’ Donuts are damn masterpieces. They’re straight-up works of art. O-
kayyy
?”

As they laughed, Phoenix saw that her ghost in the mirror was flickering instead of blazing. Was he laughing, too? Phoenix would like to think so, but it didn’t seem likely. She hadn’t seen him in the form of a man since the night she slept in Carlos’s bed, but she imagined he was sighing near her even when she couldn’t hear him. Otherwise, why would he still be here?

What do you want? What do you want me to do?
The questions came to her again and again. She never forgot him long, even when she tried.

The door opened, and a passing woman stuck her head in. “Big man’s comin’,” she said, a warning, and walked on. Was Ronn coming to see her, or was he still in hiding?

The makeup artist stubbed out her cigarette and leaned close to Phoenix’s ear, her voice low. Her breath smelled like tobacco and mint gum. “He don’t come back here unless he thinks the guest is fine,” she told Phoenix, and Phoenix knew then she wasn’t talking about Ronn. “Remember, he’s got two babies and a girlfriend.”

“Uh-oh. Cockblock,” Gloria whispered, and she and the stylist snickered.

When Alex Compton walked into the green room, the space suddenly seemed smaller because his presence was so large. He had a smooth face and a cleft in his chin, more like an actor than a comedian, and his snappy silver-gray suit was camera-ready. Phoenix felt currents shooting between Trey, Gloria and Serena when he appeared. There
was
something hypnotic about spying a familiar face on a stranger, Phoenix thought. She felt mesmerized herself.

Compton knocked on the open door even though he was already inside, just to make sure everyone saw him. “So,
this
is where the party’s at! Just thought I’d pop in and holla, ladies. We’re amped to have you with us, Phoenix. I’m Alex.” He gave her a smile that looked dazzling in the mirror’s reflection, nearly as bright as her ghost’s light.

“Mr. Compton, can I have your autograph?” Trey said, bounding to him. Sarge had already asked G-Ronn and D’Real to sign Trey’s book. “You are
so
funny, man.”

“Thanks, little homey. Gotta laugh to keep from crying,” Compton said. As he signed, his eyes never left Phoenix’s in the mirror.

A bottle of crimson nail polish on the makeup table fell to the floor, unnoticed by everyone except Phoenix. The bottle rolled until it lay directly beneath her feet, tinkling against the metal base of her chair. To her, the sound was deafening, snapping her from her bedazzlement.

“Phoenix, if there’s anything you need, say the word,” Compton said. “I’ll—”

“I need a piano,” Phoenix said, spinning her chair to face him. It took her several seconds to wonder why she suddenly felt resolved about it, but she wanted a piano. Badly.

Compton froze in place, one arm akimbo, the other outstretched as if he’d planned to shake her hand. He glanced behind him at the empty doorway, then back at her. “Oh. Okay. I’ll have to figure out…how to do that. We’re right at showtime.” Panic crept into his face.

“Can I have it center stage, please? Any piano is fine,” Phoenix said.

Gloria made a face at Phoenix.
Piano?
Gloria mouthed.

“Someone will talk to Patti. Patti will take care of it right now,” the makeup artist told Compton in an assuring, parental voice, and Compton’s muscles relaxed, the smile back.

“OK. It’s all good, then,” he said, happy to go while the problem was solved.

“Shit. I gotta tell Patti,” the makeup artist muttered, leaving on his tail.

All she’d done was ask for a piano, but she’d huffed and puffed and blown them all away.

“Man, did you see that?” Trey laughed. “Aunt Phee snaps her fingers, and they
jump
!”

Gloria stood in front of Phoenix, arms crossed against her chest. “Excuse me, diva girl, but why do you need a piano for a prerecorded track? Sarge won’t want you changing the set.”

It was one more thing Phoenix couldn’t explain. She wasn’t sure she knew.

C
arlos was sitting in the front row. Phoenix saw him right away, a spotlight’s ray singling him out of the gray faces in the audience hidden behind the glare. She smiled and gave him a
Whassup, Carlos
incline, just like Lauryn Hill at the Stephen Talkhouse Bar, and Carlos blew her a kiss. Phoenix talked to Carlos on the phone every day, but she hadn’t seen him since the day Milton came and went, so she was glad he had accepted her invitation. Phoenix felt unusually happy; maybe the happiest she’d ever been. She hadn’t expected to find the happiest moment of her life on the stage of
Live at Night
in Studio B in Burbank, but here it was.

Phoenix looked for Sarge next, shielding her eyes from the lights.

There he was. Sarge was standing offstage beside the camera monitor, next to a woman with a clipboard. Phoenix couldn’t make out the subtle details of his face, although the tilt of his head and the rise of his chest told her he was proud of her. Phoenix assumed that the woman standing next to Sarge was Patti, the producer who had found her a piano. The piano wasn’t center stage as she’d requested, but it was on hand and ready, a satin black Steinway she wouldn’t mind owning if she had room for a piano.