Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva (13 page)

“Daaamn, that was off the grid. You sure know howda put it on a brutha,” Derrick exhaled. “How ’bout I get that bubbly and fire them jets back up?”

Shy of commitment after two failed marriages, I began searching for an escape.

“Listen, D, I have an early call tomorrow,” I said, sitting up, feeling claustrophobic. “I mean, I ’preciate you hookin’ a sistah up and all, but . . .”

“Girl, you trippin’.” He dismissed me, flexing his arms folded behind his head. “Jus’ needed someone to take your mind off all that drama on the soap, release the tension. I know how it is. Too much pressure make a pipe burst. It’s all good.”

Derrick’s nonchalance stung me. Secretly, I hoped he’d want to get something started again, only I didn’t want to be the one who appeared white-on-rice clingy or eager to go back down Memory Lane. It had ended badly the last time, when I discovered he was simultaneously dating two models and in retaliation tagged his Trans Am rims with pink glitter spray paint and graffiti’d “2-TIMER” on his windshield. Luckily, there were other disgruntled love interests so he never figured out who had exacted her revenge.

Girl, just tell the brother how you really feel. Stop pretending to be Miss Independent when all you really want is to rest against the security of Derrick’s delicious chest for eternity.

Ready
to finally spill my guts, I began, “Derrick, honey, I—”

“Hold up, I ain’t tryin’ to marry ya or nothin’. Busy and able as I am, might not be so lucky next time catchin’ me.”

Derrick was right. I could take a catnap during my lunch break on-set tomorrow.

In an immediate about-face I reasoned, “Yeah, you right, boo, I was trippin’, but I’m so thirsty I could spit dust. How ’bout I look good waitin’ here on those bubbles you said you were gonna get?”

“Be right back.”

While Derrick got the Clicquot, I thought, as clairvoyant as I sometimes could be, I couldn’t begin to predict what would happen on the set of
The Rich and the Ruthless,
and at that moment I didn’t care. With D’Angelo’s “How Does It Feel” playing in the background, all that seemed to matter was Act II with Derrick. Everything else would have to wait in the wings.

O
n little sleep, I woke the next morning remarkably rested, ready to take on the world. In other words, fortified to head into
R&R
with unflappable purpose. Before leaving Derrick asleep in my bed, I kissed his salty lips, a lasting memory from our steamy tryst the night before. Glancing down to see his enormous
l’érection
I thought, shaking my head,
What a waste
, before whispering, “
Je t’aime
, Derrick.”

His show was on a two-week hiatus and I knew he would have no problem showing himself out. More important, I knew he wouldn’t go rifling through my medicine cabinet and drawers like I regrettably had at his pad in the past. Why do we girls do that, knowing we’re gonna find something we wish we hadn’t?

The first person I ran into on the set was buppie actor Ethan Walker.

After Derrick quit
R&R,
producers hastily decided to bring back their
favorite go-to plumber, judge, cop, drug dealer, and preacher, veteran bubbler Wilson Turner, as my interim love interest. Wilson was formerly with
Yesterday, Today, and Maybe Tomorrow,
a canceled soap from a bazillion years ago
.

If it weren’t for Grandma Jones being so over the moon about her senior citizen heartthrob’s return, I don’t think I could have endured the girdle, the Tab, the Bumps No More, or the Old Spice cologne. Not to mention the coal black Afro toupee he religiously wore, cut to topiary perfection, glued carefully against his gray fringe.

I’d assumed casting might have considered someone younger than a senior citizen, silly me. Luckily, the fans hated the pairing. Enter Ethan Walker.

“How’s it going, Calysta?” he garrulously asked on the go, dressed in Sean John sweats and a Clippers fitted cap, attempting to hide yet another nasty case of pinkeye.

“It’s going,” I replied. “Wanna run lines?”

“Sure, cool, right after I check my fan mail. My bin is overflowing, dude. Meet you in your room, say fifteen?” The elevator doors closed.

“Sure, fine, fifteen,” I shouted to the stainless steel. “Pompous ass,” I muttered as I walked toward my dressing room. “They must be half crazy if they think I’m gonna kiss his contagious butt today.”

“Talking to yourself, Calysta? You’re a girl after my own heart,” said Maeve Fielding, shuffling up next to me in slippers, robe, and sunglasses. “Did you hear Beyoncé is starring in a new movie about Etta James?” she mumbled, noshing on scrambled eggs from the commissary.

I pretended not to know. “Really?”

Maeve was one of those people who felt the only things they could talk to me about were black entertainers and, of course, Nelson Mandela. Yes, I’d met people like her before, but Maeve took it to a whole ’nother level.

“Yeah, I loved Etta, but one of my all-time favorite blues singers was
Bessie Smith, now
that
was a singer and a half. Listen, Calysta, would you follow me to my dressing room? I could really use your help. Alison is hogging the new hairstylist again. Randall is insisting she change her hairdo for the third time today.”

Reluctantly I said, “Sure, Maeve,” knowing exactly what she needed my help with.

Walking past her plastic ficus tree decorated with one lone Christmas bulb, she peeled off her kerchief, dropping the paper plate into the trash, oldies music playing in the background as she growled, “Damn scrambled eggs are always cold.”

Forty bright vanity lightbulbs betrayed the icon’s prunish face as she sat down in her director’s chair, stamped Lady Leslie Lovekin on the back. Makeup was not her friend. Each wrinkle illuminated, her Clara Bow lips gripped yet another cigarette.

“That’s Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven, you know. Bet you never heard of them,” she announced, tossing the metal lighter onto the vanity.

“Bet you’re right.”

She took in a long drag, swaying to the tune before exhaling, smoke curling toward a struggling air vent plugged with dun-colored Kotex. Maeve’s dressing room quickly went from semi-smoke-free to a suffocating carcinogenic hell. Pushing mounds of makeup to the side, she reached across and snapped off two pieces of medical tape, attaching them at her temples.

“I bet you can sing, Calysta,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror. “Seems like all you colored—I mean,” she went on, enunciating carefully with the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, “African American people can carry a tune.”

Clamping the petite metal clip to the thumbnail adhesive, she stretched the flesh-toned lanyard over the crown of her head, asking me to secure it with my finger as she continued to pull it across her wig cap, attaching it to the other side, giving herself an instant face-lift.

I’d helped Maeve before with her freakish stage trick. But hey, who was I to judge? Times were tough for everybody and no one had “extra” for nip/tucks these days.

“Yep,” she continued, pulling on her wig, “I even saw Billie Holiday perform in New York City, she was—”

Cutting her off, I said, taking shallow breaths, “Listen, Maeve, I’d really love to hear more and I’m a big fan of everyone you’ve mentioned, but I gotta do my hair and makeup and run lines.”

“Oh okay. I gotta be honest, I’m dreading your wedding. I hate being a glorified extra in those damn scenes. All those long boring hours, and the overtime stinks to high heaven. Anyway, thanks, Calysta.”

As I opened her door I said, “The movie Beyoncé starred in is
Cadillac Records
and it’s
been
out on DVD.”

“Already?”

“Yeah, the studios tend to do that after a year or so. And Maeve, did you know that Carol Channing was black?”

“Where did you hear that? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s true. It made national news. My Grandma Jones always believed Dinah Shore and Ava Gardner belonged to our club too. You know what they always say, ‘Check the cuticles.’ See you on-set.” I fled, leaving Maeve staring down at her fingers.

Sixty seconds later, I dumped my makeup kit into the dressing room sink. After starting to apply foundation to my neck and face I suddenly stopped, taking in the reflection behind me, flooded with memories of room 21J fifteen years earlier.

“What’s up with the Africa poster and the leopard couch?” I’d asked a college intern.

“Oh, Mr. Roberts told us to put this stuff in here.”

“I moved from New York, not the Congo, for crissakes. Might as well kept goin’ with palm wine and Kola nuts.”

Now in the refuge of my warm Jamaica pink dressing room, tastefully decorated by moi, its atmosphere one of sophistication and calm,
with an inconspicuous herbalist staff in the corner and photos of Ivy and Grandma Jones throughout, I prided over a framed
Cliffhanger Weekly
cover boasting Derrick and myself, the only soap cover anyone of color ever got.

My landline rang.

“Calysta?” an
R&R
office staffer asked.

“Yes.”

“I have a call for you from a Zylissa. Says she knows you.”

“Put her through,” I said with a sigh.

“Calysta?”

“That’s me.”

“Hey girl, whatchu up to?”

“Gettin’ ready for a scene. How ’bout yourself?”

“Hmph, gettin’ ready to get evicted if I don’t book this dumb Valtrex commercial, I know that much. I’m so tired of auditioning. I didn’t get
any
play during pilot season either. I coulda’ peed all over a role if one existed.”

“I know, but you can’t give up now.”

“Who says? If I could find me a sugar daddy like Kara did I sure would. Yeah honey, he’s like in his seventies or somethin’ and gives her whatever she wants.”

“Yeah, but what does she have to give him? Never mind, I don’t
even
want to think about it.”

“Pays her rent, got her teeth fixed, she drivin’ a new Mercedes, got diamonds, shops on Rodeo not Rod-e-o, and he takes her to Europe on business all the time. And for that, I think I’d find me a way to give my sugar daddy whatevah he wanted. ’Cause right about now, these casting directors are cookin’ my last grit and I ain’t about to go back to Americus, Georgia.”

“Don’t talk like that, Zylissa.”

“They’re never gonna cast me in Hollywood, and you know why.
Same reason I can’t get arrested on your Creole-lovin’ soap as a damn day player. They either go for shallow or
LL
. Ain’t even thinkin’ ’bout my deep chocolate ass, my gapped tooth, my dreads, my dream, my truth, my
me
. I get to the callbacks, then the callbacks for the callbacks, meanwhile I’m tryin’ like hell to hold on to my killa performance and they already done picked long hair, light skin . . . as usual. Those phony-ass-kissin’ producers with their big Chiclet-capped teeth smilin’ back at me like I got the dang job, knowin’ I ain’t got shit.”

Near tears, she said, “All I want to do is act, Calysta, and sink my Chi-town theater experience into somethin’. I jus’ wanna work. I swear they only bring me in to fill up that sign-in sheet and make their sorry casting office look busy.”

“I know, Zylissa. I know, but you can’t wait on the phone to ring. Check out Whoopi. Or CCH and Latifah. Even Mo’Nique. They’re
always
creatin’ their own stuff ’cause they know they have to. They’re in a movie or producin’ one, writin’ a series, and in their downtime they’re doin’ a play or writin’ books. Look how many auditions it took
me
before I even got
this
gig.”

“Yeah, you right, but Calysta, you be the exception to the rule, girl. Even though you in that
LL
package you just as darkskinned as you please on the inside. Everything about you is chocolate. I ain’t nevah seen someone lookin’ like you workin’ as hard for the money.”

Laughing, I said, “You so crazy.”

“You think I’m jokin’, I’m serious.”

“Remember in NYC when Weezi booked me on that crazy music video that went all night?”

“Who could forget? Up twenty-four hours for zip.”

“But be honest, Zylissa, it’s how we met and we
did
have fun, and we
did
meet Hammer.”

“Sure did. Girl, don’t make me laugh.”

“Where is he, anyway?”

“Mmm-mmm, preachin’ or somethin’.”

“Tell you what, I’ll front your rent, but this is the last time. You still owe me from last year. I ain’t forgettin’.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Calysta, ’cause you know I love ya, but girl, you’re tighter than Dick’s hatband. You be squeezin’ a penny so tight Abe be sittin’ on his
own
lap.”

“Very funny. Stop by the set tomorrow for the check.”

“A check? I ain’t got no bank account. I don’t even have a cell no more. I’m callin’ you from a pay phone and had to take a bus to that.”

“What happened to your ride?”

“Got a boot on it. Didn’t have insurance any old way and could barely afford gas, so good riddance, repossess the friggin’ leased ride. I even called my ex-boo Seaweed last night just so I could get some free food. I’m sorry, Calysta, but I need cash and I need it now.”

“Okay, okay, come at lunch and don’t be late like always. And don’t throw me under the bus and sneak upstairs to casting saying I sent you, like last time. That really pissed me off; I took all kinds of heat. You know I gave them your picture and résumé four times.”

The loudspeaker broke in: “Calysta, you’re needed on-set in ten minutes for item twelve, page sixty-nine, Ruby and Dove’s bedroom.”

“Ten minutes?” It wasn’t uncustomary for our show to shoot out of sequence, but man, was it a pain in the neck.

“Did you say be there in ten minutes, Calysta?”

“No, I mean—never mind. Gotta go, Zylissa. Twelve sharp.”

“Cool beans, can I get some lunch in the commissary?”

“Yeah, go ’head. Later.”

“Calysta, five minutes for item twelve, page sixty-nine, Ruby and Dove’s bedroom,” repeated the stage manager.