Soul Siren (14 page)

His eyes strayed over to Steven and Erica. Maybe it was the proud black man super-stud thing. He didn’t want to look like he couldn’t control himself in front of Erica—or in front of the white boy.

“Come on,” I muttered soothingly again, and kissed him on the lips.

Steven rolled off Erica, both of them still laughing, and Steven saying, “Come on, man, take a joke. I’m gonna get Erica to do that to me. I bet I come like a rocket! What are we going to do for an encore here?”

I grabbed some towelling and ran water over it in the sink to wipe off my chest, passed a couple of fresh panels to my shock victim.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing some girl-on-girl action,” said Odell with a smirk.

“Don’t be a pig,” Erica said right away.

I wasn’t surprised or hurt by her words. In fact, I was clucking my tongue in disgust and stepping away from him.

“What?” said Odell, holding his hands open in a pose of innocence. “What? What did I say?”

“Sure, Odell,” I told him. “We’ll do that right after I see you give Steven a blow job.”

Steven affected a Southern drawl. “Odell, my man, yours just ain’t a gentlemanly suggestion.”

“Why not?” he laughed.

And Erica looked at him, her eyes slits, demanding, “What are you thinking, man? I have to get Michelle off because you can’t?”

Steven was rolling again with giggles.

“Hey, you’re out of line with that shit,” Odell snapped, and I could see the word forming on his lips:
bitch.

It’s not as if I had been enjoying myself with him. Maybe she was more observant than I thought.

Odell grabbed me around the waist, trying to pull me into a clinch. “Come here.”

“What?” I said. “You gonna fuck me now to
prove
something?”

“Hey, they want a show, let’s give ’em one, babe. Get me hard.”

“Get yourself hard,” I said, slipping away from him.

“Well, this is losing its charm,” said Erica, closing her eyes and pretending to fall asleep.

“Odell, why don’t you take a shower and go watch TV or something, man,” suggested Steven. “You’re bringing the party down.”

Odell was searching for his trousers. “Oh, I’ll do better than that, dog. Throw me the keys to the Porsche. Fuck this shit, I’m outta here.”

“Doesn’t have to be like that,
bro.
”

“Oh, yes, it does, bro,” he shot back, buttoning his shirt. “This is a party for three, I guess. I’m going back to New York.”

“Yeah, you’re going home
coach,
” said Erica.

“Fuck you,” said Odell. “Gimme the keys, man—”

“Don’t,” I piped up. “This is stupid. We’ve all been drinking. Odell, why don’t you just go and cool off—”

“No! No, I’ve had enough of this bullshit. You two playing cock-teases while—”

“Hey!”
Steven, raising his voice and losing his patience.

“Let ’im go, Michelle—”

“He’s been drinking, Erica!”

“I can drive fine,” Odell was saying.

“And I don’t give a shit if you can,” Steve cut through him. “You’re not wrapping my car around some trucker’s rig! You want to go home? Go and walk, asshole. You’re twenty minutes from an Exxon. You can call yourself a fucking cab into the city.”

Odell shook his head, tucking in his shirt. “You’re a spiteful prick, Swann.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” answered Steven. “You’re fired.”

We heard the door slam behind him.

Steven clapped his thigh. “Forget him, ladies. Let’s have a good time. Michelle—” He tossed me the remote in his hand and gestured for me to toss over mine. “Odell’s got one poor imagination. I got a much more fun game in mind.”

And he handed the new remote to Erica. With a glance and a lift of her chin, she instructed me to put the egg inside me. I didn’t care that Steven was watching. I would have done anything she told me in that moment. I pressed the egg against my wet lips below and slowly pushed it in. It felt a hell of a lot better than Odell.

“You,” Steven said to me, dropping his voice to a lascivious whisper, “get to critique our performance. If you like what Erica’s doing, you give her a reward. And maybe, just maybe if you’re fair and just, she’ll give you one back.”

And when we were past the giggles, and Erica saying, Aw, Michelle just wants you for herself, me telling her no, show me what you got, girl, I watched my best friend. She stalked her man, her fingers sliding up his leg to cup his ball sack. Massaging him there in a way I didn’t think possible, a manner both sensual and utterly lewd at the same time. His penis came to life like one of those flowers turning towards the sun, blooming from a half-erect pink to an unbridled crimson, and Erica extended her tongue to give it a lick like sweet ice cream. I hit the setting for
one,
and she sat back on her calves for a moment to revel in the thrill. She returned to a slow embrace with Steven on the floor, the two of them rolling around like the lovers in
From
Here to Eternity
but no beach and no crashing tide washing up to them. Then Erica got that look in her eye, that look that said she was about to pounce, shoving her pubic mound up to the inside of Steven’s thigh, remembering my trick with Odell and putting the egg under his balls, and I hit the two setting to drive them wild, Steven rubbing his cock on her belly. And I was there, I was there—

Feeling an intimacy with her I still can’t articulate properly. I was forgotten and yet I was like human background music, at last able to give her pleasure, and I couldn’t help myself, my hand reaching down to play with my clitoris. It didn’t matter that she only received, that she wasn’t giving back, her remote now abandoned a couple of feet away on the rug. Erica slipping Steven’s white cock between her luscious brown breasts, her lips coming down to suck two inches of him in, and then his penis sandwiched between her tits again, Steven’s hands running through her hair, Erica moaning as I jumped a setting right to
four.
The egg inside me, only giving a pleasant fullness, no vibration, just my finger rapidly strumming my clit, and now Erica was down on all fours, and for the briefest instant I saw her mound between her legs, and then Steven ducked his head in and began to deliciously work his tongue on her lips.
Five.
Maximum.

“Shit! Oh, shit,
uuuh, uuuh, uhh!
”

I gritted my teeth to stop the torturous keening escaping my lips, my eyes shutting completely as I tipped in slow motion onto my back on the carpet. I felt tears rolling down my cheeks, and then a warm mouth was kissing my lips, seeking entry, requesting a dance of tongues. I died on that floor, loving her, my eyes opening to see Steven’s closed lids, one tentative hand cupping my left breast. My eyes looked past him to Erica, lying on her side, happy and spent, offering her silent permission. She was making a temporary gift of him to me. I shook my head and mouthed the words:
It’s okay
. Taking the egg out of her vagina, she gave me this goofy expression like Can you believe what we’re doing here? We’re crazy. Two girls going wild. She was so blind.

She called him back to her.

I watched Erica finish him. I watched her fingers jerk him off then guide him inside of her, pumping her hips to make him come quickly. Steven’s face contorted into a silent cry, never looking more like a boy than in those seconds of ecstasy. The three of us lay on the rug, each very quiet, and then Steven slowly got to his feet and made a casual remark about fixing us some more drinks. As if we’d been playing tennis out on his courts, nothing more. Erica got up next, saying, “Shower then hot tub. You guys in?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“Mish, you thinking about Odell?”

No.

“Don’t worry about that asshole, sweetie,” she went on. “He’s nothing. We’ll get you a guy. Right, Steve?”

“Hey, you’re the one who was endorsing the egg.”

“Shut
up
!” Laughter, and then she was off to the shower.

I slipped on my blouse and did up a couple of buttons. As I padded back to the kitchen, Steven looked at me as if I were still nude, holding out a rum and Coke.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“No problem,” he answered. “She’s really something, isn’t she?”

I lifted my drink in a toast gesture and said, “Yeah, she sure is.”

“So are you.”

He saw me blush, taking it for a come-on, and I think he wanted to get a slight rise out of me, see how I would react. He must have known I was tempted to have him after Erica gave me permission. It was one thing for her to send him to me, another to learn he was interested.

He added, “I just meant Odell doesn’t deserve you. Forget him like Erica said.”

“Thanks.”

“Look, you’re clearly going places,” he said, coming out of the kitchen still nude and casually scratching his balls, “Erica’s doing well, so you’re doing well. I know there’ll be big things in store for you. Look, I never lie. At least, I never lie to my friends. Forget Odell. Jesus, the guy’s my lead dancer for the concert tour.”

“Meaning what?” I asked, confused.

“You’re practically an exec, Michelle,” he explained. “Erica got you that office at BSB. You think Odell’s got one somewhere? His office is an Adidas bag! In the whole pecking order, the whole fucking entertainment industry caste system, you were dating
down,
honey. Him leaving is a good thing.”

Heat

T
here was a real vibe,
I mean, a real crackle of energy with the whole team when we were doing
Drum,
” Luther told an interviewer on one of those shows about the top-charted albums of all time. “You know how these artists go on in movies or music, and they say, ‘Oh, no, man, we had no idea how big it would be.’ I can’t BS you, man, we knew!” Loud, happy laugh, deep from the gut on this one. “Come on, Erica wanted an epic, and damn if we didn’t set out to help her make one.”

He was right about the atmosphere during those sessions. Morgan had assembled his “dream team” of unknown legends to record live on five of the tracks, and meanwhile, Luther was working with the African choir. There were heated debates during the mixings over some of the effects used, mostly between Morgan and Luther, but they both
cared
so much, they both felt how important this album would be. Erica had the final say this time, having fought so hard for so long with the label over creative control, and she wasn’t going to give it up. But instead of her flamboyant public style where you knew exactly how she felt on war, Muslims or corporate oil pollution, when it came to the music, she was unusually reticent. She waited for the men to shout themselves hoarse, tire themselves out and then appeal to her. With one sentence, she could settle the issue.

One afternoon, Luther and Morgan crossed swords over the arrangement of a bridge. Finally, they turned to her.

“What do you think, babe?”

“Erica, there’s a reason the strings come in that early for—”

“You’re both wrong,” she said.

We waited.

“The reason the arrangement doesn’t work is because
the bridge
doesn’t work,” she said, staring at the control board and rubbing her temples. “It sucks.”

We all looked at her blankly.

“You wrote it, honey,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “Still sucks. Give me ten minutes, guys.”

The two of them looked at each other and obediently stepped out of the booth. I moved to leave as well, but Erica stopped me. “No, you stay, girl.”

“What for?”

“Keep me company, tell me what you think,” she urged me. “You’re the only one not yelling.” And within fifteen minutes, she had rewritten the bridge.

It was something to see, however, the three of them putting it together. Morgan doing keyboards on the title track with Luther’s own feverish percussion, using a peculiar mix of household objects and Third World instruments, the two of them trading looks as if they were simply jamming. Whatever Luther felt over Morgan’s involvement with Erica, he must have forgiven him or excused him. There was child-like joy between them in that studio, a bond never in serious danger of fraying over petty jealousy.

Erica was the centre of it all, the cause of the tension, the magnet that pulled them back together. As the tracks slowly coalesced into her defining album, the musical style like a spine on a book, we all watched her vision mature. When you make something that well, even the creator gasps a little.

“This is going to go through the roof,” I whispered in quiet awe one day in the studio.

“This one,” said Erica, allowing herself a faint smile of pride, “is for my Dad. He gave me so much for this.”

Yeah, I thought, I imagine he did. Maybe it took a Duane Jones putting in his time in clubs with his alto saxophone to clear the road for Erica Jones. Most people would say no, it was Duane Jones going through dental college and bringing her up right, sitting her down in front of the family piano. Erica always told me she learned more about composition from her father than anyone else, and that included Morgan.

“If I never do another album,” said Erica, “then I’m glad I finished here.” But of course, she would and did. Never mind the Grammys, we knew what she wanted, and it was a CD that was a must-have classic, that will still hold up decades from now. “This one’s for my Dad,” she declared again.

One of the most popular tracks off the album turned out, of course, to be “It Was a Pleasure to Burn,” even though we couldn’t get airplay and the networks told us flat out not to even bother making a video for it. Erica said she didn’t care. “You’ll see,” she laughed. “Mish, folks can tell the difference between horseshit and roses.” I didn’t know what that spontaneous aphorism was supposed to mean at the time, but I found out later that radio stations across Europe were playing the hell out of the cut. Erica tried to cover her surprise and pretend that she expected it all along. But I knew she was genuinely surprised when she heard fans chanting the opening line at a concert. That’s when everyone was sure of an underground classic.

On the album, Luther sampled a bit of this atmospheric track from Art of Noise that must have been close to twenty years old, “Instruments of Darkness,” that had this brooding malevolence. It sounded like the theme music for an army of evil. And then Erica started the vocals quoting the first two lines of a book we took in high school, Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451,
taking those famous lines in a new direction:

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure

to see things eaten,

to see things blackened and changed.

A future not earned

to see the ignorant fuckers beaten

where fools with inadmissible lies

have history rearranged.

In concert, she often recited these lines in darkness, the stage lights killed for the brief moment of suspense, and after the tour dates in Boston and Chicago, she couldn’t get through the second line without a huge cheer of expectation welling up from the stadium.

W
hen Steven came back from finishing the tour to promote his new album,
Slummin’,
he called me. After a quick chat about what Dallas and San Diego were like, I turned the conversation to Erica’s itinerary and how he could catch up to her perhaps—

“Mish, I need to see you.”

“What’s up?”

“Just want to talk.” He wouldn’t say about what. “How soon can you get over here?”

He’d mildly flirted with me in the past, but I heard his personal assistant in the background on the other line, and I had no reason to expect trouble.

When I got to his townhouse, sure enough, his PA was working the phones, giving hell to a dry-cleaner as if her livelihood depended on it, which it probably did. Steven sat at his desk, watching CNN while leafing through a prospectus for a new all-gay television network trying to get a launch out of San Francisco. “I must be hitting some interesting markets to have my people send me shit like this for investment,” he commented.

“You, uh, don’t want to see an all-gay network?” I asked innocently.

“Doesn’t matter what I want to see,” he said, tossing the folder aside. With his blond locks and wearing a bright red Versace jacket, he looked like Gordon Gekko’s nasty little son. “These assholes are too thick to remember gays only represent ten percent of the population. Sure, we all watch
Will & Grace,
but that doesn’t mean they got a lock on the entertainment industry or that I want to watch queer cooking, queer soaps or queer porn after eleven. If you only ever hover at ten percent, how can you build market share? Idiots.”

“Thanks for the advice on the stock portfolio,” I said. “Why did I haul my ass down here?”

“Odell.”

That was a bolt from the blue. He certainly hadn’t called me after our sexcapades in Santa Fe and Steven firing him. Maybe Steven would take him back as friend and employee, but I wasn’t interested in seeing the guy again. And I hoped Steven hadn’t called me all the way over here just to talk to me on Odell’s behalf.

It wasn’t that at all.

“About halfway through the tour, just after Erica came out to visit me in Florida,” he explained, “Odell got through on my PA’s mobile and left me a message. Says that Erica’s been fucking this old duffer on the side and how she’s willing to take even a shrivelled-up black cock over my sad little white dick. Nasty shit like that.” He shrugged. “I know the guy’s pissed at me for kicking him out, but he was a lousy friend, and he wasn’t that hot a dancer anyway. Still—”

He looked hard at me. Waiting for me to defend her, to explain.

I tried bluffing my way out. What else could I do? Sure, I was surprised. There were ways of erasing the no-name fellows Erica slept with, but I had somehow never considered the prospect of Morgan being an embarrassment to her. Morgan was
inside
. And for Erica and Morgan, sex was just sex. He was one of the most unsentimental creatures you could ever meet, and so long as he didn’t have to meet Steven Swann, he couldn’t have cared less that Erica was with
him
. I had never looked at the coin flipped over. I never thought I would have to cover up for Erica and lie to her boyfriend in addition to the press.

“Steven, what are you expecting me to tell you?” I asked. “You’re going to take Odell’s word for it? A guy who wants to get back at you?”

“If I took what he said, I wouldn’t want us to talk.”

I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Jesus, Steven! We’re doing it in front of each other out west, and now you’re getting worked up over her
maybe
screwing another guy?”

“It’s not the same thing,” he said. He was damn calm about all this. Perhaps he didn’t want to show the pain or anger in front of me.

“It’s not a big leap,” I countered.

“So Odell’s telling the truth.”

I didn’t answer. My face said: consider your source. But I wasn’t making a strong denial.

“He gave me a name for the guy and an address, told me the jazz bars where he plays. You might as well tell me, Michelle.”

His personal assistant was calling across the room that somebody was on line two.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. I was talking too fast, part of me sincere, part of me acting.
Because I was glad he had found out.
I just couldn’t show it. So I was the great lady of the theatre the same way I had to perform for dozens of executives or producers or lovers who wanted Erica’s time. Time that cut into my portions with her.

“This isn’t the way you should have—no, sorry, that’s a stupid thing to say. What I mean is, I don’t think she ever intended to hurt you. This thing with Morgan she’s got, it’s almost as if she fucks him out of gratitude, I don’t know, she always says sex is like food or wine, but I think she’s putting on a guy’s attitude because—”

“Michelle,”
he interjected. Then the boyish smile again, the one he thought could smooth everything over. “It’s okay. I wanted to know, but…I forgive her.”

“You do?” I said in mild astonishment. What I wanted to ask was
why
?

Not even a tight-lipped expression of hurt on his face, no sharp intake of angry breath, nothing. And not because he already knew. There should be some betrayal of what he was feeling, even an infinitesimal one. The most I could hear was the soft clicking of tumblers, the calculation of angles. Was he past cold hate, planning a humiliation for her because of her cheating? Mild panic in me for all of two seconds. No. That wasn’t it either.

“I forgive her,” he repeated.

Line two was still beeping away.

“Sorry, I got to take this,” he said.

I don’t know why he’d asked me over instead of confronting her with this. And to the best of my knowledge, he never did bring it up with Erica.

He said he forgave her. You say that about somebody, you imply the sin is done and in the past, not to be repeated. But if he wasn’t going to talk to her about it then Erica could go on seeing Morgan. Here was the golden boy offering me no sign of how he could prevent this. He must have known their casual trysts would continue. I walked out the door not having a clue what was on his mind. If I had, perhaps things would have turned out differently.

Two weeks later, Erica had me type up a press release announcing her engagement to Steven Swann.

N
ow you’re dressed in black, when I left you were dressed in white. Can you fill me in?…
Craig David’s voice floating out of my computer speakers as Luther’s latest email popped up on the screen, complete with a little webcam movie attached. Luther in London, putting himself in self-imposed exile. He told me he made one last-ditch attempt to persuade Erica that Steven wasn’t good enough for her. She said Steven must be good enough for him, what with his paycheck for producing Steven’s
Slummin’
album.

“You did
Drum
out of fear, didn’t you?” he asked her.

“Excuse me?”

“You did—”

“You’re full of it, Luther—”

“Oh, yes, you did, Erica. You know damn well that hooking up with Steven means you’re not going to do important work anymore, you’re going to churn out fluffy pop tunes because you’ll be surrounded by it every goddamn day! It’s Steven, Erica. The guy asks to put a song together the way you write up a balance sheet.”

“Oh, great, so I have to meet a higher standard than you set for yourself!” she told him. “How can you say that when you’re
his
producer? Are you a hack then, too?”

“Don’t confuse work with life, Erica. I do his albums then I go home to my own place. They got a saying in Hollywood: even shit has its own integrity. And when I compose
my
work, I don’t hear Steven Swann’s crap coming out of my music. You don’t have to do this. You going to play wife for him? What about all the things you believe in? You think you can write another
Pariah
after you marry a white—”

“Oh, here it comes,” she said. “That’s what this is about—”

“No,” he insisted, “no, it’s not. But you think Steven Swann cares about anything past himself and what NASDAQ closed at on Tuesday? You’re going to pass around your talent the way you—” He stopped himself abruptly.

“The way I
what
?” she demanded. “Go ahead and say it, Luther! The way I pass around my body?”