Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (2 page)

Mr. B

Selling. That means I’ll have a new
landlord. That means I’ll need to renegotiate my lease. Which
basically means the new owners are gonna throw me out on the street
and tear the building down for a new expensive condo—or another
hotel, like
The King & Grove
.

“
Shit.” I stare at the note, as if looking
at it will burn the words off and miraculously replace them with
friendlier ones. A gust of frozen January air rushes in from a
broken window down the hall and chills the shaved side of my head.
I sneeze. I crumple the note up and take my groceries
inside.

“
Shit,” I say again. “Shit shit
shit
!”

I grab a
can of
Amp
and
Rockstar
from
the fridge and pop it open, drink half of it. I smack my lips and
down another quarter. “Shit,” I whisper. “Fucking
shit
.”

The note is dated
yesterday
—Friday. I
must’ve missed him or, more likely, not heard him while House Music
bore a deafening hole in my ears. And I failed to see it as I
stepped out the house today to go and get some
groceries.

I head
to my window and look down at the street. I see Patryk’s
graffiti tag next to his masterpiece on the bottom right wall: A
colossal Rube Goldberg-Jackson Pollock mix of floating heads with
wires coming out of their necks. I laugh, and feel a smile bubble
up inside me. I remember sitting on that sidewalk at one A.M., so
tipsy that I thought the building would fall on my head, watching
him paint that one. Patryk the Painter, we used to call him. That
was the same night he sketched out a rough draft of some of the
tats for the upper half of my sleeve.

I remember dancing till three A.M.
with my girl Savva on this very
street, waving my hand in the air, oblivious to rent, to needing to
send money over to
Mamah
.

Oblivious to loss.

Good times. Good times.

I wipe the stray tear from my eye as I think
of her...

Savva
. Only I used to call her that, everyone else
called her Savannah.

Night falls fast. A skateboarder
arrives
and starts doing
flips on the sidewalk. I guess he’ll also be kicked out when the
big real estate moves in. When they open Bushwick’s own version of
the
Wythe
Hotel
for out-of-towners
who don’t know the first thing about art but who “want to
experience it firsthand.”

An acute sadness stings me with its tiny
needles. It starts off at my skin but quickly burrows its way into
the chambers of my heart.

And three years have come and gone.

Three years, and I
’m still at the whim and mercy of city
zoning laws.

Three years, and all I have to show for it
are two
Pioneer CDJ2000
decks, a gazillion MP3s, a
Serato
Digital DJing license, and endless other DJing gadgets that
still haven’t gotten me into the big time.

Three years, and the dre
am I had has remained just that: A
dream.

I finish the energy drink, fling it
and—
score!
—three
point it into my trash can. I go to the fridge and grab another,
sip it slower this time. Then I do what I always do when I’m
depressed:

I slap on my
Allen & Heath
headphones, crank up the volume to
dangerously high levels.

And I mix.

At some stage I f
all asleep...

Some time past
midnight, headphones still on my ears and blaring
away, I’m woken up by a buzzing in my jeans pocket. In my
half-dream state, I mistake it for a hornet. In a dazed panic I
almost throw the iPhone against the brick wall at the other end of
my loft, then almost crash my decks by getting up too quickly from
the couch behind them.

The phone buzzes again. I rub my bleary
eyes and gingerly ease the
expensive headset from my ears.

Can’t afford a new
one
, I think.
Couldn’t afford a
new iPhone either
. Who
am I kidding? I didn’t even afford the first one! If Patryk hadn’t
given it to me—

Buzz
!

I look at the screen:
XAVIER
.

And that just makes me feel sick to my
stomach.

“
What the fuck?” I whisper to myself. The
phone trembles slightly in my hand.

I
almost don’t answer. Almost. “X—Xavier...long time no
hear.” I don’t ask him how he is, because I don’t really want to
know.

“
You haven’t taken my name off your
phone?”

I don’t comment.

Judging from the beats I hear in the back,
it sounds like he’s at a party.
Nothing’s changed
. I recognize the song as a
Miss Kittin
track—
Come into my House
.

“
Que passa
, chiquita?” I hear him sucking on a
smoke. “It certainly has been a long time. I wish this was a social
call...but I know those days are over.”

A minor sting. I can live with that.

“
Look, you still mixing up a storm?” he
asks.

“
Twenty-four seven.”

“
Still hooking up all that local indie
house with Chicago beats and G-Funk Hip Hop and all that eclectic
stuff and shit?”

“
Whatever my fingers can touch.”

“
Would you be willing to accept a gig from
me...knowing how you feel about the old days? And about
us.”

I could do a gig every night of every week
and I still wouldn’t have enough dough to send over to Mamah as
well as get a new place. “Business is business. And, Xavier, for
the record, I don’t hate you. It just
hurts
...when I’m with you.”

“
So you still blame me.”

I sigh out.
“Do we
really
need to do this?
No
, I
don’t blame you. If you must know”—I swallow hard—“I blame myself
most of all. Now why did you call?”

“
I hear you. I’m sorry, it’s just been so
long since we talked.” his Hispanic accent is coming out stronger
now. “Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you don’t wanna slit my
throat before I tell you this next thing. You ready?”

I sort of feel like a knife’s gonna jump
up from behind the door if I say yes. “Uhm, ready as I can be, I
guess.”

“
Now, Blaze, you never gonna believe it,
baby, but Xavier got you the gig”—he pauses—“of
gigs
!”

That Xavier has called me a year after we
last spoke and, of all things, offers me a
gig
, leaves me slightly confused. “Excuse
me?”

“
House Market
, chiquita. I got you a chance at
House
Market
! If, of course,
you’re interested...”

I almost see the Pearly Gates themselves
open up in front of me and shine their glorious light over my
body.
“
H—House
...
Market
.
The
House Market? Like,
the
hottest, baddest, finest
underground party in Brooklyn since the Giuliani Dance Party
Apocalypse? Randy Dhawan’s baby?
That
House Market?”

“
Da one and only. Me an’ Randy are
like
hermanos
now. We
like
brothers
,
man.”

So
I take it he buys from you.
“I see.”

“
Baby, there is
so
much you don’t know. We really should hang out
again sometime”—my throat tightens—“but...yeah...whatever. I know
you don’t like my lifestyle choices. So, anyway, there is only
problem wit da gig, sugar-pop. Um—”

“
What?”

“
Well, it’s kinda running
right
now
.”

“
I don’t understand.”

“
The party, chiquita, like, it’s
on
...right the
fuck now!”

I listen to the music. The song has
changed. I don’t recognize it, which vexes me on a very fundamental
level because it sounds like some commercial stuff, and I should
know that shit. I should know it backwards if I have any hope of
ever making it in this biz.

Xavier is silent, and I figure it’s
probably because he’s letting the news sink in. Three atom bombs:
One. He calls after a year. Two. House Market. Three.
Tonight
.
“Xavier, you gonna explain? As far as I know, parties like
House Market
get booked months in
advance.”

“
Tragic story, honey. Tragic story, but in
this business, we only look to the love, know what I’m sayin?” He
says
Love
like
Lohv
.

And, no,
I don’t understand what he’s saying. He’s not
making any sense at all. Which probably means: “Xavier, you
rolling?”

“
Like a Mofo, baby. The only steady girl I
date is Molly, you dig? Anyway, babes, the Deep House DJs for the
night, well, they had a little date with Johnny Law, comprende?
Tough love, tough love. Anyway, Randy’s freaking out. The dude
spinning at the moment goes too much into the commercial shit. Good
for an opener, but not for the whole night—if that were even
humanly possible—and not for
House Market
. Randy takes pride in his parties. And, well, the
House Market
label has also just come out as
well, so, the parties bring in sales.

“
All the big names are booked for the
night. He’s desperate. He wants some classic stuff for the night,
’cause that’s what he promises people. So I put in a word for you
because I know you can spin that shit in your sleep.

“
Randy usually never listens to me on these
things. I mean, I’m just nothin but a consultant, dig? But, hey,
desperate times, un’erstand?”

Consultant.
Mm-hm...

My mind is a whirl
. “Xavier, what exactly are
you
getting from this?” Silence
from him. “X. Speak to me.”

“
Look, Blaze, you
know
me, OK? Don’t ask that stuff of me now.
Just...
accept
the help.
I’m not gonna admit to no shit—but I’m also not gonna plead
complete ignorance. I understand what happened, and it sucks, and
we all suffered.” I note his referral to our greatest mutual loss
merely as “it.” I also see that he’s in his
Dr. Jekyll
form right now. The one that
regrets.
The
one that is human
. “I’m
reaching out, and I’m offering you something I know you need.
Something that
DJ Heaven-Leigh
needs. Remember when we came up with that name for you—the
three of us?”
Don’t go there, boy. Don’t go there!
“Good times, good times. Anyway, Blaze, I
ain’t gonna beg you for
dis
.
You take it or you leave it.
I
don’t
need it. You do. I know it, because even though we ain’t spoken in
a year, I know I ain’t seen your name headlining at
Output
or
Nine-Ts
or any other hot New York club yet. And you
know
that getting into
House Market
is like getting into a virgin’s
holiest of holies—a
catholic
virgin
on top of it.”
Gross
. “I don’t
need to explain that to you, or explain that if you do a good job
on it, you’re in the door—
everywhere
. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. But I
am
explaining it—like you’re
stoopid
or something, because if you didn’t have the
opinions you have for me, you
prob’ly
woulda jumped at the opportunity already. Now, take it or
leave it. I ain’t gonna beg you. And I sure as fuck ain’t gonna
admit to something you know isn’t true about Savva either just so
you can take the gig on a ‘clean conscience’ or some shit like
that. Ya dig?”

“
Uhm, yeah, I
dig.”

“
Now, aside from the great exposure, the
gig pays five hundred. Less than the guys who were gonna be here
before you, but, hey, you’re an unknown.”

Or you’re taking a
commission
. Which starts
to explain things a little, and which sounds a lot more like the
Xavier I know. But I can live with that. And I can also live with a
bone being thrown my way, no matter who’s doing the
throwing.