Slick (29 page)

From her end of the couch, Madison beamed me a goofy smile. “What?”

“Will you be my daddy?”

“Shut up.”

She went back to the TV, which now gave us a five-second music video clip of a do-ragged Hunta at his most sexually menacing. Even I got scared of him.

“Wow,” she said. “I caught that one. You know, it’s kind of funny that the news is the only place you can see or hear ‘Bitch Fiend’ now. It’s like contraband everywhere else.”

“I’ve never heard the song.”

“It’s lame. It’s just Hunta strutting around, bragging about his big dick and all the different women he’s bagged. It only got popular because it has a good beat and the video shows lots of skin. I can’t believe it would corrupt or inspire anybody.”

“That’s the debate,” I said.

“What do you think?”

“I think the press is going to screw Hunta into the ground.”

“So if you were his publicist, what would you do?”

“If I were his publicist,” I replied, “I’d start screwing back.”

 

 

On Tuesday, we made some noise.

As the sun set over the Pacific, Gail Steiner speed-walked the perimeter of the Griffith Park Observatory. She had returned to her beat at the
Los Angeles Times
last week, after eight months of maternity leave. Nobody could picture this rocket of a woman doing the domestic thing. She’d probably spent the whole time buzzing furiously around the house, scorching the walls with her afterburn. Well, now it was her husband’s turn to be the latchkey parent. She was back out in the open, doing what she loved.

Eventually, she pegged her new contact. It was hard to miss him. Rocket-of-a-Woman, meet Tank-of-a-Man.

“Calvin?” she asked.

He paused before answering. “Yup.”

“Hi. I’m Gail. It’s great to meet you. How you holding up?”

“Could be better.”

“I know. Listen, like I said on the phone, you have nothing to worry about. I’ll go to jail before I give up your name. You’re totally safe with me. Okay?”

That was essentially what I had told him, but Big Bank was more afraid of the rumors. If any of his comrades caught him leaking to the press, his reputation would be ruined. I had assured him the odds of that happening were as slim as he wasn’t.

“And by the way,” she lied, “you’re doing a good thing by talking to me.”

“Doesn’t feel that way.”

“I know. It’s never easy. But if Hunta’s doing something wrong—”

“Not something,” he corrected. “Someone.”

Surely, Gail was beginning to realize the jackpot she had won. Too bad I couldn’t take credit for it. I would have had a chit with her the size of Ohio.

“Calvin,” she said, slowly reaching into her purse or jacket, “I just want you to know before we even begin that I’m going to be recording this. Nobody’s going to hear this tape but me. I promise. Is that okay?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Of course Big Bank had been recording from the moment she arrived. His tape would be heard by several of us, including Hunta. Big Bank had insisted on it. There was already a big cloud of mistrust inside this operation, most of it centered over me. Wisely, he wanted to keep his own skies clear.

“All right,” said Gail. “It’s on. You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s the story?”

“You want a story? I’ll tell you a story. It’s all about a woman.”

On tape, I could practically hear Gail smile. “What’s her name?”

 

 

Your name is Harmony Prince, and these are the facts as you recall them. On Saturday, March 11, 2000, you attended an open dance audition sponsored by Mean World Records. You succeeded in landing a small role in one of their videos (“Chocolate Ho-Ho”).

On April 5 and 6, you participated in the video shoot at a production studio in Glendale. This was when you first met Jeremy Sharpe, aka Hunta. He didn’t seem to take any special interest in you until he noticed the scar on your right thigh. When he asked you how you got it, you told him of your fateful “run-in” with the Los Angeles Police. From that point he seemed
very
interested in you. He conversed with you as much as his schedule allowed. At the end of the second day, you and he exchanged phone numbers. He promised he would use you for his upcoming video (“Bitch Fiend”), but the shoot came and went without you even knowing.

But at least you made it into Mean World’s database of fine young things. At least once a month you received a mailed invitation for some sort of bash. You ended up attending two of them: a Fourth of July barbecue and a November tenth gala to celebrate
Huntaway
going platinum. Both shindigs were held at the swank estate of Byron “Judge” Rampton. Both times you spent at least an hour talking to Jeremy. You were never completely alone with him; nor did he ever try to get you alone. At the November tenth event, you noticed he spent a lot of time touching you, but you didn’t take it as an overt sexual gesture, especially since he was stoned out of his mind and touching everyone.

Then came the Christmas party.

This time you weren’t invited, you were hired. On December 11, Marjorie Bunce, the Mean World publicist/event planner, offered you four hundred dollars to grace the label with your presence. The terms were simple. Put on sexy hip-hop elf-wear. Dance from ten to midnight. Mingle from midnight to two. Then stay or leave as you see fit. At a hundred dollars an hour, the job was a holiday miracle. You would have done it for the buffet.

On Friday, December 15, your roommate Daryl “B-Naste” Lynch dropped you off at Le Meridien Hotel at 9:20 P.M. Upon checking in with Ms. Bunce, you joined your fellow dancers in the designated changing room. By 9:50 you and the rest of the elves were assembled in two-by-two formation by the main door to the ballroom. Five minutes later, you got your entrance cue.

Already things seemed off with this party. You’ve seen inebriated people, of course. You’ve even seen inebriated Mean World people. But tonight the revelers seemed really out of control. Chairs were being thrown. Bottles broken. Women groped.

Jeremy was hardly above the fray. From your dancing spot, you watched him cup the breast of R&B sensation Felisha, immediately triggering a brawl with her husband. By the time you looked back, he was arguing with the Judge. You’d never seen him so crazy before. You figured it had something to do with his wife.

At 10:20, he approached you with a wide neon grin. You even smiled as he held you by the hips and danced with you for a minute or two. Once the song ended, he asked you to come sit with him on a nearby couch.

You can’t, you told him. You’re supposed to dance until midnight.

He waved it off. “Naw, fuck that shit. Nobody care. Come on.”

You can’t....

“Come on, Harmony. I ain’t seen you in months. Come talk to me.”

Actually, it had only been a month. But you were flattered that even in his zonked-out state, he remembered your name. You joined him on the couch, well in view of at least a dozen others.

For Jeremy, catching up was a one-way street. Over the next fifteen minutes, he buried you under a mountain of personal angst. His father still didn’t respect him, despite his success. His wife resented him
because
of his success. His friends kept using him for his money. The Judge kept confusing him
out
of his money. And his critics kept bashing him, either for trying too hard to sound like Tupac or for not trying hard enough. He was being hit from all sides and nobody understood him.

All along, you listened and nodded like the well-trained hostess you were, increasingly aware of the strong hands moving up and down your arms, then your legs. Admittedly, you didn’t mind. For five nights a week, you were hit up, talked up, felt up by toads. By every comparative standard, Jeremy was a prince. He was all sweet and sad and funny, and damn, the way he looked at you. The way he
looked!
By the time he said “Let’s get out of here,” at 10:30, you were under his spell.

It wasn’t until he returned from the concierge desk, hotel key in hand, that you came to your senses. You knew what he wanted. How the hell were you going to tell him? How the hell could you—a fawning, near-naked, cheap-flesh party elf—explain to him that you were saving yourself for marriage?

That was your dilemma as you quietly rode up the elevator, as he kissed your neck and whispered into your ear that he hasn’t stopped thinking about you since the day he met you (which was crap, of course, but such wonderful crap). As soon as the elevator opened, you wanted to run, but still you followed him, all the way to the door of Room 1215.

At last, you cracked. You can’t, you told him. You can’t do what he wants you to do. In broken, clumsy phrases, you explained the whole abstinence thing. He was more stunned than anything else.

“Hold up. Wait. You saying you a virgin?”

No. You never said that.

“So this a religious thing.”

You never said that either, but it was easier just to nod your head and go for the simple story. You looked away. You cried. You apologized for being so stupid. But then his hand clasped your shoulder, and he gently turned you around. Suddenly he was more sober than you’d ever seen him before.

“Hey, it’s all cool,” he assured you. “It ain’t about that.”

You wiped your eyes. Really?

“I swear,” he said. “I just wanted to, you know, be with you. There are lots of ways I can be with you. Shit, we could lie down and talk. I don’t care. Right now I just want to be with someone who ain’t using me or judging me. Look, just hide out with me. Just for a little while. Please?”

Once again he managed to extinguish all your fears. Right there in the hallway, he held you close and stroked your hair. As you nuzzled against his strong chest, you thought you’d found a true prince indeed. You teased yourself with a sudden crazy vision of the future, one in which he leaves that shrew wife of his, marries you, and takes you all around the world. You compiled a list of things you
would
do with him in that hotel room, being the sweet guy he is and looking the way he does. Jesus. You’re only human.

At 10:45, in Room 1215, you and Jeremy kissed. You kicked off your pointy elf shoes. You fell into the bed. You began to walk him through your list. It was a good list.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for Jeremy. He was still drunk. Still stoned. Still strong. As soon as you felt what he was doing—

“Stop. Please.”

 

 

On Tuesday, it became official: I wasn’t going to heaven.

At 11
a.m.
, I pulled the car over on Ocean Park Boulevard, in Santa Monica. I had taken Harmony on a long and winding trek from her apartment in Venice to the downtown L.A. skyline, through the wide and airy streets of Pasadena, and then all the way back to the shore. The real journey was happening inside the car, as I walked her through a dark and stormy narrative. For the most part, she listened well. It wasn’t until the last few details that she turned to face the window. She didn’t make a sound. I didn’t even realize she was crying until she asked me to stop.

“I didn’t mean stop the car,” she said. “I just meant stop talking.”

“You want me to keep driving?”

“Yeah.”

I put us back on the road. I didn’t want to coach her in public for this very reason. There was simply no way I could feed her her story with out opening up old wounds.

Still, this was a bold new low for me. At that moment I was able to float outside my body, through the fourth wall, and into the seated audience that was watching the movie version of this. I could look around and see the bitter expressions they leveled at the big-screen me. I was the asshole, the villain of the story. And no matter what I did or said, no matter how good my intentions were, the audience wouldn’t be happy until I got my comeuppance, hopefully at Harmony’s hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and left it at that.

Eventually, she swapped her Kleenex for a Pall Mall, then punched in my car’s cigarette lighter. By the time it popped back out, she had regained herself.

“He didn’t do none of that shit,” she said, lighting up.

“I know.”

“He didn’t even know who the hell I was. He walked right by me. A couple times. Went straight to the couch with some other woman.”

I knew that too.

“I can’t tell what’s crazier,” she added. “The fact that you’re doing this to him or the fact that he’s paying you to do this to him.”

At the moment, I was more concerned with what I was doing to her. As soon as the coast was clear, I made a sharp U-turn.

Harmony clutched her door handle. “Whoa. What you doing?”

Distracting you. “Taking you to the airport.”

“Why?”

“Because this is hard work. We need a vacation. You and I need to get out of this city.”

She laughed smoke at me. “Shut up.”

“I’m serious. I’ll pay for the whole thing. Where do you want to go? Paris? London? Rome?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Why am I crazy?”

“For starters, what makes you think I want to go anywhere with you?”

“All right,” I said with feigned umbrage. “If that’s the way you feel about it, we’ll take separate trips. I’m going to Madrid. What’s your pleasure?”

“Forget it.”

“Come on. If you could go anywhere, where would it be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fine,” I declared. “I’ll just give you my American Express card. You can go wherever you want. Just make sure to come back by the twelfth.”

Harmony crossed her arms and eyed me. I caught her gaze. “What?”

“You ain’t serious about this.”

“No.”