Authors: Aisha Duquesne
Soul Siren (31 page)
But there’s music in here. The CD racks in the library are about three years out of date, but there’s good stuff in there. I got a peculiar look from a fellow inmate when she saw me reaching for a Luther Banks CD—his first album that he always said never got any marketing department backup, that sank like a stone in Tower Records and never made it on the charts. Funny to find it in here.
Erica came to see me once.
You’d think I was having an audience with the President or the Pope. They cleared the room with the glass partitions and the chairs and the phones, reserved it just for the two of us because Erica’s celebrity “might prove disturbing to the other inmates.” Translation: they didn’t want a scene. I had been in here a year, so it was safe for her to come. I was yesterday’s news.
She wasn’t dressed flashily. As a matter of fact, she looked like she could have walked out of a Goldman Sachs office. Blue blazer and skirt, white blouse with a delicate ruffled collar and this diamond brooch on the lapel. She picked up the phone on her side of the glass, and for a moment, I only heard her clearing her throat, struggling to find words. I hadn’t gushed when I saw her. I wasn’t smiling. I was in mild shock that she had come at all. Hell, my parents had never come down to see me. And here was Erica.
“Mish. How you holding up, sweetie?”
“Well, it’s not
Shawshank Redemption,
but it ain’t the Plaza either. You going to tell me your news?”
My intuition surprised her. She stared at me and said, “How do you know I’ve got news?”
I shrugged, drummed my fingers on the narrow table countertop. “I’m the prison psychic. Spill, girl.”
I didn’t state the logic of the obvious—she wouldn’t be here unless she had news. Despite all that had happened and our time apart, I was still reasonably sure of her nature and her habits. She had come today out of a vague sense of responsibility for me. I’ll just bet, I mean I’m
sure
she thought that if she had been a better friend or had been more observant—picking up on how I felt—maybe she could have done something. Kept me out of trouble. Guilt can be such a self-indulgent emotion. What could I do with mine? Or hers? I couldn’t bring those men back to life. And she couldn’t save me.
“I don’t know why I had to come tell you this,” said Erica in a small voice, “but I’m going to have a baby. And I’m definitely getting out of the game now. Luther’s job is really taking off, and they want him out west, so we’re buying some property in California. BSB wants in on a label we want to start up. We can piggyback off their distribution deal through HMV and Tower and all the others, and it means I can ‘retire,’ you know? Develop new talent.”
I said nothing.
She rolled her eyes and sighed, then laughed nervously. “I don’t want to end up a joke on the charts, you know? Still trying to get people to love me when the music’s getting tired.” She looked down at her hands for an awkward moment, then said, “Luther says he’ll make an honest woman out of me. Baby’s due in June so we’re getting married next month.”
“Send me an invitation.”
“Mish, come on.”
“It’s okay, Erica, I’m in prison. If I want to make a joke in bad taste at my own expense, just let me be.”
We talked about inconsequential things. Then a guard stepped over to say our time was almost up.
Erica put two fingers on the glass, a gesture to imitate contact when it was impossible in here, and her voice cracked with feeling: “Oh, Michelle…We were sisters.”
“I know,” I said.
“We were sisters, Mish.”
Vague, creeping doubts still with her that somehow she was partly responsible. Her eyes were moist, and we both knew this was the one and only time she would come to visit. She slid back her chair and rose to her feet. Then a thought occurred to her, and she tapped the window of the barrier. I picked up the black phone receiver again to listen. Standing there, opposite me on the other side of the glass, I heard Erica Jones sing. Not one of her own numbers, but one of my favourite songs from Alicia Keys’s second album, “If I Ain’t Got You.” Erica’s voice, loud and clear a capella:
Some people want it all, but I don’t want nothing at all, if it ain’t you baby…
We were over our time, and the guard didn’t stop her, transfixed. She finished the final chorus, replaced the black phone and mouthed a goodbye.
No, I don’t hold her responsible. I don’t. Honest. I’m in here, and I wish her well. They make me see a psychiatrist, even though I never instructed my lawyer to use an insanity plea, and I tell the doctor the truth. I don’t dream about making love with her anymore, about us being together intimately and passionately. That’s impossible now. Right now, at this very instant, she is getting on with her life. This will be my address for a long, long time. There’s music in here, and I will be all right. The obsession is over.
You see, I understand now that I
let
Jill catch me.
No, I don’t dream anymore about Erica and me. I do dream about her and Luther, though. They’re good dreams, and they’re frequent. Sometimes I think about them together even while awake, and I remember what Erica confided to me about how they make love. I remember little details from the monitor when I watched them. Erica is vivid in my imagination, her lovely dark skin shiny with perspiration, her full breasts swaying a little as she rides her man, arching her back and pumping her hips with him inside her. Erica looks down at him with genuine love, and she is happy. Erica is finally blissfully happy. I can let my obsession go because she’s found her true man, and they’ll take good care of each other.
I
gave
Erica to Luther. I see that now. I must have subconsciously made mistakes, left little clues, a trail for Jill to follow. Miss Jill Chandler thinks she’s so smart, calling me a predator when my love is more generous, more giving than she can ever imagine. I had tasted Erica, finally had my chance to make love to her, and I know, I
know
given time she’d lose her inhibitions and give love back to me. But we ran out of time, and I had to make sure she’d be all right with a person who loves her almost as much as I do. I chose Luther for her and let Jill catch me.
It’s the only reasonable explanation.
In my dreams, I see how Luther’s biceps flex as he reaches up to touch her face, to let his fingers run down over her collarbone to those full brown breasts, cradling them, their nipples so hard. I see Erica’s mouth open in a gasp as she moves, and there, his enormous dick wet and throbbing as he disappears into her again. Riding him, riding him as her forehead glows and she feels rapturous love. I see all the combinations, all the positions for them. I can almost feel Luther for her as he takes her from behind, his strong hands gripping the soft skin of her ass as he sinks into her up to his hilt, the tiny sensation of his balls slapping against the inside of her thigh. I know how her vagina contracts and
holds
him there. I visualise her on her back, looking up at him, her knees raised, Erica screaming as she begs her man to pull out and come all over her, jets of creamy white spunk flying across her brown stomach and her tits. I see her making him hard all over again, demanding he put it in, the way that crimson head just pauses before it slips into the wet, welcoming folds of her vagina, and, my God, she’s got such a beautiful pussy.
She comes. She’s so amazingly beautiful when she comes, and I did say right at the beginning that she is larger than life even in sex, didn’t I? Erica comes again and again with Luther inside her, and I know now that everything’s fine.
Erica is happy. That’s all that’s really important.
About the Author
A
ISHA
D
U
Q
UESNE
began her writing career working with network correspondents in Africa. In her twenties, she moved from London to New York, where she worked at a major publishing house and helped write several “tell-all” autobiographies by black celebrities. This is her first novel.
SOUL SIREN
A Delta Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Brown Skin Books edition published in the UK as
The Singer
in January 2006
Delta Trade Paperbacks edition / February 2007
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2006 by Aisha DuQuesne
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING
-
IN
-
PUBLICATION DATA
DuQuesne, Aisha.
[Singer]
Soul siren / Aisha DuQuesne.—Delta trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
Previously published as: The singer.
1. African American singers—Fiction. 2. African American women—Fiction. 3. Serial murder investigation—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title
PR6104.U67S56 2007
823'.92—dc22 2006021903
Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33666-2
v3.0