Here's what you
need to know: I hate lines. That's the only reason I stopped by
Roscoe's that day. I would explain this to the guys from
Robbery-Homicide, not that LAPD ever believes a word I say. But
it's the truth.
Any other
day, if I had swung by Roscoe's Chicken N' Waffles on Gower and
Sunset, there would have been customers waiting in the plastic
chairs lining the sidewalk, hoping for a table inside, out of
the sun's reach. Me, I would have driven straight by. I love
Roscoe's, but what did I just say? I hate lines. Lines are an
occupational hazard for actors looking for work, so I seriously
hate lines on my days off. Maybe it was because it was
ten-forty-five on a Monday morning -- too late for breakfast and
too early for lunch -- but the sidewalk outside Roscoe's was
empty, so I pulled over to grab some food.
Chance.
Happenstance. Karma. Whatever you call it, I walked in by
accident.
As anybody in
this town knows, some people give off a magnetic field. A few
lucky ones have it naturally; and some, like me, have worked on
it over time. A certain walk, the right clothes, a strategic
combination of aloofness and familiarity. When I walk into a
room, strangers' eyes fix on me like a calculus problem they
can't solve: I know you from somewhere. You must be somebody,
what's-his-name on TV, or Whozit, from that movie that just came
out. Being noticed has always been an important part of my
work -- hell, half the people in L.A. moved here hoping to
refine the art of being noticed, with no cost too high. By now,
it's second nature. Customers looked up from their plates and
lowered their voices when I walked into Roscoe's.
Later, half a
dozen people would describe me down to the shoes I was wearing:
white suede Bruno Magli loafers. Bone-colored light ribbed
sweater. White linen pants. Gucci shades. Any cop knows that if
you ask six people for a description, you get six different
stories. Not this time. One seventy-six-year-old grandmother at
a table in the back had the nerve to tell the cops, "I don't
think he was wearing anything under those tight white pants."
I'm not lying. And she was right. They noticed me, down to
religious preference.
But as I
walked through the door of Roscoe's, I tripped over someone
else's magnetic field. The air in that place was crackling,
electrified. It made the hair on my neck and arms stand up.
Remember that scene in Pulp Fiction when those two
small-timers tried to hold up a diner, not knowing the customers
included Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, stone-cold killers
there for a quick breakfast after blowing away three dumb-ass
kids? Well, either somebody was about to hold up Roscoe's at
gunpoint, or someone close to royalty was eating there. Had to
be one or the other.
"Hey, Ten,"
Gabe said, nodding at me from behind the cash register.
"Everything
cool, man?"
"Cool as a
Monday's gonna be." Gabe looked busy, counting the dollar bills
from his cash drawer with meaty fingers. Gabe was a short,
fleshy brother with worried eyes and a low BS quotient. He
wouldn't tolerate a holdup without showing something in his
face, even if someone had a gun jammed in his back. I tilted my
head to scan the tables to see whose magnetic field was trumping
mine.
I didn't see
Serena at first.
Although
there were only six customers in the place and she was sitting
alone at the corner table, she fooled my eyes and I looked right
past her. All I'd seen was a petite, busty brown-skinned girl
with a braided crimson weave and a baggy white track suit, like
countless ghetto goddesses I pass every day. If someone had
asked me at the time, I wouldn't have recalled her as all that
attractive, much less someone I knew. It was her voice
that gave her away, that raspy, spiced honey that would be
unforgettable even if it wasn't one of the best-known voices in
the world.
"Oh, so you
ain't talkin' today?" she said, a smile peeling from her lips.
There isn't a
man alive who could have blinked an eye, taken a breath, or
remembered his middle name for at least two seconds after seeing
that smile aimed his way. The girl froze me where I stood, my
ass hovering six inches above my chair.
Serena
Johnston. Damn. The girl was a chameleon. Some women need
an hour in front of a makeup mirror to make the kind of
transformation Serena could make in a blink, just in the slant
of her chin and something riveting in her eyes. All of a sudden,
she'd gone from nobody I needed to know to a creature like the
ones described in longing song lyrics by the great, dead soul
singers -- all the woman any man could ever need. Her face
filled my head with memories of every other inch of her.
The world
might know her as Afrodite -- the superstar rapper whose first
two movies had both scaled the $100 million peak, making her a
straight-up movie star, too -- but she'd always be Serena to me.
Five years ago, the last time I'd seen her, films were just a
dream she was chasing the way a freezing man might fan a glowing
ember. I knew she'd get it going sooner or later, but nobody
could have expected her to rise so fast. I couldn't even take it
personally that she hadn't returned either of my phone messages
-- one to congratulate her on her first blockbuster, the second
to give my condolences after the rapper Shareef, a friend of
hers, was killed the night of his Staples Center concert soon
after the last time I saw her. I knew Serena had known Shareef
almost all her life, and he'd started her career, so that must
have torn a hole in her heart. She didn't call back either time.
A woman that hot was too busy for niceties.
Besides, I
figured she was too much like me. The past was the past.
And now here
she was. Here we were.
Stupid me. I
thought it was my lucky day.
I went to
Serena's table and leaned over to kiss her cheek, soft as satin.
I caught a whiff of sandalwood and jasmine, last night's
fragrance. So, the fan rags were right: She wore Christian's
Number One. Girlfriend had come a long way. My clothes and watch
were worth four hundred dollars more than my bank balance, and
this woman could afford damn near two thousand Gs for a bottle
of perfume. It's a wonder I could even see Serena beyond the
massive chasm that separated our prospects. Being that close to
magic made me ache.
"My father
raised me not to speak to ladies unless I was spoken to," I
said.
A ray of
girlishness transformed her smile, and I felt a tug from
somewhere new. "No ladies at this table, T."
"So, where's
your crew, Big-Time? No assistant? No entourage?"
"T, I'm a big
girl. I don't need no babysitter to eat waffles. If you were
anybody else, I'd give you a peck and say hey, and then I'd tell
you I'm not in the mood for company, so give me a call sometime.
But instead, I'm hoping you'll shut up and sit down. Damn, you
smell good. But that's not Opium."
"Not
anymore," I said. I'd given up all my old fragrances five years
ago. All I wore now was Aqua di Gio, leaving the exotic Oriental
spices behind. I couldn't wear Opium, Gucci Envy, any of them.
There's something about cologne: It can make you a different
man. Whenever I went back to my old fragrances, I itched for old
habits.
Serena rested
her chin on both fists, studying me like I mattered. "How you
doin'?" Her eyes said she wanted me to say I was doing fine.
Great. Never been better.
"Fine, darlin'.
Great. Never better."
"Don't lie to
me, T. For real."
Right then, I
wanted to tell her about the past month. I could feel the story
clawing from my stomach, trying to break free. A bad taste
flooded my mouth, and I took the liberty of sipping from her
water glass. Serena had never minded sharing. "Everybody goes
through changes now and then. You know how it is. You?"
"Fine. Great.
Never better."
Two liars,
then. Serena's eyes didn't look like they belonged to a woman
who owned her own powerhouse production company and had more
brokers on her speed-dial than a girl from the Baldwin Hills
"Jungle" had any right to fantasize about. I might as well have
been staring into my own problems. If I could have, I would have
yanked Serena away from whatever was bothering her and taken her
to my favorite Maui spot, an out-of-the-way beach where the
sun-crisped tourists don't treat locals like their personal
valets. Just for a few days. We wouldn't have to say a word. The
otherworldly sunsets would have cleansed us beyond anything
language could provide.
I'm not the
wishing type, but I wish I could have done that for Serena.
"I've got a
steady gig," I told her. "Deodorant commercials."
"I thought
that was you. What else you got going on?"
"One gig pays
the rent, for now. My agent isn't worth shit. You ever heard
this joke? An actor comes home and his house has burned to the
ground. His wife is bruised up, her dress torn. She sobs, 'Your
agent came to the house, he raped me, he killed our children,
and he burned up everything we own.' The actor says: 'My agent
came to the house? What did he say?' "
I'd hoped to
win another smile from Serena. I got a smile and a laugh.
"I feel you.
That's harsh," she said.
"If I can get
my agent to call me back two weeks later, hey, it's all good. I
must be sentimental, or maybe I'm just too lazy to shop around."
That was only
half the story. Blaming your agent is a citywide pastime in
Hollywood. If I hadn't scored the Dry Xtreme gig, Len would have
given up on me. Before the commercials, I hadn't made him any
money in eighteen months. Len could have cut me loose in the
nineties, but he never had. We had been together for ten years,
longer than his marriage. Len used to think I was going places.
On rare occasions, he still believed it.
"You're a lot
of things, T, but you ain't lazy. Or sentimental."
A lilac business
card materialized on the table in front of me. Casanegra
productions, read the black embossed script, which I could see
was modeled after the script on the Casablanca movie
poster. Classy. I also recognized the name on the card: Devon
Big...Copyright © 2007 by Blair
Underwood, Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due
