Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  Katrice had a clear-eyed way of seeing things that always made her sound like an oracle in a designer pantsuit and a bad mood. Phoenix had already complicated his day, and days were getting too short for complication. “Katrice, drink some tea and chill out, little sister,” Marcus said. “Don’t you think she might be a little distracted because she almost got shot yesterday?”

  It was a cheat to bring that up, but sometimes Marcus couldn’t pull his claws back.

  Katrice pointed her pencil at him. Touché. “You hear me,” she said and pivoted away.

  Mentioning the shooting was the quickest way to be left alone. Even yesterday, at Ronn’s, they’d all talked around the thing uppermost on their minds, with Ronn sitting there at his conference table like the emperor wearing no clothes. Marcus had let Ronn know he wasn’t going to play the hear-no-evil-see-no-evil game when his daughter was involved. The first time Ronn had laid eyes on Phoenix—when Marcus had seen the light across his face—he’d told Ronn he believed in business being business and only business. But if it’s ever more than that, young blood, do me a favor and back off if there ever comes a time you can’t be good for Phoenix. Well, the time had come and left footprints. End of story. Marcus would not pretend that shit away, whether it was Ronn Jenkins or whoever-the-hell-else with a few million dollars.

  He had brought his daughter here, and he was going to see her through.

  “Stardom equals influence equals power,” Marcus whispered, closing his eyes. On days like this, his mantra kept him from forgetting why he was here. Ronn Jenkins and Katrice Daniels could groom Phoenix and make her a star. Three Strikes knew how to move units, and sales were what Phoenix had always been missing. Stardoms equals influence equals power.

  If she was going to work her ass off regardless, Phoenix deserved some money, not the thirty-thousand-dollar contracts she’d had to split with her band while they slept five to a hotel room so they could afford to go on the road. She’d be better off in law school, but if music was her calling, she’d better get on her feet so she wouldn’t go out like Marvin, Bird and Billie, always broke. Even if she only recorded one CD with Three Strikes, she could save a chunk of cash. Inherited wealth was still the biggest disparity between blacks and whites, and he and Leah wouldn’t have much to leave her. The cash they’d invested in Phoenix’s career aside, Leah had drained them holding on to her father’s club for all those years out of misplaced sentiment.

  Marcus had no room for misplaced sentiment. Phoenix might be strong enough to stomach either poverty or obscurity, but he doubted his daughter could stand both. If an artist could find a way to make some money, hallelujah. And at least Three Strikes was black-owned, even if it wasn’t Motown. (Hell, Motown wasn’t Motown anymore either, he reminded himself). Ronn was a sharp kid. He reminded Marcus of his son Malcolm, as bright and hungry as his namesake, except his son had burned so much of his life energy trying to throw off the yoke of crack that he would be lucky to make a good living and have a family, much less excel. Unlike Malcolm, Ronn was one of the moths who’d gotten out of the jar.

  But Ronn’s money didn’t come for free. Phoenix must not have been paying attention when Katrice told her Three Strikes expected her to do six months of advance publicity for Rising, and up to six months after that if the singles caught fire, like “Party Patrol” was already. Phoenix was lucky as hell to have the tour support, but Katrice was right: Phoenix was still idling at the starting line, and the race had already begun. That had been true before yesterday’s shooting. That had been true for a long time.

  Without knocking, Marcus opened the door of The Mothership and walked in.

  The person closest to him, standing two strides from the door with his back turned, was Carlos Harris. Beyond Carlos, Marcus saw Phoenix sitting at the console, her head bent over a pile of papers while a man Marcus didn’t know—a man who might be in his sixties, also shaved bald—spoke urgently to her. Katrice hadn’t been exaggerating; Phoenix was in a damn meeting while Jamal Lewis was waiting to see her.

  Carlos was closest to the door, so Marcus took Carlos by the crook of his arm and invited him outside with a tug that nearly pulled him off his feet. “Let’s talk a minute,” Marcus said with more civility than he’d believed he had in him. He was so quick, it was possible Phoenix hadn’t seen him snatch Carlos before the door closed behind them.

  Llamame, Carlos had said to Phoenix the other day, like a pimp snapping his fingers, but the smug smirk on Carlos’s face was gone now. Instead of trying to yank his arm away, Carlos went limp against the wall. Few men forgot a good ass-kicking, and the empty early-morning hallway must have looked ominous. Sarge leaned on top of Carlos the way he had in the pen when he needed to make a point, his chest pressed to Carlos’s, his face two inches away. This pretty boy was lucky he’d never done time, because he wouldn’t have lasted long behind the wall.

  “Mr. Harris.” Marcus breathed down the bridge of Carlos’s nose.

  “I think you should calm down, sir.” Carlos’s head lolled, a guilty man’s eye contact.

  “You’ve been having a good time hanging with Phee these past couple days, huh? I’ve been meaning to ask you something: Do you have a good memory? I have a great goddamned memory. Ask me about something you think I should remember, and I’ll tell you if I do.”

  “I’m not trying to fight you, Mr. Smalls,” Carlos said, his hands shoulder high.

  “I thought about you a lot back in the day, son. I had a catalog of ugly fantasies with your face attached, but I had to settle for the shit I wouldn’t go to jail for. I sent a long complaint to your editor at the paper, and I spelled it all out. Did you ever hear about that?” Leah had signed the letter, too. Marcus had figured a letter from a white School Board member would get more attention than a black ex-con.

  “Actually, you sent it to the publisher,” Carlos said. “That letter almost got me fired.”

  “What I really wanted was send your ass to jail—and I’ve been locked up, so I know of which I speak. For me to want another nigga in lockup is really saying something, you dig? I never did know if Phoenix told me the truth, but I wish you could have gone to jail just in case.”

  Carlos’s face looked sickly, and Marcus had to admit it felt good to have another conversation with Carlos Harris. Marcus was masterful at scaring people, but his skill was mostly wasted in polite society, aside from brushes with drunken clubgoers or hardheaded fans. This felt good, but it also felt right, a combination that was hard to come by.

  “I didn’t have sex with her,” Carlos said softly, contrite. “We never did that, and we’re not now. I really am sorry about everything. I wish I could go back and fix it. We’re—”

  “What the fuck good does an apology do me now?”

  “Let go of me,” Carlos said, not blinking. With his apology spent, his options must seem thin, Marcus knew. Marcus tightened his grip on Carlos’s forearm, grinding muscle against bone. Carlos tolerated the pain, hiding it except in his squinting eyes.

  “You disrespected me, Mr. Harris,” Marcus said. “You disrespected my family. You disrespected my daughter, playing doctor with a schoolgirl because it made you feel like you had a bigger dick. There’s no coming back from that, son. Phoenix is grown now, and I can’t give her the eyes to see through you, but you better know right now that you will never earn trust or respect from me or my wife. That door is locked, and you don’t have the key.”

  “I understand,” Carlos said, his voice dull.

  “Try, ‘Yes, sir.’”

  “Yes, sir,” Carlos said.

  Marcus finally let him go. “Now, what the fuck is so important that Phoenix is back here bullshitting with you instead of doing her damn job?”

  And so Carlos told him.

  Phoenix heard her father licking his fingers as he ate from the order of tandoori chicken he’d brought in from Punjab House down the street. He sat at a barstool at Phoenix’s kitchen counter with his Billboard and a can of Red Bull. “So, wh
at’s your plan, Peanut?” he said.

  Everybody wanted to know her plan. Milton, Carlos, now Sarge. Her only plan was to try to find the sense in her life again. Phoenix was sprawled across her futon with a cold, damp washcloth over her eyes while her Mac played back its recording of the music she’d composed in her sleep, glibly showing her the face of a new world. The music was vivacious and wonderful—priceless, Milton had said—and she had rescued it. But from where? And how?

  “I keep thinking about this poem by John Keats,” Phoenix said. She was so tired, she could only mumble. “He’s my favorite poet we studied in my AP English class. He was really young, but he was sick, always afraid of dying.”

  “Marvin used to read Keats. Marvin was deep.” When Sarge mentioned Marvin or Diana or Smokey in his stories, no last names were needed. Like Huey and Malcolm and Stokely.

  “He has this poem called ‘When I Have Fears,’ and there’s this great line: When I have fears that I will cease to be / Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain. I’ve never been able to forget that line. It freaked me out when I read it. Like, damn, this guy knew he was gonna die, and he’d never have the chance to write all the poems he had in him. Scott Joplin must have felt that way, too. He didn’t want his music to die with him.”

  “Yeah, welcome to the club,” Sarge said. “Phee, you’re adding a whole lot of chaos to your life you do not need right now. You need to let this Joplin shit go.”

  Phoenix pulled the washcloth away her eyes, stunned. Sarge cracked a chicken bone between his molars, gazing back at her. Yeah, you heard me, his eyes said.

  “This is from the same man who sent me to the Joplin House?”

  “I wanted you to pay homage. You’ve taken this to a whole new tier.”

  “I see what this is about,” Phoenix said, disappearing behind the washcloth again even though her skin had leached away the coolness.

  “Carlos is involved, so you think it’s bullshit. You don’t believe me about the ghost.”

  After reading the full score, Van Milton had trailed behind Phoenix all day, asking questions when he could. He’d wanted to spend the night at her apartment, hoping for a musical encounter, but she’d sent him home with Carlos instead. Maybe the phantom piano would show up for him, at least. She’d noticed Carlos hadn’t invited her back to his place, but she didn’t mind. She didn’t need to sleep anywhere she didn’t have a toothbrush, because she didn’t belong.

  “What if I do believe it?” Sarge said. “What if I believe you saw this ghost and he sent you all this music? Hell, I saw what happened when you were ten. I was there. I’ve been in the world long enough that you can’t surprise me. But it’s done now. You gave the music to the experts, and you can let it go.”

  “Sarge, if you really believed me, you wouldn’t say that.”

  “I’m not here to argue metaphysics, Phee. I’m living in this world. You missed an interview last night. Jamal Lewis felt dissed today. You’re messing up. If you want to break your contract with Three Strikes and go hunting for Scott Joplin, more power to you. Just let me know, so I can start spending what’s left of your advance on lawyers.”

  Sarge had a gift for bringing the vitals into focus. Phoenix had committed a year of her life to this CD, maybe more, and now it felt like millennia. She was trapped and hadn’t noticed.

  “What did you say to Carlos?” she said.

  “Don’t change the subject. If you have a question for Carlos, you need to ask Carlos.”

  “He’s been a big help through this, Daddy.”

  “I didn’t say anything he shouldn’t have heard from you first.”

  “He heard it, believe me.”

  “He’s heard it now,” Sarge said, and licked his fingers again. “Katrice said something that blew my mind today, by the way. Thought you’d like to know.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Katrice said you got jacked by D’Real in the studio. Those were her exact words.”

  “She said what?” Phoenix said. She sat up, grateful when no cannonball rolled between her temples. Her headache from this morning had erupted to a migraine, but she was feeling better.

  “That’s right,” Sarge said. “Katrice said she wanted more of your vision in Rising.”

  “She didn’t act like it.” Besides D’Real, Katrice had been the main one always pushing her to sound more commercial, more R&B, more urban—in other words, more like everybody else.

  Phoenix heard Sarge walking toward her, heavy soles on her tiles. He sat beside her. “Appearances are deceiving.”

  “Remember that about Carlos,” Phoenix said.

  “You remember that about Carlos, too.” Sarge leaned over her as if he were telling her a bedtime story. “Next time you’re in the studio, fight harder. Hold your ground. Marvin started doing his best-selling stuff, like ‘Grapevine’ and ‘What’s Going On,’ when it was from the heart. People had to know him first, though. He didn’t just come from nowhere. After Rising, people will know you—but you have to take it from there.”

  Sarge had done it. For nearly a minute, Phoenix had forgotten about her ghost and remembered her music. Sarge was a wizard, but his wizardry wouldn’t be enough tonight. She wasn’t going to be like Ronn, pretending her life was still in her control. Something had changed this morning, maybe when she’d seen the nape of Scott Joplin’s neck. Something had changed when Van Milton told her the magnitude of the gift Joplin had given her in her sleep. Sarge might not be able to see it yet, but she didn’t have a choice. Something had changed.

  “I think I’m gonna get some rest, Daddy,” Phoenix said. Her yawn began for effect, but it became real once it was in motion, mined from deep in her lungs.

  “If you want, I’ll stay here with you, Peanut.”

  “No,” Phoenix said. “I’m fine by myself tonight.”

  For the first time, Phoenix wanted to be alone with her ghost.

  Part Three

  Goin’ around.

  Swing, swing, goin’ around,

  Keep on a-goin’ around…

  SCOTT JOPLIN

  Treemonisha

  ACT I, SCENE IV

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Phoenix barely recognized herself in the mirror beyond the circus of bright lights. With a mortician’s care, the makeup artist for Live at Night dabbed Phoenix’s face with shine-resistant powder while Phoenix sat and stared, transfixed by her hair. Her forehead was bordered by tight rows of narrow, zigzagging cornrows, with her golden scalp glistening and radiant between them. Braids bound the front of her head, but the rest of Phoenix’s hair was liberated in an explosion of puffing hair like a halo around her. In this bright light, Phoenix could see the tinges of red hiding in her dark brown Afro, nearly the color of her eyes. Serena was a genius.

  “Are you sure you want to go with the Macy Gray look?” Gloria said behind her.

  In the mirror, Phoenix saw her cousin puff on a Newport and pass it to Serena. Serena had quit smoking two years ago, gaining twenty pounds in the process, so she must be nervous today. Serena was forty-eight, and despite her expertly dyed hair, this was the first time Phoenix thought her sister looked her age, more like she could be her brown-skinned mother. Serena looked so much like Sarge, they were often mistaken for brother and sister.

  “Snow White’s got a point, Phee,” Serena said. “I’ve got you looking fly, don’t get me wrong, but you said G-Ronn wanted extensions. We should’a gone with that Italian weave I brought, and I could’ve had hair halfway to your behind. That’s how all the big stars do.”

  Phoenix smiled. “This is the way I want it, Reenie. It’s perfect.”

  “Yeah, that’s right, Aunt Phee,” Phoenix’s nephew Trey said from the back table, where he’d been popping potato chips and cheese squares into his mouth. “Aunt Phee’s keepin’ it real. She wants to look black.”

  The makeup artist gave Trey a surprised glance over her shoulder, and Serena rolled her eyes. “Lord have mercy. Marcus made t
his child read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and now he thinks he’s Huey from Boondocks. Stop trying to talk like you’re grown,” Serena said.

  It had been two years since Phoenix had seen Trey, and she’d been startled to discover that her little nephew was already half a man. If Trey were Jewish, he’d be studying for his bar mitzvah the way Mom had forced Phoenix to go to shabbat school for her bat mitzvah. Mom had said she wanted to pass on her heritage, even though she ate bacon regularly and let Phoenix go to church with Sarge. Baruch atah adonai elohaynu malech ha’olam. The prayers she’d learned still came back to Phoenix, mementos of somewhere ancient and far away. Sarge was teaching Trey his own version of his people’s story.

  “You look beautiful, Aunt Phee,” Trey said. “Like a queen in Africa.”

  “Oh, she’s a little princess for sure, but not the African kind,” Gloria smirked in her best Long Island accent, and Phoenix gave her cousin the finger.

  “Daddy? What do you think?” Phoenix said.

  Sarge had been quiet today, sitting on the love seat in the back of the green room while he watched her prepare for the performance, occasionally snapping pictures for Mom with his digital camera. She was still the bridge between her parents, at least. “Trey’s right. You look beautiful, Peanut. Whether or not the label will like that look for you, I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”

  Serena made a quiet humphing sound, gently shaping the edges of Phoenix’s hair. “Yeah, you figured out it ain’t all about ‘Black Is Beautiful’ no more, huh, Marcus?” Serena said. Her voice was teasing, yet it wasn’t. Serena had always called her father by his first name, maybe because he had been only seventeen when she was born, and it seemed to grant her license to say things Phoenix never would, like a scolding old friend instead of his daughter.