But she apologized. Rick gritted his teeth. She was rooted to her spot next to the Lincoln, a couple yards to his left and a few feet behind him. Screwing with the order of the melanin rainbow. Never mind what she was doing with his head.
Terrance finally waved him over for an introduction. It was Mykah, who proceeded to give Rick a nearly identical greeting, except when he turned it on Rick, the enthusiasm was fake. Terrance shot a look over his shoulder as he followed Mykah through the door, like maybe Rick was a complete idiot and might pop off his mouth about the attitude.
Nah, T. Just wondering what I did.
Rick glanced back, almost — but not quite — forgetting to hold the door, and Carolyn gave him a half-way smile over that. When the door latched behind her, Rick closed his eyes for a second to speed the adjustment to the gloom in the hallway. Mykah was apparently more concerned about lighting the outside of his place than the inside.
Carolyn’s heels tapped a slow rhythm on the cracked tile floor, punctuating Terrance and Mykah’s conversation. Rick knew where Terrance had been and couldn’t care less what Mykah’d been doing, so he concentrated instead beyond the cinderblock wall beside him, to the beat that pounded through to his bones, and tried to forget about the woman behind him.
He almost didn’t catch it when Mykah suddenly turned around.
“You hear from Eyedea lately?”
Casual, very casual. Rick reached around Carolyn’s shoulders to ease her into the circle that had formed with the question, catching the surprise on Mykah’s face as he did. Assumed she was with Terrance, no doubt, and Rick suspected it wasn’t even about skin. She was too damned elegant for him.
That only made it better.
“You see what he’s doing, here?” Rick asked her, before switching back to Mykah. “Carolyn don’t know about that, so I gotta explain it.”
Briefly distracted by her arm slipping around his waist, he managed to regain his original thought. “He asking if I heard from Eyedea because Eyedea was the MC who took me down at Scribble Jam six years ago. Kept me out the finals.”
Carolyn’s eyes widened, like she was playing along. Then he remembered that she really didn’t know this. She had better things to do with her life. Not now, though.
“So Mykah reminding me about this defeat, here,” he said. “A little psychological warfare, I figure. Keep me in mind about getting smoked.”
Rick hit the last word hard, about the same way Eyedea had, as he raised his eyebrows at Carolyn. She didn’t know that, but Rick saw the slightest quiver at the corner of her mouth, like she was already anticipating the punch line.
“By the guy who won the whole damn thing the year before.”
The smile spread across her face. She hadn’t missed a punch line yet.
Then she shook her head. “And you don’t think it’s too soon to show your face in public again?”
Her eyes glittered, brighter than the forty-watt lights could account for, and Rick swallowed his shock over her turning a prop role into a speaking part. Mykah laughed as he clapped Rick on the shoulder, like he hadn’t been doing exactly what Rick said he’d been doing. Carolyn tilted her head and shrugged when he looked at her. What’d he expect?
As the circle broke up, her smile faded the same moment chilled air filtered through the back of his shirt. Rick moved away, glancing to the short locks on the back of Mykah’s head as he led them on, and breathing a sigh of relief that she hadn’t dodged when he reached for her.
The beats grew louder as the hallway narrowed, like being underground, except colder, dirtier and darker than the subway stations. He glanced around for the red EXIT, saw only more shadows. Carolyn was beside him, but there was no map for her to consult on these walls, she couldn’t steer him back to the surface where it was safe.
This was nothing like he remembered. Mixed up with the fact that Carolyn was here, the real contrast hit Rick’s gut like a drop of the express elevator in Louis’s building.
He never really cared before. He still remembered watching Sam Dyson that last day of Scribble Jam, nobody else seeming to be aware that Zeus’s right hand man was wandering around. Still remembered Sam turning, walking right up to him, with that expectant look on his face. Asking the question that would certainly be followed by a positive answer:
So, Ricky Rain. You got a demo on you?
His face changed to disbelief when Rick found his voice. No. Sir. I don’t … no.
Why would he? He had a decent job. He was kind of thinking Mary was all right then, even if Aiesha couldn’t stand her. So what that she only went to Cincinnati to prove her existence to anyone else with tits? Mary was just pissed off about crossing the whole damn state, crashing on the floor at some friend of Terrance’s, with him, T, Kale, Gil and Aiesha plus the guys who lived there, eight bodies in a one bedroom for three days. Crowded, but hell, it was free, it was only three days and it was supposed to be fun.
It was only a game.
No demo, Mr. Dyson. But I’ll send you one.
This wasn’t the same at all. It wasn’t going to work, he couldn’t go back.
Carolyn gave him a sharp look and turned to face him, straight on. Inches away, close as she’d been when she swapped his hat. No need for that now, he was wearing it, but her eyebrows lowered into a frown. What could he have done wrong with his mouth shut and his hands in his pockets?
He was about to ask, just for the hell of it, when Carolyn bit her lip and slid her arms around his neck, her cheek right up against his. The scent of her hair jerked him back into the subway car, and his arms went around her before he remembered how that kept working out.
He felt her breath right below his ear.
“I know,” Carolyn whispered. Two words, soft and slow, running up under the beat from the next room. Like she’d been reading his mind.
Rick closed his eyes, powerless to keep himself from crushing her against him. Powerless to deny the truth. She did know. Not because she guessed, or because she infused some fantasy into the lyrics of his songs, or because she read some lie on the internet. The warmth of her body collided with a cold edge of fear that ricocheted through his soul.
She knew because he’d told her. Everything.
Carolyn moved in his arms, and he opened his eyes, loosened his grip, expecting to see the gratitude again. She didn’t move away, though, and the look on her face wasn’t gratitude. It was something like …
“And I know,” she said, “that you’re incredible.”
… conviction.
Under the beat, straight into his heart, the words echoed like they had more power than he’d ever believed before. Power enough to absorb the terror. Her hands were soft on the sides of his face. Only a single beat passed through him before she pulled his mouth to hers.
His split-second of shock evaporated with the touch of her lips, hesitant against his, and in an instant there was nothing else — nothing, not the beat, not the words — nothing mattered anymore. Her arms tightened around his neck, and her mouth grew as certain as he was. He didn’t know how he managed to wait, but then her lips parted and her tongue touched his and the jolt went straight to his gut, a live wire of sensation that he couldn’t have written a rhyme to match if it would guarantee his next contract.
The moment it hit, her mouth was brushing his jaw, then his neck, before he felt the heat under his ear as she said it again:
“I know.”
Rick exhaled slowly, breathed in her scent as he found her ear. But the chorus was played, and he hadn’t written the verse he was supposed to kick in next. In the fog of words that had been failing him for months, only three broke through.
She does know. That was why she’d slid over to him in the car, why she’d slid her hand into his, even after what he’d said. That was why she said she was sorry.
She does know. Not just what was riding on this, but why it mattered so much to begin with. The ricochets rang louder as his body argued against them, trying to persuade him t
hat the feeling of Carolyn in his arms on her own free will was worth the price of her perception.
He didn’t have the words to work it out and no time left to try, so he only said, “Go with Terrance, a’ight?”
She nodded against his shoulder. Rick forced himself to let go as she moved to follow Terrance around the last corner. Carolyn gave him one long look before the turn.
Then she disappeared, and the beats through the cinderblocks filtered back to his ears and into his bones. Where they’d always belonged.
27: Never Felt the Rain
He needs me. I can help him.
Those were her thoughts. Not the protests she’d heard a thousand times from women who’d read her book. Words she’d argued with, as gently as she could, that it wouldn’t work. Your heart will break over an illusion. Please, don’t believe that.
But he’s different.
Terrance pulled open a door, and the music, with infinite mercy, took over. The room looked like an unfinished basement above the ground, not much bigger than Walter’s conference room. She couldn’t count the bodies jammed in, maybe a hundred, maybe more. She was overdressed, but so was Terrance in his dark green shirt and charcoal slacks.
She moved closer to him as he led her around through the back of the crowd, to the front of the room. When he stopped against the right wall, she saw the profile of the DJ working the turntables on a raised plywood platform. The crowd was listening. Every so often, a collective approval responded to some complicated scratching. She stood beside Terrance who leaned against the block wall and surveyed the crowd. The ratio was seventy percent male, thirty percent female, if that. Most of them looked to be hardly out of their teens. Half — if not more — of the faces were white.
The Chinese DJ with a short brush of black hair finished his set to a roar of approval. He flashed a quick grin to someone in the crowd and slid one hand over the record for a final scratch. The room quieted as Mykah pulled a wired microphone from the table and called out two names.
Carolyn scanned the faces in the crowd until she felt Terrance’s hand on her shoulder. He nodded to the opposite side of the room, where the low stage offered a break in the bodies and a fairly clean line of sight. Rick stood with his back against the wall, space on either side of him. No one else paid any attention to him as the DJ started up the beat and a rapper took the microphone, throwing lines like darts at his opponent.
Rick’s right arm was around his waist, propping up his left elbow, knuckles under his chin. His eyes never left the two men on the plywood. He didn’t react with the crowd. He watched.
Before Carolyn knew it, the two passes of the microphone were over, and the tall black rapper had won. A very underdressed girl climbed up the stage and slid her arms around the winner. Carolyn had a good view of his hand on the girl’s ass, and she cringed when their tongues lingered out in the open.
She looked back to Rick, startled to find his gaze on her. He moved his hand from his mouth and ran his tongue over his lower lip as his eyebrows shot up. Carolyn felt the heat spread through her mouth and beyond, but she shook her head in answer to the sarcastic question she saw in his eyes. No way in hell are you getting that kind of PDA from me.
Rick’s faked disappointment made her laugh and relief flooded through her at the relaxation on his face. Mykah’s voice through the speakers broke into her thoughts.
“Next up, some boy wanting some BK action. XO, you up for some nobody from the Land?”
Carolyn could only see XO’s back — and the cut muscles of his arm around the girl, filling in the pasty gap between her cropped t-shirt and a skirt that barely covered her ass.
“Ricky Rain, you say you still got it,” Mykah said. “So let’s hear it.”
Terrance straightened beside her, and she saw Rick moving through the crowd. Heads whipped around, with noises that sounded like recognition.
XO stiffened and extracted himself from the girl. She stumbled toward a group of friends who caught her from the platform.
Rick worked his way through the people on the floor, shaking hands, tapping fists together. She couldn’t help smiling, until he took an easy step onto the stage and the last hand held on. Long decorated nails wrapped around his wrist and Carolyn flinched. She felt her short nails in her own palms and took a deep breath at the impulse to go ghetto on a girl Rick didn’t even glance at as he pulled free with a flip of his arm.
Then he was shaking XO’s hand. It was surreal, knowing how all the pieces of his past clicked into a straight line, ending with his easy jump onto a plywood platform. The body she’d held in the hallway hadn’t lied, and she’d felt desperate to give him something, anything, knowing somehow that he wouldn’t — couldn’t — ask for it.
But now, he looked fine. She wished she knew if it was real.
Rick’s eyes flicked past XO straight to her, and her mouth went dry. He looked happy.
Terrance shifted, and Carolyn glanced over to discover she was mimicking his body language, her arms folded across her chest. She relaxed when she saw him smile, even though Terrance kept his arms crossed. Something happened that she missed, and he grunted.
He must have caught her confusion, because he leaned over and spoke into her ear.
“He letting Ricky go last. Don’t have to, it’s his turn.” Then as the music started, he muttered, “Confident mofo.”
The bass voice pulsed through the speakers, like bullets spitting out over the beat. “You here to get exposed — you just a fuckin poser —supposer —with bullshit flows.”
Carolyn shrank back, but Rick didn’t even move.
“Rain can’t hide behind your reputation — you here alone now — ain’t got your god’s protection.”
He moved closer, towering over Rick, who still didn’t react. Except his lips — he mouthed the word “protection,” almost to himself, as XO spit it into the microphone. Carolyn’s eyes widened as he did that again, a moment or two later, anticipating the words as they came. She couldn’t tell if the crowd’s reaction was to that, or XO. Or both.
“Just a pretty white boy, but now you XO’s toy … ”
The seconds stretched out and she felt her teeth on her own lip as the younger man picked Rick apart. How did he stand there, hardly reacting at all?
The rapper’s delivery was fast and thick:
“Since you don’t get it / I’m gonna s’plain it / white girls in the suburbs / who just want a respite — ”
Rick’s eyes widened slightly as XO jabbed a hand toward him, stopping an inch from his chest.
“You just some R-N-R from Em-In-Em — ”
Rick’s mouth opened, his eyes wider — sarcasm. Occupational hazard.
“And that shit won’t make you plat-i-num.”
Carolyn bit her lip, but she thought Rick looked amused. XO had delivered every line straight to him as if no one else were listening. When the music stopped, he raised both arms like he’d won already before he passed the microphone back to Mykah, and turned to the crowd for the first time.
Rick reached across the stage and caught XO’s attention, to slap his hand, front to back. Congratulating him? Carolyn shook her head when she saw the broad grins on all four of the faces on stage. It was just a game.
In the flash before the DJ started up again as Rick took the mic in his own hand, she realized that this was what he’d been after. A trip back in time to when his shoulders weren’t buckling under the weight of his choices, back to a minute where if he didn’t make it, the consequences wouldn’t destroy him. She could see in his face that he was there.
“Turn that beat down,” he said to the DJ, who lowered the volume an eighth of a decibel. Rick raised his eyebrows at XO. “Don’t want you to miss nothing.”
He dropped the microphone to his side, and Carolyn held her breath, but he brought it back to his mouth before her fear could catch hold.
“So I’m a Shady vacation? Is that what you saying? That I don’t know my station — you think I’m just pla
ying?”
The crowd’s whoop was loud, and Carolyn finally breathed, deep and long.
“XO you ain’t got nothing new to say, I done heard every bit of it yesterday — it’s tired; it’s old; it’s weak and it’s thin — your skills don’t matter, just the color of your — ”
He held the mic over the crowd, and they filled in the word for him. “Skin!”
Rick bent to one guy in the crowd. “Would somebody please tell him what century we living in?”
A loud burst of laughter hit her ears, but Rick went right back to XO:
“So I’m a pretty white boy, I been hearing that all my life. Just the other night — I heard it from — ” he half turned to the rear of the stage “ — Mykah’s wife.”
Carolyn’s eyes widened at Mykah’s brief scowl.
“But I only feel that shit — when the fe-males be sayin it.”
An “Oh!” went up from the crowd and Rick’s tone changed again, the syllables pouring from the amplifiers like a waterfall, tumbling over each other so fast she could barely keep up.
“Now I didn’t call you gay and I saw your demonstration of hetro-sexuality to protect your reputation. So I guess they’s an exception to your rules in black and white?” He went back to the crowd. “I know I read this somewhere — baby, turn out the light!”
The laughter drowned out his next few lines, and Carolyn strained to hear until his words overcame the noise.
“ … can’t stop a storm that bears down like a train / I wish I could tell you that I’m feeling your pain / I wish that I could sympathize … ”
The beat stopped, and Rick held his free hand out, palm up.
“But I never felt the Rain.”
The roars bounced off the cinderblocks as Carolyn slumped against the wall. She glanced up and saw unadulterated pleasure on Terrance’s face. Pride, too, she thought. His expression mirrored her own heart, steeped in his longer and far more personal history.
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