The Company We Keep

by Mary Monroe

  “Carla, I just want to be happy,” Teri lamented. “I want what every other woman wants. I’ll be thirty soon. Once my grandparents are gone, I’ll be virtually alone.”

  “You’ve got other relatives,” Carla reminded. “They are scattered all over the place.”

  “And I hope that’s where they stay.” Teri laughed. “I can do bad by myself, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do. I do know what you mean,” Carla assured her.

  CHAPTER 31

  Teri was still thinking about her session with Carla the next morning when she arrived at work. She had two meetings scheduled before lunch and a conference call with the blind rapper and his diva of a manager. She had no idea what they wanted to demand or complain about this time so she was not looking forward to the call.

  Another disturbing issue she had to keep on the front burner was her boss. Victor was all over the place, fussing and cussing up a storm. The rumor around the office was that his latest wife wanted to leave him to be with another man and wanted to take a huge chunk of his money with her. So in addition to acting like a scalded rooster, he was looking like hell these days, too. Since he was already homely, a lot of people didn’t even notice a difference. But to the more observant people like Teri and Nicole, they noticed how bad their boss was looking. The heavy blue bags he’d had removed from underneath his eyes a couple of years ago had returned and this time with a vengeance. He looked ten years older. His dyed, black hair, with the gray roots of every single strand showing for the first time, looked thinner. His ponytail resembled a beaver’s tail—flat and stiff.

  “Keep as far away as you can from Victor today. He looks like hell and I don’t want you to get caught up in the crossfire,” Teri told Nicole with some concern as soon as Nicole arrived.

  “I take it he’s in a bad mood this morning?” Nicole asked casually.

  “What’s that dragon’s name that breathes fire?”

  “What are you talking about? Some Harry Potter shit? What the fuck has a fire-breathing dragon got to do with Victor?”

  “Victor is that dragon this morning.” Teri lowered her voice and leaned closer to Nicole’s ear. “I heard his wife is leaving him for another man,” she reported.

  “No shit?” Nicole said, cursing under her breath. “He has my sympathy because I know how that feels. Well, thanks for the warning.”

  “Have you spoken to Barry Conover about his boy Trevor?” Teri wanted to know. There was a grave look on her face. “I tell you, some of the agents and tour promoters and managers are just as much trouble as their artists. Barry’s a major thorn in my side. And I thought that blind rapper’s manager was a bitter pill to swallow. Sheesh!”

  Nicole nodded as she turned on her computer. “I told Barry to make sure Trevor is on time for the meeting. He has a nasty habit of missing planes. I saw another meeting on your Outlook calendar for this morning that I don’t remember setting up. Didn’t say who with, though. What’s up with that?”

  “I did that before I left the office last night. It’s with—well, look who’s here,” Teri said, revealing one of her warmest smiles as Eric entered the reception area, lugging one of his cameras and a briefcase that had seen better days, and approached Teri. “I hope we didn’t have a meeting scheduled for this morning that I forgot about or that someone forgot to tell me about,” she said, rubbing Eric’s shoulder and looking at Nicole at the same time.

  “I don’t have an appointment with you this morning, but I was passing by and was hoping I could catch you free. All I need is five minutes.” Eric grinned as he gave her a brief embrace. Then he turned to Nicole and smiled. She grinned so hard she bit her tongue. She had not seen him since his last visit to the office a week ago. “Nicole, how are you doing?”

  “I’m fine,” she managed.

  Teri bit her bottom lip and glanced at her watch. “Well, if I don’t meet with Trevor Powell soon, the shit is going to hit the fan big time. I was going to have to talk to you about him anyway. His album cover bid is too high.”

  “You’re telling me now,” Eric said, his smile gone.

  “Come on, Eric. Work with me,” Teri pleaded, folding her arms. She wore a navy blue skirt and a bright yellow blouse. Not only was the blouse just a little too snug, it was low-cut. It was difficult for Eric to keep his eyes on her face. And that was another issue. He often wondered how the men that Teri had to work with could continue to maintain their composure when they had to deal with her face to face. He liked Teri, but he liked Nicole even more. She was more his speed. Teri was too ambitious and way too high maintenance for a simple hot-dogs-and-beer dude like himself.

  Now Nicole was a different story. Eric didn’t know that much about her, but he knew enough to know that she was more his speed than Teri. The way she looked and acted around him revealed a lot about her. If only he didn’t have that loud-ass bitch Yvette in his life!

  “Wasn’t the bid approved already?” Eric questioned, shaking his head. He glanced at Nicole, then he turned back to Teri. “Do you want to continue this in your office?”

  “I wish I could,” she replied. “But it would take more than a few minutes and that’s more than I can spare right now. Look, why don’t you work with Nicole and get on my calendar as soon as possible, later today or even this evening after hours. If you can’t come to me, I will come to you.”

  “Cool. But before I leave I just want to know one thing—wasn’t that bid approved already?”

  “Yes it was, but only if it can be cut by 5 percent.” Teri held her breath as Eric thought this over.

  “That’s not the way I do business, Teri,” Eric said, looking thoroughly disgusted. “That’s not what we agreed to.”

  “I approved your budget, Eric. The changes were made over my head. I can’t do anything about that. You know I love working with you and I want to continue doing so. I enjoy it, and I know you need the work. But—and I know you don’t want to hear this—but my hands are tied. Victor made it clear that if you didn’t agree to this, he’d go with another photographer. Nicole, did Barry finally settle on what model he wants featured on the album cover with Trevor? I want Eric to shoot her.”

  Nicole responded, “Yeah, but I just found out a few minutes ago that she violated parole. Something about her slapping a waiter at McCormacks. But we’ve got her look-alike sister to fall back on.”

  Teri rolled her eyes and slapped the side of her head. “That’s one less headache I have to deal with.” She released a huge sigh of relief.

  “And I’m sorry to be one of the headaches that you do have to deal with. But this is not fair, Teri. I’ve worked with Trevor before. His last album went gold and I shot the cover for that album. If anything, I should be getting more money this time, not less! Where is the logic?”

  “This isn’t about logic. And honestly, it’s not even about Trevor. It’s about power, who has it and who doesn’t have it.” Teri was silent for a few moments. “Enough said. You do me a favor and go with this, and I will pay you back.”

  “I see,” Eric said. From the look on his face, he was through with this conversation. Nicole was glad to see that he was a man who knew when to quit. But as far as she was concerned, he was still in a good position. How many other struggling photographers, with just a few credentials to their credit, got to work with some of the top recording artists in the business? And Eric didn’t seem like the kind of person to push his luck. She liked that because she wasn’t, either.

  People often asked her why she’d settled for being “just a secretary” when there were so many other opportunities available these days. But she was happy being a secretary. She was already where she wanted to be. She wouldn’t trade places with Teri for all the money in the world. Or her cousin Lola. That magazine that Lola wrote for had just about sent her screaming to the nut-house. She was always stressed out about one job assignment or another. Last year after she’d interviewed a group of rowdy Hells Angels, she’d had to take the next two weeks of
f to recover. No, Nicole had gone as far as she wanted to go. She had a steady job, a son she loved, and almost everything she needed to be happy. Now if she could just get herself a do-right man like Eric she wouldn’t have to die to find out what heaven was like.

  “Can I call you later in the day to set up an appointment?” Eric asked. Nicole didn’t realize he was talking to her until Teri cleared her throat and shot Nicole an impatient look.

  “Oh! Yes, please do that,” Nicole chirped, looking and acting flustered. She started straightening papers and pads on her desk, but her eyes were still on Eric’s face.

  He handed her his business card. “If I don’t call you, would you please call me?” he asked.

  Teri excused herself, rushed into her office and shut the door.

  “I’ll do that,” Nicole said, blinking.

  CHAPTER 32

  “Your ‘Morning Starr’ is going to face you from the skies over this great city of L.A. for the rest of the day. I will be back tomorrow morning at the same time, and I hope you will all join me again. Up next right after our news break is my favorite lady DJ, Sister Beverly Blue. God bless and remember, where you go, there you are. Peace and blessings.” Harrison brought up what had become his signature sign-off music, anything by Miles Davis.

  He closed his mike as Beverly Blue entered the booth, huffing like a sumo wrestler. Why this woman chose to hide her pretty face behind a pair of saucerlike sunglasses all the time was a mystery to Harrison and everybody else. She had big, beautiful brown eyes. They went well with her nut brown complexion and her soft, attractive features. She also had a nice firm body that she usually hid somewhere within the folds of a voluminous, floor-length skirt and a baggy sweater like today. But she was the only female DJ at the station and she wanted to be admired for her ability, not her looks. Ironically, the men she worked with rarely tried to hit on her. Even though her friends had warned her to use every weapon she had at her disposal. If she had to get over, “use your booty and your beauty” she’d been told. But she didn’t have to flirt with or fuck anybody to get or keep her job. She was one of the most dignified and straitlaced women Harrison knew. And he meant it when he referred to her as his favorite lady DJ.

  “BB, my DJ,” Harrison greeted, kissing her gently on the lips. “Have you met Trevor Powell?”

  Trevor, an artist who was the source of a lot of Teri Stewart’s recent frustrations, stood backed up against the wall in the booth. Trevor was a highly talented singer with millions of fans. He was also a man whose greatest love interest was himself. He and Harrison had been friends for several years, but a lot of people didn’t know that.

  “Not in person, but I was at your last concert,” Beverly told Trevor, shaking his hand. “Only believe the good stuff that Harrison tells you about me,” she joked.

  “So far it is all good,” Trevor told her, still holding on to her hand. When he started to squeeze it, she gently removed it.

  Trevor, a month from his thirty-sixth birthday, was good looking and he knew it. He had known it all his life and had used his pretty-boy features to his advantage. He knew that a lot of women went for men like him with light brown skin and wavy black hair, even if the man was ugly. His brother Errol looked like a flying monkey, but women never looked past his high yellow skin and that head full of thick, wavy brown hair he possessed. Trevor knew that he didn’t have to do much to get a woman. Just looking good was enough, but being a major recording artist had earned him a spot on a pedestal that was so high he knew that if he ever fell off, he’d break every bone in his body. And if that didn’t do it, his long-suffering wife probably would. But as long as she kept her ass on the grounds of their lavish estate in Atlanta, raising their three sons like she was supposed to, he didn’t have anything to worry about. He also owned a townhouse in London. But the condo he owned in L.A. was where he could be found most of the time when he was not on tour.

  Trevor and Harrison spent a lot of their quality time visiting inner-city schools speaking to the students, encouraging them to stay in school and avoid the gang activity that had become such a thorn in L.A. culture. Despite his reputation as a difficult, self-centered womanizer, Harrison counted Trevor among his most important friends.

  Beverly loved Trevor’s music, a soft blend of reggae and jazz, and she knew that half of the women in L.A. would love to be standing where she was right now. They would have stripped down naked right in front of Trevor if he had asked them to. But she wouldn’t. Other than his music, which was some of the best, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do for her. She’d been in a serious relationship with the same man for four years, and so far the only other man in the industry that she would consider fucking was Diddy, Doody, Puffy, or whatever the hip-hop bigwig Sean Combs was calling himself these days. With other women and babies coming out of his ear, it was unlikely that a relationship between him and her would ever develop. Hell, she hadn’t even met the man in person yet. Anyway, she was happy with what she had in the meantime.

  “Well, I guess I’ll hit it if you brothers don’t mind,” Beverly said, plopping down hard on the high chair that Harrison had just vacated. “How did you two meet?” she asked, looking from Harrison to Trevor.

  “We met in London about five years ago,” Trevor told her.

  “Is that right?” Beverly said, looking at Harrison. “You’ve known each other that long. Harrison never said a word…”

  One thing Harrison didn’t do was exploit the relationships he had with a lot of well-known performers. Early in his career he had been bombarded with requests from friends and relatives for him to get autographed CDs and pictures, free concert tickets, and even dates for them. And he had tried to accommodate as many requests as he could. He did until the details of an after-hours liaison that he’d set up between a casual female friend and an up-and-coming rapper ended up on the Internet. That would have been bad enough, but it had included a video that she’d secretly taped with a hidden camera tucked into the folds of her cap—her sucking dick like it was going out of style. From that point on, Harrison was very closemouthed about the relationships he had with celebrities.

  “Uh, I’d like to stay so you and Trevor could get better acquainted, but we’ve got to roll,” Harrison told Beverly with a wink. He knew from the way Trevor was looking at Beverly that he wanted to mount her right then and there. To avoid a potential nauseating situation, Harrison ushered Trevor out of the booth and they went straight to the garage.

  Harrison ignored the stares they received from the people entering or leaving the parking area. But Trevor loved it. He grinned and waved and would have done more if Harrison had not rushed him to his car.

  “Say, brother. I heard you were dealing with Miss Teri Stewart over at Eclectic,” Harrison said, pulling out into traffic.

  “Unfortunately,” Trevor said with a groan. He sniffed and adjusted the rearview mirror to check his hair. Then he had to make sure that nothing like a bacon bit or a sliver of bell pepper from the omelet he’d eaten for breakfast was stuck between his pearly white teeth. Satisfied with his flawless appearance, he let out a loud breath and reared back in his seat.

  “Oh? You don’t get along with her?”

  “Man, Jesus couldn’t get along with that woman for longer than a minute. She’s a bitch! Do you know how long me and my people have been trying to work out some minor details regarding my upcoming album cover? Shit!”

  “I disagree with you, brother. I’ve heard some good things about Teri,” Harrison said defensively. “She’s very focused.”

  “So was Idi Amin. What’s your point?”

  “I like Teri. As a matter of fact, I like her a lot…if you know what I mean.” Harrison gave Trevor a mysterious wink.

  “Come again?” Trevor said with a jaw-dropping gasp. “That woman is too stone cold for me, man. She could freeze a ball of fire into a block of ice with one of her mean-ass looks. I wouldn’t go near her without one of those flame-throwing gadgets. That’s what it’d
take to thaw that heifer’s pussy out. I bet there’s an ice cube where her clit ought to be! I’d like to shake the hand of just one man who has even made it into her bed, bath, and beyond in the last five years.”

  “Be my guest,” Harrison said. He began to steer with his left hand. Then he extended his right hand to Trevor.

  CHAPTER 33

  Trevor whirled around and looked at Harrison’s outstretched hand, then his face. He stared at him for a few seconds with his mouth hanging open so wide that Harrison could see the wad of Dentyne parked on top of his back teeth. “You? Teri Stewart let you into her ‘no parking’ zone? No shit.” Trevor closed his mouth for a moment, then he guffawed in a way that reminded Harrison of a scene from the old movie Francis the Talking Mule. His friend, who was one of the most handsome men he knew, now looked like a laughing mule with his teeth bared and his tongue flapping like the soles on a pair of cheap shoes. Trevor slapped the dashboard so hard it made Harrison swerve. “You and Teri? Aw man, you have got to be kidding me! Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would a man like you get involved with a woman like Teri? You can do a whole lot better. I’ve seen you do it.”

  “Better? Better than what?” Harrison asked, glaring at his friend out of the corner of his eye. “What’s wrong with Teri?”

  “Nothing is wrong with that sister if you’re a robot or Superman. I bet she’s got computer wires and telephone cords where her brain ought to be. Other than that, there is nothing wrong with Teri.” Trevor sniffed. “As a matter of fact, I like the woman. After all, she is pretty.”

  “I guess you don’t know the Teri I know,” Harrison offered.

  This gave Trevor something to think about. He wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes and gave Harrison a thoughtful look. “I guess I don’t, huh?”