Boss Lady

by Omar Tyree

  Tracy said, “I already started contacting them. So you just keep your schedule open.”

  * * *

  I got back to Sasha and Jasmine’s room and was dressed and ready to go. Everyone was there but Alexandria.

  “Did Tracy say we could get the limo?” Jasmine asked me.

  I had forgotten all about it. I said, “I didn’t even get to ask her. We were talking about some other stuff. But where’s Alexandria?”

  Maddy looked at me and said, “She had something else she wanted to do.”

  I looked at Sasha to see how she would respond.

  Sasha read my look and said, “I’m not bothered by it at all, Vanessa. I’m no more than friends with Jason. I mean, I did like him like that at one time, but . . . you know, you grow out of it.”

  It sounded like denial to me, but Sasha wasn’t the kind to sulk. She was always getting offers.

  She said, “So let’s go out and have a good time, man. The next movie starts at ten-ten.”

  Jasmine said, “But how do we get there with no limo? Isn’t that too far to walk?”

  She had a point. Delaware Avenue was at least a ten-block hike.

  Maddy frowned at her and answered, “We take a damn cab.”

  I asked, “So are we waiting for Shamor and them, too?”

  Maddy answered, “I guess so.”

  She made it sound as if it was a problem. I didn’t get into that. I just planned to have a good time.

  When we met up with Shamor and his camera guys and walked out from the hotel, headed for Delaware Avenue, all I could think about was Alexandria and Jason. I wondered what Tracy would think about the two of them together. And I wondered if she would get mad at me for my girl doing her own thing. Then again, Alexandria was older than me. She was twenty. So whatever she was up to with my cousin was on her.

  “What are you over here thinking about?” Shamor asked me.

  He brought my attention back to our outing as we attempted to wave down a few cabs.

  I said, “Oh, I’m just daydreaming. Don’t mind me.”

  “Well, what do you daydream about when you’re daydreaming?”

  Shamor was obviously trying really hard to converse with me, and the more he tried, the more I avoided it. I even jumped in a separate cab from him and Maddy to send him a clear message—talk to my girl, not to me.

  Jasmine even picked up on it as she rode in the cab beside me.

  She smiled at me and whispered, “It looks like somebody’s feeling you around here.”

  I smiled back at her and said, “I know.”

  And all night long I tried to avoid Mr. Cameraman, who made my night a lot more draining than I had planned.

  Sisters

  You said you was gon’ take me out to eat on South Street when you came back home, and you just calling me now? You been home since this weekend.”

  My sister Veronica was chewing me out over the hotel phone.

  I told her, “Yeah, but I’m not home on pleasure. We’ve been running around nonstop since we got here.”

  “Yeah, well, my girlfriend Tara said that she saw you down South Street last night with a bunch of models or actresses or something.”

  I was stuck. I should have just taken my sister out Sunday night and gotten it over with before we got too busy with the casting calls. It was now Wednesday, June 18, and we were starting our workday at noon instead of at nine in the morning, like we did on the first two days. We were getting a little more downtime, so I finally called my sister. However, she was right. I should have called my family earlier. Procrastination kills.

  I said, “Well, what about if we go out to eat tonight?”

  “What if I’m busy tonight?” my sister responded to me.

  “Busy doing what?”

  “Whatever I’m doing.”

  I paused a minute. I needed to clear my head before I said anything irrational to her. Veronica liked twisting your words into weapons.

  I said, “You want to come down to the casting call? It’ll be much less crowded today.”

  I decided to change the subject to try and brighten the mood.

  Veronica said, “I’ll let you talk to Tiffany about that. I don’t care about this movie like she does.”

  My sister was really beginning to disturb me. It seemed like she was giving me a hard time just for the hell of it, but I knew there had to be a reason.

  I said, “Well, what do you care about, Veronica? You’re always saying you don’t care about something.”

  “I don’t care” was Veronica’s favorite phrase, ever since we were kids: I don’t care about this, I don’t care about that, I don’t care about whatever.

  She said, “Whatever, Vanessa. I’m getting dressed right now. You can call me back later.”

  “Well, let me talk to Tiffany, then,” I told her.

  “Tiffany! Your sister’s on the phone!” Veronica hollered through the house.

  I held the phone away from my ear and shook my head. I could understand if Veronica was mad about her predicament in life, but attitude problems only made the situation worse. She had to learn how to be more proactive and less negative.

  I said, “You hurt yourself more than you hurt others when you make bad decisions, Veronica. I just want you to know that.”

  I figured I’d slip a few words of wisdom out to my sister while she still held the phone in her hand.

  She snapped, “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about your attitude.”

  “I don’t have an attitude.”

  “Are you sure?”

  My sister got mad and let me have it again.

  “Look, Vanessa, I don’t have time for your mental games this morning. Now I told you, you’re not as smart as you think you are. So go play them mind games on somebody the fuck else!” and she slammed the phone on my ear before I could talk to Tiffany.

  I took a breath and called the house right back. I was assuming that Veronica would let the phone ring and allow Tiffany to answer it. But it didn’t work out that way.

  “Hello,” Veronica answered again.

  I paused. Did I really want to continue a dispute with her, or simply move on from it.

  I said, “Let me talk to Tiffany.” It was time to move on. I decided it was too early in the day for me to waste too much of my energy on obvious immaturity.

  “Tiffany!” Veronica yelled into my ear again.

  I took a deeper breath and maintained my poise until my baby sister was on the phone.

  “Hello,” Tiffany answered.

  I immediately asked her, “What is her problem?” referring to Veronica. She was really frustrating me, and I couldn’t even talk to her.

  Tiffany answered, “PMS,” without missing a beat.

  I couldn’t help but crack a smile. I went from a serious attitude sister to a jokester.

  She said, “Anyway, what’s up with the casting calls for Flyy Girl? Can Tracy put me in the movie as an extra or what?”

  I could see Tiffany in a movie scene as clear as day. She was a medium brown, lanky, and humorous teenaged girl who could crack jokes with the best of them.

  “Can you write your own lines?” I challenged her.

  Tiffany went right into her own scene:

  “That girl Tracy swear she the shit. But she need to wipe her ass, ’cause I can smell her from over here. Bitch.”

  I had a delayed response to it. At first it was shocking, but then I began to smile. It was a sour kind of humor that you had to think about.

  I said, “This is not an R-rated movie, Tiffany.”

  She said, “So, let me get this straight, we can’t cuss in this movie, after all the cussing she did in her book?”

  It appealed to me at that moment that Tiffany had always had a foul mouth, but she got away with it because she used a humorous touch.

  I said, “Actually, the screenplay doesn’t have as much hard language as the book. And there’s not a whole lot of speakin
g scenes for extras. That’s why I asked you if you could come up with something.”

  “Oh. Well, let me play the Jantel role. You know I’m going to Simon Gratz this year. I might go out for the track team,” my sister told me.

  I paused. I didn’t want to get her hopes up for something too big.

  I said, “I think you need to focus on just a role as an extra. I’m not even going to talk about any other role with you. These people are professionals.”

  “And I’m not?”

  I said, “I think you could be a professional one day, but you’re not right now. You’re not even in high school yet.”

  “Tennis players become professionals at my age.”

  “You’re not a tennis player either,” I told her.

  “I could be,” she responded. “I’m built like a tennis player. You could even call me Tiffany Williams.”

  I could see that my conversation with Tiffany would end up all over the place. She always had a flighty mind like that. She would jump from one illusion to the next.

  I asked her, “What time are you planning on coming to the auditions? I can have someone looking out for you at the door. You can at least see what everyone else looks like.”

  We were narrowing down the performers we wanted to call back for quality roles and screen time.

  Tiffany said, “Can you pick me up and take me down there? I’m a little weak on bus fare right now.”

  “If I pick you up, it’ll be around eleven-thirty, and I’ll have no time to wait for you to get ready. Or better yet, you could just ride your bike over?” I suggested.

  She said, “Ride my bike? All the way to Freedom Theater? What do you think, I’m going out for the Tour de France sometime soon, and I need training? That’s a long way.”

  I smiled again. I said, “If you really want to be there, you’ll be there. I won’t be picking you up every day when we start shooting this film.”

  “Yeah, but I might have money by then,” she told me.

  “What, you’re getting a summer job?”

  “No, but I play the lottery. I’m gonna win any day now. You watch.”

  Tiffany was full of jokes.

  I joked myself and said, “Okay, you can buy yourself a role then.”

  Tiffany paused and mocked me.

  “Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha. You’re not even funny. Get ready for early retirement.”

  “Whatever. Well, I was just calling to check up on you,” I told her.

  “When you coming to the house?” she asked me.

  “For what? She don’t want to come over here. She’s a California girl now,” I heard Veronica pipe in the background. I wondered how much of the conversation she had listened to, or if she had just walked back into the room.

  “PMS,” Tiffany whispered to me again. “I hope I never get it bad like that.”

  Tiffany had me locked on a smile. I was glad she was there to talk to. She had lessened the pain of talking to Veronica.

  I said, “If I come back home, it sounds like Veronica’ll be there camped out to beat me up.”

  Tiffany said, “Please. Only one sister in this house had heart enough to put her hands up to Mom. But I’ma do it too soon . . . when I wake up.”

  That joke wasn’t funny. I didn’t know how I felt about that. Hitting my mother was like a permanent black eye to my character. Anyone could bring it up at any time. And they did.

  However, I was curious.

  I asked, “Do you and Veronica talk about that a lot?”

  “Umm . . . what do you consider a lot?”

  “More than five times since it happened.”

  I was just throwing out a number.

  Tiffany said, “Oh, well, we always talk about it then. We talk about it five times a week. We make sure we mumble it under our breaths though. ‘That’s why Vanessa bust you in the mouth.’ ”

  I had to force myelf not to laugh. Tiffany must have fallen on her head too many times as a baby, because she had obviously lost a lot of her marbles.

  I said, “Don’t let that slip out on you. But I have to start getting myself ready now. It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

  “So, you’re not gonna pick me up then?”

  She was pressing me.

  I said, “I’m gonna be with a group of people and I won’t be driving.”

  “Yeah, Veronica said you was hanging out with the Oxygen Foundation now.”

  “Oxygen Foundation?”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  She said, “Yeah, your crew got their noses all up in the air, sucking up the oxygen. Won’t you tell them to save some for us.”

  That was about enough for me. Tiffany could run her mouth for hours, and all about nothing. So I cut her short and said, “Okay, I will.”

  * * *

  When my girls and I were all dressed and ready to go, wearing our third set of Flyy Girl Ltd. clothes for the week, I found myself itching to ask Alexandria how her night had gone and what all she had done. She had never been one to talk too much about her personal life. Nevertheless, I couldn’t think straight without knowing something.

  “Did everybody sleep good last night?” I hinted. We were standing at the elevators, ready to catch one down.

  “Like a baby,” Jasmine responded. She responded to everything.

  One down, three to go, I told myself.

  “What about you, Sasha? The bedbugs bite you hard last night?”

  “Oh, I was up watching HBO. They always have those good original movies at night.”

  “So, we came from the movies, and then you went right back to watching more movies?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, I was just up,” she told me with a chuckle.

  “You stayed up, too, Maddy?” I moved down the line and asked.

  Maddy answered “No,” real curt. She seemed like she had an attitude with me, and I knew exactly why, but I didn’t want to comment on it out in the open with everyone.

  Before I could get to Alexandria, the elevator doors opened. Four people were already riding it down from the higher floors. I knew I couldn’t get Alexandria to talk in that environment, so I waited for us to reach the bottom. When we finally did, Robin, Shamor, and the rest of the New York camera crew were all waiting for us.

  “Hey, it’s time to go, girls. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

  Robin practically pushed us through the hotel lobby toward the limo that was parked outside at the front entrance. Tracy was already waiting inside. I didn’t want to get into a conversation about Alexandria being out with Jason in front of Tracy. I still had to figure everything out first.

  “So, what did y’all do last night?” Tracy asked us.

  “We went to the movies, South Street, Delaware Avenue,” Sasha answered.

  “Any guys try to get those digits?” Tracy joked to us.

  “That’s always,” Jasmine answered.

  Tracy looked at Alexandria and said, “What about you, Alexandria? You find anything you like in Philly?”

  My heart jumped into my throat. I just didn’t know what to think about a Jason/Alexandria connection. But what could I do about it? If they liked each other, they liked each other. Then again, Jason had forced me to introduce them.

  After Tracy’s question to her, Alexandria cracked a smile. I sat there and watched her every move.

  She said, “Maybe. You never know.”

  Maddy grinned and looked away.

  “What are you grinning about, Madison? You meet somebody here, too?” Tracy asked her.

  I looked away after that. It seemed that the same guy had somehow intertwined himself with Maddy and me without my even trying to be involved in it.

  Maddy answered, “Not exactly,” and everybody got real quiet.

  Then my cousin looked at me.

  “What about you, Vanessa? Any old fling get your eyes open?”

  I didn’t feel like having that kind of conversation. But since she was asking me, I decided to play devil’
s advocate.

  I said, “What if they did? And what if I had company over last night? How would you respond to that?”

  I knew that a good discussion would throw things off of me, so I was willing to give it a try.

  Robin looked over at Tracy in the limo with a raised brow.

  It was weird. We had all read about how wild Tracy was as a teenager, but there we were, walking on eggshells with her about our own personal lives.

  She asked me, “What would you expect me to say? I’m not your mother.”

  Jasmine spoke up again. I guess she just couldn’t help herself.

  She said, “Yeah, but you did bring us out here. And I think we all feel like we don’t want to let you down. Especially Vanessa. She has to live with you.”

  For once, Jasmine’s big mouth actually made some sense.

  Tracy nodded to us. She said, “You guys have all read about me in my books. I’ve made mistakes, so you already know that I’m far from perfect.”

  Sasha said, “Yeah, but that was a long time ago. And we all understand that . . . and you know, you’ve made some great accomplishments. So even though we know what you’ve been through, we also see where you are now.”

  Maddy said, “In fact, since we know you’re not perfect, we can’t really front like you don’t know what time it is. You know what I mean? It’s like, you already know the ropes.”

  “And that’s all the more reason for you guys to open up to me,” Tracy argued. “I know what it’s like trying to make the right decisions as a girl. And I don’t even have kids yet, so please don’t treat me like a parent.”

  We all laughed a little. Her joke loosened up the tension in the back of the limo.

  “I see what they’re all saying though, Tracy,” Robin stated. “I mean, you do understand that you’re not just a regular person anymore. Whether you like it or not, these girls look up to you now, and I’m not just talking about the girls in this car. You literally have thousands of urban American girls who have read your book and who swear by you. That’s why making this movie is so important, so the girls who still haven’t read it can be affected by your story now.”

  “And you guys all think my story is that important?” Tracy asked us all.

  “Yeah,” we all responded to her.