Soul Siren

by Aisha Duquesne

  “Who works like this?” she asked the walls. “You’re not a doctor or in real estate! Who does these hours and drops everything for—”

  “I do.”

  “Look, I don’t pretend I understand this,” Karen started. “But—”

  “What do you mean you don’t understand this? What is this?”

  I was a bit annoyed with her. As good a time as we’d been having, I sensed that her normal reserve had been set at a cooler temperature all during her stay. Karen didn’t like being out of her element.

  “This business, this world!” she replied. “Don’t you think they lay it on a bit thick here? Everybody’s such a drama queen.”

  “Not everyone.”

  Karen laughed. “You’re working for one of the biggest, Michelle.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said as I got dressed. “You’ve never liked Erica. She’s…got this personal thing, and she’s upset.”

  “So? She’s a big girl.” Karen put on her bolero jacket and reached for her purse. “What are you jumping in for? Lovers’ spat. We’ve had them. Jesus, what am I saying? They’re not even lovers, according to you! And she’s got a fiancé! I feel like I’m watching the two of you in the MacDonald hallways again.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning she should have got this nonsense out of her system when she was seventeen. Darling, does she really expect you to come running every time a man gets bored and wants a little time to himself? Besides, from what I hear, Erica is perfectly capable of finding her own amusements.”

  “The only way you heard that is from the parties I took you to.”

  Karen shrugged in mild confusion. “So what? What’s the big deal about where I heard it from?”

  I sighed. I didn’t bother to explain why I was defensive over the point. I had gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure Erica’s sexual adventures never circulated beyond the Manhattan and LA party circuits.

  “Look, Michelle, it can’t possibly be your job to pass her the tissues and be a shoulder to cry on when—”

  “It is my job,” I said impatiently. “I’m her personal assistant, for crying out loud! Personal assistant. That is what I do. I book things for her, I make out her schedule, I pick up her dry cleaning if she needs me to, and, yes, Karen, I’m also her friend!”

  She stared at me in shock, and then I saw her face blush with hurt and anger. Like all calm and reserved people, her rage could be volcanic. “Oh, God,” she said.

  I waited for the explosion. The earth was shaking under my feet, but it was only Karen’s voice that trembled. She wasn’t going to yell at me. She wasn’t about to get into a screaming match. There was a crushing finality in her tone and words, and the worst of it was that I was prepared to accept her verdict.

  “I thought you were past this,” she said to me. “I worried about it, of course, when you took the job, but I thought, hey, playing gofer for Erica Jones and putting up with star tantrums and whatever would cure you. The bloom would be off the rose. Boy, am I a fool.”

  I couldn’t say anything except “Listen to me, Karen, I love you. I do!”

  “Yeah, I think you honestly believe that,” she said, her voice climbing an octave as she rubbed a tear away. I moved to embrace her, but her eyes warned me off. “You won’t change. You’ll never change. Do you actually live and wait for her to have you? That she’ll change her mind tomorrow?” She shook her head to answer her own question. “I suppose I should count myself lucky. You have so much love in you, Michelle. You must have for this much trouble. I suppose I should be grateful you let me have a bit of it. You gave me just enough to think I was rich!”

  “Kamala—”

  “No,” she sobbed quietly. “No, I’m going home. I’ll know that you mean what you say when you finally come back to Toronto. Maybe we can still do Vancouver…”

  “Kamala, my job’s here! My life is here!”

  “I know,” she said, finally unleashing her temper. “You gave up school for that slut! You gave up a life to take care of her. I’ll know you’re serious when you come home, and you’re ready for us to take care of each other.”

  She walked out of the hotel room and left me standing there. I didn’t know what to do. I knew her well enough to let her be for a while. There was nothing to do at that moment but get to the café to console Erica, to give her advice that would sound as hollow as I felt.

  Edgar’s Café on West 84th Street. Rich desserts, and hot cider in the winter. Edgar Allan Poe lived a block farther east on 84th, hence the name. My best friend was at a table in the back, nursing a cup of coffee, dressed down in the hope she wouldn’t be recognised in public. The grey sweatshirt and black Gap jeans worked, but it would have helped if she’d taken off Steven’s engagement ring, its blazing diamonds like a lighthouse beacon for autograph seekers. A huge rock on her finger to constantly remind her of him, and here she was talking about Luther.

  “He’s going to be expecting something, I know he is,” she told me, shaking her head and blowing her cappuccino. “Barely sends me a word while he’s off in England, but I know it’s not over for him either.”

  “You’re the one who said he’d had his chance,” I reminded her.

  “I know, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But there’s such heat there, Mish. It’s worse than when Steven was putting me on hold, making me wait, thinking I didn’t know what he was doing. Don’t get me wrong, I love Steven, but sometimes he’s too clever for his own good. It’s like all the hunger’s gone out of him, and he’s got to have games. I worry sometimes if I’ll…Well, if I’ll keep him interested. With Luther, it’s like the two of us can’t help it. We’re burning up, and we don’t even know what it is! Then something happens or one of us gets stupid and stops to think about the repercussions. It could be so great, but…”

  “But what?”

  Erica blew on her coffee again and offered this sad smile, one that belonged on one of those Venetian Masters’ paintings, a smile that said there was so much behind the eyes. “People call me angry. I think sex and love and creativity are connected. Don’t ask me how, this is about as metaphysical as I want to get. It’s a gut feeling. And Luther, he’s been so angry at the business for so long. You’ve heard him carping, we all have. But what I really think he’s angry at is…”

  “Himself?”

  “No—nothing that predictable. He’s trying to pull something out of himself, flush it, make it, I don’t know, but he’s not going to be satisfied or happy with anyone until he’s done. I know I sound selfish, girl, but I don’t want a seeker. I want someone who’s settled, who’s got it out of his system. I do enough searching of my own, damn it! As a matter of fact, I think that’s what Steven likes about me.”

  I wanted to laugh at this warped logic. She was my friend, so I said nothing. She didn’t realise she was saying in other words: he likes that I’ll grow, because he’s rich, successful, and with me, he doesn’t have to grow any more. She was going to have a fine marriage of convenience. The old-fashioned term would mean more with them than with a French politician and his wife. There could be dancers or jazz sages for her in between concerts, and in addition, Erica could develop politically and emotionally while Steven Swann kept his eye on how many vintage guns he collected and how well his mutual funds did.

  I read over these lines, and there’s a judgmental, cruel tone to them that’s not entirely accurate about the way I felt then and there in the café. What I saw was my beautiful girl groping towards an ideal, not sure of what she wanted and having so much love to spoil on whoever would be her choice. I lived for these small intimacies that gave me a window on her dilemma. Karen had up and left. She couldn’t understand how half an hour of coffee on the Upper West Side with Erica could send me to happy oblivion, could erase my own self-disgust at those failed novels Karen suggested I try to salvage. I went off to the ladies’ room and when I came back, Erica was scribbling on a large white napkin with the café logo on it, writi
ng one of the first verses for “Burn My Letters.” One minute we were reflecting on her love life like any other pair of girls at a table, the next she was writing the song that New Musical Express in Britain called “a scalpel peeling back the soul.” I wish I could have explained it to Karen. Erica is larger than life. She’s larger than my life.

  I rang Karen’s room the next day and left a message. She didn’t return my call. When I showed up at the front desk the following day, I was told she had checked out. Her ticket was a special open-return, and I knew she had kept her word about going home. I considered booking a flight to follow her, I really did. I could always stay with my folks. But she was demanding that I return permanently, so that any romantic gesture of turning up at her door in Scarborough would have rung hollow after a few days. As I stepped out onto the corner of Madison and 41st, it wasn’t one of Erica’s songs that played in my head but a tune by Vonda Shepherd, the chick who sang for the old Ally McBeal series, only her real stuff on her albums has always been so much better. Tears in my eyes as I sang off-key: I’d rather take a blow, at least then I would know, but baby don’t you break my heart slow…

  Karen…

  I loved New York. I loved the feeling of being important, as artificial as it was and dependent on a house of cards of office politics and a friend’s loyalty. But Karen was right. My life here had its price. I didn’t even know what I could do if I returned to Canada. I had dropped out of school, never completed my BA. My guess was that the recruitment pages in The Toronto Star or The Globe and Mail still had few advertisements for PAs to pop stars.

  But that wasn’t why I stayed put.

  We both knew why. And all I needed was an excuse to rationalise it to myself. Erica provided me with one.

  She came home to the apartment in dark sunglasses, her eyes puffy and bloodshot from hours of crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me.

  “Stev—Steven’s called off the engagement!” she said, her body wracked with sobs. “He—he doesn’t—he won’t see me! He doesn’t want to see me!”

  “Oh, shit,” I said and put an arm around her, walking her to the couch.

  “What am I going to do?” she wailed. “Mish, God, it hurts so much! He—he won’t see me at all! What did I do? I love him. I don’t understand!”

  I kept rubbing her back, telling her it would be all right. But I wasn’t sure. The papers were full of news about her engagement and the speculation on the wedding date. For the first time in her career, she had been open with the media about her personal life, and it was only because she had felt safe, secure. Now that the door had been opened, it might never be shut. She could be made to look ridiculous. She might be portrayed as spoiled or gullible. We could both remember the reams of nonsense printed about Jennifer Lopez’s on-again-off-again romance with Ben Affleck. We could both recall dozens of other celebrity couples in music and movies, their dirty laundry suddenly getting the spin cycle on television. Erica was in real trouble. Steven had called it off, and it wouldn’t take long for that detail to get out.

  I wasn’t going to fly home for quite a while.

  Risks

  I had to go see Steven. Understand, please, I was her protector, her chief architect for damage control. It was one thing to persuade a flight attendant in Chicago that he shouldn’t open his mouth and no one would believe him. This was Steven Swann, who had more money, a bigger profile and an image-making machine behind him of his very own, not just the publicity department at Brown Skin Beats. Nothing could hurt Erica more than to be made to look ridiculous in her personal life. If she dumped him, fine, but he was the one breaking it off. Erica was too caught up in her pain right now to help herself. Why, she even thought she could win him back. Steven, however, had always shown us that he stuck to every decision he made. It was over between them, and I had to know why.

  He wasn’t at all surprised to see me show up at the townhouse. I didn’t bother with a greeting as I stormed through his front door.

  “You played her,” I said.

  “I did not ‘play’ her,” he insisted. He did his bashful Tom Cruise laugh, the one that said I know you want to take me to the woodshed, but you can’t bring yourself to do it, can you?

  “You did. You played her.”

  “Mish—”

  “Don’t call me that. My friends call me that.”

  “Michelle, the engagement was real. I was in love with Erica, but we—we want different things. It just wouldn’t work out.”

  “So you can’t be honest with me. I thought your big thing was you never lie.”

  “I don’t lie,” he said, and he actually giggled over this. “I just change my mind, babe.”

  I tried again. “What was it?”

  “You want me to be the bad guy, fine,” said Steven. “How about I didn’t want to settle down? I’m a big star, so I want to have as many girls as I can have. Will that do? You don’t like that one, we’ll come up with another.”

  “Steven…”

  He folded his arms and squinted at me. “What did you come here for, Mish? Was it for Erica or was it for you?”

  “You’ve lost me,” I said.

  “Oh, I think you get what I mean.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was genuinely confused.

  “I think you’re relieved as hell that I’ve broken it off with her,” he said.

  “You’ve hurt my best friend. You guys didn’t fight. You didn’t have any major problems. You said you forgave her for Morgan. So now you do this, and it comes out of nowhere. I want to know why.”

  “Well, maybe it’s over you, Mish,” he said.

  “Yeah, right.”

  He took a step very close to me, and I could feel his breath on my cheek. “We both know the truth is I’ve wanted to slip into your panties ever since you became Erica’s girl Friday. And we also both know you’d like me to. That Saturday night at my house out west? That was very enlightening.”

  “I’m gay, Steven. You know that.”

  “I think you’re versatile.”

  I laughed in his face. “You’ve got a hell of an ego, Steven. That’s it, eh? You’re one of these guys who thinks he can turn a girl like me with his magic wand?”

  He rested a hand on my shoulder. “Not at all. I’ll be flattered to be your exception to all that pussy.”

  “Not interested.”

  “Yes, you are. I don’t fool myself. You want me because Erica had me, and part of you wants to know what kept her coming back. Seeing us go at it wasn’t enough. Annnnnnnd in your twisted, pretty little head, you think you can ‘help’ her by us getting it on. You want to prove what a creep I am, even if you can never tell her.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You come up with all that just to get with me? You’re forgetting something anyway. She wanted to give you to me that Saturday night.”

  “We were all pretty drunk. And giving me away ain’t the same as taking me, is it?”

  “Boy, do you lay it on thick.”

  He shrugged. “You haven’t gone for the door. You and me, Michelle—neither of us likes people very much, do we?”

  “No,” I said. “No, we don’t. But I love Erica. She’s my friend.”

  “Yeah, don’t we all love our bosses!” he scoffed. “Cut the shit, Michelle. You are relieved it’s been called off, aren’t you? You couldn’t stand Erica gushing on and on like that, making a fool of herself. She was one step away from being a joke. She’d be carving our initials in a heart on a tree or something next. Come on! Yes, maybe she’s a pain in the ass when she’s fucking dancers backstage or picking up guys like stray cats, but when she’s single, she writes hot, and her mind’s like a laser, man. I have to say I did admire her shit. When the news gets out to the press, yeah, she’ll look silly for a day or two. So what? We’ll both do another album and make more money.”

  “So it was business,” I said. My lips tried to make it a question, but it came out as deadpan confirmation. “The whole time you were together,
it was business.”

  “Not the whole time. She was a fantastic lay—well, you of all people know that. You saw. How good are you? It’s not like I can go by Odell.”

  “Fantastic,” I shot back. “For the right girl.”

  “I’ll add revenge to your motivation,” he said, chuckling again. “You want to pay her back, I know you do. You hate the hypocrisy, you hate that she’s crying her eyes out when you know she cheated on me. And guess what? The hilarious thing is, I didn’t fuck around on her at all! And look at what a villain you’re making me out to be. Fucking hilarious.”

  This was getting me nowhere.

  “Please, will you tell me what it was all for?”

  “Make it worth my while.”

  I looked at him hard, dragging out the suspense a little, but both of us knew it was going to happen. I was in a short grey wool skirt, and in two seconds, I reached under the hem and pulled down my panties, offering them to him as a trophy. He smugly shook his head and tossed them aside. He gripped me by the waist, lifting me like a dancer to the perch of his desk. My skirt rode up, and he had a view of my pussy. We didn’t kiss at all. His fingers slid up the inside of my thigh, and then he was fingering my petals, stroking me and summoning my juices. Slipping inside me, then out again to tease the bud of my clit, back inside my vagina to sink a little deeper, explore a little more. Two of his fingers inside me now, pushing and retreating, his eyes locked with mine, his face very close so that he could listen to the sound of my ragged breathing. He wanted my heart to flutter. He wanted response.

  Withdrawing his hand, he reached out and ripped open my blouse, laughing at my shock.

  “Don’t worry, Erica left a couple of tops here. You can wear one home. Hey, maybe she’ll even ask you how you got it.”

  I didn’t even see the pocketknife in his hand that sliced between my bra cups. My tits were suddenly exposed, and I felt this stab of exhibitionist pleasure. I don’t know why I felt it now and not when we were out west, maybe because I was still acting with Odell, playing a role. My tits swelling for him now…Before I could say anything, his mouth greedily sucked in my right breast past the dark circle of the areola, prompting me to moan. He took that as encouragement, circling his tongue around my nipple and closing his teeth down in a gentle bite. God, I thought only Karen could do this well. Once again, he interrupted himself and opened a drawer to the desk. He pulled out a very big gun. A .45 actually.