Soul Siren

by Aisha Duquesne

  Yes, I was detached, disconnected from what I had done. I couldn’t even summon impatience over Erica’s mournful sobs, bringing myself to tell her snap out of it, girl, he dumped you, he was a bad person. We don’t wish him dead, but he doesn’t deserve this many tears. (I did wish him dead, and I had made it so.) Erica cried. I held her. I held my beautiful luscious star, and I basked in the warmth of her body, I let her tears cascade down her face until they touched my lip, and I revelled in their sweet salt. There were dreadful nights when she was close to exhaustion, already in her nightie, and I came into her bedroom out of sincere concern. But as I held her close and she rocked in my arms, barely knowing me, I could feel the press of her pubic bone through her cotton underwear against my thigh. My face in her hair, her breasts crushed against my own in her grief, I felt closer to her than even in the intimacy of our sex games with Steven’s toys at his house out in Santa Fe.

  After I finally coaxed her to slip back into her bed, whispering, “Sleep, Erica, come on, sleep, honey,” I went back to my room and my own en suite bathroom. I sat nervously on the sill of the tub. Shivering, gooseflesh on my arms, hot needles in my legs and feet, my panties so drenched, I was peeling them off me. It took only seconds of stimulating myself to reach orgasm. If she had kissed me, God, if she had tilted her face up, her generous breast escaping the silk the way it had so “accidentally” freed itself for Luther, and what if she wasn’t wearing underwear, if I could feel the tight curls of her wedge of fur against my skin? Erica, oh, God, Erica, if I only could comfort you the way I want to…

  Erica didn’t go to Steven’s funeral. The family organised it, and they didn’t deign to inform her where it was. His parents were called all kinds of names over this snub, including “racist” in the press, but Erica said she could understand how they didn’t want the funeral turned into a circus. “He must have told them,” I remembered her whispering in the apartment.

  “Told them what?”

  “That he broke it off,” she explained, her voice dead of feeling. “He must have told them it was over.”

  She never raised the subject of him again. Within a week of the funeral, MTV and Fox were talking about something else, and while I heard rumours that Vanity Fair had assigned a reporter to delve into the shooting, even the cops weren’t knocking on the doors at Brown Skin Beats anymore. Life had to go on. The dewy-eyed girls who had made up Steven’s fan base had given him candles that burned brightly but not for very long. When it came down to it, Steven didn’t inspire any moments of pause among household strangers the way people were stunned by the plane crash that killed Aaliyah. With her, you thought, my God, too young, so much potential, an innocent talent. No one could ever say Steven Swann was innocent.

  Steven’s death, however, prompted one significant decision in Erica’s life. She didn’t talk about it with me first. And I never saw it coming.

  Brown Skin Beats was one of those corporate cultures that loved their frills. As you walk in the marble-floored lobby, you pass a full-service cafeteria and an open plan bullpen for junior management with large aquariums of tropical fish. Somebody had ripped off this décor from the Bloomberg offices. My corner office was small but it was mine, and I also liked to take advantage of a large gym in the BSB basement. There was a room with rowing machines, stationary bikes and other equipment, plus a dance studio with a balance bar and full-size mirrors. Since Erica was my boss and I made up her schedule, which meant I pretty much made up my own, I liked to go down there in the afternoon when no one was around and do some stretches.

  It was three o’ clock when I strolled into the studio, expecting to find it empty, and there she was. This tall young woman who couldn’t be much older than me on a stretching mat. Her skin was a café au lait shade, and I had a generous view of it as she sat in skimpy shorts, her long shapely legs in a “V.” As she sank down to press her elbows on the floor, her oversized tank top was pulled by gravity, and I saw the divide for two magnificent full breasts. Her hair was cut short, framing an oval face with lustrous dark lashes, hazel eyes and a smile of brilliant white teeth. She gave me a friendly smile as I came in.

  I waved back and draped my towel over the balance bar. “I didn’t think anyone else used this space in the middle of the afternoon.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Did you book it for yourself? I’m new. I haven’t learned yet how things are done around here.”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” I said, and I introduced myself.

  “Jill Chandler,” she replied. We shook hands.

  There was an awkward pause where both of us didn’t know whether to go on talking or share the space and do our separate exercises. I decided for both. I took up a position close to her side and began doing knee bends, sinking my weight and sending my right leg back in a long stretch.

  “So what are you going to be doing for BSB?” I asked politely. “You in marketing? Production?”

  “I’ll work with Erica Jones.”

  “Oh.” A small but insistent warning rang in my head, like those annoying alarm clocks that buzzed over and over again.

  “Yeah,” she went on. “I’m going to tag along on her public appearances, go along to the concerts with her. She’s decided she needs physical therapy because the touring can exhaust you. It’s brutal.”

  “Tell me about it,” I chuckled.

  “You’re that Michelle, aren’t you? You’re her PA. Wow. Been waiting to meet you.” And then we were shaking hands again.

  “Why, uh, why would you be waiting to meet me?” I laughed.

  Jill went on stretching. I had stopped what I was doing, listening closely to her now, but I was very distracted by her movements. She was twisting and curling her body into the most flexible poses I’d ever seen. They resembled yoga stances, but they were somehow more energetic and suggestive.

  “Oh, it’s just I heard you were really nice,” she said.

  Aha. A diplomat.

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye with a slightly embarrassed smile on her face. “They say you make a lot of the big decisions when it comes to her, and…I mean they did say you were nice, but I know you’re important around here. I was hoping we’d hit it off. You know, new job, first impressions.”

  “Hey, I’m a kitten,” I replied. “I’m glad people told you that, umm…what are you doing there?”

  She stood up, blowing air from her lungs with her exertion, and there was a glow on her forehead and neck now. Her perspiration had an almost sweet smell to it.

  Smiling at me, she said, “It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s one of the reasons I usually duck out to use a gym all by myself. This is kind of an ancient African form of exercise and meditation, it’s uh—” She lowered her voice to a girlish whisper. “Kind of an African Tantric yoga.”

  “Get out!” I blurted, laughing. “Come on, there’s no such thing!”

  “No, really,” she said.

  She gave me the African name, but I couldn’t remember the multiple syllables, and then she touched me lightly on the arm for emphasis, reassuring me the art actually existed. I felt a sudden electrical charge, wondering if she was flirting with me. But my radar was never any good with women. Men were obvious. Girls were subtle and more difficult to read.

  “It’s wonderful stuff,” said Jill. “You should try it sometime.”

  “Hey, Sting, I’ll just watch you for now,” I joked.

  She shrugged an okay and knelt down again on her mat. Then she was falling back on her knees, arching her spine until her shoulder blades touched the floor. A swan neck and such beautiful graceful arms, her thighs so toned and perfectly sculpted.

  “Well, you’re just standing there staring, so you might as well get down here with me,” she said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Come on, we’ll do some regular stretches. Hey, I give a real good workout.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I said.

  And for the next forty-five minutes, we
exercised together. We gripped each other’s wrists and see-sawed forward and back with our legs spread out. We took turns holding each other gently around the waist as one of us raised a leg high. We ran in short sprinting bursts around the studio to keep ourselves pumped. I told her that was enough for me today, I was going to hit the shower. Jill still had reps to do on the weight machines, and then she’d head out for a jog down several blocks of Fifth.

  “Go with God,” I panted, towelling my neck.

  As she waved a goodbye at the door, saying she’d see me around, she passed Luther and traded brief hellos. Luther, wearing a tank top and sweatpants, spotted me through the glass in the door and walked into the studio.

  “Hey, how you doing?”

  “I’m okay,” I answered. “Made the mistake of trying to keep up with Wonder Woman there.”

  “She is something. How you holding up?”

  “Me?” I asked in surprise. “Why? Holding up under what?”

  “Steven’s death. Everybody’s been so focussed on how Erica’s coping with it, I wondered if anyone bothered to give a damn that you were hanging with him, too. He did take you along with Erica to Santa Fe, and I got the sense you two were on good ter—”

  “I’m fine, honey, I’m good. I don’t know if I could call Steven and me friends, but…”

  I shrugged, wondering what else I could tell him. Typical Luther, the one guy with the thoughtfulness to remember others were affected. Being smitten with Erica never gave him blinkers. But I was at a loss to come up with anything to confide for his trouble.

  “I understand,” he said, not truly understanding at all. “You kind of packed it away, haven’t you? I’ve noticed that about you. You’re so quiet, it’s like you think you’ll waste your emotions if you express them in public.” He gave me one of those sideways grins of his. “In a way, you’re the perfect fit for Erica. She’s so out there, so extroverted, she just gives it out in a tidal wave, and you, you’re…”

  “A dripping tap,” I suggested.

  “No…”

  “A birdbath?”

  “You don’t have to be so closed off about Steven, you know,” he tried again. “Especially with me. We’re friends, aren’t we, Michelle?”

  “Course we are, sweetie.”

  “Right. Look, it sucks. Big time. I’m not sure I completely liked the guy, but I worked for him and with him, and I respected his drive. Steven was always so go-go-go, you know what I’m saying? And in the middle of the night, even I’m sometimes so pissed at the son-of-a-bitch who took it all away.”

  I thought I better give him a little of what he wanted to hear. “I am, too,” I said in a small voice.

  “We go on,” he said, still in rallying mode. “We go on and make music and do business. I think it’s a good thing Jill’s come on board. I doubt Erica will need her that much, maybe for the odd wing nut, but she’s got the same kind of zing, doesn’t she? She’s really charismatic in her own way. And she seems to know how to be there for Erica without cramping her style.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about anymore. “You’ve lost me,” I said. “What do you mean ‘cramping her style’? She told me she’s Erica’s physical therapist.”

  Luther’s mouth grew from a tight-lipped line to bubbling laughter. “Must be Jill’s idea of a joke.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, and I still didn’t.

  “Well, maybe Jill was trained once as a physical therapist, I don’t know,” answered Luther, “but that’s not why she’s on the payroll now. With what happened to Steven, Erica thinks maybe it’s time she got some protection. Jill’s her new bodyguard.”

  So Erica had picked up another shadow, one right beside my own. I met Jill Chandler again that very evening. Erica’s limo collected me at the office, and on the leather seat waiting inside was the newest member of the team. As the car rolled towards our apartment to fetch the star, I asked Jill about her little white lie. She confirmed Luther’s notion that, yeah, she had a bit of an off-beat sense of humour, and besides, it paid to be discreet about her work, even when folks would eventually find out what she did.

  “It’s never good to come off as a big enforcer type or throw your weight around,” she explained. “I’ve seen some women try to pull that in this line of work, over-compensating for all the sexist shit they put up with. But look at me. I’m not that big, and I’m not really that tall. It’s just better to play it low key.”

  It made me wonder how she ended up in her line of work to begin with. Jill said she’d been a New York police officer for three years, and after the brief joy of graduating from the academy she had hated every minute of being on the force. A grind: the ungrateful public, the hazards, the politics, all of it. So she got a job with a high-profile corporate protection service, and after two years of walking two steps behind oil executives and bankers, realised the business depended completely on good customer relations and rapport with clients. When she set up her own bodyguard service, she took an impressive number of clients with her.

  “What about all that African Tantric Yoga stuff?”

  There was a wicked glint of mischief in her eyes. “Oh, that’s real. I wasn’t making that up.”

  I leaned forward in the seat, making the leather upholstery crunch, and I opened the mini-bar. Helping myself to a tiny bottle of Johnnie Walker, I tossed her another one and told her, “I see I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.”

  “Oh, we’ll get on like a house on fire, you’ll see.” She dropped the little bottle into her slim spaghetti-strapped handbag, explaining, “Can’t drink now. These are my working hours.”

  The car rolled up in front of our building just then, and Erica came down. At Madison Square Garden, I would have normally been watching the audience or Erica dazzle her fans. I had to stay alert and close by for any sudden chores, but tonight the show ran smoothly, and I watched Jill instead. Oddball girl, sure, I thought, but she’s nobody’s fool. Look at her scope out the crowd from the wings, ignoring the usual boisterous fans in the front rows, letting security do the mop-up on them. Jill training her eyes on exits, backstage corridors, places where the disturbed might find access. And when the show was over, hovering over Erica’s right shoulder, one step behind—able to stop anyone from chasing after the star but close enough to intervene if trouble jumped out of the blue ahead of us.

  When we went out on tour, most of the nights were uneventful, but early on—the second show in Detroit—I saw how Jill handled trouble. A white guy with a face full of stubble and eyes frosted over with an angry blankness moved out of the crowd and started bitching about how Erica wouldn’t let him see their child, why are you doing this, Erica? Completely made-up insane stuff. His hands extended to either shake her or choke her, and Jill was suddenly there, blocking the man’s way, folding his wrist in on itself and spinning him forward and then back in a wide arc. She sent him hurtling to the concrete with a dull thud.

  People were shouting things like holy shit and somebody call the cops, and Jill’s calm tone held a demand instead of a polite question: Erica, you okay? Erica not moving, staying put exactly as Jill had insisted in their agreed-upon contingency plans. You do as I say when there’s a problem, Jill had told her, or I can’t keep you safe. Erica was probably fixed in her spot more out of shock than anything else, just as I was.

  We asked her later: what the hell was that?

  “Oh,” said Jill, her voice casual, “a little police take-down, a little aikido. You two did well. I’m glad neither of you panicked.”

  The minor incident barely rated a paragraph in the entertainment pages, but it was enough to secure Jill Chandler’s job for a while. The problem for me was that Jill Chandler wouldn’t be satisfied with standing around and playing sentry.

  Michelle? Call me when you get this, please.”

  Morgan. Again.

  Morgan had begun to treat the message space on my mobile like he had squatter’s rights there, calling me at all hours to
“resolve” his royalty issue. I told him we’d discuss it when I got back to New York. He kept calling. I left a message on his answer machine that royalties were out of the question, but, yes, I was checking with the management of Brown Skin Beats to see if I could get him some kind of “bonus” for his work on Drum.

  Funnily enough, the decision came down to Luther. His stock had soared since his producing gigs on a couple of Britain’s hottest R&B stars, and BSB got smart and brought him inside, giving him a fancy title like “associate creative director” or some such thing. He still did what he did, only now he scouted talent, he assigned producing jobs, and he had budgets to manage. He made more money. Not enough to party like the stars, but he would be comfortable. When the tour reached LA, he was in town over a movie-scoring thing for one of the label’s acts, and he took me aside to discuss the Morgan issue.

  “Mish, why do you want me to sign off on giving him more money? Yes, he’s family, but he got a fair price on Drum.”

  I considered taking Luther into my confidence. Before his jaunt to the UK, I could have predicted which way he’d go on the issue. He would have called Morgan crazy or a liar over the songwriting credits. He would have taken Erica’s side hands down. No way he could see her objectively. After London, well…Integrity was very big with Luther. He would have raised a huge stink, gone digging for where the bodies were buried, found out if Morgan was right. And if Morgan was right? Well, his shiny spanking new job with BSB wouldn’t stop him insisting on public reparations, future credits in liner notes and in publishing, and if the label wanted the matter ignored, he’d say no and go public.