It's Raining Benjamins

by Deborah Gregory

“Um, lemme see—‘Don’t chomp on my intestines, ’cuz that’s my lunch, you scaly toad’?”

  “No!” Pucci says, almost giggling himself to death before he gets the joke out. “He said, ‘Poop you later, alligator’! Heeheeheeheehee!!!”

  “That’s disgusting, Pucci!” I sneer, growling so Pucci knows I don’t think his jokes are funny.

  Bubbles, of course, giggles at Pucci’s joke, like he’s Dr. Doolittle or something.

  “Bubbles, you coming to my birthday on Saturday?” Pucci asks her wistfully.

  “Um, of course, Pucci. You’re the man!” I notice her looking at me when she says it, like it doesn’t matter if I want her there, because now Pucci invited her.

  “Come on, let’s go in the living room.” I motion to Bubbles. Having Pucci around is cramping my style.

  Galleria plops her Kitty Kat notebook down on the table, then whispers, “What are you gonna do about getting him a pet for his birth-day?”

  “Nada,” I whine.

  “What are you gonna get him?”

  “Nada,” I repeat.

  “You have to get him something, Chuchie,” Bubbles snaps.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I’m not fighting with you about it,” Bubbles says. Then she whips open her notebook, and starts acting like she’s a real songwriter. “Chuchie, you’re gonna see. It’s not so easy to write a song, ’cuz the inspiration has to hit you. Then it just kinda comes out.”

  “I know that,” I reply.

  “Well, lemme see what you got so far.”

  As I take out my school notebook from my backpack and put it on the table, I sheepishly tell her the truth. “I don’t really have much. I, um, just thought it would be fun if we did it together.”

  “I know, Chuchie—but you must have written down something!” Bubbles says, kinda annoyed.

  “Yeah,” I say, hesitating. I open the Italian section of my notebook, and shove the page in her face.

  “W-what is this?” she asks, stammering. “Doodle hour?”

  “No, look! What about this?” I say, pointing to the one line I wrote on the page.

  Bubbles reads it aloud. “‘There’s precipitation in the nation, and not the kind you think—stop blinking, and don’t pass me those shades …,’ That’s good … we could definitely work with that….”

  Bubbles takes a deep breath, like she’s going to give me a lecture, then taps her pencil on the table. “Chuchie, first you have to write verses for the song, okay?”

  What’s a verse? I wonder. But I say, “Yeah, I know that, Bubbles.”

  “So. Let’s work on the first verse,” she says, flipping to a page in her Kitty Kat notebook. The page is filled with lots of scribbling. Obviously, she has already been working a lot on the song.

  “Look at this,” Bubbles says, pointing to a line on the page.

  I read aloud what Bubbles has written, “‘Dollar bills sure give me thrills, but it’s nothing like the Benjamins, baby. Don’t maybe, awrighty, they’re mighty.’”

  Without thinking, I blurt out my reaction. “It kinda sounds like the song those girls, CMG, were singing in the New Talent Showcase.”

  “Yeah? So?” Bubbles retorts. “It’s not exactly the same. You can’t say that I’m copying them, ’cuz here’s their song.”

  Bubbles turns to another page in her notebook, and reads aloud. “‘Yeah, we roll with Lincoln/What are you thinkin’?’” Bubbles frowns. “That’s kinda like what you wrote, Chuchie,” she points out. “So don’t go accusing me of copying!”

  “Well, I don’t know. We both wrote things that kinda sound like theirs,” I volunteer. “‘Thinking. Awrighty. Mighty.’ It sounds the same, right?”

  “Okay, scratch that,” Bubbles humphs, kinda annoyed. “Let’s start again.”

  “Oh! Oh!” I say, getting all excited. “I thought of something to put at the end!”

  “What?” Bubbles asks, like she’s not sure she wants to hear it.

  “‘It’s raining Benjamins … Hallelujah! It’s raining Benjamins…. Hallelujah!’”

  I can tell Bubbles is pleased, even before she says, “I like that!”

  “I got that idea when we were at the ‘Mad Millennium’ Fashion Show,” I tell her.

  “Okay—now that part’s called the chorus,” Bubbles says. “That’s where the group sings the same thing together.”

  “Chorus,” I repeat. “Okay.”

  Bubbles’s wheels are spinning a mile a minute. “I like that … Hallelujah—that’ll work….” All of a sudden, she is deep in thought, scribbling madly.

  I don’t want to disturb her. I’ve seen her do this a million times, and the songs always come out la dopa.

  “How about we start it with—‘For the first time in her-story/There’s a weather forecast that looks like cash …’”

  “I like that!” I say, getting into the groove. “Then, how about something like, ‘Put on your shoes and spread the news’?”

  “Yeah!” Bubbles says. “That’ll work!” Writing some more, she says, “Okay—‘So tie your shoes to spread the news/And come around the bend at half past ten!’”

  For the next hour, Bubbles and I go back and forth like this, until we have two verses and the chorus. Bubbles starts humming a melody to go with the words.

  “You really are better at that than I am,” I admit to her. “How do you come up with the beat?”

  “I don’t know, Chuchie. It just comes to me, I guess,” Bubbles says, shrugging her shoulders and smiling sweetly. “Sometimes I start hearing the melody of a song before I even think of the words.”

  “Oh!” I say with surprise. “Well, I guess I’m not really a songwriter—but I do want to help sometimes, okay?”

  “Well …” Bubbles says, hesitating, “I guess so—but I don’t feel right giving you equal credit.”

  “Credit?” I ask in surprise, because I’m not sure what she’s talking about.

  “You know—songwriting credit, in case the song ever gets published or something.” Bubbles is acting like she knows everything about the music business, está bien?

  I can’t believe her. She can be so selfish about some things! Yo no entiendo—I don’t understand why she does that. I love her, and would do anything for her—and she knows that. Why doesn’t she do the same thing for me?

  Then, all of a sudden, the strength of all the brujas who traveled the earth on broomsticks gives me the courage to speak up for myself. I blurt out, “Bubbles, if you don’t give me song-writing credit, I’m never gonna speak to you again!”

  “Okay, you gnocca!” Bubbles blurts back at me, beaten for once in her life. Then a sly grin spreads over her face, as she gets her usual last word in. “But only if it gets published, you understand?”

  “Yo entiendo perfectamente, I understand perfectly, you babosa,” I hiss at her—which sends Bubbles into a fit of giggles.

  By the time the twins and then Dorinda arrive, Bubbles and I are still giggling about our first songwriting experience. I start dancing around the living room, singing “‘It’s raining Benjamins … Hallelujah! It’s raining Benjamins … Hallelujah. It’s r-a-i-n-i-n-g … Amen!’”

  Chapter

  9

  If I thought staying at the Royal Rooster Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard was something to cluck about, the Def Duck Records office in Rockefeller Plaza has definitely laid the golden egg!

  “How tall do you think that thing is?” I mumble to Dorinda, as we both gaze in awe at the gold duck statue in the lobby.

  “About fifty feet,” Dorinda says, eyeing the duck statue like it’s gonna start quacking. “They musta had a lot of artists with gold records to lay this thing!”

  “Elevator is that way, ladies,” says the security guard in the lobby, pointing to the back.

  “Look, that elevator goes to the ninety-second floor!” Bubbles whispers to me, because she doesn’t want the twins to hear her. They are bigger scaredy-cats than the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz when it c
omes to riding elevators.

  Madrina pushes the button for the forty-ninth floor, and I’m just hoping the twins don’t have a barf attack in front of the record company executives!

  “I guess we can’t ask the record company to move their offices to a lower floor yet,” Madrina says, putting her arm around Aquanette. “Not until they give us a deal, huh?”

  “No, ma’am,” Aqua says. She always gets very formal when she’s scared.

  Gracias, gooseness, I think, as we step into the reception area. The twins held on to their lunch.

  The reception area is really quiet. I thought there would be music playing everywhere. Mr. Freddy Fudge comes to get us. He’s a tall, skinny guy with blond, short, fuzzy hair, and a chocolate-brown complexion like the twins. He looks tan coolio, too, in his black-and-white-checked blazer with a red handkerchief in the pocket. I almost blurt out that red is one of my favorite colors, but I’m too nervous to even speak!

  “We met an A & R gentlemen, Mr. Tom Isaaks, at the New Talent Showcase in Los Angeles,” Madrina tells Freddie Fudge as we walk down the hallway.

  “Yes, he’s on the West Coast.” Mr. Fudge then goes on to explain that he too is an A&R development executive—for R&B artists.

  We’re not R&B artists! I think to myself—but I’m not saying anything. Bubbles looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

  Luckily, Madrina says something before Bubbles does. “Mr. Fudge—”

  “Call me Freddy,” he says, as we walk down a long, skinny hallway past a whole lot of cubicles and offices. Everybody seems really busy here.

  “Freddy—you know, the Cheetah Girls aren’t really an R & B group.”

  “Oh, I know, Mrs. Garibaldi,” Freddy says apologetically. “It’s just a catchphrase in the music business, for, um, ‘urban music.’”

  “Oh. Okay,” Madrina says, smiling. “The girls like to think of their music as ‘global groove.’”

  “Excellent. There’s a hook we can really work with—that is, if everything works out,” Freddy says cautiously. He opens the door to a conference room, and motions for us to step inside.

  “Thank you—” I say, then stop myself from saying his name, because I’m not sure if it’s okay for us to call him Freddy, or if we’re supposed to call him Mr. Fudge. I’ll ask Madrina later.

  Mr. Fudge introduces us to the three other people sitting in the room. “This is my assistant, Haruko Yamahaki. Mouse Almighty, the producer you’ll be working with for the next few months—and hopefully longer than that, if everything goes well—and Mr. Chunky Carter, one of our new talent coordinators.”

  After sitting down at the conference table, Madrina pipes up. “Freddy, you mentioned something about a test single—”

  “Yes, Mrs. Garibaldi. Let me explain. Mouse is going to be responsible for selecting songs from various songwriters that he feels would really showcase the Cheetah Girls,” Freddy says, his hands propped up on the table, folded in a tent position.

  “If we feel that the songs are strong enough, the Cheetah Girls will be given a record deal option with Def Duck, for the release of one ‘test single.’ If that single tests well in the marketplace, the girls will then be given a full record deal, and you’ll go back in the studio and cut an album.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Garibaldi says.

  “I know it’s a long process,” Mr. Fudge continues. “But these days, we only add a certain number of artists to our roster each year. That way, we can spend the proper time, energy, and money on artist development, marketing, and promotion. I hope you understand that.”

  “Yes, we do—although you’ll soon see that these girls have already been groomed to take over the world!” Madrina says with a knowing chuckle.

  Everybody in the conference room laughs along with her, including Haruko, who has a funny laugh. All of a sudden, I start to feel more relaxed. Looking around, I see that my crew is feeling the same way.

  “Would you girls like a soda?” Haruko asks, her dark eyes twinkling. “Take one, please.”

  I can’t stop staring at Haruko’s lips. Her red lipstick looks really la dopa with her long black straight hair. I love red lipstick—even though I don’t wear it yet, because I’m afraid I’ll mess it up. I wonder how she gets it to look so perfect.

  “We would love a soda,” Aqua pipes up, which for some crazy reason gets us all giggling again.

  Now Chunky starts talking, telling us that he will be working with us to coordinate our studio sessions with Mouse, and handling everything else that needs to be done.

  “Why don’t you girls tell us a little about yourselves?” Mouse suggests, then leans back into his chair like a Big Willy. He doesn’t look like a Mouse at all. I wonder how he got his name….

  “Well,” Bubbles says, speaking up for us. “We’re wanna-be stars in the jiggy jungle, I guess.”

  Haruko does that laugh again, which makes me laugh, too. Bubbles looks at me, but I’m sorry—I can’t help it.

  “How did you girls hook up?” Chunky asks, curious.

  “Chuchie, I mean, Chanel and I have been friends since we were born. See, our mothers used to be models together, and then my mom became Chanel’s godmother and everything.”

  “Chanel and Galleria and I all go to the same high school—Fashion Industries East,” Dorinda says, smiling and showing off her cute little dimples.

  “And we met them at the Kats and Kittys Klub!” Aqua explains enthusiastically. “We wuz singing by the barbecue grill, and they just loved us!”

  Now Bubbles and I start laughing loudly—because that’s not exactly true. Aqua is telling a fib-eroni. Bubbles hated her and Angie at first, because she thought they were show-offs.

  Actually, I think Bubbles was just kinda jealous, because we’d never been asked to sing at a Kats and Kittys party, and we’re from New York. Then here come Angie and Aqua, straight out of Houston, and they just kinda take over, está bien?

  After we blab some more about our music, Mr. Freddy Fudge is back down to business. “What I will need is for you and the girls to sign an agreement. It states that Def Duck is providing the financial arrangements for a demo tape, but we’re under no obligation to give you a record deal until such time as we deem it viable to enter into such an agreement.”

  “I’ll have my lawyer look it over, and get back to you,” Madrina says, like a real manager.

  “Okay,” Mr. Fudge says, rising from the table and reaching over to shake Madrina’s hand.

  We say good-bye to everyone fifty times. As we’re leaving, Dorinda turns to Haruko and says, “Thank you for the soda. Um, I like your name.”

  Haruko laughs that funny laugh of hers again, and replies, “I like yours, too.”

  “What does yours mean?” Dorinda asks curiously, looking around at us to make sure she’s not holding up anything.

  “It means ‘child born in the spring’ in Japanese,” Haruko says, beaming like she’s really happy someone asked her something about herself. “What does yours mean, Dorinda?”

  “‘God’s gift,’” Dorinda says, smiling back.

  Madrina puts her arms around Dorinda and says, “Come on, ‘God’s gift.’ Let’s go eat a well-deserved early dinner.”

  We all wave good-bye to each other fifty more times, before we finally head back down to the lobby, where Mr. Golden Duck Statue is still standing.

  Bubbles waves good-bye to the statue. “Good-bye, Mr. Ducky, you made us feel lucky!” she says.

  “Hey! That’s a song!” I exclaim, feeling like I’m sitting on top of the world.

  “That’s not a song, Chuchie,” Bubbles says, giggling. But she’s really nice about it, and puts her arm around me.

  I guess she’s right—that would be a stupid song. Still, I’m so excited about the fact that Bubbles and I wrote a song together that I tell Madrina all about it as we walk down the street.

  “I like it!” Madrina says, when I tell her the words to the refrain. “God knows we could use a cash money shower right
about now—even if it’s only a shower of George Washingtons!”

  Chapter

  10

  You know,” Madrina says as we stand on the corner, waiting for the light to change, “if this all works out, I’m going to talk to the record company executives about recording some of your songs.”

  “That’s a done deal-io!” Bubbles says excitedly.

  “You know, at the end of the day in this business, it’s all about publishing rights,” Madrina says, getting serious. “That’s where the real money falls from the sky.”

  “Publishing rights—what are they?” Dorinda asks.

  “Well,” Madrina explains, “the person who writes the song collects publishing royalties for as long as the song sells, is played on the radio, gets used for motion picture sound tracks or television commercials—you name it, there’s a way to claim publishing payments.”

  “Word? That’s dope!” Dorinda says. And now I can see that the songwriting wheels are turning in her head, too.

  “Well, we’ve got to try to get every ducket in the bucket,” Bubbles says emphatically. Then she turns to me. “Chuchie, we’re gonna have to work on our song some more, you know?”

  “Yo sé, mamacita!” I say enthusiastically.

  “What time do we have to be at your house on Saturday?” she asks me.

  “Noon, I guess,” I say wistfully, because it suddenly hits me that I still don’t have a present for Pucci. And now that the day is almost here, I realize that I can’t just get him nada, like I said.

  “Madrina, do you think I could have my paycheck today instead of Saturday?” I ask, in my sweetest voice.

  For working three afternoons at Toto in New York … Fun in Diva Sizes, I get forty dollars a week—half of which I have to give to Mom to pay back the charges I sneaked on her credit card like a babosa.

  “I think we can arrange something,” Madrina says. “You’re buying Pucci a birthday present?” she asks excitedly.

  “Well, I guess,” I say, kinda puzzled.

  “Chuchie, here,” Bubbles says, taking some money out of her cheetah wallet and stuffing it into my hand.

  I must be dreaming, because Bubbles wouldn’t give me money if the sky was falling.