Skin Game

by Lawrence C. Ross

  As she wrapped her hair for the night, she decided to focus on what was right in front of her face and nothing else.

  Tomorrow things will be different, she thought.

  It was six in the morning when her cell phone rang. She instinctively reached for it, thinking that it was Donovan.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Keisha!” Steven yelled cheerfully. “How are you doing, baby?”

  “What the fuck are you doing, Steven?” Keisha asked. She almost hung up, but something told her not to.

  “I was just calling to let you know that I’ve been working overtime to make you into a star. I know that you wanted to leave us behind, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean?” he asked, laughing. “Hmm. Well, I mean that when you get to UCLA today, there are going to be some things that you just may be interested in. If they do interest you, give me a call. I look forward to hearing from ya! Ciao, baby.”

  Keisha hung up the phone and thought to herself, What the fuck is Steven doing and why is he still fucking with me? She didn’t want to fuck for Pimp anymore, so what? Get another girl, she thought.

  That muthafucka is dangerous, she thought, lying awake in her bed. She picked up her phone again.

  “Donovan.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Keisha?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Do you have to go to work today?”

  “Yeah, I was about to leave. What’s up?”

  “I just got a call this morning from Steven Cox, the guy who runs Pimp.”

  “You did? Why? How do you know this guy?”

  “He ran the video I did and he’s pissed that I told him I wasn’t going to appear in any more videos.”

  “So what did he say?” Donovan asked.

  “He was vague. He said that when I got to UCLA, there were going to be some things that interest me. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I’m a little scared.”

  “This is what I’ll do,” Donovan said, picking up his keys. “I’ve got to get to the construction site at seven, but I’ll tell the foreman that I might have to leave early. I have a perfect record, so it shouldn’t be any problem. If you get to school and there’s something wrong, you call me.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it,” she said.

  “Get some rest and don’t worry about it,” he told her.

  “I will.”

  Keisha hung up the phone and still couldn’t sleep. Patra wouldn’t be up until noon, so she couldn’t talk to her. And the dorms didn’t open until eight, so all she could do was watch television and try to get back to sleep. She watched it with one eye, trying to let the talking heads on the news lull her to sleep. But when they went to the local segment of the news, she found herself wide awake.

  “So we go to UCLA,” the anchor said, “where Jean Van Zandt is covering a strange occurrence on campus. Jean?”

  “Yes, Bob,” Jean said. Jean was standing in the main quad, where hundreds of students were just beginning to walk on campus. “The big story is a poster that has been plastered all over campus. It’s an X-rated poster about an X-rated movie called Inside Keisha! According to this poster, Keisha is a student at UCLA.”

  Keisha sat ramrod straight. This can’t be happening, she thought. But it was.

  “We’ve tried to identify if this is a hoax, or if there really is a UCLA student named Keisha in this movie, but we haven’t been able to get a response from school officials. Right now, the campus police are going around trying to take down all of these posters, and, Bob, there are thousands.”

  “Jean, have the students seen these posters, and what are their reactions?” Bob asked.

  “Let me ask one of them right now,” Jean said, collaring a student with a poster. “Hello, my name is Jean Van Zandt with KFOX. What’s your name?”

  “Roland,” the student said. He was a thin kid with a shock of blond hair.

  “Roland, what do you think about these posters?” Jean asked, putting the microphone right in his face.

  “Well, I didn’t think I’d see something like this on campus, but I think it’s cool,” he said.

  “You think it’s cool that someone on your campus is apparently starring in an X-rated movie?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, who knows if this is real or not, but if we did have a student in a porno, it wouldn’t bother me at all.”

  “Thank you very much, Roland.”

  “Bob, that’s the word from UCLA. We’ll keep an eye out for the reaction from campus officials. Live from UCLA, I’m Jean Van Zandt.”

  Keisha stood up and began pacing back and forth.

  Jesus, she thought. Jesus. So this is what that muthafucka had in store for me. The more Keisha thought about the humiliation, the more she felt like she really wanted to hurt someone, badly. She hopped into the shower and then got dressed as fast as she could.

  It was no time to deal with moving—she could do that later. She needed to get to UCLA as fast as she could. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she got there, but she knew that she had to deal with this. The genie was out of the bottle in the one place she didn’t want it to be.

  “Patra, I’ll come back by to get my shit,” she said, sticking her head into her room. Patra mumbled something sleepily, but Keisha didn’t wait to hear it. She was on her way to school.

  Chapter 30

  It is better to be bold than too circumspect, because fortune is of a sex which likes not a tardy wooer and repulses all who are not ardent.

  —Machiavelli

  Donovan arrived at the construction site at his usual time and began to work. Joe, his foreman on the job, was in the bungalow they were building, so he didn’t have a chance to ask him about getting off early. So he got to work, worrying about Keisha and what was supposed to be happening at school. What was this Steven guy up to?

  “Donovan, come here!” the foreman yelled. Donovan ran over to the bungalow.

  “Sit down, Donovan,” Joe said. He had a serious look on his face. Donovan didn’t have a clue what was coming next. The television buzzed in the background.

  “Before I start, I just want to say that you’ve been doing great work here,” he said, looking away from Donovan—never a good sign. “And you’ve done something I never thought would happen when we brought you on board. You’ve never missed a day and you’ve always given a great effort.”

  Donovan was listening to his foreman, but suddenly he was focusing more and more on the television, and what it was saying.

  “…The big story is a poster that has been plastered all over campus. It’s an X-rated poster about an X-rated movie called Inside Keisha! According to this poster, Keisha is a student at UCLA…” the television said.

  Donovan was stunned. He failed to hear what his boss was telling him.

  “Donovan, are you with me?” Joe said. Donovan snapped back to the present.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Donovan asked.

  “I said that you are now a member of the union,” the foreman said with a smile. “Congratulations!”

  “You’re shitting me,” Donovan said. “I’m in the union?”

  “Congrats,” the foreman said, extending his rough hand. Donovan took it and shook it vigorously.

  “Damn, damn,” Donovan said over and over. “I’ll never let you down.”

  “Oh, I know you won’t,” Joe said. “Now get your ass back to work.”

  “Joe, can I ask for one favor?” Donovan asked uncomfortably.

  “Sure, what?”

  “I came here today on time because I didn’t want to mess up. But I need to help my girlfriend with something very, very important. Could I leave now and make it up later this week?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Joe said, looking at his worksheet. “You would leave us short today.”

  “Joe, I swear that I’ll never leave early again in my life, but I really need to go.”


  Joe looked intently at Donovan.

  “Get out of here,” Joe said, smiling. He opened the door. “This is your one and only day off, but I guess since you’re in the union, we can let it slide.”

  “Thanks, Joe,” Donovan said, running out of the bungalow. “I’ll be back at seven tomorrow.”

  Donovan got into his car and headed to UCLA. He didn’t know where he could find Keisha, because she wasn’t answering her cell phone. But he knew there’d be a crowd of television cameras, and if he found those, then he’d eventually find Keisha.

  As Keisha drove to a UCLA parking lot, she felt as though every eye was on her, when in reality, it seemed like no eyes were on her. But it was different when she got on campus. She could see all of the news stations camped out in the main quad, and she figured that they’d do their damnedest to stop every black woman they saw in order to ferret out whether this Inside Keisha! star was real or imaginary.

  So Keisha decided to take the back route to Murphy Hall. She needed to get some advice—and fast—about what to do. And the person to give that advice was Belinda. As she scurried through Murphy Hall, no one looked at her face.

  “May I speak to Belinda, please?” Keisha asked. She was out of breath trying to hurry to Belinda’s office without running.

  “She has a student, so you’ll have to wait,” the receptionist said. Keisha wasn’t waiting. She breezed past the receptionist.

  “Hey, you can’t go in there!” the receptionist screamed. Keisha didn’t stop. She got to Belinda’s door and opened it. Belinda was talking to a student, and they both looked up at Keisha as though she were an alien.

  “Keisha, I’m with a student,” Belinda said, slightly annoyed. “You’re going to have to wait.”

  “I can’t wait,” she answered. “I need to talk to you now.”

  “I’ve got to go anyway,” the student said. “I’ll talk to you later, Belinda.” The student got up and left, and Keisha closed the door and sat down.

  “So how can I help you?” Belinda asked.

  Keisha looked at her queerly. “Have you seen what is going on outside? They’re all looking for me!”

  Belinda leaned back in her chair and looked at Keisha. “Yes, I know what’s going on, but so what? The school is not going to release any information about you, so they’ll cover the story for a little bit, but after something more interesting comes up, they’ll be gone. So relax and stay low, and things will work out.”

  Keisha leaned forward and started pounding her fist on the desk. “You don’t understand these people. The people who did this are not going to stop. They are going to release my name and then try to embarrass me.”

  Belinda stood up and walked over to Keisha. “Keisha, what is a smart girl like yourself doing in a porno movie?”

  “I needed some quick money,” she said. “I thought I could do this one thing, get away with no one knowing who I was, and then come to school and start over. But when I told this guy that I wasn’t going to do another movie, he did this. He’s not used to getting told no. Now this is going to jeopardize my scholarship, and going to this school.”

  Belinda sat back in her chair and looked out at the campus. She could just about see the boom mikes and the reporters talking in front of their cameras. She had to think of a good strategy to get this young woman out of her bind. There was only one solution she could think of, but it was probably the hardest one.

  “Keisha,” she began, “you have to understand your problem before you can come to the best solution. You have a unique problem, at least as unique as I’ve seen over the years. But I think there is a solution.”

  “What is it?”

  “The only thing this porno guy has over you is the fact that he can embarrass you. And he can continue to exploit you by making you hide. Do you want to hide from this all of your life, or do you want to look it in the eye and deal with it?”

  Keisha sat silent for a second. She stood up and looked out the window. “I’m going to face it.”

  Belinda stood up and put her arm around Keisha. “Well, if you’re going to face it, then you’re going to face it with support from me and Mary.”

  “What about my scholarship?” Keisha asked. “Doesn’t it say something about high morals, or something like that?”

  “Yes, it says that,” Belinda said. “But there’s nothing in there that says people can’t make mistakes and keep their morals. Don’t worry about the scholarship. It took me a hell of a lot to get it for you and I’m not going to allow someone to take it away from you. I’ve got your back.”

  “Thanks,” Keisha said. “Call Mary and let her know what I’m about to do, please.”

  Belinda got on the phone and dialed Mary. “Hey, Mary, this is Belinda. Keisha is about to address the situation. Can you meet us in my office? Good, we’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

  Belinda hung up the phone. “Done.”

  “Thanks,” Keisha said.

  “Ready to do this?” Belinda asked.

  “When Mary gets here.”

  Mary left her office as soon as she got the call from Belinda. She’d seen the posters on her way to campus and she’d seen the cameras. This was definitely a first for her. And as she walked across campus to meet Belinda and Keisha, she tried to figure out a plan. But in less than five minutes, she was in Belinda’s office, facing Keisha. She really didn’t know what to say. “I never knew that it would come to this, but we can get you through it.”

  “Thanks,” Keisha said. “I said that I wanted to be a women’s studies major. Well, we’ll be talking about this moment for the rest of our lives.”

  “That,” Belinda said with a wry laugh, “is an understatement. But we’re going to make this story a one-day story. No one will even remember this tomorrow. Are you girls ready to go?”

  “Yep,” Keisha said. “Excuse my French, but in the words of South Central, let’s go fuck these muthafuckas up.”

  “Well, okay,” Mary said, smiling.

  “Have you seen this shit?” Steven yelled to everyone in the office. “We are getting coverage hand over fist. KFOX has us on the air. I saw the posters on KABC. And I bet that we get coverage on the Today show tomorrow!”

  Steven was so excited, and he got even more amped when he took a long sip of his coffee. The caffeine put him into another dimension. He was literally bouncing off the walls.

  “What adult video company has wall-to-wall coverage? Pimp does. That’s who. This was fucking brilliant. I’m almost at the point of saying ‘fuck Keisha,’ this shit can just sell more DVDs.”

  Ray watched this from the corner, looking at Steven exalt in his grand strategy, and noticed how much his movements reminded him of what he watched on the History Channel. Steven moved just like Hitler. He was full of power, and he thought he was untouchable. It was fascinating to watch, but Ray also knew that it was dangerous. Here was a man who loved crushing people, and if he could crush Keisha, he could easily crush both him and Marty. It was just a matter of time.

  “Steven, we’ve got five girls ready to go and we’re set to do more of the Inside series in the next month. We got the publicity we wanted for Pimp videos. Why don’t we let it go? This shit can come back to backfire on you.”

  “Let it go?” Steven said in a low voice. “Let it go? No, Ray, when someone decides to fuck me, then I’m going to fuck them even harder. And I’m going to fuck Keisha so hard, her unborn kids are going to feel it.”

  “But damn, why her? What did she do besides not want to do any more videos? And you’re a fucking ex-lawyer, not some fucking hit man.”

  “I put one hundred thousand into her video,” Steven said. “We’ve got more hoes coming to do shit, but Keisha had that ‘it’ that we needed to really fly. Fuck it, we’ve already gone over the one hundred thousand video mark, and there’s no sign that it’s slowing down. She was going to be my Jenna Jameson, and then she fucking quit. Now she’s going to pay.”

  “How the fuck does she get ou
t of this?” Ray asked. “Do you want her to do another vid? If she does, will you let her off the hook?”

  “She doesn’t,” he said, laughing. “She’s going to be trapped by what she did, and I’m going to squeeze her.”

  “So there’s nothing she can do,” Ray said.

  “When she grovels, then I’ll stop,” Steven said as he left the office. “Until then, I’m on my way to UCLA. And if you still want to have a job after all of this, then you’d better get off your ass and come with me.”

  Like ants out of an anthill, Steven, Marty, Ray, and Rosario poured out of the Pimp headquarters.

  “Rosario, I want you to watch my back if anyone tries to harm me,” Steven said, pulling out of the parking lot. “You never know when one of those feminazis will come out of some bushes and try to attack me. It’ll be cool to have one of their own sisters fucking them up.”

  “Why don’t you just have Rosario attack someone?” Ray said sarcastically. “I mean, wouldn’t that make better copy?”

  As Steven cruised to a stop sign, he turned around and looked at Ray. “Why are you suddenly concerned with Keisha? Still trying to get in her pants?”

  “I never wanted to get into her pants, and I really don’t give a shit about her,” Ray said. “But I know that sometimes enough is enough. And I think you are about to go over the line.”

  “I am the line, Ray, and don’t you forget it,” Steven said, driving away. “In my business, there’s always some kid with fifty thousand of his daddy’s money who wants to make a porno because he thinks it would be cool. Usually it’s some white-boy college dropout and he’ll make more money than I would in ten years. So if I wasn’t born a shark, then you are seeing me turn into one. Gotta do it if I want to survive. And you’ll do it if you want to survive with me. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Clear as day,” Ray said softly.