by Wallace Ford
As fate would have it, I already was thinking about making a trip to Los Angeles. There was a medium-sized film production company that was looking to raise capital to finance the creation of a television series based on the real lives of a famous politician, business executive, female sports figure and television personality.
The creative executives of this production company called it reality television. I had never heard of such a term at the time, and I figured that it might make some sense to learn a little bit more about this coming phenomenon in the broadcast industry.
There was also a quirky biotech project in Tarzana, east of LA, involving a Nobel Prize–win-ning biologist who was working on the technology that would allow doctors to “grow” organs—livers, hearts and lungs—on demand. It was a natural progression in the entire concept of cloning, and if it worked, it would change the world of medicine. Indeed, it would change the world.
As I was contemplating these weighty issues, I heard one of the Unholy Trio of Ralph, Jerry and Trini laugh more loudly than usual. This normally would not have gotten my attention, but then I heard Trini talking about California.
“Everybody knows, or should know, that of the forty-four people who founded the City of Los Angeles, twenty-six were black.”
“Man, you are so full of shit!”
That would have been Jerry James. You could always count on him for sober and insightful commentary, no matter what the subject. Trini was implacable, however, and he pressed on with his peroration.
“Listen, my waterhead friend, and you just might learn something. Although I really doubt that it is possible, given your advanced age and diminishing brainpower.”
“You can kiss my diminishing ass is what you can do.”
“As I was saying, what is even more amazing is that the majority of the founders of San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego were of African descent. And, Orange County, Beverly Hills and Malibu were once owned by people of African descent.”
I have to confess that at this point, I had to put my drink down. Either Trini was revealing some fable born of too many vodka cocktails and magnums of champagne, or there was some real unknown history that I was learning for the very first time. And now it was Ralph Watson’s turn to speak.
“Trini, you better not be making this shit up.”
“The truth shall set you free, Ralph. Just finish your drink and listen. The Picos, black Spanish-speaking brothers named Pio and Andres—and, by the way, Pio was twice governor of California—owned San Fernando Valley, Whittier and the area that we now know as Camp Pendleton.”
“What in God’s name possessed you to tell us all of this shit, Trini? We are in fucking New York. What the fuck do I care about California anyway?”
“Well, Jerry, I am going to try and be patient with your sorry ass. The fact is that California is in the media every day. What is more amazing to me is that most of us know nothing about the fact that the state is named after a black woman queen.”
My jaw dropped involuntarily, the exact same way that most jaws drop. It was now Ralph Watson’s turn to put in his two cents.
“You mean to sit there and tell me that California was named after a black woman? A black queen? You better explain some more or you will have us thinking that you have gone back to the glue-sniffing days of your youth.”
“The name of the state of California begins with a story read by the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortés. That’s right, the same Cortés who conquered Mexico and demolished the Aztec empire before entering Baja California, continuing his search for even more gold.”
Trini’s story had the ring of truth. Everyone at the bar at Dorothy’s went silent, or at least they became less noisy, as he continued. He was clearly on a roll. A friend of mine has used the expression, “Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.”
Perhaps it was a coincidence that I was thinking about going to Los Angeles just before Trini started in with his story about California. And perhaps it was a coincidence that Trini started to spin a tale about the black origins of the state of California that pretty much sealed the deal as far as my making the trip was concerned.
Even as Trini was speaking, I was looking forward to being in California and looking at the place with new eyes born of the historical perspective that I was hearing. Trini took a sip of his ever-present scotch on the rocks and continued.
“Actually, Cortés read the seventeenth-century best-selling adventure story written by a Spaniard named Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo. The name of the book was The Exploits of Esplandian, and it was published in Seville in 1510. It was written as a sequel to a popular Portuguese poem, ‘Amadis de Guala.’”
By now, crazy-ass Trini Satterfield had not only managed to capture the attention of everyone at the bar at Dorothy’s By the Sea, everyone within earshot was lending an ear. Relishing the attention, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a few sheets of paper with something of a flourish.
“I have been reading about this whole black-California story on the Internet, and I printed out some background because I knew that there would be some nonbelieving, white-man-glorifying fools in the house. There’s always one.” Trini stared meaningfully at Jerry. Jerry looked up from his drink and gave him the finger, smiling all the while. Trini continued reading.
“Here is an excerpt from the book that gave rise to this black-California story that featured a nation composed entirely of fierce, powerful, wealthy black women:
“Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island named California, very close to that part of the terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by black women, without a single man among them, and that they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body, with strong and passionate hearts and great virtues. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks. Their weapons were all made of gold. The island everywhere abounds with gold and precious stones, and upon it no other metal was found. The commanding Queen Califia ruled this mythical island.
“An island of fierce, powerful and wealthy black women? Hell, that sounds like right here in Manhattan to me!”
We all had to laugh at Ralph Watson’s smart-ass remark. But Trini was on a roll, and he was not finished. So we continued to listen.
“I did some more research and found out more about this mythical island of California. It turns out that there were four black governors of California when it was a part of Mexico, but in the mythical California, which was an island on which gold was the only metal and pearls were as common as rocks, the women were considered to be most powerful, and they had beasts that were half men, half birds.”
Reading with a dramatic flair that surprised us all, Trini continued. His enthusiasm was readily apparent and infectious. I actually wanted to know more about this myth.
“Get this: After mating with a man, the women would feed him to these beasts, called griffins.”
“Sounds like a girl in the Bronx that I dated about two months ago.”
You had to hand it to Jerry James. If nothing else, he was irrepressible.
“Now, when Cortés arrived in California searching for this mythical queen, he found her influence on him to be so profound that he paid tribute to this powerful black woman, Queen Califia, by naming the state after her. I could not believe it when I did some further digging and found out that a painting of this Queen Califia can be found in the California State Senate chamber in Sacramento, the state capital. There is a mural painted in 1926 by Maynard Dixon and Frank von Sloun in the Hall of the Dons at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. And, believe it or not, there is a large painting of Queen Califia on a wall of the Golden Dreams building at Disney’s California Adventure in Orange County.”
I thought about my early days as an investment banker. That was when I worked on municipal finance deals, a number of them based in the state of California. I tried to recall the stationery from California state officials. Trini
seemed to be reading my mind as he went on.
“Unfortunately, on the Great Seal of the State of California, you will see the Greek goddess Minerva instead of Queen Califia because Minerva was more acceptable to the Europeans who settled in the state. None of this matters, though. At the end of the day, after all the historians and anthropologists attempt to spin this story in another direction, the truth will still be the truth: California was named for the black woman Queen Califia.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Yes, Jerry, you will be damned. In fact, you already are damned.”
The rest of the bar at Dorothy’s laughed at Trini’s rejoinder. But the story stuck in my head for some unknown reason. And I am glad that it did. It was because of that story that I did something that I know Charmaine would have wanted me to do: take a break and breathe the fresh air of relaxation and pleasure. As Trini ended his story, I knew one thing: I was on my way to California.
CHAPTER 10
Diedre
A Day in the Life
I will never forget that September morning when first heard the news of Gordon’s New Orleans Fiasco. The fact that he had almost killed Ray Beard and himself messing around with cocaine and prostitutes was not surprising, and frankly, it was always difficult to summon up anything approximating sympathy for that lousy son of a bitch.
But the fact that he had betrayed Jerome, Paul and me was something that I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive. I had put all of my money and all of my dreams into my asset management company, DBD Financial Advisors. When I merged my firm into Morningstar Financial Services along with Jerome and Gordon, I wasn’t only investing my money and my dreams, I was also investing my future and my life.
When I found out that Gordon had damned near killed himself while celebrating his betrayal of Morningstar, I experienced a feeling of pure hatred that I had never known before. I know that I have a very bad temper and that I struggle daily to control it and to master it, to make that negative energy serve me instead of making me its servant. But for a few moments that day, all I wanted was to be able to visit severe and vicious and interminable vengeance upon Gordon’s nappy head.
Paul and I will probably always have our differences, but that morning, as we lay in his bed listening to CNN in disbelief and shock, he was the one to come to his senses first. While I was flailing and cursing and plotting all manner of pain and suffering for Gordon, Paul almost immediately got on the phone to call Jerome to begin to find a way to salvage the Morningstar venture.
And he did more than salvage the venture. With Jerome, Paul and me working together, we were able to get our company back on track, and we have been even more successful than Paul had predicted when he first suggested a merger of three of the top black investment banking firms on Wall Street.
We have greatly expanded our asset management business by focusing on union pension funds across the country. And Jerome has turned out to be a virtual genius when it comes to identifying great corporate opportunities way ahead of anyone else on the Street.
And through it all, Paul has been the perfect counselor. He has not just been making sure that the firm complies with the legal requirements attendant to the business these days. He has also been the advisor, the steady hand and the one person who never seems to ever get overwhelmed by the relentless pressure of Morningstar or the rest of his practice.
And then there is the added detail: Paul and I used to be married. Paul and I divorced many years ago. Paul and I remarried after the New Orleans Fiasco. Paul and I now have a two-year-old son, Paul Jr.
Several years after our divorce, Paul and I were able to establish an uneasy truce, and that eventually evolved into a comfortable friendship. And it was on this basis that we coexisted for a number of years. And it was pretty remarkable considering the conflagration of passion that consumed the end of our first marriage.
It’s still difficult for me to recall exactly why we came to a parting of the ways. We met soon after we graduated—Paul from Harvard Law School, me from Columbia’s School of Business. We were full of dreams. Paul was going to change the world through his work as a public interest lawyer, and I was going to found a community development bank that would change America, neighborhood by neighborhood.
We both found that neither the world nor America changed that easily. And it may be that the frustration of encountering the brick wall of harsh reality turned our union of idealism into a steel-cage match. To put it simply, we took our frustrations out on each other, and in the end, neither of us could take it anymore and we both moved on.
Paul became the suave, sophisticated and eminently successful corporate lawyer whose greatest asset seemed to be a network of contacts and relationships all over the United States and throughout much of the world. Whatever a client needed, Paul seemed to have a contact, colleague, friend or old classmate who could be of assistance.
I went on to climb the corporate ladder at Citibank. I think that it is fair to say that I was one of the rising stars at the bank. And then one day, literally one day, I was summoned to the executive suite and fired on the spot. I had less than three hours to get out of the building, and after my forced sunny sabbatical on the beaches of Anguilla, I came back to New York and founded DBD Financial Advisors, building it into one of the most successful asset management firms in the country.
Paul and I continued to build on our comfortable friendship after he proposed that Gordon, Jerome and I merge our firms. There might have been something more to it as time progressed, but I still don’t think that any word but “friendship” would describe our relationship.
As the merger progressed, however, Paul’s fiancée, Samantha Gideon, died of throat cancer. Her decline was sudden and certainly unexpected, and it seemed to devastate Paul in a way that I would not have thought possible. After all, Paul was always the rock; he was always there for everyone else. Indeed, Paul was the one who always made sure that everyone else was all right.
I had seen Paul endure the death of his father and his brother, but when Samantha passed away, it was something entirely different. He seemed to have absorbed a psychic beating that left him just going through the motions of life.
I don’t think that most people would consider me to be a compassionate person. I will never be the soft, cuddly type. But Paul’s pain almost broke my heart and I did reach out to him because, after all the years, I really did care.
And somehow, in reaching out to him, we both found that there was something special about each other that we never had been able to appreciate. And to put it simply, we fell in love, just like silly teenagers in some Norman Rockwell setting.
But it felt good and it made sense. And we got married and, even though we were both getting to that “certain age,” we went ahead and had a son. And even though the stress and strain of every day has made every day a little more difficult, our getting married made it possible for our wonderful, beautiful, lovely son to come into this world. And whatever maddening differences there have been between Paul and me, I can only be grateful for the blessing of that little boy in our lives. And I keep hoping that the blessing of Paul Jr. will be enough to keep our classic little nuclear family together.
CHAPTER 11
Sture
Cloud Nine
After Kenitra left Dorothy’s that evening, I found myself counting the moments until one o’clock like a child waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney. Except I knew exactly what my present was and where it was located: not under a tree, but in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
And so, after Kenitra left me savoring the delicious invitation to spend a week as her friend and lover, I tried to concentrate on my work as the manager of Dorothy’s By the Sea—with very little success. I tried to keep an eye on the bartenders and waiters, but all I could think about was Kenitra’s lips and that serpent of a tongue that darted out between them in the most sensual fashion. I tried to make sure that the waiters and waitresses were being pol
ite and courteous and hospitable, but thoughts of Kenitra’s breasts and thighs kept clouding my vision.
I should have been thinking about the obvious streak of madness that possessed this woman to stay with a maniac like Gordon Perkins for the years before he met his comeuppance in New Orleans. I should have been thinking about the danger of cavorting with Gordon’s wife while he was still alive. Instead, I just thought about those long, lovely thighs as being a highway to a heaven that I just had to visit that night or that might be lost to me forever.
And finally, one o’clock came and it was time to start closing the restaurant. Trini Satterfield, Jerry James and Ralph Watson were always among the last to leave, and this night was no different. Mercifully, they had exhausted their hoary hoard of stories and lies and legends, and they trudged off to whatever adventures the remainder of the night had in store for them. I waved good-night to them as they headed out the door. I don’t remember if any of the Unholy Trio even grunted a response that night. They might have, but my mind was already on an elevator in the Waldorf, and I wanted to make sure that my body wasn’t too far behind.
As always happens when you want to hurry, a hundred thousand little items demanded my attention before I could finally say goodnight to the night manager and get into the car-service car that I had already called. Kenitra had given me her cell phone number with instructions to call only when I was in a car and on my way. I absentmindedly noted that it was a California area code that I called as the driver headed north and then east. Thankfully, there was no traffic to speak of at two o’clock in the morning.
“Good evening, Kenitra.” I was truly at a loss for words. I hardly felt like the sophisticated manager and part owner of a big-time New York City nightspot.
“Good morning, Sture. I was starting to think that you might have gotten a better offer tonight and that I would have to play all by myself. Actually, I have already started. Playing—with myself, that is.”
