I wanted to spit in his face once he said that, but I was not that ghetto. But he did have some nerve talking about disrespect.
“Look, Tay’von, I don’t have time for this shit. Now, I understand that you have your little crowd, and maybe you feel like you have to put on a show for them, but do that shit with someone else.”
Everyone was waiting to see if Tay was going to let me talk to him like I just had. He was a star who didn’t have to put up with no bitch who talked back to him—at least that was how they saw it.
“I just don’t understand you, Tangie. Do you know how many bitches will kill to have your spot here with me?”
“Oh, please, Tay’von, spare me the speech. Please don’t think that you’re the only famous or rich dude I have ever been with. And I want you to know and never forget that if you chose to end this, you won’t be the last, and you can bet on that shit.”
Tay’von looked at me in disbelief. He threw the bottle of Rémy that he held in his hand at the wall.
One dizzy bitch screamed, and another one said, “Oh no she didn’t!”
I turned around and looked at all the faces around the suite and then back at Tay. “I want everyone to get out of here right now, Tay’von.”
He laughed, convinced I was playing. “Why do they have to leave? You came and found them here, didn’t you?”
“Oh, so you think that I’m playing, right? You’re really going to try to challenge me on this, huh?”
I looked at Black. He was the only one who had stood up.
“Uh, we’re gonna get out of here and let you two talk,” Black said as he yanked on Shamika’s arm to leave, but she stood up really slowly, hoping that something would go down before she left the suite.
Black pulled her out into the hallway, with Carl and Tony right behind them. The other three girls just sat there like they were watching a show. I was about to start knocking bitches out, but there was a knock at the door just then, so I went over and opened it. The hotel housekeeper came in with her cleaning cart, and the thought of catching a charge for attempted murder went out the door. I reached down and took the bottle of bleach that was sitting on the left side of her cart and ran over to the girls. I started pouring the bleach on them hoes and anyone else who got in my way.
“I asked y’all bitches to leave, but no, we have to do this the hard way,” I said as I splashed the bleach all over their clothes.
Tay’von tried to stop me, but I poured it on him too. He ran to the phone and called Tony and Carl back up to the suite. They rushed back up, but by the time they got there, the bleach bottle was empty and the girls were running out the door. Carl and Tony walked in on me screaming like crazy people, and they looked lost. Tay’von just sat on the floor, unable to believe what he had just seen. I was hysterical. I had been stone cold about everything for far too long, and I had cracked. It had been only a matter of time.
After screaming for ten minutes straight, I ran into the bedroom and began throwing things in an overnight bag. I didn’t know where I was going to go, but I did know that I needed to get the hell up out of there. Tay jumped up and came into the bedroom after me. He looked around the room frantically. He came over to the bed and took things out of the bag as I continued to put them in.
“Get the fuck away from me, Tay’von! Don’t touch my shit! I’m leaving you!” I screamed like a drama queen.
He took the bag of clothes and threw it on the floor. “You ain’t going no damn where! What in the hell is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? I walk in here, and you got all these people in here so they can watch your drunken ass get in my face and talk shit,” I said as I cried and talked all at the same time. I was so incoherent that Tay had to concentrate just to understand the little bit that did make sense.
“Fuck all this shit, Tangie. What I really want to know is where in the hell you were all night. What, you and Amira met up with some niggas or something?”
Even through my tears, I had to stop myself from laughing at his dumb question. “Fine, Tay. If you won’t let me pack my things, then I’ll leave without them.” I tried to pass by him, but he grabbed me and pushed me on the bed.
“Didn’t I tell you that you are not leaving? You’re going to stay here and tell me where you were last night!”
“Fuck you, Tay’von. You can’t make me do shit. I don’t have to stay here if I don’t want to.”
He yelled for Carl and told him to lock the door from the outside. The hotel allowed for the bedroom doors to be locked from either side. Carl did as he was told, and from then on, I was trapped.
“Now you can’t leave,” Tay said as he sat on the bed.
“This is so fucked up, Tay. How are you going to keep me here when I don’t want to stay? This is kidnapping, you know?”
“What? Did you think that I would just sit here and let you walk out? Come on, Tangie. We both have put too much into this to just let it go. Me more than you, if you ask me, so no, you can’t go. Now that we have that out of the way, you can either tell me where you were or I’m gonna get some sleep. I’ll call Carl when I get up to open the door. You might as well get some z’s, ’cause I’m sure you didn’t get any last night.”
“Fuck you, Tay’von.”
“Fuck you too, Tangie.”
And that was it. He rolled over and went to sleep.
I went into the bathroom and drew a bath. I got one of my baggies and took out my weed and coke. I locked myself in the bathroom and turned on my iPod. I stepped into the hot water, and I made sure not to get out until I had finished everything that had been in my drug baggie.
* * *
When I woke up, Tay had already left. I looked at the clock, and it was seven at night. I got up and walked into the living room area. Damn. We were gonna end up paying a hell of a lot of money for the hotel to fix the damage that I had caused with the bleach. I noticed that the same maid whom I had let in earlier was still there.
“Your husband asked me to come back and clean up as much as possible,” the older black lady said as I walked to the bar and rolled me up a white boy.
I asked her if she minded that I smoked. She said no, so I rolled up another joint and asked her if she wanted to join me. She sat down, and we lit up.
“It’s been so long since I have had one of these,” she confided in me.
“Yeah, well, enjoy. If it wasn’t for weed, I don’t know how I would make it through some days.”
She laughed as she choked on the smoke. “Shit, my friends and I used to smoke all day and night back in my day. But my husband put a stop to it after we got married.”
I looked at the older lady with a “Yeah, right” face. “I wouldn’t give weed up for any man. Half the damn time, I have got to be high just to deal with them.”
“Isn’t that the truth? Trust me, I know. After three husbands and four kids, I wish that I had never given it up.”
We shared a laugh as I looked over at her. Anyone could tell that she was one bad bitch back in the day. Hell, she still looked good. Her hair was as soft as mine, but whereas I had a tan complexion, she was damn near white.
“You know, watching you today totally reminded me of myself. I wanted so badly to burst out laughing when I saw you douse them girls with that bleach. Yeah, I had a red-hot temper too,” she said as she thought back to her younger days.
“I don’t know what got into me. Tay’von was yelling at me, and here were these groupie bitches . . . Oh, my bad. I have to learn how to watch my mouth.”
“Oh, child, please. I know all about them groupie bitches myself. See, when I was around your age, I was one of them so-called groupies. I went from singer to singer. We stayed in all the nice hotels, just like this one. I would have never thought that I would end up cleaning them today.”
“What happened?” I asked as I got up to fix both of us a drink. I wanted to hear it all. Sometimes hearing about someone else’s downfall could save you from your own.
“Well, when you’re young, you don’t think about putting money away. So when it got to the point that I had been passed around to everyone who would have me, there was no one left. No one wanted me in the end. I was used goods and yesterday’s news. I hadn’t saved a dime of the money that was given to me by these men. I must have gone through hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. But when you’re no longer the ‘good-time girl,’ no one wants you. But hey, I had a hell of a time while it lasted.”
I handed her a drink and sipped my own while thinking about myself. Could I really end up like her? The terrifying part was that any woman in my position could end up like her. Hell, many had.
She went on. “I have seen you around the hotel, but every time I come up here, you are always out. But now that we are sitting here talking, I just have to tell you that in all that you do, make sure to save some money to fall back on. Don’t count on these stars to always have your back. That’s one of the most important things that I have learned in my forty-six years of living.”
We drank and talked for another hour or so. She told me about her life, and I shared some of mine. I vowed never to make the same mistakes that she had made. I learned a lot from her that night and later thought about it as a chance meeting that was meant to be.
Before she left, I asked her for her name. She told me it was Mavis Brown. I got up and told her to hold on. I went to my purse and made her out a check from my own account for sixty thousand dollars. I placed it in an envelope, sealed the flap, and told her to open it when she got home.
* * *
I stayed in for the next two days. We ended up having to move to another suite once the hotel found out what I had done with the bleach. I also got a note from Mrs. Brown thanking me for the money. She wrote that she would be taking it and moving down to Florida to be with her mother. She told me that when she saw how much the check was made out for, it made her drop to her knees. She said that she would keep me in her prayers and that she would ask God until the day she died to be by my side whenever I may need Him the most.
A few days later it was time to leave Philly and head to Chicago, and everyone was packed and ready to go. The only person who had seen me since the day I went mad was Tay’von. I walked into the hotel lobby with my shades on and my head held high. “Never let the haters see you down” was my mentality. I walked through the lobby like the queen that I was. I could feel the hatred and envious looks that were shot my way. White, black, yellow, brown, and blue, it never mattered what they were. They all wanted to be me. When I walked by anyone, they stopped what they were doing so that they could take in all that I was giving out. Tay’von watched everyone else watching me with a smile on his face. He understood. My beauty and presence still took him aback at times.
“Damn, girl, you would think that you’re the one who’s a star,” Tay said as he took my hand.
“I am the star. Don’t you know that by now?”
“You’re right. I don’t even know what I was just thinking.”
With that, we got into our limo and drove away. I didn’t even see Amira at the desk in the hotel lobby, but she later told me that she had noticed me and had waited to see if I would speak to her. She said that she had walked away, pissed, thinking that I had meant to ignore her. But she knew she’d get a chance to talk to me in the next city.
During the plane ride, Amira tried to make eye contact, but I pretended to read a book the whole flight. After we landed in Chicago, we went straight to our new hotel, and I did not exchange words with Amira. It was not that I didn’t like her; it was just that her friend had freaked me out. Things were different with her. It was not like she was some man whom I wanted something from. I knew that love was what she was looking for, and I just didn’t have the time for that, and I was afraid to love. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about her. I craved her touch. I wanted her to touch me like she had before. I played the time that we had spent together over and over again in my mind. It was like she got stuck in my head, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get her out.
After hours in the hotel room, I had enough of just sitting around and thinking about her, so I decided to go to Tay’s show. I didn’t know how things would play out with Amira, but I just couldn’t spend another night alone in a hotel room.
When I got to the venue, Tay’von was on his second song, so I rushed past A’s dressing room, hoping that she wouldn’t see me, but I failed. She came out of her dressing room as if she were a hound dog catching the scent of a fugitive, and stepped in front of me.
“I really need to speak to you, Tangie.”
I kept my eyes on the floor, because if I looked at her, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from doing what she wanted. “Can you let me get by so that I can get into Tay’s dressing room?”
“No. I need to talk to you, so just give me a minute.”
“I don’t want to talk, Amira. There’s nothing for us to talk about.”
She lifted my head so that she could look into my eyes. When she asked again to talk, I was not able to resist. I walked into her dressing room, pissed that I could not tell her no. She closed the door and asked me to sit down. I did.
“So what is this all about?” I asked as she sat in a chair across from me and slid it close to me.
“What’s been up with you? I haven’t seen you, and you never got back to me. I must have left five to ten messages for you at the hotel desk in Philly. And I didn’t get a chance to talk to you the morning my friend dropped us off, ’cause you ran off. I don’t know what to make of things.”
I wanted to tell her that she had been on my mind like crazy, but I didn’t. I just sat there, looking everywhere else but at her.
“I know that this might be hard for you, but don’t you think that you should at least give this a try?” she said.
Rage filled me because I knew that I couldn’t.
“Give what a try? Do you want me to come to you and say, ‘Yes, Amira, I’m gay, and I want to be with you’? Well, that’s not going to happen. I could never just be with a woman. I know that we had sex and all, but I am not gay. I am not a gay woman.”
She put her hand over mine and tried to comfort me. “Look, I am not trying to push you into something that you are not into. But I do know that you feel something. All that I am asking is for you to be open about things.”
I looked down at her hand over mine, then back at her face. Damn, she was sexy. Thoughts of our night together flashed through my mind and turned me on. I crossed my legs to stop myself from taking her hand and putting it down my pants.
“Um, I think that I should get out of here.”
I stood up and walked to the door. My body begged for her to stop me. She came over to me and turned me around so that I was facing her. As she pressed me against the door with her body, I felt her breath on my neck. She pressed her hand against the door and just stood like this and breathed, in and out, in and out, in and out. Her breathing started to come harder and faster as desperation snuck into her soul.
“Tangie, please, please just give this a chance.”
I felt each word against my neck as she moved her lips. It was as if they were trying to pierce my flesh so that her words could find their way to my heart.
“Okay, fine. You’re not gay, but let’s not think about it that way,” she said.
She moved her lips from my neck and placed them on my lips, but she didn’t kiss me. They were just there. She looked at me straight in the eyes, and when I went to turn away, her yelling stopped me, “Look at me, God damn it! Look at me!”
I did as she asked. She knew that the eyes never lied, even though the mouth could tell many tall tales. And right then, she saw it. She saw the need for her in my eyes and knew that she had me. She kissed me with her eyes open. I kissed her back as our eyes stayed glued on one another. We saw the truth and didn’t want to look away. She touched me with her body and lips only. I moaned from her kiss alone and could f
eel myself wanting more.
There was a knock at the door, but I heard it from afar. Someone was telling her that she needed to head to the stage, but I had her within my grasp and didn’t want to let go. She pulled away from me and asked me if I could watch her performance. We left her dressing room and walked to the stage. When we got there, Tay’von was taking a quick break while Amira performed. He’d go back out later and close out the show. He kissed me hello and took my hand so that I could go to his dressing room with him.
“Oh no, I want to stay out here. I’ll be there in a minute,” I told him.
He gave me a “What’s wrong with you?” look and let my hand go. He didn’t understand but headed to his dressing room alone.
Amira hit the stage, and you could hear her fans going crazy. She motioned to the sound people to turn down the music as she hit the center of the stage.
“I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight. I have been working on a new song, and I want you all to be the first to hear it.”
The crowd went crazy with excitement as the music came back on. It started with a strong and sexy beat. The type of beat that would make you want to do a slow, sexy strip dance for your mate. Then her voice came in low, deep, and full of soul and lust. Her voice oozed sexiness as she started to sing “If You Were Here Right Now.” She had turned the poem that she wrote for me into a song. She must have written the rest of the lyrics when I was locked up in my hotel room. I stood there and listened to her belt out the song with so much feeling and heart that it gave me chills. I looked up at the monitors, and I noticed that she had tears running down her face.
The audience was quiet. I had never been to a concert where everyone was that quiet. By the time she was done, most people were in tears, including me. Once she stopped singing, everyone started to clap and cheer. She turned to where I was standing and mouthed, “I love you.” She turned back to the crowd and told them that this was her new single and that they would be able to buy it in three weeks on the internet, or they could wait an extra week to pick up the single in stores.
For her next song, Black joined her on the stage, so I left to go back to Tay’s dressing room. When I walked in, he was just coming out of the shower.
The Art of Deceit Page 13
