All of a sudden, my cousin began to smile at me. She said, “You were always a thinker, weren’t you?”
I said, “I can’t help it. But all of my thinking may mess me up with guys. It makes things too complicated for me. I mean, I look at exactly what it is, a guy gets to go inside of you. And I don’t know how I really feel about that. Do I even want a guy inside of me? Why can’t I go inside of him? You know?”
My cousin started laughing at me.
She said, “You’ll change your mind once you feel it. You’ll want a guy inside of you. Trust me.”
I said, “Okay, what if I called Shamor, the camera guy from New York, over here to break me in tonight? Would that be right or wrong? I know he likes me, but I haven’t given him the time of day. I even messed him up with Maddy, because I think she liked him at first. But he was too obviously trying to holler at me.”
“For real?” she asked me.
I said, “Yeah. He says something to me every chance he gets. But you’ve made it easier for me to avoid him with these dinners we’ve been going to. But what if I did do him? Would I be stoned to death for it? And am I supposed to marry him just because I want him inside of me?”
Tracy shook her head. She said, “Now this is what I have the biggest problem with. There should be more meaning behind a young man and a young woman forming a union. I mean, what is the reason for it?”
“What was the reason for you?” I asked her. She had formed several unions in her youth.
She said, “I just wanted the possession. But in possessing a guy, they end up possessing you. So now I try to stay unattached, like you said.”
I said, “I know. And that’s why I don’t want to possess them. It’s a trap. You become owned by a man. And marriage sets you up for ownership. But do men want to be owned? Heck no. They call it the ball and chain.”
Tracy said, “Everybody’s owned by something, Vanessa. There’s just no way around that. Your job, your contracts, your house, car, credit card payments, your God. Everything. Nothing comes without some form of ownership.”
I said, “You’re right. And right now we’re all feeling owned by you. You’re the boss lady, and I pushed you into this. Now we’re all ready to complain about it, just like in a marriage. So I really got what Bruce was saying tonight. Marriage is interesting. That’s the most intelligent way to describe it. Because it’s not simple for anyone, no matter what Kiwana says.”
My cousin stood up from the chair as if she was ready to leave.
She said, “So you think I should just leave Jason and Alexandria alone? What about the other two? Is Maddy feeling his friend now? What happened with Shamor?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I said, “I don’t know about them. And I guess she just blew Shamor off, like he blew her off. But with Jason and Alex, if they really want to be together, and we’re still going back to L.A. this Sunday, then they’ll have to figure out what they’re going to do. So I wouldn’t even sweat it until they start trying to travel.
“Like they said,” I told my cousin, “they’re just hanging out right now. Jason was hanging out with Sasha and Jasmine, too, and nothing happened there. So . . .”
My cousin nodded. She said, “I get your point. I’ll just let her know that she should make her decisions based on something real and I’ll move on from there.”
She walked toward my door as I followed her to relock it. Then she turned to ask me before she left, “By the way, what do you feel about going with me to visit Vic— I mean, Qadeer Muhammad’s store in Germantown tomorrow morning?”
I smiled. I said, “I still have to do something with my sisters and see my mom and everything.”
She said, “We’ll have plenty of hours for that tomorrow. We’ll be on the road all day. So we’ll drive up to his store early, then I’ll drop you back off at your mother’s house after that.”
I said, “So, what’s the strategy for him this time?” She still had never been able to master the man. I was nervous about meeting him myself. But I definitely wanted to. And I noticed that Tracy was becoming accustomed to my opinions on things. She was growing attached to me. I never would have thought that could happen.
She said, “There is no strategy. I just want you to be around him for a minute to tell me what you think of him. You’re becoming, like, my second pair of eyes and ears to see and hear things more clearly. So get ready for it. He’s the real deal.”
I smiled as she opened the door to leave.
I said, “I know he is.” And I was already thinking about Mark Fletcher in the film role. But I kept that information to myself.
* * *
Talk about being nervous, I thought about meeting Tracy’s very own Victor “Qadeer Muhammad” Hinson, and I couldn’t even eat my breakfast that morning. How could one man have so much of an impact over women? It was unexplainable. I had never heard his voice and had never seen his face. Nevertheless, his aura seemed to be smothering us. It was just as much Victor’s movie as it was Tracy’s. Bruce was right again.
Jasmine and Sasha knocked on my door and were ready to go by 9:30 AM. Alexandria and Maddy moved a lot slower and quieter, but they were ready to go as well.
I opened the door for my girls, and they were already pumped with energy. They just bum-rushed my room.
“We’re getting the full Philadelphia tour today, hunh?” Jasmine asked me.
Sasha grinned and shook her head. “Is it too late for Ritalin?”
“For who?” Jasmine asked her. “I know you’re not talking about me.”
Sasha continued to grin and declined a response to it.
I said, “You guys are at it bright and early.”
“Hey, I’ve been waiting to see the city, man. We’ve been cooped up inside Freedom Theater every day this week. It’s about time we get to enjoy ourselves during the daylight for a change.”
She said, “We talked to Petula and Tonya last night, and all we had to talk about was the casting call and South Street, basically.”
“Well, you’ll get your chance to see plenty today,” I promised them. “But I won’t be there with you.”
They both stared at me in alarm.
“Why not?” they asked me.
“I haven’t seen my family since we’ve been here, and now we’re down to the last two days, so I have to see them. They’re already pissed at me.”
“Yeah, you gotta see your family, man, that’s for sure,” Jasmine commented.
I grinned and said, “But first, I get to meet Victor Hinson with Tracy this morning.”
Sasha asked me, “Are we going to meet him, too?”
“Don’t tell me you’re splitting up from us again?” Jasmine whined. “Man, I feel like such a stepchild. You get to meet everybody who means anything.”
“I’m the personal assistant,” I bragged.
“Well, what are we?” Jasmine asked.
I answered, “Regular assistants.”
Sasha laughed. She said, “You’re her cousin, that’s about it. That’s why you get to go and we don’t,” she said. “If Tracy was my cousin I’d be in the same position as you.”
“So you don’t believe I bring anything to the table?” I asked her.
“Like what, your pencil and notepad?”
Jasmine laughed and said, “Oh, that’s low.”
I told them, “If it wasn’t for me, none of us would even be here. I was the one who jump-started this whole film thing, and the idea for the clothing line.”
Sasha nodded and said, “That’s probably true.”
“Oh, so you do give me credit for that?”
Jasmine said, “Wait a minute, Tracy already said that she had been trying to get the Flyy Girl movie produced, and that she had friends in the fashion industry, so you didn’t jump-start jack. You just got her to stop sitting on the couch and make it happen. But the ideas were already there for her. And it was her idea to bring us all to Philly for this walk-in casting call.”
I looked at J
asmine and joked, “What? Let me find out if Jasmine has all her facts together?”
She said, “Look, I may talk a lot, but I know what time it is. Tracy is the beast. She’s really doing it. She’s my new idol, man.”
I had heard enough. I said, “All right, let’s get a move on. They’re probably all downstairs at the limos waiting for us.”
We walked out into the hallway and were met by Alexandria and Maddy.
“Speak of the devil,” Alexandria stated.
“That’s what we said about you last night,” I told her. It just slipped out of my mouth.
“What? What she do last night?” Jasmine asked. Everything slipped out of her mouth.
Alexandria huffed, “I minded my own business.”
It seemed as if she had a bone to pick that morning. I could read it as soon as we met up with her in the hallway. I wondered how much she and Maddy had talked about me in their room the night before. And if they talked about me, then I was sure they had talked about my cousin. You know, it’s hard keeping the peace among ladies sometimes.
I asked them, “Is everything all right this morning?”
“Does everything look all right?” Maddy asked me back.
I stopped and stared for a minute. I just knew they weren’t blaming me for them getting busted.
I said, “We don’t have issues this morning, do we? Because I didn’t cause them.”
“Whatever,” Alexandria mumbled.
It was obvious that they were beefing with me.
Sasha asked, “What’s this all about?”
She could feel the tension herself.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Maddy told her.
“Well, what does it have to do with you?” I asked Maddy. I wanted to get it all out in the open before we even started our day.
Maddy said, “All I’m saying is that we’re not fucking kids. And I don’t appreciate being treated that way.”
I said, “Well, why beef with me about that? I said the same thing to my cousin last night. I was defending our right to make our own decisions.”
“Well, what happened last night?” Jasmine still wanted to know. She was left out in the cold.
Alexandria told her, “None of your damn business, girl. You’re always running your fucking mouth about something.”
Before I knew it, Jasmine had mugged Alexandria into the hallway wall.
“You think you’re the shit. You’re not the fucking shit, you whore!” Jasmine screamed at her.
Maddy jumped on Jasmine’s back and yanked her head by her ponytail.
“Owww!” Jasmine yelled.
I jumped on Maddy to try and pull her away from Jasmine. Alexandria then caught her balance and rushed at all of us.
“You fucking bitch!” she screamed at Jasmine with wild, flailing arms.
Jasmine got loose from Maddy and rushed Alexandria into the wall again with a loud thump.
Boom!
Maddy turned and faced me. She said, “Oh, I’ve been waiting for this.”
Sasha pleaded, “What is wrong with you guys?”
But it was too late for that. Maddy was ready to attack me, and Alexandria and Jasmine were already throwing down in a full-fledged fight in the Marriott hallway.
Maddy tried to reach out and claw my face with her nails, but I backed up and slapped her arms down. Then I threw a left-hand cross to her face and knocked her backwards. That only seemed to get Maddy going stronger. She was a lot thicker than I was, so I had no ground to give.
When Maddy rushed me in the hallway a second time, I must have thrown about ten lefts and rights at her face like a Mexican boxer. I didn’t even know where I hit her, but I do know that she didn’t get a chance to hit me. I wasn’t going for it that morning. I hadn’t done anything wrong to them. They were acting like damn fools just because we had caught them with my cousin.
“Hey, hey, hey!” someone yelled out from behind me.
I turned and noticed an older white man with his wife behind him. He was attempting to break up the fight.
Maddy tried to rush at me a third time, and the older white man restrained her.
She screamed, “I’ma fuck you up now, bitch! This ain’t over with! Get the fuck off of me!”
“Someone call security!” the white man yelled as he struggled with her.
Sasha was shaking her head saying, “I don’t believe we did this.”
I guess she was embarrassed by it. Sasha was the only one who wasn’t caught up that morning.
I was too on edge to be embarrassed at the moment. But there we were, acting like uncivilized, ghetto girls in the hallway of the Marriott Hotel in downtown Philadelphia.
* * *
The next thing I knew, the hallway was filled with hotel guests who were peeking out of their rooms to find out what the hell was going on so early in the morning. Someone else had managed to pull Jasmine and Alexandria apart. Then the hotel security showed up, followed by police officers with guns, all for us.
“What’s the problem here?” the officers asked us.
They were both black cops, dark brown males in their thirties.
Sasha answered, “It was just a catfight that escalated into . . . this.”
I wasn’t much for words at the moment either. I was still in defense mode I guess. Then my cell phone went off. It was Tracy calling us from the limo downstairs. She had no idea of the mess we were now involved in.
“Who are you all with?” the officers were asking. They were filing a disturbance report and everything.
I answered my cell phone and told my cousin, “You’re gonna need to come in and get us.”
Tracy was pissed again. After everything had been settled, she got me alone outside the hotel and asked me, “So who started this shit?”
I didn’t want to dime on anyone. So I asked my cousin, “What did you say to them in their room last night?”
“I can’t remember,” she answered too quickly.
“Well, whatever it was, I don’t think they liked it too much,” I told her.
She calmed down a bit and put things together.
“So they started this shit this morning?”
I still didn’t want to answer that question. I said, “All I know is that I had to finish it. But I don’t know how they’re going to feel about me now as their friend.”
I liked having a crew of girls to support me. I can’t lie about that. So I felt empty after the fight. It wasn’t a win for me. I had lost my peace with my friends, if I still wanted to call them that.
Tracy shook her head. She was still trying to figure out what to do.
She said, “I guess I’ll just have to put them in separate cars until they all cool off. And you’re still coming with me. But now we’re running an hour late.”
At first, I was actually surprised that my cousin was sticking to her schedule. But then I thought about the movies she had made, and the determination on the set to finish each day of work, and I realized that nothing would stop Tracy from doing what she had to do once she decided to do it. She was used to jumping over, and piling through, unexpected roadblocks, and our fight that morning was no different from any other technical difficulty. The show had to go on.
We walked back over to the second limo and I climbed inside while Tracy had a few words with Robin.
“The chauffeur has my list of locations, and you just keep these girls apart until they get it all out of their system,” she said. “Vanessa is going with me.”
Robin nodded to her. “Okay. I got you covered.”
Tracy hopped inside the smaller limo with me and took her seat across from mine. And as we pulled off, headed for Germantown Avenue, she began to smile and shake her head.
I had no idea what was so humorous to her, so I sat silently and didn’t respond to it.
She said, “So you finished it, hunh? And busted Maddy’s face all up. You’re from North Philly all right. Madison didn’t know who she was dealing with.”
It wasn’t right, but I cracked a smile with her. I didn’t even see Maddy’s face. I wasn’t thinking about it.
I said, “So, we’re still going to meet with Victor this morning?” just to change the subject. I felt awkward viewing my friends as adversaries. And I still considered Maddy and Alexandria to be my friends.
Tracy looked at me and answered, “No doubt about it. You should have known we weren’t leaving Philadelphia without seeing him. That’s a given,” she told me.
I grinned and shook my head.
I asked her, “What is it about him that gets to you?”
Tracy shook her head back to me.
She said, “He’s a dominant black man. He’s the one white men are the most afraid of, and in awe of.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked her. My cousin would speak in poetic riddles every once in a while. I needed more straight talk. Not that I couldn’t understand her deeper meaning, I just wanted to make sure.
“Victor makes and lives by his own rules. That’s what all dominant men do. They follow the rules they want to follow, and bend or break the rules that they don’t.”
“What about you?” I asked her. She did the same thing.
She caught on to my logic and smiled. She said, “I’m a dominant woman. And so are you. That’s why you’re living with me now. You refuse to be the victim. You refuse to be oppressed. You seek what you want. And you map out how to get it.”
She said, “That’s dominant theory in itself. And that’s how you have to be.”
I nodded to her. It all made sense to me. And I was growing closer to my cousin every day. So if she connected so well to me, I wondered why she was so adverse to connecting to Alexandria. What was it about my friend that turned her off?
“So what do you really think about Alexandria?” I asked her.
I still knew what I knew about Alexandria, I just wanted to hear more of my cousin’s views on her.
Tracy’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Like I said, I just don’t trust that girl,” she told me. “And if I got Mercedes around her, Mercedes would pick her ass apart. She’s a pro at reading people. It’s a part of her survival mechanism.”