Boss Lady

  Jasmine sighed and went to see who was at the door. When she opened it she said, “Look what the catfight brought in?”

  I leaned my head toward the door to see who she was talking about. Alexandria and Maddy walked into the room wearing their pajamas.

  “Okay, where is everybody’s pajamas?” Alexandria asked us. “We’re ready to do the pajama party thing and order some more pizza for room service on our last night here.”

  “You didn’t tell us that earlier,” I stated. I guess Alexandria and Maddy were both willing to let the fight end and move forward with our friendships.

  “Yeah, give us an announcement or something,” Jasmine added.

  Maddy said, “You want us to come back in twenty minutes? It shouldn’t take you that long to change.”

  “What, we’re all girls in here. You don’t have to leave the room for that,” Sasha told them.

  “Well, you’re all acting like we caught you off guard with it,” Maddy responded.

  I said, “You did. We didn’t know if you guys were still beefing with us or not.”

  Maddy said, “After we done spent an entire day together, if we still had a beef, you would definitely know about it.”

  “For real,” Alexandria agreed with her. She said, “We thought about it, and we didn’t want to end this trip on a bad note like that, especially after it was reported in the newspaper. It really made us feel silly.”

  Sasha said, “Wasn’t that crazy? I don’t think I want to be a celebrity if it’s all like that.”

  “No joke,” Jasmine agreed.

  Alexandria then looked at me. She said, “So we went ahead and called up Tracy to apologize to her before we walked over here.”

  I nodded to them. “That’s good to hear.”

  Maddy spoke up and said, “We wanna apologize to you and Jasmine, too.”

  “Apology accepted,” Jasmine told them. “I fight and make up with my sisters and cousins all the time. It’s no biggie.”

  Sasha said, “So that means we’re all family again?”

  Alexandria grinned and said, “Yup, that’s what it looks like.”

  “Well . . . I guess we can order pizza then,” I commented.

  Sasha said, “The works.”

  “But no onions,” Alexandria told her.

  “Why not?” Jasmine asked.

  “Because you both talk too much with onions all on your breath, that’s why,” Maddy told them.

  Jasmine opened her mouth wide and exhaled like a dragon.

  Alexandria shook her head. “She’s crazy. We need to check her in somewhere.”

  I jumped on the phone and began to order the pizzas.

  “Yes, we would like room service.”

  * * *

  The pizza had just arrived when Tracy called me on my cell phone.

  “Hello,” I answered.

  “What are you all doing?” she asked me. “I guess you’re not in your room.”

  I answered, “I’m in Sasha and Jasmine’s room. We’re all eating pizza and watching a movie.”

  “All of you are together?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even Alexandria?”

  I guess Tracy was surprised by our last-minute unity as well.

  I said, “Yup.”

  “And Jason didn’t show up at all tonight?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Did he call her?”

  “You want me to ask her?”

  Tracy paused. “No, just leave it alone. But I do need to talk to you a few minutes just to wrap things up.”

  “I thought you were hanging out with Raheema and Mercedes again tonight.”

  She yawned noticeably over the phone. She said, “I thought so, too, but I’ve been pushing it all this week, and I really couldn’t hang tonight. I’m exhausted. They said they might swing past late.”

  “Are you sure you’re still gonna be up?” I asked her. It was already late.

  “No, but they can try me anyway,” she joked.

  I chuckled and chomped on a slice of my pizza.

  “Hey, stop being greedy, Jasmine. You always have to show off,” I snapped.

  The girl had grabbed three slices at once.

  She said, “Look, I’m hungry. Don’t let this great body fool you. I have to feed it to keep it this way.”

  “Whatever,” Sasha told her. “You got nothing on me.”

  Sasha stuck her nicely rounded ass out and smacked it.

  We all started laughing.

  “Well, what are you, the amazing Asian?” Jasmine joked. “You just got lucky, that’s all.”

  “She got some black in her somewhere,” Maddy stated.

  Sasha said, “We all come from Africa in our genealogical roots.”

  Maddy shook her head. She said, “Now you know she’s Asian when she starts talking that scientific shit. Genealogical roots.”

  We were having a ball in there, laughing it up like old times.

  Over my cell phone line, Tracy said, “It sounds like you guys are back to being the best of friends.”

  “I wouldn’t say all of that,” I told her.

  She said, “Well, I don’t want to take you from your girls. You go on back to having your fun.”

  “Are you sure?” She sounded lonesome.

  “Yeah, I’ll be all right. I got a lot of stuff to organize up here tonight.”

  Once she said that, I came up with an idea. “You need help with it?”

  “Well, I could use some help, but . . .”

  It sounded like she didn’t want to ask me.

  “We’ll help you with that,” I volunteered.

  She said, “I don’t know if I want all of them up in my room like that.”

  I walked toward the door to have more privacy. “Hold on,” I told her. It was still pretty loud in the room, so I had a good reason to step out into the hallway to finish our conversation.

  “Where are you going, Vanessa?” Jasmine asked me.

  “Just out in the hallway. You all are too loud in here.”

  “Well, at least we have three rooms in a row so no neighbors can complain,” Sasha commented.

  “Only Sasha would think about something like that. You know how quiet Asians like to be,” Maddy kept at her.

  “Would you stop it with all of the Asian jokes,” Sasha complained.

  “Yeah, you’re about to start another fight up in here,” Alexandria told her. “And Tracy’ll end up in the newspapers again.”

  Maddy opened her mouth, then she caught herself and changed her mind.

  “Nope, I’m not even gonna say it.”

  I looked at Maddy and nodded to her with a smile. She had to accept that every argument was not a fight. Then I walked out into the hallway.

  As soon as I was out of the room and closed the door, I walked away from it and said, “Tracy, they’ve been feeling like you’ve been alienating them this whole week. Especially with all of the extra meetings you’ve taken me to with your old friends. That also created some of the tension that built up into the hallway fight. So if you let them help you organize your things tonight it would be a good move to massage their egos.

  “I mean, let them feel close to you for the night,” I told her. “It’s our last night here.”

  Tracy sighed and said, “My room is not in the best shape right now. But I don’t hold that fight against them. I told them that.”

  I said, “Okay, but at least let us help you clean up or something.”

  “What, and have those girls complaining about me making them do more work on their last night here? They’ve already been working for free. That would just add more drama to the next ridiculous newspaper article.”

  “They’re not gonna think that,” I told her. Nevertheless, I think I spoke too soon. Tracy was probably right. My girls were ready to play for the night, not work for the night.

  I said, “So, you just want me to come up by myself then.”

  “No, I told you to go ahead an
d stay there. I’m okay.”

  I wasn’t convinced of it. I said, “Oh, did you ever catch up with Kiwana to ask her what she thought of the movie?”

  “Yeah, I called her, but we didn’t get a chance to go into detail about the movie. She was with her daughter again. I didn’t want to push it.”

  I was wondering again if Bruce was right in calling Kiwana a fence-jumper. The issue of our film project was still being avoided.

  “But like I said, Raheema and Mercedes are supposed to swing by tonight anyway.”

  As soon as she finished her sentence, there was a slight stutter over Tracy’s line connection. That usually meant someone was calling in.

  “That’s them right now,” she told me. “So I’ll just get them to help me tonight.”

  I was still hesitant.

  “Oh, okay. You sure?”

  “Go on back to your friends, girl. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I said, “Well, how come Robin and her crew are not helping you tonight?”

  “They’re out partying, too. But I get harassed too much when I go out. And I don’t want to have to punch a cameraperson out tonight for catching me out on the town just enjoying myself. That’s why I like Zanzibar Blue. Folks usually know how to act in there.”

  Finally, she said, “Look, let me call back my friends and you go on back to your friends. Okay?”

  She was the boss, so I said, “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow morning then.”

  * * *

  When I walked back inside the room, Alexandria was on her cell phone. She walked toward the door for more privacy herself. I assumed it was Jason calling.

  I still felt bad for Sasha about my cousin jumping ship on her. But you win some, you lose some. She wasn’t taking it bad.

  “We’re just chilling,” Alexandria said over the phone. “Okay. It’s whatever . . . It means, whatever,” she repeated with a grin.

  It sounded like Jason was giving her a hard time about her plans for the night.

  “Tell him to just come on down,” Maddy suggested for all of us. “Because you’re not going anywhere tonight. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do when she gotta do it.”

  Alexandria shook her head and didn’t respond to Maddy.

  “Okay,” she repeated over the phone line. Then she hung up.

  “So is he on his way down or what?” I asked her.

  Alexandria didn’t want to answer. But it was pretty obvious to all of us. So she went ahead and said it. “Yeah.”

  “So much for our girls’ night,” Maddy concluded.

  * * *

  We were all rested and fattened up with breakfast food in the morning. Our flight back to L.A. was not until three o’clock in the afternoon. Since the Marriott was only a twenty-minute drive from the airport, we had all morning to be lazy. Sasha and Jasmine’s room seemed to be our headquarters, so we were all holed up in there again.

  “Well, this is it,” Jasmine commented.

  We had our luggage stacked by our doors ready to take down to the limo. We had all said our good-byes to everyone, including my phone call to my family in North Philly, and it was nearing our time to check out.

  “We’ll be back,” Sasha stated. “We have a movie to make, remember? This was just phase one.”

  It wasn’t that we doubted it, we were just in shock that phase one had come to an end.

  I sighed and said, “You’re right. Now we have to head back home and get these Hollywood studios to see what we see.”

  “Maybe we need to bring them out here on location,” Maddy suggested. She said, “A lot of those people are just sitting up in their offices somewhere with a Hollywood window.”

  “I know that’s right,” Alexandria agreed.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Well, here goes our luggage,” Jasmine assumed.

  She went to open the door, and Tracy surprised us all with Raheema and Mercedes. They all walked into the room on us.

  Tracy said, “Well, you guys met Mercedes briefly at the casting call, but you didn’t meet her sister Raheema.”

  My girls were all speechless for a minute. It was a very pleasant surprise for them.

  Jasmine spoke up first with her hand over her heart.

  “Okay, let me calm down. I’m gonna stay calm,” she told herself.

  We all started laughing nervously. It wasn’t every day that you get to meet the real characters of a famous book. Of course, I had already met them, but I became excited and nervous all over again for my girls.

  “It’s good to finally meet the real thing,” Alexandria said with her hand extended to Raheema.

  The rest of my girls began to speak and shake Mercedes’s hand as well.

  “I just thought I’d make sure to introduce you all to my girls before we all left,” Tracy told us.

  “So, you’re the flyy girl of this crew, hunh?” Mercedes asked Alexandria.

  “We’re all flyy,” Alexandria responded. That shocked me. She was usually out for herself.

  “Okay, I can respect that,” Mercedes told her. It didn’t seem like she believed her, but she was willing to move on.

  “So, everybody’s excited about the movie?” Raheema asked all of us.

  Jasmine said, “You know it. Of course, there’s no part in it for a Hispanic girl, but that’s all right.”

  My girl was punching her little two cents in.

  Mercedes said, “Are you kidding me? Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam were big time in the eighties. And Puerto Rican dance girls, hanging out with the graffiti artists. You never saw the movies Wild Style or Breakin’? You better recognize. Tracy could pop you right in.”

  “She was just saying that to get a rise out of me. She knows I’m gonna put all of them in the movie,” Tracy commented.

  Maddy spoke up and said, “We all heard that.” And we did. Tracy had just promised us our cameo roles with Mercedes and Raheema as our witnesses, and none of us would allow her to back down from it.

  * * *

  On the plane back to L.A., we were all thinking about meeting Raheema and Mercedes, and all the fun we had in Philadelphia. However, all of our patience had been tried in different ways. I believe we were all returning a little more mature about life. We had learned something more about ourselves. And we all understood the humility and stamina we would have to have, not only with the Flyy Girl film, legacy, and franchise, but with anything that we tried to achieve individually.

  From her window seat next to me, Tracy asked me, “So, outside of the fight you guys had in the hotel the other day, how do you think this trip went?”

  I smiled and nodded to her. I said, “It’s been great. We all learned a lot from this. And I really mean that.”

  Tracy nodded back to me and said, “Me too.”

  Then I asked her, “But why are you flying coach with us? I just don’t get that.”

  I felt for sure that stars were used to getting the star treatment. But Tracy had a simple answer for me.

  She said, “I just want to know what it feels like to be normal again sometimes. This trip for me was like returning to my roots as a little girl. You guys won’t understand that until you reach my age yourself.”

  I smiled. But I thought I did understand. I had only been living in L.A. with Tracy for three years, but I was returning home that week as well. So I reminded her of that.

  I said, “I understand. I was returning home to my roots, too.” And I thought again about the promise that I had made to my mom and my sisters. I was out in L.A. with a serious job to do.

  Back to Hollywood

  When we arrived back out in L.A. after the Flyy Girl casting and location scouts in Philly, it was like, “Okay, now what?” Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. We got our three hours back, and they seemed useless. In fact, the time difference seemed like a reason to procrastinate. The East Coast hustle and bustle forced you to move a heck of a lot faster in everyday transactions. But I seemed to be the only one miss
ing that hustle.

  I created a things-to-do list as soon as the plane touched down, but it took everyone three days to move on anything. It was like my friends had gone into hibernation. Even Petula disappeared on me for a minute.

  I guess they all needed time to rest from the moviemaking process.

  My cousin Tracy, the boss lady, went right back to seeing her friend Dalvin, as if they had had no arguments about the film. Not much was going on at the Flyy Girl Ltd. office in Inglewood either. Did we fly out to Philly to begin casting a movie and set up a clothing line office just for the hell of it? I really had to ask myself how serious we all were. I know I was serious, but I couldn’t speak for everyone else.

  Charmaine, however, had remained busy on the clothing designs. So I was over at the Flyy Girl Ltd. office looking at hot new designs she had come up with for jeans, wraparound skirts, and tops. We seemed to be the only ones working. Charmaine was also from the East Coast, out of Orlando, Florida.

  She said, “So, product sales went pretty good in Philadelphia?”

  “Yes they did. I think we have a hit on our hands,” I told her.

  She asked me, “But was it Tracy they were buying into or the clothes themselves?”

  I thought about it. “That’s a good question. I believe it was a little bit of both. I mean, they liked the designs, but surely they were buying into the Flyy Girl franchise, and Tracy’s popularity is a major part of that franchise. It’s nearly impossible to separate the two. I mean, she is Flyy Girl.”

  Charmaine nodded and said, “That’s what I’m afraid of. Because if they are buying the clothes more because of its novelty and the connection to Tracy, I don’t know how long it will last past Tracy’s interest in it.”

  She said, “As a designer, I would rather the clothes be able to stand on their own.”

  “But doesn’t she present a good launchpad for the clothes?”

  “Yes, she does, but it’s a blessing and a curse,” Charmaine commented. “A launchpad is all that we’ll get if the clothes don’t catch on on their own. That’s why I’m working overtime on the ideas to make sure the clothes stand up. Otherwise, this opportunity for me goes down the drain.”

  She had a good point. I had always like Charmaine’s coolheaded logic anyway.

  She said, “I hate to admit it to you, Vanessa, but I would rather your cousin be more of a celebrity guest to events that I do for the Flyy Girl Ltd. line than a true business owner. I mean, she’ll still be the owner, but I’ll need her to back away from everyday business and just let me run things the way I know how to. So I’m kind of glad she’s not here much. It gives me the space I need to do what I need to do.”