Tracy grinned, realizing I was prepared to defend my argument.
She said, “Meagan is okay. I don’t know about Solange, though. I mean, I hear she wants to get into the entertainment business, but you know how it is with the lesser-known family members. It just doesn’t seem to work. It seems like the Wayans and Baldwin brothers are about the only ones who can get away with that.”
“Well, let’s go talk to Meagan’s people then. We don’t have to use Solange. She looks closer to you though.”
I was just ready to do it. We were all out there in Hollywood already. What was the big holdup?
Tracy said, “Susan and I have already discussed the project with several producers, and none of them seem to get it. It’s just too many unknowns involved for them to want to finance it. Biker Boyz was jam-packed with known stars, and it still tanked.”
“But it did wonders for Meagan and Derek Luke,” I noted.
“Yeah, but neither one of them can open a movie, Vanessa,” my cousin argued. “What did Derek Luke do for Antwone Fisher, even with Denzel Washington co-starring and directing it? Nothing,” she answered for herself.
“It was up for an award at least,” I argued. I said, “And I think it depends on who they’re trying to open a movie for. If you asked urban teenagers, they’ll go see them in the right film every day of the week, just like they did for John Singleton’s movies. But if you’re counting on these stuck-up–behind Hollywood people to see it . . .”
My cousin cut me off and said, “You sound just like a college student. I used to be the same way when I was at Hampton. You get up in college and all of a sudden you think you can just up and change the world.”
She was halfway laughing at me.
I said, “Well, isn’t that why we go to college in the first place, to be the next wave of movers and shakers? You did it. I mean, you’re out here in Hollywood now, and a lot of girls look up to you. They may not have agreed with all of the things you did, but they love the fact that you represented the urban reality so well, and that you survived it. And they just want to see that representation on the big screen.”
“And you think I don’t? Some things just take more time, Vanessa,” she argued.
My cousin had a point of course, but I was already on a roll. I said, “What about when Spike Lee was doing all his New York movies? I mean, if we need to leave starstruck Hollywood and go back to the streets to get it done, then that’s what we need to do.”
I had put in overtime doing research on black films, while renting and watching them all. I had gotten gung-ho about the entire filming process.
Tracy said, “That was a different time back then, Vanessa. Independent films were a lot easier to be picked up for distribution back then. But now we have a lot of those same films going straight to DVD instead. Is that what you want to happen to Flyy Girl? I know I want a theatrical release myself, and not some underground rental sleeper. What’s the point in waiting all of this time to do that?”
She stopped me in my tracks with that one. I wanted to see Flyy Girl on the big screen, too, in a breakout blockbuster weekend, with teenaged girls lined up all across the country. I just felt that urban American girls deserved our own breakout film. We needed our own Boyz n the Hood and our own American Graffiti. Flyy Girl was it.
Before I could get out another word on the subject, Tracy’s cell phone went off. She looked down at the number before she stood up to answer it.
“Hey,” she answered while walking toward the kitchen. That’s all I needed to know. It was her “friend.” That’s all she called him, and she had been “friends” with him for over a year. But she never let him stay over at the house. She even used me as her excuse to keep him at bay. I would have liked to have lived on UCLA’s campus, but Tracy had gotten used to having me around the house with her.
“We were just sitting here talking about movies,” she told him as she strolled into the kitchen.
I smiled, realizing her game plan. She didn’t feel like having her friend over for company that night. That’s why she said “we.” Otherwise, she would have said that she was just sitting there watching television, as if I wasn’t in the room with her. I knew all of my cousin’s M.O.s by then. She was an interesting case, thirtysomething and as free as she wanted to be, and with all of her own money to pay the bills.
I was still a virgin myself, and I was not even looking out for guys. They were all case studies to me. Maybe I read too much into things, but their conversations never added up.
“Are you doing any homework tonight?” a guy at school would ask me.
“Yes, I am,” I would answer.
“You need any help with it?”
“You have media relations courses?” I would ask.
“No. I’m studying business.”
“So, how can you help me with my homework?”
That’s when they would start to stumble.
“I mean, I’m just saying if you would need any help with anything.”
“Well, why would you want to help me?”
“I mean . . . why not?”
Then I would ask them, “Don’t you have homework of your own to do?”
“Yeah, but it’s not that much?”
“So, you would spend that extra time just to help me?”
“Yeah.”
“But what do you get out of that?” I would ask them.
That’s when they would look confused.
“What do I get out of it?”
Then I would break it all down. “Time is money, right? So why would you want to spend your money on me just to help me to do my homework?”
That’s when they would forget how to add.
“I’m saying, I’m not even thinking like that. I’m just trying to help you with whatever you need help with.”
See what I mean? That explanation doesn’t add up. Nobody does something for nothing. If they did, then why would they make a choice about whom they would do something for? I had been an excellent student my entire life. I didn’t need the extra help. But I knew plenty of girls who didn’t look like me who did, and they didn’t get offered help for anything, unless they had a “friend” of their own. Sometimes not even then would they get help.
Like I said, maybe I was reading too much into things, but my understanding of the situation was not helping me to become comfortable with dating.
My cousin, on the other hand, had all the experience in the world in the men department. So when she walked back out of the kitchen with a can of Sprite in her hand, and was already off the cell phone with her friend, I was curious as to what happened with him.
“You hung up on him already? Is he coming over? I need to go upstairs now?”
Tracy shook her head and said, “You’re moving too fast, girl. You need to pump the brakes.”
“I’m saying, you walk out one minute talking and you walk back in the next and it’s over with,” I told her.
“He was just saying hi, which is still too much information for you,” my cousin told me. She retook her seat on the sofa.
I asked her, “Do you ever think about getting married and having kids now?”
Tracy looked at me and tried to decipher where my sudden question had come from.
“Is that a requirement in being a woman?” she asked me back. “You’re in college now? You tell me?”
I said, “No, but it is a part of life, and people expect it, especially when you look good.”
“Well, I expected you to have a real boyfriend by now, but that hasn’t happened either.”
She was right, I had none.
I grinned and said, “I have plenty of time for that.”
“So you’re not in a rush then?” she asked me.
“Not at all.”
“Well, why should I be?”
It was a set-up question.
I said, “Because . . .”
I didn’t want to be too bold about it, but my cousin was asking me for it?
&nbs
p; “What, I’m getting old and running out of time?” she assumed.
I grinned at her and ate my last spoonful of strawberry ice cream.
“They’re your words, not mine,” I told her.
“Yeah, but they are your thoughts.”
“I mean, people want to know,” I leveled with her. Readers were even asking her the husband-and-kids question through emails on her website.
“People also want to know when they can win the lottery,” my cousin joked.
“Whatever.”
We continued to watch Entertainment Tonight on the television in silence for a minute. They were doing a report on the success and the wealth of the Olsen twins, who were syndicated with reruns of Full House on cable. Since Full House, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen had grown into teenagers, and they had made a fortune on straight-to-video movies as well as a gang of products that young American girls were going crazy for.
“They don’t have to work another day in their lives if they don’t want to,” Tracy commented with a sip of her Sprite.
That only got me started again.
I said, “You’d be in the same position if you made a whole line of Flyy Girl products.”
Tracy stopped and stared at me.
“Would you let it go?” she asked me. “It’ll happen when it’s supposed to happen.”
“And when is that?”
I just couldn’t control my mouth about it. I didn’t even mean to say that.
Tracy shook her head for the last time and didn’t say another word to me that night.
* * *
When we walked up to bed and went our separate ways to our rooms, I decided to keep my comments to myself. I don’t know. It just seemed to me that my cousin had gotten soft and a little bit lazy. She was not the kind of woman to take no for an answer before, but there she was, living in a fully furnished Hollywood crib, with the black Mercedes parked out front, while telling me no about a project that she knew would work and would benefit her more than anyone.
My cousin was the official Flyy Girl. No one could ever deny that. Her book had come before all of the other urban-girl books and before the urban-girl clothing lines. There were no Baby Phat or J. Lo lines before Flyy Girl. Tracy could have racked up with Flyy Girl everything.
I thought about the Flyy Girl franchise all night long. I just couldn’t get the idea off of my mind. I mean, you have to understand, that with me waking up and going to bed near my cousin every night, it was like living with chocolate on your lips that you were never allowed to taste. So you walk around pushing your lips away from your tongue to keep from accidentally licking the chocolate off. You know what I mean? It was driving me crazy.
I had a million ideas about how to blow up Flyy Girl Ltd. as an urban-ladies clothing line. But Tracy always managed to cut me off and ignore me. One time, in the heat of the discussion, she even told me that maybe I should think about my own career and stop sweating hers. I ignored her at the time. People always say things in heated arguments they don’t mean to say. Then again, a heated argument is also when the truth comes out. And maybe that was the truth. Flyy Girl the franchise was dead, and I needed to think about something else worth my time and effort.
I figured maybe I could start my own flyy girl following. But I couldn’t call it that. My cousin wouldn’t allow me to. She still protected the name. So maybe I would call my club The Urban Ladies. Or better yet, The Urban Miss. That title had more pizzazz to it. I wanted to create something that symbolized the fact that urban American girls had it going on. Black girls, Puerto Ricans, Asians, mixed girls, and everybody in between who just wanted to fit in with the urban scene.
I mean, we rarely got a chance to shine in our own light. We were always the trifling girlfriend, the unknown girl waiting at the bus stop, the invisible secretary with no lines, or more commonly, the swimsuit-clad, dance-video chick. Hip-hop videos were what urban girls were becoming the most known for. And that was a crying shame, because they were pushing nothing but sex. Make it shake and bounce, swing it to the left, swing it to the right, drop it like it’s hot, stick it out the back window, pull it in, push it out, wiggle it all around, slide it down the pole, rub it up against the wall, now stop, and do it all in slow motion for me. Thank you very much. Here’s your paycheck and free CDs, and make sure you come out tonight to the after-party.
Need I say more? We needed better imagery than that. And I was becoming more pressed by the minute to make it happen.
* * *
Tracy woke me up that morning after I had gotten about three hours of sleep. It was a little after eight o’clock in the morning, and I hadn’t gone to bed until after five from thinking so much about my ideas.
I strained to look up into my cousin’s face. When I focused on her, she looked like she had seen a ghost that morning. She had that deadly still look in her eyes.
I asked her, “What’s wrong?”
“Susan’s uncle died in his sleep last night.”
I just stared at her for a minute.
“Edward Weisner?” I asked her to make sure.
Tracy nodded. “Yup,” she said. “So I need you to drive over there with me.”
I had classes to go to, but I wasn’t about to say it. My classes were not until later that day anyway. But I was still tired as hell.
I mumbled, “Okay. Let me get up and get myself together.”
We hit the middle of L.A.’s rush-hour traffic while trying to make it to West Hollywood Hills, where Susan’s uncle had lived with his wife, maids, and caretakers. I didn’t know exactly where it was, but I couldn’t seem to stay awake for the ride. We were not getting anywhere fast with L.A. traffic jammed up anyway. Los Angeles was a real headache to get around.
Tracy didn’t have much to say for the first part of the drive. She was keeping her calm. What else could you do when a family member of a friend dies? My cousin had to keep her poise for when we arrived at the house.
Out of the blue, she said, “He liked Flyy Girl, too. Once he got a chance to read it, he called it a naturalist’s book, unapologetic and without political agendas. He said it flowed exactly the way it was supposed to. So the people who got it, got it, and the people who didn’t, shame on them.”
I opened my eyes for a minute to see what Tracy looked like when she told me that. She had a slight smile on her face.
At that point, I didn’t want to rub anything in on her. I had already stated my piece and had started thinking about my own ideas. So I decided just to listen for a change.
She said, “He told me that every movie you do should be a dream movie. He said to write every film like it’s your last . . . because the inspiration of your people is at stake.”
Man, I was just itching to say something about Flyy Girl then, but I didn’t. I was going to see if Tracy would put together the ironies for herself.
“You have to believe that you can make a difference,” she commented.
She seemed energized by the memories. She was remembering all the important things that Susan’s uncle had told her.
“What are you gonna do with your opportunity?” she asked rhetorically. “You have to live your life with passion, because to live life without passion is like not living life at all.
“And those who create for the love of the art are consistently getting better, but those who create for the love of money . . . those guys are forever getting worse.”
I finally smiled and said, “That’s where you got the title of your sequel book from.”
Tracy looked at me as if I should have known that already.
She said, “You heard me say that before. You have read the book, right?”
I grinned. I did know it already, but her saying it was a fresh reminder.
I said, “Of course I read it. I was there when you two were putting it together. I just hadn’t heard you talk about the things that Edward Weisner told you lately, that’s all.”
She nodded and said, “He made a lot of good points. He was
the one who inspired me to do such a good job with writing Led Astray.”
“And what about now?” I asked her. It was my sly way of continuing to bug her about writing a great script for Flyy Girl.
Tracy didn’t look me in my eyes when she said it, but I know she felt me.
She said, “I know what you’re getting at, Vanessa. And we’ll just have to wait and see.”
* * *
We arrived at the Weisner house, which was in the side of the mountain behind the hills of Hollywood. No way in the world would I live on a mountainside like that, especially with earthquakes reported in the California region. I was nervous about just being there.
There were plenty of cars parked in the driveway and in front of the garage, so we had to stop and park on the street.
“How many times have you been out here?” I asked Tracy.
“Only a few times. It’s not like this was a hangout or anything,” she answered as we walked to the front door.
After we rang the bell, an older Mexican woman answered the door.
“Oh, Tracy, how are you doing?” she said and hugged my cousin.
“How are you, Mrs. Sanchez?”
“Maria,” she fussed at my cousin. Then she looked at me.
“And who is this?”
Tracy had never taken me over there with her. It was my first time.
She answered, “This is my cousin Vanessa from back home in Philly.”
I slid out my hand to shake Maria’s, only for her to wrap me into a hug.
“A cousin of yours is a cousin of mine,” she said to Tracy.
I was still too tired to recall everyone I met there that day. The majority of the visitors were family members, old associates, Hollywood powers, Maria’s family, and Tracy and me. That let me know how close Tracy had gotten to Susan and her powerful Hollywood family. But there was no crying and mourning in the house. They all seemed to use the gathering as a meaningful get-together that was overdue. They were even drinking wine in there. Tracy was shocked herself.
She asked Susan on the low, “How come it doesn’t look like . . . anybody’s sad in here?”