Chapter 2:

Drama Queen

Despite all the traffic and the clamor of the city’s denizens at its core, the outside world was comparatively quiet. Marvelous no longer had to shout mouth-to-ear to make conversation. He looked back at the club, realizing how hard it was to talk to anyone in such a place. What a strange way to meet people, he thought. He remembered his mother calling such places meet-markets—or was it meat-markets? She always said it with such derision, and he understood why—yet Marvelous could not be happier he had attended and had, in fact, managed to meet someone. Maybe such places were useful after all? Again, he wondered at the powers of alcohol, which seemed to make it all so much easier.

Of course, there are other ways to communicate, more efficient ways than talk, he realized: a smile, a wink, a dance. Besides, conversation was often mundane, so burdening. What, after all, do you have to say to someone you just met? This question mirrored his current concern—but it seemed Julia was more than capable to keep a conversation alive all on her own.

“…you know, the concert was totally phat. I mean, that’s what you’d expect right? Nothing less from Stylize. Right?” Julia slipped her arm around Nathan’s waist and pulled him close, leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Right,” Nathan answered, giving a nod and locking his eyes on Julia’s. He had missed the opening of what she said. Whatever. He was more intrigued by the warmth pouring off her body, heating him where they touched, wondering that the sensation could be the same glorious feeling he had experienced with Michelle, with Kelly, despite barely knowing this girl. He wrapped his arm around Julia’s waist, keeping her close, keeping her warmth close. She doesn’t mind it. She snuggled in to it.

“So my girl and I are singin’ his song, you know, Battle Cry 2009. The one that goes, ‘bat to your cranium / drop you like uranium / bitch in a ditch / and you’re threatenin’ / to bring it on?’ Anyway, there’s this huge ass bus and my girl, Sasha, she’s all wow!, so she walks up and starts bangin’ on the windows. ‘Who’s in there? Yo, who’d in there?!’” She continued emphatically, banging her hands on his shoulder. Marvelous listened, enraptured, wading in the stream of her words. “I’m tryin’ to pull her away, like ‘knock it off, Sasha, I’m tired. I gotta work tomorrow,’ but she keeps bangin’ on the windows, ‘who’s in ‘at? Who’s you got?’—she talks like that when she’s drunk,” Julia conceded, though she, herself, took on the slang with such ease. “Finally she stops, like, ‘bastards can’t even be polite and say what up,’... We turn away and hear the window thump. This big ol’ black dude pokes his shaved head out the window and, I swear to God, he aims a gun at us! A gun like this uggin’ big, then yells at us, ‘yo, bitch!’

“I’m scared shitless when I see the gun, right? I’m just standing there starin’ back at this guy, like duh, with my hands up. Sasha’s all ‘it’s cool, put it down. It’s cool.’ I can’t say ish. The big fucker has a gun! And he’s big! He’s twice the size of you!

“So he’s sassin’ at Sasha, and we hear another voice, somebody else inside the bus, ‘Hey Moose. Moose! Who id it?’ some slurred up shit like that, right? Like some’ne’s hard at the sauce. This big dude tucks his head in the window and says, ‘jus’ some li’l white bitches,’ which gets Sasha livid. You don’t just go around callin’ girls bitches, you know? Besides, he’s lowered the gun so it ain’t pointed at us no ways. Still, I don’t want nothin’ to do with any of this. He still has the gun, e’n if he’d pointin’ at the groun’. I’m pullin’ on Sash’s arm as she’s pullin’ back toward the bus... ‘who you callin’ a bitch?! Set your piece aside and come on out! We’ll see who’s a bitch!’ Sasha says.

“Now this girl is maybe a hundred pounds, five foot three inches of attitude and little else. Anyway, another window slides open and another shaved head pokes out—and of course, we recognize this guy immediately. It’s Stylize, in the flesh. Like, damn!—I can’t believe it!

“Now, Stylize, he’s like, ‘yo, Moose, get your black ass in the bus.’ Sasha looks at me, like, can you beliede this? That’s Stylize! I’m like, duh… —but I still want to leave.

“He looks us over and he says to us, ‘hey, why don’t you two come up an’ drink.’ He’s giving us the up-and-down and likin’ what he sees—and who wouldn’t, right?” With that, Julia nudged Nathan as if to say, you sure do.

Nathan couldn’t help but blush.

“So we’re staring up at Stylize, and I’m thinkin’ rappers with guns is bad shit. There’s too much precedent. I’m like, ‘no man. I gotta work tomorrow. Kick ass concert though.’

“Sasha’s not thinkin’ the same way. She grabs me as I step to leave and says to Stylize, ‘whatcha got up there?’

“’Liquor,’ he answers, and Sasha’s all, ‘duh! What kind of liquor!?’

“He like, ‘Chopin, Walker Blue, Cristal’ maybe a little Louis… on and on droppin’ serious labels. Sasha nods and says, ‘pass that shit down!’

“He hands her a bottle of Oban and says, ‘what’s your names?’ Sasha swiggin’ the sauce, so I say, ‘Veronica,’ pointing to myself, ‘and Betty,’ pointing at Sasha. Sasha hands me the bottle.

“Stylize gets it, he’s like, ‘you’re funny. Little white girls stealin’ Archie names like a black boy never been to the grocery store. Why don’t you two come up? I got better stuff up here. We can party.’

“He’s been staring at us this whole time, and not at our faces, so I’m thinkin’ no uggin’ way. I hear Moose in the background, like, ‘yeah, BOY!!! Stylize gonna git us some cream tits!’ Which warrants a complaint from several female voices already on the bus.

“Stylize turns back inside and starts yellin’ ‘shut up! God Damn! Shut up! White bitches be sensitive!’ Which gets them all laughin’. Suddenly, I’m thinkin’ it might actually be fun…

“I swig the bottle and reach it back towards Stylize, ready to wash out. Sasha grabs it before Stylize can take it, and downs another long pull. I say, ‘sorry, Bodycount,’ because that’s the other name he goes by, right? ‘Sorry Bodycount, but I gotta work early, early.’ Sasha nods in agreement and passes the bottle back to him.

“He says, ‘so it’s like that?’

“I shrug and reply, ‘feel free to stare as we go,’ and Sasha starts singin’ ‘Boo, you got the weaponry / tucked in them Gucci pants / you dangerous. Let me handle you properly / I got all the right credentials.’ You know, from off his first album, Danger Girl, or Baby, She’s Dangerous, or something li’e that. I never did like that song, but Sasha was all over it.”

“I haven’t heard that one,” Marvelous admitted.

“Yeah?” Julia nodded, then continued, barely catching her breath, “So we’re walkin’ away and they pro’ly can’t hear us anymore, halfway across the parkin’ lot, but Sasha’s still singin’. Suddenly this car goes screechin’ up to the bus. It’s this tight beamer 7 series, big rims, little tires, lookin’ like ‘wow’, total custom job, lean and beauliful.

“Anyway, this guy leans out the window of the car and he yells, ‘Yo Stylize! Who da bitch now?!’ There’s all sorts of yelling and shouting. Moose hangs the pistol back out the window, aimed in our general direction. Pop! Pop! Several shots pop off—and I swear to God, this uggin’ rifle comes out the back window of the beamer, and this guy, he guns all over the bus. Ba-b-bam-b-ba-bam-bam!!!

“Sasha and I are just standin’ there dumb as ugg with our hands over our ears. Our eyes and mouths gaping like we’re watchin’ holy Armageddon, or the Cubs beatin’ the Yankees, or some other far-fetched fantasy melodrama goin’ on all in our face, li’e contacts. Then this beamer goes tearin’ away from the bus, right past us. Sasha and I get a perfect look at the guy in the back seat, you know, the gunman. He got the window down. He looks right at us and gives us an uggin’ grin as he passes. He’s got the gun pointed at us in one hand and does this li’l gesture, you know, the tongue between the fingers, and just drives on like nobody knows who id is. Of course, ev’rybody knows who is.” Julia paused with a sad smile stretched across her face, not happy. It was one of those smiles people use to hide the hurt, and Marvelous realized the break in her story was in pursuit of levity, to break up the pain of… what was still to come?

“So go ahead. Guess who it was,” she says, breaking away from her slang.

“No,” Nathan shook his head. “None of that happened.”

Julia put her hand on her heart,” Swear to gawd!” she said. “Go ahead, guess!”

Nathan had no clue. He didn’t get the paper. He refused to watch the news. He didn’t know if he could pick Stylize out of a line-up, much less guess the grudges against him. He shrugged, his eyes going wide. “Did he die? Stylize, I mean?”

“Shot four times. Nobody lives through that. Seven people on the bus died, including three girls who just happened to be in the wrong place; partying. Two others lived, but all fucked up. One walked away, clean. All her scars on the inside,” “Where would Sash and I have fit on the bus?”

Nathan really didn’t like the final twist in the story. Why did it have to be about murder? Why couldn’t it be a romp, a mere anecdote, a brush with stardom? Why couldn’t it be about the intrigue of celebrity, or the folly of hero worship?

It wasn’t. It was a tale of murder in which seven people returned to the dirt. He’d had too much to do with death and killing. Suddenly, he felt sapped, his energy sucked out by the drama and hopelessness of the tale. The world was such a mess!

Yet, with Julia on his arm, he didn’t feel so lone about it. She was hurting too, and her pain made his pain manageable.

Who committed the murders? Who would Julia implicate? Nathan hadn’t a clue, and honestly couldn’t see why he should care. He tried to shrug it off. “Pat Sajak?” he joked, pushing back his own personal pains. Digs Burnam. Kelly. Angelica Scruples. Thomas Mosa Lexing. Michelle.

“No! It was Trigger!” Julia revealed, giving Marvelous a push to emphasize her point.

Nathan didn’t know who that was, his lack of reaction making this evident. He took the shove, straightened out, and continued walking as if nothing had happened.

“Of the One-Eight-Seven Club?!” Julia said, pursuing Nathan, Still expecting a reaction.

“Damn,” Nathan finally said in an effort to appease her. “That’s crazy.” But there was no feeling behind the words. Who was Trigger? Then he wondered if she had really witnessed a murder and stared into her eyes, looking for any sign of falsehood. He wanted to tell her a story of his own. I’ve witnessed murder, he wanted to say. I’ve witnessed the worse kind of murder. Meaningless. Materialistic. For some reason, he suddenly wanted to cheapen her story with the greater calamity of his own, in a grown-up version of I-can-do-better. He refrained from the urge and simply said, “I’m sorry,” and rubbed her back reassuringly.

“Sasha and I, we ran for my car, like, ‘what if Trigger realizes he’s left witnesses and comes back for us? What if he comes back and has more than murder on his mind?!’

“Suddenly sober—ish, we ran like hell is behind us. We jumped in my car and tear off, and the only thing she says to me the whole way home was, ‘can I stay at your place?’ I was more than happy to say yes.”

“The next morning, I skipped work and finally talked Sasha into going to the police. We testified and everything—but Trigger had like six lawyers. We were the only witnesses and the police never found the gun. Sasha and I felt stupid after Trigger’s lawyers got through with us. Why didn’t we go to the police immediately? We admitted to being drunk and it was over. They argued we were too impaired to see what happened, to see who did what. They alluded that we were whores, and even if we were there, we were blaming Trigger because he had money and public beef with Stylize.

“After the depositions, Trigger went all Jesus on us, making comments to the reporters, ‘They’s just confused white girls, can’t tell one black man from another,’ and, ‘Can’t fault the girls so much as the raycis system that raised ‘em’.

“Sasha and I are all, ‘Ugg you, we know what we saw, you bastard.’

“Later, like weeks later, we get personalized memorabilia from Trigger: autographed photos, albums, and what not. Somehow he got our addresses. Sasha, she freaks out, thinking it’s a portent. ‘He’s killed once, what should stop him from killin’ again?!’ I tol’ her he was just tryin’a get under our skin, but, Sash, she moved off and changed her name anyway. She wouldn’t tell me where she was goin’ after I refused to go with her, saying something about them makin’ me tell where she went or some crap. It was all so Hollywood. We were friends since second grade, and I’m thinkin’ I’ll never see her again because some thug rapper crawled under her skin and made her crazy.”

Julia sighed, her voice slipping the crude street edge, moving into a plainer diction. She didn’t fidget so much, her manner calming perhaps with this shift in personality. Marvelous wondered about this affected change in behavior. Was it conscious? Was she simply playing out stereotypes, was she changing moods, or perhaps personalities?

“‘Outrun a gun, fool / I got your number / its a four and a five / and a cal for your life.’ Uggin’ bastard.”

Nathan recognized the song. Indeed, he’s just heard those lyrics. It was the chorus of the final song at Club Wet. Now Nathan got the connection, why they left in such a hurry. It was Trigger playing over the speakers.

Julia smiled, far more reticent now. For a minute she said nothing. Marvelous simply allowed the silence, content to let Julia do what she would.

“Not the happiest ending, I know,” she finally allowed.

Nathan smiled back, hoping he was comforting and feeling bad about his previous contempt. He’d imagined the story was about witnessing some scandalous affair, a voyeuristic invasion of the gross drama celebrity attracts. But no. It was a story of personal loss, of a good friend going cold and walking away, of being rejected.

Would it have been worse if Michelle had left me instead of dying? Nathan wondered. How would it be if she was out there somewhere and simply didn’t care to come back? He shuddered to think of Michelle walking away, unable to love him, and that she ever could have left him.

But she hadn’t. She’d loved him to the very end and he’d continued to love her long after she was gone. In light of Julia’s story, that suddenly seemed okay.

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