The Accidental Diva Read online

  “You’re serious.”

  “Take it, it’s a gift.”

  “I’ll take it. But only because you put so much thought into it.” He smiled and slung the bag under his arm. She saw a muscle bulge under his T-shirt. She flushed and bit her bottom lip nervously. Jay stared at her mouth, transfixed, as if he’d never seen one before. And then their little conversation turned into something else entirely.

  He was riveted. It seemed he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Helplessly, Billie returned his gaze. He leaned toward her as if he was going to kiss her. She prayed he wouldn’t touch her, but if he didn’t she’d die. It felt like hours were passing. Totally out of her element and feeling like an adolescent, she chewed her lip again.

  “What’s your favorite place?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Here, in the city.”

  She was shaking like a toy poodle. His mouth was inches from hers. “The Biography Bookshop, I guess. On Bleecker. Why?”

  “Meet me there tomorrow at twelve.” It was not a question.

  “Okay.” She would do anything he asked if he would just kiss her.

  “I’m not kissing you,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Lightly, he ran his fingers up the side of her neck and behind her ear. When he reached her ponytail, he unfastened her clip. It fell to the floor. He slid his hand from the back of her neck up into her hair. Gently grabbing a handful, he tilted her head back and kissed her throat. He let the tip of his tongue graze her skin. She let out a tiny moan. He brought her face in front of his.

  “If I kiss you, I won’t stop,” he said.

  “What?” She was dizzy.

  “I won’t stop. You have to go.” He grabbed her bag and walked toward the door. She stood there in utter disbelief. This man had just given her the most boldly erotic moment of her life and was now throwing her out.

  “Glinda!” he said.

  Billie whipped her head around in surprise. Did he just call her that?

  “You ain’t gotta go home, but you gotta get the hell outta here.” He opened the door, and she snatched her bag and walked out.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “I’m not challenging that. Meet me at twelve.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “You will.”

  3.

  clout, cash, and ass

  Portrait of an intelligent hoodlum: In 1973, Jerome Lane, Jr., was born at home, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. This was two decades before Fort Greene became a mecca for young, black, urban professionals, long before anyone had heard of Moshood’s upscale Africana-chic ensembles, or Carol’s Daughter’s all-natural beauty products, or Brooklyn Moon Café’s poetry night, or Chez Oskar’s Sunday brunches (attended by the who’s who of black media). If anyone had suggested that one day a studio in Fort Greene would rent for $2,000, they would’ve been laughed right back across the East River. In the early 1970s, the only people in Fort Greene were the people who’d always lived there. The storefronts that would one day be fancy restaurants serving steak frites and mussels were bodegas and liquor stores. Crime was high, rent was low, and gentrification was forever away.

  Jay lived with his mother, Linda, on the twelfth floor of a Walt Whitman project building, off of bustling Myrtle Avenue. She was a part-time cleaning woman and full-time heroin addict. She only spoke to Jay to yell at him for existing. The yelling was usually punctuated by a mighty punch. She was a heavy-handed, resentful teenager.

  Linda wasn’t married to Jay’s father, Jerome Lane, Sr., and they didn’t live together. But unlike many of the boys in his neighborhood, he saw his father all the time. He came over every night for “dinner.” Dinner went like this: Jerome would walk in the apartment screaming at Linda, then Linda would start screaming at him. She’d throw something at him, he’d hit her, she’d hit him back, and they’d end up in a tangle on the floor. Then, before dinner was even contemplated, they’d shoot heroin together and pass out. This was the only time they were quiet. They were black and blue and battered, but they’d nod out holding hands and smiling.

  Jay wanted no part of this craziness, so every night at dinnertime, he escaped to his best friend Khalil’s apartment two floors down. Khalil’s family was the exact opposite of Jay’s. Whereas Linda always spoke in a near-shriek, no one in Khalil’s family seemed to speak at all. They seemed totally uninvolved with one another. His mother, Janet, and his stepfather, Frank, never spoke to each other. Khalil never spoke to them. In fact, Khalil loathed them, especially Frank, which mystified Jay, who loved their silence. To him, it was a blessed relief from the turbulence upstairs. After dinner, Jay and Khalil would play Space Invaders until Frank came in, oddly averting his eyes, and announced that it was time for him to check Khalil’s homework. Jay would then return upstairs. He’d step over his parents, take a bath, and put himself to bed.

  One night when Jay was seven, he was having dinner at Khalil’s, as usual. At their dinner table, his chair faced the window, which looked out over the dilapidated playground. During Janet’s pound cake, he saw his parents free-falling through the sky.

  Everyone ran to the window and saw Linda and Jerome lying faceup on the cement, holding hands and smiling. Janet began screaming, but Jay was used to seeing them like this. He knew something terrible had happened, but it felt very far away from him, like the starving Ethiopians on TV. From then on, he lived with Khalil.

  The two of them were inseparable, though they were almost polar opposites. K, as everyone called him, was the tough boy in the neighborhood. He took absolutely no shit, none. He was short and chubby, but remarkably fast. K always had an answer for everything and was quick to fight. It was as if he had two personalities—at home he was tight-lipped and subservient. Outside, he was explosive. Big on action, he wasn’t a talker. Jay, on the other hand, talked everyone to death. He was a tall, skinny, animated kid who was adept at slipping out of near-fatal situations. No one ever messed with him. First of all, K would kill anyone who tried, and second, because he always had such good ideas.

  When Jay and K where nine, they became lookout boys for the local gang of crack dealers, led by a frighteningly gaunt eighteen-year-old named Bone. While Bone negotiated deals, Jay and K rode their bikes up and down the block, looking out for police, or strangers who looked suspiciously unsuspicious. After the two boys spotted a middle-aged white man in hip-hop clothes (and knocked him out with Jay’s boom box), they were each given a .38-caliber pistol and a promotion.

  The boys were assigned to count the sale receipts in the “stash” apartment, which was conveniently located three floors down from K’s. After school, the boys would count the thousands of dollars with their state-of-the-art Commodore calculator. They’d rap their favorite songs (anything by DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, or Afrika Bambaataa) and force whoever forgot the words to say “uncle.”

  One day, the boys heard sirens and a furious pounding at the door. Thinking quickly, they stuffed all the bills into their backpacks and ran for the back window. Below was a pile of trash bags. They looked at each other, figured seven stories wasn’t exactly fatal, and jumped out onto the trash bags. Jay’s cheek was sliced open from a broken wine bottle, and K broke his arm, but they escaped with all the cash. It was a star-making feat.

  Jay and K’s ability to pull this off earned them much-coveted respect from Bone’s crew, and they were deemed mascots. Bone began calling the two boys “Nuts.” Because they always hung together. But mostly because they were crazy.

  The next couple of years were a flurry of successful errands, schemes, and heists. Life was lovely. School was easy, making money was easy, and because of his “Nuts” status, Jay held the privilege of partying with the older crowd. In the summer, DJ Kaptin Krunch would plug his turntables into a streetlight, spin records like “Top Billin’” and “The Real Roxanne,”
and madness would ensue. These parties lasted till dawn and passed in a blur of shell-topped Adidas, velour tracksuits, and mushroom hairdos.

  Due to the Nuts’ mascot status, their best friends, Yellow Andre, Black Andre, and Darryl, were deemed cool, too. Less clever than Jay and K, they weren’t in the game, but they were master shit-talkers and could hold their liquor. During the summers, the boys included Bone’s surly little cousin TyJuan in the group, though he was far less entertaining.

  In the winter, Kaptin Krunch moved his parties into his apartment on Cumberland Street, where sometimes the high voltage of his equipment would cause a power shortage. No one cared. Boys took turns freestyling while Krunch beatboxed. Some brave soul would inevitably move the furniture, produce a cardboard box, and break dance—risking being dissed if the crowd sniffed a poseur. At one of these wintertime parties the Nuts lost their virginity. Bone got them high on all sorts of things, and thrust them in a room with everybody’s favorite hood rat, Sonata. Jay-Nut and K-Nut were both forever changed. K decided never to touch another girl with a Jheri curl, and Jay became a Lover. He fell hopelessly in love with Sonata, and she him. They decided to go together. Sonata was sixteen and Jay was twelve.

  This was as good as it gets. Clout, cash, and ass.

  The summer after eighth grade, everything changed. First of all, Bone’s crew got busted, and they all went to jail. This was terrifying, and everyone went underground. After this, it became clear to Jay that shit flows downhill.

  The Nuts slept in bunkbeds, Jay on the bottom and K on top. Since Jay’s parents’ death, he hadn’t been able to sleep through the night. Without fail, he’d wake up at 3 A.M., with no hope of going back to sleep for hours. During this time, he would write in a steno notebook he entitled “My History.” He wrote short stories about his day, his friends, and Irene Cara. Then he read until he fell asleep. (His favorite authors were Donald Goines, infamous writer of junkie/pimp fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, and Robert Ludlum. He checked these out from the library on Hall Place—this was far enough away from his building that he wouldn’t be caught in this rep-shattering act.)

  Sometimes during his insomnia bouts, Jay would notice that K wasn’t in bed. He couldn’t see up there, but he could just feel it. He never asked K where he went. He reasoned that at night, everyone has their own agenda. You don’t have to answer to anyone, and you don’t have to deal with daytime rules. Jay read and wrote in secret, so he respected whatever K was getting into.

  One night, Jay got up to get a drink of water. In the dark, he padded toward the kitchen and stopped abruptly in his tracks. He heard Frank ordering K to do things to him, in a raspy whisper. Jay’s blood froze, and he stopped breathing. Later, when K crawled up the ladder to the top bunk, he pretended to be asleep. He pretended not to hear K say, “Got to, or he’ll kill her.” Jay said nothing, and never did. Most middle-of-the-night happenings are remembered like fragmented dream scenes, but K’s calmly resigned “everybody has their cross to bear” voice would reverberate in his mind forever.

  The next day was a Saturday, and K woke up wanting to fight. After Masters of the Universe and He-Man, they knocked on doors and rounded up their friends. It was a blazing day in August, a month before school would start. Everyone was restless, over-heated, and end-of-summer bored. Jay, K, the two Andres, Darryl, and TyJuan stood on the corner, chain-smoking, waiting for an opportunity to present itself. It came in the swaggering form of Paco, a Puerto Rican thug from Spanish Harlem. What the fuck was he doing there? Paco used to go with Darryl’s older sister, Margie, but disappeared soon after she gave birth to a pink, curly-haired boy. Also, Darryl suspected he was responsible for Margie’s messy suicide attempt. (Who really believed her bloodied wrists were the result of a nail file accident?) Given these factors, no one could figure out what Paco was doing on their block by himself.

  Jay proclaimed it divine intervention. His friends bought this, and jumped Paco. After the other boys were through, K continued to pummel Paco unmercifully (much to the consternation of Darryl, who felt K was stealing his moment). Jay finally had to drag him off, wildly punching the air. They fled the scene, leaving Paco a complete mess and mumbling revenge epithets in Spanglish.

  Two days later, word got around to Nuts and company that a group of Puerto Rican boys were rumored to be somewhere on Fulton Ave. They hid out at Black Andre’s apartment to assess the situation (save for TyJuan, who, after the Paco thing, decided now was as good a time as any to catch the train back to Philly). K was furious, and refused to hide like a pussy in his own neighborhood. His warlike bravado got everyone excited for battle. They grabbed their pistols and flew down the eleven flights of stairs (the elevator hadn’t worked in fifteen years). They burst through the double doors and were met with a hail of eardrum-shattering bullets. Paco and his friends were speeding away in a stolen car, firing ill-aimed shots out of the windows. The two Andres and Darryl jumped back behind the steel door at the last second. But a bullet passed through Jay’s left shoulder and struck K in the heart. He was killed instantly. It all happened in a matter of seconds, in broad daylight.

  Everything stopped for Jay. The shot to his shoulder knocked him to the ground. His body wanted to lose consciousness, but he fought it and managed to stand up. The two Andres and Darryl were shouting for help and frantically shaking K’s limp body, but Jay stumbled away. He couldn’t look at his friend like that. Darryl kept shouting after him that Paco and them were long gone, but Jay wasn’t going after Paco. Why get into a war that wouldn’t end until everybody was dead? K was already gone.

  Instead, Jay’s feet took him to the nearby Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Frank was a janitor. He wandered through the echoing corridors and eventually found him, mopping the men’s room. He could tell Frank was surprised to see him. Jay told him that Khalil was dead, but Frank said nothing. In a blind rage, Jay grabbed his face and slammed it against the tiled wall, knocking him to the floor. Frank didn’t put up much of a fight. Jay pistol-whipped him until he could no longer raise his arm and Frank was semiconscious. Wordlessly, he held the mouth of the bloody pistol to Frank’s temple. He kept it there for a while, lost in thought. Finally, he pocketed the pistol and pulled out his house key. Steadying his hand, he carved a huge, unmistakable “K” on Frank’s forehead. He took all the money in Frank’s wallet ($17) and stumbled off. He never saw Frank or Janet again.

  4.

  accidentally sexy

  It was one on Saturday, and a bright, gorgeous day in the West Village. Billie hurried down rainbow-flagged Christopher Street toward Bleecker. All morning, she’d been hovering near hysteria. She’d revisited and revisited the previous night until it became surreal. She prepared herself for being stood up.

  Billie dressed hot, though, just in case. After serious deliberation, she’d decided on a look she termed “Accidentally Sexy.” She wore skinny gold hoop earrings, a short, yellow Betsey Johnson slipdress, a little jean jacket, and tan knee-high stiletto boots. Pocahontas meets Chiquita Banana.

  Nonchalantly, Billie strode into the Biography Bookshop. Most of New York was still asleep, so the store was empty. Except for Jay, who was knee-deep in the true-crime section. He’d shown! She snuck up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hi.”

  “Hey! What’s up, ma?” He hugged her, careful not to touch anything important.

  “How are you?”

  “All right.” He not-so-subtly looked her up and down, eyes widening. “Yellow is a good color.”

  “Thanks.” Billie smiled fetchingly. “What are you reading?” She peered at the open book in his hands. It was a biography of Lizzie Borden.

  “Yikes. Didn’t she slaughter her parents with a hatchet in the eighteen hundreds?”

  “An axe. But I only picked it up because I used to love the TV movie about her.”

  “There was a TV movie about Lizzie Borden?”

/>   “Way, way back in the day. Elizabeth Montgomery played her. After Bewitched. You know how Lizzie takes off her bloody clothes and throws them in the fireplace?”

  Billie nodded. “To destroy the evidence.”

  “Right,” he said. “In the movie, they showed Elizabeth Montgomery naked from the back. This was a key moment in my sexual awakening.”

  “Really? Elizabeth Montgomery?”

  “I mean, look. I’m eight. I’m looking at a woman who, to me, is a virginal, suburban housewife with flipped-up hair. All of a sudden she’s naked and bloody. That mad titillating.”

  “Ohh-kay.” Billie searched for something cute to say. “Maybe you just have a thing for witches.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Maybe you’re right. So, tell me why we’re here.”

  “What?” She panicked—this had been his idea!

  He smiled. “Why is this your favorite place?”

  “Oh. Well, I love old bookstores. And I’m obsessed with biographies, especially ones about really fabulous women. Divas, really.”

  “What do you consider a diva?”

  “Hmmm. A woman with a lust for living, who has epic love affairs, a glittery career. A woman with, um, balls.”

  “Okay. So, what’s your favorite biography?”

  “Well, hmmm. I’ll read anything about Zora Neale Hurston. Her life was so fascinating. I mean, this is a woman who wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, the most perfect novel ever”—Jay nodded in agreement—“in seven weeks. She totally revolutionized Southern fiction, and died a broke waitress. It’s a very romantic, tragic story.” She paused. “And I have another favorite, but you have to promise not to laugh or think I’m wack.”