The Accidental Diva Read online

  “I promise.”

  “Elizabeth Taylor.”

  “No.”

  “Look, if Elizabeth Montgomery ushered you into manhood, I can have a Liz Taylor fetish.”

  “Okay, you got that. Why, though?”

  “Her life is cinematic. She was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. She had great loves, broke up marriages, won Oscars. All her husbands went broke buying her the world’s most expensive jewelry. How do you get eight men in a row to do that?” Billie shook her head in awe. “She never second-guesses herself. She’s gutsy, and glamorous, and a broad—”

  “And a drunk, and a slovenly mess…”

  Billie grabbed one of her biographies from the entertainment section. “Look at this woman, she’s flawless.” The cover illustrated the icon in full mid-sixties mode, huge bouffant, major cleavage, the whole nine.

  “Her hair looks like a Peppermint Pattie.”

  “You were supposed to not be laughing at me.”

  “I ain’t laughing, just bewildered.” He looked at Billie standing there with her hands on her hips. “You know something?”

  “What?”

  “I find it hard to believe that you don’t know how to make a man do whatever you want. Buying jewelry, or otherwise.”

  “I didn’t go to that school,” she said.

  “Hah.”

  “Clearly you did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t ask me to meet you here, you told me. And I’m here.”

  “Somebody had to do something. You were being molested.”

  “If you want something you just take it, huh?”

  “Me and Elizabeth Taylor.”

  “So why didn’t you kiss me?”

  “I told you why.”

  “But you wanted to,” Billie said. She was feeling saucy and completely out of character. “So what if you didn’t stop?”

  “I knew you couldn’t handle it.”

  “Excuse me?!”

  Jay laughed. “You couldn’t. You’re, like, delicate.”

  “I’m not that delicate.” She stepped toward him and tried to look brazen.

  “Why are you blushing, then?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  She took a deep breath and went for it. “You smell so good I want to bite you?”

  “Do it, then,” he dared.

  She grabbed his arm and bit his bicep.

  “Goddamn!” Jay said, rubbing his arm. The hipster salesgirl looked at them curiously from behind the register. “I think I’m delirious.”

  “Oh, I didn’t hurt you.” Billie’s heart was racing. She was not delicate. She was a wanton animal.

  Jay shook his head and grabbed her shoulders. “Okay, listen. We’re gonna make some rules. If you want to bite me, bite me. If you want to tell me something, say it. Life’s too short to waste time blushing and shoving tea in my face and being all nervous and shit. You’re driving me crazy.”

  The salesgirl nodded to herself. Right on.

  “Okay. I think…”

  Before she figured out what she thought, he put his hands on either side of her face and kissed her. His kiss was slow and deliberate. He sucked her mouth, sucked her tongue, relishing her. Softly, he bit her bottom lip and her knees buckled.

  Billie was drowning. She grabbed the back of his shirt in her fists and held on for dear life. Hungrily, he kissed her deeper. Shamelessly, she wrapped her leg around him. He pushed his leg in between her thighs, ran his hands over her ass, and pulled her to him. She moaned, instinctively grinding her hips against his.

  The salesgirl’s mouth dropped open.

  Billie’s head fell back, and Jay seared her neck with soft kisses and love bites. When he reached her ear he whispered, “I will fuck you right here in front of this girl if we don’t leave,” and ran his tongue over her earlobe. Billie managed to nod in agreement before melting into another of his devastating, all-consuming kisses. Without breaking it, they somehow stumbled out of the store and into a cab.

  Billie and Jay couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Ripping off her jean jacket, she straddled his lap and kissed him anxiously. He pulled the spaghetti straps down over her shoulders and her flimsy dress fell to her waist. When he unfastened her strapless bra, he stopped breathing. He’d never seen breasts that full on a girl that small. With a muffled “Oh my God” he pushed them together and ran his tongue over her taut nipples, kissing and softly sucking them. The scandalized cabdriver almost ran through an intersection (atop his dashboard sat a photo of his adolescent daughters left back in Calcutta, which he quickly flipped facedown).

  Billie trembled, her whole body aflame. It was broad daylight, and she couldn’t have cared less—she wanted him. She pushed up his shirt and ran her hands over his obscenely well-sculpted chest. Unzipping his jeans, she found his cock, rock-hard and huge. Following the new rules, she climbed off him and knelt on the floor of the cab. She took him in her mouth. He groaned and commanded her to stop. She ignored him. He felt the situation called for a power shift. Jay pulled her up onto the seat. Sliding her dress up to her waist, he found a see-through thong with “Saturday” embroidered across the front. Awww. He grinned and bent down, hooking his arms under her thighs.

  Through the flimsy material, he lightly flicked her with his tongue. She let out a broken little moan. He thought this was cute, so he teased her with another chaste lick. Pleasure tore through Billie. Boldly, she grabbed his face and pushed him into her. Then he pulled her thong to the side and ate her so deliciously and thoroughly that Billie became religious. Her moans got louder as he sucked and licked and sucked and she was so wet and she arched her back and he told her to come in his mouth as if she had a choice and then she exploded with a fearsome shudder.

  They were in front of her brownstone building. Billie was half-naked and in a languid stupor. She thought to herself, “I am a whore,” and smiled. Jay paid the sweating driver and half dragged, half carried Billie to her first-floor walk-up. She fumbled with the keys for what seemed like hours, because his mouth was on the back of her neck and his fingers were deep inside her and she felt that in seconds she would come again. Instead, he grabbed the keys from her and they finally burst through the door. Lips locked, they fell on the couch together. Somehow, everyone’s clothes came off and Jay was on top of her, covering her with his strong, lean body. He slid just the tip of his cock inside her. She gasped. His lips softly touched hers. Trembling, they breathed each other’s breath. He sank in slightly deeper. Softly, she cried out. Holding himself back, not wanting it to end, he pulled out almost completely.

  “How much do you want?” he asked her.

  “Everything, all of it,” she breathed, out of her mind.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, yes…”

  He held her hands on either side of her head, kissed her deeply, and plunged into her as far as he could go. She arched into his thrust and came, her senses shattered. He kept going, fucking her and fucking her until she came again, brighter than before, and so did he.

  * * *

  • • •

  Jay didn’t say, “You’re mine, you’ve always been mine,” and Billie didn’t say, “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.” They didn’t say these things to each other because it wouldn’t ring true after knowing each other less than twenty-four hours. Instead, they lay naked on her rose-embroidered couch, in her shabby chic studio (which had never seen a man, naked or otherwise), and talked circles around “I need you I want you I love you.”

  Billie and Jay were thrilled at what they discovered, which was that much of the same stuff floated around in their heads. They became obsessed with traversing each other’s brains. They reminisced over “The Bloodhound Gang,” and Right On magazine
, and The Last Dragon (Jay had been “Sho Nuff” one Halloween, and Billie knew all the words to Vanity’s “Seventh Heaven” song). They argued over whether the best Seinfeld episode was “Junior Mints Surgery” or “Mulva,” and realized they were the same episode. The following were the hardest motherfuckers, ever: Miles Davis, Geronimo Pratt, and Sonny Corleone. They wondered whether, in real life, Rocky would ever have beaten Apollo Creed. Billie loved Anaïs Nin, Jay loved Henry Miller—and the memoirists had loved each other, too, which was a nice thing. Both missed Jodeci and Jell-O Pudding Pops. They were intrigued by the Doors and anything starring Robert Mitchum. They hated the phrase “the black experience” because it suggested only one. They agreed that Old Dirty Bastard taking a limo to pick up his welfare check, on MTV, was trifling. They both got Evelyn “Champagne” King and Cheryl “Pepsi” Riley confused, but were aware of the vast differences between Jeffrey Osborne and James Ingram. Sometimes, at night, Jack Torrance stormed the hotel hallways in their minds. On the Road made them both want to, oh, just get away from it all. They traded dialogue from The Mack. They didn’t trust religious fanatics, or anyone who didn’t recognize that The Golden Girls was hilarious. They both figured that the voice of God probably sounded a lot like Nas. They didn’t say what they didn’t know, which was how incredibly lonely they’d been until today.

  “Quiz!” announced bruised-lipped Billie, who was draped around Jay like a sari.

  “Okay.”

  “Mel Gibson or Mel Brooks.”

  “What? Mel Gibson is garbage.” He paused. “Actually, Braveheart was kinda all right. But Mel Brooks wins, without question. Madeline Kahn singing ‘Sweet Mystery of Life’ in Young Frankenstein? Blazing Saddles? Even though Richard Pryor wrote half of it, the man’s a genius.”

  “I support that.”

  “Tony Montana, Tony Manero, or Toni Morrison?”

  “Hah! Well, Tony Montana has the whole ‘Say hello to my li’l friend’ thing, which is an important moment for everyone. The American Dream, soured. Tony Manero overcame his Italian-American inner-city rage in a Bensonhurst disco, which is sort of fascinating if you think about it. And the Bee Gees, forget it.” She paused, lost in thought. “I have to say that Scarface and Saturday Night Fever are iconic—but really dated. Toni Morrison is timeless. Beloved blows your mind every time you read it.”

  “No doubt, no doubt. Nicely executed, good delivery.”

  “NCAA or NBA?”

  “NCAA. There’s more heart in the game without the dollars.”

  “Good answer. Who’s the bigger playa, JFK or Bill Clinton?”

  “JFK, easily. They’re both playas. But you always know a true playa by the company he keeps. Bill married Hillary, who’s mad intelligent but homely. JFK married Jackie, a fly debutante in pimped-out sunglasses. Bill runs around with women like Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky. JFK ran around with Marilyn Monroe and Angie Dickinson. If you’re gonna get caught out there, make it count. This is a gangsta we’re talking about.”

  “Angie Dickinson was a gangsta, too. She slept with the entire Rat Pack.”

  “True.” He kissed the top of her head. “Billie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your hair smells like peppermint.”

  “Aveda Rosemary Mint shampoo.”

  “Billie?” He enjoyed saying her name, like when you learn a really good word.

  “Hmm?”

  “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

  “Last year I had to write an article about getting a Brazilian bikini wax. Do you know what that is?”

  “Um, no.”

  “It’s when you get everything waxed off. All your pubes. It’s very trendy among, you know, raised-pinkie-finger types. So I go to get this thing done, right? Everybody at work says it’s no big thing, you hardly feel it. So I’m not worried. I go to the salon and wait in this tiny room. In comes a mean, mean old Brazilian woman. I’m instructed to take off everything from the waist down, lay on this table, and hold my knees to my chest. She lays down a layer of boiling hot wax and rips it off. Jay, I’m telling you, I can’t even relate this pain to anything you’d understand. I begged her to stop. She ignored me and did it anyway. I’m sobbing.”

  “Stop playin’.”

  “Then she orders me to get on all fours.”

  “Stop playin’!”

  “I’m serious. It was the most mortifying experience of my life. And the whole time I’m thinking to myself, this costs a hundred dollars. Women pay for this. This is a choice. If someone chased you down a dark alley and poured hot wax in your ass, you’d have them arrested.”

  Jay appeared disturbed. “I’m speechless.”

  “It’s okay.”

  They lay together in comfortable silence for a while.

  “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

  Jay thought about this. He didn’t know how to rank the things that had happened to him. To him, his story was just his story. Everybody has one. Either you learn how to live with it, or it eats you up. But Billie was totally unlike anyone he knew. The girls he grew up with were wily and thick-skinned. They’d lived five lifetimes by the time they were sixteen. Billie’s worst experience had occurred at a spa. Jay wanted to protect her. He didn’t want to fuck her up. He didn’t know what she could take, and he didn’t want her to go. Ever.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the best thing that ever happened to you?”

  Jay looked at Billie. He tilted her chin up and kissed her sweetly. She wouldn’t believe him if he told her.

  * * *

  • • •

  After he had left K’s father, Jay wandered in circles until it was dark. He was losing a lot of blood from the gunshot wound. People he knew called out to him and offered help, but he just kept walking. Around 1 A.M., he found himself sitting on a crate in front of a bodega in Clinton Hill, the next neighborhood over. He was reeling. He was surrounded by groups of teenagers smoking weed and generally fucking around. Eric B. and Rakim’s “Paid In Full” was blaring out of a huge, silver boom box. Across the street, a cluster of old men sat on folding chairs wiping their sweaty faces with handkerchiefs and drinking Schlitz malt liquor. Four little girls were playing a heated game of double Dutch on the corner. This wasn’t his territory, but no one bothered him. In the dark, no one could tell he was covered in blood, but the look on his face was not sporting.

  Eventually, a tiny, rail-thin girl approached him. She was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a striped tube top. Her face was pock-marked, and she had deep bags under her eyes. She looked no older than twelve. She asked him if he wanted his dick sucked. He said he didn’t. She asked him if he wanted to fuck. He said he didn’t. She asked him what he wanted, then. He said, “A bed.” She said, “Come on,” and he followed her up the block.

  They stopped at a dilapidated Victorian apartment building. The girl fumbled with her key for what seemed like hours. Finally, she managed to unlock the door, and Jay followed her up three trash-strewn flights of stairs to a graffitied door. Inside, it was totally dark. Judging from the lively grunts and groans, there seemed to be people fucking all over the apartment. Stumbling over a writhing couple on the floor, she led Jay into a closet-sized bedroom in the back. She turned on the light and there were two men and a girl in a sweaty knot on a mattress on the floor. The girl screamed at them to get out, and didn’t they know the rules, that this was her room. She slapped the naked girl across the face, who slinked out of the room, followed by the irritated men. With disgust, the tiny girl snatched the outdated, psychedelic-printed sheet off the mattress and threw it in the hallway. Wearily, she looked at Jay and saw the state he was in.

  “Jesus Fucking Christ! Get in here! Somebody followin’ you?”

  He shook his head, shutting the door behind him. He colla
psed on the mattress and put his good arm over his eyes. The room was 100 degrees, at least. The girl took the pillowcase off the pillow and tied it around his arm, like a tourniquet. She scurried out of the room and came back with a wet towel and a blunt. Gingerly, she began mopping off the dried blood on his arm. She lit the blunt and popped it in his mouth.

  “Can you hit the lights?” Jay muttered, inhaling deeply. He didn’t want to look at anything. She hopped up, flicked the switch, and resumed her position. They sat there in silence, the sounds of fucking all around them. Slowly, the weed eased some of his pain. The girl felt his forehead. His skin was ablaze with fever. Again, she disappeared. She returned with a washcloth soaked in cold water and placed it over his eyes. He lay there, floating in and out of consciousness, while she sat cross-legged next to him. The tiny girl watched him, curiously. After a time, she spoke up.

  “Are you runnin’ from something or somebody?”

  “I ain’t runnin’.”

  “Why you here, then?”

  Jay didn’t know.

  “What happened?” Her question was met with silence. “Listen, I don’t know nobody. I ain’t from here,” she said. “I won’t say anything.”

  He didn’t know why he told her. Maybe it was because he was in shock. Or maybe he responded somehow to her soothing voice, or felt safe because she was a complete stranger. But he told her what had happened. The girl held him in her skinny arms, and he trusted her.

  In return, she told him her story. Her name was Tammy. She was seventeen and from Newark, New Jersey. Her teenaged mother ran away when she was an infant, and she was raised by her grandfather. He was a fanatically religious alcoholic, and beat her up on Sundays for sins he imagined she’d committed. When she became pregnant at fifteen, he almost killed her. She suffered a violent miscarriage and moved in with her boyfriend, a twenty-seven-year-old hustler. Two months later, her boyfriend woke up on Rikers, and she was stuck with a $600 rent. Tammy began bagging groceries at Safeway and baby-sitting. Struggling. She started drinking heavily and hanging out with her boyfriend’s brother, a charming junkie named Damon. Eventually she moved in with him. And stayed drunk. Often, during Damon’s parties, he would pass her around to his friends in exchange for drugs. Tammy was rarely coherent.