“Think of somethin’ and you can have it,” Cal said.
It was true. If she thought of something she wanted she bought it without even glancing at the price tag. The attention was mind-blowing. All she had to do was walk to her car wearing short-shorts and she’d be on the E! channel and TMZ the same night. But there were downsides. After she married Cal her mental development got put on hold. There was no need to read anything but tabloids and fashion magazines and no reason to challenge herself or create anything more worthwhile than a line of handbags to sell on HSN. There were six thousand of them in a warehouse somewhere. She thought about getting a job but Calvin was against it unless she found something hip to do. Nothing to sully up the brand. Their home life was nonexistent. If Calvin wasn’t recording, he was clubbing, hanging with the fellas or on tour for weeks at a time.
And Noelle discovered that even unlimited excess loses its charm, the thrill of getting anything she wanted wearing thinner and thinner. Wasn’t that the whole point? Wanting, waiting, struggling, and then getting it. Not wanting and getting in the same damn breath. She found herself thinking about the ordinary issues everybody else thought about. How can I feel good about myself? What am I passionate about? Can I succeed on my own? How do I get Charles and Bug out of my fucking house?
Calvin was unhappy with the marriage too. His blue-ribbon trophy wife who looked like a billion bucks on his arm and who told him she’d take a bullet for him and shaved his balls for him and wore thongs and stilettos to cook breakfast for him was bitchy and moped around and complained about everything from the size of her closet to their seats at the Image Awards. Not a word about the house in Coconut Grove right across the bay from LeBron’s place or her six hundred pairs of shoes or hanging with her friends at the Pasha Club drinking thousand-dollar bottles of Cristal or her personal hair and makeup artists or that beast of a bodyguard that followed her around, like she needed one to watch her eat lunch at the Ivy. And Noelle wasn’t interested in kids. Not that Calvin wanted them but having kids was in, a fashion statement. You didn’t have a baby and name it Zippy or Apple Pie you were off the blade.
In the beginning, Noelle went on tour with Cal to shoo away the hos and chicken heads but he cheated anyway. Her girlfriends said that was the price of being married to a rap star. Noelle lived with it for a while but the reports became so numerous and persistent it got to be humiliating. The straw that broke the camel’s self-respect was a tabloid photo of Cal with his tongue down Tierra’s throat. She was another singer at Bobby’s label and they’d never gotten along. Noelle retaliated. She locked Cal out of the house, slashed his suits with a box cutter, threw his Montecristos in the swimming pool, and had his Mercedes Black Series SL65 towed away. Cal retaliated for the retaliation by bringing Tierra back to the crib and doing her in the marriage bed. When Noelle found five used condoms on the bedroom floor she said: “Oh, the shit is on now.”
Even in the rap world their fights were legendary. Cal was performing at the Nokia to a sold-out house. He was doing the finale, “Up from Nothin’,” putting a little extra into it because Snoop and his entourage were supposed to be in the greenroom watching. He was midway through the second verse when Noelle came out of the wings and hit him with what people said was Bishop Don Juan’s pimp cup. He grabbed her by her weave and slung her into the audience. At a Thanksgiving dinner, Cal cooked Noelle’s Stella McCartney shoulder bag in the microwave and she slapped him with a turkey leg. She nearly bit his finger off when he pointed at the door and told her to get out and he mashed his waffles into her face at Roscoe’s. Noelle air-freighted Hella to Kwaylud, a rival rapper who lived in Atlanta, and Cal threw her hairdresser out of a second-floor window. On her Facebook page, she posted a picture of him masturbating. He hired a cement mixer to fossilize her shoe collection in concrete. After the divorce it didn’t stop. He cut a diss track, rhyming about her cottage-cheese ass and different-size titties, the nipples big as cupcakes. Noelle responded with a radio interview and described in graphic detail how Cal liked baby talk and how his dick was shaped like a knitting needle with an army helmet stuck on the end. Bobby Grimes said the tabloids should have gotten together and given them an award.