“We’ve got to do something about this,” Noelle said to her caller. “I don’t know but I know I don’t want somebody they call IQ sniffing around my business and in case you’ve forgotten, we’re in this together. I realize that but the story’s not over until it’s over. All right, call me later.”
Noelle went into her cathedral-like closet, more clothes in there than the Prada store on Rodeo Drive. She was making an appearance on The Shonda Simmons Show and wanted to look fresh, make a statement. Let the world know she was doing just fine without her scalawag husband. All she had to do now was decide what to wear when she went out shopping for something to wear.
Consuelo, the housekeeper, was dusting in the bedroom. “Consuelo?” Noelle said. “Could you tell Rodion I want to go shopping?”
“?Quieres decir que el monstruo feo?” Consuelo said. “I don’t want to.”
Cal was curled up on the double-king Duxiana like a cooked shrimp. Above him was a poster-size black-and-white photo taken in an underground club somewhere in South Central. Cinder block walls, low ceiling, klieg lights reflecting off a field of captivated faces and holding clouds of weed smoke in the air. Cal was part of a trio back then and that was his debut as front man. He was stripped to the waist, his body like bundles of fibers jeweled with sweat, holding the mike like he was drinking the last drops of nectar from a golden goblet. Cal knew the song well. It was the one that put him on the map. He lay there mouthing the words:
I’m up from nothin’, I come from nowhere
goin’ solo on the road to everywhere
Don’t need the hard sellin’, feelin’ the ground swellin’
The blade of my saber sickle-cellin’ the haters
flossin’ traitors to vapors while I be makin’ that paper
if I want ya I’ll take ya, circumvent your equator
There’s nobody can save ya, my shit is greater and greater
I’ve become the Creator
“Up from Nothin’” went multiplatinum and stayed on the Billboard charts for six weeks. Life as a rap star had begun. Luxed-out tour buses, sold-out concerts, signing autographs and riding in limos, smoking spliffs big as ice cream cones, and staying in hotel suites the size of his mama’s backyard. He hung out in the VIP section with the celebs, did a commercial for a tequila company, performed at the BET Awards, and got a Grammy nomination. He shot a pilot called No Diggity and got the part of a demented drug dealer in a movie about street racing. He’d always been popular with the females but this was a whole different level, bitches lined up like job applicants arguing over who got to give him a blow job first.
Cal made thirteen more albums. Four multiplatinum, four platinum, and the rest gold. He was a full-on star, king of the block, an MVP in the game everybody wanted to play. Along the way he married Noelle. Yeah, the shit went bad but they had some good times, he had to give her that. When exactly he began to fall apart he couldn’t remember. It snuck up on him gradually, nobody noticing at first. How he got more and more reluctant to go out, spending most of his time at the crib incommunicado. If you asked him what he’d been up to he’d shrug or act like he didn’t hear you. When the fellas talked him into playing Madden he’d fumble on purpose or punt the ball sideways into the stands. He slept twelve, fourteen hours a day or had insomnia and wandered around the house until five in the morning. He got paranoid. Said some of his jewelry was missing and somebody was tampering with his food. He stopped showering and shaving. He lived on Krispy Kremes and Spicy V8. He complained about allergies, headaches, and backaches but Dr. Macklin couldn’t find anything wrong. He adopted a stray cat.
Bobby Grimes didn’t know about Cal’s condition until they were recording new tracks for the first of Cal’s new three-album, fifty-five-million-dollar deal. It had happened a week earlier at the Rock Steady Studio in Santa Monica. Bobby arrived late. Charles and Bug were on their phones texting. Anthony was staring at a photograph of a seagull like it was flying away with his youth.
“How’s he doing?” Bobby said.
“See for yourself,” Anthony said.
Cal was in the booth, supposedly working on a hook for the single. He stood at the mike, haggard and hopeless, his stomach like a soccer ball underneath his nine-hundred-and-ninety-five-dollar cashmere bathrobe. He rapped in a monotone:
My brain is in pain with none of the gain
what’s happening in my mind I can’t quantify or justify
my lifestyle eatin’ me alive like Bug on a chicken thigh,
my sex drive in a nose dive
off the high board, don’t need the awards
I’m prerecorded, exploited, I need to be Sigmund Freuded
Bobby watched, horror and disbelief billowing up inside him like a mushroom cloud. “Why is he in a bathrobe?” he said.
“He says they’re more comfortable,” Anthony said.
“More comfortable than what, clothes?”
“He says he’s tired.”
“He doesn’t look tired, he looks mentally ill. My God, he’s big as a house.”
Cal droned on:
I got to stop roamin’, be a pigeon goin’ homin’
back to Mississippi, make some homemade chili
while I be chillin’ with my kinfolk