I ain’t seen since I was an egg yolk
in my daddy’s egg sack,
I can’t see, I can’t feel, my world is going black.
Bobby sat down at the mixing board with Big Terry, Cal’s longtime producer. “Why are you letting him go on like this?” Bobby said.
“Cal does what Cal wants,” Big Terry said, “you know how he is.”
“Well, could you get him back to work, please?”
Big Terry turned on the intercom. “The fuck you doing, Cal?” he said. “Your kinfolk are in Inglewood and you couldn’t find Mississippi on a got-damn map. You better get serious in there.” Cal didn’t seem to hear him, staring at a horizon only he could see.
“This is unbelievable,” Bobby said. “I knew he had problems but I had no idea it was this bad. How long has he been like this?”
“He’s been going downhill since the divorce,” Anthony said. “I could hardly get him to the studio.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me this before I signed him to a three-album, fifty-five-million-dollar deal?”
“Really, Bobby, I thought he’d have snapped out of it by now.”
“What about you?” Bobby said to Bug and Charles. “You didn’t think to give me a heads-up?”
“We figured he was sick or somethin’,” Bug said. “Like he had the flu.”
“The flu? You thought he had the flu? All that blubber and not a single brain cell.”
Cal was unintelligible now, murmuring into the pop filter like it was an ear and he was telling it a secret.
“What’s he on?” Bobby said.
“Weed, prescription pills,” Anthony said.
“Look at him. There’s no more chance he’ll make a decent record than Bug turning down a Family Meal at Popeye’s.”
Cal came out of the booth and zombie-walked through the control room.
“Cal, are you all right?” Bobby said.
Cal staggered into the men’s room and locked the door behind him. He was sweating and breathing hard. A humming he thought was the fluorescent lighting was inside his head, a swelling pressure behind his eyes. And then, for the first time since he was five years old, he wept like a five-year-old. “I’m messed up, I’m messed up,” he said, “I’m losing my muthafuckin’ mind.” When he finally stopped crying he felt as empty as the box of Krispy Kremes he ate in the car, nothing left but the crumbs. He was blowing his nose in a paper towel when he heard the Voice.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” the Voice said, “and I have no idea what’s wrong with me.”
At first, Cal thought the words were coming from him but he looked in the mirror and his mouth wasn’t moving.
“I’m isolated,” the Voice said. “I have no one to confide in, no one who understands. My friends and family are useless.”
Cal hated being with the crew. Anthony always impatient, Charles and his attitude, Bug doing his tough love thing. Come on, son, show me your man bones and get the fuck up out that bathrobe.
“I’ve lost interest in everything but sleeping,” the Voice said. “The activities I used to enjoy seem ridiculous now.”
These days, Cal would no more go to a club than he would a rodeo. The deafening music, the blinding strobes, the drunk rowdy crowd waving their arms and woo-hooing like it was enjoyable being squeezed into a dance floor like Pringles and paying sixteen dollars for a cocktail. And a rap star couldn’t relax in public. You had to be cool every damn minute in case somebody took a video of you picking your nose that would be on YouTube until the end of time; standing there talking shit with a bitter-ass cigar in your mouth and holding a bottle of Gran Patrón by the neck like it wasn’t no thang or laughing with the fellas like only an insider would get the joke, turning smooth for the ladies, every line said a thousand times before.
“I’ve forgotten how to enjoy myself,” the Voice said, “how to have fun.”
The last time Cal could remember having real fun was when he was a kid and his dad drove him around the Forum floor on his forklift or when Angie and her friends came over and they did stupid dances in the living room. The Running Man, the Soulja Boy, the Chicken Wing.
“My eating is out of control,” the Voice said. “I’m drinking too much or doing a lot of drugs.”
Cal had gained twenty-five pounds. The only thing he felt comfortable in was a bathrobe and he was eating pills like a food group. If Snoop knew how much weed he was smoking he’d organize an intervention.