Chapter 17
17
You use up everything you’ve got trying to give everybody what they want.
Nina Simone
Eight years ago
“This weather is a flagrant foul! If I wasn’t very aware of how broke you are, I’d sue you for damages,” Rodney bleats against the bitter cold and razor-sharp wind.
“Oh, hush,” I shoot back with considerable effort, given the fact I can hardly feel my own lips. “You live in Boston, don’t act brand-new!”
From my East Village apartment, we walk westward on Eighth Street, arms linked, toward Electric Lady Studios. I’m nervous and giddy as all get-out because my best friend in the whole world is about to meet my new husband—and he has no idea.
No one does.
Elliot and I eloped last week in LA, and I haven’t even told my own mother. It’s been such a whirlwind, that I have yet to officially move into Elliot’s sleek penthouse in SoHo. Since Rodney’s flight landed this morning we’ve been holed up in my studio in Alphabet City. Unlike me, Rodney chose to stay the course at Berklee and is now spending a week with me in the city for his winter break.
“Well, in Boston I don’t walk around aimlessly in subzero temperatures,” he replies. “Remind me why we didn’t call an Uber? Better yet, why didn’t the label send a car for you?”
Good question. Elliot hasn’t answered my last three texts inquiring about the same thing. But today is supposed to be a happy day, so I bite back the irritation and creeping concern that something’s not right.
We stop at the crosswalk. “I wanted us to take the scenic route,” I insist, fudging the truth a little. “Figured it’d be fun to show you around the Village.”
I spread my arms like Willy Wonka opening the doors to his chocolate factory. Rodney’s eyes go wide with suspicion. But still, he humors me by taking a quick scan of our surroundings just when a massive rat with a condom wrapper in its teeth scampers between us. Squealing, I jump back about a foot and almost bust it on a strip of black ice.
“Very cute,” he deadpans, reaching to help me regain my balance.
“Well, someone’s practicing safe sex at least?” I offer, attempting to catch my breath and steady my pulse.
“Since when do you make jokes?” Rodney asks.
“Since when are your eyes blue?” I tease, clocking the new color contacts he’s acquired since we last FaceTimed each other.
My best friend rolls his ocean eyes while straightening my beanie. “Promise me this won’t change,” he says, gesturing between the two of us. “I know you’re about to be a star and everything.” He makes little quotation marks with his gloved hands. Then soberness seeps into his eyes. “But promise me you’ll remember this version of you .” He taps my chest. “And take care of her too.”
My eyes are stinging suddenly, and not just because it’s seventeen degrees outside with a windchill of minus two. When I told my parents I was dropping out of Berklee, they cut me off. Not just financially, but entirely. Apart from a birthday card they still sent me last May, we haven’t spoken in more than a year. And all the emails I’ve sent them with updates about my progress with music have gone unanswered. Even my short stint on The Voice barely registered a blip from them.
Rodney and his cousin Frank, along with a random crew member, were staged as my “family and friends” who watched from the wings during my televised audition. And when the performance resulted in a four-chair turn from the judges plus a spotlight the next morning on the Today show, only then did I get a snippy email from my mother wondering why she and Dad hadn’t been mentioned on camera.
I was eliminated several weeks later at the start of the live performance rounds, and as I packed up my lonely hotel room, I could practically hear her voice in my head telling me I told you so . As for my dad, all I heard was what I’ve come to expect from him…radio silence. Somehow, that was worse.
Everyone needs someone in their corner. I’m lucky enough to have finally found two someones—Rodney and Elliot. And they’re about to meet each other for the first time.
“Mark my words, Rod. When I become a star,” I say, “I’ll be taking care of us .”
We finally make it to Electric Lady and get buzzed in by security. Sonica greets us when we enter. Her shock of bleached blond hair, kaleidoscopic tattoos, and signature black lipstick pay perfect homage to the scores of punk and rock groups whose legendary music made these hallowed walls vibrate with energy. The place was founded by Jimi Hendrix in 1970 and has been a famed workshop for the likes of Stevie Wonder and David Bowie to Beyoncé and Jay Z.
By now I have been here so many times that Sonica recognizes me on sight. Still, I pinch myself each time I cross the threshold. But this time, when her eyes land on us, they dart around with a slight sense of panic.
“Ella! What a lovely surprise,” she practically chirps with a quick recovery. “We weren’t expecting you today.” Her voice is a bit higher and thinner than I remember.
“Heeeyy, Sonica,” I reply, keeping my words bright and steady, like I do this all the time. “I’d love you to meet my very best friend in the whole wide world, Rodney Allen Jenkins.”
“Girl, you ain’t have to give her my whole government name, did you?” he whispers in my ear as we approach her desk. He leans forward to shake her hand. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
Sonica gives Rodney a brief shake and a genuine smile while swiftly donning her headset and dialing a number. “One second,” she says, winking. “Elliot’s in with an artist. I’ll see if he’s got a break coming up in the session. In the meantime, how about we set you up in a private room?”
She must sense my unease at her suggestion because she adds, “If that’s all right?”
“Ooooh, a private room,” Rodney coos, with a subtle shoulder shimmy. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
At this point, the growing unease from Elliot’s earlier unresponsiveness is full-fledged. I knew he was working today. When Elliot and I spoke this morning before Rodney’s flight landed, he told me he’d be in the studio workshopping some arrangements for the songs he and I have been writing together and that he’d send a car to pick us up to join him later. I’ve been so excited for Rodney to finally see me in the booth with the Elliot Majors behind the mixer. Finally, someone who was in my life before everything changed was going to witness me living the dream I’d been talking up forever. But it seems like Elliot had other plans.
But for Rodney’s sake, right now, I am a swan—calm up top, but scrambling like hell with worry under the surface.
Once in the meeting room, Rodney and I preoccupy ourselves with catching up on his dating life and the epiphany he’s had since pursuing a degree at Berklee in music business and management.
“So, turns out I don’t think I want to be an executive after all,” he tells me.
At this, my head tilts to the side like a confused puppy. “I’m sorry. This coming from the guy who idolizes Clive Davis like most people do Michael Jordan? I mean you’ve stalked clips and photos from his pre-Grammy party every year since you were eight.”
“Oh, imma finish this degree and do all the internships, don’t get me wrong,” he says. “But I’m starting to see that what’s drawn me to the industry, more than even the music, is just the open avenue for creative expression. And I’m into it in a big way. The photography, the fashion…I simply don’t care as much about deals and the contracts.”
Watching him explain this is like watching the clouds break after a storm. My friend is practically glowing with excitement, and it’s the brightest spot of this so far very dreary day. I’m about to tell him how happy I am that he’s found this new direction when suddenly the door bursts open and in walks my very tardy husband.
“I guess I’m here to meet the man of the hour,” Elliot says, voice booming as he enters the room. He carries along with him an indica-laced aura and two men I’ve never met. Heading straight for Rodney and drawing him into a hug, he nearly jumps upon spotting me next to him.
“Oh! There you are, babe,” he says, before leaning in for a kiss. “Sorry, it took me a minute. Had a session run long. You tell your friend the good news?” I don’t miss the faraway look in his eyes or the very concerned one in Rodney’s.
“What news?” Rodney asks, trying to hold on to a precarious smile.
I smoke from time to time. It shouldn’t be a crime. But then again, why do I feel like crying? Instead, I clear my throat and wrap my arm around my husband’s waist. “Elliot and I—” I say, but then pause. And for some reason the words are jammed in my throat, like they’ve been dipped in concrete and I’ve got to force them out. “We…got married!”
Elliot’s two friends start clapping him on the shoulder and dapping him up, and Rodney just stares at me in blank shock. But he must read my unspoken plea, because it only lasts for a second or two before the shade lifts, and gradually, he’s smiling and cautiously congratulating us too. Then, as promised, Elliot brings us into the studio, where for the next four hours, he proceeds to dazzle us all with his virtuosic command of the soundboard.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I tell the back of the driver’s seat of the sleek SUV that my new husband arranged to bring Rodney and me to “anywhere our hearts desired” after we left the studio. And while we’re on our way to Sylvia’s in Harlem—Rodney’s pick—my best friend’s eyes are currently piercing my profile with ice beams of judgment. And like a coward, I’m staring ahead, unable to meet his eyes for fear that doing so might threaten the last fragile shards of confidence I have left in my big decision.
“Look at you like what?” he responds softly, feigning ignorance as he turns back to his window.
A long, slow exhale whooshes out of me. “Don’t look at me like I just got a face tattoo,” I say. “I mean I get it. On the surface, this feels fast , I know. But there’s so much more to Elliot. You just have to get to know him.”
“Do you though?” he asks, and at this I turn to wordlessly stare at him in confusion. “Know him. Do you really know him?” Rodney clarifies.
I sit with Rodney’s question for a minute, turning over the length of time I’ve “known” Elliot in my mind—roughly five months at this point—which isn’t so far off from shotgun wedding territory that it won’t continue to raise eyebrows as more of our loved ones, and the world, catch wind of it. But my parents got married after less than a year of knowing each other. And my grandparents had an even shorter runway than that. While I wouldn’t consider either relationship to be enviable, they each stood the test of time.
“I don’t fully know him yet,” I admit. “But I think that it’s impossible to truly know a person anyway until you’ve done some life with them. And that’s all we’re doing here, committing to doing life together, and learning about each other on the way.” I can practically see the question churning in Rodney’s mind: Doing life together, is that what you’d call what I just witnessed at Electric Lady? Because it’s the same question on mine. But at this point I’m merely working my theory out loud, hoping it sounds as solid to Rodney as it does in my head and heart.
“But El, baby. Marriage is big. You couldn’t have just…I don’t know, moved in with the man?” he asks, and this is the moment the spark of hope that my best friend would cheer on my latest rash adventure begins to wither. It must be apparent on my face, too, because next, Rodney’s rushing to walk it back. “Look. I’m wrong for that, okay?” he says, flustered. “Ignore me, please. Come what may, you’ve got this. You always do.”
Then he grabs my hand on the middle seat, and our eyes meet as gradual smiles, mine tentative, his reassuring, reflect on each other’s faces. “Besides, if he fucks it up, I know a guy.”