Chapter 25 #2
“Isn’t it a trip how white folks will lose their shit over a C-note?
They damn near forget to be racist,” Bishopp whispered conspiratorially as he sank into the soft couch next to me.
He gave me a small smile showing teeth that were devoid of his omnipresent grill, not seeming to notice that I was still struck dumb at his entrance.
He gestured to the bartender, then took my hand, and said, “So, Nikki Rose, editor in chief of Sugar magazine, you are even prettier than I remember.” He reached up to twirl one of my curls around his finger.
“And you are here to figure out how anyone could possibly think that Sliq Bishopp, a leader of the hip hop community, would need to rape anyone.”
I had been gazing at the flawless tawny brown of Bishopp’s clean-shaven pate; I’d never noticed how attractive he was underneath the gangbanger gear, and I had the absurd urge to lick his shiny head to see if it tasted like the chocolate truffle it resembled.
But his comment brought me back to reality.
Withdrawing my fingers and removing my hair from his grip, I pulled out my recorder and said, “Nice to meet you, Bishopp. Do you mind if I tape our conversation?”
“Right down to business, huh?” Bishopp downed the entire flute of champagne the bartender had placed in front of him. “I thought we could get to know each other a little before we get to the interview.”
“Getting to know you is part of the interview.” I smiled at him in what I hoped was a charming way, but Bishopp just blinked at me as he drank half of a second flute that had appeared. I guessed his gesture to the bartender meant some version of “keep ’em coming.”
“Nah, Nikki Rose.” Pointing at my untouched champagne, he said, “I need you to have at least one drink with me before I spill my guts.”
This wasn’t the first time I’d been offered a drink during an interview.
Normally, I turned them down, but Bishopp was looking at me like a drug dealer who needed me to sample the wares to prove I wasn’t a cop.
So I took a small sip and immediately furrowed my brow.
“Why does the champagne taste like that?”
Bishopp laughed at my grimace. “There’s a big shot of vodka in the Cristal. That will get you right.”
“Whew, glad I asked.” I tried to smile back but wondered whether this was Bishopp’s go-to drink when he was trying to disarm a woman.
I’d been drinking so much champagne lately that I quickly tasted something else in that flute.
Someone else may have thought it was just a brand they didn’t recognize. “Think I’m going to stick to Perrier.”
“Man, why you acting like a prude?” Bishopp looked annoyed but signaled to the bartender again. “The way people talk about you in these streets, I figured you’d be up for more than a fancy club soda.”
I didn’t know if he was referring to Alonzo’s character assassination or my now-public “thing” with JJ, his producer. Either way, Bishopp was clearly comfortable aggressively hitting on me. I felt like a pawn in a game I barely understood.
“People talk about you in these streets too. I think that’s why we’re here,” I replied sharply, although I was less annoyed at Bishopp than at myself for being distracted by his dimples and deep green eyes.
“Oh, okay, I see you, Miss EIC. I guess you did not come to play.” Bishopp downed the rest of his second champagne-and-vodka mix and motioned for a third. “That’s too bad, though. We could have had some fun, you and I.”
Something in his tone made that comment feel like a threat.
Then Bishopp winked over my shoulder at his white-suited crew, who had clustered near the bar, throwing back tequila shots.
It seemed as if they’d been waiting for some kind of cue from Bishopp because his boys, swollen with prison-yard muscles and implicit power, guffawed and nodded knowingly toward me.
I subtly turned my head in the other direction to make sure that Von was still there, wanting to cry with relief when I saw him sitting in a corner looking back and forth from me to the book he’d brought to pass the time.
Without Von, I would have been truly uneasy, likely how Bishopp’s accuser had felt as she was sucked into a situation she couldn’t control.
“You do know that I’m here to write a cover profile on you for a national magazine? You sure this is how you want to start?” I asked him, turning my tape recorder on. “We are now on the record.”
Bishopp stared at me over the top of his glass, his expression darkening.
I’d never seen a man in a white linen suit and Gucci slides look so dangerous.
“You’re nothing like I’d thought you’d be.
But I guess I should have known when you wanted to meet in the lobby that you’d be taking this way too seriously. ”
Listening to Bishopp go on and on about how disappointed he was that I was so straitlaced and how he’d been ready to show me a good time brought to mind my first experience with Alonzo, five years ago at a Midtown hotel not that far from where Bishopp and I were now.
I remembered thinking that I’d arrived early, but Alonzo was already ensconced in a quiet area of the hotel’s sleek Italian eatery, nursing a tumbler of bourbon and yelling at someone on his cell phone.
I’d seen him at a couple family functions but had lumped him together with my mother’s old friends so never paid him much attention.
But since he had the potential to get me a job in publishing, Alonzo Griffin had become much more compelling on that winter afternoon.
I hadn’t wanted to interrupt, so I’d loitered near the door, spying on Alonzo as he’d punctuated his loudest points with indignant hand gestures.
His ponytailed locs and silvery Italian suit were already distinctive, but the unabashed brutality and volume with which he dispatched the unlucky soul on the other end of his call set him far apart from everyone else in the conservative room.
There had been a fearlessness in Alonzo’s carriage that exuded authority.
I remembered being startled by how potent his energy had felt when his eyes met mine across the room.
By the time Alonzo had waved me over, I was already a little intoxicated by him.
Which made it that much easier to give in to everything that came next: his hand brushing my hair off my shoulder, his knee touching mine under the table, his fingers absently rubbing my arm as we talked about how he could help me achieve my professional dreams, the invitation to the room, my shirt over my head, Alonzo thrusting into me from behind as both of my palms were pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window, not caring if any tourists below could see us.
I was doing the same thing with Bishopp, getting lost in his brutal good looks. My attraction to dominance tinged with ruthlessness was spinning me in concentric circles that got smaller as I neared a perilous center. If I didn’t break out of this pattern, I would implode.
With greater resolve, I pulled Bishopp back to our conversation by asking with faux innocence, “So, if I’d agreed to do the interview in your suite, would you have assumed that I was down to have some ‘fun’?”
“Well, yeah, Nikki,” Bishopp growled. “If a female accepts an invite to the crib, she knows what’s up.”
“What if I hadn’t understood what you meant by the invitation to your room?” I was getting somewhere, but he didn’t know it.
“Why else would a bitch think I want her up in the suite? I’m not a dental assistant. I’m a fucking rapper.”
“What do you mean by that? Why does it matter that you’re a rapper?”
Bishopp sighed deeply and drained his third flute.
The more alcohol he drank, the more he sounded like his song lyrics—and the less attractive he became.
I tried not to dwell on the thought that he was likely packing.
“Look, if a bitch wanna mess with the music industry, a bitch had better learn how we get down. We get money and ‘we don’t love them hoes,’” he emphasized, quoting Snoop Dogg.
“You think that music is different than other industries?” I kept probing, hoping he was too buzzed to recognize that I was leading him in a specific direction.
“Most of these nine-to-five niggas is soft.” Bishopp’s speech was starting to slur. “I don’t know any real G’s who would invite a female to their crib for a fucking tickle party.”
“But what if I was up in your suite tonight and I really thought I was only there to do an interview, so I told you no?” I pushed a little more. “Also, I think you mean ‘woman,’ not ‘female,’ right?”
Bishopp smirked at me, then loudly sucked his teeth. Ignoring my last comment, he continued, “What’s a no to a G? If you’re in my house, you’re mine.”
I glanced down to make sure my tape recorder was still running. “Is that what happened with your accuser? She didn’t know the deal, so she said no and you weren’t trying to hear it?”
“Seriously, what did she think I wanted when I pulled her out the crowd at my concert and invited her to my place? Like, what did she think was going to happen? Why was she dancing in the front row in some booty shorts and a bra if she didn’t want my attention?
” Bishopp tapped his forehead to indicate his accuser’s obvious na?veté.
“And now she wants to cry rape because she’s mad I don’t want to be her boyfriend or something? Man, fuck that. She knew what was up.”
“So why do you think she’s saying that you raped her? That’s a serious accusation for someone to make from some hurt feelings.”
He leaned forward and whispered, “I know you’re smarter than this, Miss EIC. It’s a shakedown. She’s using the court system to launch an expensive civil suit. This bitch is after my money.”
“But Bishopp, did she say no?” I held my breath.