Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Imani beat me to the office. I walked in to find her pacing in front of the Wall. We were going into week four of production on the November issue, so it was nearly full.
“Okay, I have a plan,” she said without turning around.
“If we kill the vegetarian Thanksgiving thing and push the holiday girls’ trips feature, the accessories story, and obviously the cover to December, we free up twenty pages in the well.
You think that’s enough for Bobbie’s tribute? ” Her voice broke on the word tribute.
“I know,” I said simply. “I hate this so much. I hate everything about it.”
“I profiled Bobbie once for Essence. She spoke in the most enlightened perfect sentences. All I had to do was transcribe them. And she went out of her way to be kind to me.” Imani turned her head, and I could see the smear of runny eye makeup bruising her cheek.
“I don’t know, it changed me or something. I started my locs after I met her.”
“Bobbie had that impact on folks.” Sondra was now standing on Imani’s other side.
“And she was the nicest. I remember one year I was a baby entertainment reporter covering the red carpet for the Grammys. Bobbie walked past all the mainstream outlets until she got to me. Then she gave me the best interview. I had all the dopest clips of her, and that was the year she won best new artist. She got me a promotion.”
“I styled the music video for the lead single of her second album,” Freddy said in a hushed tone next to me.
“First of all, her body was bananas. She looked sick in, like, every single thing. And she was super sweet, posed for pics with the whole glam squad, and even hired me once on the side to style her for the BET Awards.”
The rest of the team was starting to file in, a sad parade of people whom Bobbie had touched, directly or indirectly, in some way.
I looked around the shattered and sniffling group assembled in the conference room and wished I could reminisce with them.
But we had work to do. All the relevant magazines would be in a race for the biggest writers, so I’d spent the car ride to the office calling entertainment journalists I’d worked with at StyleList. I’d managed to lock down Joan Morgan, Nelson George, Lola Ogunnaike, Scott Poulson-Bryant, and Touré to write about different aspects of Bobbie’s life and impact.
But we still had to map out the rest of the issue.
“Okay, team, you already know how much work this is going to be. We have seven days to produce a tribute worthy of Bobbie Washington. And I have a crazy idea,” I said, looking from face to face.
I needed them to get inspired so they could channel their sadness into doing their best work—for Bobbie.
“I want to redo the whole issue from Bobbie’s perspective.
Let’s salvage what we can because there are some completed pieces that might still work. We’ll have to push or kill the rest.”
“So almost as if Bobbie were the guest editor,” Sondra said, nodding.
“Exactly, you totally got it!” I exclaimed.
“Bobbie was the original Sugar girl. So, let’s remake this issue from her point of view.
But we’re also doing a proper tribute. I want to call the famous folks she’s worked with to get their favorite experience with her.
Sondra, you’re running point on that. Freddy, I’d like to do a style spread with all her best looks.
Imani, I’d like you to write the main cover story.
You can talk about your experience profiling her years ago.
” I thought for a minute. “We also need a visual timeline of Bobbie’s life events to run along the bottom of the stories in her tribute.
And we need some space in the book for you guys to share your Bobbie memories.
If we keep them to a few sentences, they can be a design element along the timeline or they could be on a running sidebar throughout the issue. ”
“That’s fucking genius!” Von cried out, hitting his hand on the table. When some people turned to stare at him, he said, “What? You know it is.”
I smiled at him gratefully. “We’re going to meet tomorrow at noon for everyone to present any additional ideas you have for the issue.”
“What are we going to use for the cover image?” Freddy interjected. “Bobbie only had a couple of photographers she liked to work with, and Groove has most of the rights to those images.”
I sighed and looked toward the ceiling.
“I don’t know the whole story,” Freddy continued, “but when Barbara ran Groove, she bought a few photographers’ catalogs, and I know the best Bobbie images were in those archives.”
“Damn it. But okay, let me try to think of something.”
I was surprised that Luna and I were in near-matching outfits when we met the next morning: tracksuits, white high-tops, ponytails, and hoop earrings.
My tracksuit was powder blue and Luna’s was flamingo pink; her nails were so long and bright, they looked like crab legs, while I had bitten mine to the quick overnight.
Otherwise, we were twinning. We started when we saw each other, an involuntary smile flashing across both of our faces before we remembered that we had beef.
I’d emailed Luna with the subject line For Bobbie asking to meet up, figuring that she probably had a Bobbie story too, so maybe she’d humor my request. Luna had agreed to meet at a diner on the same block as the Groove headquarters at 10 AM; I’d arrived at 9:30 to get good and caffeinated before dealing with Lunatic.
Reaching out to her had been my very last option.
We’d mocked up covers with different red carpet images from Getty that made the magazine look cheap.
We’d reached out to secondary photographers who’d shot Bobbie for her music label and found nothing but overused publicity pictures and unflattering outtakes.
We’d even tried still shots from her music videos.
None of it did Bobbie justice. We needed those images that Groove owned. Luna was my Hail Mary.
“Well, that’s not the ugliest outfit I’ve seen you wear.” Luna’s backhanded compliment reminded me of Lucinda and Barbara. “Please explain what is so goddamned important that you dragged me to this dive in the middle of crunch time—for both of us,” she said.
There was no need to remind her that this “dive” was her choice. “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice. It’s definitely a tough week,” I started. Luna’s tense jaw and furrowed brow told me I’d better get to the point. “Obviously, we’re both working on tributes to Bobbie.”
“Obviously, Nikki. I fucking slept in these clothes.” She squinted at me, creasing the day-old concealer I now spied circling her eyes. “Seriously, what is it that you want? You’re wasting time I don’t have.”
I’d only thought about Luna on a runway or out on the town; I’d never considered how much time she must spend in her office.
She’d stopped modeling a decade ago to transition into writing for Hot Hair; then she’d worked her way up to eventually become the editor in chief.
Even though Hot Hair wasn’t the most highbrow title, that ascent must have still taken hard work, focus, and talent.
And now Luna was the deputy editor of what was still the biggest urban entertainment magazine.
Just because we didn’t have the same taste didn’t make her lazy or even bad at her job.
So, yeah, Luna Baxter would be working her ass off right now too, same as me.
“My bad, Luna,” I said, and meant it. “I know you’re busy.
Bobbie’s death plus putting together the tribute is wearing on me.
We were in the last week of production on November, and now we’re pulling the whole issue apart.
There’s no time to even think about missing Bobbie.
” My breath came out more ragged than I thought, and I quickly glanced at Luna to see if she’d noticed, but she was intently examining her nails.
I would have normally thought she was ignoring me, but I could see how tightly Luna was clasping her hand.
“At least you have a week. I got into it with Alonzo because we’d already shipped November, so we had to pay a stupid amount of money to pull it off the presses.
But our cover was Sliq Bishopp. You know, telling the ‘real story.’” She looked up and made air quotes, then continued.
“I was, like, no fucking way everyone else has Bobbie Washington tributes on the stands and we’re out with an accused rapist.”
Luna and I shared a brief, knowing look. “Yeah, Bobbie would absolutely not have liked that,” I said.
“At all,” Luna replied. “You knew her?”
“Nah, not really. But she came to Howard when I was there, and it was hugely inspirational. Hard to explain, but I felt different after she left.”
Luna closed her eyes for a beat too long.
“Bobbie was my first-ever interview,” she murmured.
“We grew up in the same neighborhood and started doing what we do at the same time. Bobbie always had something very different about her. So when she was a local artist playing dive bars and I was modeling while trying to get people to pay me for my words, I interviewed her on spec. It took me weeks to get, like, fifty bucks for the piece.”
I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, but I was legit impressed. “So you have some real perspective on Bobbie’s life.”
“Yes, I have real perspective,” she intoned in a Steve Urkel voice. “Nikki, I just told you that Bobbie was my homegirl.” Luna rolled sad eyes.
I could see I’d made another mistake, and I was about to lose Luna. “You did. You’re right. I’m thinking about Bobbie’s impact, but you literally grew up with her. That’s a different kind of hurt.”
She grunted at me, her eyes still hooded. “Can you tell me already why the hell I am here? We only have twenty-four hours to make any changes to the November issue before we gotta get it back to the printer. I am not missing my on-sale date humoring the great Nicole Rose.”