Читать книгу Crazy in Love - Crystal B. Bright - Страница 10

Chapter 2

“Tell me again, Craig. What do you mean I have nothing?” Shauna paced in front of her manager’s desk.

If she kept moving, the negative thoughts threatening to creep into her skull would stay away. Plus walking had helped her over the last few months.

She did stop long enough to glare at Craig. The back of her legs brushed against the red leather chair that sat in front of his desk. She remembered buying him this pricey showpiece for his fiftieth birthday along with a black leather couch, mink carpet, and mahogany desk with platinum fixtures.

Good to see that they all traveled well from the office building she used to own to Craig’s new digs in this dump down at the Oceanfront in Virginia Beach.

Craig adjusted his glasses on his thick nose. “Your half-year stint in rehab hasn’t done wonders for your career.”

She pulled her floppy red hat down lower over her eyes. “It wasn’t rehab.” Another lesson she learned in Peaceful Acres: call things like she saw them. “I just needed some time away.” She sat on her hands to prevent Craig from seeing them tremble. Her emotions simmered, nearly breaking the surface.

Get it together, girl. Don’t break.

Craig gazed down at his computer. “It was a lot for you to perform the day of…well, you know.”

Yes, Shauna knew. Attempting to do a full concert on the same day she buried her mother sounded crazy. If that statement went for an apology, she would take it.

After a deep breath, she did her own damage control with her manager. “The time away did help. I got to do something I hadn’t done in a long time: focus on me. Now I’m ready to get back to work.”

Craig grumbled in that manner that made Shauna cringe.

He stood from his desk. “Audiences are fickle. Stay out of the spotlight and they forget about you. I can only post so much on social media before they figure out that it’s not you.”

Even virtually, Craig spoke for her. Shauna released her hands and spoke her mind. “Are you saying the fans don’t care about me?”

“I’m saying it’s hard to keep them interested without new material.” He sighed loud enough to be annoying.

“But I recorded so many songs. What happened to releasing my album?” She wouldn’t have been able to promote it, but lots of popular artists released work without promotion and did well. She could have been one of those people.

Craig lowered, then shook his shaved head. Her heart slowed its beat and she felt a heavy pressure on her shoulders, the same pressure that had crippled her spirit.

Come on, girl. Breathe. You are not weak.

“It had been a while since you had a release before you committed yourself.” His dark skin seemed murky now, especially the more Craig spoke to her.

“Stop saying I committed myself.” She folded her arms. “Going to Peaceful Acres was the greatest thing for me.”

His bushy eyebrows drew together.

“It was the first time I took time for myself where the paparazzi didn’t follow me. It was a vacation without all of the sand and surf.” Maybe if she said it enough, that line of trash would sound plausible.

“Thanks to your sabbatical, Universe Records dropped you. Radio stations stopped playing you. The only video of yours on YouTube that’s getting a lot of play is the one from your last show.” He wrung his hands together. “The memes alone will drive you crazy.” As soon as he made the statement, he flinched. Like he needed to cover up his mistake, he kept talking. “The fans stopped writing.” He tapped his fingers on the desk.

She shook her head hard enough that the back of her neck ached. “That’s not true. I still got fan mail. They cared.”

Her fan mail that used to be delivered by the truckloads could now be brought to her by one carrier from his satchel in a single trip.

Shauna exhaled and eased back into the chair. “Besides, I shouldn’t have to explain anything to anyone. Rock stars do crazy stuff all the time and get a pass. Since middle school, I have been homeschooled and tutored, so I didn’t do the typical rebellious teenager stuff. I have been working hard since I was fourteen. I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink. I don’t go out to parties. I need to be cut some slack here.”

Craig sighed, then lowered his head again. If Craig thought her sabbatical made her soft, he had another thing coming. Forget what the doctors had said about her making some significant changes in her life. No, Shauna needed to keep on track like she hadn’t missed a beat.

He stood from his desk and planted himself in front of her. He brought his hands to his hips. From under the brim of her hat, she spied his knock-off Rolex watch and simple gold wedding band that glowed against his dark skin.

“What happened to all of your good jewelry?” She flicked his watch.

“This is part of what I wanted to tell you after your last show.” He covered his watch with his hand as he regarded her. “Your accountant ran off with half of your money and fled the country. We tried to get your attorney to sue the bastard, but she was in on the scam too and took off with more of your dough. Then you had all of the other people in your employ.” He brought his hand up and ticked off people on each finger. “Your personal chef, your masseuse, your stylist, your acupuncturist.” He snickered. “The reason you got six months in that place was because each time they asked for money, I fired someone you employed until there was no one left.”

“Not even my vocal coach?” The person who had been with her before she signed her first record deal would never leave her, right?

“He was the first to go.” Craig shook his head. “I don’t mean I fired him. He left on his own as soon as you, um, went away.”

She rubbed the back of her neck to relieve the strain and to keep her hands occupied. When her fingers brushed against the coarse, balled hair underneath her braids, she brought her hand down.

“I can’t even afford to hire someone to style you. You have no money. Nothing. Nada. Zippo.” He made a circle using his index finger and thumb.

She gritted her teeth, snorted like a bull, then spoke. “What about you? You could have gone off and represented some other hot up-and-comer.”

He put his hand on top of her shoulder. It was the first personal touch she’d had since being away. She relaxed, but kept her gaze on him.

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” His already deep voice dipped down to a lower octave. “I gave up my pay months before you went in. I hired my own lawyer to go after the bastards but they made sure to have ironclad contracts. I saw the writing on the wall and I tried to tell you but, well, you know.”

Yes, she knew she hadn’t listened to anyone. As one of the hottest R&B artists out there, no one had bothered to give her any bad news except for one thing.

“I also sold my house, the cars, the jewelry. Delores and I don’t mind the comparably smaller house. She says there’s less to clean, especially since the maid stopped coming by three times a week.” He chuckled again but this time it was meant to ease her mind.

She reached forward to pat his hand, but stopped herself. The old Shauna wouldn’t have shown this much compassion. Chantel Evans threatened to come out, and she didn’t need her old, insecure self with her overwhelming need to please rearing her timid head. Like Craig used to tell her, “Release your ghetto fabulousness.”

If she showed a softer side, Craig would probably worry that she couldn’t be that hit maker again. From everything he had done for her, she knew he expected her to do great things again. Shauna wondered if she could deliver.

“And the restaurant?” Shauna remembered when Craig had bought the place for his wife because it was Delores’s dream to own her own Southern-cuisine restaurant.

He smiled. “I don’t care if I have to dig ditches to keep that place going. Delores has more than earned her right to have Dee’s House.”

It was nice to see a man so supportive of his woman’s goals. It would have been nice to have someone supporting Shauna instead of using her, like her record label.

She scanned Craig’s much smaller space. Bright white paint covered the walls, and it didn’t match the expensive items he’d brought into the room. As soon as her gaze settled on his shelves and she caught a glimpse of her Grammy awards, she raised herself from the chair and strolled to them like a magnetized pull.

When she stood in front of the gold trophies, she stared at them. They reminded her of her old self. Her confident self even if the confidence stemmed from a lie, a fake persona.

She put her hand on the plate and ran her fingertips over her engraved name. A shiver crept up her back as though she had touched a tombstone.

“With no money and a crooked accountant, your taxes hadn’t been paid. When the IRS sold your house and all your possessions while you were resting, I couldn’t bear to let them sell those.” Craig stood behind her. “I didn’t have enough money to buy anything else.”

What world had Shauna returned to? She would have been better off staying at Peaceful Acres but the doctors there had convinced her to go, move on with her life. How the hell was she supposed to do that?

Shauna turned around. She didn’t want to keep staring at her awards, painful reminders of a life she used to have, about a person she used to be.

“I’m going to sing.” The statement made her blink. She’d thought about it during her time away but never verbally expressed her desires. Then again, what else did she have left to use?

“Good girl.” Craig beamed, a smile spreading from ear to ear.

“But I haven’t sung in a while.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not ready.”

She hadn’t sung a note since finding out her mother had passed away. She didn’t know if she could get up in front of a crowd of people and sing like she used to as a former diamond-selling artist. She had to bring that old Shauna Stellar back and make her bigger than ever.

“I figured you would say that.” Craig rifled through some papers on his desk as she approached him.

“So if I have no money, if everything I own is gone, what do I do now? Where do I go?” Shauna reclaimed her seat. This time she pushed her hat back and stared at Craig.

“Since you have no more houses or apartments, you will stay with me and Delores. She’s missed the kids since they’ve gone off to college and gotten lives of their own. You’ll be good for her. She can lay off me for a change.” Craig laughed. “And your cousins are in and out of the house all the time.”

Shauna fell back in her seat. Even though she loved Delores’s home cooking, and her cousins made great substitutes for a brother and sister she never had, she really wanted to branch out on her own once she came out of Peaceful Acres.

Craig clasped his hands together and sat them on his desk. With a grin as big as the Atlantic Ocean, he made an announcement. “You, my dear, are going to get back into the music biz by producing.”

Shauna furrowed her eyebrows, which she knew needed a good waxing. “Producing what?”

“Music. You know. That thing you know about so well.” He smiled.

Shauna couldn’t help but to grin with him. That same reassuring expression got her through her first on-stage performance by herself. He’d given her that same radiant look when he convinced her that she would win her first Grammy the night she did. He’d smiled at her the day he’d dropped her off at the rehabilitation center and told her she would be fine. However, she didn’t understand this new plan.

“Oh, no. I’m not about to help someone else jumpstart their career while I’m struggling to revive my own. Besides, who will want me to produce them? You’ve called me crazy. Don’t you think other artists out there think the same thing? I want to work, Craig, but I don’t think even my opinions will matter to anyone.” She wiped her eyes to stop any impending tears.

Craig shook his head. “I don’t want to hear that negative talk from you anymore. I’ve known you since you were fifteen.” He held his hand about three feet above the floor like her five-foot-nine stature could have ever been that height at fifteen.

“Besides, it’s all you have left.” He plopped a file in front of her with Charisma Music in iridescent lettering across the top. The folder nearly knocked over his nameplate.

“This was my mother’s studio.” Shauna kept her stare on the words.

“The smartest thing your mother did before she died, besides raising a wonderful daughter, was to will this place over to you once you turned twenty-five. I didn’t want to tell you this before because of everything that was going on with you. I mean with your mom and—”

She raised her hand to stop him. She didn’t want to hear a replay of the last few months before she took her much-needed rest, especially not about Raheem, one of the reasons she couldn’t handle being in the real world anymore.

Craig straightened his tie. “The studio is yours. The IRS didn’t take it.”

“So? If Universe dropped me, doesn’t that mean my production deal with them is out, too?” Shauna didn’t see the possibilities like Craig. From the way he flashed his megawatt smile, she knew he had something in mind.

“Universe dropped you. But they haven’t said anything about their affiliation with Charisma. I plan on making a personal visit and selling them on retaining the studio so that you still have a distribution deal at least.” Craig smiled like he knew his plan would work. “So, you do what I said. You produce. Get your name back out there. Then eventually when you’re up to it, you’ll sing again.”

“I’m up to it now.” Yeah, and if she repeated that enough, she would convince herself. “I want my music to have meaning.” For her, that meant writing her own songs, which she had never done either. “I have nothing to sing about. The Princess of Love Ballads is dead.”

At one time she hated that media nickname. As an R&B singer, she’d sung more than just ballads. The slow love songs did put her over the top as a multi-platinum artist. What did she have to show for it now except for some memories and awards bought at a yard sale?

“She doesn’t have to be.”

“Yes, she does. I need to come back doing something way different than before. If I come back still singing the same stuff, I’ll just capture some of my old fans. But I come back doing hip hop or pop or something, I’ll rake in new fans.”

He flashed her a quizzical look.

“It’ll work.” She nodded. “But I still don’t see how having a studio is a good thing except for recording my next album. What artist is going to want me to produce them?”

“The one artist your mother signed before she died. He’s all we have left.” Craig looped his thumbs around his black suspenders. His normally rounded belly appeared flatter. Shauna knew his new physique didn’t come from exercise but rather an adjusted new diet that excluded the rich foods he’d enjoyed when money had rolled in steadily.

Craig continued. “Your mother gave him and his band a two-record deal and we have the funds in the operating budget to produce one album.”

“Why not drop him and use the money for me?”

Shauna had to think about her career, not someone else’s. She needed to work. She didn’t care if she had to walk all over someone to reach her goal. Raheem had done it to her. Bastard.

Craig held up one finger. “One word, my dear. Lawsuit. We don’t have the money to fight him, and he would definitely win.”

“No loophole?” If nothing else, she knew that every contract had its loophole. Then again, had she been such an expert on contracts, her accountant and attorney wouldn’t have stolen all her money.

Craig continued, interrupting her thoughts. “No loophole. Go in the studio with him and make sure he has some hits.” He hunched his shoulders. “Sorry, baby girl. I hadn’t expected you to get out so soon. I was hoping the money generated from this guy’s album would bankroll your comeback album.”

“So who is he?” Shauna tried to keep her inquiry sounding nonchalant. With her gaze fixed on the folder and a hand on her lap keeping her bouncing knee restrained, she knew her cover had been blown.

Craig pointed down to the folder. “Look inside.”

She flapped open the cover and caught an eight-by-ten glossy colored picture of a white man in a cowboy hat, jeans, cowboy boots, and white button-down shirt opened to mid-chest. In the shot, the man with a goatee leaned against a wooden fence with a lasso in one hand and the reins of a horse in the other. The stereotypical country photo made Shauna laugh.

“You’re kidding, right?” Shauna kept her gaze on the singing cowboy’s mesmerizing brown eyes. She rubbed her stomach when she felt a tickling feeling crawling over it.

“Does it look like I’m laughing?” Craig’s face had gone stone-cold serious.

“Please tell me he’s the next white soul singer who happens to like wearing this Grand Ol’ Opry getup.” She couldn’t help but stare at his chest and notice his broad shoulders and large hands. She even liked the way his jeans fit him.

Craig shook his head. “Nope. Country. Straight up and down.”

“I sing R&B. All I know is R&B. How in the hell am I supposed to produce a country singer? I don’t know anything about their music. I mean I can even understand hip-hop or rap, but this…” With great reluctance, she closed the folder on the singing cowboy.

Craig’s eyes lit up. “Sure you can do it. Whitney sang a country song.”

“Yeah, she sang it in an R&B way and made it her own. This man is a country singer who wants to sing that way. I can’t do this.” She shoved the folder back with the Dukes of Hazzard cutie inside and brought her hat down over her eyes again. “Why would my mother have even signed him? I didn’t know she knew anything outside of soul music.”

“There was a lot about your mother that you didn’t know.”

Shauna glared at her manager, but knew he had assessed Shauna and Fatima’s relationship perfectly. Once Shauna’s career took off, their relationship became strained, not as close as they used to be. She couldn’t even tell her mother why she felt the need to remove herself from everything she knew to get her life in order.

“She wanted to branch out. Try some new things. Why don’t you take a page from her book and try producing?”

Shauna shook her head, nearly losing her hat in the motion. “Let’s just cut our losses. I’ll sell the studio, pay this guy off, and go on—”

Craig cut her off. “Go on what?” He pounded his fists on his desk. “This is it, little girl. Music is all you have. My life, my world, is wrapped up in this business, in you. I believe in you. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t have made it here into my office. Now I’ve been waiting patiently for you to come back. I have made plans and backup plans and backup plans to those backup plans for when you come out. And when I present you with an offer, you turn your nose up at it? I don’t think so. You’re going to go down to the studio every day with Truman Woodley.”

Shauna felt her eyes go wide. “His name is Truman Woodley? What is he, a Boy Scout?”

“Maybe when you start working with him you two can decide on a suitable name change. It worked for you.”

Adopting a new persona had helped Shauna in a way. She could delve into a character without revealing her true self while she performed. She doubted this guy wanted to do the same thing.

“You are going to produce this album. All of this is going to lead you back to one thing.” Craig held up his index finger like God announcing her fate. “You’re going to sing again and to packed houses.”

The tickling feeling disappeared and Shauna’s stomach churned. Although she’d said she wanted to sing, the idea of standing in front of a crowd hit her like a punch in her gut. She saw herself on stage again babbling like an idiot and fainting like before.

She swallowed, hoping to calm her tightened insides, but instead her insides went in reverse. She recalled this same feeling the first time she’d sung on stage by herself at the tender age of fourteen. She bolted from her chair and ran to his glass doorway.

Shauna’s pounding footsteps on the hardwood floor echoed in her ears. She ran past an office worker who must have recognized the international sign of being nauseous. He directed her to the bathroom but she only caught “…door on the right.”

Shauna burst into the bathroom, pushed open a stall door, and collapsed at the toilet, purging her insides into the white, automatic bowl. As soon as she lifted her head slightly, the murky water swirled down, offering her a clean bowl to continue vomiting. She inhaled and caught the putrid stench of her predigested food.

After her second heave and the toilet’s second auto-flush, she felt something over her shoulder. Shauna turned her head to see a crumpled white paper towel by her.

“Thanks.” She accepted it. “God, what a day.” She said it to herself but also to the kind stranger behind her who had just offered her some compassion in the form of the gritty paper towel. She would have to put on her Shauna Stellar face to appease this fan.

“Do you ever get the feeling like the world is laughing at you and you’re not in on the joke?” Shauna sat on her haunches for a moment before attempting to stand. “I get home today and I’m told to produce this country singer who I have never heard of. I don’t even listen to country music. And I have that guy’s career, my manager’s career, and my own career riding on everything that I do. It’s too much. Something’s got to give and I think it’s going to have to be Slim Pickens.”

She heard a flush from a couple of stalls down from her and a creaky door opening and closing. When her stomach felt settled after she’d purged, both physically and emotionally, she sat up on her knees, still facing the toilet.

“I just don’t think I can do all of this.” When she heard the water in the sink turn off, Shauna raised herself up from the floor. “I don’t know who you are, but thank you for listening to me make a fool of myself.” She smiled and laughed until she turned around and came face to face with her Bo Duke-Slim Pickens singing cowboy.

Shauna peeked behind him briefly to catch the row of urinals. Among everything else, she’d run into the wrong bathroom. On top of that, she ended up confessing that she didn’t want to produce Truman’s album.

She swallowed uneasily and attempted a clumsy smile, one that twitched at the corner and didn’t stop until she put her hand over her mouth.

Truman towered over her. The gaze from his tobacco brown eyes bore down on hers until she felt smaller than the brain of an ant. Had she had a brain in her own head she would have remembered her own first rule of being a celebrity: never speak your mind in public. The truth always got twisted into something distorted and ugly. However, this time her rule hadn’t failed her. Her rude statements had stung her.

She took a step back into the stall. Truman, looking like he had stepped right off his photo in jeans and white button-down shirt, scratched his head. His short, brown hair barely moved in the motion. He put one hand on the doorframe of the stall. The other hand held his cream-colored Stetson.

He smelled like the great outdoors, which included a mixture of fresh cut grass, leaves, tree bark, and honeysuckle. When she spent summers with Craig and Delores in Virginia Beach, the outdoorsy scent used to calm her. Now she would always associate the scent with embarrassment, fear, and anger—Truman’s anger.

He placed his hat on his head, tipped it back with one finger. “And I thought our first meeting would be awkward.”

Even through his smooth country accent she caught his sarcasm. He walked out of the bathroom.

She let out her breath, leaned against the cool tiled wall, and slid back down to the floor. “Great. Just what I needed, someone else to hate me.”

The door opened. She expected to see Truman, ready to formally curse her out for her stupidity. Instead a young, pimply face man entered. He did a double take when he found Shauna in one of the stalls. He stared at her, then the urinals while hopping from one foot to the other.

He opened his mouth to say something when she cut in.

“Don’t worry. I’m out of here.”