Control, page 7
She looked at me and froze. “Well, yeah, but the second one I didn’t know I could get. So, that threw a monkey wrench in my plans.”
She was so casual about it that it didn’t seem to matter. “Well, did somebody see you there?”
“No, that’s why I ran in the fire escape as soon as I saw him. But, you know, when they got friends and bodyguards and all that, all it takes is for one of them to see you. So, I had to hide from all of them.”
“And what are you gonna tell the first guy? You just up and disappeared from him?”
“No, I had already left his room. But then I can’t hang out with him, because he’s gonna want to go out at some point, and I didn’t want to be trapped in the room with him. So, my best decision was to leave. And that’s when you called.” She grinned. “Perfect timing,” she repeated.
“For you, maybe,” I told her, “but I was damn-near home already.”
“My bad. But this the kind of stuff I get into that I need to talk about.”
“No, you need to stop getting in this kind of stuff in the first place,” I argued. “Talking about it after the fact is useless.”
“Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have anything to talk about.”
We looked at each other and laughed in unison. She knew she was crazy.
I said, “Anyway . . . I got some music I want you to hear. And you tell me what you think about it.”
She perked up with that, as if she was ready to twerk in my passenger seat.
“All right, let me hear it. What you got, some old school?”
I smiled and put on Dark & Moody’s “Ghetto Opera” track. I didn’t even want to tell Mrs. Melody what it was. I wanted to see if she could figure it out.
She started listening to it and froze. She was really paying attention. She said, “The beat is dope. But it sound like . . . spooky horror music.”
“Could you write something to that?”
She frowned. “If I’m doing a Halloween song. Who produced that? That’s not your music, is it?”
I shook it off. “No, I don’t do music. This is from another client of mine.”
Mrs. Melody eyed me again. “She got a bunch of issues?”
“No more than you,” I told her. “She just wants to be successful like everyone else. That’s what you want, right?”
“Hell yeah,” she hummed. “But naw, the beat ain’t bad though. It just got that spooky sound.”
“All right, let me play you another one.” I put on another beat that I liked, which was more up tempo. Mrs. Melody started nodding to it immediately.
“Okay, this one sounds like . . . we got a Halloween party up in here.” She curled up her nails as if she had turned into a dancing zombie from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” And we laughed again.
“So, you can’t do anything with this one either?”
“I mean, it’s just not my style. Maybe if she took out all that spooky-sounding shit and just used a funky-ass bass line, I could do something with it.”
I nodded and continued smiling. “What if I put you two together to work on some new stuff. Then you can tell her what you want.”
Mrs. Melody went silent and stared at me in deep thought. “She’s not real crazy, is she?”
I continued to smile at her. “Well, how crazy are you? What if she asked me the same thing about you? Because jumping around in the bedrooms of enemies in the music business is suicide. So, again, how crazy are you?” I repeated.
“I’m not crazy, I’m just try’na get mine,” she responded.
“In any way that you can, which could be considered crazy,” I stressed.
“No, it’s just determined.”
“Whatever you wanna call it,” I argued. “So, would you meet up with her?”
She paused again. “Where? ’Cause I wouldn’t want to meet her in the dark or at night or anything. I gotta meet her for breakfast when the sun is out. Like ten or eleven o’clock in the morning would be good.”
“That’s more like a brunch,” I joked.
“Yeah, and that’s better than dinner. I don’t want her thinking about sippin’ on some wine or nothin’. She might try to slip some blood in it.”
“Would you stop? She’s not like that,” I lied. I didn’t really know what Dark & Moody was capable of to be bluntly honest about it. I had to talk her out of thinking about blood sacrifices, and I definitely wasn’t going to tell Mrs. Melody that.
“I’m just saying, man. If she’s making that kind of music and she’s already seeing you . . . Does she wear all black with thick black mascara?”
I shook it off. “No.” But she does call her music gothic funk, I told myself. I said, “But she’s already dark, so she doesn’t have to do all of that with the mascara and makeup. She’s a dark and beautiful girl.”
Mrs. Melody smiled at me. “Sounds like you got a crush on her.”
I chuckled. I got a crush on you too, I mused. “So, let’s say I invite both of you guys to meet up at my office. Would you be willing to do that? Then you can see for yourself how normal she is.”
Mrs. Melody wavered for a minute and then tossed up her hands. “All right. When you wanna do it?”
I continued smiling. Everything was falling right into my plans. I figured I would tell her about my movie ideas later. It was one step at a time.
DESTINY FLOWERS
Reflection 11
AFTER A VERY LONG NIGHT OF DRIVING, PLOTTING, AND PLANNING, I got back into the office that next morning closer to ten AM than my usual nine. I had forgotten all about a follow-up call from Destiny Flowers. But she didn’t. Like radar, she called me as soon as I got settled in.
“You had a busy night last night, huh?”
“How’d you know?” I asked rhetorically.
“Because I called and you weren’t in yet.”
“Did you leave a message?”
“I don’t like leaving messages. I’ll just call until you get there.”
Yeah, whatever, I thought. I could tell this woman was going to be irritating. But I didn’t have a first session that morning until eleven, so I had time to let her pull my ear for a minute.
“So, what can I do for you this morning?” I asked her.
“Oh, I just wanted to talk to you about some of my ideas.”
“Ahhh . . . you do realize that I set up professional appointments for my clients to come in and go through a full hourlong—or more—session for pay, right? I mean, that’s my job. That’s what I do. I just don’t listen to people’s ideas. You might wanna call up a think tank company for that.”
“I know what you do. You don’t have to explain that to me. I’m not stupid.”
At that point, I was speechless. I never called her stupid. And I was hesitant to say the wrong thing to her. So, I mumbled, “Ahhh . . . okay . . . would you like to setup an appointment?”
“You charge a hundred dollars an hour?”
“Yes, I do. I try to keep my price even and affordable.”
“Well, I can afford that.”
“I know you can,” I told her.
“How you know that?”
I paused. “If you’re paying rent or a mortgage here in Atlanta, then you got a hundred dollars, ’cause if you don’t, you can’t live here. In fact, you need a hundred dollars to even keep a cell phone on.”
“Oh, now that’s true. These cell phones are getting more and more expensive. Then they keep trying to add more data and apps and stuff all the time.”
I nodded, wondering when we would get to the beef of her conversation.
“Okay, so . . . do you have a certain day or a time in mind?” I commented.
“A day and time for what?”
I paused again. This woman . . . It was too early in the morning for foolishness. I said, “Excuse me—”
“Oh, oh, you meant a day and a time for your sessions,” she said, cutting me off. “Well, let me think about that.”
She was a real time waster, so I started eyeing my clock to take my mind off of cursing her ass out. I said, “Well, you need to think about that before you call here again.”
“I need to set up an appointment just to call you?” She sounded offended.
“No, you don’t need an appointment to call, but you do need to think about setting up a session. Otherwise . . . what’s the point?”
“The point is, I just wanted to talk to you about my ideas.”
“Okay, we already discussed that. And I am not a think tank. I’m a psychologist. I get paid to discuss people’s personal issues.”
“And I got a whole lot of ’em.”
“That you need to set up a session with me to discuss,” I told her. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have another long day ahead of me that I need to prepare for.”
She said, “Your first session is not until eleven o’clock. So, you still have time to talk to me.”
“How do you know what time my first session is?”
“Well, you’re not gonna start in between hours, are you? And right now, it’s only ten twenty-eight.”
I didn’t want to give her more information about my work schedule, so I let her go on with her assumptions.
I said, “Well, you let me know when you have a day and a time in mind. Okay?”
“Are you getting ready to hang up on me?”
“I’m trying not to. I would rather be professional and civil. But . . .”
“I’m getting on your damn nerves,” she filled in.
“Yes, you are,” I admitted.
She started laughing. “Well, at least you’re honest about it. I like that.”
I had heard enough. I said, “Okay, look—”
“I know, I know. I need to make an appointment, right? I will. One day.”
“Well, you let me know when, and I gotta get back to work now. Okay? Bye.”
I waited for her to respond.
“Aw’ight,” she mumbled. “I got you.”
Then I hung up the line.
“That damn girl,” I commented. “She gon’ make me need some coffee.”
DARK & MOODY
Reflection 12
ONCE THEY WORKED OUT THEIR SCHEDULES, I WAS ABLE TO GET Mrs. Melody and Dark & Moody together in my office that next week. And I was smiling away, just thinking of all the collaborations we could come up with.
“You two look like a new-wave Salt-N-Pepa in here,” I joked.
They looked at each other, both dressed in their usual style. Mrs. Melody was extra sexy in a baby blue dress, and Dark & Moody was artistic in black denim with colorful jewelry and earrings.
Dark & Moody smiled at the reference. “I’m way darker than Pepa. In fact, they should have called them Salt-N-Cinnamon, ’cause Pepa’s not all that dark.”
Mrs. Melody grinned and chimed in. “I think the point was to use a familiar term like salt-and-pepper because everyone can remember the name. You know, it’s catchy.”
“I think it’s catchier to use things that people don’t know. Then you’re like the only one doing it.”
Mrs. Melody continued smiling. She said, “It’s very hard to be the only one doing something these days. When you have no followers, that means you make no money.”
“And we want plenty of those,” I interjected. “You have nearly a half million followers now,” I added of Mrs. Melody.
I hated to pick sides, but one of the things that could hold Dark & Moody back was her penchant for presenting the counterculture, which is only good when it works. The reality was, Mrs. Melody was the one who could take Dark & Moody to a new place in her career. So, I had to make sure we all got on the same page for something to work.
“Money doesn’t always lead to longevity,” Dark & Moody commented. “I’d rather have a long and productive career than a fast, overnight burnout because I was chasing the money. That happens to a lot of people in music now.”
“They just need better producers,” I countered. I had to make Dark & Moody feel important as well. She had 52K followers on Instagram herself, which was still four times as many as I had.
“So, anyways . . . what I haven’t told either one of you yet is that I’m pulling together a possible film and studio project with a venture capital group that I’m hoping will say yes to the ideas. I’m trying to pull all of the pieces together now. And I was thinking something like a horror vehicle, or a psychological thriller.”
Mrs. Melody grinned and said, “That makes sense for you. You deal with people and psychology all day.”
“Exactly. And I was thinking about using Dark and Moody’s music to create the mood that we want.”
Dark & Moody heard that and grinned herself. She said, “I can see that.”
Mrs. Melody added, “Yeah, but you don’t want the whole movie to be like that. I mean, what if you have a love scene or something?”
Dark & Moody frowned at her. “I can produce regular music. I just prefer my gothic funk.”
“Gothic funk?” Mrs. Melody repeated. “Sounds like some Batman shit.”
“Well, Batman is the Dark Knight from Gotham,” Dark & Moody countered.
I couldn’t tell if these girls were getting along or not. It sounded as if they were both trying to establish their perspective.
“Well, I was thinking Mrs. Melody would make a great lead for that. What do you think, DM?” I asked the music producer.
She paused and considered it. “DM? I like that,” she responded. She didn’t say anything about Mrs. Melody’s acting in the lead.
“Yeah, it’s short for Dark and Moody,” I told her.
“I know. People just haven’t called me that before. They just call me Dark, or Tasha.”
“Oh, so that’s your real name?” I perked. She had never told me before. Maybe it had slipped out by accident.
She smiled and said, “Yeah, it’s Tasha Samuels.”
Mrs. Melody nodded. “You put T. Samuels on your music credits for publishing?”
She nodded. “Yeah. What about you?”
“I’m M. Anderson.”
“Cool. So, we have Tasha Samuels, Melody Anderson, and Victoria Benning all sitting here trying to figure out how we can work together,” I commented.
“On a movie?” Mrs. Melody repeated. “And these guys have the money?”
I paused. “They have it but getting it from them is the challenge.”
Mrs. Melody frowned. “Getting the money is always the challenge. Welcome to the fucking world of America.”
DM eyed her and said, “Well, I don’t do everything just for the money. If it’s a good project, I’m in.”
“So, you would be willing to contribute some of your productions to the project?” I asked her.
She stared across my desk from her chair and said, “Definitely.”
“Well, I really like the ‘Ghetto Opera’ track of yours,” I told her.
She smiled immediately. “Yeah, that’s one of my favorites.”
Even Mrs. Melody agreed. She nodded and said, “That could be the theme song.”
“But you said you couldn’t write to it,” I reminded her. It was the first track I had played for her in my car.
“No, I said it wasn’t my style. But I can write to anything. Or freestyle to it. Ma-fuckas say they wanna make a movie / it’s all good if the money there to move me / I’m a stuck-up chick, I get choosy / start talking bullshit, and you’ll lose me / but say the right shit to me, and we groovy / popping champagne bottles in Jacuzzis . . .”
I was impressed. Even DM smiled at it. “But that’s not the topic,” she commented.
“I mean, whatever the movie’s about, I can adjust to it,” Mrs. Melody countered. “I’m just saying that I don’t have a problem with writing. Especially if it’s gonna be the theme song of a movie. But to use it as my music . . . I mean, my fanbase would be like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ You know? They ain’t never heard no horror shit from me.”
DM started shaking her head. “See, now that’s the problem. When we start letting the audience control our careers, that’s when we end up with a job instead of a passion.”
Mrs. Melody persisted. “You can do whatever you wanna do with your career. You just won’t make any money from it.”
“Oh, I’ve made money. Let’s not get it confused,” DM responded. “My shit is that good. I’m just saying that I don’t allow the audience to dictate what I do. We lead and they follow. Right? Not the other way around.”
Mrs. Melody paused in deeper thought about it. Her answers were typically rapid-fire, so Dark & Moody had definitely gotten to her. And I was curious to see how she would respond.
“I mean, you can say that . . . but . . . if the audience is not following what you’re doing, then you’re just gettin’ in the way, ’cause they’d rather hear something else,” she argued. “So, move off the stage with that shit. That’s when they start booing.”
“Then that’s not your audience then,” DM countered.
Mrs. Melody said, “No, you could have made them your audience, but you fuck it up when you try to do you before they know you. You gotta please them first. Then you can do you, because they like you. But if you don’t let them like you first . . .”
She had a point, so I turned to DM and awaited her response.
She said, “You want the right ones to like you. Because if you’re just out here chasing any audience, your numbers and popularity will go up and down based off what they like versus what you like.”
Mrs. Melody cringed. She said, “That’s gonna happen anyway. I got songs right now that my audience likes way more than I do. But I don’t get mad at them for that. I made all of it. So, I let them like what they like and keep doing it.”
She said, “It’s a give-and-take when you have an audience. It’s not always about you. It’s just like any other relationship. The other side has things that they’re interested in too.”
With that, I wanted to redirect the conversation. Since they both had very strong personalities and opinions, they could debate like that for hours.
“So, the movie idea would be a go for both of you guys?” I asked them.
Mrs. Melody answered first. “Sure. But you still don’t know what it would be about?”
