The Illest, page 4
“Okay. I’ll see you then.”
He hung up the phone and looked at the clock. It was nearly 4:00 p.m., definitely not a lot of time to calm his nerves.
He hopped in the shower and started brainstorming what he had in his suitcase that he could wear, since he didn’t have enough time to go out and buy anything. By the time he dried off, he had pieced together his wardrobe in his head. He would wear a white dress shirt, a pair of dark, dressy denims, his black leather loafers and matching belt, and a navy blue blazer. While he didn’t consider himself a fashion aficionado, he had learned at Ellison-Wright that there were core staples a man should always travel with, especially if he were gone for longer than a day. Of course, he had not intended to wear that particular combination at any point; still, he was pleasantly surprised such seemingly arbitrary advice could prove so instrumental in a bind like this.
He finished dressing around 5:30 and headed into the kitchen to grab a snack, just in case it was a while before he ate again. Then he went downstairs to wait in the library.
Looking around the quiet room, Troy could feel his pulse quickening. What if he said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing? It was one thing to do something foolish in the presence of Eris, but it was another thing to do something publicly that could embarrass both of them. The fact that they would be going together meant that, at least publicly, they were somewhat of a couple—if only for the evening. Last week if someone told him he would be escorting the most beautiful actress in Hollywood to a fashion show, he would have slapped the person who was doing the talking. No one dared dream that big!
Troy could see the Lincoln Town Car through the front window when it pulled up. He locked up the brownstone and walked down the steps. The car’s windows were tinted, and by the time he pulled the handle of its door, his stomach was in knots. He looked into the car and immediately realized it was empty.
“Excuse me,” Troy said in the direction of the driver. “Who sent this car?”
“Sir, my dispatcher sent me to this address. I’m supposed to pick you up and take you to 41st and 6th in the city. That’s all I know.”
Troy stared at the empty backseat, wondering where Eris was. Hadn’t she said that she was coming to pick him up? Or had she said that she was sending a car to get him? He couldn’t remember.
“Sir, are you getting in?” the driver asked. He was attempting to be polite, but it was clear that he was becoming annoyed with this kid who didn’t seem to appreciate having a driver take him into the city.
“Yes,” Troy responded, hopping into the backseat. So this was how it was going to play out, he thought, as the driver navigated the neighborhood then onto the Brooklyn Bridge.
Seeing New York City from a car was refreshing. The evening sun gave a golden tint to the buildings, and as the car sped along the streets, Troy noticed pedestrians moving about the sidewalks and sighed that he was not one of them. The plush comfort of the town car added to the fact that this was not just a taxi ride where plopping your behind in the seat cost $2.00—that is, if you were able to catch a cab as a black man.
The Town Car pulled up to a stop outside of a nondescript brick building, where a short line of people stood in line behind a red velvet rope. They were flashing passes and the bouncer was admitting them one by one. It was then that Troy realized he didn’t have a pass.
“Excuse me,” he said to the driver. “Did the person who sent this car for me leave a package with you to give me?”
“No, sir. No package. I was just told to drop you off here.”
Troy stepped out of the car and walked toward the line. It was moving quickly, and he realized he would be face-to-face with the bouncer, empty-handed, in a matter of seconds. He quickly stepped out of line and walked to the pay phone on the corner, retrieved Eris’s phone number, and called her.
His call went straight to voicemail. “Hey, Eris, I just wanted to let you know that I was here. I’m standing outside the club waiting for you. I don’t have a cell phone, so I’ll just be out front waiting.” He hung up and walked back to the club.
A limousine pulled up in front of the building, and Z, a famous supermodel, stepped out and was quickly ushered through the door. Troy went back to the line behind the rope, trying to play it cool, although the June air was starting to make him sweat.
“Pass?” the bouncer said, holding out his hand to Troy once he’d reached the front of the line.
“I’m a guest of Eris Perry’s,” he said. “I might be on a list or something.”
The bouncer, a huge Puerto Rican guy with muscles jumping through his black designer t-shirt, lowered his head, scanning the list. “What’s your name?”
“Troy Dobbs.”
The bouncer looked up and down the different pages of his clipboard before saying, “No Troy Dobbs on the list.”
“What should I do? Eris Perry had a car drop me off here to meet her.”
“Yeah, and Janet Jackson is giving me a ride home tonight,” the bouncer said, laughing. “Step to the side, kid.”
Troy stepped out of line, his face flush with embarrassment, his body sticky with sweat. He glanced at his watch. It was 7:15, and he figured surely Eris should know by now that he’d arrived. Frustrated, he walked across the street and leaned against the building facing the club.
Over the next ten minutes, Town Car after Town Car, limousine after limousine, pulled up dropping off a Who’s Who list of celebrities at the front door. At a certain point Troy lost track of who was in the building, but he figured the list of famous people rivaled that of a major awards show. All he knew was that he was still outside, his blazer now resting in the crook of his arm, his dress shirt sleeves cuffed to his elbows. His feet were starting to hurt from standing so long in his loafers, and he contemplated just how much longer he would wait outside the club before walking down to the Metro Station a few blocks away and heading back to Brooklyn.
He glanced at his watch again. He would leave at 7:30, he told himself.
Once the long hand of his watch touched the numeral six, he took one last look at the door. Surely she would come to get him. It would have been pointless to have a car bring him this far just to drop him off and leave him. He turned to leave.
That’s when he saw a thin woman with an Afro emerge from the club, wielding a Sidekick and looking frantically from left to right. It took a moment before she looked straight ahead in Troy’s direction. He stood still, unsure of whether she was walking towards him or simply crossing the street.
“Troy?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’m Regina, Eris’s assistant. We’ve been looking all over the place for you. Have you been out here the entire time?”
Troy reached up dramatically and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Yeah. I’ve been out here for a while. I was actually just about to leave.”
“Don’t do that. Come with me. The show hasn’t started yet. Eris has been waiting on you since seven.”
Troy sighed and considered telling Regina that he’d pass. He was tired and felt sticky. His coolness had expired the moment he had to take off his jacket and cuff his sleeves.
“I’m really sorry,” Regina added. “Things got mixed up. I only knew to come out here because we called the car service, and they said that you had already been dropped off.”
Troy looked around him, noting that all of the activity was straight ahead. The party was directly in front of him, and he already knew the myriad of entertainers in the building because he had seen them all arrive. It was definitely tempting. But he realized all of that paled in comparison to the fact that Eris had been waiting on him, refusing to stop looking for him when he didn’t arrive. Although the situation had been horribly inconvenient, one thing seemed clear, as far as Troy was concerned: Eris actually cared about him.
He looked into Regina’s expectant eyes and nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Regina smiled and walked back to the bouncer.
“He’s with Eris Perry,” she said to the bouncer, pointing at Troy, whose clothes were damp with sweat.
Troy did his best to be cool and nod his head like, “I told you so.”
The bouncer looked at Troy and said, “Oh word? My bad, my man.” He then stepped aside and let Regina and Troy into the building.
Behind Troy he could see that the sun was starting to set.
7
Choices
Regina handed him a paper napkin from her purse without saying a word. This only amplified how humiliated Troy was that he had to stand outside long enough to sweat through most of what he was wearing. The air conditioning inside the club was a welcome reprieve, and once he wiped his brow with the napkin, he realized that he would probably be dry by the time the show ended.
Regina led him through the throng of A, B, and C-listers. Supermodel Z was chatting with Puffy, while Isaac Hayes escorted his date to a seat near the stage. When Troy got within range of Eris, his heart melted like a popsicle lying on a Mississippi sidewalk in July. This was the first time he had seen her really looking like the movie star Eris Perry.
Eris was famous for a particular bob hairstyle, where her hair was faded in the back. The cut was so connected to her image, it was often referred to as the Eris Perry cut, in the way the Halle Berry’s hairstyle was referred to as the Halle Berry cut. With the makeup and that glow of celebrity, Eris looked different than she had when Troy had hung out with her days before. She had been low key with the hats and loose clothing, but now this was Eris Perry in all of her famed glory. The sight of her put Troy in so much awe that if he died at that moment, he would have sailed into the great beyond a very satisfied man.
When Eris noticed Troy approaching, her lips gave way to a smile. She was smiling for him, Troy thought, unable to hide his own smile. She stood and embraced him.
“I’m so glad Regina was able to find you. I was starting to get worried that the car service had broken down or something.”
He started to recap the last forty-five minutes of standing outside getting dissed by the bouncer in the hot June sun, but then he decided to let it go. After all, she had just embraced his damp body and not commented on it. She knew, just like he knew, that everything that had happened was unfortunate, and her willingness to move forward with the evening inspired him to do the same.
“It was an adventure—but I made it. Just in time.” He smiled so she would know there were no hard feelings.
“I see you met my assistant, Regina.”
“Yeah. She’s cool people.”
Regina took a seat on the other side of Eris, leaving Eris and Troy to converse privately.
“I’m just glad to be here with you,” Troy said, taking in all of her beauty up close.
She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I just hope you enjoy the show.”
“I’m sure I will.”
The lights dimmed and the runway lit up with model after model walking the runway wearing the latest in the fall sport collection of Fila, a brand that Troy had once enjoyed as a child, particularly when it was an Italian import. From what he was hearing, though, there were some trademark issues and now there was a rebranding of the U.S. version. He half-expected Z to model in the show, but she was clearly a supermodel and in attendance primarily as a celebrity, which was further enhanced by the fact that she sat next to Puffy.
Troy found it difficult to really pay attention to the models on the runway. All he thought about was what would it be like to have a space like this to himself with Eris. She was the model walking through the runway of his mind, and truth be told, it did not matter what label she was wearing or from what collection.
The fashion show didn’t last long, and within minutes the DJ had started spinning tunes for those who wished to remain afterwards. Many of the celebrities were already at the coat check, preparing to leave for other events. Eris leaned over and whispered something to Regina, who nodded and walked away. Eris then approached Troy.
“So what did you think of the show?” she asked.
“Pretty cool. Thanks for bringing me.”
“No problem. I’m just sorry you had to wait outside so long.” She patted his chest. “But at least now you’re dry,” she said, chuckling.
He allowed himself to smile, silently appreciating the fact that his shirt was no longer sticking to him.
The DJ started playing “Runnin’” by Pharcyde, and Troy found himself involuntarily nodding to the rhythm of the music.
“You wanna dance?” Eris asked.
“Are you serious?”
“Or are Ellison-Wright men too good to dance?”
Troy laughed, taking her hand and guiding her onto the dance floor, where several other celebrities and socialites had already gathered to dance. He loved the song and found himself rapping along with it. Eris smiled, watching him as he moved from side to side, matching him with her own smooth movements.
The DJ mixed in several other songs, and they continued dancing, but when Troy felt the first beads of sweat forming on his forehead, he slowed down to a basic two-step. There was no way he would allow himself to sweat through his clothes a second time.
“What do you have planned for the rest of the evening?” Troy asked.
“I don’t know. What’s up?”
“I was just hoping the evening wouldn’t have end here.”
Eris smiled. “You don’t hold back, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re pretty straight forward with what you want.”
Troy shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess it always feels like it might be the last time I see you whenever we’re together, so I want to at least put it out there for you so you’d never be able to say you didn’t know what I was thinking.”
“I can appreciate that. Let’s go.”
Troy didn’t even bother to ask where. He would have gone anywhere she asked him to go.
The Town Car dropped them off on 6th Avenue, near 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Troy thought it an odd choice, given the general popularity of the location, but he was happy to be in such a beautiful architectural space with Eris.
They walked between skyscrapers toward the overlook, where flags surrounded a courtyard that would serve as an ice skating rink in the winter. They took a seat on one of the benches between the two buildings situated just behind the overlook.
“When I first moved to New York, I came here,” Eris said. “There were hundreds of people walking around here and down there in the courtyard.” She pointed just beyond them at the pit that lay ahead, all of the tourist activity taking place on a lower structural level. “You know, people told me that I would never make it in the industry living in New York. ‘You have to move to L.A.,’ they kept saying. But I’ve always been in love with this city—ever since I was a little girl and used to see it on TV.”
Troy nodded. “You’re from Louisiana, right?”
Ellis smiled, nodding. “Small place called Monroe, somewhere along I-20 between Mississippi and Texas.”
“When did you come here?”
“As soon as I graduated from high school. There was only so much I could do at home. Booking local commercials and doing community theater got kind of old after a while. My mom thought I was crazy for coming here. She wanted me to go to Xavier University in New Orleans and major in biology or something. I swear I thought she would disown me when I turned down the scholarship offers for school. In the end, it was my dad who convinced her that I could just defer for a year and see what happened with my acting. I think they both figured the ‘real world’ would shock me back into school faster than Flo Jo doing 100 meters, but they were wrong. I had no intention of ever going back—not if I could help it.”
“So how long have you been in New York?” Troy asked.
“Long enough.”
“Seriously. How long?”
“Going on fifteen years,” she said, chuckling. “I guess that’s long enough for me to know that I probably won’t be going to college.”
Troy quickly surmised that Eris was around thirty-three-years-old. Being that he was only twenty-two, the idea of the eleven year age difference was both jarring and exciting.
“I know what you’re thinking. I see you over there doing the math. You’re trying to guess my age.”
“No, it didn’t even cross my mind,” he lied.
“Most women in the industry are really funny about their ages. The way I see it, if you hide things like that, they’ll probably come to light even faster. And with this Internet thing, it’s probably just a matter of time before people start putting other people’s business out there for the world to see. I doubt Ruby Dee or Bea Richards ever had to think about those kinds of things.”
Troy nodded. “You mentioned Ruby Dee before. I take it you’re a big fan of older actresses.”
“I guess you could say that. In those older films, like A Raisin in the Sun and Stormy Weather, those women were classy and talented. Not to say that sisters aren’t doing it well now, but it was just different back then, I guess. There was a lot more on the line.” She paused. “Maybe I’m just romanticizing the past, but it just feels like those women were doing more than just acting. That’s what I try to remind myself when I take a job: what I’m doing is bigger than just memorizing lines and saying them in front of a camera. The right role could change a life. I truly believe that.”
Troy smiled awkwardly. “I guess I never really thought of it that way.”
“When you finish film school, you’ll probably make your own films. At first you’ll probably be happy to be making films and getting paid to do it, but I imagine at some point you’re going to give a lot of thought to what you want your art to say to people.”
