Vengeance

“Well, I’ve been with Michael about the same amount of time, but we’ve never married and have no children . . . as of yet.”

I whispered, “Hmm,” and gave her a sympathetic look.

It was a damn shame for her to stay with trifling-ass Michael Vinson, who was not even halfway attractive no less, for that long without a ring. She must have been hard up. In retrospect, the two of them deserved each other.

“I assume you’re at least shacking.” I did not wait for a response. I knew they were. “And what does your man, Michael, do?”

“He’s an actor.” For once, her face lit up. “He’s exceptional, too.”

“Oh, what’s his last name? Maybe I’ve seen him in something.”

“Vinson. Michael Vinson.”

I frowned and said more as an insult than a statement: “Never heard of him. Is he a working actor? When was the last time he was in something?”

Bianca seemed embarrassed for her friend. She probably wondered if Cherie was going to tell the truth and shame the Devil or go for broke and make some shit up.

“Well, the last major movie he was in was New Jack City. He played a drug dealer who was part of Wesley Snipes’s posse.”

“I’ve seen that several times. Did he have a speaking role?”

“Not exactly, but—”

“Baby girl . . .” I decided to stop the madness. “New Jack City came out in the early nineties, ninety-one if I remember correctly. If your man hasn’t done anything since then, that can’t be considered his career. That’s like me not putting out an album for years, decades, and still calling myself a professional singer. I’m not one to get into someone else’s business, but you need to stop being dick dumb and tell his ass to get a fucking job or stop fucking him altogether. We get what we settle for. You know what I’m saying?”

I struck a big-ass nerve with that one.

“So where’s your man?” Cherie asked with heavy acerbity. “I’ve never seen you tied to any particular man in the press.”

“And you likely never will,” I replied. “I don’t have to put my business out in the streets to get attention from the media. My talent trumps everything else. But it’s interesting to know that you’re clocking my comings and goings like that. What color panties do I have on?”

Bianca’s mouth flew open, but no words came out, and Cherie had to make a drastic move to hold her tongue.

“Trust and believe,” I added. “There are very few straight men on this planet who would not fuck me if given a chance. That includes both of your men. Look at me and look at the two of you. Be for real.”

The tension was getting thick and I seriously wanted to hurt someone at that table. It was time to end the farcical luncheon meeting.

I stood up abruptly. “Thanks for the meal. Nikki will be in touch once you send whatever it is that you’re . . . peddling.”

With that, I strutted out the front door like the queen that I was, with Diederik straight on my tail.

“You really went in on them,” he said as we met up with my other two bodyguards outside and headed to the limousine curbside.

“I hate fake bitches!” I replied and climbed into the backseat.

I could make out Bianca and Cherie through the pane-glass window. Cherie was going off and pounding her fists on the table, surely calling me every venomous term she could come up with. But would the hooker ever be bold enough to say it to my face? Time would tell, and I planned to enjoy every second of it. They had an option to walk away and never contact me again. Greed and a desire for a bigger social status would never allow them to do that, though. I was the closest that they had ever been, or would ever come, to actually being significant in society, and neither one of them would risk fucking it up. I was banking on that, and I was never wrong.

Chapter Eight

After spouting all of that shit about not claiming something as a career if you have not done it in years, that was my cue to get back to working on my next album. Operation Vengeance in full effect or not, the rest of the world still highly anticipated the release of Impulse, my ninth album. I had at least three or four more tracks to lay out but had already recorded an EP in case I did not complete the rest of the songs by my deadline. An extended-play album contained more than one song but not as many songs as a traditional, full-price album. It was the latest craze for newer acts who could not afford to go all-out with at least eight tracks. Even if they landed a deal, record labels were reluctant to fund longer albums for fear that they may do a major belly flop upon release. With the digital age of music taking over, the true money was in touring and being the ultimate entertainer. That was why I was who I was. Outside of talent, it was like playing a game in someone else’s body. No one knew that I was Caprice Tatum. Caprice Tatum disappeared off the face of the planet and, just like I had assumed, no one ever even gave a damn.

As I waited for my recording engineer to get everything together to do a take of “Shame on It All,” I could not help but chuckle at the irony. Here I was enticing the world with love ballads about sex and being in great relationships, or club tracks about how to get your freak on, and I was doing none of the above. I will admit that I went for the jugular when Cherie inquired about my nonexistent man. Granted, even if I did have a man, I would not have wanted him splayed across every magazine cover with me, or being featured weekly on TMZ when we walked out of restaurants. It would be difficult enough to simply get to know a man, rather less have the entire world scrutinizing everything about him concurrently. What man would want to deal with such madness? He would have to be someone already used to the limelight and I had yet to meet a celebrity male who I would have fucked with someone else’s pussy. Most famous people traded lovers all over the place, mostly to remain newsworthy. Or both parties would actually be gay and putting on pretenses to cover up the truth. No sir, none of that was for me. All of that was besides the fact that I was incapable of feeling those kinds of emotions in the first place.

I had done a very bad thing when I left the restaurant that day. I wanted to hurt someone so much that I hurt myself. I had not resorted to cutting in well over a decade. Yet, I found myself that night in my Jacuzzi making slight slits under my knee, where they would blend in and look like the normal folds on my legs.

“Ready whenever you are,” Brian, my engineer, said, breaking me out of the zone of deep thought that I found myself in. “By the way, ‘You Can Lick Your Breakfast’ is on fire. I predict it hits number one on the Billboards the first week.”

“Thanks, Brian. We think alike.”