“Ryk,” she said in a tone that made him look up instantly, fear in his eyes. “Is there something you’re not sharing with the class?”
He nervously fussed with the joint and looked anywhere but at Kara. He hit the space bar on his laptop, killing the music. Silence filled the room.
“Richard! What’s going on?”
“Yeah, so I had a call today,” he began. “The producers aren’t sure they can do the show they want. They wanted to show the true story of how a rave works, and obviously that includes the dealing shit.”
Kara felt her anger burning in her chest and fought to keep it at a manageable level.
“So you knew all along that you’d be a DJ and drug dealer on the show?” she asked slowly.
“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head as if he had said no.
“And nobody bothered to tell me that I was being cast as the clichéd black girl love interest of a drug dealer?”
“You are my love interest,” Ryk said feebly. “It’s not casting.”
Kara gripped the Pyrex beaker of antifreeze in her fist, fighting the urge to tip it into the laptop keyboard.
“I did it for us,” Ryk continued. “The producers are one hundred percent sure that this show will be so controversial and so real and so edgy that it’ll make us both famous.”
Kara looked at her gloved hands, spattered again with toxic chemicals. She really needed to rub her forehead.
“Ryk. Nobody is going to make a celebrity out of a black girl dealing drugs at a rave. And as far as I know, this show would make excellent evidence at trial. Why the fuck did you not tell me?”
“They told me not to.”
“Who’s ‘they’? The fucking voices in your head?”
“No, the producers, baby. They made me promise to not tell you.”
Kara set the beaker down. She thought back to all the paperwork that she had signed. It had been all releases, no contract. She hadn’t agreed to any payment deal or actual appearance on camera.
“Are there cameras in this apartment?”
“No, they’re being installed tomorrow.”
Well, that was something at least. Her mind raced.
“Are you mad at me, baby?” Ryk walked toward her, arms open, a lit joint between his fingers.
“A little,” Kara lied. “Does this mean the show isn’t happening?”
“No, not at all,” Ryk said brightly. “They’re just gonna reconfigure and have some meetings and then it’ll be all systems go.”
You really are an idiot. Kara kept the thought to herself as she felt his arms wrap around her waist. He pressed the joint to her lips. She did a cigar inhale, filling her mouth with the smoke, then blowing it out her nose. She took Ryk’s wrist and guided the joint back to his mouth.
“You finish it off, baby,” she whispered. “I wanna get these last bottles filled. Go sit on the couch and relax.”
“You’re not mad?” he said in a baby voice.
“Naw,” she lied. “Stupid show. They’ll come around.”
He released her waist and tapped the space bar on the laptop. The generic dubstep filled the air again.
“This shit is still gonna own the dance floor this weekend.” Ryk took a long, slow draw on the joint.
“Yes, baby, it’s definitely shit.”
“Huh?”
“Sit, baby, and get your chill on.”
Ryk fell onto the ugly sofa bed and wrapped himself in a comforter that looked as if it had been stolen from a Motel 6. It probably had. Kara resumed silently pouring the liquid into the little bottles as the room filled with stinky smoke. Kara hated weed. The acrid taste in her mouth was only adding to her worsening mood.
“You’re so beautiful, baby,” Ryk slurred, and his head dropped back onto the sofa. Kara knew that within two minutes she’d hear snoring.
“Shhhhhhhhhhh,” she whispered.
Half an hour later, DJ Ryk Rollin was completely asleep on the couch and she had filled all 1,200 bottles. Tomorrow, she was due back to apply little stickers that would read either EASY LAY or GEORGIA HOME BOY (Ryk hadn’t yet decided whether to be direct or ironic), but Kara had already decided that tonight was her last night as the future fake love interest of this particular drug-dealer-slash-DJ.
She pulled off her gloves and stood, stretching her arms lithely above her head. She went to the bathroom and dabbed at the green stain on her white suede platforms. It had faded to almost white anyway. She sniffed in approval. Thanks for behaving, chemicals.
She looked in the mirror. Her Afro was wrestling with a simple headband and had pushed it almost down to her forehead. She pulled five elastic bands from her Fendi purse and deftly twisted the entire ’fro into five equal puffs that framed her face perfectly. With robotic efficiency she applied mascara and liquid eyeliner, then matted her cheeks and dabbed her lips with a thick coat of deep violet gloss. She switched out her platforms for her favorite pair of purple-suede Prada open-toed stilettos. As she buckled them at her ankles, she considered leaving the platforms at Ryk’s. She hated lugging stuff around. One glance at Ryk, unconscious with a roll of hairy, pasty fat hanging out of the bottom of his shirt, convinced her that it would be better to lug the boots home with her. She didn’t want to come back to this place.