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party. Luckily, Tasha had her camera phone out and was ready to record full video footage. “I was in Harlem,” Tamia added, “and would you believe that none of the cabs I stopped would bring me all the way downtown? I had to get two cabs.”
“Yes, I would believe that, but the really crazy part was that you were uptown.”
“What? I’m always in Harlem.”
“Since when? Since Troy’s last dinner party?”
“Okay, maybe I never go to Harlem. It’s a new client,” Tamia admitted, feeling then that “client” was such an odd word to put next to Malik’s name. Nothing they’d done or discussed was like anything she’d ever experienced with a client. “So how are you holding up? Any streaks yet?”
“No streaks; just freaks,” Tasha said. “I ran into Venus.”
“Oh no.” Tamia frowned and plucked a glass of wine from a tray passing by. “The original Cruella DeVil with fifteen last names? God, I hate that woman. Now, there’s one I will never understand. How can that witch find, like, thirty husbands and I can’t get one?”
“The law of opposites. Men love everything they hate. They say they need a nice girl, but they really want a bad girl.”
There was laughter, loud, bold, and female, coming from the center of the room. All eyes shifted from drinks and faces that pretended to be listening to overused bar stories to discover the commotion, the party within the party, that was evidently more exciting.
“Lynn Hudson,” Tasha said in two gruff words after the shoulders before her peeled back so she could see the source of fun. “The team’s new publicist. The child is hardly out of elementary school and she’s already head of the class.”
Tasha and Tamia looked on openmouthed at Lynn, who was sipping on a glass of champagne as the handsome streaker from the year before whispered in her ear. Pretty as a honeysuckle and as sexy as a rose, she giggled and giggled like whatever he was saying was the best-kept secret in the room. Three girls at her side had the same kind of attention from other football players whose asses were probably just as nice as the one Tamia saw in the picture on Tasha’s phone. They giggled too and sometimes went to share what was being whispered to another girl in the pack.
“What is this, high school?” Tasha said, annoyed. “The cheerleaders and the dumb jocks? Spare me. Wait until reality hits and the bullshit those men whisper in their ears leads to sloppy titties and tiger prints12 on their guts.”
“Oh, don’t be so negative, Tasha,” Tamia said. “They’re just the new crop. We were them once. Right?” Tamia looked at Lynn’s wispy, happily bouncy hair, her thin, slender hands, and new skin and suddenly couldn’t remember ever looking like that. “You act like we’re ancient or something,” she tried to remind herself more than Tasha. “We’re just thirty…and that’s the new twenty…so we’re them and they’re—”
“Ten?” Tasha watched beside Tamia as a song prompted the girls to start dancing. And when their fists pumped into the air, the entire room seemed to want to join in.
“I guess so.”
“Well, if I’m twenty and they’re ten, then their asses should be at home and asleep. Not up in here messing up the party.”
“Well, it doesn’t exactly look like they’re messing up the party,” Tamia said as a couple pushed past her to get a better spot on the dance floor. “It looks like they’re making the party.” Her eyes followed the couple and she watched them encircle one of the girls on either side. She laughed and turned toward Tamia. “That’s Ava.”
“What?” Tasha asked.
“It’s Ava. The one I told you about that’s engaged to Charleston’s friend.” Tamia’s heart was skipping beats. Suddenly, she’d gone from watching to spying.
“Who? Which one?” Tasha looked frantically, as if locating the betrothed beauty would make any difference in her level of disgust.
“Right there—dancing with that couple.”
“The white couple?”
Tamia nodded and shook her head at how freely Ava danced with both the man and woman. It was a freedom she never understood about the younger It Girls. They didn’t seem to notice much the difference between men and women and gyrated on anything beside them. When she was new to partying, it was only white girls hip rolling on each other, but now it was everyone. She looked to see if Ava was wearing her engagement ring. It was there.
“She is cute.” Tasha wanted to find something nasty to say to keep her mood, but really admitting to the girl’s beauty was enough to kick it up a few notches. “She looks kind of like me when I was younger.” She looked at Tamia for approval.
“Yeah…and then you woke up.”13
?
The faithfully entertaining frolics between foes who pretended to be friends provided just the right amount of social familiarity between both parties. Each foe knew what it was and if she was smart, she expected nothing more or less from the opposition. The complete opposite was true when the line between foes and friends was a bit softer and unclear. When a foe really thought she was a friend or a friend had secretly decided to become a foe, things got messy and especially uncomfortable.
Fifteen minutes of spying and frowning later, Tasha and Tamia were heading to the bathroom to retouch their highly unnecessary under-eye concealer when one such line was blurred.
“It’s Lionel LaRoche’s wife…Natasha, right?” Tasha and Tamia heard someone squeal after they’d turned from the scene on the dance floor that now included one of the football players’ ass cheeks.
Tamia turned first, thinking she would help remind the reporter or whoever it was that she was wasting her time trying to chat with Tasha by calling her “Lionel’s wife” or “Natasha.” It was like calling LisaRaye Lisa or Lisa Raye—she hated both titles and anyone who wanted to know her needed to know that.
