Her name was Chloe Chadderton.
They sat in a bar atop one of the city’s more elegant midtown hotels, Silver’s agent having made the reservation, thereby paving the way for his appearance. Otherwise, the headwaiter might not have admitted a young black man wearing dreadlocks and what looked like carpenter’s overalls over a red T-shirt, not to mention footwear that had the appearance of used combat boots.
Chloe was more appropriately attired, wearing a simple brown woolen dress—this was springtime, yes, but the weather outside warranted clothing more suited to Scotland in the month of January—high-heeled brown pumps to match, a heavy gold bracelet on her right wrist, and a dangling gold medallion that nestled in the hollow of her throat. If Silver had been pressed to say what color she was, he would have said “Uptown ripe,” what the slave owners down South used to call “high yeller,” which exact words he had used in one of his songs to pillory modern-day bigots wherever they lived. Silver’s own color was a rich chocolate brown, which he hoped Chloe found attractive because thirty seconds after they’d met he was madly in love.
The one thing a rapper could never be accused of was being tongue-tied. He was close to that now.
“It was really nice of me to…of you to come meet me,” he said.
Chloe thought he was sort of cute, stammering and lowering his head that way, like a schoolboy. She figured him for twenty-three, twenty-four years old, some four or five years younger than she was—but since George’s death, she’d dated men who were even younger than that. On the phone Silver had sounded very businesslike. Introduced himself as the writer for Spit Shine, which group she’d heard of, told her he was interested in acquiring the rights to one of George Chadderton’s songs, who should he talk to up there at Chloe Productions, Inc.? She’d told him she was George Chadderton’s widow, and she was the person he should talk to, and he suggested that they meet for a drink, he’d tell her what he had in mind.
Reason he had asked her to have a drink with him instead of going up there to her office was he didn’t know how she’d take to the idea of a rap crew doing only her late husband’s lyrics and throwing his music in the garbage can. He still didn’t know how she’d react. But the lyrics were all he wanted, never mind that calypso shit.
Rain snakes slithered down the long window beside their table. Sunset wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes yet, but the city already looked dark and forbidding and there were lights on in all the office and apartment buildings. Chloe was drinking a Johnny Walker Black on the rocks, Silver was drinking a Perrier and lime. Needed to keep his head clear. He really wanted that song, wanted to get it in rehearsal for the concert coming up.
“The song I’m interested in,” he said, “is ‘Sister Woman.’”
“Good song,” she said. “George wrote it just before he got killed. Well, the lyrics, anyway.”
He could’ve jumped on this at once, this business about the lyrics, but instead he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know there’d been that kind of trouble.”
“Well, it’s a long story,” she said. “Some crazy woman was keeping his brother prisoner…it was really too weird. Anyway, he left this notebook full of lyrics, and I thought something could he done with them. So I hired this person to put some calypso music to them….”
“There’s no composer listed on the…”
“I paid him outright. A thousand bucks.”
Smart lady, he thought.
“Copyrighted it all under the name of Chloe Productions. Wrapped an album deal that netted me three.”
Well,not so smart, he thought.
“Not enough to retire on, but it got me through a long cold winter. How much did you plan to pay for using the song?”
Straight to the point. Had it been another long cold winter? Even so, spring was here. Wasn’t it?
“We’d only want to use the lyrics,” he said. “Spit Shine. We’re a rap group….”
“Yes, I know.”
“We don’t do calypso stuff.”
“I didn’t think you did.”
“So all we’d want would be the lyrics. Cause they make the kind of point we’re int’rested in makin.”
“Um-huh. So how much would these lyrics be worth to you? Did you plan to record this, or just perform it live?”
“We’d use it in the concert first—we’re doin a concert on the fourth, though you’d never know it.”
“The Fourth of July?” she said. Eyes opening wide. Gorgeous sloe eyes the color of coal. Narrow oval face. Good firm breasts in the fitted brown dress. Medallion hanging in the hollow of her throat. Long, graceful neck, he wanted to kiss her behind each ear.
“No, no,” he said. “Next month. The fourth.”
“So there’s some kind of urgency,” she said.
“Well, we’d have to put it together, rehearse it…”
“Put it together how?”
“As rap,” he said. “Give it the rhythms rap needs. This isn’t just a matter of talkin the lyrics, you know, they got to be paced, they got to be skittered.”
“Where’s this going to be?” she asked. “The concert.”
“In the park here. Grover Park.”
“Be a lot of people?”
“It’s a free concert,” he said, figuring he’d cut her off at the pass before she got any grandiose ideas.
“You want the song free then?” she asked. “Because it’s a free concert ?”
“No, we’d pay you for the use.”
“How much?”
He figured he was dealing small time here. The lady needed money, that was the long and the short of it. He didn’t know she was in fact dead broke and considering a life not dissimilar to the one Sister Woman lived in the song.
The music company aside—it was virtually defunct, anyway—Chloe was still doing what she’d been doing at the time of her husband’s murder, dancing almost naked on bartops, men tucking dollar bills into her G-string, sometimes five, rarely more than that unless you went in the back room with them. In the back, you danced naked for them, you let them touch your breasts, kiss your nipples, slide their hands up your legs to your garters, all this was a simple step above performing forty-dollar hand jobs behind the plastic greenery, which she had never done because she knew that once you crossed the Rubicon into performing an actual sex act, the progression after that—and the justification for it—was easy. Massage parlor work, escort work, outright prostitution. She had girlfriends who’d gone that route, girls who used to dance alongside her on the bar. They told her she was dumb not doing it herself. She had considered it. She was still considering it. But here was a man interested in her dead husband’s work….
“What about the other songs on the album?” she said.
“Not interested in anything but the hooker song,” he said, and shook his head. “I’d like to put it in the group’s li’berry.”
“Say it was yours?”
“No, no.”
“Say you wrote it?”
“No, I wouldn’t rip it. We’d give your husband credit.”
“Fuck my husband,” she said, startling him. “All I’m interested in is what’ll bring the most money. You want to buy the copyright, fine, say the song is yours, that’s fine, too, the lyrics are yours, whatever you want , but that’ll cost you. You want to perform it one time, that’s another matter. Then you’d have to come back to me next time you want to do it. I’ll level with you, Mr. Cummings….”