But her purity and beauty will be the end of her.
A main character has to be flawed in some way, right? So far, Psyche is the all-American black girl with…with…a conscience? This is an interesting twist. Or is this book supposed to be a satire on the modeling industry? If that’s the case, Psyche is going to get hers in the end, proving, I guess, that purity isn’t chic in American society.
I am still Venus, I am still head of Aphrodite Inc., and I am still the world’s delight. I am a classic beauty with bronze, luminous flesh. My beauty is intoxicating and suffocating. I still do four, five covers a year, and I’m nearly twice that wench’s age. In other words, for a middle-aged sistuh, I am still da bomb. I am a weapon of mass destruction, atomic, neutron, and hydrogen bombs all rolled into one.
And since I sign Psyche’s paychecks, Psyche is about to have a bomb go off in her trifling little life.
Yes. Psyche is about to realize that I am ugly to the bone.
And now I hate Venus. She sounds straight off some soap opera, like some Texas matriarch on Dallas. So one-dimensional. And jealous? Hasn’t jealousy been overworked as a basic conflict in women’s fiction?
And when I want things to get ugly, I call on my wayward son, Q. After I buzz him, I’ll only have to wait a few seconds for him to come into my office. Men, as a rule, obey me, and my boy is punctual. I’ve had that boy on lockdown since the second he was born. He’ll do anything for his mama.
Mainly because I sign his paycheck, too.
Hmm. What kind of a name is Q? If “P” stands for Psyche, “Q” has to be the main love interest. His name sounds wimpy, like some name from a James Bond movie, and we’re not about to talk about those ridiculous movies.
2: Quentin “Q” Dione
Mama’s buzzing me again.
Hmm. A new voice. This could be a challenge after all. Let’s see if the author can give Quentin—and who on earth would give any child this name?—more than one dimension.
Must be time for a little mischief.
I smile at the little mirror on the back of my office door and see my white daddy, a male model named Adonis from way back in the day, staring back at me. It’s unmistakable. Adonis, who now raises show dog Alsatians, gave me good hair, gray eyes, a straight nose, and perpetually tanned skin. Yet Mama swears I’m Festus’s boy. Not a chance. My “daddy” Festus is blacker than coal dipped in Hershey’s syrup plastered with tar and covered with dirt, and I’m light skinned as a feather.
More intrigue. Q is mixed. He’s rare in literature, and I don’t know why. This country has been the melting pot for a couple of centuries nearly everywhere except in novels.
Not that I’m angry, you understand. Being in between has its advantages, particularly with the ladies. Yeah, being mixed lets me mix with all shades of beauty, and no one grits on me when I have, say, an Asian doll on one arm, a fiery redhead on the other, and a dark chocolate bunny in front of me beckoning me with her silky brown finger. Because I am a rainbow, I can talk to and taste any flavor of the rainbow.
And the rainbow tastes good. America: the melting pot that melts in your mouth.
I don’t like his “player” attitude at all. Why can’t he be a normal man? I hope Psyche, even though I can’t stand her yet, puts him in his place. If she does that, I might like her a little bit.
I fly by Grace, Mama’s third replacement secretary this month, and open Mama’s greenish blue seafoam door. Mama has this thing about seafoam that borders on the psychotic because some “certified fashion color consultant” once told her that she looked good in seafoam.
She doesn’t, but no one tells her that.
I see Mama looking over Manhattan through her seafoam contacts past some roosting pigeons while sitting in her seafoam chair behind her seafoam desk, one finger curled around some seriously dark extensions tied up with a seafoam scarf. A few pigeons roost outside her window as if readying to fly her chair out over New York. Mama is still fine as hell, but I know her age is taking its toll on her. If it weren’t for Botox, collagen treatments, and cosmetic surgery, she might look like someone’s hot, gray grandma.
This is sick! “Mama is still fine as hell”? And what’s up with the seafoam? My own mama has a thing for dark blue ducks, but…seafoam contacts? Grandpa Joe-Joe is sounding more functional the longer I read this.
“Q?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“I have a job for you.”
“Yes, Mama.” Who are we firing today?
She tosses a magazine over her head, and it flutters like a butterfly into my hands. “Check out who’s on the cover.”
Daa-em, Psyche is looking finer than fine, as usual. And on Maxim. I always knew she’d be a crossover hit with the white boys since that Sports Illustrated cover. Psyche’s been playing hard to get with me for ten years and barely gives me the time of day, but when that girl smiles at me…shit, she’s the finest woman on earth right now. Luckily, I have a subscription to Maxim so I don’t have to sneak this copy out of Mama’s office.
“Not much left to the imagination,” I say, trying to remain noncommittal, my arms folded.
I have learned never to compliment one of Mama’s models in her presence. I once said that a model was “cute,” and that’s all I said, though she did have this ass, ooh, that would make you smack your mama with a stick. The “cute” model went from Cover Girl commercials and a bit part in a James Bond flick to posing with a “neck massager” on the back pages of some smut magazine almost overnight. Mama ruined her cute little ass big-time simply because I said she was cute. I cringe at where she might have ended up if I had said what I was really thinking about that ass. She’d probably be in the maternity section of the next Sears catalog, flaps down with a lost look on her face.
That is so true! What woman in her right mind would pose for those kinds of pictures? What is she thinking? Is she thinking, Well, I’m pregnant, so I’d guess I better go get my picture taken with a flappy bra?
Mama spins around in her chair, her fingers knitted together, her elbows on her desk. “I want you to fire her, Q.”
I try not to blink, but I can’t help it. Psyche has been the flavor of the month for nearly ten years, ever since she was sixteen. She is the hottest hottie on the planet, billboards and ads everywhere, even a doll marketed by Mattel. Mama must be trippin’. I mean, Psyche is responsible for at least 30 percent of Aphrodite Inc.’s annual revenue.
“Um, fire Psyche?” I manage to ask.
“I don’t stutter.”
This is serious. The board of directors, a bunch of wrinkled old men and women Mama uses to rubberstamp her ideas, are going to freak out. “Um, the board of directors—”
“Fuck ’em.” She spins around. “She is to be fired by the end of the day today, a copy of her pink slip in my mailbox by six sharp.”
Too much profanity. Proper ladies of color should never use the F word, especially foxy femme fatales who sleep around and wear seafoam contacts. I know it’s part of her character, but…it’s so unnecessary and a waste of ink. Now I know black women do curse. I just don’t want to “hear” them curse in books. It’s so…permanent in the reader’s mind.
I could argue with her, but it won’t do me any good. When Mama gets just a tiny bit mad, whole departments lose their jobs, and security puts them and their shit out on Madison Avenue for the entire world to see.
“Yes, Mama.”
Mama flips a Rolodex card over her head, and I snatch it out of the air. “Those are her home and cell phone numbers, and when you’re through with that card, burn it.”
After I memorize those numbers,