One Mississippi (26 page)

“No! No!” Tim said. “Keep it! Smoke it with Sonny. Whatever you want!”

I was thinking how smoothly the superstar had just finagled that joint from Tim. She glanced over at me. “Your friend doesn’t say much, huh? Boo!”

I’d been happy to stand there like a lump while Tim did all the talking. But now Cher had called upon me to demonstrate my command of English. “Hi,” I ventured. “I love how you sing.” Oh what an idiot. I cringed, inside and out. Why couldn’t I be cool, like Tim? Why did I have to reveal my true moron nature with my first utterance? This is why I hadn’t dared open my mouth.

She took mercy upon me with a smile. “You got a name?”

“Daniel. Musgrove.” Idiot idiot idiot, the echo resounded throughout the Coliseum.

“You guys aren’t crew, right? You’re fans. How’d you get back here?”

Tim shot me a look of bottomless disgust. Dumb ol’ Daniel gives away the whole show the first time he opens his mouth. “We just kept going through doors, and nobody stopped us,” he confessed.

“Only the best security for Sonny and Cher,” she said. “I guess I have to have you thrown out now?”

Tim held up a hand. “No, we’ll go. Sorry to bother you. Thanks for being so nice.”

“Oh, that’s okay. You’re sweet,” she said as if it pained her to admit it. “Are you guys boyfriends?”

“Uhm — no!” Tim was aghast, sputtering. “We’re not — you know — we brought girls to the show! They’re up in our seats waiting for us!”

“Hey honey, relax, it’s okay either way,” she said. “Some of my best friends are faggots.
All
of my best friends, actually. But you don’t have to be, if you don’t want to.”

The door flew open with Sonny Bono behind it. “Where the fuck have you been!”

“Don’t come in here yelling at me!” she retorted. “This is my dressing room! Get out!”

Sonny Bono wore full stage makeup and a shimmery Nehru-collared shirt, purple stretch pants, white patent-leather boots with five-inch pimp heels. “I’m standing up there by the band thinking we’re about to go on, and you’re still sitting here in a T-shirt talking to — who the hell is this, the Hardy Boys?”

“My fans,” she said with a little wink for us. At least that’s what I heard her say. Tim later claimed she said “my favorite fans,” but I think he made that up.

That was one of the most thrilling moments of the whole thrilling thing — when she winked at us, then set into fighting with Sonny, not playfully as in the opening of their show, but in deadly earnest. You never heard so many “fuck”s
in three minutes. At first I was delighted that they would rip into each other with the two of us watching, then I was appalled, then I began to get the feeling they were used to fighting in front of people. Maybe even liked it. I guess when you’re this famous, you need an audience for everything you do.

“I know you like ’em young,” Sonny was saying, “but could you please keep your hands off the fifteen-year-olds? You could get us arrested.”

“Me? Me?” she protested in that throaty famous voice. “What was her name, in Aspen? The promoter’s little girl? Sydney! She really
was
fifteen!”

“I didn’t fuck her,” he said.

“Only because I stopped you.”

“That’s right,” he said. “If she’d been eighteen, I would definitely have done it before you got there.”

“You’ll fuck anybody who lets you, Sonny! That’s just a fact. You always have, and you always will.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Oh. I am so sick of this!” she moaned.
“Fuck!”
She burst out in a big belly laugh.

Sonny wasn’t amused. “Get dressed and be up on that stage in five, or I’ll sue you for breach of contract.” He slammed the door going out.

It was obvious they had done a lot of fighting. They were good at it. But I thought that was no way for Sonny Bono to treat a great star like Cher. I didn’t care what she might have done to him, he didn’t have a right to speak to her without respect. He didn’t deserve to be married to her.

Tim said, “Wow! What an asshole.”

“Shut up!” Cher leaped from the sofa. “He is not an asshole! — yes he is, but who the hell are you to say that?”

“Sorry,” Tim said. “Just — he was so nasty to you, and I —”

“What do you know?” she snapped. “You don’t know anything. Get out. Get the fuck
out!
”

We got out. We went straight through that door, through the party, through the double doors. We fell upon each other, laughing. It was the most incredible amazing thing that had ever happened to anyone! The adventure of a lifetime! Who would ever believe us?

Tim stopped laughing. “Oh my God, you’re right. We don’t have any way to prove it. We didn’t get an autograph or anything.”

“It’s okay. We’re both witnesses. We know it happened.”

“No, we have to go back, Skippy. We need proof.”

“Go back? Are you nuts? She’ll have us arrested!”

“What — she took my joint but she’s too good to give me her autograph? What did I get from her? Nothing!”

I shook my head. “Man, they sure like to cuss, huh? They really hate each other.”

“Yeah, it’s kinda disappointing,” said Tim. We climbed the stairs toward the exit.

Tim had put his finger on it. Disappointing. When they were hollering at each other it seemed slightly out of control, and a little sad. Not that I held any illusions about the enduring love of Sonny and Cher, but their whole act was built on how much fun they had together, in spite of the fact that she was cool and he was a dork. To discover they actually despised each other — what a letdown!

Faintly above us we heard the clamor of the band starting up. “You build somebody up in your mind, you know,” Tim said, “and you think, man, I’d love to be them, their life must be so perfect. But she seems miserable. And I don’t care what she says, Sonny is a complete asshole.”

“Yeah,” I said, “she didn’t much like it when you pointed that out.”

“That was my big mistake. Otherwise I believe she might have taken us with her on the tour bus. Don’t you think she was kind of attracted to me, Dagwood?” He smoothed his hair to emphasize his studly appeal.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”

“Well, Sonny sure did think so — ‘Keep your hands off the fifteen-year-olds.’ Who do you think he was talking about? Us!” He snapped his fingers. “Damn, I can’t believe we didn’t get her autograph!”

Neither one of us mentioned the disconcerting moment when Cher asked if we were boyfriends. I almost brought it up to make a joke of it, then decided against it. Maybe it was the way Tim was dressed, all in black with that white satin piano-key tie. Obviously Cher didn’t know that in Mississippi that was a pretty dangerous question to ask somebody. Obviously things were different out there in California, where all her friends were.

20

A
T FIRST ARNITA
and Rachel refused to believe us, but when I described Cher’s paisley wall drapings and feather boas spilling from trunks, they got excited and begged us to take them down to meet her.

Too late! The lights suddenly went out. The crowd sent up a huge roar.

Tim was too excited to stay in his seat, and went wandering off again. I wasn’t about to miss the start of the show to go looking for him again.

The spotlights converged on one corner of the stage, making a pool of light into which Sonny and Cher suddenly strode, hand in hand. The roar doubled. Sonny Bono threw his hands up as if the noise startled him. Cher waved one lanky arm, and threaded two fingers through her straight, straight hair, her trademark gesture.

A huge projection of Sonny and Cher shone on a giant screen above their heads. In the time it had taken us to climb up from her dressing room, Cher had transformed herself from a great-looking girl in a T-shirt into a bronze goddess, mostly naked, sprayed with diamonds, hundreds of glittering diamonds clustered artfully around the crucial junctures of her body. Beside her, waving, was Mr. Droopy Mustache in his shiny shirt, which was just as lividly purple at a range of one hundred fifty yards. “Hello Mississippi!” he boomed into his mike. “Or should I say ‘Mis’sippi’? How you-all doing tonight?”

The crowd roared hello. I wondered why the hell Tim had gone exploring just when they were taking the stage. And he’d been the most excited to see them! Meeting Cher was too much for him. He had to go outside to calm down.

Even from our altitude, it was obvious that Sonny and Cher were barely occupying the same stage. They didn’t touch or look at each other. They sang “All I Ever Need Is You” to separate audiences on either side of the Coliseum. They maintained a buffer zone of about ten feet between them at all times.

Some men follow rainbows, I am told . . .

The moment the song ended, Cher left the stage in a cloud of dazzling light and applause. The spotlights narrowed down to Sonny, who dragged out a wooden stool to sit on while he sang “You Better Sit Down, Kids.” His voice was so nasal, so blandly unappealing that I knew the truth, once and for all: there would never be a Sonny without Cher.

“Where the heck is Tim?” Rachel said. She had managed to wedge a soda straw through a space in her teeth, at the side, so she could sip from her cup of Tab.

“I was wondering that too,” I said. “Maybe he’s trying to get closer.”

Sonny Bono finished his song, acknowledged the polite applause, and left the stage as Cher reappeared to a loud grateful roar. Now she wore a black leather harness contraption with many straps, buckles, and sequins. She sang “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves,” and went off to a massive ovation.

Here came Sonny again, hauling that stool from stage left. He sang a song called “Laugh at Me” that I thought was really asking for it, honestly. By now it was clear that Sonny’s main function was to stay onstage long enough to give Cher time to change into her next costume. And here she came, in a slinky red-and-silver extravaganza with a V-scoop back that went all the way down to the crack of her ass.

Arnita said, “Didn’t they used to sing together? They’re not even on the stage at the same time.”

“They can’t stand each other, can’t you tell?” I felt smug, with all my inside information. “He was yelling at her the minute he came in her dressing room.”

“And they act so lovey-dovey on TV,” she said. “Let’s don’t ever do that, okay? If you want to break up with me, just tell me. Don’t put on some stupid act.”

I reached for her hand in the dark. “Okay. But I don’t want to break up. Ever.”

She leaned in to kiss my cheek. I squeezed her hand and smiled.

Cher’s voice sounded like a lovely French horn playing in a lower register.

I saw a man, and he danced with his wife . . .

I was still smiling when the Coke hit me. A twenty-four-ouncer with lots of slushy ice, a big soft paper cup full. It struck at an angle across my neck and sent a geyser of icy soda slopping over me, Arnita, and the kid sitting directly in front of us.

I turned, half expecting to find somebody in the row behind us embarrassed to death about having accidentally dropped a Coke. But the people behind us were turned around too, craning behind them to see who had launched it.

Up there in the dark, I knew, was a woman who hadn’t liked me kissing Arnita.

Arnita was way ahead of me, rising from her seat. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Good idea.” I followed her up.

Rachel cried, “Oh my God, you guys are soaked! What happened?”

“We’re leaving,” I said.

“Leaving? Why?”

“Come on, Rachel. I’ll explain it outside.”

A brave man would have marched up four rows to where that woman sat. A brave man would have dragged her and her husband out of their seats and addressed the situation in such a way that they would apologize to Arnita, to me, and to the sopping kid in front of us, who was now glaring at me.

“Look, it’s not my fault,” I told him. “Somebody up there threw a Coke on us, okay?”

He kept glaring as if to say that a brave man would march right on up there and deliver swift retribution. Obviously I was not that man. I was just as much a boy as he was. I was ashamed of my whole species, ashamed of that stupid woman for being so mean, ashamed of myself for my cowardice and for putting Arnita in this situation.

But brave enough to march up there and straighten them out? No. I’d spent my whole childhood learning the First Law of Dad: at the first sign of conflict, flee. Better to get the hell out of there and stay alive. One day when you’re stronger maybe you can come back and make a better fight, and win.

We squished down the ramp to the curving corridor around the perimeter. “I can’t believe that,” Rachel said. “What gave her the idea you two were even together?”

“I kissed her,” I said.

“And I kissed him back,” Arnita said. “On the cheek.”

Rachel frowned. “That’s not illegal.”

“Probably is, in Mississippi.” I blew out a breath. “God, I hate this place! It’s always this huge deal over who’s black, who’s white, who hates who, what’s the significance. I’m so sick of it I could puke.”

“You’re right, Daniel,” Arnita said. “That’s the only thing people see. The outside layer. It’s ridiculous.”

She was only trying to agree with me, but for some reason this rubbed me the wrong way. “Oh, you’re one to talk! The way you go around trying to confuse everybody.”

She jerked back as if I’d slapped her. “What does that mean?”

“What good does it do for you to go around pretending you’re white?” I said. “You’re not white, okay? You’re black. Just face it. Everybody knows it. Including me.
And
you.”

“Daniel —”

“If you’re not black, why did that woman throw her Coke on us? Huh? Tell me that.”

“You don’t have to yell,” she said. “What happened is not my fault.”

“No, it’s my fault, for humoring you.” The anger in my own voice surprised me. “I thought I could just pretend along with you, and no one would notice us, and everything would be fine.”

“You can’t help it if other people are stupid,” said Rachel.

“No, but at least you can face the truth about yourself,” I said. “Instead of making up some fairy tale to make yourself feel better.”

Arnita stopped walking. I hadn’t counted on her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. “So what is the truth, Daniel? What is it you want me to face?”

“Look, you know I — you know how I feel about you, okay?” I grasped her shoulders. “But you should be over this white thing by now. It’s not doing anybody any good. Least of all you.”

Her eyes darkened. She pulled away. “God! I really hate it that you felt like you had to humor me. All this time I thought you believed me.”

“Wait, now. Don’t change what I said.”

“You sure waited long enough to tell me what you really think!” she cried.

Rachel cut in. “Y’all, don’t take it out on each other, please! It’s nobody’s fault.”

“Butt out, Rachel,” I said.

Tim chose that moment to come rushing up. “Where y’all going? I was coming to get you! I found us four amazing seats right down front, on the side!”

“We’re leaving,” I said. “Some woman threw a Coke at us.”

“What?” He gaped at the brownish damp stains all over us. “Why?”

“Let’s just go, okay? I don’t want some confrontation.” My mind was racing even faster than my pulse. I set off at a determined pace toward the exit doors. Halfway there I realized I was walking alone.

It was a long walk back to where they stood. Rachel was explaining the situation to Tim.

“It was a twenty-four-ouncer, I think,” I said. “Had to be. It was full too.”

Tim snickered. “That’s kind of hilarious.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Maybe not right this minute,” he said, “but in about ten minutes it will be.”

“You know, Tim,” said Arnita, “everything is not funny.”

He peered at her oddly, as if she were insisting the sun had just turned into the moon. “Sure it is,” he said. “Everything is funny all the time.”

That was as plain a statement of the First Law of Tim as you’ll ever hear. Everything is funny. As long as it’s funny, it doesn’t have to matter. As long as you’re laughing, you don’t have to care. And of course who was the one always laughing up a storm beside him? The other half of the Laff Team?

Tim said, “Y’all can leave if you want. I’m going back in to watch.”

“We can’t leave,” I said. “We came in your car.”

He shrugged. “So calm down, come back in, enjoy the show.”

“I’m sopping wet, Tim,” said Arnita. “I want to go home.” I’d never heard that particular chill in her voice.

Tim said, “Well go, then. Nobody’s stopping you.”

She turned to me. “Will you take me home, please?”

“It’s not my car! Timmy, look, we’re wet, and we’re mad, and the whole thing’s kind of ruined anyway. You’re not even watching the show. You’re out here.”

“I’d be in there right now, but I’m standing here talking to you,” he said in his most reasonable tone.

Rachel spoke up. “Timmy, they want to go home.”

“Oh, you too? Good, y’all can split a taxi three ways! My God, people, you’re all overreacting! Whatever happened is over. Nobody’s going to lynch you, Arnita. They probably dropped the Coke by accident. God!”

I glanced at Arnita, who was glancing at me. We caught each other thinking the same thing.

She pinned Tim against the concrete block wall while I dug my fingers in his pocket and yanked out his keys. “Come on, girls, I can drive!” I danced back out of his reach.

He lunged at me. I tossed the keys to Rachel, who lobbed them at Arnita. We played keep-away, zigzagging back and forth all over the corridor. Tim got the keys away from Rachel, but I wrestled them from his hand and ran a swift wideout pattern to the exit doors. By the time I made a miraculous Hail Mary pass to Arnita, everybody was laughing but Tim.

“Give ’em back,” he said. “Give ’em
here!
”

Rachel cried, “Oh shut up, Timmy!” through locked teeth.

“Fuck off!” he barked. “Don’t you tell me to shut up!”

Her smile dissolved. She cast her eyes down.

Tim whirled on Arnita. “Give me those keys!”

She said, “Here,” and put them in his hand.

Her surrender caught him completely off guard. I’d never seen him beaten so easily. At once he switched to begging. “Can’t we go in for one more song, please please please? Pretty please? One song, then we’ll go.”

I longed to go in with him. The truth was, we had been looking forward to this show a long time. And now we were here, we’d been chased out of Cher’s dressing room by Cher herself — did we have to miss the rest of this historic evening because of one idiotic woman in the audience?

“Maybe one song,” I said.

Arnita’s eyes registered my change of attitude. “Oh. Now you want to stay?”

“Just for one song. Don’t you think that sounds fair?”

“You stay, then,” she said. “I’ll find a way home.”

I took her arm. “No. I’ll go with you. I mean, just — tell me what you want me to do.”

She didn’t say anything. Her eyes stayed on me, waiting for me to decide.

“Rachel, you’ll stay with me and watch the show, won’t you?” Tim said.

Rachel shrugged. “You’re the one with the car.” She hadn’t looked up from her shoes since he told her to fuck off.

I had stood by all evening watching Tim pretending to be nice to Arnita. All the time I could see through his act. Every glance, every seemingly offhand quip, was a little arrow aimed at her. It was only now that I recognized his master plan for the evening. He wanted me to choose him over Arnita, and he wanted me to make that choice in front of her. He hated Arnita, the space she was taking up in my life. His best friend was not supposed to have other friends, especially not some girl.

I had the fleeting thought that Tim was nowhere near his seat when that woman supposedly threw the Coke at us. It occurred to me that he might even have been the one who threw it — I could believe that. That’s how much he hated Arnita.

I didn’t care for that smile of satisfaction when he thought he had me talked into staying. I had to wipe that smile off his face. “Enjoy the show, Timmy. Rachel, take care. Arnita, let’s go.” I took her hand and led her toward the exit.

She dropped my hand. “No, Daniel, why don’t you stay, and I’ll call Jimmy to come get me in the taxi.”

“Oh, we’re definitely calling Jimmy, how else are we gonna get home?”

I couldn’t resist looking back. Tim and Rachel were watching us. Tim said something to Rachel and they started toward us.

“Look, he’s changed his mind,” I said. “Now he’ll offer to drive us, but it’ll be our fault he has to miss the concert.”

“Fine with me,” she said. “As long as I get home.”

Tim came up with his arms folded across his chest. “I guess we can go. It’s kind of a dud anyway. Sonny Bono sucks so bad.”

We were almost to Minor before Tim announced we were missing the show of a lifetime and it was all my fault.