Bliss by Danyel Smith

boar-bristled hairbrush; ginger lip gloss;and four fat fashion magazines. She wanted to lie by the pool before the hotel’s throng emerged at around nine, before her convention mates descended, bloated and burping postmidnight antics.
    No I didn’t fuck him. Yes I sucked his dick
.
    They won’t impeach Clinton
.
    Somebody stole my weed right from my goddamn purse
.
    Look, if my boy does the remix, it’s fifty up front plus points
.
    Snoop did the dog thing already. DMX doesn’t know that?
    If OJ. did it, he should go on TV, admit it. Fuck everybody’s head up with the double jeopardy
.
    Don’t know why I didn’t send promo CDs down to the Million Woman March
.
    Get off ‘Pac’s dick. He’s dead. For real. Get with the new
.
    Eva wasn’t in the mood. She was tense, and she had to pee.
    The lobby chandelier dripped giant glass tears, was as big as a living room. Her sandals alternately clicked on marble and sunk into red-and-gold carpet. Small potted Christmas trees lit the concierge’s desk. A gardener, who she also recognized as the bartender from Showcase Savoir Faire, sprayed plants with water and with something acrid from a dented metal can.
    “Show your teeth,” he said, smile brighter than his eyes.
    Eva gave him the courtesy of a glance. She could see the pools and the beach beyond through the lobby’s glass walls.
Same old slippers
, went a verse she remembered from one of her high schools,
same old rice
.
    Same old glimpse of paradise
. Eva didn’t tug at her tiny skirt, a sheer silk orange scarf tied with flourish at one hip, even as she felt the man’s eyes on her ass.
    “Eva! Evillene!” Evillene was the name of the Wicked Witch of the West in
The Wiz
.
    Don’t nobody bring me no bad news
. That was the witch’s theme song.
Words and music by Charlie Smalls
, went the mainframe in Eva’s head.
Performed originally on Broadway by Mabel King. Show opened 1975
. Evillene. People thought Eva didn’t mind the tag.
    As cheerfully as she could, Eva called out, “Hey, ladies.” But sheskirted the trio of older radio women curved over a clutch of lipstick-stained cups. Eva didn’t have it in her to rehash the showcase. She barely had it in her to get to the family pool. It was called Ripples, but the water sat platter flat. Eva was still queasy.
    But at least she was lying in real sun. As the pool filled with kids, Eva looked at them and couldn’t imagine being responsible for one of them not drowning. She sat on the pool steps just as she’d sat in the pool closest to the lobby the afternoon before, except the afternoon before she’d been talking to her convention mates and talking to her assistant back in New York on her tiny cell phone. Eva had been drinking vanilla rum and listening to a Latin jazz band. Eva had been jovial yesterday afternoon. Yesterday she’d been thirteen days late for her period.
    Today she was thinking about family, so she watched a man of about forty-five rub suntan lotion into his wife’s arms. He wasn’t a part of the second annual Vince the Voice Urban Music Takes Over the World: International Marketing for the Millennium convention. The man rubbed lotion into his wife’s arms from where the short sleeves of her tee ended to the backs and palms of her hands. He tucked in a towel around her legs, from hip to toe, and fixed an umbrella so his wife was in the most possible shade.
    Damn. How sweet
.
    Then the man walked around to the deep side of the pool and cannonballed in. He swam underwater until he got back to the shallow, then floated on his back, his hairy belly rising from the water like a giant coconut.
    Eva eased herself down another step, so the water buoyed her breasts. She noticed a wheelchair by the wife’s chaise. And then Eva saw that the woman’s hand rested on her terry-covered thigh like a dead bird. That the woman’s sapphire ring twinkled like a living eye in the sunlight.
    The woman looked at Eva, and Eva didn’t look away. The husband