Bliss by Danyel Smith Page B

1920s. And I don’t care what anyone says, or what money girls have, the shit is still the same right now
.
    She had her hand on her flat belly.
    I got to be able to get up and go when I’m ready to get up and go
.
    A light palm that communicates, and checks, and protects.
    “Eva! You incognito?” Sunny plopped down next to Eva at Ripples. “You look fucked up.”
    “Sick is what I am,” Eva said. Her hand moved easily from her belly to her side. “Faded.”
    “Say it:
still drunk
. So am I.” Sun leaned back in her chair, pleased for the moment with decisions made, with conquering performance, with morning heat on her face. Starting her own label was vanity, and a strategic pledge of allegiance to Sebastian. There’d been stacks of papers to sign, and an office space on a quiet floor of Roadshow’s modest building in which to move furniture. Sunny wanted Eva to work at Sonrisa/Roadshow, needed Eva to sign artists and build it into something important. It had been her plan to shock Eva, though. Manipulating a melodrama in which Eva was the fool made Sunny feel strong and wise. “When I first got in this business,” Sunny said, “somebody told me there were two bad ways it could go. Said women either get fat because of all the free food, or turn into alcoholics because of the free liquor—”
    “Why didn’t you say something?” Impatient with the new self-reliant Sunny, Eva wanted to slap back her star’s shine. “To me, about Sonrisa.”
    Sunny shrugged. “Thought Hawk would’ve told. Or Ron. That’s your man.”
    “Ron knew?” Eva said this dumbly. She didn’t have it together enough to bite back.
    Sun shook her head. “You actually like Ron,” she said. “Why? He’s smart, God knows. But he’s an ass.”
    “You should have signed with him back in Carmel, then,” Eva said. “Asses get the job done.”
    “He seemed to know everybody.” Sunny shrugged again, her default gesture. “Seemed like a good guide for all this.”
    “And then here comes effervescent Eva.”
    “Yeah. My savior!” Sun put her arms straight in front and clapped her palms hard. Eva thought of a trained seal. “That night in Carmel—”Sunny hugged herself with the memory. “You, me, and Dart were gonna go to the movies. I wanted to stay at the hotel, soak in that
giant
tub.”
    “So me and Dart left.”
The story’s old
Eva thought.
And been told
.
    “Ron beeped me, though,” Sunny said, dropping new info casually, “talking about meeting them in the lobby—”
    “Who’s ‘them’?” Any other time, Eva would have hidden her ignorance of the details. Figured out a way to let Sunny fill her in.
    “You don’t know? It was him and
Hawk
,” Sunny said. She focused on the middle distance like she could see her beginnings there in 3-D. “They wanted to buy me a drink. ‘Just come down,’ Ron was saying. ‘They got mineral water by the bucket.’” Sunny looked directly at Eva, and spoke dreamily. “You’d been so nice that day, though. Talking to me about my
style
, what I was trying to
do
. Talked about your mom.
Listened
when I told you about Wheatley, why I like her poems, why I wanted to name an album after her. Plus, you and Dart got along. You got us those rooms … at that place … by the ocean. I was curious, though—”
    “I want to know what Ron was saying.”
    Sun got matter-of-fact. “That you were dope, but you didn’t have the connections he has. That he has relationships with everybody—from the CEO of This to the CEO of That, to the guys who pay the PDs to program the songs at the big radio stations. Even the truck drivers who get the CDs to the stores.”
    Eva reached for her water.
Sounds like him
.
    “He said that what I could really count on you for—”
    “—was I’d fuck who I had to, to make your shit hit.”
And what? He says
that
to
me.
Though he knows sex don’t work quid pro quo. It’s a stupid way to even try and do business. Sex is for … depends on who’s