TAMPA, FLORIDA – Friday, January 27, 1989, 6:36 AM

Valerie woke up in the morning to the sound of the telephone ringing. She glanced at the digital clock and groaned. 6:00 AM?! Whoever was calling, she hoped it was good. She snatched the phone from its place on the nightstand and burrowed back under the covers, holding it to her ear.

“Hello?” she said groggily.

“Valerie! You’re awake!” The voice of Valerie’s best friend/manager/the convenience store guy, Wilson, blasted in her ear.

“Yeah, because of you! Hell, it’s 6:00 in the morning!”

“First, it’s 6:36,” Wilson corrected. “And second, I’m sorry. But I just got a call from California. Los Angeles, to be exact…”

LA? She didn’t even stop to consider that possibly someone big and important wanted to talk to her, so she assumed it was an estranged family member looking for money after the success of Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll. A shit film, but it did help her pay off a lot of stuff. Not enough to just hand it to anyone, though, especially a random stranger.

“Uh-huh…”

“You know what I’m getting at?” Wilson asked.

“The second cousin, three times removed, wants money,” Valerie answered. “My own parents are barely ever here for me, so why should I care about a hobo in Los Angeles?”

“No, Val!” Wilson said. Why couldn’t he just get to the point? “You still in bed?”

“Well, yeah…”

“Then get out of bed, you’re gonna be dancing like crazy after I tell you this.”

“Okay, okay. I’m going. Just call me back in an hour, please.”

“Nooo, I can’t hold it in much longer, I’m too excited!!”

Now she was starting to suspect it might be something big for her, for the both of them…

“Okay, well, get to it, Wil! I seriously mean it when I say I want to hear this.”

She kicked the covers off and finally did as she was told, sitting on top of her twin sized bed and twirling the telephone cord like the girls on TV did.

“You up?”

“Yes.”

“A hundred percent awake?”

“No.”

“Ready to have a dance party?”

“Absolutely not, Wil!”

Wilson burst into laughter.

“Okay. I’ll tell you. I got the call last night and I was kind of drunk—”

“Wil, yesterday was a Thursday. Why’d you go out drinking?! And how do you not have a massive hangover right now?”

“Who says I don’t? Anyway, that’s not important. The point is, I got it at maybe 10:00 PM, but I wasn’t that drunk, so I recognized her voice.”

“Whose voice now?”

“You’re gonna shit bricks, Val.”

“Ew, that’s sick! But c’mon. Who was it?”

“Tia Boseman, international superstar, and she wants to work with you!”

Oh. My. Fucking. Gosh.

“Holy shit, Tia?! You’re kidding!”

“I’m not,” Wilson said seriously. “I talked to her manager first, and he said Tia wanted to talk to you personally. But I told him you weren’t available, so he put me through to her.”

“And this wasn’t some joke?”

“I know for sure it wasn’t, Val. I was drunk, but I know Tia Boseman’s voice.”

“Damn, Tia’s the next best thing after Michael Jackson!”

It wasn’t as though she thought Michael Jackson was better than Tia Boseman. In truth, she deeply loved and admired both of them, but Michael Jackson was just more famous. That’s right. It was all she cared about—what working with one of them could do for her. Call me a selfish bitch, but I only thought that because I didn’t know either of them personally. Well, all that was about to change…

“Valerie, she wants to meet you,” Wilson went on. “In California. She said she was gonna have people come pick you up for your 10:00flight, and you’ll get there at noon, LA time.”

So… Wilson gave some strangers her address when he was drunk?

“Today, are you kidding?!”

“Nope… Look, you have to go, Val. Tia’s a busy lady and she only has time today. You pass this up and you’ll never get the chance again.”

Duh, of course she knew that!

“I’m going for sure! I would never pass this up, no way!”

“Good. Hurry up and go pack, then. Call me when you get there.”

“Okay, will do. Thanks so much, Wil. Bye!”

“Bye, good luck!”

Valerie hung up and replaced the telephone set, setting my alarm for 9:00 AM. She honestly didn’t think she would be able to go back to sleep, but she did end up catching a few hours’ worth of z’s.

9:00 AM

Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!

Her eyes slowly opened and that was when she remembered.

“Holy shit.”

She still couldn’t wrap her mind around what was going to go down in merely six hours. She leaped out of bed, and if her life were a movie, this would be the part when the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited” started playing.

I’m so excited!
And I just can’t hide it!
I’m about to lose control and I think I like it!

She headed to the bathroom, stepped out of her pajamas, and hopped in the shower, for once not making the water way too hot to handle. After carelessly shampooing her dark chestnut hair, she gently massaged her face with the pomegranate exfoliating wash gifted to her by the producers of Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll. She then moved on to soaping the rest of her body, and stood in the shower until the water decided to go cold.

And when I make it big in LA, this shit will never happen again.

Valeria stepped out, putting on her pink bathrobe (another gift) and her hair in a bun. She made her way to the kitchenette, taking a sip of water from her mug (coffee, especially in the morning, just wasn’t her thing) and putting a piece of bread in the toaster.

Now she just had to find an outfit that wasn’t too business-y but didn’t make her look like a complete slut. When she finally settled for a cream blouse, a tan leather jacket, and black skinny pants for the mild California weather, it was already 9:20. Definitely not enough time to take care of all the stuff she had left at home, and Valerie realized she should have just listened to Wilson and started three hours ago. Her hair wasn’t even half dry, and she wouldn’t get the chance to get some curlers in it.

Packing wasn’t hard, though. She tossed a few items—undergarments, clothes, beauty/sanitary materials… It wasn’t like she was expecting to be asked to stay in a mansion and work on music with Tia every single day. No, of course not.

9:30 AM

Click.

“Shit. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

Valerie was in the middle of blow drying her hair when this time, her electricity decided to go out. She groaned. The Tampa International Airport wasn’t far away from her home, but she was almost sure Tia Boseman’s people would come before they really needed to.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

“Damn it.”

She put her hair back in a bun and went speeding to the door with her suitcase, grabbing her black backpack and forgetting about the toast that had gone cold ten minutes ago. Slipping on some black booties, she unlocked the door and tried to appear as normal as possible. She always told herself that a good first impression was the hugest necessity for success.

“Hello,” she said, opening the door.

“Hello, Ms. Joyce?” one of the two men standing there asked.

“Yes, that’s me.” Valerie smiled a bit for comfort.

“We hope you were informed that we would be escorting you to have lunch with Miss Tia Boseman in Los Angeles,” the man continued.

“Oh, yeah, I’m all packed.” She patted her suitcase’s handle and hoped the men hadn’t noticed her wet hair and makeup-free face.

As she followed the two men down the stairs of her apartment building (the elevator had been busted since she moved in over a year ago, and luckily, she only lived on the third floor), Valerie kept reminding herself that the five hour flight would give her more than enough time to make herself look presentable. For her, she tried to see everything as a walk in the park rather than a race. A race she just couldn’t deal with. But over time, she found that her procrastination led to her doing things in a rush at the end, which was awful, and something she just couldn’t change. Oh well. Still, she didn’t like the idea of living life as a race against time, but that pretty much summed up the word “life”.

They were soon downstairs, and Valerie saw parked in front of the worn apartment building a sleek black car (she wasn’t too good at identifying brands or models). One of the two men offered to take her suitcase, and the other one opened the car door for her.

“Thank you,” she said politely. Don’t mess up. Don’t you dare mess up here.

“Um, Ms. Boseman would like to make sure we’re not interrupting your schedule…”

“Oh, no, of course not, it’s fine!”

Gosh, did that make her sound desperate?

“Okay.”

Phew.

9:50 AM

“Flight LG3889 for Los Angeles, California, is now boarding at gate A15. Passengers with young children or disabilities have priority…”

Valerie had tried discreetly applying a moisturizer to her face but failed when a couple of traveling martial arts students passed her and gave her strange looks. Now she was sitting, agonizing over the fact that she’d forgotten to bring her book of Shel Silverstein poems. She’d borrowed all his books from the library, copied the sonnets down in purple ink, and kept the papers bound in a teal trapper keeper. It sounded stupid, but that was just how she “stole” books. Well, it wasn’t like she was selling them for money, anyway.

“Ms. Joyce?” one of the burly men said. “We should go now.”

Valerie was surprised that when they got up and marched around the terminal, nobody recognized the men as Tia Boseman’s bodyguards. Actually, she didn’t know how many bodyguards Tia had. Probably tons. But what if these guys were selected randomly off the street so they wouldn’t be recognized and have to dodge around? What if they were planning to kidnap her without Tia knowing? Oh, God.

She ignored the thought as they crossed the jet bridge and the flight attendants greeted them. Instead, she focused on the fact that the two men were leading her to first class. First class! The seats were huge and set far apart from each other, and something told her that the window seat with a gift basket sitting on it was hers. That was, in fact, what had happened when she flew to New York to record songs for Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll. She just didn’t fly in first class that time.

“Your seat is here, Ms. Joyce.”

Ha! She was right.

She took the basket and set it on the large table by the seat. Sitting down, she pulled out her makeup bag, checking to make sure nobody was watching. Her girl friends always told her she had to look “effortlessly beautiful”, and that she couldn’t let guys (or anyone, for that matter) know that she actually had to try. She coated her lips in a deep red lipstick and brushed her eyelids with a tan shadow—she wasn’t really one to follow the trend of fuchsias and bright yellows and blues on her eyes. Besides, she wasn’t going to a party or anything, so she didn’t have to look particularly… colorful.

Soon, the plane began taxiing and Valerie knew that this was it. She was going to LA to make music with Tia fucking Boseman. After all these years, she’d finally, finally, finally made it. She’d always thought that twenty-six years old was too old to jump-start a career. Just look at Michael Jackson, or Brooke Shields, or Shirley Temple. People liked young talent. Like, really young. But this old lady was finally going to make it. The plane leaned backwards, and in Valerie’s mind, it turned into a free bird, no longer a huge chunk of metal. She felt in control, and she was going to soar as fast and as far as she could. She didn’t even consider the fact that Tia’s next album wouldn’t do well.  

She’d done it, and she was never going to look back.