Page 21 of You've Got a Place Here, Too
“Now you’re talking,” Wil said. They were near whisperinganyway, discussing a fundraising plot in Wil’s bedroom while his roommate was away. “I’ll get Tino in on it.”
“You sure he’d be right?”
“You know he’s talented.”
“Under certain direction, of course.”
“I know what you mean. But you know what I mean, and you know what it is. Remove any doubt now.”
“It’s not my concern you should be worried about.”
“Maybe we’re worrying too much.”
Sometimes Detroit’s fortunes worked against its own. Thousands of coloreds, then Negroes, and then Blacks came north to work in the auto plants, which were now exported to Mexico, Canada, everywhere but Detroit, everywhere Black folks weren’t. The year Des and Wil found each other at Lewis was the same year some angry white men beat to death an unlucky Asian bachelor who looked like the Asian men that put them out of work at the same plants. Hell, it was hard enough just getting the whites at the plant to play nice with the Blacks at the plant and get them the same union pay. But when the plants started suffering, Blacks, as always, had to find another way. Another way was school. Another way was a Black school, Lewis. But now Lewis had to find another way.
In desperation, their plan worked. The entire student body was asked, but maybe only about fifty students volunteered, to sell tickets at five dollars a pop to fill the auditorium at Lewis to hear original songs and covers performed by Wilbur Franklin and Friends, with all proceeds going to the Lewis College of Business student relief fund. If this staged show was a success, administrators said, maybe it could be a concert series. Maybe an accounting student or two could be assigned as the series bookkeeper, maybe someone could be trained in marketing andpublic relations. Maybe, maybe, maybe. In a city like Detroit, built on steel will, there wasn’t always room for maybes, but now there had to be.
“Maybe you should let me handle the looks and stage design,” Wil said to Des a day before the show. And maybe Des didn’t try to think about that rejection too much immediately after, or the day of the show.
“But I always do the looks. And I’ve got the vision to make them pop.”
“I know, I know. But maybe this time, to make it work, I should be the one handling everything. Just for now.”
“But then you’ll get all the credit for it.”
“The dean and everybody still know it was both of us with the idea, but both of us…”
“Both of us…?”
“We just can’t be seen too close to each other. You know people are talking.”
“People are always talking, but who’s the people that are so important to you and what are they talking about that seems to be more important than anything else?”
“It ain’t about what’s important, it’s about distractions.”
“I’m a distraction? Is that why you’re trying to bring Tino in? And shut me out?”
“I promise it’s not like that, but I don’t want anyone to think we’re a thing, you know?”
Lewis College of Business didn’t have an athletic program. It didn’t have a marching band. It didn’t have a majorette team. The “College of Business” portion of the name should negateany notion of music, arts, or any other curriculum dealing with liberal arts.
But for a brief time on Detroit’s west side, it held sold-out shows at that auditorium every Thursday night. The talent show had been such a success that the administration stood by their word on making it a concert series. And folks would be mistaken to think that this was still a quiet little Black-owned secretarial school.
Cars—all made in town—would line up on every free space on Meyers Road near Six Mile, careful not to block the driveways of the duplexes facing the campus.
By the end of the spring semester, Wil was juggling disc jockey duties at Club Heaven, being Des’s undercover lover, business classes during the day, and now concert promoter and artist manager. Lewis all but officially appointed him as the college’s marketing manager, but because he was still a student, it was important he get his degree—and then maybe he’d stick around. Until then, the shows at the auditorium were a steady stream of revenue, alongside some other last-ditch measures to keep the doors open and keep Violet Lewis’s dream a reality.
Des never dreamed of being a gofer, but he worked his way back into the operation nonetheless. Picking up dry-cleaning from off Livernois for Valencia’s performances and simultaneously scoping out new outfits for her in the fashionable boutiques on the same avenue. Dropping off demo tapes of her recorded shows to managers and club owners around town. Taking notes for Wil on the days he was too sleepy to attend class. Building a businessrelationship undercover—as well as all sorts of other things going on undercover the whole time, mind you—and keeping a healthy distance in public.
“It would help if you did a little bit of the window-shopping with me sometimes, you know?” Des said.
“All you have to do is tell Valencia where to go and she’ll handle the rest. You don’t want to attract too much attention to yourself,” Wil shot back.
“Okay, and what about the costumes for the rest of the performers? When are you going to let me actually make some instead of just styling them?”
“We’ll get there, just not now. But we’re almost there. Two semesters more and we can take this thing full speed ahead. Both of us.”
It only took four semesters to complete the highest degree available at Lewis, an associate’s. Both he and Wil were halfway done, but Wil didn’t seem to be focused on his degree—or Des. So Des reconsidered his original plan of going to New York. Leaving Wil wasn’t a possibility under consideration when he first conceived that plan, however.
