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I had to agree to take call for three weekends in a row in order to travel with Lorenzo to the three-day Black Fiction Festival in Maryland, or as he called it, the Fic Fest. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go, it was just that, like I said before, I hated conferences, and he’d told me that was essentially what this was. A huge conference with writers and book lovers, complete with panels and everything. The only big difference would be that the authors would be the vendors, and Lorenzo, or Street, was one of the featured authors. He was also on a panel, and as a featured author, was hosting his own meet and greet.
He was so excited about this event that by the time the day came for us to leave, I was kind of stoked about it, too. He promised this event would be like nothing I’d ever attended before, and well, he was right.
The Fic Fest was held in an event center in the DMV. We arrived early to set his booth up and met some other really nice authors. We’d flown in the night before, had rested well, but were a little late getting to the venue because Lorenzo, and I quote, had to have some of his pussy that morning. Not that I was complaining.
Lorenzo had had all his books and table swag shipped to a member of his street team, which he’d had to explain to me was a group of fans who helped him spread the word about his books. Most volunteered their services, but he’d actually paid this young lady to receive and bring his inventory to this event.
She damn near climbed him when we arrived, and I pretty much had to talk myself into not snatching her bald. But after Lorenzo introduced us and made it clear that I was his woman, she calmed down considerably. That might have also had something to do with the scowl I gave her. I usually wasn’t really the jealous type. That was probably why Robert got away with cheating on me more than once. I never went looking for anything or got upset when women approached him. Wait, who was I kidding? Robert wasn’t Lorenzo by a long shot, the longest of shots. Women didn’t exactly fawn over him, because he wasn’t attractive. He just managed to somehow find affair partners who, like me, were willing to see past his looks. But I never experienced with him what I experienced with Lorenzo that day.
Anyway, the street team member, Stacy, left shortly after we got there to change and promised to be back with the others. The others turned out to be five other women who all came dressed in shorts and black t-shirts with the words “Street’s Team” on them in red lettering, made to look like oozing blood. I quickly found out their jobs were to walk around the venue handing out Lorenzo’s promotional items, like postcards and bookmarks, as a way of driving traffic to his table, while Stacy, dressed in the same attire, stayed behind to help him at the table by handing him books to sign. He gave me the task of handling the payments, and I quickly had to get acclimated to using the app on his tablet to process credit card payments or make change for the cash customers. Not complicated work, but extremely chaotic, because to say my man was popular would be a huge understatement.
Good Lord!
When they opened the venue’s doors to the public, people literally poured into the place, with a vast majority of them making their way to see Lorenzo. Some came prepared to buy one or all of the seven books he had in publication. Others came with their own personal copies for him to sign. They grinned, declared their love for him—not for his books, but him—took pictures with him beside the huge standing sign of him that sat next to his table, had him sign everything from the variety of Street’s Team t-shirts some of them wore, to the souvenir books that were handed out at the door, to the palms of their hands. One woman had him sign her bare back!
Some of these women were even crying about finally getting to meet him. It was like I was at the table with Drake or The Weeknd, or shit, Beyoncé. It was amazing, exhilarating, and when I wasn’t side-eyeing some of the bolder women, I was feeling extremely proud of my man. In this world, just like in my world, he was a superstar.
But at the end of the day, I was also exhausted. So was he, but I could imagine that much interaction with other people would be hard for him anyway. I worked with the public every day. Lorenzo didn’t. He spent most of his time in his office writing, and other than Rell and an occasional visit from his sister or mother, I was his only link to the outside world. Once, I’d asked him about that, and he told me he’d seen people do so much bad stuff in the past that he preferred a more low-key life now and didn’t particularly like being around people. And when we made it back to our room and he instantly fell into bed, I knew our plans to go out to eat were nixed, especially when I came out of the bathroom to find him asleep. So I ordered room service for both of us, woke him up to eat, and then we both climbed into bed.
As we settled into bed that night, he whispered, “Thank you for taking care of me, baby.”
I kissed his bare chest and closed my eyes. “Always.”
*****
The second day was a bit less hectic, since Lorenzo’s panel was scheduled for first thing that morning. Stacy, who I found to actually be very sweet once she learned her boundaries, manned the table while I sat in the panel audience and watched Lorenzo work his magic. He was seated at the front of the room with four other male authors for a discussion titled, “Will the real men of black fiction stand up?” And I felt like the Author Street fan I was as he sat there looking all thick and luscious, discussing the perceived shrinking number of male authors in black literature.
The rest of that day was more of a blur than the first, as even more people crowded the venue, with Lorenzo’s table being surrounded by readers, mostly women, for most of the afternoon. Again, we were both too exhausted that evening to do anything other than order room service and collapse into bed. The next day was his meet and greet, and I knew it would be exponentially more exhausting for him.
