A moody, slow-burn romance set in 1977, "Time Waits for No One" follows Michael Jackson and Jacqueline, two lovers caught in a whirlwind of fame, ambition, and aching vulnerability. As Michael's star rises and Jacqueline navigates her own dreams and...
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The afternoon sun came through Michael's bedroom window in long honey-colored stripes, falling across the carpet and the open suitcase on the bed.
He stood in the middle of the room with his eyes half closed, muttering the vocalizations into the shape of a tune only he could hear. The shirt in his hand — the one he was supposed to be folding — had become a conductor's baton, swaying through the air to keep time with his humming, until he finally tossed it toward the bed. It landed on top of the suitcase instead of inside it.
"I still try, dee dot da, mhm dot da dee da da," he scratched out, snapping his freed fingers to coax the melody the rest of the way out.
It was never something he could plan for. A fragment would surface — a syllable, a rhythm, a half-formed chord — and then it was a footrace. The groove had no interest in his itinerary. It did not know about the suitcase on the bed or the car that would be pulling up in two hours, and it would not have cared either way.
Latoya had something in common with it on that front, in that she was an equally inevitable force of nature. Her knock and her entrance arrived as a single event, the courtesy of one indistinguishable from the fact of the other.
"Michael, this room is a disaster. How do you manage to let it get this cluttered even after Maria comes and cleans it so nicely."
"Latoya, I was working."
"Michael, you were standing in the middle of the room making noise." She moved past him without being invited, her eyes doing a full lap of the room before settling on the suitcase on the bed. "Are you packing? I thought you had a couple weeks off."
Michael turned to look at her with the full weight of his patience running out.
"You always come in here interrogatin' like you have a warrant or somethin', Latoya. Prettiest Joseph I ever saw."
Latoya chose not to take the bait on the Joseph comparison. Instead she looked her brother over with the particular attention of someone who had grown up sharing walls with him: wound up about something, and not saying what.
Before she could probe deeper, the garment lazily thrown on top of the worn brown leather interrupted her.
"Michael, you are not bringing this brown shirt."
"What's wrong with my brown shirt?"
"It makes you look like a deacon."
"You said that last time."
"Because it's still true."
He crossed the room and took it from her hands. Folded it with more care than he'd been giving the suitcase all afternoon. Placed it on the bed. Not inside. She clocked this and kept her mouth shut, and the look on her face was the closest thing to a truce she was going to offer.
Latoya sat down on the edge of Michael's bed, reaching over to pick up a stray sock, folding it with its pair as she glanced into the half-packed suitcase.
