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I don't even know why I'm going to the show," says DeeDee. She's sitting in Splinters, in the Gallery Mall in Philadelphia, gettin' the 'do done. The hair on the back of her head is being tapered close to her scalp with electric clippers. The Braxton-esque crown is blow-dried straight and bumped under softly. "I can't believe R. Kelly got married to that child." "But then I heard she ain't no child"-this from another chair, where someone's getting finger waves. Then the girl with the electric clippers speaks. She talks out of the side of her mouth as she folds back DeeDee's ear. "I heard she is. And that n···a"-now she looks up-"needs more than any 15-year-old can give him." The sprawling Gallery Mall-like the depressed, faded Philadelphia neighborhood it's nestled in-was probably real fly about 15 years ago. Now only the most stalwart of chains-the Gap, Foot Locker, the Limited-remain. Stores stand empty; nowhere is there that mall bustle, except at the Hair Cuttery and at Splinters, and that's because it's Friday and sisters are getting ready for the weekend. They're discussing R. Kelly because he's headlining at the Spectrum tonight and because, word is, he just married his teenage protegee, Aaliyah. Like the jocks on the radio in New York, Philly, Oakland, and L.A., folks are yammering about Kelly's marriage, making comparisons to Marvin Gaye and Jerry Lee Lewis, joking about jailbait and robbing the cradle. After arrangements were made for an exclusive interview with VIBE, R. Kelly pulled out at the 11th hour-on the advice of his lawyers. At press time, it was chaos within the Kelly camp, with no spokesperson for Kelly or Aaliyah (both are managed by Aaliyah's uncle, Barry Hankerson) commenting on the marriage or on her alleged pregnancy. The various rumors were helped along by everyone from MTV News to USA Today. But no one can answer the question Right On! posed months ago: "R. Kelly and Aaliyah: Are They Just Friends?" The distilled hearsay goes something like this: First everybody thought Aaliyah and R. Kelly were so much in love that when he went on tour, they missed each other terribly. So he supposedly sent his bodyguards to Detroit to get her and bring her to Florida, where he was on a tour date. Then, supposedly, she traveled with him to Chicago, got a phony ID, and married him in a hotel room. Aaliyah's parents were supposedly flipping, and her father supposedly wanted to put Kelly in jail. Supposedly the father went and got his daughter from Chicago, and forbade her to see him and vice versa. But, supposedly, that didn't stop R. Kelly from calling Aaliyah and-when her dad answered-from supposedly saying, Put my wife on the phone. Instead, Aaliyah's father put her on a plane to Europe, then Japan, where she's supposed to tour for several months. Then there's the story that says Aaliyah is supposedly 19, and none of this is as scandalous as folks would like to make it. There is, after all, an Illinois marriage license dated August 31 for Robert S. Kelly and Aaliyah D. Haughton, which lists their respective ages as 27 and 18. (Of course, the marriage would be null and void if the ages are not legit.) The only problem is, while promoting her million-selling Jive Records debut, Age Ain't Nothin' but a Number, Aaliyah has been evasive about stating her age. Her official bio says 15, and a record company publicist has said, "We stand behind the bio." Obviously, performers have been lying about their ages since the dawn of time. But that's show business: smoke and mirrors, mikes and sound checks. Marriage, however, is something else, and if Aaliyah and R. Kelly's is real, then her pseudo-Lolita image becomes reality. And R. Kelly's sex-man image gets that much murkier.