Abby Road (16 page)

Lindsey made the motion of locking her lips and throwing away the key.

“Go on, Abby,” Steve said, sounding more like Oprah.

“When I asked Todd what kind of tree we were standing under, he had that
look
in his eyes.” I addressed Steve. “You know
that look
?”

“Yes,” Steve and Lindsey answered in unison.

“Todd told me the tree is called a Kissing Willow.”

It was dead quiet.

Until Lindsey sucked in a breath. “You’re kidding. What did you say?” My sister was leaning so far forward she was practically in my lap.

“After that, there wasn’t much talking going on. We were kind of . . . at it for a while.”

Lindsey sighed.

I looked down at my lap, unable to make my huge, ridiculous smile go away. I was remembering that tender, almost anguished and relieved look in Todd’s eyes when he’d finally pulled me in; how he kissed me once, drew back to look me in the eyes, and then cupped a hand behind my head. For whatever reason, it had been the most romantic moment I could remember.

After that, the next hour was a blur. Although I did recall, at one point, privately confirming that Todd was indeed the world’s best kisser.

While I was sampling a taste of his neck, Todd murmured softly in my ear, saying that he’d been wanting to do this all day. I explained to him, in my own special way, that he’d fought back for far too long.

I kept my eyes away from Lindsey’s expectant face, unable to share with her any further details of where my mouth had gone next and what Todd’s hands had done.

“And?” Lindsey’s impatient prompt startled me back to the present. She was leaning forward again, pushing her blond hair away from her face. “What happened next?”

“Umm . . .” I rubbed my lips together, recalling perfectly how Todd had tasted both salty and sweet. “He apologized, actually.”

“For what?” Steve asked.

“He said he
had
to kiss me because of the legend.” As the pair of them stared blankly at me, I wished I’d kept that part of the story to myself. It was just too cute. “Yeah, well.” I took a deep breath. “Todd was telling me some story about how every maiden who passes under that tree has to get a kiss or she’ll die a heartbroken spinster, but, uh, I probably wasn’t giving him much of a chance to speak.” My cheeks prickled with a blush.

Lindsey sat back and sighed like Lady Juliet leaning over her balcony.

“I asked him if he was making the story up, but he said he wasn’t, that it had something to do with Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth.”

“What?” asked Lindsey, perplexed.

I shrugged and grinned wider.

“Did he drive you back here?”

“He offered, though I told him I wanted to ride my bike to work off the key lime pie. But he was so cute. He was all worried that I’d get lost in the dark. He wouldn’t let go of my handlebars.”

“I’ll bet he wouldn’t,” Steve said, laughing like a proud frat brother.

“As I was coasting away, I asked him if he’s working tomorrow. He said he is, but only in the morning, because in the afternoon he has a date with a singer.”

Lindsey, deadpan: “Marry him.”

L.A.-based Mustang Sally, the band renowned for back-to-back platinum albums and sold-out tours, is shockingly out of the spotlight this summer. Plans to regroup at the studio in September have set the entertainment press on fire, wondering what kind of musical gem will come out of the notable break. If the next album is anything close to its predecessors, the whole world is in for a mega-treat.

“Satellite,” the must-hear song that opens their fourth album, continues to dig its melodic claws into your heart and refuses to release throughout the nearly five-minute joint. The highly anticipated follow-up to the previous year’s fantastic pop cheese Nice Going
,
their album Losin’ Myself
was anything but lost. With a combination of piano-led melodies, roaring guitar riffs, plus peach of a singer Abigail Kelly’s irresistibly all-American fusion of sass versus vulnerability, the album is an incessantly catchy guilty pop pleasure. With its hook-crazy, techo-lite beats and super slick power ballads, it confidently displays yet another example of why Mustang Sally is indeed the “something-for-everyone” band to beat.

In that battle, however, this band has already prevailed, winning public as well as critical plaudits en masse, beginning
with their ten-fold platinum début, Mustang Sally. Four albums later, they are still seemingly enduring and unaffected. The hyper-catchy ex-college-coed Kelly takes her listener on a wild ride through the brazenly bubblegum electric track of “I Shoulda Saw Love” to the slightly broader palette of the pop-dance pastel “Stupid 4 U.” Frankly, we can’t get enough of the lyrically trivial as she strains her debutant purr into a Billie Holiday-esque plea that comes across as both ridiculous and wonderful. The difference between obscurity and overexposure is found within Kelly’s own throat.

Legitimizing a one-time minor garage band, guitarist Hal Richardson, bassist Jordan McPhee, and drummer Kiyoshi Sukuki are anything but minor characters in this story. Richardson’s juicy guitar licks are straight from the school of Jimmy Paige, McPhee’s slap-and-pop method eerily mirrors the likes of Flea and John Paul Jones, while Sukuki, the obvious rule-breaker of the bunch, could easily go toe-to-toe with idol Keith Moon. Kelly stands by her band, living the sunny pop life, while the boys take care of essential rock ’n roll business.

“The new record will be highly stylized,” Axeman Richardson reports. We hope he’s right. The past albums never mockingly descended into self-parody. “When I Look at You” (a duet with Kelly’s ex-squeeze, Miles Carlisle) has a definite sense of economy and speculation, while “Satellite” is a cathartic pillow for the singer and her listener to cry on. Their last album rounds out with the aesthetically potent “Minor Keys,” a wistful gem in which Kelly chooses music over a lover.

{chapter 11}

“AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING”

“I
’m leaving now!” I called out as I climbed aboard the red beach cruiser. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.” Lifting my feet, I coasted down the driveway and into the street. “Probably not too long,” I added under my breath, almost as an afterthought.

“Wait!” Lindsey shot from the front door. I hit the brakes. She flew in front of me, one hand in a wet lime-green rubber glove. “Where are you going?” she panted, blocking my way.

I squinted past her shoulder and then down at the ground, looking everywhere but at her eyes. “Into Seaside,” I said, feeling my stomach tighten. “I have a date to keep, remember?”

Lindsey didn’t reply at first, but she finally exhaled a confused, “Oh.” Her tone made me look at her. Deep concern mixed with disappointment on her face.

And I knew that she knew.

I gripped the handlebars. “So I guess you heard me on the phone earlier.”

Lindsey nodded once. I sighed, squeezing the handlebars.

It was another hot day, hotter than yesterday, but I’d sufficiently cooled off, having swum for two lovely hours with my nephews. We’d spent the rest of the early afternoon making and sampling homemade snow cones, while Lindsey ran errands.

And then “Helter Skelter
.
”

“What are you going to do?” Lindsey asked.

“I’m not sure. He wants me back in L.A. tomorrow. That’s why he called.”

“I know,” she admitted. “I heard you taking. And then . . .” She paused, moving to properly look me in the eyes. “I heard you crying.”

I dropped my chin. “I wasn’t crying.”

A white truck screeched its brakes as it rounded the corner and found my sister and me standing in the middle of the street. We moved off to the sidewalk.

“So? What did Max say? Did he guilt you into doing something again?”

“No,” I said slowly, feeling defensive. “He was nice on the phone, actually.”

Lindsey chuckled—heavy sarcasm. “Naturally. He’s nice to you when he wants something. Even I know that.” She sat down on the curb, shading her eyes from the sun with one gloved hand. “What did you tell him?”

“I didn’t tell him anything.” I kicked at a bike pedal, making it twirl around and around under my foot. “I don’t really have a choice, though.”

“Of course you have a choice!” Her sudden exclamation made me flinch. “You’re not his little puppet. You can do what you want.”

I closed my eyes. Not this again.

“It’s his sick little game.” Lindsey shook my front tire. “Max is manipulating you; he does it all the time. You’re the only one who doesn’t see it.”

I opened my eyes, only to stare down at my hands twisting around the handlebars. My knuckles were turning white. I let my gaze wander over her shoulder to her tidy front yard.
Suburban paradise
, I thought, a little resentfully.

“You have no idea what it’s like for me now—”

She cut in with: “Because you don’t talk to me anymore.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

“This is unsolicited advice, Abby, but you need to fix your life or figure out something else to do.”

“Something
else
?” I echoed back, unbelievingly. “This
is
my life.
This
.” I waved down to myself for some reason. “This is the way it is. He needs me in L.A. If I don’t go, if I don’t do what he wants, it affects everyone.” In the back of my mind, I couldn’t believe I had to defend Max Salinger so zealously. He was the person who started everything, who gave me everything. The band wouldn’t be where we were today without him. Even Lindsey knew that. “If they need me there, I have to be there. If
I’m
not working, the guys in the band can’t work. We’re a team. I owe them.”

“You don’t owe anyone.” Lindsey stared at me, her expression unrelenting. “Now,
sit down
.”

Surrendering to her “request,” I swung one leg over the bike and let my foot fall onto the sidewalk. I slumped down on the curb next to her.

“I just miss you, sis. So much.” Lindsey’s voice was normal at first, but the aggression quickly returned. “You’ve been away from Max for only
three
days
. You’re supposed to be here all summer. You never get a break. I’m sure that’s a big part of your problem.”

I shot her my most withering glare.

“You know,” she rephrased, “why you’ve been so out of it lately.”

I bit my lip, turned away, and sat motionless on the sandy street corner, knowing there was no way I could explain to her—or to anybody, for that matter—how things were.

Yes, I was sure part of my “problem” was my job. But that was the bearable part of my nightmare, the part I could handle.

“You need to make some changes,” Lindsey said, placing a hand on my arm.

I tossed another scornful glance her way, but she ignored it.

“For starters, you have to learn to tell Max no.”

“Please,” I mumbled, looking out at the street. “I don’t need a lecture.” I ran my fingers over my eyebrows, seeking relief from a new headache.

She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And, stop beating yourself up over Christian. You know it wasn’t your fault that . . .”

She went on talking, but I made myself zone out: Abby’s Defense Mechanism 101. My entire consciousness was in another place now, inside my head, away from whatever my sister was saying. It was dark and tumultuous where I went, but it was far away. I didn’t want to keep forcing myself inside, but there was nowhere else to go.

Despite this effort, I was suddenly thinking about Christian, about the last night I’d seen him, a year ago. The band had been leaving for London the next morning for a few quick shows. Christian wouldn’t be coming with me that time like he usually did. I didn’t like traveling without him; I felt safer and happier when my big brother was around. He was my anchor.

I remembered the airport-bound limo picking me up at five in the morning, after I’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for Christian to return home with my takeout veggie burger—the midnight snack he’d volunteered to fetch after I whined and begged him for an hour.

Other than that, I had very little memory of that trip abroad. I couldn’t even remember how I’d heard the news the next day—heard about what happened back home the night before, when I’d been dead asleep and didn’t hear the sirens a few miles down the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Don’t you know that by now . . .” Some of what Lindsey said sifted through my barricade, but her voice was distant and muffled. “Why will you never talk to me about what happened?”

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. I was being held under water, a riptide pushing, undertow pulling, and the only voice I could understand was telling me to relax and breathe, to give in.