Coming Home (23 page)

 “You’ll get the hang of it,” he said, taking her hand.  “You
haven’t been at it very long.”

“Two months,” she said.  “If I cannot learn something as simple as
waitressing in two months, how will I ever learn anything as complex as
medicine?”

He squeezed her hand.  “We’ll hire you a tutor.”

Her smile was faint, but it was there.  “You are so kind to me,”
she said.  “Rob, I have a problem.  I don’t know how to solve it.”

He’d known something more than a bad evening at Wong’s was
bothering her.  “
We
have a problem,” he corrected.  “What is it?”

She opened another textbook and pulled a piece of paper from it. 
He took it from her and studied it.  “This is your tuition bill,” he said, and
shot her a quick glance.  “Your parents didn’t pay it?”

“I would not have known, except that my chemistry instructor said
that I was not on her class list.  So I paid a visit to the registration
office.  It seems that my parents returned the bill to the university.  In this
envelope.”  She pushed it across the table.  Stamped on the front in red were
the words
Addressee Unknown
.

“I saved some money during the semester break,” she said, “but not
nearly enough to pay the entire bill.  I managed to give them enough money to
stall them, but if the balance is not paid within three weeks, my enrollment
will be canceled.”

He flung the bill down on the table.  “I never thought they’d go
this far,” he said.  “How could they do this to you?  Jesus Christ, Nancy,
you’re their daughter!”

“Hush, please, Rob.  You’ll wake the entire household.”

He began pacing, running his hands through his tangled hair. 
There was no way he could scrape together the kind of money she needed, not in
three weeks.  “They’re the most cold-blooded human beings I’ve ever run
across,” he said.  “How can they call themselves parents?”

“I told you they would make it as difficult as possible for us.  I
shouldn’t have married you.  I should not have brought you into this.”

He paused in his pacing.  “I’ll call my folks,” he said.  “First
thing in the morning.  Maybe they can give us a loan.”

“I would not ask your parents for that kind of favor,” she said. 
“This is my battle, not theirs.”

“You’re my wife,” he said, “and their daughter-in-law, and you’d
damn well better believe it’s their battle.  Family sticks together.”

“I would not ask this of you!”

“I’m your husband,” he said.  “Damn it, Nancy, I won’t have you
dropping out of school because those two old goats are too stubborn to pay your
way.  You’ve been planning to be a doctor since you were eight years old.  I
won’t let them take it away from you!”

She touched his hand.  “Please, can we talk about this tomorrow? 
It’s very late, and I have an early class.”

He melted.  He always melted when she touched him.  He drew her,
warm and slender and solid, into his waiting arms.  “Anybody who wants to hurt
you,” he said, “will have to go through me first.”

In bed, he pulled her close.  As usual, she was stiff and
unresponsive.  She and Casey had turned a corner of the living room into a
sleeping alcove, complete with privacy curtain, but it failed to lessen Nancy’s
paranoia over their lack of privacy.  Unless they were alone in the apartment,
she froze the instant he touched her.  “Rob,” she protested,  “they will hear
us.”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning, Nance.”

“They could still hear.”

“We’re married,” he told her.  “It’s legal.”

“I could not face them across the breakfast table.”

He rolled away from her and fell back against the pillow.  He had
never forced himself on a woman, and he wasn’t about to start now.  But his
wife was making him crazy.   How many nights could she expect him to lie beside
her, awash in the scent of jasmine and warmed by the closeness of her body,
before the dam burst and his emotions surged forward and shoved chivalry aside?

***

Six weeks after Danny made the decision to take a year off from
music, Rick Slater suffered a near-fatal cocaine overdose.

The instant Slater’s condition stabilized, his wife carted him off
to an upstate rehab facility, leaving his band without a lead singer.  Rob
convinced the other band members to give Danny an audition, and at Casey’s
urging, Danny reneged on his vow and joined Slater’s band.

It was a marriage made in heaven.  He and Rob had played together
for so many years, there was a telepathy that happened between them on stage, a
psychic energy so visible it had them striking sparks off each other.  Within a
few days, he’d learned all of Slater’s material, and by the end of two weeks,
they’d squeezed several of Casey and Rob’s originals into their sets.  Word on
the street was that the band’s new lead singer was hot, and night after night,
it was standing room only at Delaney’s, the East Village club where Slater and
company were house band.

It soon became obvious to everyone that it was Danny who was
drawing the crowds.  When Slater’s doctors predicted a long-term stay in rehab,
the band went into an intensive huddle, emerging with a new name: 
Danny
Fiore and the Rick Slater Band.

And the fickle public forgot Rick Slater had ever existed.  Night
after night, as Danny stood silhouetted in the spotlight, the women in the
audience openly yearned for him.  The more aggressive tucked their telephone
numbers into his pockets, tossed their unmentionables on-stage, blatantly
propositioned him between sets.  Although he made sure his wedding ring was
clearly visible, none of them seemed to care.  Each one fancied herself the
woman who would topple Danny Fiore from his matrimonial pedestal.  And each one
left the show in acute disappointment, because every night, as soon as the gig
was over, Danny went directly home to his wife.

In April, the band was booked for two nights into a hot new club
on 42
^nd
Street.  Audience response was tremendous, and on the second
night, the manager asked them to return for a three-day gig on Memorial
weekend.  So Danny was pumped, his adrenaline running high, when they started
breaking down and packing up after the last set.  Taking a deep drag on his
Marlboro, he unplugged his mike and began coiling the cord.  “Hey, Wiz?”

“Yo?”

“I’ve got five big ones that say we can have it all packed up in
ten minutes flat.”

On his knees beside his open guitar case, Rob grinned.  “Thinking
of a career as a roadie, Fiore?”

Danny flicked an ash.  “A man has to make a living.”

Josh Taylor, the drummer, sidled up to him.  “Don’t look now,
man,” he said, “but those chicks from NYU are still hanging around.”

“Go for it, Jocko.  I’m slightly married.”

“Don’t let him kid you, Josh,” Rob said.  “He’s
very
married.”

Danny put out his cigarette, grinned, and turned to unplug an
amp.  He found himself face to face with a youngish guy in khaki shorts and a
Hawaiian shirt. 
Tourist
, he thought automatically. 
Probably got
lost on his way to the john
.  “Excuse me,” he said, squeezing past.

“Wait a minute,” the guy said.  “Mr. Fiore?”

He paused.  “Yes?”

The man held out his hand.  “Drew Lawrence.”

Lawrence’s handshake was firm and brisk.  He patted his breast
pocket and drew out a business card.  Handing it to Danny, he said, “I’m with
Ariel Records.”

Behind Lawrence’s back, he met Rob’s eyes.  They stared at each
other for a fraction of a second, and then Danny looked at the card in his
hand.  “Ariel Records,” he said.  “I don’t believe I’ve heard of you.”

“We’re small.  And constantly on the lookout for new talent.  I
think you and I might be able to do business.”  Lawrence paused.  “Interested?”

It took him a moment to find his voice.  “I’m listening.”

Lawrence grinned.  “Come sit down.  You look like you could use a
drink.”

As a small, independent company, Ariel Records was willing to take
chances that the larger companies wouldn’t.  Perhaps because they had less to
lose than the larger conglomerates, they were willing to risk more.  And Drew
Lawrence, acting on instinct, channeled all Ariel’s available resources into
Danny Fiore’s debut album.

Lawrence’s instinct paid off in spades.

That first album, titled
Stardust
, was a mixture of
straight pop and driving rock, balanced off by a sprinkling of blues ballads so
funky they fairly peeled the paper off the walls.  Again acting on instinct,
Lawrence chose for the first single release a catchy, hot little Fiore/MacKenzie
pop tune.  To the amazement of everyone except Drew Lawrence,
Tell Me Lies
debuted at number twenty-three on the pop charts, jumped fifteen places the
second week, hit number one its third week on the charts, and stayed there for
a solid nine weeks.

Ignoring the music industry truism that says an artist who has a
monster hit the first time around may never again rival that first effort,
Lawrence released a second single from
Stardust
.  Another
Fiore/MacKenzie creation,
Whisper in My Dreams
was a smoky, sultry
ballad that climbed steadily up the pop charts to number one before crossing
over to peak at number three on the R&B charts.  Lawrence timed its release
to coincide with a grueling six-week bus tour of the rural South.

***

There was a comforting anonymity in the ethnic mix of Sunday
afternoon patrons at McDonald’s.  At the next table there were two Indian women
in saris, and behind them, a group of lanky black teenage boys was showing off
for the two giggling girls across the way.  Rob brushed the crumbs off the
table and sat down across from Nancy, who was watching the door with an
expression so wistful it wrenched at his heart.  “Don’t worry,” he said,
opening the bag of food and handing Nancy her French fries.  “She’ll show up.”

Nancy smiled, but he’d obviously failed to allay her fear that her
younger sister hadn’t been able to escape the house and the eagle eye of their
mother.   As he unwrapped his Big Mac, she delicately nibbled at the edges of
her fish sandwich, but her gaze never strayed for long from the entrance.

The instant she saw Mei Ling, her face radiated happiness.  Her
sister made her way to their table, and the two women embraced and began
talking and gesturing rapidly in Chinese.

He’d never met Nancy’s kid sister before, and he studied their
animated faces.  They had the same eyes, but where Nancy’s face was delicate
and birdlike, Mei Ling’s was broad and rounded, with a high forehead.  She wore
her hair in a chin-length bob, shorter than Nancy’s, but with the same rich color
and texture.

When Nancy introduced them, Mei Ling grew tongue-tied.  He
imagined that at fifteen, cosseted and pampered and kept on a short leash as
she was, her experience with white males was limited.  Especially given her
parents’ value system, which placed all white males just slightly higher on the
evolutionary scale than the spawn of Satan.  “Would you be more comfortable,”
he said, “if I left you alone for a while?”

He could see the answer in Nancy’s eyes, so he took his lunch
outside and sat at a table near the play area, where he could still keep an eye
on the two women inside the restaurant.  As he ate his lunch, kids and parents
alike eyed him with distrust, suspicious of any man who sat in the play yard
without a child attached.  When he finished eating, he lit a cigarette and
watched the kids playing.  One little girl slithered down the slide and landed
a few feet away from him.  She gave him a shy smile and he returned it, but her
mother spoke sharply to her and she scurried away.  The mother grabbed the girl
by the wrist and dragged her out of the play area, lecturing her loudly about
the dangers of strange men.

An hour passed before Nancy and Mei Ling ended their visit.  As
his wife forlornly watched her younger sister leave the restaurant, he
wondered, not for the first time, if he’d done the right thing by marrying her.

Three days later, he opened the apartment door to insistent
knocking.  The man who stood on the other side had greasy hair and a stained
shirt.  “I’m looking for Nancy Chen MacKenzie,” he said.

Rob looked the guy up and down, and squared his jaw.  “What do you
want her for?” he said.

“I got something for her.”

“I’m her husband.  You can give it to me.”

“Sorry, buddy, no can do.  I have to deliver it to the lady
personally.”

Nancy came up beside him.  He put an arm around her, and he could
feel her trembling.  “I am Nancy Chen MacKenzie,” she said.

“Then I guess this is for you,” he said, handing her an envelope. 
“Have a nice day, folks.”

Rob slammed the door behind him and tried to read over his wife’s
shoulder.  “Rob?” she said, her voice rising.  “What is this?  I do not
understand.”

He took it from her, skimmed through the legalese until he got to
the part that was intelligible.  His throat tightened as he read, and he felt
color rising in his face.  “It’s a restraining order,” he said, “forbidding you
to have any contact with Mei Ling.”