Coming Home (30 page)

chapter nineteen

Written
and produced by Rob MacKenzie and Casey Fiore, Danny’s third album,
Going to
the Dogs
, went platinum within weeks.

During
production, Casey and Rob tried desperately to prevent their working rapport
from being tainted by the awkwardness that had sprung up in their personal
relationship.  But it was impossible to pretend that nothing had changed,
impossible to take back the words she’d spoken to Rob’s wife.  Impossible to
ignore the fact that Rob had not set foot inside her house since her
confrontation with Monique.  She understood that he was trying to save his
floundering marriage, but it hurt to know that he could cast aside their
friendship so easily for a woman as shallow, as vain as Monique Lapierre.

As
record sales went through the roof, Danny was besieged by offers from
television talk show hosts and movie producers.  His new manager, Rudy Stone,
was pushing him to accept as many offers as possible to promote his escalating
career.  The end result was that now, when Casey needed him the most, he was
spending great chunks of time flying between Los Angeles and New York, taping
guest spots for
The Tonight Show
and
Saturday Night Live
.  Every
magazine from
Tiger Beat
to
Rolling Stone
to
Playgirl
wanted
an interview.  The scandal sheets, on the other hand, didn’t bother with
interviews.  They had a field day, printing the lurid details of Danny’s
nonexistent extracurricular love life.

At
first, as her pregnancy progressed, she tolerated it all.  She even found some
of it amusing, until love-stricken women began calling on the telephone at all
hours, forcing her to have their telephone number unlisted.  When one bold fan
had the audacity to walk right up to their door with a copy of
Tiger Beat
in
her hand, Casey threw a conniption.  The next day, Danny had a security system
installed.  As Casey watched the closed circuit cameras being mounted on the
new gate at the end of her driveway, she wrapped her arms around her growing
belly and wondered how she would manage to raise a normal child, locked inside
a glass house, with the rest of the world locked out.

***

“You should dress this way more often,
cher
.”  Monique
fingered the tuxedo jacket he’d tossed carelessly on the back of the commode. 
“You look terribly handsome in black.”

Rob scowled into the bathroom mirror.  “Easy for you to say.”  He
bent and splashed water on his face.  “You’re not the one wearing the monkey
suit.”

“But you do it for me,” she said.  “Because you know how important
they are, these little charity functions.”

Important for her image, perhaps.  Monique was continually
sponsoring one benefit or another.  The publicity was good for her career, and
that spectacular face sold tickets to these thousand-dollar-a-plate affairs. 
But he doubted that his little love muffin even knew what charity tonight’s
benefit was raising money for.  Patting his rear pocket absently, he said,
“Bring me my wallet, will you?”

She stepped away from him, elegant in a clingy black silk gown
that revealed everything, including the fact that she wore nothing beneath it. 
Her heels clicked on blood-red tiles, and he watched her go, aroused by the
sight, the sound, the smell of her, troubled by the knowledge that every man
who saw her tonight would have the same response.  “
Robert
?” she said a
moment later.  “What is this?”

He dried his hands on a plush, floral-scented towel and followed
her.  “What’s what?”

“This?”  She held up a mottled blue slip of paper.

“It’s a check.  What does it look like?”

“
Oui
.  I can see that,” she said.  “But what is it for?”

“It’s for my mother,” he said, taking it from her and tucking it
back into his wallet.  “What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?”

“Why are you sending your
maman
a check for five thousand
dollars?”

A muscle knotted in the back of his neck.  “I send a little money
home once in a while.  Okay?”

Her mouth thinned, and two deep lines bracketed those lush lips. 
“We are now supporting your parents?” she said.

The anger rose in him slowly, so slowly he could measure its
ascent, like the thin line of mercury rising in a thermometer.  “Don’t worry,”
he said.  “I haven’t touched your precious money.  Every goddamn penny of it’s
mine.”

She raised those slender shoulders in a Gallic shrug.  “You are
too—what is the word?  Thin-skinned. You grow angry each time I mention money. 
Why is that?”

“I can’t stand the waste I see all around me.  My folks are
scraping to get by, and you’re terrified that I might send them a tiny fraction
of your money and leave you too poor to buy the bare necessities.  Like
expensive Scotch and designer dresses.”  He eyed the revealing black gown and
his mouth drew tight.  “How much did that one cost you?”

“That is not your concern,
cher
.  Perhaps I made a mistake
when I married you.  You still think like a poor man.  And you wish to live
like one.”

“And what are you, the world’s expert on poverty?  You wouldn’t
know poor if it bit you on the ass.  I’ll be glad to tell you what poor is. 
Poor is wearing the shoes your brother wore last year, because your dad got
laid off again and there isn’t money to buy shoes for nine kids.  Poor is
digging through the box of clothes Father McMurphy brought over, looking for
something that won’t look too ridiculous.  And then wearing it to school,
wondering who’ll recognize the old clothes their mother gave to the church last
week.  Poor is your mother coming home at night with her knees all bloody
because she spent the whole fucking day on them, scrubbing floors for some rich
bitch who doesn’t give a goddamn about her or you or anything except her damn
money.  So you can build your altar and pray to your money god, but don’t
expect to see me kneeling there beside you!”

Her face hardened, erasing any beauty that had been there.  Or
perhaps her beauty had never been anything more than illusion.  “I was right,”
she said.  “You’re nothing more than a peasant.”

For a moment, as he studied her face, he wondered what he had ever
seen in this woman.  “That’s right,” he said.  “I’m a peasant.  I come from a
working-class, blue-collar, meat-and-potatoes family.  And you know what?  I’m
damn proud of it.  My people know who they are.  Nobody I know is pretending to
be Queen of the World.”

Her face went white.  “You bastard,” she said.

“Right.”  He picked up his car keys and his wallet, crammed them
into the pocket of the monkey suit, and headed for the door.

Her voice followed him.  “Where are you going?” she said.  “We
have a dinner to attend in forty-five minutes.”

Without breaking stride, he said, “I’m not going.”

“How dare you walk away from me?” she said.  “Nobody walks away
from me!”

“I’m not fighting with you tonight, Monique.  Just give me some
space, before I do something we’ll both regret.”

“Nobody walks away from me!” she repeated.  “Do you hear me? 
Nobody!”

He stopped abruptly next to the antique telephone table in the
foyer and turned to look at her.  She was standing in the archway, her fists
clenched, her eyes furious.  “Watch me,” he said.

“If you walk out that door,” she screeched, “don’t expect to be
allowed back in this house!”

He paused, squared his jaw, and for a full ten seconds, he just
looked at her.  “Fine,” he said bluntly.  “I’ve had enough of living with a
lunatic anyway.”

She gaped at him in astonishment, and then her blue eyes filled
with tears.  “Monster! 
Fils de chienne!
  Nobody has ever walked away
from me!”  She threw herself on him, clenched fists beating ineffectually at
his shoulders, his chest, his face.  He peeled her loose, imprisoned her wrists
in his hands and held her away from him.  Breathing heavily, he said, “Grow
up.”

Monique was not the kind of woman who was attractive when she
cried.  “You are not the only man in the world!” she shouted.  “There are a
million other men who would be thrilled to be where you are, sleeping in my bed
every night!”

“That’s fortunate,” he bellowed, “because that position just
became vacant!”  He released her, bent and pulled the telephone directory from
beneath the hall table and flung it at her.  “You still have forty-five
minutes,” he said.  “If you start calling now, I’m sure you can find another
date for the benefit.”

It took five minutes to pack what was his.  He left the new
clothes hanging in the closet, the diamond pinkie ring and the gold wedding
band on the dresser.  He loaded all his worldly possessions into a single
suitcase and put the top down on the Porsche so the wind could blow through his
expensively styled hair.  And without looking back, he drove away from the Bel
Air mansion that had been his home for the past twelve months.

***

Danny was in London taping a BBC special when she went into labor,
three

weeks early. 
She’d been having Braxton-Hicks contractions for a week or more, but Mark
Johnson, her doctor, had insisted they were nothing to worry about.  Just the
day before, he’d patted her hand with his huge, warm paw and said, “This baby
isn’t coming for another three weeks.  Danny will be home long before then. 
Cheer up.  It’s almost over.”

She believed him until her water broke as she was hoisting her
lumpy body out of bed the next morning.  She sat there in disbelief as the
sheet beneath her sopped up the liquid and the overflow ran down her legs and
into her slippers.  Her first thought was that they’d gone through six weeks of
Lamaze class for nothing.  Danny wasn’t going to be here for the birth of his
child.

Unexpected resentment bubbled up inside her.  Why was he never
here when she needed him the most?  Just once, it would have been nice to come
ahead of his career.

She called Mark, who nearly had a coronary when she told him she
would drive herself to the hospital.  “There’s nobody you can call?” he said. 
“A relative?  A neighbor?  A taxi, for heaven’s sake.  Once your water breaks,
labor can set in quickly.”

She thought fleetingly about calling Rob, but decided that if he
could be a jackass, so could she.  “I’m not about to deliver on the freeway,”
she told Mark.  “I can do this.”

“I’m sending an ambulance for you,” he said.

“Over my dead body,” she said, and hung up the phone. 

Just for spite, she took Danny’s new Ferrari.  It was bright red,
had 3,000 miles on the odometer, and had cost him more than the annual budgets
of several third world countries.  If she didn’t make it to the hospital, he
would be dealing with some interesting new stains on the upholstery.

Mark was waiting at the emergency room entrance, looking not a
little exasperated.  She pointed a finger at him.  “This is all your fault,”
she told him.  “If you’d told the truth yesterday, I could have reached Danny
in time.”

He patted her shoulder and chuckled.  “We’ll videotape the birth
if you’d like.”

“Doctor J?”

“Yes?”

“Stuff it.”

As most first babies do, this one took its time being born, and
its mother discovered a heretofore unseen shrewish side to her nature.  Casey
ranted, she raved, she yelled and cried, she cussed out Danny Fiore and Dr.
Mark Johnson and several hapless nurses.  The pain went so far beyond her vague
imaginings that she begged for medication, and when her plea was refused, she
threatened to sue the entire medical establishment for keeping womankind in the
dark.  The doctors and nurses, saints all, just patted her hand and wiped her
brow and fed her more ice chips.

Katherine Ellen Fiore was born at twilight, and when the
red-faced, lumpy, squalling mass of humanity was placed in her arms, Casey
burst into tears.  She cooed and stroked, counted fingers and toes, and gazed
into the blue eyes, so like Danny’s, that solemnly gazed back at her.  “Welcome
to the world, Katie Fiore,” she said.

She was reluctant to let go when they took the baby away.  Mark
chuckled.  “Wouldn’t you rather have her clean and sweet-smelling?” he said.

“I’ll take her any way I can get her.”

“How’s the pain now?”

She grinned.  “What pain?”

“That’s my girl.”

“I was horrible, wasn’t I?”

“Quite.  And you loved every minute of it.”

“Mark, is she healthy?”

“We’re performing the routine neonatal testing—Apgar scores, and
so forth.  But she looks fit as a fiddle to me, robust and attentive and loud.”

“I feel like I could climb mountains.”

“You just did.  Now you need your rest.”

“I can’t rest.  I have to call Danny.”

“I already talked to Danny.  The hospital finally got through to
him an hour ago, but you were eight centimeters dilated, and not in any
condition to chat on the phone.  He’s probably a basket case by now.”