Endless Summer Nights (16 page)

Halfway down, I stopped and looked up at him.

“My father once said every act has a closing,” I said. “I’m closing this act of my life.”

Part III

“Fighting Love in Brazil”

“W
elcome to BK’s Crescent Moon Café, the realest borough’s only live music lounge featuring nightly entertainment by new artists. Thanks for supporting real music. First up, we have Sunshine Embry, who’s been making waves behind the scenes for a bit, but now she’s stepping out on her own and she wants you to hear what she’s got. So, I present Sunshine!”

I carried my father’s guitar to the small square stage through a wave of complimentary applause followed by deafening silence that magnified the noise of my every awkward movement. I sat on the seat in the center stage and readjusted the microphone, avoiding the audience’s stares. I’d planned all of this, but still it seemed like a surprise that I was up there and everyone was watching, waiting.

“Thank you,” I said, squinting at a bright spotlight in my eyes. Glasses clinked and chatter started in the background. “This is just a little something I’ve been working on.”

It had been three months since I’d packed up my apartment in Manhattan and moved back to my father’s brownstone in Brooklyn. There had been too many dark nights with tears and uncertainty. The growing pains of change and fear of what was next. But in the past few days I’d been on the upswing. Waking up before the sun went down. Eating. Answering Leticia’s text messages.

I exhaled and placed my fingers in position on the guitar.

I was there to sing a song about freedom. Riches in freedom. The first thing I wrote after I left the beach house and quit my job.

The first stanza of the song was about a woman’s heart ready to surrender. But she was afraid because she didn’t know who she was. But everyone kept telling her she was special and that she would know it if she only just leaped.

Kimya kept her promise of not chasing me anymore. I worked to convince myself that I didn’t care, but after five years of holding her on my shoulders, I had to admit that it felt odd sometimes not to have her harassing me in the middle of the night because she couldn’t sleep, or crying on my shoulder over her latest bout with Sean. For a long time, leaving her felt like a breakup. As if I’d lost someone I’d been in a really long relationship with.

In the second stanza, I stood and sang about the woman with the heart standing over her surrender, that it felt so far down, and deep and scary, but she was ready to close her eyes and just fall.

After I paid to move my things to Brooklyn and got the brownstone to a place where I could actually lay my head down at night, my funds were low.

In the last verse of the song I sang at the Crescent Moon Café, the woman with the heart jumps with her eyes wide open. She feels she’s rushing to her surrender and halfway down she starts to think she’s going to die, but then, from nowhere, she’s lifted. She looks back to see what’s carrying her. It’s her own wings. She’s flying. She’s no woman after all. She’s a bird.

“Thank you,” I uttered beneath complimentary applause from tables in the first few rows before the stage. I nodded and curtsied playfully as the emcee with the red-dyed dreadlocks returned to the microphone.

“Sunshine Embry, everyone!” he said. “Thank you.”

There was more applause and one woman even approached me for a hug as I left the stage.

I walked to the bar and ordered a drink. Sat the guitar against the bar and tried to take a stool, but someone slid it away.

“That’s my seat,” the person with the freshly manicured hands and shiny single diamond said.

“You came?” I looked up and hugged Leticia.

“Certainly.”

We sat on neighboring stools on either side of the guitar.

“Was I bad?” I asked her. “You know I don’t claim to be a singer,” I said. “I’m a writer. Just wanted to share my words.”

Leticia smiled. “It was beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

The bartender set my Jack and Coke down and Leticia insisted on giving her credit card to start our tab.

“How’s everything going?” I asked. “Wedding planning in full swing?”

“It’s like a freaking job. I feel as though I need an assistant,” Leticia complained. “Clayton and I fight over everything and the wedding planner ignores both of us. Sometimes, I just want to wake up one morning and go to the courthouse. Keep it simple!”

“But that’s not what you really want.” I peered at her.

“Hell, no! It’s my wedding. I want it big and fab and ridiculous,” she laughed. “And I’m sorry that you’re not the maid of honor. This stupid family tradition. My sister has no idea what to do.”

“I’m okay with it. Don’t burn any bridges on my account,” I said. Leticia’s winter wedding spectacular was far from anything I wanted to spend my time on. The closer we got to December, the more intense and outrageous her sister’s emails became. It was just late August and she was already picking out decorations for the bachelorette party.

“So what’s going on with you? I see we have new music to share.” Leticia nudged me.

“You know, that’s the one thing that’s going right with me. Seems like once I set my mind to it, sat down and finally started writing something, it all came out. For once, I have more songs than blank pages in my notebooks. It’s amazing.”

Leticia hugged me as I tried to be cool and say it was nothing.

“So, what’s going on with the gig?” she asked.

“Looking good right now. I was in the studio for the third time last week and I think Megatron’s taking a liking to my work. But you know how these things go.”

After I’d written my first five songs with no idea about what I was going to do with them, I realized that the error in my plan of waiting for Kimya to pass my songs along to Megatron was hidden in the equation—waiting for Kimya. And with that option gone, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I mean, I knew where he was. He knew who I was. There was no reason for me not to try to get my stuff to him. I just showed up at the studio one night ready to give him my notebook. I felt meek when I saw him. Went into a speech about knowing he wouldn’t take me seriously because I was just someone’s former assistant, but he laughed and invited me into the studio with him. He put me in the booth and said he was going to play some new music he’d been working on. I should sing whichever song I thought went with the beat. If he liked it, he’d record. Well, he liked it. And he recorded me.

“This is it,” Leticia squealed as if I said I was just selected for
American Idol.

“No, this is just a small opportunity that may pan out to be nothing,” I said.

“Girl, stop it! You are working for the top freaking producer in the industry. Do you know how many people would kill for that?”

“I’m not working
for
him yet—just
with
him. No checks being cut.”

“Sunny, just claim it,” Leticia argued. “Stop doubting yourself.”

We sat in silence for a minute as I sipped my drink and listened to a woman on the stage singing “Simply Beautiful.”

“Maybe you could call him,” Leticia whispered.

“Just leave it alone. I fell for his bullshit and now it’s over. Stop bringing it up.”

I saw Leticia glaring at me, but I kept pretending to listen to the singer.

“You know he’s back in the studio?” Leticia inched out.

“I don’t care.”

“I’m just telling you about what’s going on in his career. A successful singer we both used to love,” she said, picking at me. “I read it on a blog—‘New Music Coming Soon From Marlo Lee.’”

“Still don’t care.”

“Wonder if any of the songs are about you.” Leticia turned to the singer then and pretended she was listening.

“It’s been three months. If he cared, he would’ve called me,” I said. “And you know what, I don’t think I would’ve answered anyway. I’m doing me right now. And I don’t have time for the games. Inviting him back into my life would mean more Kimya, more drama and more—whatever else.”

The singer went off to loud applause and up next was some poet who was reading a poem off a cell phone screen.

Someone in the audience yelled, “Tacky!” and we all laughed.

“I understand, Sunny,” Leticia said. “I was just hoping, you know, after how excited you were about him, that it would work.”

“I wanted it to work,” I admitted. “But you know what, it didn’t. Like when you and Clayton got together, you didn’t have to ask questions. You didn’t have to worry. He just gave himself to you and that was it. It was love. I want that. Something mature and grown-up.”

Leticia started laughing so hysterically, she covered her mouth.

“What?”

“What you said about Clayton,” she said. “Being mature and easy.” She leaned in to me. “No such thing. I love that man, but he’s been in Leticia’s Training Academy since day one. His ex-girlfriend is still stalking my Facebook page and while he was the one who had the idea to get married, I had to help him with the down payment for my engagement ring.” She held out the ring to my open mouth.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“Not at all. That man is swimming in student loan debt from his MBA and his credit is jacked,” Leticia revealed. “But I love him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all of that?”

“I wanted you and everyone else, maybe even me, to think it was perfect,” she said. “But the more I’m thinking about it, the more I’m realizing that it is. It’s straight-up perfect. For me. And if I’m okay with it, and he’s okay with it, then whatever. We’re fine. The point is, nothing’s what you think it’s going to be. Looking for love isn’t easy.”

There was silence when the poet left the stage. And I guessed he didn’t have any friends there either, because not one person clapped. Even the emcee looked perplexed when he reclaimed the microphone.

I asked Leticia if she was ready to go and she downed the last of her drink like it was water. Like those parties in the Hamptons, I guessed we’d outgrown bad open-mic spots, as well.

* * *

For all my fear of passing my words along to Megatron, I couldn’t believe that he seemed to love, like, everything I gave him. After those first visits to the studio, we started a routine. I’d meet him at the studio after he was done working with his artists from the label. Into and through the night we’d work on new songs.

Megatron wasn’t “mega” at all. He was a small man with lots of energy. Just, like, five-six and one hundred and twenty pounds, maybe. He was so frail beneath his oversized clothing that he looked as if he’d tip over at any moment and his unlaced Timberland boots were the only thing keeping him on the ground. But still he zipped around the studio all night as though he was trying to burn calories. I’d watch him buzz about and wonder where all of the energy came from and if he ever went home to sleep, or what he had waiting at home for him.

After so many nights sitting beside him in the booth, I realized that none of the answers to my quiet questions mattered. Megatron was in his zone in the studio—connecting with his only love. When he played the music he was making, just in short samples that he’d connect into longer pieces, his little body shook with excitement, as if he was in church getting the Holy Ghost. He was all passion about his work. And I came to suspect that this was why he was so successful. What kept big stars and dreamers like me just coming out tugging his coattails. He could do what he did day in and day out, because it was never about work for him. It was about love.

“I think you’re ready, Sunshine,” he said one early morning in the booth.

I was sitting beside him, falling asleep and wondering when he was going to announce that it was time to wrap up our session.

“Ready for what?” I asked groggily.

He turned to me, but I couldn’t see his eyes through his dark shades. “I have an artist for you. Someone I want you to work with.”

“Really?” I perked up quickly, nearly fell out of my seat.

Megatron laughed and nodded slowly to let me know he was digging my excitement. “You came in here knowing enough about music and lyrics. We just had to put it all together. I like it. I think a lot of other people will, too.”

I jumped on his tiny body and squeezed. Just hearing those words at that moment made tears assemble. It could’ve been that I was tired and hallucinating or maybe a little high from the fumes from the bong Mega kept lit in the lounge for whoever wanted to partake.

“Damn, girl, you can’t go grabbing on me like that,” Mega said, looking even smaller in my grasp.

I settled myself back into my seat. “So, who is it? What’s the project?”

“A singer I’m backing right now. Still working some things out with the contract, so it’s on the low,” he said secretively. “But if everything works out, we’re gonna move fast. The label is sending us to Brazil to record. Hope you have your passport ready. Some company trip shit.”

“Are you serious? Are you flipping serious?” I ignored Megatron’s request that I leave space between us and jumped on him again, kissing his cheeks and making him hug me.

He held out, but after a while he started laughing and hugged me back.

“Guess this means you have a passport.”

“I do!” I jumped up and clapped my hands. “When do we leave? I mean, if everything works out with the contract—”

“Next week. And don’t worry about a thing. Everything is covered by the label. But you know that from working with Kimya in Brazil, right?”

“Yes,” I agreed. I hadn’t seen Kimya in months, but still hearing her name stung a little. By then, she knew I was working with Megatron. We’d nearly run into each other at the studio a few times and while people thought the music industry was big, it was really like a country high school cafeteria that included the cool kids’ lunch table and nerdy back corner. Having left my post with Kimya, I was supposed to have been sent to the nerdy corner, but my new connection to Megatron meant I might actually get a seat at the cool kids’ table. And the way things ended with me and Kimya, I knew she wasn’t happy about that. My being successful meant I could do it on my own—that I never needed her and she’d always only needed me. To Kimya, that was betrayal and she wasn’t above seeking and getting revenge—when she was sober. I knew she’d come for me. It was just a matter of when and how. I wondered if she’d already tried to talk Megatron out of working with me.