One Hit Wonder (17 page)

“Kevin, man. You can’t do this anymore. If you get in deep you can’t get out,” Tyler said.

“It hasn’t been that bad,” Kevin said.

“I had to pick you up twice for rehearsal, other times you’ve been late or drunk — ” Matt said.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” Kevin rubbed his pale face. “I’ve messed up. But it’s over. I can do this, I’ll get it straight.”

“You might need…professional help,” Audrey said.

“No. I don’t need it. Trust me.”

Audrey took his words with a great deal of pragmatism, but neither she or the band could force him into rehab if he didn’t want to.

“Oh, John. I’m not going.” It was like Audrey had thrown a bucket of cold water at him that day. He met her for lunch in a deli near the darkroom because he couldn’t wait to share the good news. They were going to perform at Lake Tahoe Fall’s Festival.

“Not going? What do you mean?” Surprised, John froze with his sandwich midair.

“I’m sorry, baby. There is no reason for me to go.”

“I’m the reason.”

“John … I can’t follow you around like that. It’s ridiculous.”

“What I think is ridiculous is us having to be apart because it doesn’t seem right to other people.” He took a bite of his sandwich.

“Well, it is not just that. I mean, you’ll be working. It is a huge deal. You guys have to give it one hundred per cent.”

“Last time you were around I think I did pretty well.”

Audrey blushed.

“I don’t want to leave you alone.” John said, soberly.

She knew what he meant; she didn’t want to be alone either. The bruises on her body were disappearing, but the image of what had happened remained clear in her head. She’d told John she was fine, but her nightmares told him otherwise. She’d scream in the dark of their bedroom and he’d quickly embrace her and whisper her back to sleep, telling her it was only a bad dream, that he was there and she was okay.

“I can’t go, anyway. I haven’t finished the work for the show and I’m running behind.” She stayed home for a few days after the incident at Ryan Correll’s party while John helped Matt and Tyler move Kevin to their apartment — the alternative to rehab.

“I guess you’re right.” John sounded defeated. “It just seems everything we do keep us apart.”

“It seems like that because we’ve started from the confinement of a Winnebago, anything beyond that compares to … .” Audrey looked around the deli searching in vain for the right analogy. “Infinity.”

• • •

When she arrived home that evening, exhausted from the long hours inside the darkroom, John was already there.

“I have a surprise for you.” John said.

“Really? What is it?”

“Look what I found.” He nodded toward their kitchen table, where a fruit basket was filled with several pieces of fruit.

“Mangos! Where did you get them?” Audrey said.

“I went to the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax after lunch.”

“John …” Audrey grabbed a mango and held it close to her face, closing her eyes and inhaling its sweet scent. “Thank you.”

“Look at the label.”

She twisted the fruit around until she found the small yellow sticker. “It’s from Brazil.”

“They could have come from your grandfather’s farm.”

“Yeah, I guess they could’ve.”

“We could go visit after the touring for this CD is over.”

“Can you do that?”

“If Atlantis signs us for a second album, I suppose we’ll have some time before we start recording. I’d love to meet your family.”

Audrey chuckled. “Careful with what you wish for. They’re a crazy bunch. I mean…it has been so long. I only know what my mother tells me about them now.”

John ambled up behind her, hugging her waist. “Maybe it has been too long.”

“Maybe you’re right. I resented my mother for so long for trying to make me more Brazilian. I already felt like an outsider as it was, I didn’t need her constant reprimands reminding me I wasn’t as American as my peers.”

“You’re not.”

Audrey turned to face him.

“You’re not like any other woman I’ve ever met. You’re strong and don’t take anything for granted. You don’t feel entitled to things like other people do.”

“But that has nothing to do with being American, It was the way I was raised: to believe you’re the only one who can change your own life. It’s up to you…well, and God, but that’s a different story.”

“And who raised you to be like that, your Brazilian mother?” He smiled.

She walked to the counter and sat the mango beside the sink. “I’ll make us some salad.”

John followed her. “Audrey, there’s nothing wrong with being angry at our parents sometimes, but they’re just people, like us; they make mistakes.”

“I’m not angry at her, anymore. I think I’m…embarrassed. She had it hard when she came to the U.S., barely speaking English and having no money. Living in the very conservative, very white North Shore.”

“She must have suffered all kinds of prejudice.”

“Oh, yeah. For a while people said that the old guy she was taking care of was her lover. The guy was eighty! Everyone alienated her. And still, she was proud of her heritage and tried to impart it to me, but I behaved like a spoiled brat.” Audrey sighed. “I was ashamed of her.”

“Your mother loves you very much and she’s proud of you.” He held her face in his hands.

“Yeah?” Audrey muttered without conviction.

“Of course.” He kissed her. “You — liking it or not — are very Brazilian, everyone can see it. And I love it.”

This is unusual, Audrey thought, when Janice told her Edward wanted to see her right away. Most days he was so busy, they barely talked. She knocked on the door of his office, a frosted glass cubicle in a far corner of the studio.

“Audrey, come in. How are you?”

“Doing well. You?”

“Running like a headless chicken.
Vogue
called this morning and they need an emergency photo shoot to run with an article on the selling of Prêt-à-porter — the eBay of fashion couture. Charlie and Ethan are taking over other clients. Can you come to New York with me tonight? We should be back in two days.”

“Of course.”

Edward told her what to get from the studio and sent her home to pack. She needed to be at LAX at six, which meant leaving much earlier to avoid rush-hour traffic on the 405.

On the way home she texted John,
going to new york with edward. back in a couple of days. leaving at 6. love you.

“Hi.” The phone rang almost immediately after she’d sent the message.

“Hi babe, what’s going on?”

“
Vogue
called, and when they call, you answer it.”

“I see.”

“The other assistants are busy, and Edward’s asked me to help.”

“Can you come by Atlantis? I wanted to see you before you go.”

“I can’t. I am going home to pack, then right back to LAX before traffic gets bad.”

“Hmm. Call me when you get there?”

“Will do, honey.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

• • •

The photo shoot in New York was like running a marathon. Edward had to improvise because he didn’t have everything he was used to working with, including Charlie who intuitively was able to provide Edward with what he needed before he asked. Heck, before he even knew what he wanted, but she, working as if she’d split herself in multiples, did reasonably well. Only when it was over, she had time to appreciate the 360-degrees view of Manhattan from the penthouse
Vogue
had rented. She walked around the perimeter of the glass wall which kept people safely away from the edge of the building. An immaculate rooftop pool was the backdrop for the shoot, where models sat in stylish pool-side chairs dipping their feet in the water and drinking fake martinis while pretending to held joyful conversations. Prêt-à-porter’s founder and CEO, a forty-something slim brunette who towered over them wearing a grey dress and Manolos, looked better than any of the models. One of the models had told Audrey it was the same pool where Samantha from
Sex and the City
had skinny-dipped with a boyfriend in the middle of the night, and Audrey imagined John’s long body gliding under the blue water and the subdued heat of their bodies keeping them warm.

“Let’s pack up and go. We need drinks.” Edward met her staring southwest.

“Can you believe it has been ten years?” She looked at the void where the Twin Towers once stood.

“Hard to believe.” He nodded.

“This is only the third time I came to New York after it happened. I’m not used to not seeing them there. Were you here?”

“No, I was in London for Labor Day.”

“I was in high school. I remember parents coming in crying, picking up their kids, and being afraid the world was going to end.”

“It kind of did … for Americans, anyway.”

Audrey faced him inquisitively.

“Before, they heard about the bad in the world but it was this invisible thing, something that could be easily ignored. Sure, there was Vietnam and Pearl Harbor, but that was war. You kind of expected the worse.” Edward faced her, his solemn face beautifully adorned by creases of time. “Americans never had to face the atrocities that happen to good people on a daily basis in some of the other countries. Everyone was so busy. Mortgages. SUVs. Little Leagues.”

He turned back to the faint beams of light in the darkening sky. “When September 11th happened, it all became real, tangible. The fire, the bodies, the ashes. Suddenly, life as they’d known it wasn’t safe anymore. They joined in the party, all the suffering, and pain, and injustice, and cruelty beyond words.”

• • •

Vogue
’s designated assistant took Edward’s equipment back to Times Square, while Edward and Audrey headed straight to dinner, both starved. The caterers for the shoot weren’t bad, but it was one thing eating cold cuts while working, and something else entirely to wind down after a long day in front of a nice hot plate of food and a drink. Edward wanted to go to City Crab, so they walked the twelve-block stretch to 4th Avenue.

“I think you should start making special requests to these magazines. Why have all this status if you can’t even eat what you like?” Audrey said.

“I could be Edward: the diva photographer.”

“I bet you’d be popular with the models; their newest BFF.”

“BFF?”

“Best Friend Forever.”

“Are you taking the piss?” He snorted. “What are you, sixteen?”

“What are you, one hundred?

“I feel like one hundred right now. Thank you for that.”

“Sorry. Don’t you talk to the models at all? I mean, you’ll learn all kinds of things. You shouldn’t pass up the opportunity.”

“I think I hear a judgmental tone in your voice. Besides, I’d rather date them.”

She thought of at least one joke she could have made right then, but she was suddenly quiet. They strode the streets coated by dark and the pre-autumn air cleared away summer’s mugginess.

“Well, at least I used to. Now they’re getting younger and younger, and I’ve grown older and older.” Edward rubbed his shaved head and chin, where stubs of gray hair peaked out from his black skin.

“Don’t feel bad, grandpa. You still got it.” Audrey wasn’t lying. Edward was sculpted like a totemic panther, tall and athletic with narrow black eyes and full lips.

“How old are you, Audrey?”

“Twenty-eight.”

Edward’s smile was nostalgic. “I am forty-eight.”

“
O tempo não para não
,” Audrey said, half to herself.

“Is it Portuguese? What does it mean?”

“Yes. It means: time doesn’t stop. It’s from one of my mom’s favorite Brazilian musicians.”

Around eleven, they left City Crab stuffed, tipsy, and happy. Edward was fun to hang out with; in L.A. he was so busy, she had never known that side of him. He said his girlfriend of four years had broken up with him not long ago. She was a writer and had taken a job in New York — to get away from him. Being in the city brought up feelings he’d tried to ignore.

“What is it that makes one fall out of love?” he asked when they sat at the bar in the Bulldog’s Pub.

Audrey stared into her Guinness; she couldn’t answer him. She had fallen out of love with an ex-boyfriend without knowing how it happened. She wondered if at some point he’d asked the same question to someone, somewhere.

“I understand when there are arguments, fights … .” He gulped his own Guinness. “Bad sex. We had none of that, it was great. We got along. I loved … love … her.” He looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar, a bottle of Jack Daniels over half of his face.

Audrey tried to think how to change the subject quickly; he seemed about to start crying.

“I wish I had seen the signs.” He finished his Guinness and ordered them another round along with Jägermeister shots. “There must have been signs.” He knocked down his shot and slammed the cup on the worn dark wood bar.

“Have you talked to her since?” She was going down a dark path, but she had to say something. Perhaps talking about it would help him get over and move on.

“She called me on my birthday.” Edward nodded, smiling.

“Sometimes when you don’t have something is when you realize you need it.” For an instant, she felt a little preachy, but the last shot of Jägermeister had gone right to her head and the words came out of her mouth big and fluffy.

“She doesn’t know I’m here, so maybe I should call her.” He looked at Audrey, his eyes wide and sparkly. “Should I call her?”

Oh, crap. She hated giving advice, especially love advice. She knocked down her Guinness and took her time savoring the rich dark liquid running down her throat, but he was still waiting. “What do you want to do?”

“I think it looks very indifferent to come all the way to New York and not even let her know I was here.” He ordered more shots with a wave of his fingers.

“Edward, calling her is like jumping off a plane without — absolute certainty — your parachute is going to open.”

They clicked their glasses and downed the shots.

“All right.” He pulled his cell out of his pocket.

“I’m going to the bathroom.” She climbed off her stool and pulled her own cell from her messenger bag. She had missed a call — John’s.