Opening Act (11 page)

“I'm not friends with her,” he said, irritated that the search resulted in a list of English-
language
poets. Of which there were about twelve million.

“You don't need to be. She shares everything with everyone. Total social-media exhibitionist. Maesha Vance. M-A-E-S-H-A.”

“I don't want to see a kitten playing with an aardvark,” he said, trying
BRITISH POETS
.

“Armadillo,” she said.

“Arma-anything.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well.
Sommmme
one's obviously found his inner snark this morning. Hungover much?” She slid the cup closer to him. “Coffee's getting cold.”

There was no Wikipedia list of British poets. What the hell! He tried
ENGLISH LITERATURE
and got a page with a wall of text that went on for ten miles.

He closed the laptop and took a slurp of coffee. It surged through him like lightning, and he felt immediately better.

Pernita smiled at him. “There we go. Little color back in your cheeks.”

He hated when she was right. He shoved aside the laptop and took another chug from the coffee. It was definitely revivifying. In fact, he could feel his brain cells start to wake up and percolate.

“I've told you about Maesha before, I'm sure,” she said, going in for her second cinnamon bun. “She's the one who's been screwing Rob Kerringer.”

“Who's Rob Kerringer?”

She put her hands on the table, as if his ignorance had sapped her of the strength to lift the cinnamon bun.
“Rob Kerringer,”
she said with more insistency, as if this would make a difference.

“Who is Rob Kerringer?”
he repeated, imitating her.

“I can't believe you don't know who Rob Kerringer is,” she said, raising the bun to her lips again.

“I can't help what you can't believe.”
British poets, British poets,
he thought. What did he know about British poets? Just Shakespeare, really. Shakespeare and John Lennon. Did John Lennon count?

“Rob Kerringer is the tech billionaire,” Pernita continued. “He's the one who invented Sited. You know, the app that lets you insert yourself into any photo you're taking, while you're taking it?” She bit off a mouthful of the gooey bun, then said, her voice thick with chewing, “I cannot
believe
you don't know this.”

“I've never heard of Sited,” he said. “That's a stupid app. It's embarrassing.”

“Well, Daddy doesn't think so. He's one of Rob's investors.” She smiled victoriously at him, as though playing a trump card. Which, of course, she was.

Shay shrugged and said nothing. He was thinking back to his chat with Loni in the kitchen, when she'd berated him for his terrible lyrics. She'd mentioned a poet then, hadn't she? Someone Shay had surprised her by knowing. How did that happen? He didn't know anybody.

“That's how I met Maesha,” Pernita continued, licking the frosting from her fingers. Either she was oblivious to Shay's complete lack of interest in this subject, or she just didn't care. “Launch party for the app. You'll be doing lots of those, you know. Whether you like it or not.”

He shrugged again. “If I have to.”

William Blake! That was it. Loni had mentioned William Blake. Suddenly Shay was certain that this was her Facebook name. He would have bet money on it. He knew enough from his college psychology classes—and from his own, unsystematic studies of human nature—that the things people mention to you within the first ten minutes of meeting them are inevitably the things most important to them. Hell, how long after meeting someone new did Shay mention the band? Like, nanoseconds.

“You
do
have to,” Pernita said, looking around for something to wipe her fingers on. “Don't worry, you don't need to say much. You can just stand there and smolder. Be the sexy, mysterious front man. It's good for your image. Far better than if you talked.”

And then there was the shocked way Loni reacted when Shay had tossed off those Blake lines, like he had the poet's whole output right there on his personal hard drive. She didn't need to know that the only way he knew those lines was because Bono recited them in U2's “Beautiful Ghost.”

“No, you just leave all the talking to me,” Pernita said. She reached down to the floor, picked up a discarded T-shirt that had been lying there for God only knew how long, and wiped the frosting from her fingers onto it. “I'll do all the talking for you.”

Shay snapped out of his private thoughts. “You?” He was shocked that Pernita was picturing herself as part of Overlords of Loneliness's parties and press junkets.

She nodded and took a sip of her own coffee. When she finished she licked her lips and said, “Problem with that?”

“Well…yeah. You're not part of the band, is all. If the band has a spokesman, it should be a band
member
.”

She smiled at him, as if amused by his childishness. “Okay,” she said. “You'll do it yourself, then?”

He frowned. He knew he had it in him. He
could
represent Overlords of Loneliness. But—he hated admitting it
again
—Pernita was right; he was better off as the sexy, silent front man. His awareness of his strengths was sufficient to convince him of that. He'd have far more impact as an image—an icon—than as a personality.

He shook his head.

“Lockwood, then?” Pernita said, cocking her head. “Lovely, genial, easygoing Lockwood? He's your choice?”

Of course he wasn't. Lockwood was too sweet-natured for the job. He lacked the killer instinct to
make
people pay attention to what he was saying.

“Baby, then? Or Jimmy?”

Baby was a featherweight, and Jimmy came off as a sociopath. Shay folded his arms in frustration.

“Trina, then! It's settled.”

For a moment he felt like his chair was collapsing under him. Was there any greater recipe for disaster than letting Trina speak for the band? She had all the tact and finesse of a T. rex.

Pernita winked. “Me, then? It's settled? Honestly, honey, it's a bargain when you think about it. Most bands have to hire a PR firm and shell out thousands to get someone to message for them. You don't have to do that. I told you, when I convinced Daddy to take you on, you were getting the complete package. Not
just
the most successful band manager in the music business, but a
team
. Meaning,
moi
. I've just graduated with a master's in Communications with a special focus on entertainment. I'm fresh, I'm young, I'm hot, and I'm smart as a whip. I mean,” she concluded, looking at him with deliberate boldness, “where would you be
without
me?”

He understood her meaning. She was pretending to ask where he'd be now, without everything she'd done for him, but in reality she was threatening him. Where would you be, she was saying, if I dumped you now? Where would you be if I walked away and took Daddy with me?

Shay wasn't stupid. He knew he was trapped. And he knew
she
knew it, too. That's why she'd agreed to his, in retrospect, ridiculous no-strings-attached rule before their first roll in the hay. She
knew he wouldn't be able to cry foul when she quietly changed the rules to
hers
. Which is exactly what she'd done. She knew that nothing in his life meant more to him than Overlords of Loneliness, and she'd given him the means to take them right to the pinnacle of commercial success. “Daddy,” after all, was the near-legendary Halbert Hasque, whose string of clients weren't just pop-idol gods, they were millionaires to a man. He could do the same for Shay.

And all Shay had to do was let Pernita invade and lay claim to every single corner of his life. To own him entirely. To run him exclusively. Well…let her try. She obviously thought she had him where she wanted him. But he had his own ideas. There were still some small corners of his life that were safe from her, and he meant to keep them that way.

She'd turned up her nose, for instance, at attending the concert's after-party. She was far too self-important to allow herself to mingle with mere
fans
. So that meant last night had belonged to Shay alone, and he had every intention of building on it. But not right away. Pernita—appeased by his obedience and rendered sweet by the sugar of the cinnamon buns—came over, sat in his lap, and put her arms around his neck.

He knew exactly what that was prelude to. So he went there, without a grumble, and hey, why shouldn't he? Pernita was a lot of fun when she finally let
him
take charge.

And he did take charge. In the bedroom, with her sprawled out beneath him, naked but for her designer scent, she looked like a fragile little china doll. He could almost believe her to be vulnerable, breakable.

But then he pressed into her, and her hip bones, which jutted out from her taut, smooth stomach, stabbed into his thighs; they were sharp as hatchets. And the nipples of her pert, creamy breasts scraped across his chest like sandpaper. Pernita only looked soft and frail—all you had to do was touch her to realize she was a woman of wire and glass.

So he felt no hesitation in going at her like a locomotive. He knew she could take it. And when she wrapped her legs around him and urged him on, faster, harder—well, he was only too happy to oblige.

To oblige
her
, that is. He skillfully, energetically brought her close—closer—to the convulsive brink of a tantric Niagara Falls, and then pushed her over, and watched her fall, flailing and howling in wild ecstasy.

But he didn't follow her. As soon as she fell limp, he reined himself in and declined to finish. This was one more thing he refused to give up to her, if possible. He'd choose when, and with whom, he'd ride the joy train. This took a degree of willpower he didn't usually have at his command; but at least today, his killer hangover made it easier.

Did she have any idea? If she did, she pretended otherwise. But then
everything
about their love-making was pretense. For example, the way, at the height of their thrashing across the sheets, she accused him of “punishing” her. But it was never really punishment. It was a charade of punishment, her little gift to him so he could exorcize his anger and give him the illusion of power. Yes, he took control of their sex life, but only because she let him. That was Pernita in a nutshell. For her, submission wasn't even submission. For her, it was just another tactic.

Afterwards, while she was in the shower, he crept back to the kitchen table and opened his laptop again. He went to Zee Gleason's Facebook page, pulled up her friends list, and searched it for William Blake.

And there he—or rather she—was.

There was no photo of Loni. Instead the profile picture was an image of one of Blake's paintings, of a muscular angel. On the
ABOUT
page, there was no information on birth date or current city or anything else remotely personal. There was only this passage:

       
He who binds to himself a joy

       
Does the wingèd life destroy;

       
But he who kisses the joy as it flies

       
Lives in eternity's sunrise.

He grinned. There was no doubt in his mind. There might be other people, other Blake devotees, who had Facebook pages like this, but there was no way that Zee Gleason, of all people, could know more than one.

He clicked
ADD FRIEND
and put in a simple message:

Tell me more.

CHAPTER 6

The alarm on Loni's phone bugled to life. She snapped out of a sound sleep, groped around her nightstand for it, and, when she found it, tapped Snooze, again wishing for a tangible object she could slam down on.

As she lay in the warmth of her bed, enjoying the act of putting off her day, she wondered why she had bothered to set her alarm at all. Force of habit, probably. It wasn't as if she had anything she had to get up for…any place to go, anyone to see, anything to do. And something about that utter emptiness caused a little wriggle of discontent in her breast that wouldn't let her go back to sleep. It was a paradox: the pointlessness of getting up was upsetting her so much that she might as well get up.