Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel) (7 page)

“I was going to suggest taking a
class
. Meditation, Tai Chi, yoga, something. Find an outlet.”

Rick smirked. “It used to be as simple as finding a wall socket and plugging an amplifier in.”

“Promise me you’ll look into it?”

“Yes, I promise.” He rolled his eyes. “In all my spare time, I will look into it.”

“Speaking of time, you’ll know about that date in twenty-four hours, right?”

“Less, actually.” Hence the sweating and the trembling panic.

“I’ll give you your Garden date,” she began, and Rick braced himself for the conditions.

“If?”

“If the other band holding the Garden drops out and you get first hold, we will pick another date for the wedding,” she stated simply. “The world won’t end.”

Rick nodded in agreement, grateful for the ability to breathe naturally and think clearly.
The world won’t end. Fancy that!

“But—”

Ah, but here’s the rub,
Rick thought. Behind every rock band, there were usually a half dozen women who thought they could run the show better than the myriad of agents, managers, and publicists hired for the very job.

“But whatever date we end up with, you need to support him. And I need him home. No touring before the wedding,” she advised.

“No problem there. We’ll be in the studio all summer.”

“And no touring right after the wedding, either.”

“Kat, we are releasing a new album. A street date’s all but set. We’ll need to tour it. I can’t promise you that.”

“Then I can’t promise you the Garden date.” She hugged herself tight. “I’ve waited a long time. I can’t let the road take him.”

He saw loss dulling the luster of her emerald eyes. It occurred to him that she, too, was versed in cruel and unusual punishment. For how could she not help but wonder whether each kiss good-bye to Adrian before a tour might be their last? Kat’s first husband had boarded a train for a quick business trip that ended up ripping a hole through her and Abbey’s hearts and well-being.

“Deal,” Rick heard himself saying. “But I have one condition. You cannot tell Adrian about my panic attacks.” Kat raised her brows at his use of the plural. “I know you two probably share everything, but I beg of you. Please keep this to yourself, all right?”

She gave him a small, tired smile and reached to squeeze his hand. “Deal.”

“I think I’m going to sleep on the lanai tonight, if that’s all right with you.”

Kat yawned and unfolded herself from the futon. “It’s all yours.” She paused at the doorway, turning back to look up at him. “I sleep out here sometimes, too,” she admitted. “If you really quiet your mind and listen, you can hear the lake. It’s no ocean, but . . .”

“It’ll do.”

Fighting Words

Sidra carefully closed the quotation marks with two more strokes of the paintbrush and leaned back on the stepladder to observe her work. Not bad:

“In life you only need to journey twelve inches.

That is the distance from your head to your heart.”

She had given the yoga room a sunny wash of pale yellow paint last month, with flowing pale green accents and trim. Now she was adding various quotes she had gathered over time to the walls for inspiration.

If only twelve inches were necessary, why did she feel like the only loser who hadn’t left the city over Memorial Day weekend? Her classes were empty; the record shop was a ghost town. She should’ve checked in with friends, made plans. She climbed down the ladder and lugged it over to the far wall. Even a barbecue out on a postage stamp of a lawn in Queens would’ve been something. Sighing, she climbed back up.

Seamus was gearing up for his journey through twelve states. He would leave next month and not return until late August. It had taken Sidra a week to let that sink in, but she accepted it now. If anyone needed to travel out of his head and heart for a while and do some living, it was Seamus.

She was excited to paint her next quote, one by the famous Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar:

“Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim.

The better your practice, the brighter the flame.”

She knew it would be a perfect complement for the wall where she demonstrated her poses, under the old exotic hanging lamp.
That lamp must have a good history,
she thought, wondering just what its origins were. She needed to ask her uncle if he knew.

“Looks good.”

Sidra twisted on her ladder to face her cousin. “Thanks, Mikey. Figured I’d do it while no one was around to smell the fumes.”

Her logic received a curt nod. “You know Shay and Char are bailing on me?”

“Yeah.” She often found herself resorting to monosyllabic Manhattanese tough-girl tone around her older cousin.

“You’ll put in some hours for me up front, right?”

Sidra painstakingly stroked the curl of a thick cursive capital
Y
onto the wall freehand. Dexterity inherited from her mother’s side of the family had been perfected through her formative years in Montessori school. Thousands of Downward Facing Dog poses kept her armpits strong as she leaned and stretched her entire arm’s length to finish the word.

She hated working in the record shop, where hipsters and homeless guys were always trying to pick her up. Revolve Records was a haven for the weirdo and wayward population of the Lower East Side, who would linger for hours, hogging the listening stations and never spending a dime.

“One night a week, Mikey. And a few weekend hours, but that’s it.”

“All right.” He grinned. Mikey Sullivan was a huge trash-talking teddy bear of a guy. He didn’t even need a ladder to land his kiss on her cheek. “Thanks. You all set here?”

“All good,” Sidra replied happily, and resumed her lettering. She loved her space and appreciated all the help her family had lent in making it come to fruition. Mikey and his dad had sanded down and refinished every floorboard, Seamus had expertly installed recessed dimmer lights and wide fans on the ceiling, and Fiona had sewn vibrant pillows in earthy fabrics for the small lounge area. Enduring a few hours behind the cash register in return wouldn’t be a hardship.

Mikey’s large frame filled the doorway once again. “Hey, did you see the For Sale sign up next door?”

Sidra lost her grip on the paintbrush, earning a pale green stripe down her leg as it clattered to the floor. “No! Shit. The dry cleaner’s?”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ A, right?” Mikey said grimly. He swooped his arm down to retrieve the thin brush, like a grizzly bear swiping a fish from the river current. “And with the corner property still vacant, our asses are officially on the line.”

Every couple of months, Mikey Senior—or Sully, as he was called by everyone who knew him—threatened to dip his toe into the sellers’ market that was skyrocketing around his family’s building. But Sidra had always assumed that, like his son, Uncle Sully was just a big trash-talker. Investors routinely came sniffing around these streets to snap up the last of the genuine New York up-and-coming, next-hot locales, trying to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse, but he had yet to really bite. However, if his building was sitting pretty with two ugly wallflowers on either side, it was bound to be the most popular girl at the dance.

Mikey emphatically pointed the brush at her. “We gotta drum the shit up outta these businesses, okay?”

Sidra plucked it from his hand. “Hell yeah.” She didn’t know how or to whom she was going to drum the shit up out of yoga, but going down without a fight wasn’t in the Sullivan vocabulary.

“Come up front for a second, I wanna show you something.”

Ever the gentlemen when he wanted to be, her cousin swept his hand and let Sidra take the lead up the long corridor to the front of the record store. Over the PA, Dropkick Murphys were blasting out their own brand of pirate punk, and Fiona was sitting on the counter, swinging her legs to the beat as she flipped through one of her fat fashion magazines.

“When can I borrow your new shoes, Sid?” she hollered over the music.

“When you grow a size-five foot,” Sidra quipped, earning herself a playful kick in the butt by one of Fiona’s Doc Martens, easily a size eight. She hadn’t even worn the fancy footwear herself today, opting for ratty tennis sneakers in case she splattered paint.

“Mikey, will you buy me sandals like Sidra’s?” Fiona batted her eyelashes his way.

“If you want a sugar daddy, go date someone over at Doughnut Plant,” Mikey teased his girlfriend. “Now get your ass off the counter and rotate some of the end displays, wouldja?” Holding the door, he motioned impatiently. “Letting all the AC out, Sid. Come on.”

Out on the sidewalk, Mikey adjusted the brim of his flat black cap and squinted upward. “Well, what do you think?”

Under the old Sullivan and Son Bicycles sign now hung a sign for Evolve, in equal billing with the one for the record store.

“Oh, Mike. I love everything about it!” And she did, from the yellow swirling motif to the orange flaming sun. “Thank you!”

Mikey allowed himself to be hugged. “Thank Seamus. He painted. I just hung it.”

Sidra had figured as much. Whether it was a paintbrush or a drumstick, Seamus itched to create with whatever was in his hands. “It brightens up the neighborhood,” Sidra observed.

“Yeah. So let’s not give my dad any good reason to tear it down, okay?”

As Sidra stepped back toward the curb to get a better look at her new sign, a flash of the sun’s glare off a moving windshield caught her eye from down the block. Her pulse rate quickened at the sight of a sleek black limo sliding down Rivington’s narrow passage. Mr. Import had crossed her mind more than once since he had hailed that cab to JFK.

“Someone must be lost,” Mikey muttered under his breath, watching the tinted windows as the car slowed to a crawl past them. Sidra felt heat rise to her cheeks, no doubt matching the red of the luxury car’s taillights as it braked to a smooth stop. She chastised herself for even fantasizing that it could be the handsome stranger who had come to her rescue with a wheelchair.

Yeah,
like he’s gonna pop out of that car with a dozen roses and a glass flip-flop for you?

“Forget what I said,” Fiona breathed. Now she was the one letting all the air-conditioning out, her curvaceous body propping the shop door open. “Mikey, I want you to buy me shoes like
those
.”

A spike heel, capped with silver, speared a candy bar wrapper in the gutter as its owner swung her other leg out of the limo and stood to full height. She surveyed the block from behind large sunglasses, her lips pursing slightly as she brought manicured hands to her hips.

“Loubies.” Fiona’s worshipping tone brought Sidra out of her trance, but lit a flame under Mikey’s temper.

“Christ almighty, Fi! I’m not paying to cool the entire East Side. Close the friggin’ door!”

“Yeah, well, wipe the drool from your chin, Mike,” Fiona snapped. “She’s clearly outta your league . . . and I doubt she’s here to trade in her used records.”

The woman cast a furtive glance in their direction before sliding back into the car. Long nails flicked the candy wrapper from her heel to the curb as if it were a cockroach before the door slammed and the limo sped off.

“Nah, she’s probably one of those bendy, trendy yoga bitches.” Mike pulled his cap from his head, wiped his sweaty brow, and grinned at his cousin. “Looking for
you
, Sid. There goes the freakin’ neighborhood.”

* * *

When one went poking around in Uncle Sully’s backspace, there was no telling what one might find.

“Uncle Sul?”

Sidra’s foot came down on something soft and pliable. It protested with a baritone squawk, causing her to jump about a foot. She picked up the old bike horn and laughed to herself. Although the bicycle shop had been closed for years, her uncle’s inventory mysteriously seemed to keep growing.

She stepped deftly over snakelike coils of bicycle tubing, but stopped short when she heard a strange, staccato hiss coming from her left. She backtracked around a pile of shipping cartons and spotted her uncle kneeling on the cement floor. Sunlight streamed through the open roll-up door behind him, yet it was the cascade of soldering sparks that caused her to squint.

A masked figure stepped into her path, causing her to yelp.

“Boo.” Seamus laughed, flipping up his welding mask. His gloved hands plucked the bicycle horn from her grasp. “Hey, I’ve been looking for one of these. Thanks!”

Sidra watched her brother circle around their uncle. Sully passed him the blowtorch, and they both bent their heads with the concentration of surgeons conducting a delicate operation. Sidra stayed at a safe distance until the iron’s flame was extinguished and both men stepped away, lifting their masks triumphantly.

“Oh Shay, it’s beautiful!” Sidra gasped. “I can’t believe you finally finished it.”

Seamus had a knack for Frankensteining spare parts together into something functional. This time, he had taken one of the frames left to languish in the back of the bike shop and turned it into an aesthetically pleasing, aerodynamic riding machine.

Sidra ran her hand over the ruby leather seat. Gold ornamentation against the black frame gave it an elegance that far surpassed any other steampunk-inspired bike she had ever seen. And she had seen many, as Seamus insisted on thrusting magazine photos and blueprints under her nose regularly. This one had a coachman’s lamp mounted on the front, and ample gears, clocks, springs, and wooden rims to complete the look.

“I used old army ammo boxes for storage in back,” Seamus explained, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. “Steam-pimped my ride.” He grinned.

“Your grandfather—God rest his soul—would be proud, Seamus.” Uncle Sully pointed upward at another Sullivan and Son sign, this one hanging over his workbench, and then touched his heart with as much reverence as making the sign of the cross. “Bikes,” he announced, gathering up his tools. “Bikes are in the Sullivan blood.”

Or, in Mikey’s case, in the Sullivan blood alcohol content,
Sidra thought wryly. Several years ago, her uncle and cousin attempted to get in on the rickshaw craze. Sully blew a wad of dough on a fleet of pedicabs, and then had to spend a bundle to bail out Mikey for drunk driving (drunk pedaling?) when he crashed into a cab coming off the Brooklyn Bridge. Luckily, no one was hurt and he had no fare in the rickshaw at the time, but it was a dark period in the evolution of the Sullivan bicycle business.

“I bet you could sell it for a mint,” Sidra mused, running a finger along the sleek handlebars.

“The hell with that! I’m riding this old girl. Come with me.” Seamus threw a leg over the frame and pounded the seat behind him. Sidra gave him a withering, skeptical look, then turned to her uncle.

“Hey, Uncle Sul?”

“Yes, angel?”

She was about to recite a litany of reasons why selling the building would not be in the family’s best interests, but when he looked down at her with those watery blue eyes so much like her father’s, she lost her nerve. “What’s the story with that light?”

“The one in your space?”

“Yeah. Does it ever turn off?”

Sully polished the tip of the soldering iron thoughtfully. “Your grandfather”—he gave a heavenward jab, this time with the torch—“God love him. He always said not to mess with it. That’s all I know.”

It was a nonanswer at best. Which was rare, since Sullivans rarely minced their words.

Seamus gave the mounted horn an impatient squeak. “Gitawnup!”

Sidra threw her own leg over the bike with a laugh, and her uncle gave her a boost to land her on the seat.

“Hang on,” Seamus warned, shoving off with one foot and catching a pedal beneath his other. Sidra squealed as they bumped out the roll-up door and into the bright light, shooting through the alleyway. “Lean with me,” he instructed. “I won’t let us fall.”

Brother promised, and sister trusted. And off went the two siblings through lower Manhattan on a bicycle built for one.