Tease (4 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“You laughed when I fell.”

“It was funny. I mean, you’ve been here a week, and if there’s a broken chair or a guitar with a busted string, you pick it. The guys have a pool about when you’re going to break your glasses in P.E.”

I’d wanted to fight harder with her. I’d wanted to blame her for a week’s worth of misery, but the fact was, I had chosen that guitar because it was blue, and I didn’t check the strings. The gum did look pretty old, but I’d blamed them anyway, and I’d sat in that chair because it was far away from everyone.

“Everyone says you’re a snob,” said Gabby.

“I am not a snob. I’m a bitch.”

I’d chewed the inside of my cheek for a second, because awkward girls weren’t supposed to risk saying things like that to cool girls. After a second, she laughed, and I did too.

“Come sit with us at lunch,” she’d said. “I think my brother has a crush on you, so… gross. Okay?”

She’d folded me into the in crowd from that lunch on, like a complementary voice in a symphony, just adding me as if I was naturally in the same rhythm and key, and my entrance simply hadn’t been arranged for the first few measures.

“You calm?” I asked Gabby in the dressing room as she poked at something nonexistent on her face. She had to be. Since my night with Jonathan when he’d promised to call Arnie Sanderson, she’d been blissed out. The call had been totally unnecessary, but any light at the end of her tunnel was a positive.

“No, I am not calm.” She giggled. “Look!” She held her hands out. They were shaking. Generally, one wouldn’t want that in a pianist, but in Gabby’s case, as soon as she sat down, her fingers and body would quiet, and she’d be completely on top of it. “I got everyone from school in. I called in every favor. And the whole gang from Thelonius? All here. Darren, too.”

“He bring his new girl?”

“I have no idea. Do you feel strong on
Cheek to Cheek
?” We’d worked on a rendition that sounded as though Gershwin had been talking about more than a little facial contact. All the songs were shaking out that way, and it brought them in.

“We’re good on
Cheek to Cheek.”

“It’s happening, Mon. Really happening.”

“This is a long process.” I took out my makeup bag and smeared back on what Jonathan had kissed off. “We’re not signing any contracts in the morning. We don’t even have a disc or anything.”

“You said not to worry about that.”

“I didn’t worry about it until Jonathan introduced me to Eddie Walker as if I didn’t know who he was, and if he’d asked me for a disc, I wouldn’t have had one.”

I watched her in the mirror and saw her eyes go blank. She was doing a calculation in her head, and she took a second to come up with the answer.

“Penn,” she said.

“Yes, they went to University of Pennsylvania together, but do you know what sport they played?”

When Gabby didn’t know something, she didn’t pretend she did, so her answer came quickly. “No.”

“Baseball.”

She pushed her mascara stick into the tube slowly, staring at it. I could almost see her filing the information and cross-referencing it with every other piece of Hollywood intelligence in her head.

“Thanks for doing this,” she said. “I know you didn’t want to do a restaurant gig, but I feel really good about it, and I couldn’t do it without you.”

“Well, I was wrong. I should have said yes right off. I mean, the thing about performing is you have to perform, otherwise you’re all talk, right?” I said.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. If we get WDE behind us, we can maybe start doing
your
songs.”

I shrugged. My songs were rage-filled punk diatribes and wouldn’t translate into the loungey thing I was doing with Gabby. If we landed an agent as a piano-driven lounge act, I had no idea what I would do with him. I couldn’t go from eXene to Sade on a dime. As a keyboardist, Gabby could play anything at any time, but I would be in a world of shit at the first hint of success working at Frontage. I had zero songs ready.

“I didn’t tell you something about meeting Eddie today,” I said, trying to sound flip.

“He cute?”

“Yes. And he’d heard about us.”

“He was trying to get into your pants.”

“No, he didn’t know it was me singing here when he mentioned it. I mean, he did, but he could have just said something polite like,
oh, how nice
. But he didn’t. He was all,
Oh, that’s
you?”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“He’d heard someone was bringing down the house at Frontage.”

“Some
one
?”

I got defensive. She’d gotten me through high school. I’d never abandon her. “He didn’t phrase it like it was just one person. Could have been a swing ensemble from the way he said it.”

Gabby tossed her sticks and tubes back in her little bag. “I’d better get out there,” she said. “I have to warm them up.”

We hugged like sisters, and I went back to making my face presentable.

When I told Jonathan he was lucky to have sisters, I’d meant it. I hated being an only child. I hated when my mother looked at me as if I’d somehow disappointed her by being her first and last, as if it was my fault they found cancer during the C-section. I hated being the only kid in the house. I hated being responsible for every success and failure of my parents’ children. The attention was great, except when I wanted to die from it.

If anything happens to the only child, there’s no backup. If she’s a drug addict, all the kids are drug addicts. If she dies in a car accident, suddenly the family is dissolved.

In one way, I never felt right around people, and in another, I craved their company. I needed them too much. So I had tons of acquaintances, maybe four hundred people in a loose music-scene around Echo Park and Silver Lake. I could fill a club when I needed to, but outside the guys who wanted to screw me, I inspired no closeness in anyone besides Darren and Gabby, who were orphans and needed me as much as I needed them.

CHAPTER 5

I poked my head out into the restaurant. Darren was at the bar with a huddled group. I recognized them: Theo, Mark, Ursula, Mollie, and Raven. Darren was Mister Popularity. He could bust out an inside joke with anyone he met on the east side. He had an ear for language and a way of listening that gave him a vocal “in” with whoever was in earshot.

I didn’t see a girl I didn’t recognize, so he either came without her or I knew her. I deliberately didn’t look at the table by the warm speaker. I didn’t want to see if they’d shown or if it was a table full of assistants getting drunk on the company dime. I didn’t want to see an empty table with a big “reserved” card on it. I didn’t want to see anything at all; I only needed to feel.

I’d been drawing off the energy from my night with Jonathan for two weeks, and after that afternoon at the Loft Club, I felt renewed and concerned. I couldn’t let myself depend on him getting me all hot and bothered so I could sing to the throb between my legs. I had no idea how much longer he’d drag me around by the panties, but it surely wouldn’t be long enough to make a career.

Rhee stood by the door at the opposite side of the room, hair up, a big smile her default setting. A black woman in her forties, she didn’t look a day over thirty. She winked when she saw me and tilted her head to the table by the warm speaker, which I couldn’t see from where I stood.

It was go time, as my dad would say.

The management always put fifteen minutes at the beginning of the schedule for the talent to walk around doing a meet and greet. My disdain for that type of gig had evaporated when I realized what shrewd businesspeople ran the operation. My job wasn’t to fade into the background as I’d originally thought, but to make the diners feel as though they’d walked into a place where they were known, and special, and wanted. The goal was repeat business, and though new customers were encouraged, the management found people who came back regularly were better tippers, better customers, and better friends than a constant stream of trend followers.

Gabby was already improvising something on the piano in the center of the dining room. Her eyes were closed. She wouldn’t even know it was time to start until I put my hand on her shoulder in twelve minutes. Darren was in the middle of an earnest discussion with Theo and Mark, and I broke in to greet them.

“You guys,” I said to Darren, Theo, and Mark as a group, “please look like I’m cheering you up when I sing, okay? You’re talking like you’re at a funeral.”

Theo, who had Maori tattoos crawling up his neck despite being a skinny Scottish dude, pointed an unlit cigarette at me. “You tell him to get his sorry ass over to Boing Boing Studios. He’s a man without a band. It’s a crime.”

Darren rolled his eyes, and I put my hand on his arm, speaking for him. “He told you he wants to mature as an artist before selling his ass to the man, right? He told you he wants to develop his process before he starts playing for other people’s glory?”

“Oy,” Theo said. “My ears hurt with this.”

Mark cut in. With his narrow-lapel jacket and horn-rimmed black glasses, he couldn’t have been more Theo’s opposite. “You need to get in your ten thousand hours, buddy. That’s the rule. You can’t master an art in under ten thousand hours. Documented. You can’t develop a process in a vacuum. Bank on that.”

Darren looked at me with his big blue eyes. Poor guy. He and Gabby had enough to live on from their inheritance, but they couldn’t do much more than live. The cash flow they enjoyed seemed to keep them from doing the things they needed to do in order to grow.

“Darren, try it,” I said. “Be a studio musician for fifteen minutes. You’re making a big deal over nothing.”

Over Darren’s shoulder, I saw a face I recognized, and though I took a second to put a name to her face, she knew me right away and waved, smiling.

“Thank you,” Theo said. “Nicely done, lassie.”

But my mind was on the woman in the green dress. “I have to go,” I said, making my way to her.

Before I got half a step away, Darren grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear, “Behind you, at a deuce up front. Kevin.”

“Fuck.”

“Bad idea,” he said.

“Can you get rid of him?”

“Nope.” He smiled at me, our faces close enough to kiss. I’d left Darren for Kevin almost two years before, and though he forgave me, he’d never forgotten.

“Fuck. What do I do?”

“You go and act like this is your room.”

Right. This was my room. Kevin was the interloper. I stood up straighter and continued toward the woman in the green dress: Jonathan’s sister.

“Theresa,” I said, “hi. I’m so glad you came.”

She kissed each of my cheeks. “I had to, of course, since I was the one who told Gene about you.”

“Oh, it was you,” I said. “Thanks again, then. I had no idea you worked at WDE.”

“I run the accounting department. Not glamorous, but it keeps me busy. This is my sister, Deirdre.”

Deirdre stood close to six feet tall, and she wore jeans and an Army surplus jacket. Her auburn curls stuck out everywhere, and her eyes were as big and green as the emerald isle itself. They were also glazed over, with lids hanging at half mast. She was drunk, and dinner hadn’t even been served yet.

“Hi,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

She looked at me, then made a point of looking away. I was being ignored, and somehow it was deeply personal. I turned back to Theresa with a big fat smile. “I hope you enjoy the entertainment tonight.”

Deirdre made a huffing noise, and Theresa and I looked at each other for a second. She seemed as embarrassed as I was as she said, “I’m sure I will. Come by the table after.”

I thanked her and left. I looked at Rhee. She spoke with a customer, nodding and serious, her dark skin a flawless velvet despite her knitted brows. If she wasn’t on me, I had a minute. Scanning the room, I saw Kevin sitting with his buddy Jack. Kevin waved me over with one hand and pushed Jack’s shoulder with the other. Jack gave me a quick wave and vacated the seat. Apparently, I was supposed to sit there. I glanced to Rhee again. She held up five fingers. Five minutes left. Perfect. I slid into Jack’s empty chair. Kevin didn’t get up or pull the chair out for me. He never did.

“Nice to see you,” I said.

“You changed your number.” He gave me the sorry eyes. They used to put me in a state of panic that I’d done something to hurt him. His huge brown eyes, big as saucers, hung under eyebrows that arched down at the ends. He had the textbook cartoon sad face. His hair had that greasy hipster look, a perfect complement to the ever-short beard that broadcast he was above such trivial concerns as looking nice in company. I used to think that made him smarter, more intellectual, more spiritual, but really, he’d just hit a lucky triple in the looks department and made it to home plate on a force play.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You know where I live.” I smiled because I wanted Rhee to see me engaging a new person, not looking like an alley cat about to defend a fishbone.

“That’s stalking,” he explained. “The fact that you didn’t want to talk to me was enough of a message.”

“Yeah, well. We’re grown-ups, and that was a year and a half ago. So, I have four and a half minutes. It is nice to see you.” I plastered my friendliest smile across my face as I delivered the last line, and he bought it. He took a sip of his beer and relaxed.

“I heard about you singing here. Everyone’s talking about it. ‘This girl at Frontage will make you cry.’ As soon as I heard it, I thought it was you. My canary.” I think I blushed a little. No. I
know
I blushed a little. With all his degradation of my music toward the end, I’d forgotten his pet name for me. The memory of the time he did honor my talents went straight to my heart.

“And once I thought about you...” He stopped himself and reached into his pocket. “I thought, man, I’d like for her to see what I’m doing too. Thought we could hook up again. Artistically. You know? As creators in this mad city.”

He handed me a brochure. The Los Angeles Modern Museum had a Solar Eclipse show every time there was a full eclipse somewhere in the world. It was a group show of the moment’s hottest visual and conceptual artists, and an invitation to show could open doors to new artists, reinvigorate the careers of established artists, and solidify stars in the historical lexicon.