by W E DeVore
“And the album?” he asked.
“We’ll talk. I do want to do it, more than the tour, really. But I want to start a family when I get off the road, so that might not be in the cards.” She chewed on her cuticle, reminding herself that some dreams were more important than others.
Derek watched her, one eyebrow slowly rising until he said, “Pregnant women can record albums, Q.”
“You’re speaking from experience?” she teased him.
“Yes,” he replied. “Fiona recorded the drums for ‘Fiend’ when she was a week overdue with Magnus.”
“Fi has a kid?” Q asked, shocked.
“Fi has a son. He’s not really a kid anymore; he’s nineteen. Goes to Yale. Wants to be a tax attorney.”
Q tried to imagine a child of Fiona Jameson’s wanting anything to do with tax law and failed miserably. “You’re kidding me.”
“If you had a mother like Fiona and a dad like me, wouldn’t you want to be as straight and boring as possible?” he asked.
Q’s perception of the world tilted, and she said, “Excuse me? You have a son? With Fiona?”
“Yes, I have a son. We have a son. It wasn’t planned, but he’s the best mistake either one of us ever made. We don’t talk about it, out in the world. He has Fiona’s last name. She wanted it that way. I mostly just pay the bills.” He smiled to himself. “You want to see a picture?”
Q nodded, and he moved closer to her, pulling out his phone to show her a photograph of a handsome young man with light brown hair and Derek’s eyes. “That’s Magnus.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I mean, Rob.”
“Rob?”
“His middle name is Robin, like Christopher Robin? He hates his name. Thinks it’s pretentious.” Derek flipped to another photo album and showed her a picture of his son from at least a decade earlier. “I picked his name. Fi wanted him to have her last name. I went along with it, so she let me choose the rest. Magnus Robin Jameson. Is it a pretentious name?”
Q grinned at him. “You’re asking the wrong person, Cincinnati.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I guess, I am. Anyway, Fi raised him when we weren’t on tour. He spent summers and breaks with me when he could, but I was always more of a playmate than a father. Fi’s ex did most of the real parenting stuff for both of us. They split about five or six years ago. But Magnus still calls Deb ‘mom’ and me and Fi by our first names. He’s not very impressed with his mother and father, I’m afraid.”
She watched him closely and saw how much he loved his son. It radiated out of every pour of his skin. “He’s beautiful, Derek. And it’s a good name. He’s just young.”
Derek put his phone back into his pocket and settled into the corner of the couch. “He hates me. Thinks I’m too old to be a rock star. Tells me it’s unseemly and I should settle down and stop dyeing my hair black.”
“Well, you are pretty unseemly,” she replied, grinning, and Derek grinned back at her. “Why are you telling me this?”
“It sounds to me like you think you have to choose between two lives you want. But you don’t. You can have both, angel. Understand?”
Without thinking of the potential consequences, she pulled Derek into an embrace. He patted her awkwardly on her back and said, “Is this a yes?”
She let go of him. “It’s a hard maybe.”
He laughed. “Come on, let’s go eat.”
When they walked back into the kitchen, Nick glanced up from the plate of spaghetti he was devouring and said, “Tell me Kyle owes me five hundred bucks.”
“Fuck you,” Q said. “You’re never getting that money.”
“Never say never, angel,” Derek leered.
And then she saw it. The act. The long con that Derek Sharp worked on the world to hide himself from it. She wondered how long he’d kept it up and who else knew that underneath his arrogant façade lurked a lonely man whose only son thought he was unseemly and whom he loved more than anything else the rest of the world had to offer.
Q sat back down next to Fiona to pick at her lunch, disoriented by how comfortable she was beginning to feel in her new environment. Fi elbowed her and said in a low voice, “Derek told me about that letter, Q. Don’t let it get to you. The stalkers come crawling out of the woodwork whenever they smell fresh meat. Some crazy chick broke into his house in the Quarter five years ago when he was dating that actress.”
“What actress?” Q asked.
“I can’t remember her name,” Fiona said. “She was nominated for an Oscar; Derek went with her and made a big entrance on the red carpet…”
“Shocker,” Q replied, rolling her eyes. “So, what happened?”
“The crazy chick, not the actress – although that one wasn’t playing with a full deck either - went full blown Bertha Mason in his living room. Beat his poor piano halfway to death while he was at the studio. He was lucky he could salvage it.”
“Bertha Mason?”
“You know? Jane Eyre… crazy wife in the attic…”
Q helplessly shook her head. “I don’t read much.”
Fi squinted her eyes at Q to examine her face. “You’re a liar. Every woman I know has read Jane Eyre like fifteen times.”
“Not this woman. Finish the story about Derek.”
“Ok, so Derek comes home, finds this crazy chick beating his Bösendorfer with a metal baseball bat…”
Q winced at the idea of something as beautiful as Derek’s nine-foot grand piano being abused in such a violent fashion. “Why?”
“Did you miss the part about her being crazy?” Fiona took a bite of her sandwich and said around her bite, “He called the cops and she went to jail. End of story.”
“Any of them ever come after you or Magnus?”
Fiona finished chewing and took a sip of her water. She smiled to herself and said, “He told you. I knew he liked you. It’s too bad you’re married. I hate that he’s alone.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“No, nobody ever knew. We were never what you’d call a nuclear family. I tell you, this Burn Bitch Burn person is next level batshit. Usually, they want to be with Derek and get anyone in their way, out of the way. Not play matchmaker with a fucking gun to his head.”
Q thought for a minute. “Have they all been women? The stalkers, I mean?”
“Most of them, yeah. There’s been a couple of dudes that wanted to replace him. Become him. You know, Mark David Chapman-style. But nothing like this. Somehow you both got under the same person’s skin. Kudos.”
“How afraid do you think I should be?”
Fiona considered her question for a moment. “I think there’s a better chance of you and Derek having a mad affair than there is a chance that either one of you is any real danger from Burn Bitch Burn.”
“So, no danger, then.” Q grinned.
Fiona laughed. “Not a chance in hell.”
◆◆◆
After six more hours of rehearsal, Dark Harm finally broke for the night. When Q walked out of the live room, she was relieved to find both Ben and Sanger sitting at the long table in the kitchen waiting for her, drinking coffee, and looking as fit and healthy as they had that morning. She sat next to Ben and looped her arm through his, bringing her body as close as possible to assure as many senses as she could that he was alive and well.
“I don’t like this,” she said. “You playing pretend investigator. That’s my bad habit. You’re supposed to be the voice of reason.”
“Now you know how I feel,” he joked.
She scowled at him. “You’re not helping.”
Derek walked into the room and clapped his hand on Sanger’s shoulder. “Evening, Spot. Did you come for your bowl of puppy chow?”
Sanger calmly sipped his coffee and turned his head to regard Derek’s hand. “Didn’t your mama teach you not to touch dogs that don’t like you?”
Q started to giggle.
Ben looked up at Derek. “Brother, if I was you, I’d get your hand off the man. I certain
ly won’t be helping you out if he decides to bite it off.”
Derek conceded with a dramatic sigh and walked to the other side of the table. He sat facing them and folded his hands together before he said, “Gentlemen, I think it’s time we all let bygones be bygones.”
“How you figure?” Sanger asked.
Q put her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand, observing Derek with keenly amused interest.
“I’d like us all to be friends,” he replied.
“No,” Ben said.
“Not gonna happen,” Sanger agreed.
Q stood up and said to Derek, “I’ll get them to agree to not kill you. It’s the probably the best you can hope for, take the win. Come on, boys,” she said to Ben and Sanger. “Let’s go get some heartburn. I’m starved.”
“You’re not going to invite me?” Derek asked.
“No,” they all agreed simultaneously.
The three moved to leave and Derek whined, “But I want to come. I hate to be left out.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Q said. She went back to him and squeezed his shoulder as she leaned down. “Thanks for trying, but next time, you’re gonna have to try harder.”
He patted her hand. “Goodnight, angel.”
She spontaneously kissed his cheek. “Goodnight, Cincinnati.”
As she joined Ben in the doorway, he shot her a vicious scowl. She shook him off and said quietly, “Quit it. I’m not asking you to like him. But just because you don’t, doesn’t mean that I can’t.”
Most of the drive to Manny’s Mexican and the dinner that awaited was spent by Ben and Sanger trading the various ways that Derek annoyed both of them and how much they distrusted him. Q listened in disinterested silence, resting in the back seat, and grateful to let her fatigued vocal cords take a break.
When they were seated at a table near the jukebox in the smoke-filled restaurant, Sanger stepped outside to make a phone call and Ben went to the bar to get them a pitcher of beer. She watched him unlink his cuffs and roll up his sleeves. It was a new habit he’d picked up and he’d lost most than one cufflink in the laundry because of it. He turned as he loosened his collar and undid the top button on his shirt, catching her watching him. He smiled at her and the world around her vanished, leaving Ben behind as the only person in it.
When she’d first began to consider going on tour with Dark Harm, it was the leaving that had seemed to her as being the most difficult aspect of it. But it wasn’t the leaving. It was the not being here. It was all the little things that she’d miss because other adventures would be filling her days.
Ben approached her, carrying a full pitcher in one hand and three empty pint glasses in the other. He set his burden down on the table.
“You ok?”
She nodded. “I told Derek that I was thinking about doing the tour. I didn’t say yes, but I thought it was only fair. No sense in him wasting his time on auditions if I’ve already decided to do it.”
He poured himself a beer and took a sip. “I figured there was a reason he was trying to make friends.”
“You’ll come out with us, right? For a few weeks?” she asked. “Not all at once, just a few days here and there.”
“Of course, I will.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him.
Sanger came back into the restaurant and flopped down into the chair next to Q. “Jesus Christ, I hate wearing suits.”
He tore at his tie and yanked it off, setting it aside on the table with disgust. “And it didn’t even fucking matter.”
“What do you mean?” Q asked, reaching for the pitcher and pouring him a beer.
“I shouldn’t have gone,” he said, taking a drink from the glass she handed him and sighing in relief as the alcohol hit his hangover. Ben nudged Q when he noticed, and she winked at him.
“What happened?” she asked.
Sanger took another swallow of his beer and replied, “They talked over me like I was some local hick sheriff or something.”
She looked at Ben for confirmation and he raised his eyebrows in the affirmative. “Every time Aaron would say that he didn’t think we should sell, the dude from the investment firm would give him this condescending smile and then tell me to think it over. Reminded me how hard it would be to run a business next to a construction zone for a year.”
“Sounds like Charlie and me negotiating with some of the old-school club owners Downtown.” She mimed holding an imaginary cigar and said in a gruff cosmopolitan accent that made her sound like her grandmother when she had a bad head cold, “Pipe down, sweetie. Let the people with penises talk.”
Sanger was not amused. “I have a penis, Clementine.”
She grinned. “Yeah, so I’ve heard, cowboy. But that’s not what I meant. You were the bitch in that meeting and they treated you as such. They want to meet again?”
“Yes,” Ben replied. “Just me, next week. He pulled me aside as we were leaving. I told him I couldn’t take a meeting without my business partner.”
“And your wife,” she interjected.
“What?”
“Next time, I’ll come. I’ll be on your side until Aaron starts running his mouth and he’ll convince me. Right there, in the office. With witnesses.”
Ben exclaimed, “No. Absolutely not. Then you’ll be on the list with him.”
She shook her head. “I disagree. If Aaron dies, then the only voice I’m listening to is my husband’s, and do I really want to be around all those sad memories of our best friend who died tragically in a horrible accident?”
Ben and Sanger exchanged a glance and Sanger said, “I told you.”
Q reached for a handful of tortilla chips in the basket in the middle of the table. “Besides,” she said, popping one into her mouth. “If you two are going to be in danger, I may as well get in on the action. If something happens to y’all, I don’t want to be around anyway.”
Ben reached for her hand and held it tightly. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“So you keep telling me, but something happened to Mike. Something happened to Genevieve. It wasn’t their partners or their spouses or their heirs who got hurt. It was them. You ask me, it’s you, not Aaron and not me who’s in the real trouble. We’re just window dressing.”
Sanger said, “I think you’re overreacting…”
“Am I?” she asked. “This whole situation gets a lot easier if Ben’s dead.”
“How?” they both asked.
“Ben dies. Suddenly, horribly. The bar becomes mine, or mostly mine. What am I going to do with it?” she asked. “I’m about to go on the road with Dark Harm. I don’t need the income. And I certainly wouldn’t want to ever set foot in that place again if something happened to him. I’d want it gone as quickly and expediently as possible.”
“What about Aaron?” Ben asked. “You couldn’t sell without him.”
“What’s he going to do, babe? Quit his job and run the Cove? What does Aaron Sanger know about running a nightclub? I’ll tell you what: fuck all,” she yelled unintentionally. Exhaling out her frustration, she took a sip of beer to settle her nerves. “My point is, that right now, both of you just got yourself on somebody’s shit list, and if we’re going down, we’re all going down together. You’re not cutting me out of this mess. When’s the meeting?”
“Next Wednesday. In the morning. You’ll have to be late to rehearsals,” Ben replied.
“Even better,” she said. “It’ll force the meeting to be short. We can blindside them and then bounce.”
The Manny in Manny’s Mexican approached them, carrying an overloaded tray of tacos and grilled shrimp. They shifted around the table to make room for their meal. As he set down their food, he reached into the pocket of his apron and tossed Q a padded envelope. “Someone said you left this on the bar, baby girl.”
Before she could correct him, Manny turned and walked back into the smoke-filled kitchen. She reached for a shrimp in the basket he left and began
to peel it.
Sanger pointed to the abandoned envelope. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Why?” she replied, popping the entire shrimp into her mouth. “It’s not mine. You open it if you’re so curious.”
Sanger picked it up and turned it over in his hands while Q picked up a taco and took a larger than ladylike bite. He removed the photographs the envelope contained and stared at them. His face twisted in distress as he flipped from one image to the next, repeatedly shuffling through the half-dozen or so photos he held until he stopped and stared at just one in increasing anguish.
