The Rock Star Next Door, A Modern Fairytale

by Lily Silver

  “Yeah, but . . .” Echoed throughout the room in a synthesis of modulated sound waves that sounded like a bad soundtrack for B-grade horror flick.

  “Yeah buts live in the woods.” Steve spoke ominously into his mike and then grinned.

  Their antics brought a smile to Jessie’s face as Steve’s voice with spooky sound effects came out sounding like Bela Lugosi. Steve loved the technology of sound. He doubled as their sound man in the early days, before they had an entire crew hired by record execs to set up for their concert appearances.

  “Ye--ee-aah!” Jack improvised, playing out dark, driving chords to emphasize his words. “If Kyra doesn’t give a damn she’s out of the band. Now, crank it up, dudes, we’ve got some refining to do before Monday.”

  Jessie swallowed the ache in her throat and gave her full attentions to their music.

  They had a few scratched out songs on scrap paper each one had thrown together, most with incomplete chord riffs and lots of work to do before they’d be presentable for the studio recording. She closed her eyes and offered up a faint hope that Lex would call tonight or tomorrow as she turned on her amplifier and started tuning her guitar.

  * * * *

  Lex stared at the computer screen, seeing nothing, only feeling the sting of rejection.

  What was it with him? The celebrated King of Seduction, yet he couldn’t get a woman to accept his offer of marriage? Some Don Juan he was in real life.

  If news of his defeat got out in the press, he’d be the mockery of the decade.

  Lex had been serious about committing his life to Crystal. He imagined growing old together as they held their grandchildren on their knees. He proposed at least twice a year for ten years, and she refused him, year after year.

  We don’t need a piece of paper to define our relationship. Crystal would say, It’s old fashioned. We’re free spirits, Lex. Marriage would ruin things. Think of your career. The Sex God being married? Think of the complications . . .

  He saved his work and closed his computer program as Crystal’s well worn speech echoed in his ears. It was useless to try to work. He could only think of Jessie. He kept re-playing her refusal, trying to understand what it was he’d missed.

  Mercy. He let out a long sigh, and gazed at the picture he had tacked up over his computer. The Rolling Stone cover of Jessie sitting with her knees drawn up, her hair blowing out wildly in a brilliant red swirl, her eyes so vulnerable, so full of emotion.

  I need for us to step back, take a breather . . . there’s no need to rush to the altar . . . we barley know each other.

  When your souls meet you’ll recognize each other, Ravi told him.

  So, why the hell didn’t she recognize him?

  This week had been hell. He hadn’t slept. Lex couldn’t stop arguing with Jessie in his mind. She made it plain; she wanted him to step back, stop chasing her.

  The soul remembered. That was what Ravi and other New Age Shamans taught. The soul remembered even if the mind did not. Jessie’s soul remembered something, and that was why she was running. Had he hurt her in the past? He didn’t think so, but maybe he was blocking this all out, maybe there was a reason Jessie was running away from him.

  Or was it immaturity or obstinacy on her part, a refusal to accept that they were destined to be together? Hell, he had no intention of forcing himself upon a woman who didn’t want his attentions. It might have worked in the middle ages but not here in the twenty first century. With a snarl, Lex ripped Jessie’s picture from the bulletin board above his computer. He wadded it up and tossed it into the garbage.

  Best to move on with his life. That’s what she was doing. If the girl wanted him, she’d not play so hard to get, not run the other way as if she were trying to escape a monster. He sank back down in the padded desk chair, pondering the kaleidoscope screen saver, uncertain for the first time about his belief that they were destined to be together.

  Was this some cosmic test? The waves of color on the screen saver were mesmerizing, soothing, and hypnotic. Patterns ever changing, like waves crashing on the surf, molding, shaping the shoreline.

  Had he been wrong about Jessica Kelly?

  Rolly’s file sat on his desk. Lex picked it up, thumbed through it, and was tempted to toss it out, too. He didn’t. Instead he closed it, opened his drawer and threw it in on top of the print copy of his first novel. Rolly was in Wisconsin checking out Jessie’s family. He’d be back soon with a report and a bill for expenses.

  Strange, he thought, propping his chin in his hand as he stared once more at the screen saver. Very strange indeed. Jessie ran away at sixteen and her parents never reported her or her brother as missing. Stranger still, any mention of her family sent Jessie into a panic as if some deep dark secret were about to be exposed.

  He needed a walk to clear his head. Lex turned out the light in his study and closed the door. It was almost midnight. The moon was high in the sky. Not quite full. He shrugged into a sweatshirt jacket and meandered out on to the patio.

  Music came from next door. Live music. They were jamming.

  Deadlines. The irony of success. Once you made it to the top, you had to work endlessly to stay there. There were always hundreds of hungry, desperate musicians knocking on the studio doors, hoping to take your place when you slipped a notch.

  Lex moved down the moonlit path to the shore and stared at the rolling surf.

  He was glad he was leaving the music business behind. It was all about image, and just like the kaleidoscope on his screen saver, the image was ever changing. Few rock idols had the staying power to work past forty. Madonna was an exception, but she, too, had learned to change and modify her image accordingly. David Bowie had a natural class, which made him seem timeless.

  Yet, for each Madonna or David Bowie who brought classic grace to their own image as they aged in the spotlight, there were countless others who possessed neither the grace to change with the times or the good sense to retire and fade from the spotlight. Aging men who never seemed to grow past the wildness of their teen years, gray-haired has-beens who wanted to party down as if they were still twenty-five.

  There was nothing worse than a rock icon that didn’t have the good grace to retire while he was still popular. There were many of those, still touring into their fifties and sixties--playing to smaller and smaller crowds. That wasn’t for Lex. He was on the crest of a new career, a new path, a new found spiritual enlightenment and he was glad to be leaving the daunting life of touring with its sordid business of groupies, drugged out roadies and trashed hotel rooms.

  He evolved past his stage persona. Hell, he’d started with the predatory male gig when he was just nineteen, had refined it to become a more cultured, suave master of seduction as he matured. At thirty two he didn’t want the pressure of being the ideal fantasy lover to thousands of screaming, lust-filled females as they threw their bras and panties at him on stage. At first, it was like a drug, the power he held over women. The first time a girl took off her shirt and asked him to sign her breast, he’d been blown away. The first time a woman pulled down her pants and asked him to sign her ass, he’d thought he’d died and went to heaven. Twelve years later, it was just another day in the life of a rock star. And a lot of those asses he had to sign had zits on them, too.

  “Hey, dude?” A voice intruded upon his meditations to the soothing waves and the lunar goddess. It was Steve from next door. “How’s it going, man?”

  Lex turned to the lanky figure, not sure of what to say. “I’m alive.”

  “Sorry.” The skinny keyboardist offered his hand. “If there’s anything I can do, man, just name it. I’m there for you.”

  Lex kicked at the sand with his boot and pondered the genuine sorrow he heard in Steve’s voice. “Thanks. If--if there’s ever a time she’s in trouble,” He hated himself for what he was saying but he still loved Jessie. No matter what, he’d always love her. “What I’m trying to say is, if she’s in trouble, sick, in need of a friend or a favor;
call me. Let me help, no matter what she says. And, if you’d just let me know that she’s okay from time to time.”

  “Sure. I will.” Steve seemed surprised. “But, you could call her yourself.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “She still loves you, dude. I know she does. Things have been rough lately. She’s worried about Jack. She just needs time. You two belong together.”

  “I waited, for ten years, for my last girlfriend. I don’t have any more time to give.”

  “I get that. Still. Jess is worth the wait. She wouldn’t two time you, like that other bitch. It’s not in her. Hey, care to drive up to Moonshadows for a drink?”

  “No.” Lex shrugged, pulling at his earring. “I’m up to my ears in my work, I was just taking a break to clear my head. Alcohol hardly helps the creative process.”

  “Another time, then?” Steve squashed his cigarette beneath his feet as he spoke. He looked back up to the house. “We’re trying to hammer out the kinks before we enter the studio to lay tracks. We have a few days left and lots of crap to get through.”

  “Keep it straight and sober, you’ll write better material.”

  “I wish my band mates had that theory down. Jess and I do most of the composing, at least lately cuz we’re the only two who are sober.”

  The sliding glass door opened and Steve was being waved to return to their jam session by one of the guys. “Hey, string bean.” By that address, Lex identified the waving silhouette as Jack. “Get your ass in here. Darrell’s messing with your boards, man, he’ll trash our demo tape.”

  “Shit.” Steve swore. “We’re past deadline by a week and now the monkeys are playing with my sound equipment. Sometimes I hate this life.”

  Lex nodded as he started to walk down the shore in the opposite direction.

  Yes, the star machine was a brutal mistress. Success in the music world was precarious and fraught with pressures that drove some of the brightest musicians to suicide.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A month passed since Lex and Jessie’s breakup.

  A miserable four weeks in which she managed to convince herself she’d made the right decision. It was moving too fast, Jessie reminded herself almost hourly. Her family dynamic imploded over the proposed marriage and truth be told, she didn’t know Lex that well. There could be something dark and sinister lurking behind that magnetic smile and those sensuous blue eyes.

  No matter how she tried to spin it in her mind, Jessie couldn’t convince herself she was right.

  Her heart ached for just a glimpse of him or a word between them. Lex still resided next door. She didn’t see him. His car remained parked in the drive. His housekeeper and his agent seemed to come and go, but Lex had become invisible. He made no further contact with her. He seemed to fade away like a mirage into the Malibu sands.

  All that was left was to throw herself into her career to try to get over him.

  Jessie did just that. She ate on the run, slept as little as possible and spent the long lonely nights in the recording studio with rest of the band. They had some pretty intense jam sessions, a few heated arguments over chord structures and melodies, but all in all, they managed to pull it together by sheer dint of will.

  Kyra showed up infrequently for the studio recording sessions. Kyra’s presence added tension to the sessions on the sparse days she showed up. She nursed a deep grudge against Jessie for ‘dumping Lex’ as she put it. Kyra didn’t even want to hear Jessie’s reasoning. She made her mind up that she was marrying Mike, and that meant she was taking his side in the matter of who was at fault in Jessie and Lex’s breakup; it was Jessie without question. Kyra had been her best friend all through school. Now she appeared to resent Jessie, almost to the point of bitter loathing.

  “You could have had everything, Jess.” She sneered one afternoon. “Success and a man who loves you enough to marry you, just like that, with no prenuptial clauses, no long, drawn out engagement to see if you work out. Even I don’t have that. In ten years you’ll be alone, a has-been in the music industry and I’ll be Mrs. Michael Parks, with three kids and a house in the canyons. A guy like Lex comes along once, Jessie, and you blew it.”

  “Thanks for the heads ups.” Jessie muttered. “I’m twenty four and doomed to be an old maid. And you accuse me of reading too many trashy romance novels? You make it sound like I’ll never find another guy.”

  “Not another Lex.” Kyra stubbornly affirmed. “He was the kind of guy you always talked about, dreamed about, a guy who would waltz in and sweep you off your feet. Well, he did. And then you got scared and dumped him. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing, from where I’m looking.” Rick, the tall, lanky sound engineer came up behind them unexpectedly. “And don’t forget, pizza after this session.” He smiled at Jessie, giving her a seductive wink.

  Jessie smiled back, grateful for his kind intervention. Try as she might, she just couldn’t muster anything but friendship for Rick and he was doing his best at trying to make her fall in love with him.

  “Oh, you’re pathetic.” Kyra groused. “And he’s anorexic.” She gave Rick’s fleeting figure a look of disapproval.

  Rick was very thin. Jessie had to agree as she watched him slip on his headphones and sit at the console behind the glass. He was six foot four and probably weighed about one hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. It would be like making love to a Q-tip. She laughed at the bizarre image of being with the dangerously thin Rick. The memory of Lex’s hard, solid biceps and full toned chest made any charms that Rick might possess fade by comparison. The sound engineer was nice and companionable; a distraction at best from the pain of losing Lex.

  And Rick knew his business in the sound room. All who knew him dubbed him ‘The Wizard’, and the familiar chant of ‘we’re off to see the wizard’ had a very different meaning for the musicians in the sound studio. He’d been showing a great deal of interest in Jessie since they began their studio work, asking her nearly every night to go out and grab something to eat or go for a drink after they called it a wrap. Jessie did go with him, twice, but she made Steve go with them so it wasn’t too cozy.

  Kyra had the game point; he wasn’t Lex. She found herself constantly comparing the two men, with Rick coming up with a heavy deficit each time.

  Kyra didn’t know the new songs. Another guitarist was hired in her place to play the backup tracks for the new release. And the little twit didn’t care. She wanted to make sure her face would still grace the cover of the CD and her royalty checks would keep coming in, but she didn’t care about jamming with the band anymore.

  That set Jack off. After Kyra made her feelings known he refused to do another vocal track until Kyra left the studio. After she left, their studio session dissolved into a gripe session, complete with Max’s input and his assurances Kyra would get her portion for this album, but no more if she continued in this destructive vein. If the record execs learned about her deliberate absences, she’d be fired, her contract shredded, and that would cut the last badly frayed cord on a friendship that spanned more than a decade.

  The growing chasm between them grieved Jessie. Not only had she just lost the love of her life, she was losing her best friend and she didn’t understand why. They shared first dates as uncertain six graders. They confided secrets about crushes, kisses and teenage angst. Together, they had taken that first sip of forbidden alcohol at a homecoming party and shared the same bathroom when they ended up tossing their cookies afterward.

  As women guitarists, they were comrades at arms, having won their rightful place in a male dominated industry. In the early days, while still doing clubs, they endured the crude remarks of drunken men who thought they only pretended to play their instruments and loudly proclaimed there was really some guy offstage doing the guitar riffs and they were just hood ornaments for the real band.

  Jessie wished there was something she could do, some way she could reach out to Kyra without getting her hand bitten off. Any attempt to
talk about their differences was met with a brick wall of staggering resentment.

  Was it the fact that Jessie was the lead singer? Did Kyra covet being the front end? Kyra always said she liked being in the background, not the front-runner. Lots of energy was required; lots of courage to stand in front of a microphone in a filled stadium and not have your mind dissolve into gray matter jelly. It took guts and magic to make ‘em clap rather than pelt you with their drinks or whatever else they had in their hands.

  From the beginning, Jack and Jessie had taken the lead with everyone’s insistence.

  Now that the record company was promoting them as the lead singers the band was seething with resentment. Kyra was the worst, being the most vocal and catty of late, but Darrell and Steve were starting to make comments, too.

  Jack was using, big time. He’d even turned Darrell on to the white dust.

  Steve was the only stable band member to back Jessie up as they stood on the narrow precipice of success. She felt like Humpty Dumpty in the nursery rhyme, except that she had so many others depending on her to keep them all aloft. If she slipped, misplaced a step, they all would go down, shatter into a million pieces, become another statistic among the rock stars who had one or two hit albums only to fade into obscurity because they couldn’t keep cranking out chart topping hits.

  The makeup artist noted Jessie’s eyes bore dark circles when she was being primped for the photo shoot. She asked Jessie if she were using. That was a low blow. She quickly assured the kind woman she was clean, aside from an occasional margarita. She just wasn’t sleeping well due to all the stresses that went along with success.

  The makeup artist gave Jessie a card, telling her the local new age shop had just the thing to help her. They had mediation classes, relaxation tapes, past life regression, and even some herbs that might give Jessie that boost of energy she needed. Jessie stuck it in her purse and thanked the woman. The incident made her think of Lex.