“Soon,” I whisper back. “We’ve got a band to play.”
Behind him, by the bar, I notice two men, older than the rest of the crowd. Anderson and Douglas, longtime industry guys. They’re holding glasses of bubbly water and waving at Tyler. We steer past a group of people and walk across the sticky floor to where they stand.
“Here for your new discovery?” Anderson asks. The neon lights show off his wedding ring and slight double chin. Tyler has told me that Anderson is the longest-standing music rep on the lookout for new artists in Miami.
“I’ve known Dirk O awhile. Who thinks they found ’em, you or Aubrey?” Douglas asks. As a scout, he wants only to be a liaison for the recording labels.
I don’t like the question or the tone. Could it be that Dirk O really belongs with Douglas? I feel around in my bag for my small angel pillbox and wait for Tyler’s answer.
“Aubrey. She’s the one—about four months ago. We’ve been managing them ever since.”
More anxiety. I rarely take Xanax, so this pill might be expired. I put it in my mouth anyway and swallow without water.
“Congratulations,” Douglas says. “What’d ya think?”
“It’s about the guitar,” I say. Not about how intimate the music feels. Like it’s you alone with the band.
Since Tyler is sometimes quiet with reps and scouts, I smile.
Once the men leave for backstage, we head for a booth. I hold out my pillbox to Tyler. He shakes his head. “Nothing for me tonight.”
“Why?”
“I want to pay close attention. What plays best for this band. Sober.”
“You already know, don’t you, Tyler?”
“Ya. Still, I’m counting on this singer-songwriter part. I don’t always find that fusion.”
Not that he can’t drink a couple of dirty martinis or a few ginger-tinged margaritas and still discern the quality and unrealized talent of the musicians. I’m the one who nurses a wine spritzer the whole night and becomes too loopy to pay careful attention, then wake up the next day with a nasty headache.
Suddenly the lights splattered over the carved-wood bar seem less intense. I’m calm and kind of doughy, soft. I lean against Tyler and tuck my head into his shoulder.
“Y’know, I bet business doubles by spring. Fucking doubles.” He puts his hand over mine.
“Wow, really?” I sound slurpy.
“Yeah, and I’m your boss.” He laughs.
“I keep forgetting.” I do a mellow laugh. “What a boss!”
“Hey, you’re very good at the scene. You have an ear for the singers. Especially the female leads, like Patrice and her all-girl band playing feral guitar at the Clean Laundry, standing room only. Aubrey, you put them on the map.”
“A victory. It took a lot of nerve—no, more like stalking. I stalked venues to get them heard.” I’m speaking, but my voice is far off.
“So how about if we change that?”
“I’m sorry? Change what?” I’m soft and feathery.
“Change how you report to me. You manage half the bands—the ones that matter to you. I know you’ll take on some of the female singers and see what flies. Tomorrow I’ll give you an agreement. It makes us equal partners on a company we’ll start, our company.”
Equal partners. “Why? No, that makes no sense. You’re the one who toils away, it’s your career.”
“Half and half. You and me.” He stares at me in a good way, a caring way.
“Equal partners?” I ask. “Are you sure, Tyler? I mean, I’m starting out, really, it’s only been a year since you hired me.”
I don’t mention how women leave this business, the number of men in charge, the hours. I don’t reveal how I’ve been known to flit from idea to idea, that I came upon being a music rep when I saw a posting on Craigslist for an assistant. When the position with Tyler came up, I didn’t hold the bar very high. I had no idea he’d be reasonable and civilized, polite. He opens doors for older women; he doesn’t cut in line. Now that we’re together, I know he is decent all around. He hangs up his towel in the bathroom, takes out the garbage, and unloads the dishwasher. While I expected him to be edgy, given the bands he’s drawn to and his music finds, he isn’t.
“It’s been a great year and we’ve had some hits. I doubt anyone’ll come to town to perform and not ask us to handle it.” He slides his right hand under my dress. “You have instincts—you’re good. Besides, Aubrey, the papers are drawn up for us to sign.”
When Saige, the lead singer for Dirk O, grabs the mike for a solo, I feel like I can be a co-discoverer. I know their sound, their every move. I’m sucked into how nostalgic it is, like music I loved in high school. I listened to Billy Joel, Dave Matthews, the Grateful Dead, Madonna. I loved the raspy sound of Pink. Tyler leads me, pushes through to the middle of the dance floor. We’re both so cool, rocking together. The room recedes; we’re floating. I could take his shirt off, melt into his chest.
“One more set and we’ll go,” he says. “I want to bed you early tonight to celebrate.”
I bend closer, our bodies welding into each other. Then I remember. “On a breakout night? Aren’t the reps from Geffen showing up?”
“Yep, they will.” His breath is warm. I breathe it in.
“But will the reps…” I begin.
“We got them the gig, it’s fine. One more set. Besides, we’ve got the meeting with Dirk O tomorrow. That’s what counts for us.”
He moves away from me a step to better see the band. Although he is slouching the smallest amount, his biceps show and he tilts his head toward the music.
* * *
Tyler fiddles for the key to the front door, swoops me up, and carries me to the couch near the windows. From the thirtieth floor of this glass tower, the spotlights on the beach are specks. Before my head falls back against his shoulder, I look out at nothing. No stars, no moon, I can’t see the ocean.
“You hear it, right?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “The waves always crashing.”
We kiss on the couch and he undresses me, yanking down my miniskirt, my gauzy blouse.
I touch his immaculately shaved head, trace his jawline with my hands, a three-day beard. How are his teeth aligned like that? I move my hands over his back and down his body.
He stands, I watch him take off his T-shirt and jeans—he’s good at it, he’s done it all before, seen it all before. Tyler is thirty-seven and had a fiancée six years ago. Two years after the engagement was broken, he had a live-in partner. Beyond those two serious relationships were the others—he’s been in demand. A slowly revolving door where the women, one at a time, have moved forward, stepped into the room. They have filled the chair, slept in his arms, his smooth, taut shoulders protecting them. Until he realized, true romantic that he is, that none of them was the one. That was when they sensed a chilliness and knew it was over. There was some sort of conversation and then they left, their scent and human dander gone. I can see them packing their Clarins or La Mer that they kept in the cabinet in the second bathroom—the guest bathroom. Their lace thongs and flip-flops, Stella McCartney mesh jackets or Gap sweatshirts, herbal teas and travel-size Living Proof dry shampoo stuffed into a generic straw bag, a simple canvas tote from the Miami Book Fair. And as easily as they had settled in, they weren’t asked to stay. Tyler is a catch if he can be caught. He is the only guy I’ve not wanted to fix or repackage, ever.
For his every move tonight, my body and mind fall into a chant, a plea, really. I don’t want to be next—I want to be last. He is asking me to be his business partner; it has to be that we are a match.
My head is on his chest and he’s running his fingers across my shoulders. I put my right hand on my heart, then on his heart. I’m on my back, and his hands on the inside of my thighs move upward. “Aubrey, Aubrey,” he groans.
That urgency, the speed tonight. Then he’s inside me and I wrap my legs around his waist and we move together.
* * *
S
tuck behind red taillights and truckers on I-95, I turn up the volume for Joan Jett belting out “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” and sing along. I’d be annoyed if I weren’t in such an up mood from last night. My goodwill extends to Elodie’s plea of an hour ago.
“Could you please, please come up to Palm Beach? I know you’re busy with work, this is imperative,” she begged me.
Imperative. I wonder what that means to Elodie. In our family, a crisis isn’t wide in scope but personal. There isn’t much talk about politics or climate change. Nor is there such talk among our friends, it seems. Whatever Elodie has to say, she sounded flat, afraid.
“This is the third time this week that I’m driving up to you,” I said.
“I know that, yet I can’t drive down, I really cannot, Aubrey.”
“I have a meeting in Miami with Tyler and Dirk O at noon,” I said.
“With what?” she asked.
“A big meeting. A critical meeting. Can we do this over the phone?”
“I’m sorry, but please come,” Elodie insisted. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t pressing.”
* * *
I take the exit that reads SOUTHERN BOULEVARD BRIDGE and turn left toward town. At least in Palm Beach I always feel young. The weird inverted ageism makes the young very young, but it’s Mom’s crowd and older ladies who rule the place. This compared to South Beach, where I’m close to invisible at thirty-two. Each time that Tyler meets with a new band, these twenty-three-year-old girls appear out of nowhere. Only last week it happened on the pool deck at the Savoy. I bet every time I don’t tag along, they lunge at him.
My big sister would be a fossil in South Beach, I realize as I resist the urge to speed while driving east to Royal Poinciana Plaza. When I pull up to Sant Ambroeus, Elodie is sitting on the small iron bench outside the restaurant, beside a gelato cart. In her Milou shift and Hermès flat sandals, she has her blond/brown hair in that half ponytail she’s taken to lately.
“What?” I glance at the courtyard filled with pozzetti. Elodie leaps up and we kiss hello. She scans the gold-leaf signage over the double glass doors.
“Look inside. Is it crowded?”
I peer through the glass and see women seated on angular ice-blue-and-toffee leather stools at the bar.
“Sort of. There are people right up front. I can’t see past that to the tables.”
“We can’t go in. I’ve run into two ladies from the Literary Society and two wives of James’s clients, plus Allison Rochester and Betina Gilles.”
“Are we avoiding people? I thought you chose a place to be seen. And to shop a bit.” I twirl my finger toward the storefronts. Zadig & Voltaire for me, 100% Capri for her, Kirna Zabête if our mother joins us.
“We need to talk, Aubrey.” Her voice is rushed.
We take off our sunglasses at the same time and look at each other’s eyes and eyebrows. We look very much the same today, except my sister is frightened, jumpy. Is that it?
“Want to go to your house? Mom’s?”
“Let’s get in my car. Or yours.”
Elodie points past the collection of bright white or silver Mercedes convertibles. “Over there.”
She leads us around the corner and presses the key fob that she’s holding in her right hand. Her own silver sedan beeps back. We get in and she blasts the AC. I tug my leopard-print miniskirt down and start checking for a text from Tyler. Got band Furrow into St. Pete. Want 2 more West Coast clubs.
I can do it, I text back swiftly. How is …
“Aubrey?” Squaring up in her seat, Elodie turns to me.
I hit Send without completing my thought. “What is going on?”
“Well, there’s privacy here. Unless the car is bugged.” She gives a dry laugh that makes her sound old or tired. “Most people are in the stores.”
“I mean, why come to shop at Hermès, then stay in the car?” I say. “I haven’t done this since that time in college when Daniel practically locked me in his Audi to announce he was dumping me. I was so upset that when I came home for Christmas break a day later, Mom and I sat in her car in the garage while I cried. Then she took me to the Avenue and we shopped at Eye of the Needle. Retail therapy.”
“Mom’s good at that.” Elodie sighs, blows the oxygen around our shared space. Two women walk by and tap at her door. She does a phony official wave, like she’s a minor politician and they are her constituency. For once she doesn’t explain, doesn’t say to me, “They’re on my board” or “They’re members of the Literary Society.”
“I have to ask you something.” Elodie holds out her left hand as if she’s about to touch my shoulder, then doesn’t.
“Sure, what’s up?” I’m still curious as to why we’re in the car, why her voice is this quiet.
“So we were wondering—I mean James was, mostly—if you could, you know, help us have our baby?” Elodie looks out the window, away from me.
Help us have our baby? For a second, I think she must be making a very bad joke. A joke so strange and perverse that I’m not sure I comprehend the meaning. Could it be that my sister, based on how demanding her life is in this kind of spoiled way, is on hallucinogenic drugs?
“What?” I say.
“I know it’s raving mad to ask you. I told James, but he came up with the idea.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Like I said, James, well, we want to know if you could assist us.”
“James? Wait, how? You don’t mean I’d have sex with … or a test-tube-type thing? Then they put the egg back into you? Or…”
Elodie turns toward me. “You know what? Never mind. I should never have asked you.”
“Well, you did. So try to explain.” I don’t know why I’m pushing her, yet I am.
“In a doctor’s office. James’s sperm, your egg.”
I almost say, I still don’t fucking get it. I don’t because Elodie looks like she’s a broken bird that has smashed up against a roof after flying in high winds. She survived but is no longer herself. The result is her request, which is unimaginable. How could this possibly be? Does she understand who I am? During the day I book the bands, I’m at the clubs at night, plenty of gigs go until four A.M. What about Tyler, who only this morning held me tight while showing me the partnership agreement. We floated around, swaying while “This Love,” by Maroon 5, blasted from the speakers. My any day/everyday life with Tyler.
Tyler and I talk about how lucky we are to be unencumbered. After a trip to the ASPCA two months ago, we realized we can’t care for a rescue dog. If we find out on a Tuesday morning that it’s Las Vegas by noon on Wednesday, we’re there. Tyler doesn’t seem remotely interested in having kids. Except his nephew, six-year-old Stefan, is the screen saver photo for his laptop. In the photograph, Stefan and Tyler are at an ice-skating rink in Portland. When they FaceTime, Tyler plays “Puff the Magic Dragon” and tells Stefan he loves him. That’s thousands of miles away and at best a yearly excursion.
Then there’s Elodie, my older sister, who tied my shoes until I was in third grade, gave me her dog-eared copy of Little Women for my tenth birthday, and took me bra shopping before it was necessary. Every adult move she made was impressive, light-years ahead. Today she can’t be pregnant, can’t have her own baby. Her desperate request proves how much she needs help.
“I know, it’s so much to ask,” Elodie says. “For you to fork over your body for my benefit.”
I sigh. “Elodie, I want to help. I wish I could. I’m not sure I’m the answer, a candidate. I’ve had lots of lovers. I’m a vegetarian, so who knows if I get enough protein. I’ve had two abortions, exposure to secondhand smoke, people smoking weed, music so loud at some venues that it could break the sound barrier.”
“You would be tested, vetted,” she says. “That’s not a problem.”
Vetted? What about Tyler? How does he fit into this? I doubt I could have sex; even if it’s allowed, it would flip me out utterly. I couldn’t sneak an occasional smoke, any booze whatsoeve
r, or pop a pill, lug equipment onto the check-in line, take long flights. Who would live this life while pregnant? Who would want to? Aren’t I one of those people who says she isn’t sure she ever wants children, that the world is a toxic place? There is the greenhouse effect, world leaders scare me, violence is too frequent, and gun control an issue. She would not want to hear any of my reasons.
A valet who works for the shopping plaza comes toward us; he’s young and obviously lifts weights. Checking that we are alive, since we’re sitting where few would. I flick my hand to discourage him from coming closer, kind of like our mother would do it. Both of us watch him back off, shrugging as he walks toward the other stores.
The car is closing in, suffocating. I hit the button to take down the window, then bang it because it isn’t working. Elodie shakes her head. “I’ve locked it. We have to keep it quiet.”
“I need to breathe.”
My sister lowers her window an inch, turns on the engine, pushes a few buttons. She’s almost whispering.
“Let me at least explain. You would carry our baby, be artificially inseminated.” She stops, stares at me. “I know. It’s outrageous, right—beyond terrifying?”
“I need air,” I say.
“Aubrey, listen.” Elodie opens my window an inch, too. I sit up in my seat to catch the breeze.
“I know, I’m worried someone might hear us. Like I said.” Elodie looks at the dashboard when she speaks, not at me. “At work I’ve been looking at these four-year-old children at Reading Hour. Sometimes I get to watch them for years; they move up, to different-age events. I have my favorites. This year there’s a little girl named Charlotte, who is four, and boy twins called Gabriel and Aaron, who are in first grade. I sometimes wish one or two were mine.”
“Please don’t, please,” I say. “You do see how confusing it seems. I mean, yours, mine, and James’s baby? You are lucky, you have a great life. I mean, in New York or in L.A., I don’t think everyone has to have a baby. Do you think this has to do with your friends, Mom and Mimi—with living here?”
A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel Page 5
