by Hope Lyda
“This is a suit—an expensive suit, Cecilia. And Marsha happens to be wearing a lovely floral wreath.” I glared at her miniskirt and wanted to yell, “Meanwhile you’re wearing fabric swatches.” But instead I smiled and lifted my hands, palms up.
“What?” She asked.
“I’m releasing you of my presence so that I can get back to Blaine.”
She looked at me intently, eyes narrowing to slits, and she retrieved the cigarette for a theatrical puff. “How’s that all going? You and Blaine?”
I headed for the door without responding. She didn’t deserve to say Blaine’s name, let alone ask about him.
“I want to see the package tonight. I’ll come by at eight.”
I headed straight to my cubicle and dialed home. The machine picked up. I’d warned Hudson to never answer. “It’s me. I have important things to discuss so I’ll be home by four. You mentioned writing new music, right? Just curious. We’ll talk. Don’t open the door for Tupperware salesmen, paperboys, or Girl Scouts, and don’t order in. I’ll bring dinner. Good job not answering the phone. Unless you’re out of the apartment, then bad job.” I hung up wishing he’d broken the phone rule so that I knew he was okay.
I juggled a large bag of fish-and-chips and used my shoulder to push open the stalled door of the bus. With Cecilia’s early return, I knew this would be one of the last nights I’d have a legitimate excuse to carry two orders of take-out food home. I slowed my steps. I’d miss having Hudson around, but there was also an underlying excitement about what might happen next. The smell of lemon wedges and malt vinegar was rejuvenating, and I was excited to tell him the truth and make things right. Cecilia would interrupt the evening to spin her lies, but otherwise this night would be about coming clean, helping Jude find his way out, and ensuring a more authentic life of my own.
As I crossed the street, I noticed Levi pacing at the western corner of the block. I was in a hurry to see Hudson, but Levi seemed troubled. He was also the key to my master plan. He was the only one who could arrange a meeting with Jude, Ray, and Trevor, set up a sound studio, and oversee an entire album recording in a week. I scrolled through that list again. Yes. It was good I was seeing Levi now.
I ventured right instead of left, maneuvering through a thicket of Seattleites waiting outside of Easy Street Records for a CD release. When Levi saw me break through the crowd, his pacing stopped and he motioned with his hands for me to hurry to his corner. I would have emphasized that I was the one carrying a greasy bag brimming with food, but he looked distraught, so I quickened my steps up the incline and arrived at the corner breathless and worried.
I handed Levi the food and bent over to catch my breath.
“Libby, there is no time.”
“No…time to breathe? It is required for living.”
“You can’t go in the front way. Jude said you’d be coming home about now. I’ve been watching for you so I could sneak you in the back.”
“There is no back.”
Without a word, Levi started along the sidewalk in racewalk mode.
“Don’t drop that bag. It’s a special meal. Jude and I don’t have many more nights to hang out.” I was rambling and ambling now. I looked around to be sure nobody heard my reference to Jude. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I have a lot to tell you, Levi. There’s no plan to save his career. My boss lied. But now I have a plan that requires your help and connections. I have faith we can pull off this plan before the deadline. There’s a deadline, that’s something else I need to tell you about.”
Levi stopped and turned back to look at me with worried eyes. “People know, Libby. We must hurry.”
I didn’t have to ask what they knew. And there was no time to find out how they knew. So I stopped talking, started jogging, and followed the old man and the seafood. We had walked two sides of the block and were nearing the main entrance street for the Regal Queen. “Unless you have a system of cables and pulleys, I don’t see how we’re getting in the back of the building, Levi.”
The little Pac-Man figure turned a sharp left and headed for the front door of my church. The church I meant to be mine, anyway. “What are you doing?” I yelled.
“It’s okay. This is my church.”
“You go here?”
Levi unlocked the door with a set of keys on a rope key chain. “I’m the pastor.”
I stopped in my tracks and mentally fell down.
“Come. Come,” he said and ushered me into the darkness of the sanctuary.
When he shut the front door behind us, the faint glow from strands of twinkle lights along the back wall illuminated worn wooden pews, mismatched runners, and a frayed friendliness. It was very comfortable and safe. What had I been afraid of?
Levi led me down the one aisle to the altar and then opened a narrow door on the left. He pulled a piece of string above our heads and a small lightbulb flickered on and cast our shadows against a white curtain. Levi pulled the curtain aside for me. “Watch your step. This is the baptistery and it might still be wet from earlier this week.”
“Do you know how many times I’ve almost come here?” I asked incredulously.
“Not for sure. But I’ve watched you wait outside many a-Sunday.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Now go through that door,” Levi instructed. “And, by the way, I recall inviting you to church.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know it was this church or that this church was your church. This door? I feel like Alice in Wonderland.” I opened yet another small door and a set of steep stairs filled my view.
“Flashlight to right, by foot.”
I reached out my hand and sure enough, there was small flashlight resting on the first stair. “I think I’d like your sermons. You are a man of precise words.”
The stairs creaked and complained as we made our way up to the opening. A sliver of light greeted us at the top. My eyes could make out angled walls and dark shapes. “You can take the lead now, Levi. This is a bit creepy. Where are we? I’m all turned around.”
“This is the Regal Queen attic. If I remember correctly, we walk about fifteen long strides to be directly over my apartment,” Levi whispered.
“Then what? We knock three times, Tony Orlando?”
Levi laughed. “As a matter of fact, we do.” The spry man counted out the steps on tiptoes, so I followed in the same manner. He did indeed knock three times on the apartment’s ceiling. Two feet ahead of him, a square yard of attic flooring dropped down and the sunlight traveling through Levi’s apartment below projected a funnel of light in the darkness of the dank attic. It looked like a scene from Poltergeist, which I knew only because Hudson had made me watch it twice during the past few days.
Levi handed down the food and then pulled me by the hand over to the hole in the floor. “Sit with your legs dangling down, reach to the other side, grab this ridge, and swing down into the room. They’ll get you.”
“They? You first.”
“Are you sure you’ll follow?”
“I didn’t leave a trail of bread crumbs, so I have no choice.”
“Okay. Watch me.” With ease Levi followed the instructions he had given me and a moment later the agile man was standing in his apartment, cheering me on.
I hesitated. Then Jude came in to view below. “I’ll get you, Libby.”
I closed my eyes and swung down. Jude grabbed me at my waist and let me down to the floor slowly. I opened my eyes and stared in to his. “Jude, I have so much to tell you. Things are not as they seem.”
“You’d better hear me out, Libby. I messed up everything. But first, I want you to meet my friends Trevor Lawson and Ray Stricter.” He turned me to face two thin but handsome men.
“Libby.” Trevor nodded.
“Hi, Libby.” Ray reached out to shake my hand, which was shaking on its own.
“Friends?”
Jude smiled. “Yeah. Thanks to Levi. You’d better sit down for this.”
&n
bsp; I willingly obliged and took a seat on the long, green couch. It looked like it belonged in a 1950s dentist office. Only then did I notice Newton tied to a chair by the hallway. He had on huge headphones. I could hear Frank Sinatra emanating from them.
“Newton!”
Newton started to open his mouth but Levi shushed him with one stern look. Newton closed his mouth and pouted. I kept staring at the captive and then at Levi.
“Libby,” Jude said as he sat down next to me, “I went against your rules.”
“Ya think?”
“The feeling that I needed to reconnect with Ray and Trevor turned into urgency. I just knew I had to come clean with them personally, without Cecilia. And then if they forgave me, we’d find a way to go on. If they didn’t forgive me, then whatever Cecilia has planned as my big reemergence into the public arena wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t consider doing that unless Ray and Trevor knew all about it.”
“Good instinct.”
“So after Cecilia called this morning to tell me she’d explain her plan tonight…”
“Cecilia called you?”
“Yeah. It was about an hour after you left and an hour before you called with your message. But by then I had already come over here, to Levi’s place. I knew that if anyone could locate Ray and Trevor behind the scenes, it would be Levi. I also knew he’d be willing to help us work through the situation.”
I nodded toward Newton.
“I’m getting to that part. Ray and Trevor came over here, not knowing that Levi had invited them so that they’d have to face me.”
“And no blood was shed?” I asked.
Ray spoke up, “I thought about it. We spent the first seven months of Jude’s disappearance sure that he’d gone off to do something stupid and dangerous. We were afraid we’d lost our friend. Then there were rumors of sightings and bits and pieces of information coming in to us that pushed us from worry to anger.”
“But we’ve had time to cool off. Ray and I have been working on our own projects. Heck, Ray even got married. The break’s been good for us. Jude’s gimmicks got the attention, but we were all out of control. Ask Levi. He had to save our hides over and over,” said Trevor in a surprisingly quiet, gentle voice.
“And drive us home from more than a few bars after last call.”
I nodded toward Newton again.
Jude sighed. “After the initial shock, it was like when we lived here before…we were just great buddies. Then Levi gets a call from John Meier.”
“That name sounds familiar.”
“He covers the local music scene for the paper and several online publications. Somehow, he’d received word that Ray and Trevor were seen entering the Regal Queen and that I might be here as well. John knew Levi lived here, so he immediately called and asked what was going on. Of course, Levi denied anything and everything, but the rumor still got out there, thanks to…” Jude pointed to Newton.
I followed the point and scowled at Newton. “Newton, you and your darn tabloids.” I returned my attention to Levi. “Actually, I was afraid he’d pick up on who Hudson was even sooner.”
Levi cleared his throat. “Newton mentioned Hudson looked like Jude one day when I picked up my mail, and I totally scoffed at that comparison to derail any further ideas. But when he saw Ray and Trevor walk into the lobby this morning, he was on the phone within minutes of their arrival.”
“So that crowd outside Easy Street?”
“That’s for us,” Ray pointed to Trevor and himself. “We have a scheduled appearance in…” he checked his watch, “half an hour. There’s also a group forming outside of the apartments in case the rumor about Jude is true.”
“What’s stopping them from coming up?” I asked, panicked.
“Levi called in four club bouncers who go to his Bible study.”
“There’s an image you don’t get every day,” I said and thought about it for a few seconds. “Call me crazy, but wouldn’t the sudden appearance of four large men be a pretty good clue that the rumor was right?”
“That’s where we’re stuck. We had to keep people away, but now we’re trapped up here and fueling the story all the more. How badly do you think I messed up Cecilia’s plan?” Jude asked with such sincerity that I regretted, yet again, ever believing that Cecilia was looking out for anyone but herself.
“I don’t suppose any of you three have a copy of your contract?” I asked.
The three bandmates simultaneously pulled out copies of the contract from their pockets and presented them to me for inspection.
“I’m impressed. So you know all about the timing?”
“Did you really think none of us knew our careers would be sealed in a week?”
I shrugged, my stereotype of musicians quickly deteriorating.
“That’s the main reason Ray and I agreed to be a part of the EMP event this weekend. We want to be visible during this contract dissolution. FreeTime might own us more than ever after this week, but our fans should know that we didn’t sell out completely. We got enough flak for our last album. If we disappear without a word, we’ve totally lost all chance for respect,” Trevor stated with passion.
“I’m the only sellout,” Jude said. “I couldn’t see a way out, so I just made one. This is all my doing. That’s why Cecilia’s offer to step in and help me undo the damage was perfect.”
Levi smacked his lips to express his aha moment. “Cecilia Mitchum?”
“Yes!” Jude and I said at the same time.
“I know Cecilia from way back. You’d better brace yourselves, boys. I’m guessing Libby’s news is not good news. Unless Cecilia had a dramatic conversion this decade?”
“No dramatic conversion,” I stated and headed into my pathetic confession.
Forty
“I’m not at all surprised Paulo and Cecilia are teamed up again. It’s perfect, really,” Levi said, scratching his chin. He was reminiscing.
“You know him too?” Jude asked, scratching his own chin as he watched Levi.
“The LA and Seattle music scenes were competitive but also linked by common promoters, investors, and legal counsel. I met Paulo at several events and Cecilia was always close by.”
“In what capacity?” This was getting most interesting.
“His assistant. But only in the beginning. Soon she built a name for herself in public relations. Paulo would represent affluent clients in court, usually get them off on a technicality, and then turn them over to Cecilia. She did reputation clean up for the executives who lived the high life but didn’t stand on moral high ground. When Jude told me a little bit about his encounter with a local PR pro, I didn’t even think of Cecilia.”
“He probably used misleading words like ‘kind’ and ‘helpful,’” I said. “Why did she leave that industry?”
“The last reputation she had to clean up was her own. She succumbed to the darker side of that high life and began a tour of rehab centers. That too was a very celebrity thing to do at the time. But Paulo didn’t like the burden of her problems, so they parted ways romantically. Cecilia needed a new life, so she got in on the ground floor with Ken Dunson. He was the PR ‘it’ kid back then and had a solid image for creativity with scruples. It was a great move for her, actually.”
I finished the story with my information. “But she fears losing her status in a company she helped build and along comes Paulo. She misses him and the status, and shifting to Paulo’s circle is a professionally acceptable way to exit Reed and Dunson. When she happened across Jude, she probably couldn’t believe her luck.”
“Do you really think, after all you know about her, that her encounter with Jude was accidental?” Levi asked.
Jude and I both looked at each other with opened mouths of pure astonishment.
“Really?” I hadn’t thought through a deeper level of deception. “Man, she’s good.”
“No, wait. How would she have known where I was?” Jude asked, reluctant to believe he had been sought out rather than disc
overed.
“Paulo has probably had you investigated and followed for months. All of you.”
“I need a bathroom,” Newton said with a wheeze.
Levi stood up from where he was seated by the kitchen table and walked over to grant Newton temporary freedom. He pointed down the hall and then positioned himself by the front door.
“Libby?” Jude asked in a rather quiet voice.
“What is it?”
“I really like Pandora.”
I smiled. He was so sincere. “You mean like, like?”
“I’m captivated by her. But she’s going to find out about all of this. And then the fact that we both kept this big secret while she’s working on her documentary and we said nothing…I knew after the first time she and I talked that I shouldn’t keep the secret from her, but I didn’t want to blow the plan. I’m still learning how to trust my instincts.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “I’d love to say this’ll all work out, but I don’t know anymore. Pan is stubborn and private and vulnerable. Her pride might overrule her heart.”
“Her heart? So you think she has feelings for me?”
I nodded.
Jude let out a big sigh of relief. “Well, then it’s worth risking her initial reaction if I think I stand the slightest chance of regaining her trust. After all, Trevor and Ray have been great about a much bigger deception.”
“Sorry to burst your Pollyanna bubble, but a musician slighted is nothing compared to a woman scorned.”
“I get your point. I’ve got to talk to her now. Can I use your phone?”
I handed it to him and then pulled it back. “You can’t tell her this on the phone. And if you bring her over, she’ll know everything that’s going on.”
“I want her to know everything. In fact, I think she should be able to film us. She could have an exclusive interview with me and the guys.” He turned to face the others and raised his voice. “Anyone care if I try to make good with the woman of my dreams by offering her an exclusive interview with us?”
Ray and Trevor looked at one another, shrugged, and smiled. “Go for it.”
