Far Too Tempting

by Lauren Blakely

  I take my dad’s car to the airport, picking up Matthew at his hotel. Ethan elected to stay behind and help Grandpa build a boat. I call Haley from my cell phone.

  “Is that studio of yours booked for the weekend?”

  Matthew pops a CD into the car stereo. I spy a handwritten white label on the front of the CD that says, “Pink Floyd, Hamburg, 1972.” I give Matthew a thumbs-up for his music selection, figuring it must be a copy on one of those bootlegs his dad traded for when Matthew was a kid.

  “Not this weekend. Have someone in mind for me?” Haley asks.

  “Why don’t you break out that red Les Paul you were feeling up yesterday and put a CLOSED sign on the shop? We have some tracks to cut!”

  …

  I feel like I’m in a garage band again. It’s like I’m back in high school recording “Sweet Summer Mine.” ’Cause it’s me and Owen in a tiny little studio in our hometown that’s nothing like the one we’re used to in New York. This one barely has any padding on the walls. The equipment is old, scratchy, rough around the edges. The soundboard could use some WD-40 and the microphone smells a little musty.

  But none of that matters because we’re making music. The three of us hole up in his studio, Haley playing lead guitar, delighting in placing the RECORDING IN SESSION sign on the door of the studio. Being the dutiful small-business owner, he would never just shut his store for the weekend. His youngest daughter Camille is home for the weekend, so she’s manning the front.

  Oh, and Matthew’s here too, taking notes furiously the whole time. He is writing an article, after all. And, I have to admit, it’s a pretty good story when the singer in question bangs her head against a brick wall for two months, flees her New York studio, runs off to Maine, and finally realizes she doesn’t have to write from pain anymore. She can find inspiration elsewhere. Maybe even—what a crazy thought—from happiness.

  We continue on like that all weekend—Friday, Saturday, and into Sunday, starting early, playing all day, giving Haley enough time to make the Tommy curtain. Then Owen, Matthew, and I stay until the midnight hour, replenishing our caffeine supplies every few hours at the AM/PM a block away. Ethan spends the entire weekend with his grandparents, telling me Sunday afternoon that they want him to read The Hobbit next, so they can carry on with their intergeneration ad-hoc book club.

  I bid adieu to Haley, thanking him for his studio, for his time, and most of all, for his wisdom. Then Owen and I head back to the house, have a final meal with my parents—trout that Ethan and my dad caught off the boat and salad my mom made for me—and then head to the airport to catch a late flight to New York. Matthew caught an afternoon flight, since he had to finish up his regular weekly column that’s due tomorrow.

  “I’m sad that we’re leaving, Mom,” Ethan says, not bothering to stifle a massive yawn as he lays his head on my shoulder after we have settled into our seats. “Can we do that every weekend?”

  “Maybe not every weekend, but we can definitely do it again.” I pet Ethan’s hair and he’s sound asleep before the plane even leaves the ground.

  I turn to Owen, who has a rough cut of our weekend jam session in a flash drive in his carry-on. “Not bad for a weekend.”

  “Epic. It’s epic.” Owen adds a yawn of his own, the fatigue of the brainstorm setting in for him too. He reaches into his bag under the seat. “Here’s something for you.” He hands me his eReader, clicked open. “Figured you can finally read my book.”

  “It’s about time.” I glance at the cover page on the screen—Tell Me A Ghost Story by Owen Michael Stanchcomb. “Ooh, you’re using your formal name. You poser.”

  “You Mariah Carey wannabe.”

  “You dick-lit writer.”

  “I’m Jane Black and this is my Grammy and holy shit,” he mimics me in a high-pitched, girlie voice.

  “Fine. You win.”

  “Good.” He closes his eyes and tilts his chair back. “Don’t forget I won the bragging rights too. I finished my novel first. And you also owe my monkey a lifetime supply of food.”

  I won’t forget either. Nor do I mind in the least paying up. But for now, I have a book to read.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Please, Please Me and With the Beatles in sixty-three, A Hard Day’s Night and Beatles for Sale in sixty-four, Help! and Rubber Soul in sixty-five, Revolver in sixty-six, Sgt. Pepper’s and Magical Mystery Tour in sixty-seven, The White Album in sixty-eight, Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road in sixty-nine, and Let it Be in seventy.”

  I stare at Jeremy, who’s looking a little perplexed sitting behind his desk. He’s not used to anyone giving it right back at him in the name and date department.

  I raise my arms high in the air, making a V for victory. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, may I present Jane Black. She follows up Crushed one year later with—” I pause for effect, hearing the drum roll in my head “Lucky Deck.”

  I slap the flash drive with the album Owen and I made onto Jeremy’s desk and plop down into the chair across from my biggest champion, tattoo artist turned record impresario, Jeremy Battenbrock.

  But before he can speak, I quickly add, “And a thousand ‘I’m sorry’s to you, my friend. I was petulant. I was childish. I behaved abysmally.”

  He waves a hand in the air. “First, I’m used to musicians and their little temper tantrums.” He points a finger at me, chiding and loving at the same time. “Yours was nothing, my friend. Stories I could tell you… Second, let’s fire this bad boy up.” He pops the flash drive into his computer and opens the file.

  There’s a glint of wild, childlike glee in his eyes as he hits the play button. This is why he put his inker down and turned the tattoo parlor over to his brother. For that moment when you first hear a band, a singer, a song you love.

  I sit back and listen as his office fills with the songs my brother and I recorded when I returned from Maine. Jeremy’s already heard “Mixed Messages,” “Don’t Ask,” and my rendition of “Physical.” Now his office fills with new songs.

  “Lucky Deck” bats first, an upbeat tune with a fast guitar sound, then next is “I’ll Objectify You.” It’s slow, moody, sexy—the kind of song you’d sing to a lover. The song that first broke though. The song that woke me up the night I couldn’t break up with Matthew.

  “The way you speak to me, the way you look at me, the way you touch me, I’ll objectify you, I’ll objectify you, I’ll objectify you…”

  Then there’s “Breakdown,” and it’s sexy and romantic. “I want to break down your resistance. I want to drive you wild. I want to make you fall.”

  After that comes “The Girl and The Ghost,” a bluesy tune, Ella Fitzgerald style, about two lovers who can’t touch each other. “Nothing but air, but smoke, but faint outlines of you.”

  Next is “Honey Kissed,” a little bit faster, a little bit fun, with a throaty, sexy vocal style to it. “Honey kissed, sun ripened for you, summer cherries, warm fruit for two…”

  We move on to “If I Were a Scientist,” a smooth, sweet romantic song about how we don’t have a clue why we fall in love. “If I were a scientist, I would know what this was, if I were a scientist, I could dissect love.”

  Up next is “Feels Like Desire,” a pure down and dirty song, with lots of slow beats, inspired by Matthew asking me to narrate in the dressing room at the club. “Feels like rising, filling, swimming, floating, falling, flying, going… Feels like desire, on and on and over again, feels like desire, on and on and over again.”

  Then there’s the last one, my favorite through and through. It’s a simple love song, that’s all it is, called “Tell Me the Snow.” I like this one best.

  Tell me the snow is falling

  Tell me the rain is pounding

  Tell me the sun is beating down

  Tell me the snow is falling

  Tell me the rain is pounding

  Tell me the sun is beating down

  Tell me everything and nothing all the night

  Jerem
y lets the song finish before he opens his eyes. He’s contemplating, considering, letting the music wash over him. I, however, am leaning forward in my chair, antsy for his reaction. He untips his chair, sitting straight up now. I can tell he wants a cigar. He loves to smoke and make pronouncements. Instead, he rumbles, “I signed a new band last weekend. Saw them down at Mercury Lounge after your Knitting Factory show. Their name is Deception Vacation. Good name, isn’t it?”

  I nod. “Yes, it’s a great name.”

  “I booked them into the studio today. I kept it free for you all last week, in case you decided to grace us with your presence again. And you know what? I’m kicking ’em out this afternoon. And you are going to get in that studio tomorrow and finish this baby!”

  He stands up and ambles around the desk to wrap me in a bear hug. “They were just dicking around anyway. They won’t be ready to record for another month.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to miss your deadline,” I say. Then I look him straight in the eyes. “You really like it?”

  “I always believed in you, Black. I knew you could do it.”

  I squeeze him back hard. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”

  I leave Jeremy’s office and walk across town back to my apartment, still humming my new songs. I like to believe they came to me in a rainstorm, in a blizzard, in a moment of insane, unmitigated fertility. But really, they were there all along, for the last two months, lying fallow in my head, waiting for me to get out of my own way. The bits and pieces of life that have become the foundation for my fifth album. Life that’s gone on around me, not only pain, not only heartbreak.

  The beat to “I’ll Objectify You” rolls through my mind and I remember the first time I sang it all the way through just a few days ago in Maine. There in Haley’s tiny little studio, I held the microphone tight between my hands and started singing about Matthew. As I did, his pen slowly stopped moving across the page. He looked up at me when he realized that his hands, his voice, all of him, had become a muse for me. As I hit the refrain, his eyes were on me, those dark blue eyes, eyes the color of my parents’ lake under a clear sky, held me tight. He kept listening, watching, seeing right through me as I rolled right into “Tell Me The Snow.”

  We both knew in that moment—with certainty, with confidence, without any question—that so many of these new songs did not come from a broken heart, but from one that was filling up.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I clear my throat and adopt a British accent. I hold the latest copy of Beat magazine in front of me. The waiter at The Tavern, a neighborhood bar on the Upper East Side, has just brought our drinks. This is the third time we’ve been out as a foursome in the last three months and I like Taryn quite a bit. I never met the infamous Kacea so I don’t know how the two compare, other than favorably for Taryn because she’s S-I-N-G-L-E. But Taryn’s also quite pretty, with straight and neat, light brown hair, green eyes, and a trim figure. And she’s funny, witty, and totally taken with Owen.

  “Ahem,” I begin, holding up my index finger in the air and assuming a rather proper tone of voice. “Editor’s Note: During the course of reporting this article, Beat journalist Matthew Harrigan began dating Jane Black. The two are still together.”

  I lower the magazine. “God, it’s so adult, isn’t it? It’s almost like when they say ‘The role of Dr. Marcus Larrington will be played today by John Smith.’”

  “Just read,” Owen commands. I catch Matthew’s eyes across the table, slip my foot from its flip-flop and covertly rub my toes against his bare leg. I still get a wicked thrill out of having someone to play footsie with. It’s July, my album just came out four days ago and it’s hot as hell in New York City, so we’re all wearing shorts and sandals tonight.

  I read more. “Creativity is a funny thing. Some days you have it, some days you don’t.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Owen chimes in, sharing a knowing smile with Taryn. Both have suffered through writer’s block.

  I give my younger brother a pointed look. “Can we have a little quiet from the peanut gallery?”

  He shakes his head. “Not likely.”

  I soldier on, raising my voice, but still maintaining the same faux English accent I used when I read all seven Harry Potter books to Ethan.

  “Creativity is not a nine-to-five proposition, as indie rock singer and Grammy-winner Jane Black learned while crafting her newly released follow-up, Lucky Deck. Imagination, ingenuity, inventiveness—”

  “Were you having a love affair with your thesaurus when you wrote that sentence?” Owen interrupts to ask Matthew.

  Matthew lifts his glass. “You know it, mate.”

  Taryn elbows Owen. “Hey there, sport. I’ve seen you curled up with yours, clutching it in your sleep.”

  “The truth comes out,” Matthew interjects.

  “Okay, kids. Does anyone actually want to hear Matthew’s article?”

  Matthew jacks his hand high up in the air. “Other reporters’ articles get old. But mine I can read over and over.”

  Owen laughs. “Didn’t we live it?”

  I push through, picking up where I left off. “Imagination, ingenuity, and inventiveness are capricious. They come in waves and you have to know when yours is coming in.”

  “Have you ever even gone surfing?” Owen asks.

  Matthew shakes his head. “Nope and it’s not like you’re from California, so don’t tell me you have either,” Matthew fires back. Owen holds his hands up, knowing he’s been caught red-handed.

  “That is the mark of the artist. They have heightened senses and know when that wave is breaking. Rather than let it pass by, they catch it and ride that sucker all the way to the shore.”

  I turn to Matthew and mouth “nice.” I return to the magazine. “The story of Lucky Deck, whose first single ‘I’ll Objectify You’ hit No. 1 on iTunes, began in a state-of-the-art recording studio in the heart of the garment district when the notoriously late Jane Black actually arrived on time, but with only three songs ready to go.”

  I read the rest of the article out loud. The article is pure Matthew—accurate, witty, clever, and full of rich details that make the reader feel as if he or she was there. He brings readers behind the scenes as he promised, detailing my writer’s block, and finally how I pulled it off in the end and learned that I didn’t have to be a sad-song writer, that I could do more than that.

  When I finish, I offer a toast. “To Oz behind the curtain.”

  “To inspiration,” Matthew adds.

  “To the two of you for getting agents.” I point my beer at Taryn and Owen.

  “To being the writer and to being the written,” Taryn adds.

  “To my divorce being final!” I add.

  Matthew lifts his glass and clinks mine. “Thank God I’m no longer her mistress. I’m on the up and up now.”

  I push away, whipping out a pair of twenties and leaving them on the table. “Drinks are on me. I have a poker game to go to.”

  I lean down to kiss Matthew on the cheek. “I’ll see you later,” I tell him. Then I say good-bye to Taryn and Owen and walk the few blocks to Kelly’s apartment.

  My divorce was final two weeks ago. We both signed the paperwork without drama or fanfare, just two simple signatures. Then a hug, and a “good luck” from both of us to the other. We get along. We have a great kid.

  I did decide to use the publicist Natalie found for me. Life has been busier and she helps immensely. She and Natalie get along swimmingly, which really helps, since Natalie is officially my manager now. My sister can find time for anything, so she simply found a way to shoehorn this into her day too. Besides, she was, for all intents and purposes, my manager for the last year anyway. Now she gets paid for it, though she insists she’s not doing it for the money, so she donates the entire check every month to environmental charities.

  As for Owen, Alicia is his agent. She fell in love with Tell Me a Ghost Story, though she did suggest he change the title to T
he Ghost in the Museum. She submitted the manuscript to publishers two months ago and he received a few rejections, but she believes it’s only a matter of time before someone falls in love with it. I do too.

  After we returned from Maine I told Matthew that if he wanted to write the book on the music industry, I would be fine with it. I trusted him with whatever he wanted to write. It’s a good feeling to trust someone, to let yourself trust someone. But Matthew said he wasn’t interested in the book.

  “Fact is, I’m just not that wild about non-fiction, as you know. I spend all day writing real stories. And at night, the last thing I want to do is get into bed with Sony or Universal Music Group, know what I mean? I don’t read nonfiction at night, why would I want to write it?” he said. “Besides, if I wanted to write, I’d write a novel…maybe something about a rock star who falls for this devilishly handsome critic and then tries to dispatch him to no avail.”

  As has become my custom, I swatted him with a pillow.

  …

  “The morning sex only lasted for a few weeks,” Gretchen announces, as she collects a pile of $1 chips from the table, having just won the latest round of Texas Hold ’Em.

  “Wait, is this the morning sex you were having a year and a half ago?” Natalie asks Gretchen.

  “Yeah,” Gretchen admits, then leans across the table, a little tipsier than the rest of us, tapping Natalie’s hand. “Well, what about you, Cab Sex Girl? C’mon, give us your latest tale.”

  “No more cab incidents. But we did do it in the kitchen last week.” Natalie pretends to look sheepish, but I can tell she’s secretly proud.

  “Remind me not to eat at your house anytime soon,” Kelly jokes.