The Rock Star in Seat 3A

by Jill Kargman

  “Fuck the hotel, come to my house?” he said, almost imploring me. “I want to have a sleepover.”

  I laughed. “I’m picturing my Iris and her friends in their Mini Boden pajamas and SpongeBob sleeping bags,” I said. “But, okay. Only if you have Paul Newman’s popcorn.”

  “I think we can rustle some up,” he said, winking as we drove. The lights of Los Angeles melted into neon streams as my eyes viewed the world as if intoxicated. I’d only had a glass or two of wine, but I felt as if I were drugged on the narcotic of Finn’s embrace, the hallucinatory nature of my experience difficult to reconcile with reality as the car sped higher into the hills and his hand seemed to squeeze mine harder with each hairpin turn upward.

  “Here we are,” he said, pulling into the most magnificent house. It was the definition of my taste—creepy almost, old Hollywood, but understated without the douche bag grandeur one might’ve imagined. This wasn’t Entourage, it was pure Finn Schiller, just what I would have pictured for him. He walked around and took my hand, helping me out as we walked up to the ivy-covered exterior, where he punched in a long code and the door opened.

  Inside, a modern interior accented with some antique mahogany pieces of furniture lent a cool air to an already impressive domicile. Finn crossed the room and opened a bottle of whiskey and uncorked a red wine for me and led me upstairs. His room was overlooking the whole city with a deck outside. I sipped my wine, and he put his drink down on the ledge and kissed me. I tasted the whiskey in his mouth, and it turned me on even more as we made out like teens outside among the glittering lights below. We staggered back to his enormous ebony four-poster bed fit for a king, or at least Billboard chart-topper, and fell onto it, rolling over each other in a delicious mélange of fevered breaths broken by smiles and kisses. We made love again, and this time, even though it was just in a bed like everyone else, it possessed all the magic of our splendor in the grass, it could have been the moon hanging above us versus the canopy, and it felt just the same. I arched my back as I felt him inside me, as a climax beckoned in the distance.

  “Don’t stop,” I begged.

  “Hazel . . .” He felt so wildly amazing I couldn’t believe this was real, and we finally both collapsed into the tightest full-body hug I’ve ever known. I looked at his face and I felt tears well up.

  “Are you okay, sweet girl?” he asked, a look of concern flashing across his brow.

  “Yes, yes,” I assured him. “I’m just so happy.”

  I hope that didn’t freak him out, but it was true. It was a feeling of euphoria I couldn’t have fathomed possible.

  “Me, too,” he replied, touching my hair. “I’m crazy about you.”

  “Me, too. Just smitten,” I said, leaning in to kiss him.

  He put his arm around me and tapped his shoulder. “Put your head here,” he instructed as I happily obliged.

  “You know, I never ever can sleep intertwined with someone, but in this moment, I feel like I could pass out,” I confessed.

  “Really? You never sleep tangled up?” he marveled. I was surprised by his reaction, given the probable scores of girls he’s bedded, and I hardly envisioned someone snuggling with a one-nighter.

  “No, I love a cuddle, but then I like to roll over and have my own space. But not now—” I quickly added. “I like it here, on you.”

  I felt a beat of sadness recalling my morning Velcro-fests with Wylie, the only man I’d ever really loved to cuddle.

  “Well, good sweet girl,” he said, kissing my forehead tenderly. “You have a big day tomorrow. Sleep as long as you can.”

  My eyelids grew heavy until somewhere, for the first time in my life, I drifted off sleeping in someone’s arms. The arms of Finn Schiller, no less. My last conscious image against the movie screens of my closed eyelids was his face.

  Chapter 27

  Dreams are not without meaning wherever they may come from—from fantasy, from the elements, or from other inspiration.

  —Paracelsus

  “Where are you?” Clarissa barked. “I’m in the lobby of your hotel and buzzed up three times!”

  “Oh, uh—I fucked up. I’m at the hair place. Meet me at the event space in an hour.”

  “Okay,” she said, sounding not okay, but since I was paying her, she was sucking it up.

  “Sorry—see you in a bit.”

  I put my phone back in the jacket pocket I’d fumbled toward on the floor and found myself naked, looking at the vast blue skies outside Finn’s room. I looked around and pieced together my passion-strewn wardrobe, finally discovering my other heel behind enormous drapes that flanked the picture windows. I went into the coffee-colored marble bathroom (noticing the extreme shower with six nozzles on either side and a huge elephant-style head on top), borrowed some mouthwash and a hairbrush, and walked downstairs.

  Finn was dressed at the table with a feast prepared by Sly, who greeted me with a nod.

  “Hazel, do you like chocolate chips in your pancakes?” Finn asked as he poured a second glass of orange juice.

  “Um, yeah! Who doesn’t?”

  I sat down and wasn’t sure how to be in front of Sly. But before I could even open my mouth to interact, Finn leaned in and gave me a kiss. All my nerves of potential awkwardness subsided, and I felt so close to him. He reached across the table and took my hand in his and squeezed it, and I swear in doing so he scavenged several heartbeats. I was obsessed.

  “I have to go down to the space for some press and the load-in,” I said, wishing I could just stay there with him all day. “Is there any way I could call a cab?”

  “Absolutely not, I’m taking you,” Finn said.

  “No, no, no—it’s across town,” I said, gesturing to the distant skyline of downtown L.A.

  “I’d love it. It’s close to my meeting anyway,” he said.

  We finished breakfast, and Sly cleared our plates with a knowing look and even a small smile in my direction as Finn took my hand, kissed it, and led me out to the garage. I was stunned to find six cars—all black—lined up. He picked the Aston Martin, and we hopped in.

  “Oooh, this is so James Bondian,” I swooned. “I’m really not a hot cars girl, I live in New York, but I know a fabulous one when I see it,” I said.

  He leaned in and kissed me as we pulled away from the house, which was even more stunning in the sunlight. He put on the radio, and I was elated to hear The The blaring, one of my favorites.

  “Fuck, I’m so behind on the next record,” he lamented. “I used to get so much writing done on the tours. Now it’s just impossible.”

  “You don’t write on the road anymore?”

  “No. You know, the bigger the tours got, the more people surrounding me kissing my ass . . . it’s hard to dig deep and get gritty when there are all these fucking sycophants. Last time I got shit done and it wasn’t until I came home and decompressed that I could do a thing. I was in an old decaying synagogue where we set up a makeshift studio and really stripped it all down.”

  “I read you’d recorded in a funeral home, too—”

  “Yeah, that was a really dark album. I was so out of it with drugs and just so down on the world. People. Relationships were dissolving around me, and I was just so disenchanted with fucking everyone.”

  “When did that spell end?” I probed.

  “It hadn’t . . . I mean, on and off, sure, but, not really until I met you. The morning of our flight I was in a fucking shittyass mood and tore Steve a new asshole for overscheduling me with bullshit shows I swore I’d never do, and just, felt so depressed.”

  “You’ve gone through so much, Finn. Have you ever tried a shrink? It might help—”

  “I did. I tried. Cocksucker wanted to dig so deep into my childhood and asked a trillion questions about infancy and all this crap. I was just like, dude, fucking make me feel better NOW. My head was splitting from pain. I never dealt with lots of grief I had, and I just thought I was a grenade ready to be tossed.”

  “.
. . you pulled the pin on my grenade of a life,” I sang, from his song “Thrown.”

  “You got it.” He put his hand on my leg and looked at me. I looked at his worn hand on the steering wheel, his leather sleeve covering his wrist. He was so sexy I couldn’t stand it. He embodied the intoxicating blend of toughness with such an emotional undercurrent.

  “It was a rough, miserable time,” he continued. “But look, I got my best work out of it.”

  We swerved across two lanes to the exit and headed down the street into the downtown area and pulled up to the space, where already huge trucks blocked off the street. Clarissa had secured all the permits for us, and the lighting people, caterers, and music folk were all already unloading into the raw space.

  “Full-scale operation you have cooking here.” Finn smiled, observing the chaos.

  “Yup. I don’t mess around!”

  “Come here, precious girl.”

  I leaned in and kissed him before zipping out to face the whirlwind of prebash chaos.

  “See you at eightish?” I asked.

  “I can’t wait, little witch.”

  Chapter 28

  Fantasy allows you to bend the world and the situation to more clearly focus on the moral aspects of what’s happening. In fantasy you can distill life down to the essence of your story.

  —Terry Goodkind

  It was time. I’d run around like a decapitated chicken for four hours, overseeing Clarissa’s staff of cuties with headsets and clipboards and six-inch stilettos with fuck-me red bottoms. The dimmers were set, the music began to fill the cavernous space. The dark purple gels glowed through the loft, and as the base boomed, gorgeous male-model cater-waiters began offering hors d’oeuvres to the early guests, who were mostly staffers from my office.

  “Holy shit, Hazel, you BROUGHT IT!” my coworker Christopher screamed from across the massive dance floor. John gave me a thumbs-up by the bar as he chatted up a peroxided nincompoop, and I spied Noah drinking it all in. Shots included.

  Noah hung up his cell as I walk toward him and Sergei, who raised a glass of purple Pimp’s Punch in my direction.

  “My god, girl,” Noah marveled, engulfing me in a bear hug. “Promotion. Raise. Whatever you want, Hazel, this is SICK,” he said, looking up at the dizzying collage of colored strobes. “Hey, where were you?”

  “Oh, I was changing in the back. I stashed my party dress and heels in my bag. Didn’t think you wanted me to show up in the jeans-and-bun look I’ve been sporting this afternoon.”

  “So, Haze, he’ll be there? Our landlord for the evening?” Noah asked, eyes ablaze.

  “Yup. Just texted with him.”

  “You text with Finn Schiller?” Christopher asked. “Get out.”

  I had, in fact, just texted with him. He said he missed me. Kira asked me to send pics, so I’d walked around snapping away, e-mailing her a little photo essay of “before” photos.

  In minutes it would be after.

  A flurry of guests checked their cars at the valet, passed my gaggle of name checkers, and brushed by velvet rope–opening huge security guards and made for one of the four bars.

  “So many hot chicks here.” Noah drooled. “This place is a total smokeshow!”

  I tried not to gloat. I knew that my boss truly just wanted a hot crowd and tons of press. Check and check. The place was packed within the first forty-five minutes, but all I could do was crane my neck for Finn.

  I was walking Noah through an interview line with Extra when I felt arms around me.

  I had been behind the camera, watching the bimbo interviewer ask Noah about his “vision” for the game and the world he was creating, when Finn’s serpentine arms wrapped their way around my waist as I shivered. The leather pushed through the thin material of my dress, and I was instantly electrified. I kept focus on Noah, who was happily chatting away as Finn’s lips dotted the back of my neck.

  Suddenly there was a lull in the rapid-fire Q & A fest that had been bantering in the background. Noah’s jaw was practically on the floor looking at us.

  “Uh—”

  “So it’s an edgier, darker world this time?” the girl asked as Noah tried to snap back into focus.

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s the underbelly, really, what lingers in the shadows of this milieu . . .”

  I had taken Finn’s hand and led him away and could almost feel Noah’s neck stretching, like something out of Beetlejuice, to see where we were going. We charged through the crowds, past the dancers on blocks, past the bartenders, through to the back, beyond the kitchen, and into a back area where I’d stashed all my stuff.

  Against the dirty windows he pressed himself against me, the same locale where we’d first cooked up the air between us with chaste exchanges. But this time we could have steamed up all the glass in the warehouse with those kisses. The throbbing bass from the DJ muted, as if we were making out underwater, isolated in our own ecosystem of raging desire uncorked from the memory of our previous encounter.

  “How much longer do you have to stay?” he asked, looking at his vintage tank watch.

  “Zero minutes,” I said. I’d delivered. I knew I was golden and could parachute out.

  We took off, speeding down the hills and onto Sunset as I turned from my window back to Finn. He was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at him. I was so thoroughly exhilarated I felt tipsy. Then, before I could even think straight, I blurted the unthinkable.

  “Finn . . .”

  “Yes, sweet girl—”

  “Finn, this is crazy. I am so wild about you, this has to be more than some kind of infatuation.”

  He looked at me, his ice blue eyes misty. “I know, I feel the same way.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hazel, I was actually thinking . . . will you come on my tour with me? To Europe?”

  Um . . . that was better than any invitation I’d ever gotten. “Really?” I beamed.

  “Really. I’d love it.”

  “Okay . . . yes!”

  I lunged across the console and threw my arms around him and kissed the whole side of his face nonstop as he laughed.

  He pulled over to the side of the road and we could not stop kissing. I ran my hands through his hair and when we finally broke apart his smile matched mine and I thought I would die of happiness. We held hands the rest of the trip, and when we pulled into his driveway, I reached for the door handle and he stopped me, grabbing me and practically throwing me into the backseat. He took my hand and put it on his jeans, so I could feel how hard he was, which ignited a thousand wicks inside my body. Our collective mercury would’ve lit the Tylenol alarms as our scalding bodies found each other and we sighed as our skin met again. His ardor turned me on even more as he gently turned me over and took me from behind. I was lying on his backseat as my hands reached up the door as he pushed inside me. I screamed as he moved from slower to fast and slow again, as I took him in and literally started to see stars. His hands held my waist, then my breasts, then stroked my back as I heard my name grow from a whisper to a yelled HAZEL as he collapsed on top of me. When I felt him I shivered into a full-body climax that shook my core and made me dizzy.

  “Babe, that was incredible,” he said.

  I felt him squeeze me as the side of his face rested on my back. I closed my eyes and savored the bliss of that heap of spent limbs and the echo of each other’s names in the night air.

  I turned around and he grabbed me so hard I thought he’d wring the very oxygen from my lungs and we gripped each other as if we could never let go.

  After our pants slowed to regular inhalations, we kissed once more.

  He looked at me and moved the hair from my face as he gently put a hand on each of my cheeks. “Let’s go make some popcorn.”

  Chapter 29

  The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than the real. It is by the real that we exist and by the ideal that we live.

  —Victor Hugo

  I awoke the next morning and lay there starin
g at him, pinching myself and also wondering if he really meant it about the tour. How did I follow up? What if we wound up together? Would I wind up living here with him, being Mrs. Finn Schiller? Would I have little rock star babies who traveled on a tour bus? Okay, Hazel . . . you’re getting ahead of yourself. God, we’d have cute kids. And every name goes with Schiller practically. He must be ready, I mean, he was in his forties!

  His eyes opened. He reached over and leaned in to kiss me.

  “Wait—don’t—” I stammered.

  “Why?”

  “I have a really bad case of the zacklies,” I confessed sheepishly.

  “What are the zacklies?” he asked.

  “I haven’t brushed my teeth yet. It’s when your breath smells zackly like your ass.”

  He laughed. “I don’t care.”

  “No, I do. This is still too new. I have to go Scopeify.”

  I ran to the bathroom and chugged some mouthwash and came back to find him crunching a wint-o-green Lifesaver.

  “Those glow in the dark, you know.”

  “They do not.”

  “Yeah, if you crunch it in the dark, there’s green sparky things.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I took his hand and led him naked into his enormous walk-in closet lined with identical leather jackets and black jeans.

  I closed the door behind us so it was pitch-black and stood him in front of the full-length mirror.

  “Okay, chew.”

  He crunched away, and sure enough, bright green flashes shone from his pie hole, like flickers of a light-up stick or a lightning bug.

  “No fucking way,” he said.

  “Didn’t you ever go to sleepaway camp?” I joked.