Famous (A Famous novel)

by Jenny Holiday

  He was cursed with a painter’s eye. He saw things other people didn’t. He was never going to get over not painting her.

  “What’s your last name?” he asked, thinking, irrationally, that if he knew it, he could somehow find her later. Put a bookmark in this meeting and come back to it, even though he knew that he was going to have to draw a sharp line between what he was already starting to think of as his “old” life and whatever was going to come next.

  “I’m moving to Los Angeles in two months,” she said.

  “So it’s Emmy I’mMovingToLosAngelesInTwoMonths?” He couldn’t help teasing. “That must have been a mouthful when you were a kid.”

  “No.” She laughed. “I’m moving in two months, and I’m going to change my name when I do, I think. I haven’t decided to what. So it’s just Emmy for now.”

  Ah, so he wasn’t the only one on the verge of reinventing himself. Perhaps that’s why he felt this strangely, strongly compelled by her. They were of a kind. “If that’s how you’re going to be, I won’t tell you my last name, either.” She likely already knew it, but she hadn’t brought it up, so he wouldn’t either.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Let’s just be Emmy and Evan. E and E.” She took another swig of the champagne. “Like e.e. cummings.”

  “I will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers,” he said. He wasn’t sure how his brain had produced that obscure line, but he knew now how he would have painted her.

  She’d been looking at the skyline, but the cummings snippet snagged her attention, and she turned, eyes suddenly glazed with moisture.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m a songwriter,” she said. “Or at least I’m trying to be.”

  Ah. The impending move to L.A., the name change—the pieces were coming together.

  “Sometimes when I hear a line like that, it makes me despair of ever writing anything worthwhile,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Don’t despair. You can do it.”

  “How do you know? You don’t even know me.”

  He shrugged. She had intelligent eyes that looked intently at the world. That’s what storytellers needed. That’s probably what he had seen in her, why he had picked her out from the row of identical puffy pink dresses. “I have a feeling you’re going to make it.”

  “You’re the only one who thinks so,” she whispered.

  “I have a good eye,” he said, struck with the urge to reassure her. “I see things other people don’t.” He turned so they were side by side, both facing the now rapidly darkening city—which was why he didn’t have any warning when she leaned over, grabbed his cheeks, and kissed him.

  Her lips were soft, and pressed so lightly against his it almost tickled. His first instinct was to push her away, because what could come of it? They were both headed for new lives, both making a break with the present.

  But he couldn’t make himself do it. What was so wrong with kissing a pretty girl on a rooftop? It was the perfect coda, actually, to his Miami life. So he surrendered, letting his whole body relax into the soft hunger of their kiss, forcing himself to attend to every nuance of the experience, to savor the bittersweet finale, as if he could file it away somehow, and take it out and examine it again later, like he would a memento from his past.

  And, oh, he hadn’t felt this alive for months. It was like she was filling him with energy he thought had been drained permanently by the police raids, the meetings with lawyers and PR people, the endless court proceedings. He sipped at her lips, letting his hands frame her face, wanting to anchor her there forever. As he deepened the kiss, testing the seam of her lips, she opened for him, but there was a tentativeness there, a hesitation.

  It was like she didn’t really know what she was doing.

  The rogue thought entered his mind as her tongue slid along his, ripping an involuntary groan from his throat as he gently pushed her away.

  “How old are you?” God, how could he have missed that? Hadn’t he just been bragging about how good he was at seeing things?

  Her brow furrowed. “Does it matter?” She was flushed, her pupils dilated, her breath short.

  She was gorgeous.

  It didn’t matter how old she was, not in any elemental way. But it did matter here on this roof, in the clumsy corporeal world. It meant the difference between continuing this spectacular goodbye-to-his-old-life kiss and not continuing it.

  “Tell me.”

  She pulled back and scooted farther away from him on the bench, confirming his fears even before she spoke. “I’m nineteen.”

  Right. It might be perfectly clear that this was merely a casual kiss, but he wasn’t going to be that guy. He eyed the nearly empty champagne bottle on the ground at their feet. That was all he needed—the story of Evan Winslow, Jr. getting a nineteen-year-old drunk and seducing her.

  So much for enjoying his bittersweet Miami coda.

  “How old are you?” she countered, a challenge in her voice.

  “Twenty-six.”

  “That’s not so bad,” she said.

  “Not so bad for what?” He was teasing her, but only because teasing was all he could do now. “You’re right,” he said. “A seven-year age difference is not bad at all for sitting on the roof talking about everything under the sun until someone notices we’re gone and sends out a search party.” He patted the seat beside him, shrugged out of his suit jacket, and held it out to her.

  He wasn’t a total saint, though. He liked the disappointment that washed across the striking angular face he wanted to paint so badly his fingers ached.

  “Talking,” she said, pouting a little but sliding back over to sit next to him and letting him slip the jacket over her shoulders.

  “Talking,” he confirmed, emphasizing the word for himself as much as for her.

  “Okay, uh, what’s your favorite TV show?”

  “I don’t really watch TV.” He didn’t tell her that he didn’t even own one. Or that the glimpses of his family’s sordid drama that he’d caught on CNN at his brother’s house had been enough to reinforce his desire to never get one.

  “Last concert you saw?”

  He thought—hard—and came up with nothing. He had been to a few shows on the last cruise he took with his parents. His mother dragged Evan and his brother and their father on an annual luxury cruise and made them dress for dinner and generally fulfill her fantasy of the perfect Ralph Lauren family. But probably cruise ship bands playing Neil Diamond covers weren’t what Emmy had in mind. “I’m not really one for live music,” he finally said.

  “Okaaay,” she said, screwing up her face like she was trying to think of a new topic.

  “It’s no good,” he said laughingly. “I’m completely pop-culturally illiterate.”

  “How come you don’t paint anymore?”

  Whoa. If her previous questions had been rubber-tipped darts that pinged easily off their targets, this one was a razor-sharp axe that sliced right through him.

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” he said, which was the absolute truth, even if it didn’t answer her question.

  “Okay,” she said, and he was surprised that she was going to accept his evasive answer. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to upend his life after all. Maybe he could get used to being not-a-painter. “So what should we talk about?”

  “You. We should talk about you.” She was the most compelling person he’d met in a long time. And she was the only person he’d met recently who hadn’t said a word about his father. “I want to know everything there is to know about you, Emmy NoLastName. Tell me about moving to L.A. Sing me a song.” He turned to face her head-on. He would listen to her for as long as he could get away with it. He would listen and watch. Then he would say goodbye.

  To her, and to himself.

  Chapter Two

  Seven years later.

  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  How many of Emerson’s misadventures in the past few year
s could be summed up that way?

  She eyed the graceful Victorian as her assistant Tony slowed to a stop. With its overgrown garden, giant shade trees, and huge wraparound porch—complete with swing—it looked like a postcard from Anne of Green Gables Land. Like a place where a catalog family would pose for their Christmas card picture in front of an adorably lopsided snowman.

  In other words, something out of another world. As far from her life in L.A. as it was possible to get.

  Which, she reminded herself, was exactly the point.

  This time it will be different.

  Except, yeah, she always said that. And it never was. But to cut herself some slack, when she said that, she was usually talking about a boy. And those days were done for a while—a good long while. No matter how much her romantic misadventures seemed to translate into hit songs that made her managers swoon as the tabloids speculated over which ex-boyfriend could be matched with which song, she wasn’t going there anymore. This was the beginning of a new era. Emerson Quinn: single, independent, mistress of her own emotional and creative destiny.

  There was also the part where the person inside the postcard house was most decidedly not a boy.

  He was a man. Just not a man who was going to have any sway over her.

  “I still don’t like this, Em,” Tony said. “They’re going to find you. You busted out, yeah, but you can’t hide indefinitely.”

  Emerson pivoted to face her longtime assistant. Despite his tendency toward melodrama, she adored him. Hell, as her first manager, he’d been the only person in the world who’d looked at the gangly teenager and seen past the combat boots and false bravado. Who’d listened to her demo and heard something bigger than the Neko Case wannabe who hadn’t quite mastered the Garage Band app on her Mac.

  And when she’d insisted she was going to be a singer-songwriter despite the fact that her parents had vowed to disown her over it, Tony had shrugged and said, “Well, why the hell not? Someone gets to do it.”

  More importantly, Tony was the only person in the world she could really, truly trust.

  “They’re my managers, Tony, not the Mafia. Don’t be so sensationalistic. I wasn’t in prison.” No, it was just a hotel suite, fully stocked with snacks, keyboards, and middle-aged Swedish songwriter dudes who were inexplicably talented at churning out pop songs designed to capture the inner life of the modern American twentysomething.

  It felt like prison, though.

  Okay, now she was being melodramatic. It was just that the last tour had only finished two weeks ago, and she was done with hotel rooms.

  She simply needed…a break. People did it all the time. That it was an unscheduled one that would throw a wrench into the well-oiled machinery that was the Emerson Quinn hit machine? Well, she was choosing to make that not her problem for a while.

  But she was faking all her bravado. Tears prickled behind her eyeballs. She pressed her lips together and forced them back. Emerson was not a crier. Emmy used to cry; Emerson did not. “I’m just taking a little vacation, Tony,” she said. “Catching my breath.”

  “And you couldn’t catch your breath in, say, New York? London? Or even back in Minneapolis? You know, somewhere with civilization? Lattes. Newspapers. Homosexuals.” His lip curled. “From what I can tell, all this place has is corn.”

  “You heard Song 58,” she said. Song 58 was the temporary title of a tune she and a co-writer had banged out yesterday at the Beverly Wilshire, thus named because it was her prolific co-writer’s fifty-eighth song of the year. The guy was a machine, and he was currently on loan to her.

  “Yes,” he said. “It was…”

  She knew what he meant. Song 58 was fine. It was good, even. With some work in the studio, it could be totally catchy. It just wasn’t…

  Ugh. She didn’t even have words for what was wrong with her right now. All she could think to say was, “I’m not writing the next album in that hotel room, Tony.” Goddamn it, her voice had hitched a little. And I’m not writing it with them at all. But she didn’t tell Tony that part. That part was a half-baked notion pricking at the edge of her consciousness, the idea that she could…drop out and come back a couple months later with an entire album in hand. She didn’t dare voice that out loud.

  “So let me tell Brian and Claudia you’re taking a well-earned vacation, and you don’t have to go anywhere at all. You can hide away at home in your PJs. Just you and the Hollywood Hills. I’ll have food delivered daily.”

  They’d been over this and over this on the flight. “You know that wouldn’t work. As much as you think you can just call them and…” She didn’t have the heart to tell him that he didn’t have a say in the matter; that whatever credit he deserved for discovering Emerson, managing her career for those critical early years, he didn’t get a vote anymore.

  “I know, sweetie. I know.” That was the thing about Tony—he heard what she left unsaid.

  The hint of sadness in his eyes was a punch to the gut. They both knew that, theoretically, he could suggest that her managers Brian and Claudia send the co-writer away and leave writing the next album for later. Or she could suggest the same thing. Insist, even—she was the “artist,” after all.

  But they wouldn’t listen. Not for long, anyway. They never did. She and Tony had made their devil’s bargain when they’d decided her career needed the power of a big creative management company behind it and left Minneapolis for California, and now there was no escaping.

  Except maybe in Dane, Iowa, population 14,581. And, according to the town’s Wikipedia entry, half of those were college students.

  “I get it. But Em, you don’t even know this guy.” Tony nodded at the falling-down Victorian. “And now you’re going to hole up in his house? What is this? Notting Hill?”

  She did know Evan Winslow, though. It might be irrational. It might have been one night seven years ago. It might have been one night seven years ago in which nothing happened. But she knew him. And he knew her in a way that went beyond the brand. Hell, he was possibly the only person on the planet who hadn’t heard of the brand.

  And he’d offered to help. Let me know if I can ever do anything for you, he’d said as they’d parted ways after their night on the roof in Miami. He was the only other person in the world, besides Tony, who had ever done that. Who had believed in her.

  Of course, the offer hadn’t been serious. It was one of those things people said but didn’t mean. He hadn’t even told her his last name. She’d known it, of course, as everyone had, but officially, he’d kept it from her.

  But she’d never forgotten those words: Let me know if I can ever do anything for you. The phrase had become a mantra during her impulsive flight from the Beverly Wilshire, a lifeline.

  And today she was here to call in her chips.

  So she hoisted her purse and flashed Tony a smile that belied the fluttering in her belly as she got out of the car. “Pop the trunk, and I’ll get my stuff.”

  “At least let me come in and meet him,” Tony said, ignoring her instruction and hopping out to retrieve her suitcase himself.

  Slinging her guitar over her shoulder, she tried to take the handle of her bag, but he wouldn’t surrender it. “You’re my assistant, Tony, not my father. I’m twenty-six, for God’s sake. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “I know.” He rolled his eyes. “Do I ever know—it was a hell of a lot easier when you were a kid.”

  “Easier, maybe, but platinum records pay several orders of magnitude better than First Avenue,” she said, naming the Minneapolis club where, with Tony’s help, she’d broken into the local music scene, paving the way for their move to L.A. and her first major-label deal.

  He laid his hand on her arm. Tony wasn’t the affectionate type. If he didn’t knock it off, she really was going to cry. And that was not happening.

  “I just think it’s a little sketchy that this guy you met once seven years ago has agreed to let you stay here.”

  Emerson didn’t bother telling
him that Evan had not agreed to any such thing. That he didn’t know she was coming. That he might not even remember her.

  Because if she told Tony any of that, she’d be on the first plane back to Los Angeles, and by nightfall, she’d be ensconced in her hotel suite, the lock clicking into place on her gilded cage like thunder in her ears.

  Before he could object again, she air-kissed him, yanked her suitcase from his grip, and rolled it up the cute-as-a-button cobblestone path that led to Evan Winslow’s front door.

  And crossed her fingers and rang the doorbell.

  The doorbell rang.

  Perfect. Nine midterms down, twenty-eight more to go, and what Evan really needed right now was Mrs. Johansen on his porch bearing yet another casserole destined to join the growing collection in his freezer. What on earth had possessed him to agree to teach a summer course?

  The answer, of course, was Larry. The chair of the art history department at Dane College had the power to make or break Evan’s tenure bid in September—and since he’d made it clear he was currently leaning toward “break,” Evan needed to ingratiate himself as much as possible, to be a good citizen of the department. If teaching Intro to Renaissance Art to thirty-seven undergrads in Dane College’s questionably air-conditioned humanities building during the summer term was what it took to lock down his peaceful, hard-won Iowa life, he would expound upon the wonders of the Sistine Chapel until he and his students were blue in the face.

  Besides, Michelangelo rocked.

  It was important to remember that in addition to being optimally located in the middle of nowhere, his job at Dane College was a pretty sweet gig. Much better than he’d ever imagined all those years ago when he’d stepped in front of the cameras after his father was sentenced to thirty years and panicked as a CNN reporter asked him, “How does it feel to have lost everything?”