Famous (A Famous novel)

by Jenny Holiday

  “She can totally outrun him!” Emmy whispered, lower this time, right in his ear. Her mouth was so close that he could feel her breath. “Do you think we should offer to get her for him, so he doesn’t have to go up the steps?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Too emasculating.”

  He felt her nod, and realized they were both leaning forward in the swing, which had stopped moving, as if they were watching a cliff-hanger scene in a movie.

  A very slow-moving cliff-hanger scene.

  Eventually, JollyGent35 knocked, and shortly after that, Mrs. Johansen appeared. She extended her hand, as if to shake, but her suitor lifted the hand to his lips and kissed it.

  “Oooh,” Emmy whispered.

  “Romantic,” Evan whispered in return.

  “Maybe,” said Emmy, which caused Evan to turn to her with a questioning glance. She shrugged. “Could be romantic, could be a creepy overreach. Depends on context and, like, if there’s any insta-attraction.”

  Insta-attraction. Evan thought back to Emmy-the-bridesmaid. He had been so marked by the years that followed that wedding, as he worked to claw his way out of his father’s shadow. Those years loomed large in his mind. Or they had. But all of a sudden, it felt almost like they hadn’t happened at all, like he and Emmy had met on the roof in Miami yesterday, and today they were sitting on the porch on a fine Iowa evening. Like Emmy somehow had the power to contract time, to collapse all those years between their first meeting and this night so they felt like a barely-there filling in a sandwich made of thick slices of bread.

  “Should we say hello?” she said, startling him a bit. “Is it creepy that they don’t realize we’re watching them?”

  “I don’t know,” Evan said. “Not sure how to play it.”

  Their uncertainty kept them silent as the pair next door descended the steps.

  “I can seat myself,” Mrs. Johansen said curtly when Jollygent35 tried to open her car door for her.

  “Creepy overreach,” Emmy said, presumably firming up her stance on the earlier hand kiss.

  Evan had to agree. Mrs. Johansen’s tone had been annoyed. And though his neighbor was definitely feisty, and sometimes ornery, she had a big heart and always gave people the benefit of the doubt.

  He held his breath as the car pulled away. Emmy must have been doing the same, because she audibly exhaled when the car was twenty or so yards away. “I almost wonder if we should follow them!” she said, the sound of her voice at full volume jarring after all their furtive whispering.

  “I gave her my cell phone and showed her how to use it,” Evan said. All that innuendo and talk of psychopaths had made him nervous. He had wondered recently why he still bothered with a landline. He’d told himself that it would come in handy someday, which was probably an excuse designed to cover the fact that he had been too preoccupied with work to bother getting rid of it—the same reason the rest of his house was such a disaster zone. He had never imagined his landline “coming in handy” would take the form of waiting by the phone for his seventy-nine-year-old neighbor in case she needed to call in the cavalry.

  “You did?” Emmy’s eyes widened with surprise.

  “Yeah,” he said, turning his gaze back to the road where the car had been a moment ago. “She promised she would call my home line if she wanted me to come get her.”

  Feeling the pull of Emmy’s regard, he swung his attention back to her. She was still watching him, the surprise on her face having given way to a kind of quizzical thoughtfulness. But then, before his eyes, a smile blossomed, as slowly as the Tortoise Cadillac had approached. “You are a good man, Evan Winslow,” she declared, untucking a long, bare leg—she had been sitting cross-legged on the swing—and pushing her foot against the porch to start them moving again.

  You are a good man.

  The words sounded strange, like she was speaking a foreign language he was only partially fluent in, and his comprehension was delayed.

  But once the meaning of her words sank in, settling on him like an ill-fitting garment, he smiled. He was pretty sure no one had ever called him a good man.

  He didn’t hate it.

  They stayed on the porch for hours, waiting, as if by unspoken agreement, for Mrs. Johansen’s return.

  Emmy could almost feel something inside her chest loosening, something hard and coiled and heavy slowly expanding, like a dry sponge in water. She had gone inside for her guitar and was playing snippets of songs, the evening having evolved into a kind of musical blast from the past game as Evan called out song titles and Emmy played bits of them. Of course, he knew pretty much nothing from recent years, but he did turn out to have an affection for American jazz.

  “Damn, is there any song you don’t know?” he said as she wrapped up “Lullaby of Birdland.” He stretched his legs out and nodded up at the moon, which was almost full. “How about ‘Moon River’?”

  She laughed at the perfection of the request. There was a shimmery white full moon hanging in the sky like a giant ripe grapefruit, and the light streaming down from it did indeed call to mind a river.

  Emmy had never loved her voice. It was fine. It got the job done. But it didn’t have the deep, rich tone of some of the singers she most admired. More than one critic had harped on her lack of vocal chops. It had never really bothered her in the early days, because back then she’d thought of herself as a songwriter first. Her voice wasn’t incidental, but it wasn’t the most important thing. But lately, on the last tour especially, when she wasn’t playing any instruments, she’d become more self-conscious about it.

  Tonight, though, somehow her voice sounded…perfect. It was strong and even, if soft—you didn’t need to belt out a song like “Moon River” when you were sitting on a porch swing in the deepening twilight.

  But it was the song itself, too. It was cheesy, yes, but as the cicadas began their nightly chorus and the first stars started to pop out, it also felt…true. Like they really were setting out on a great adventure together.

  She cleared her throat and let her hand fall from her guitar. That was enough Name That Tune. Getting all moony—no pun intended—over a man and starting to associate songs with him was a well-trodden path for her, and not one she was going down anytime soon. Evan didn’t want her anyway, she reminded herself, letting the shock of him pulling away from her last night in the attic come back to her. She’d thought they were at the point of no return. She had been at the point of no return—she would have slept with him right then and there, thrown all her carefully crafted pledges about staying away from men out the window. The fact that he could simply disengage like that was a useful reminder of where she stood with him.

  Time for a new subject, and she really did have a question she wanted answered. “What about this tenure thing? You keep talking about it, but I don’t really get it. Tenure is one of those words you know, but you don’t really know what it means.”

  “It’s job security, essentially. In academia, you do a probationary period of five years. You have to amass enough research and get good teaching reviews to earn tenure. The idea is that tenure protects academic freedom. If you’re tenured, you can’t be fired for studying or saying something controversial.”

  “Like ‘the earth revolves around the sun’?” Emmy asked.

  “Exactly. Or, you know, that a certain drug doesn’t work. Obviously, nothing I’m doing is that important, but if you don’t get tenure, you’re essentially condemned to a lifetime of cobbling together poorly paying sessional teaching, and you can kiss your research ambitions goodbye.”

  “So it’s like your do-or-die moment,” Emmy said.

  “Yeah, and for me, with all that shit that went down with my father…well…” He fiddled with his empty beer bottle, picking at the edge of the label. “I had to start over with my life.”

  She got it. He had built this life from scratch, and he didn’t want to lose it. She wouldn’t either if she were him. There were rivers of moonlight in Dane, Iowa, for heaven’s sake.<
br />
  She did, however, think he was going too far by drawing such a distinct line between his old life and his new life as it related to his own painting, but she’d learned her lesson on arguing with him. “So what actually happens?” she asked. “Is there some formula, and if you meet it, they award you tenure?”

  “I wish it was that objective. It’s done slightly differently at different schools, but at Dane College, a committee is assembled to rule on your case. The members look at your tenure file, which is a dossier you put together detailing all your accomplishments, and they commission reports from peers at other institutions—that’s like an objective outside voice weighing in. But ultimately your fate is in their hands. They get to decide if you’ve done enough. My file is due at the end of the summer, which is why I’ve been working so much, and they’ll make their decision early in the new year.”

  “Wow, okay. So time to start delivering casseroles to the committee members?”

  Evan huffed a bitter laugh as he let his head fall back on the top of the swing. “Again, I wish.”

  “So, what? Have you not done enough?”

  He shook his head, still looking at the ceiling of the porch. “I have worked my ass off. I have lived and breathed that college and my research. I have done impeccable work.”

  Emmy wasn’t surprised. Hence the unhung art, the unrenovated, falling-down house. He was pouring everything into his job. “Why so fatalistic, then? What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that the chair of my committee, who is also the chair of my department, is out to get me.”

  Emmy wanted to ask why. It was hard to imagine anyone having it in for Professor Winslow. As far as she could see, he was the full package. His students obviously adored him, if Kaylee—not to mention the carload of oglers—had been any indication.

  But she didn’t have enough time to muster an argument because the Tortoise Cadillac chose that moment to appear at the top of the street.

  “Our girl is back,” Evan said, looking at his watch. “Almost nine thirty. It must have gone well.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Emmy said as Mrs. Johansen opened her door and stepped away from the car before JollyGent could make his way around to the passenger side to help her. As her date approached, she extended her hand for him to shake, a clear signal if ever there was one.

  “Son of a bitch,” Evan said, standing as JollyGent ignored Mrs. Johansen’s body language and moved in for a kiss. Then he called, “Hello!” His tone was forced and the volume overly loud, but his greeting had the intended effect of drawing their attention. Emmy watched as he jogged down the steps and across the lawns, then stuck his hand out so aggressively that there was no way JollyGent could ignore it. “Evan Winslow,” he said. Then he puffed up his chest like a cartoon Chip or Dale facing down a predator. “Neighbor,” he added, his lip curling as if he had actually said, “Assassin.”

  “Well,” said JollyGent, clearing his throat as he shook Evan’s hand, “it’s been a lovely evening, Midori.”

  Mrs. Johansen’s given name on the lips of her unwelcome suitor sounded strange. If Evan, her close friend and neighbor, called her “Mrs. Johansen,” Emmy didn’t think this dude should be using her first name.

  “Perhaps we can make a second date for tomorrow night.”

  “I’m not available tomorrow night,” Mrs. Johansen said, and the fact that she hadn’t couched her refusal in any sort of apology or excuse told Emmy all she needed to know.

  “Saturday, then,” said JollyGent. It was a statement and not a question, which riled Emmy. She stood, too, though she wasn’t sure why, given that since she was still on Evan’s porch, no one noticed her gesture.

  “I’m not available Saturday, either,” Mrs. Johansen said, taking a step back even as JollyGent took a step forward.

  “I have that cup of tea waiting for you, Mrs. Johansen,” Evan said, stressing the formal address as if he, too, had heard and disapproved of her suitor’s familiarity. Without waiting for a response from either of them, he moved to stand between them and took Mrs. Johansen’s elbow. “Goodnight,” he said in a short, clipped tone, not even bothering to look at JollyGent as he dismissed him.

  Dang, he was sexy when he was all bossy and protective like that.

  “What a loser,” Mrs. Johansen said, taking Evan’s arm as the Tortoise Cadillac pulled away.

  He led her across the lawns up the porch stairs and to a wicker chair, it being more steady than the swing, Emmy supposed. But when he sat next to his neighbor in the matching chair, Emmy had to suppress a ping of disappointment as she returned to the swing by herself. “What happened?” she asked.

  “JollyGent happened,” Mrs. Johansen retorted. “He talked about himself nonstop. Initially, I tried to actually hold a two-way conversation, to get a word in, but eventually I surrendered. I stopped asking questions or even really responding. It didn’t seem to make any difference. It was like I was a prop. I’d rather have been at home listening to NPR. Even though Ira Glass doesn’t respond to anything I say, I learn something.”

  “Ah,” said Emmy, hit with a flare of vicarious annoyance. “I know the type. Did he try to order for you?”

  “Yes!” she said. “And he lives two towns over, so if anyone should have been ordering for anyone at Wanda’s, it should have been me for him!”

  “What did he order?”

  “Does it matter?” Evan asked. “Isn’t the fact that he did it to begin with gross enough?”

  “Yes,” said Emmy. “It’s more than enough. But it does matter what he ordered. It will tell you a lot.”

  “What will it tell you?” Evan asked, clearly perplexed. “Are there degrees of entitled douchiness?”

  “Yes.” Emmy was something of an expert on degrees of douchiness, in fact. “Like, if he ordered her filet mignon, that’s one thing—”

  “Wanda’s doesn’t have filet mignon,” Evan said.

  Emmy ignored him. “But if he ordered her, like, the broiled sole, then he is utterly irredeemable.”

  “He ordered the garden salad with grilled chicken,” Mrs. Johansen said.

  “Oh my God!” Emmy said, punching the air in a fit of rage. “I cannot even.”

  “But I overrode him. I told the waitress—it was Wanda’s niece Chloe, so it’s not like she didn’t know I didn’t want the garden salad—that I’d have a burger and fries.”

  “Yesssss!” Emmy exclaimed, jumping up and getting into position to give Mrs. Johansen a high five before she realized she was probably a little too invested in the outcome of this date than was seemly. It was just that she was so tired of shitty, entitled men, and it was somehow extra aggravating to find that they were everywhere. She could tell herself that her sample, based as it was in Hollywood and the music industry, was skewed. But to learn that not only was chivalry dead among twentysomething Hollywood insiders, it was also dead among elderly Midwesterners, well…it made her want to punch something besides the air. Or write a revenge song.

  Actually, a revenge song that wasn’t about her life…that wasn’t a bad idea. The garden salad could be in it. She got that happy-jumpy feeling that always signaled the beginning of a good song. It was kind of astonishing how easily ideas were coming to her here.

  Evan cleared his throat, and Emmy realized she was still standing there like an idiot, crouched in front of Mrs. Johansen with her hand out like a stop sign while she plotted her musical revenge by proxy.

  But as she was about to retreat in embarrassment, Mrs. Johansen high-fived her back and looked around at the scene unfolding on the porch—at the abandoned guitar and the empty beer bottles. “I think I’ll have that tea now, Evan,” she said, causing her host to jump to his feet to do her bidding. “Except make mine beer.”

  Chapter Eight

  Stage fright was a real thing. Emmy had learned to manage it over the years, to harness it, even—a little adrenaline could make for a better performance. And these days, it was nowhere near as bad as it had be
en earlier in her career. She’d shaken like a leaf before her first gig at First Avenue, the “it” club in Minneapolis, which, at the time, had seemed the pinnacle of achievement. She didn’t get that scared anymore.

  Or at least she’d thought she didn’t.

  Turned out facing a room full of teenagers was pretty freaking scary.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” she said as Evan pulled his car into Dane’s community center. What had she been thinking agreeing to his proposal that she help him with the arts program for kids he ran once a week?

  Well, she knew what she’d been thinking. It was like the cooking and the art-hanging. She wanted to be helpful and accommodating—to earn her keep, so to speak.

  And when he’d explained that a couple of the kids weren’t interested in visual arts, and he was having trouble reaching them? And when he’d suggested that music might be just the thing, especially to help a kid named Jace who kept coming but never spoke and seemed like he had no support system and was at risk of flunking out of school?

  Of course she had crumpled like a piece of sheet music in his hands.

  But now she was wishing she’d been made of something stronger than paper. “I’m afraid they’re going to know who I am,” she said, jogging after him as he headed for the front door without acknowledging her little freak-out.

  “We’ve been over this,” he countered, when she caught up with him. “You look nothing like your famous persona.” He was so adamant she almost wondered if she should be offended.

  She was dressed in more of the clothing she’d bought on her trip to buy hair dye. She’d grabbed a handful of really big shirts on that trip, rationalizing that their size and, well, frumpiness, made them a far cry from her usual wardrobe. Still, she was vain enough that she didn’t want him to think she was outright ugly.

  “You know I’m the last person who wants you to be discovered,” Evan went on. “But people see what they expect to see. No one expects to see Emerson Quinn in Dane, Iowa.”