by L. Philips
I shake my head, even though Parker can’t see me. “That’s not necessary, Parker. Thank you.”
Tess opens my door, a stack of papers that look a whole lot like contracts in her hands.
I click the intercom off and motion to the chair across from me at the desk. Tess sits daintily, her lips pursed. She nods to my piles. “Decided on your guitarist yet?”
“Yes. Nate Grisheimer.”
Tess throws back her head and makes a loud, frustrated sound, not unlike a dragon roar. “Cameron.”
“No, I haven’t,” I say with my own noise of frustration. “What am I supposed to do? Go with someone who isn’t absolutely perfect for this, even when perfection is an option?”
“You have a very loose definition of the term ‘option,’” Tess says.
“He might be. We won’t know that until we try.”
Tess bites her lip, then leans forward, putting her hand over mine. “Can I say something and you promise you won’t get pissed?”
“What?”
“Promise.”
I roll my eyes. “I promise I won’t get pissed.”
Tess squeezes my hand. “He ran away from you when you told him your name. He completely went off the map when the whole world was searching for him on your behalf. Even the tabloids have noticed he doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“I’m looking for your point, Tess.”
“That is my point,” she says. “And I’m trying to say it as delicately as I can here. Even though it probably has everything to do with his dad and ours, and nothing to do with you, he really doesn’t want to be near you, let alone work for you.”
“You’re right,” I say. “It has nothing to do with me. If he knew me, if he knew what I want to do—”
“He would absolutely want to work for you and probably fall madly in love with you while he’s at it,” Tess finishes for me. “But he doesn’t want to know you, Cam. And can you blame him for that?”
No, I can’t blame him for that. I’m just having trouble accepting it.
I jerk a shoulder. “I’ll choose someone.”
“Good.” Her smile is haughty. “I booked studio time for you in two weeks.”
Then Tess moves my piles to clear a space for the one in her hands, and she’s off and talking about Luke and the Jacket Zippers and I nod along, not really listening. All I can think about is the lyrics I need to write and the ones I’ve already written that are just crying out to be set to the music Nate could write.
Tess talks for a few minutes, then she’s done, gathering her papers, and I’m eternally grateful someone is up for running the show while I’m in the Land of Make-Believe.
“Hey, Tess,” I say before I can stop myself. She’s halfway out of my office and turns around, cocking her head at me. “Is there any reason why Mick Grisheimer’s old recordings wouldn’t be in our archives?”
Her perfectly plucked eyebrows knit together. “No. Are you sure they aren’t?”
“Parker couldn’t pull them up. And he couldn’t find anything about selling them, either.”
“That’s odd,” she says, still concerned. Then she says, “But, Cameron . . .”
“I’ll let it go, I promise. I was just curious.”
She nods, gives me a sad smile, then turns and leaves. Once I’m 100 percent positive she’s out of earshot, I hit the button on my phone again.
“Hey, Parker?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Can you do me another favor?”
“Really, sir. This is what I get paid to do.”
“Right. I need you to call someone and tell him he needs to come in for a second audition. And by all means, do not tell my sister.”
Nate
The Tank rolls up to the curb, and Victor and I both take in the unsightly building to our right.
“You’re sure this is the place?” Vic asks, and I can’t tell if he’s squinting at the sun reflecting off the dirty, cracked windows of the warehouse, or if that look is merely disgust.
“This is where it was before.”
“You sure it’s an actual record company? I mean, they did promise to pay at some point, right?”
“I’m telling you. I really think it’s for someone they think is going to be huge, so they’re trying to keep it hush-hush,” I say, trying to convince myself right along with Victor.
Victor still looks dubious. “Okay, well . . .” He shrugs. “Call when you’re done. I’m going to go track down some food. I think there’s an In-N-Out a couple blocks from here. And hit the emergency button on your phone if they start talking about kidneys and the black market. Especially if there’s a bathtub full of ice in there.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Uh-huh. See you after school, sweetie. Love you!” Vic calls in falsetto as I climb out of the Tank. I blow him a kiss as he pulls away, then tug the strap of my gig bag up on my shoulder. As I open the warehouse door, I whistle “I Have Confidence” from The Sound of Music.
I take the same path that I took a couple of days ago, remembering vividly the same smells of musty air, rusted metal, and the suggestion of ink or some mild chemical. Two flights up concrete stairs and I tug open the door at the top, the painted lettering on its frosted glass peeling off so that only the DEPART is left from whatever department it was supposed to signify long ago. The vast room beyond is devoid of any furniture, save for a few rolled-up rugs in one corner and a cracked faux-leather desk chair. There’s a smaller room off to one side, its painted lettering stating OFFICE, the windows too frosted or maybe too grimy to see if someone is inside it. As far as I can tell, it appears I’m alone in the building, and it’s eerie as hell.
I turn in a circle, not sure if I should call out like an idiot or just give up and text Victor to come back. After all, the whole thing is just weird. He might be right about the kidneys.
Just as I’m about to take my phone out and do just that, the door to the office opens with a creak.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I think I might be early,” I say. “I was afraid I’d get lost again, and my friend Victor drives like a bat out of . . .”
The man, or boy, I should say, who steps out of the office is Richard Cameron Pierce Jr.
Maybe I should be scared that he’s tracked me down. Maybe I should give some serious thought to the fact that I’m in a creepy old warehouse alone with him. Maybe all of this should freak me the hell out. But honestly, it just pisses me off.
“I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. I thought peasants were the ones who did the stalking, not celebrities.”
“Okay, first of all, I deserve that. I know what this looks like, but you actually came to me this time, and second, I’m sorry, Nate. I really am. I had no idea that tweeting one stupid picture was going to cause so much trouble.”
My anger moves up a couple of degrees on the scale from Minor Annoyance to Blind Rage. “Okay then . . . first of all, really? Tess is, like, one of the most famous people on the planet right now. I had to leave town. And you had no idea it would cause trouble? What is that? Is it some kind of celebrity privilege to be that oblivious to how reality works?”
Richard Cameron Pierce Jr. actually flinches at that. I continue. “Second, what the flying hell do you mean by I ‘came to you this time’?”
“It was an open audition. Anyone could have come. It’s not like the ad read, ‘Nate Grisheimer only.’”
I have to give him that. Anyone could have come.
“But now? The second round?” I wave my arms around at the emptiness of the room. “Going to tell me this isn’t a setup?”
Cameron’s lips twitch. “Wow. A little attention from the tabloids and suddenly everything is about you, huh?”
I fume. I also feel some embarrassment coloring my cheeks. I try to shove it aside. “Then what is this about?”r />
“It’s about a second audition.”
“Huh. And where are the others? The other guitarists who made it to the second round?”
“If you take the job, Nate, I don’t need to audition any others. You were the best.”
I laugh. The humorless sound fills the warehouse. “Now I know you’re lying. God, I should file for a restraining order.”
“Why would you think I’m lying about you being the best?” Cameron fires back. “You were great. And not just the playing. Your songwriting was spectacular. Surely you know that. I mean, it’s in your blood.”
At the mention of my father, my anger goes beyond Blind Rage and off the scale entirely. “Don’t you dare mention my dad. You know nothing about him.”
Cameron nods. “You’re right. I didn’t know him. All my information is secondhand, but I was told by people who would know that he was good. That’s all.”
I don’t believe for one hot second that’s all Cameron has heard about my father. That can’t be all he knows.
Cameron takes a step toward me, and I take one back. His cocky demeanor cracks a little, shoulders slumping. “I know you’re right for this job, Nate. You might be the only one who is.”
Then, and sadly, it dawns on me what this job is, or more importantly, who would be the boss of the whole operation.
I shake my head. “No. There’s no way I’d work for a Paradise artist. If I had known Luke Miles was a Paradise artist, I would have walked out on the audition.”
“Luke Miles?” Cameron says, and clearly my guess was wrong. He snorts. “No. This gig is for me. A guitarist for me. And songwriting credits.”
The second those absurd words come out of his mouth, I wish I could turn on my heel and stomp out of there like the most diva-ish of all divas. But I can’t. I’m too shocked to move.
Cameron continues with his absurdity. “I have lyrics. That’s not the problem. I’m looking for someone who can help me turn them into music and then play for me on the demo, and any gigs I’d do for promotion.”
“Wait a minute,” I say, and I must still be in shock because I should not be asking questions; I should be out the door. “The lyrics from the other day . . . were those yours?”
Cameron nods, and my whole world goes sideways. It’s like in that movie Amadeus, a favorite of mine as a child, when Salieri realizes that the genius behind the greatest classical music of all time is nothing more than an immature, crass brat in a ridiculous wig.
Cameron is going on, talking about his plans and the recording schedule, and I’m still immobile. Until he starts talking about money, and it’s my utter disgust that he thinks a dollar figure will sway me that snaps me out of it.
“There is no way in hell I’m going to work for you.”
“I wouldn’t blame you for that, but hear me out.”
“Wouldn’t blame me?” I laugh. The hollow sound bounces off the grimy glass around us. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through in the last decade? It’s not just losing my dad, it’s losing my whole life. Moving in with a stepmom I barely know, trying to hide from the nosy people and nosy media, practically begging people to help me learn guitar when it should have been my dad the whole time, teaching me. Do you have any clue, Richard?”
“I . . .” Cameron stops himself and shakes his head. “Please, call me Cameron. Richard is my father, and I promise you, I’m not my father. And you’re right, I don’t have any clue. Not really. I have a little experience hiding from attention, but that’s it. I don’t know what you’ve gone through. I’ve never lost anyone like that.”
“That’s right. Your father is still here, sucking blood and money out of people with real talent while mine’s in a box, six feet under.”
I’m on the verge of tears and vaguely aware that what I just said might be the kind of hurtful that you can’t ever take back, but I’m so damned angry that I can’t bring myself to care.
I also can’t bring myself to stop. “And you’re so clueless you actually want me to work for you on your little vanity project. It must be nice to sit up there, high on your hill, completely oblivious to the struggle of real people. Of real musicians.”
Cameron doesn’t defend his father, or himself, but something about him has changed. He doesn’t look like a young, confident John F. Kennedy now. He doesn’t look like a celebrity. He just looks like a kid, a kid about my age, who seems a little sad and a little lost and a whole lot hurt.
Instead, he says, “You’re probably the best guitarist out there right now. At least in our age bracket. I mean that.”
Flattery. That’s probably all he knows. Flattery and money and fame. He’s like all of Hollywood, compressed into a horribly unaware package.
“Find yourself the second best, then, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to work for you.”
I yank my gig bag onto my shoulder and stalk toward the door. I don’t turn around. I don’t look back. I know I did the right thing. I just can’t figure out why every step takes so much effort, like I’m a magnet pointed the wrong way.
Chapter Eleven
Cameron
The door slams after him, and I sink to the floor. It’s cold and dusty, and the bright sunlight trying like hell to come through the warehouse’s dirty windows seems strangely appropriate. I don’t know how long I sit there in silence, thinking, but I do know that the sun’s angle has changed considerably when I notice it next.
It’s hard to not be wanted. I have to admit, it’s a feeling I’m not used to, and I hope I don’t have to experience it much again. Usually, people always want me around. Or, at the very least, they want a Pierce around. Parties, events, shows, relationships . . . I hardly ever hear a “No, thanks” when I reveal an interest. Usually I have to turn down celebrations, possible dates, offers that are hard to ignore.
Nate is hardly usual. To some, most of the time the wrong “some,” the Pierce name is like wine. To others it’s more like poison. And to Nate, it’s definitely poison.
But the real sting of it is that Nate might be right about me being oblivious on my high hill. I play at music like a kid, scribbling lyrics incessantly and fumbling them into music at a piano, crudely at best. My only real vocal experience is high school choir and singing in the shower or whenever no one’s around. I haven’t taken a single voice lesson in my life, other than trying to learn some things on YouTube. I can barely even write music. How could anyone take me seriously?
I reach into my back pocket and pull out a small notebook. It’s one of those Moleskine things that has an elastic strap to keep it closed. I bought it at a bookstore because it advertised being the notebook for artists and poets, and I suppose I liked to imagine myself as being in that category of humanity. I open it and flip through. There are only about twenty blank pages left. The rest is full of lyrics, or ideas for lyrics, or fragments of thoughts that should become lyrics. I have complete songs in this tiny book: more than enough for an album, far more than I need for a demo. I could pick a few favorites, pay Ross or Mitchell to write something to go along with them, and slap together a demo. Hell, I could even forgo my own lyrics altogether. Paradise has thousands of songs, unrecorded, in our possession. I don’t really need to do this like Tess and I planned. All I really have to do is convince Father I can sing.
The idea settles in my head, but it doesn’t quite settle in my heart. Before I know it, I’m pulling a pencil out of my pocket and scribbling in the notebook. My hand can barely keep up with my thoughts. The words tumble out like water from a broken hydrant, a rush of cool relief on a too-hot day, a release of all the things that have built inside me from the moment I saw Nate dancing at the concert. The intrigue, the attraction, the longing, the search, the disappointment, the selfishness, the fear, and the loss.
Then, second (always second), the melodies come. Just ideas at first. A few notes here for this word, a few more the
re for a phrase. Then whole strains. Motifs. A chorus, then a verse, then a variation. Repetition, the notes circling back to echo what came before. A beat, filled in by drums I can’t name, but I know what they should sound like. A background full of guitar and bass and piano. Chords I would write down, if only I knew what they were, how they worked, how they were built. But I don’t have that knowledge, and I only have my voice, so I get out my phone and translate it the only way I can.
I record it.
Just my voice, bouncing off the brick and brittle windows of the warehouse, coming back to my ears and the tiny microphone in my phone.
I hear Tess’s heels clicking softly on the floor, and hit stop. I turn to her.
“Parker most definitely did not tell me you were here,” she says. “So don’t fire him.”
“Did he also most definitely not tell you why I’m here?”
She sighs, then squats down gracefully in her ballerina-like tulle skirt. It’s very Carrie Bradshaw of her. After brushing away some dust and dirt from the floor, she sits next to me. “Did you really think it would work, Cam?”
I nod slowly, shamefully. “He said I was out of touch. He’s right. I actually thought if I just talked to him, asked him nicely and offered him some money or a good deal, he’d maybe just do it anyway. I might be the entitled rich kid he thinks I am.”
“No, I’m the entitled rich kid. You’re the kind twin. You’ve always been. And yes, you expect people to do anything for you, but that’s only because you’d do the same for them.” She wraps an arm around my shoulders. “But with Nate, it’s not a matter of kindness.”
I follow her train of thought. “More about forgiveness, I suspect.”
“I think so.”
“I don’t know how to ask forgiveness for something I didn’t do. I don’t know how to make it right.”