“Thanks, babe, you’re the best.” He leans down and waggles his tongue right next to my face like he’s going to lick me.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I warn, glaring at him. He chuckles as he strides out of the room, the ridiculous aviators still perched on his face as if the CFL bulbs are so bright they might blind him.
As soon as the door clicks closed behind him I go into a frenzy of activity, my nerves only exacerbating the situation.
“So, as you can see on the second page of the packet, the tour starts in New York and finishes in Edinburgh. In between are most of the world’s major metropolitan centers, with a couple of short breaks to go home, do some sightseeing, whatever you feel like.”
Dez keeps looking at me, hardly even blinking.
“We can talk about the set up at the venues if you want, or that can wait until we’re ready to leave. There isn’t anything unusual about most of it. Just the standard press setup, they’ll be able to ask you some questions, then we’ll open to the public, first-come, first-served. You’ll sign their merchandise, they’ll be entered to win the free downloads. You and Garrett can take turns if you want, or both do it at once if you want company.”
He nods. “And where will you be during all of this?”
“There at the venue with you. I’m supposed to make sure you show up on time, don’t say anything controversial, play fair with the fans. And look, Dez—” I finally gaze right into his eyes, which is a mistake of colossal proportions “—I know you don’t need a babysitter. You could probably run this whole thing better than I can, it’s contract stipulations. Nothing personal.”
He gives me a small smile, and my heart starts that racing thing again like when we were in the elevator together. I’ve always been slightly flustered by Dez, something about his collected nature makes me anything but. Now that he’s crossed that line that keeps things professional between us, I’m afraid I’ll never be able to act normally around him again.
“Did I say I minded?” he asks.
“Well, I assumed…”
“Don’t assume, Shannon.” His voice is like velvet and I struggle to take a breath as he leans forward, elbows on the table, and pins me with a dark look. “I don’t mind you being on this tour, I don’t mind you babysitting me for eight weeks, I don’t mind looking at you all day every day while fans line up to get my John Hancock.”
I swallow and try to give a casual smile. Keep it professional. “Ok.”
He stands and slowly walks—no, stalks—toward me. When he reaches my chair he leans down, his lips tantalizingly close to my ear. “I’d have never agreed to do it if I wasn’t guaranteed of all that.” Then, if there were a mic in his hand, he’d have dropped it on his way out the door. Again.
Dez
My flight to Santa Fe is smooth and fast. I normally fly commercial like most people, but now that I have to go on the Soda tour—what Blaze has taken to calling it—I only have a couple of days to visit my parents before going on to New York. I was lucky to find this charter that was going from L.A. to Santa Fe, and the two corporate guys that let me hitch a ride have been the best kind of flying companions—silent.
When we touch down at the small private airport, I’m surprised to find my mother is already there waiting, long braid hanging out the open window of the cherried out VW bus that has B52 windows and a giant flower painted on one side.
“My love,” she murmurs as she kisses me on both cheeks and then steps back to look me over. “Your aura is cloudy. What’s going on?”
I’m so used to them that I don’t think about it these days, but most people would label my parents as hippies. They’re too young to have been in the original wave in the sixties, but they may as well have been. They’re both artists, my dad is a photographer who has shot everything from wars to naked actresses. My mom is a painter, watercolors mostly, contemporary versions of the Japanese landscapes and floral still lifes that are familiar to most Americans.
Mom and Dad met when he went to Japan to photograph her father for Time magazine. Her father was a famous Japanese muralist. So, the arts run deep in my family, but I’m the first musician.
“Everything’s good, Mom. Really.”
She scrutinizes me as I load my bags in the van. Her smooth, fair skin is free of any makeup, and I can’t help but think how different she is from the women I’m around in Los Angeles.
“You’ll tell me about it when you’re ready,” she says as we buckle up. “But please don’t let it fester, that cloudiness is masking something darker, you’re not balanced, and that’s never a good thing for you, Dez.”
I smile because you can take the tradition out of the mom, but you can’t take the instincts away. A mother is a mother is a mother. If she were Jewish she’d be feeding me chicken soup, if she were a Fifth Avenue corporate wife she’d be sending me to the country club for a round of golf. The packaging is irrelevant, because the fact is that all mothers worry about their kids, and I’m her only one.
“It’ll be good for me to spend a couple of days at home, Mom.”
She reaches over and pats me on the cheek. “We’ve missed you, my love.”
We drive through the desolate mesa lands, scrub brush and juniper bushes the main vegetation. The sky above us is a shockingly clear blue that I’ve never seen anywhere else in all the places I’ve traveled in the world. Before long we’re climbing up into the foothills that surround the town, past homes that blend into the earth around them, flat roofs with vigas, chile ristras hanging on front doors, and mesquite wood fencing the only thing separating private patios from the wide open spaces around them. I can feel my soul taking a deep breath as I watch the landscape. There is nowhere else on earth like this place, and it will always be home, no matter how far I wander.
At the house I spend a few minutes putting my gear away in my old room, and then go out to the studio where my dad is arranging a set piece that he’s going to photograph. He’s naked as usual, and I can’t help but grin at his shrunken old ass hanging out as he stands contemplating the arrangement he’s made with animal skins, driftwood, and of all things, an ancient desktop computer.
“You need to get some silicone injected into those glutes, old man,” I tell him as I walk in.
“Dez!” he cries as he turns around and strides across the room to throw his arms around my shoulders, pounding me on the back at the same time.
He pulls away and looks at me, his three days worth of gray scruff and bushy eyebrows making him look like a demented Santa Claus. My last name is Takimoto because my parents wanted to preserve my Japanese heritage, but my dad is as Anglo-Irish as they come.
“Your mother get on you about your aura?” he asks, inspecting me for another second before wrapping an arm around my shoulders and walking me toward the arrangement he’s set up.
“Yeah, she says it’s cloudy.”
“Huh. I can’t see that shit like she does, but I can tell you’re not a hundred percent.”
I shrug. “What’s this for?” I point to the still life.
“An exhibit at Hamilton’s in London.”
“What’s the theme?”
“Some crap about the intersection between the natural world and technology. I’m not feeling it right now. And I’d rather talk to my beautiful son than take another picture of that shit.”
He walks to the sink nearby and washes his hands before tossing a big tarp over his still life.
“Why don’t we take a walk? Your mother has some elaborate dinner planned, but it’s my hamburger night, so I need to get good and hungry.”
My mother is a strict vegan, but my dad was raised in Kansas on a cattle farm, so she’s never been able to get him to give up the meat. Their deal is that he gets to have a burger or steak one night a week. He also sneaks meat whenever he eats out with his buddies in town.
Dad grabs a pair of boxers off the back of the couch and pulls them on.
I laugh. “You getting modest on us, Dad?”
I shake my head and chuckle. My dad’s been in jail at least three times since I was born. Every time because he was picked up in some political protest somewhere. Luckily he’s successful enough to afford a good lawyer.
We walk down the trail that winds around my parents’ land. The sun is starting to set and the sky glows with burnt orange, bright pinks, and deep rose. I breathe in the clean, dry air and let the quiet and peace wash over me. My dad is good at silence, so we simply stroll together for a while. When we reach the end of the trail where we’ll need to turn and walk back he gestures to the bench he carved and set there. The spot overlooks the hillside and the land is turning purple in the darkening light.
As we settle in he rubs his knuckles over my head. “Your hair’s longer than last time you were home.”
I nod. “Rock star hair,” I say. “That’s what Blaze calls it.”
“How is he?” Dad asks with concern. “The rehab taking this time?”
“Yeah, he has Tully now. I think it’s the incentive he needed, you know?”
Dad nods. “A special love can be a pretty strong incentive. I’ve kept myself on the straight and narrow for over thirty years now because of your mother.”
I grin. “Yeah, you’re trouble with a capital T, Dad. You’re lucky Mom saved you.”
“What about you? Anyone special in L.A.?”
I sigh. This is something I haven’t talked about with anyone, not even Blaze. But if there’s someone who will listen, really listen to what I’m saying, it’s my dad. “I was seeing Scott, the guy who owns the restaurant down the block from my condo?”
Dad nods. “I remember. We met him when we came out for the Santa Monica show, didn’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“Seemed like a good kid. But it didn’t work out?”
“I guess not. It wasn’t his fault, I just didn’t feel what I wanted to feel.”
“And what is that?”
I sit quietly for a moment, the emptiness that seems to follow me through so many of my days washing over me again.
“What Blaze and Tully have,” I finally admit. “I want what they have.”
Dad nods. “The once in a lifetime thing?”
“I guess. The spark, the fire, the burn the world down thing.” I turn to him, and it hurts in my chest when I finally have to vocalize it. “I’m missing something, Dad. It’s like I don’t have the capacity to feel that strongly. I mean, I’ve cared about everyone I’ve been involved with, I’ve been attracted to them, I’ve enjoyed them, but it’s like everything is through a filter.” I use an analogy I know he’ll understand. “It’s as if I’m watching my life through a piece of gauze like you used to put on your lens when you’d photograph Grandma.”
“And you want more…”
“I want to fucking feel more, Dad.” My frustration comes to the surface now. “I don’t just want to like the person I’m with, I want to crave them, I want to need them like I need air. I want to look at my life and see every single thing in sharp, brilliant contrast, nothing foggy, nothing dulled.”
He clears his throat, mulling it all over for a moment. “You want to fall in love.”
“But I’ve loved lots of people, and I’ve never had what Blaze and Tully have.”
He gives me a gentle smile. “You were raised to be loving, Dez. Your mother is the most loving woman I’ve ever known. She’d have to be to love me all these years. You love most people you know, and some of them you’re also sexually attracted to. But you’ve never been in love, son. Loving someone and being in love with them are two different things.”
He’s right. I know he is. And this is why I talk to him when I can’t talk to anyone else.
“I met someone,” I blurt out before I can think better of it.
“Aha.” He grins. “Now we get to it.”
“She makes me feel those things I never have before. Sometimes it scares me it’s all so strong.”
His grin grows bigger. “I win!” he shouts in triumph, a fist pumping into the air.
I look at him like he’s lost his mind.
“Your mother and I made a bet. I always said it’d be a girl who finally got you. She thought it would be a guy.”
I roll my eyes.
“Love is love, Dad.”
“Of course it is, but tits, son. If you like tits it’s pretty hard to contemplate living without them for the rest of your life.”
I shake my head and chuckle.
“I’ll admit that even I thought that Gregory kid you dated in college was hot as hell, but I still couldn’t have given up tits forever for him.”
I think about Shannon’s cleavage in the silk blouse she had on yesterday. I picture molding my hands over those soft, full curves, licking the crevice between them as I unbutton that slick shiny fabric and peel it away. Yeah, he may have a point about the tits.
“So tell me about her. Who is this woman who has you thinking it’s time to fall in love?”
“Our manager, Shannon.”
“Shit. Corporate hellcat, stiletto-wearing, redhead?”
“That’s the one.” I raise an eyebrow at him.
“Holy fuck.” He stares out at the landscape in front of us in shock. “She’s gorgeous and smart.”
“But…”
“But she’s not what I would have expected for you.”
“She’s like a shooting star, Dad. She’s flaming across the sky, and I want to hitch a ride.”
“I’m afraid you’ll end up incinerated, kid.”
I stand as I hear my mom yelling for us to come eat dinner. “I’m starting to think it’ll be worth it,” I say as I hold out my hand to Dad and pull him to his feet.
He wraps an arm around my neck and gives me a noogie. “Not to worry. We’re always here for you, even if you’re a pile of ashes. Now, you going to break the rules and eat some cow with me?”
I’m a vegetarian most of the time, but once in awhile I eat a burger with my dad because it makes him happy.
“As long as it’s well done.”
“Philistine,” he mutters as we make our way to the house. “Should never have let your mother raise you with that crazy diet.”
“Didn’t seem to make any difference, my aura’s still cloudy.”
We both laugh as we enter the kitchen and Dad strips off his boxers to sit and eat. It’s good to be home.
Shannon
“Yeah, Becki, I know that clause was last minute, but I’m not going to let my clients sign this deal without it. I’ve seen too many record labels take that loophole and keep rights to songs for years, making it impossible for the band to put together a new album.”
I hear the captain say we’re about to make the descent into New York and I fidget as I listen to Becki on the other end of the call bitching about how hard I’m making her job. Tough shit, babe.
“Plane’s about to land, Becki, I’ll touch base later tonight, but I want that revised contract in my email by tomorrow.”
I end the call and power down the phone. My dad’s plane is comfortable, but small, and today it’s just me, my bags, and the two pilots. We have a corporate share jet available when we take big groups, but this small Cessna is primarily for the office staff to get somewhere quickly for a meeting. Or in my case to get to New York quickly so that I can spend the next eight weeks following Dez and Garrett around like a babysitter.
I tried to get Garrett to fly with me from L.A., but he said he was catching a ride with some friends from a movie crew. I don’t actually think Garrett has friends except for the other guys in Rhapsody, but I’m sure the real story is there’s an actress he’s fuckin
g and she offered him a mile high experience on her flight. I can only hope that he shows up when he’s supposed to and is relatively sober.
I admit that I didn’t even ask Dez how he was getting to New York. I know that he’ll be there on time, but that’s not why I left him to his own devices. No, the fact is, after that elevator ride together I’m avoiding Dez.
“Ms. Gunn, we’ll be on the ground in five minutes,” the captain interrupts my thoughts. I give myself a little shake and try not to remember the intensity in Dez’s eyes when he looked at me the last time. The way his breath felt against my skin when he whispered in my ear. I begin to mentally create a to do list for when I land. Calls to clients, a letter I need to draft to the president of EXQ Entertainment, the first cut of a soundtrack for a movie I need to listen to, and of course, my weekly debriefing with my father.
I swallow the knot that lodges in my throat every week around this time. My father and I work in the same office but manage only to see each other once a week at most. And during that one hour, I endure more stress than in all the other sixty-plus hours I work the rest of the week.
The plane bounces a couple of times as it touches down and soon I’m gathering my belongings and walking down the steps at the private Teterboro airfield. A black car waits for me just a few feet from the doors of the plane, and I thank the pilots, then walk toward the car, one bag over my shoulder, another rolling along behind me. Instead of the driver’s door opening as I would expect, the back passenger door to the car swings wide, and a long denim-clad leg slides out, closely followed by a leanly muscled chest, a perfect chiseled face, dark almond eyes and shiny black hair.
Dez.
Fuck.
He saunters toward me, his face unsmiling, but still lit up somehow. He has a glow to him, something that seems to come from deep inside.
He reaches for both my bags, and before I can think, I’ve handed them over and he still hasn’t said a word.
“What are you doing here?” I ask abruptly as he turns to take my bags to the trunk of the car.
Racing to Rhapsody: A Rhapsody Novel Page 2
