Playing Dirty

by Jennifer Echols

  He jerked his thumb toward the guesthouse. When Sarah stepped through the door to the patio outside, he leaned through the doorway and called after her, “Why? What are you doing?”

  “Going fishing.”

  “I haven’t restocked the pool in a while,” he said uneasily.

  Sarah heard another barrage of curses from Martin drift up the stairs. Quentin closed the door and disappeared from the window.

  For the first time, she walked around the pool at a leisurely pace. Cool was a relative term in the Alabama summer, but at least there was some relief today from the previously unrelenting heat: a more gentle sun, lower humidity, a breeze meandering under the enormous oaks.

  She paused at the edge of the patio and looked toward the back of the mansion. She’d seen the inside of only six or seven rooms, but the house was vast, way more square footage than Quentin needed. She supposed he’d bought it for the basement that he’d converted into a studio, the security gate of questionable effectiveness, the guesthouse, the pool, and the view through the trees of the Birmingham skyline in the valley far below.

  The mansion towered above her and fell away below her. The steep bank was planted with white crepe myrtles buzzing with bees. A screened porch protruded off the lowest story. She took a step closer and made out a magazine folded open on a lounge chair, a coffee cup on a side table, and the glint of Quentin’s glasses.

  Erin intruded, as always. The plink of a piano recording began to cascade from her guesthouse, across the patio. As Sarah walked nearer, she noted that all the doors and windows were thrown open to the pool, and she recognized the first movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto in F Major.

  She nearly tripped on the flagstones with a rush of déjà vu. Her father had loved Bach, and her mother sometimes opened all the windows for a few hours on a summer morning, replacing the air-conditioning with the breeze off Mobile Bay—an act that bespoke money above any other, because her parents’ ancestral antebellum house was hard to cool. Sarah would return from a run to hear a piano piece trickling out the windows just like this, alternately whispering and inaudible under the breeze in the trees.

  Pausing in the open doorway to the guesthouse, she saw Erin with her back turned, playing a grand piano expertly in a tight tank top and Daisy Dukes, barefoot.

  And Owen across the colorful, stylishly furnished room, sitting on a flight of stairs, hidden from Erin by the angle of the wall. When he saw Sarah, he glared at her for a moment, then disappeared upstairs.

  This shook Sarah. Something was wrong. Owen didn’t want Erin to catch him listening to her play. As if he wasn’t supposed to be in love with her.

  And the look he’d shot Sarah was pure hatred. He knew she was trying to get Erin back together with Quentin.

  This simply couldn’t be. Blond, muscle-bound Owen didn’t strike Sarah as perspicacious. His friends referred to him as dumbass.

  But maybe he had been the mysterious caller to Manhattan Music, desperate for help in keeping Quentin with the band?

  No. Owen was so into Erin that he valued his relationship with her more than the band. Otherwise he wouldn’t have started the affair with her. He wouldn’t have called Manhattan Music for help in keeping Quentin around. Sarah must have been mistaken.

  As the piano stopped abruptly and Erin leaned forward with a pencil to mark a measure on the sheet music, Sarah knocked on the open door. “Planning to play a piano concerto with the symphony next?”

  “Oh, no,” Erin said with her chipmunk giggle. She patted a soft upholstered chair next to the piano bench for Sarah. “The violin concerto didn’t work out too well.”

  Sarah couldn’t believe hold-her-own Erin would stoop to this level of self-deprecation. “Everyone else seemed to think so,” she said as she sat down. “It made the entertainment news on TV.”

  “Yeah, but Q got really mad about it,” Erin said sadly. “Q wants me to remember the difference between fiddle”—she placed her left hand on the piano bench—“and violin”—she put down her right hand—“and he says I’m a fiddle player. Q has to have his way. And that’s why we broke up.”

  Sarah was searching for an in to explore this topic when Erin went on, “No, I’m just fooling around, trying to chill out. I spent the whole morning alone in the studio with Martin. Lately he’s so loopy. Exhausted from the tour, I guess. It’s nice to come back here to my pretty house and hide, and play an easy little Bach. Bach makes such good sense.”

  “It is a pretty house.” Sarah smiled. “Quentin has better taste than I thought.”

  “Oh, it came this way,” Erin said. “I figure the old man he bought his mansion from must have kept a mistress.”

  Sarah nodded, carefully controlling her poker face. She would not give away to Erin how much the idea of Quentin keeping a mistress bothered her. “Why don’t you guys hang out here?” she asked. “This house is so much homier than the mansion.”

  “The studio’s over there, and Q cooks. And like I say, I prefer to go over there and get what I need and retreat, you know? Martin and Quentin are high-strung. They make me tired.”

  Despite the warm colors in the pretty house, and Erin’s big blue eyes and very sweet face, Sarah couldn’t shake the cold and sick feeling. She had the nagging suspicion that she and Erin would make terrific friends if they could just keep Quentin out of it.

  Just as Sarah and Quentin would make terrific lovers if they could just keep Erin out of it.

  But there it was. Rather than skirting the issue, maybe it would be best to face it head-on. Sarah said, “Listen, I’m sorry about all the public displays of affection with Quentin. You seem really happy with Owen, but I know you and Quentin broke up only recently.”

  “Oh! Don’t worry about that,” Erin said, waving her hand and sounding sincere. “I’m used to it. He acted the same way with our manager.”

  Sarah couldn’t feel any sicker and colder without needing a hot toddy of Pepto-Bismol. Maybe the problem was that Erin wasn’t jealous. She really believed Sarah was just another of Quentin’s dalliances, like the band’s former manager. If Erin thought Sarah and Quentin were getting serious, things might change. Sarah decided then that she and Quentin would get some extended time alone the next day.

  Suddenly Quentin himself breezed in on a shady draft from the patio. His presence filled the room. He caught Sarah around the waist, lifted her off her feet, and ran outside with her, without giving her a chance to say good-bye to Erin.

  “Let’s go do some shooting,” he said. “Yee-haw!”

  Suddenly he stopped on the patio and put her down. “Sorry. I forgot you don’t like to play caveman.” He brushed some imaginary dust off her shoulder.

  “I thought you were recording,” she scolded him.

  “I was. We finished.”

  “That was quick,” she said suspiciously.

  “It doesn’t take long when you get it right the first time. Course, I’m talking about recording. Other things might take me all afternoon,” he informed her provocatively, wrapping his warm hand around her icy one.

  As they crossed the flagstones, Sarah glanced back toward Erin’s house, Bach drifting out the open door again. She was the one who was jealous, not Erin. Quentin might have his coke, and Martin his heroin, and Owen his nineteenth-century Russian literature fetish, but they all were strong men ready to defend Erin in her stylish little castle. Nothing bad could happen to Erin. Unless one of her men did it to her.

  Sarah had no one to defend her. Not while her friend Tom from Stargazer was in Moscow, convincing a Hollywood movie star to make a commercial for vodka rather than drink it all. Well, there was Wendy’s husband, Daniel, too. Wendy might talk Daniel into committing murder if Sarah really needed protection. But Daniel was the press secretary for a senator, and somehow Sarah didn’t think his murder conviction on her behalf would make for good political PR. Wendy might not forgive her.

  Besides, Sarah couldn’t drag Wendy anywhere near Nine Lives. Quentin would help S
arah get her very own gun, and then she could defend herself. He swung her hand as they passed under the crepe myrtle trees buzzing with bees. She thawed a little in the sunshine.

  That night, Quentin sipped his beer and tried to concentrate on peanut antigens and the cytokine response. So much had been discovered in the two years he’d been on tour. Now he was refreshing his memory with the most recent issues of Clinical Immunology and Allergy Today.

  He hadn’t had trouble concentrating for the last few weeks. It was pleasant out here at night on the secluded screened porch, his Fortress of Solitude. The ceiling fan faked a breeze in the still dark, and tree frogs chanted in the forest. He hadn’t even had trouble concentrating last night, after he’d made Sarah come and then cooked jehangiri shorba.

  Tonight he was having trouble. Maybe because he was looking forward to a definite date with Sarah tomorrow night. She’d whispered to him as she left this evening that they should go out alone tomorrow to give Erin the willies.

  More likely it was the cold shoulder he’d gotten from Sarah that was bothering him now. He suspected she’d only come over in the afternoon because she wanted a gun. And he couldn’t convince her to stay after they returned from the firing range.

  He shouldn’t have messed around with her last night. He’d pushed her too far too fast, and now she was shying away. Which was smart of her, because they couldn’t be together. Right.

  Owen walked onto the porch without knocking, with Martin behind him. Owen snatched the copy of Clinical Immunology and Allergy Today away from Quentin and threw it at Martin, then collapsed into a wicker chair that creaked under his weight. Martin sat in the chair on Quentin’s other side. Quentin was cornered.

  “I didn’t break Rule Three,” Quentin said automatically.

  “We know Erin will go ballistic,” Owen assured him. “This is just between us.”

  “I still didn’t break Rule Three,” Quentin insisted.

  Owen and Martin looked at each other.

  “Don’t I look frustrated?” Quentin asked.

  “But you will break Rule Three,” Martin said.

  “No I won’t.” Quentin rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. “There are only eight more days until the concert.”

  Owen said, “We want you to go ahead and cut her loose.”

  Quentin had to tread carefully here, so they wouldn’t see his desperation. “I can’t do that,” he reasoned. “There wouldn’t be any way to explain it to her without telling her that the thing between Erin and me is fake.”

  Martin suggested, “You could get back with Erin early.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Owen said quickly.

  Reaching for his beer, Quentin gave Owen a knowing glance. Owen looked appropriately uncomfortable. Aha. Ammunition. But Quentin didn’t want this kind of ammunition. If Owen fell for Erin, the band would be in a world of trouble. That’s what Rule Two was for. Maybe Quentin should get back with Erin early.

  And lose Sarah? No way.

  After a sip of beer, Quentin said, “Me, neither. If Erin switches around too much, the press will lose interest. It has to be a big deal when she changes hands.”

  Owen looked like the wind had died out of his sails. Martin wasn’t as intent as Owen, anyway. Martin had never been a plotter, and it was almost impossible to get him involved in band politics when he was on a drug binge.

  “I don’t know what y’all are complaining about,” Quentin went on. “There’s nothing in Rule Three that says Sarah can’t hang around. For that matter, there’s nothing in the rule that says I can’t cop a feel.”

  Owen woke up to this challenge. “The spirit of the rule is that you can’t cop a feel.”

  “We’ve never established separation of power,” Quentin pointed out, “so you don’t have the right to interpret the spirit of the rule.”

  “Logically,” Martin said, “you wrote the rule, Q, so you’re legislative. Someone else gets to be judicial.”

  “I’m appointing myself executive,” Quentin told them, “and I’m ordering you the hell out of my Fortress of Solitude!”

  Owen and Martin looked at each other again, and Owen motioned with his head. They got up and left with more creaking of wicker.

  “Martin!” Quentin called after them. “Clinical Immunology and Allergy Today.” He caught the magazine as it flew through the doorway at him.

  He downed the rest of his beer, then thumbed back through the magazine. And looked at his watch. He wondered what time Sarah would show up tomorrow night, where they’d go, and whether they’d get some privacy. If privacy wasn’t part of Sarah’s plan, maybe Quentin could convince her.

  Martin reappeared on the porch and pulled a chair close to Quentin for a conference.

  Quentin said, “I didn’t break Rule Three in the last five minutes.”

  Martin fixed Quentin with an anxious stare, eyes owlish behind the thick glasses. “I didn’t try to explain it to Owen,” he said low, “but I’ve changed my mind since he and I talked about it this morning. I don’t think you should cut Sarah loose.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “I think you should keep her closer,” Martin said ominously. “Or go with her to buy a gun, like she wanted.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Quentin laughed. “You saw her at the firing range. She nearly capped me while I was standing next to her. I’ve never seen anyone’s hands shake that badly, outside the hospital.”

  “She’s scared because she thinks she’ll have to use that gun.”

  Quentin bit the bait. “On whom?”

  “Nine Lives. You know he’s in jail for assault.”

  Quentin could see that Martin was genuinely concerned for Sarah. But heroin made Martin paranoid. “You don’t know that it was assault on Sarah,” Quentin said. “Why would Nine Lives have assaulted her? It wasn’t a lovers’ quarrel. She said she didn’t have sex with him.”

  “You say she’s not having sex with you, either, and look at you. Completely whipped. She’s been here three days and you’re about to implode. She was down there—what’d she say?—months and months.”

  Quentin saw Martin’s point. But he still thought Martin was blowing the issue out of proportion. “It’s a good thing Nine Lives is safe in a Brazilian prison.”

  “That guy has more money than the four of us put together,” Martin said. “How long do you think he’ll stay in a Brazilian prison?”

  Quentin started to protest, but Martin put up his hand. “I don’t want to hear it. You’re so caught up in your games, like that shit you pulled with Rachel today, that you’re not paying attention. I know I’ve got my problems, Q, but at least I’m paying attention. Sarah needs to feel like someone’s got her back, and she’s not getting that from you.”

  Martin rose to leave. He paused in the doorway to say, “She has a fresh three-inch scar under her chin, Q. She really wanted that gun.”

  Martin’s words were still echoing in Quentin’s head the next morning. She really wanted that gun. And Quentin wanted to find out why she wanted it. A little revenge wouldn’t hurt, either, for the phone to Owen’s nose and the jar of garam masala broken on the floor. His hired car had driven him to the Galleria, and he’d sweet-talked the hotel desk clerk, a fan, into giving him a key card.

  Sarah’s room was dark and, not surprisingly after the way she’d treated him yesterday, cold. The bathtub was dry, so she hadn’t taken a shower that morning. He felt a flash of worry for her, which justified scanning her room and checking out her closet. Everything was in neat order. Nothing was wrong.

  She always looked immaculate. Not a wrinkle in her clothes, not a hair out of place—until he got a hold of her. He doubted she would let anyone see her at breakfast in the hotel restaurant before she’d taken a shower. But underneath her soft skin, her muscles were rock-hard. If he had to guess, he’d say she was exercising now.

  He resisted the urge to sift through her things, looking for the reason she felt so threatened.
He quashed the even stronger desire to examine all her underwear. He consulted the hotel map on the bedside table and found the gym.

  She was the gym’s only patron, jogging on a treadmill among the rows of white machines. As soon as he stepped off the elevator, he recognized the pink streak in her ponytail through the gym’s glass wall. Her back was turned to him, and she wore her earbuds plugged into her MP3 player, so she didn’t see or hear him. He sat in a chair just outside the elevator. He would watch her for a few minutes before entering the gym to surprise her.

  She was a runner. He knew that right away. She was no dilettante. Her tank top and shorts were soaked through with sweat, as if she’d been here for a long time. Yet she showed no signs of being the least bit winded, or of stopping anytime soon. He wished he could see her face.

  He wondered what she was running toward, or running from.

  Martin’s words came back to him yet again. She really wanted that gun. This was the first time Quentin had seen her when she wasn’t on parade. She thought no one was looking, and her drive was raw and undisguised. She really wanted that gun. She had a problem, and she would take care of it. If not this way, another way, wheels always turning. Quentin understood this completely.

  What he didn’t understand was how she was still jogging, her running shoes padding on the treadmill in time with his heartbeat. He had to exercise in short bursts each morning to keep from wheezing. He was actually jealous that she was healthy and athletic, probably going on ten miles by now.

  Suddenly she jumped from the treadmill without turning it off and jogged to the water fountain in the corner. Quentin was poised to go either forward to greet her, or back into the elevator, before she discovered him. Then she bent over to drink from the fountain, and he decided to stay where he was. Discovery or no, if he died right now of an asthma attack, at least he’d had a view of Sarah Seville bent over in her running shorts.

  She jumped back onto the treadmill without looking in his direction. He was invisible.

  This was stupid. It was like he had a crush on her, which hadn’t happened to him since Vonnie Conner in high school. There was almost no resemblance between Sarah and Vonnie Conner. Vonnie had been blond and busty, like Erin. A cheerleader. Only the feelings of lust, wistfulness, and loss that Vonnie and Sarah evoked were similar. The feeling that he had to have this and he could not have this.