by Tatum West
Nikki and I look at each other with shared curiosity.
“You remember that writer from New York who moved down here about the time you left for Los Angeles?” she asks. “The one who donated so much money for the new roof on the Barter Theater?”
“Yeah,” Nikki says. “I read a couple of his books. Horror. Not really my thing, but it sells.”
“It sells well,” she replies. “So, well, he decided to buy a place in Vero Beach, where it doesn’t get quite as cold in the winter. He was sick of buying snow tires. Did you ever see the place he built here?”
He shakes his head.
She turns off the main road, passing between two, sturdy stone pillars illuminated by spotlights. At the end of the long straight drive is a large house, well lit, both inside and out. The architectural style is best described as classic contemporary with just a slight prairie influence. There’s a lot of glass and wide open spaces visible from outside, but it’s complicated by added layers stacked one over the other behind low, banked walls capped with horizontal windows.
“That’s… pretty amazing,” Nikki observes as we approach. I have to concur. It’s the nicest house we’ve seen by far, and I think we’ve driven past every house in Abingdon.
“I can’t wait for you to see it in the daylight,” she says. “The view is lovely. The mountains rise up behind it in a horseshoe framing it so beautifully. It’s a very special place.”
Molly parks in front and with keys in hand, leads us on a grand tour.
The house is stunning. It’s thoughtfully laid out around a center hall walled by glass on two sides. The floors are hardwood, beautifully made in rows of alternating chevrons of various colors. The industrial kitchen is huge and built for entertaining. A few rooms flow off hallways leading to the rear of the house; one is a library, another could be a media room, another an office or studio. The real living space is on the second level, boasting several large suites and a master bedroom that looks like it was designed by Nikki Rippon himself. The walk-in closets are almost as large as the bedroom, and beautifully appointed with walnut racks and cabinets, cubbies and shelves.
Nikki oohs and ahhs all the way through it, even approving of the gem-tone color scheme used for accent walls throughout.
There’s a large pool outside, still covered for now, surrounded by a tinted concrete and tile deck, with a pool house, guest house, and gazebo at poolside, equipped with a bar. There’s a giant old oak in the backyard, and willow trees with green buds flanking either side of the house.
Beyond the pool is a wide, deep lot, shaded with trees framing open areas covered in dense, soft, green grass.
“This is a party house if I’ve ever seen one,” Nikki says, standing on the pool deck, peering out into the back yard, illuminated in floodlights. He reaches out, taking my hand in his. “Just think of the soirées we could throw here. With friends. Real friends.”
It’s a great house—but it’s in Abingdon, Virginia. It’s a beautiful little town. It’s special and unique and tucked away in a gorgeous part of Virginia. But—I don’t know. It’s so far from everything I know.
“For who?” I ask. “Is there anyone nearby who would come?”
Nikki cocks his head, giving me that all-knowing, pop-star smile. His mother and father step up, looking at me in a similar way.
“You haven’t seen all of Abingdon yet,” Nikki’s father informs me. “The population quadruples in the summer. A lot of them are theater people, down from New York for summer stock. A lot of them are artists. Then there’s Buskerfest, which draws thirty thousand people for a weekend every year. There’s some kind of festival almost every weekend. And Pride Month is getting to be pretty huge.”
Really?
He leans forward, looking past me to Nikki. “By the way, son, Dick Brown asked if you could drop by and see him when you get a chance. He said he’s got a proposition to make to you. I think he’s going to ask you to headline Buskerfest this year to see if we can up the attendance next year.”
Nikki nods. “We’ll go see him tomorrow.”
NIKKI CRAWLS in bed beside me, sliding under the covers like a cat seeking body heat. He purrs against my neck, nuzzling me, his chilly hands gliding across my belly.
“That’s some house,” he whispers, settling in under my arm.
I’m staring up at the ceiling, thinking. I’ve been thinking ever since we got back in the car and came home.
Nikki and his folks watched a movie while I sat staring at the screen, not following; my mind working on other things.
“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
We could do this. We could walk away from all of it. I could hang my shingle right here in Abingdon, doing DUIs and shoplifting cases if any came my way. Nikki could get away from the stalkers and paparazzi. We could put a recording studio in that house.
“It’s like it was built just for us,” he adds, catching my attention.
I roll, sitting up on my elbow, peering down into Nikki’s angelic face.
“Do you really think so?” I ask. “Could you live here?”
Nikki blinks. “I don’t know. I’d need a good reason to. The house is great, but there’s nothing for me to do here. I’d be bored to tears. You would be too.”
“You’ll never be bored, Nikki,” I assure him, smoothing an errant lock of hair away from his face. “You’re too smart. Too driven. You’d invent something, figure something out.”
He grins. “I’ve never thought of myself that way, you know. I just thought I was this diva. I didn’t slow down from my dream of being on stage to think about who I really am.”
“You should. You’re talented and beautiful. But you’ve got this amazing mind, too. You’re passionate and loyal, and you’re kind to everyone you meet. Abingdon seems like it might be ready for someone like you.”
“What are you saying?”
I shrug. “Let’s just ponder on it,” I suggest. “Let’s think about how it might work. Your folks aren’t getting any younger. I’m done being a high-power entertainment attorney. I’ll do pro-bono work. I bet there’s plenty of that to go around. Let’s just think about how it might work.”
A small furrow forms between Nikki’s eyebrows. He takes in a deep breath,. “You’re serious?” he asks. “You’re serious about leaving LA?”
“Only if you’re with me,” I reply. “I love you. I want you with me. I want to be with you. And I want us to have a real life together, not a life run by publicists and lawyers.”
Nikki blinks again, his eyes misting. “We’ll figure it out,” he says. “I don’t know how, but we will.”
I lean down, pressing my lips to his, tasting him, filing my lungs with his sweet scent. I love Nikki more than life itself. I can’t imagine being anywhere except with him. I just hope that somehow the universe will find a way to make that possible outside of LA, away from fame and the relentless race to stay famous.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
NIKKI
I open my eyes, shoving back sleep, my head filled with a familiar scent from my childhood. I blink, slowly coming awake. Fox is curled on his side next to me, snoring like a baby. He’s still on California time and will be for another couple days. For some reason, I only get jet lag going west. When I’m on the east coast, I rise with the sun.
Mom is cooking applewood smoked bacon. I’d know that scent anywhere. She buys it from Olly Roundstone, who raises all organic, antibiotic-free livestock, butchering it himself and selling it cheaper than you can buy something of half the quality in the grocery store. She’s bought bacon and sausage from Olly since I was a little kid. He was one of the first around here to get on the “sustainable, clean-food” bandwagon. Olly looks like a genius now that the world has caught up to him.
I leave Fox to sleep while I pull on pajama bottoms and a t-shirt and head downstairs. I find Mom alone in the kitchen, whipping eggs into a frothy foam; the bacon sizzles in a pan on the stovetop.
She turns, smiling at me. �
�You’re up,” she says. “I thought you’d sleep longer.”
“Not with that smell. I haven’t had your applewood bacon in too long.”
“Have a seat,” she says, nudging me toward the table. “I’m scrambling some eggs. The biscuits are already done. I’m just keeping them warm in the oven.”
A few minutes later and Mom and I are seated across the table from one another, enjoying the same breakfast I ate every morning for years. I love breakfast. I’d forgotten how much.
“You look too thin, Nikki,” Mom says. “I’m worried about you.”
I smile awkwardly. “You sound just like Fox,” I tell her. “He’s always trying to get me to eat.”
“Good,” she says. “Why does he have to try so hard?”
I shrug. “I dunno,” I say. “I think about it too much, about how I look and if I’m still the perfect ‘Little Nikki Rippon’ who first earned a million Facebook followers. It’s dumb. I’m just afraid of growing up I guess.”
“You’re twenty-six, Nikki,” she says. “You’re supposed to look like a young man, not a boy. You are strong and powerful—and you don’t need to hide yourself.”
I don’t know how to respond, so I don’t. Mom takes my silence how it’s meant, as an opportunity to change the subject. Her new line, however, is no better than the last.
“You’ve been working too hard, too,” she says. “And all this drama with Sal Domenico and that Derek person; you’re frazzled. You need to take some time off, Nikki. You have to.”
Part of me wants to run down the street to Gil’s house, like I used to do when I was a teenager and my mom got on my case. But I can’t do that now—I know my mom has my best interests at heart. She’s proven that to me a dozen times over.
Dan Walsh said the same thing. Fox wants to back-off LA in a bigger way. And now my mom. My whole life seems to be drawing me here.
“I know,” I tell her. “And I’m trying to figure it out.”
“What’s to figure out?” she asks. “You own a beautiful home. I’ve already got staff lined up to start working there; a housekeeper, a chef, a groundskeeper. Let us take care of you. Take care of yourself. Take a vacation. Go on a trip around the world buying furnishings for the place. Make it your second home.”
I put down my fork, fixing my eyes on hers. “What if we came here? Full time? Me and Fox? What if we moved here, permanently?”
Mom’s brows raise with surprise.
“That would be wonderful,” she says. “What can I do to make it happen?”
“What about the money?” I ask. “If I quit recording and performing, the income dries up. And what about Fox? Wouldn’t it be awkward having your flaming queer son and his boyfriend holding court just down the street?”
Mom smiles, shaking her head.
“You know your dad and I don’t care who you love, only that you are loved.” she asks me. “If you and Fox want to hoist a pride flag from the roof and float it over the whole town, I’ll help you.”
What did I do to deserve these people? I still don’t know.
“WHO IS DICK BROWN AGAIN?” Fox asks, climbing into the passenger side of our rental SUV. “And are you sure you want to drive? I’ve never seen you drive.”
“I learned to drive a straight shift on mountain roads not far from here,” I say. “I’m great at driving here. LA traffic scares the shit out of me.”
He laughs. “Yeah, I guess it’s good to be afraid and stay that way out in Cali.”
I turn the ignition, tuning the radio to a pop station I loved in high school. With any luck, one of my singles will play while we’re driving.
“Dick Brown is the creative director of the Barter Theater and general-in-charge of just about everything creative that happens in Abingdon,” I tell Fox. “He’s a legend. He’s also a friend. While I was in school, trying to become ‘Nikki Rippon’ while shedding ‘Leo Nicholas’, no one supported me more than Dick, except maybe my parents.”
“Okay,” Fox says, buckling his seat belt as we pull off. “So, if he asks you to do this BuskerFest thing, are you going to do it?”
I nod. “Of course.”
Fox seems surprised. I feel the need to explain. “Seven years ago, when I was nobody except a scrawny kid with a couple hard drives filled with songs, Dick put me on stage at BuskerFest in front of fifteen thousand people. Until that night, I was just fooling around. After that night, I was on a path.”
“Oh,” Fox says. “I guess I understand.”
After wandering all over the theater, we find Dick in the costumes room behind the main stage. It’s still very early. The cast and crew won’t start to show up until four o’clock or so for a six o’clock curtain.
“Nikki!” he cries when he sees me. He hugs me with all his might, which is substantially diminished since last I saw him. Dick, who was never a large man, has lost weight. His skin is thin with a gray tint. He looks exhausted.
“God, look at you,” he says, stepping back from me. “You’ve grown. You’re beautiful as ever. Oh, you were glorious on this stage back when you were a boy! I was lucky to have you.”
I smile, holding onto Dick’s hands. They’re frail and weathered.
“Your father, I saw him at the post office and told him to have you come see me,” Dick says. “Did he tell you why?”
“He said something about BuskerFest,” I reply.
Dick looks over my shoulder, peering at Fox. “Who’s this?” he asks, pointing a bony finger at my gorgeous boyfriend. “He looks like a lawyer.”
“He is,” I say, grinning. “Fox Lee, meet Dick Brown, a longtime friend and early fan. Dick, this is my boyfriend, Fox.”
Dick gives Fox the once over before agreeing to shake his hand. He always was eccentric, and he’s playing it up now.
“Screw BuskerFest,” he says, finally turning away from his inspection of Fox, returning to the matter at hand. “We can find a hundred acts to headline that, though you would draw a record-breaking crowd. No, I need you for more important things.”
I have no idea what he’s on about.
“Come with me,” he urges, “to my office.”
Dick’s office is a catastrophe: it is filled top to bottom with Tony Awards from the 1980’s photographs of Broadway’s biggest box-office draws, along with stacks of scripts and reams of headshots. Actors, directors, and writers want to be associated with the Barter Theatre. It’s one of the best respected Summer Stock venues in the country.
“This is the thing,” Dick says, sitting down behind his desk. “I’m having some health problems. My doctors says if I don’t slow down—retire—I’m going to put myself in an early grave. I think they’re a bit late with that diagnosis. The fact is, I can’t keep up with this place anymore. I’m retiring.”
Oh god. I knew something was wrong.
“What in the world—You can’t—”
“Whatever,” he says. “I’ve had a good run, but I’ve fucked one thing up. I took on debt with the theater to do renovations, and we’re in the red. I don’t have the time or the energy to fix it, and no one worth a shit is going to step in to do what needs to be done once they see our financial circumstances.”
How bad could it be?
“What’s the debt?” I ask. “Who financed it?”
“We’re into Chase for almost a million dollars,” he says. “I thought I’d have time to develop new programs, do outreach, a capital campaign. I can barely make it to regular rehearsals now. We’re drowning in debt.”
“What can I do?” I ask. “I can pay off the debt. I’ve got…”
“Be our next director,” Dick says. “You’ve got a name, a reputation. You’re a bigger star than anybody who has ever come through here. You love this place more than anyone we could find on the outside. You can draw the best people. You can save this place.”
Director? Of the Barter? Is he crazy?
Dick sits back in his chair, considering the expression on my face, and my absolute, manifest shock at
what he’s just proposed.
“I can get the board to approve you,” he says confidently. “What do you say?”
The director of the Barter Theater? That’s a real job. It’s not just show up, stand here, sing this, smile, turn, do it again.
“It’s a public relations job,” Dick insists. “And a financial management job. I know your folks have helped you with the latter. You’ll have lots of help, Nikki. But this place needs you.”
I run through the options in my head. I can retire to a town no one’s ever heard of and become a summer stock theater director, catering to tourists. Or, I can stay in LA, continue making records, continue touring, until the trends change and no one cares about my brand of music anymore. I can become a bloviated Axl Rose hanging out at the Soho House with a tall bottle of water, talking about the good old days, or maybe wind up doing twenty shows a week in Vegas. I can take painkillers to ease my dissatisfaction with how things have turned out, like so many other celebrities, many of whom ended up gone far too soon. Or… or… or… I can grow up and accept the fact that this fairy tale doesn’t last forever, and if it does, you wind up passed out on your bathroom floor while your closest friends steal everything that’s not nailed down before calling nine-one-one.
I swing around, fixing my gaze on Fox. He’s looking back at me with heightened anticipation.
“You want to?” I ask him.
“Do you?” he asks me.
“I can think of way worse ways to wind up my career in LA,” I admit.
Fox slips his hand inside mine, squeezing gently. “Let’s try this,” he says, his expression serious. “This is our shot to get out of LA on our terms. Let’s try it.”
“Why the fuck not?” I say, laughing. I turn to my old friend Dick. “What do we need to do?”
Dick smiles through crooked, tobacco stained teeth. “Leave it to me,” he says. “It’ll be a done deal by the end of the week. But just to sweeten the deal, will you also headline BuskerFest next fall? We could use the additional ticket sales.”
