Alligators in the Trees

by Cynthia Hamilton

  “I am not trying to shirk my fatherly duties, Marianne. But we’ve got to find a way to work together when it comes to Caitlin’s custody. I have no problems with having her for the next three or four days, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that this is coming at the worst possible time for me.” Philip heard a long, protracted sigh.

  “Don’t worry, Marianne—I’ll pick Caitlin up at 3:30. I’ll have to drop her at home, because I do have an extremely important meeting scheduled at 2:30, which I’ll have to leave and go back to. Paulina will be at the house, won’t she?”

  “Yes, but only until six,” Marianne grudgingly admitted.

  “All right, I’ll make it work. Then she can pack her things and spend the weekend at my place,” Philip said, as he wondered how he was going to juggle all his imperative tasks and a seven-year-old girl at the same time. This would’ve been a great time to have Priscilla around, he thought as he listened to a list of do’s and don’ts that were spewing from the telephone.

  “Fine, fine. Just go see your folks and take care of them. Caitlin and I will have great time together. I hope Herb is feeling better soon,” Philip said, the sentiment sounding empty and false to his own ears. Marianne uttered a curt thank you and hung up the phone.

  He stared at his calendar in bewilderment for a moment before summoning Leslie back to his office. There wasn’t enough time in the day as it was. Now he’d have to break away from one of the most important meetings of his career to play chauffer, he grumbled, then immediately felt guilty. He’d do anything on earth for Caitlin, and besides, this was her mother’s fault.

  For one fleeting, mean-spirited second Philip wondered if Marianne was pulling some sort of stunt on him. Her timing couldn’t have been more terrible. What if she had heard through the grapevine that The Phoenix might be saved, along with his career? Maybe in her heart of hearts all she wanted was to see him ruined.

  He shook his head to dismiss the thought. That was just an over-abundance of caffeine talking. Marianne may possess some dubious qualities, but he could never believe her capable of using her father’s health as a bogus excuse for leaving town on a moment’s notice.

  If there was one thing he could count on, it was Marianne playing the sainted image of motherhood until she had extracted every advantage from their divorce. More time with Caitlin meant more money for Marianne. Funny how a woman who had previously shown no head for figures had suddenly acquired a keen aptitude for finance. Philip turned back to his work and didn’t give the incident another thought.

  Thirty

  Tobias unlocked the door to his hotel suite and held it open for Priscilla. She entered cautiously, as though she were expecting some sort of ambush. Tobias smiled to himself, imagining how foolish she was going to feel when she found out how honorable his intentions were. He passed her in the foyer and led her to the living room. He got a kick watching the expression on her face as it changed from skeptical to awestruck.

  It was the piano that impressed Priscilla most as she took in Tobias’s spacious surroundings. It was her first glimpse at his musical side and the only hint she’d had thus far of what lay beneath his protective façade. She found it oddly touching that he had a piano in his suite, though she couldn’t say why. Perhaps it was because it made him seem more like a serious musician and less like a wealthy eccentric.

  “Do you play?” Tobias asked, watching Priscilla gravitate to the piano as though she’d been separated from it for years.

  “No,” she said, backing away from it self-consciously. “But I know you do.” Tobias grinned as he ran his fingers across the keys.

  “Want something to drink?” he asked, deliberately stalling. Priscilla, still leery of his intentions, declined. Though he was anxious for her to hear the music he had written for her lyrics, he didn’t mind building the suspense first. “Have a seat,” he said nonchalantly. Priscilla obediently sat down on one of the sofas, nervously taking stock of the room.

  “Nice views,” she said, though in truth they weren’t particularly interesting. Certainly not as dramatic as the views from Philip’s office or his borrowed apartment.

  As she glanced around the room, she caught sight of something that made her heart race. Until that moment, she had managed to forget Tobias was in possession of all her lyrics. He said he wanted to talk to her about them, but why? Did he plan on giving her a tutorial in song writing? Had he brought her here just to mock her? As her eyes darted in his direction, he began to play the first bar of her song.

  “Just when you think you’re immune…”

  Priscilla sat stock-still. At first, she couldn’t even bring herself to breathe. A private concert by her idol. She had to be hallucinating, she thought, as she tried to convince herself otherwise. Then a spark of recognition sent a wave of goose bumps down her body, from scalp to toe. Those were her words he was singing! Disbelief merged with elation; elation flared and faltered, and anxiety took its place.

  She had been harboring the assumption in the back of her mind that Tobias had wisely discarded her unwieldy collection of bags and boxes. Other than that niggling fear, she tried not to think of their bargain at all.

  So what if he had thrown twenty years of her private thoughts and observations in the dumpster? She had been within an inch of tossing them into the incinerator herself. It came as quite a shock to find that not only did he still have her lyrics, he had obviously read some of them as well. Not only read them, but put them to music.

  Ironically, no words occurred to her to accurately describe the thrill, the joy, the honor of the compliment Tobias had paid her. Or how unnerving it was to sit there and hear him sing her own words to her. Her throat closed in on itself as though it were being physically squeezed shut. It was in the third chorus she realized she was crying.

  The tears, great fat drops, splashed down her face, landing wetly on her shirt. She wiped at them furiously with both hands, mortified that Tobias would see. Fortunately, he was too focused on his playing to notice. She took sharp breaths and willed herself to be calm. She had just about steadied herself when Tobias glanced her way.

  He stopped singing and his hands trailed to a stop. He threw one leg over the bench and faced her. It was clear this was not the response he had expected. Priscilla made a futile attempt to smile.

  “I can’t tell by your expression if you love it or hate it,” he said.

  Priscilla croaked wanly. She studied her lap while she composed herself. “You…put music to my words,” she said. Hearing herself say that almost made her break down again.

  “I did. Do you mind?”

  “No. Of course not. I’m just…stunned, that’s all. I mean, you…you can’t have any idea how this makes me feel. I never in all my life expected to hear my lyrics sung to music.” Her gaze drifted back to her lap and tears started to fall again. She hastily wiped them away without looking up. Tobias was deeply touched by her response.

  “You called them lyrics. Lyrics are meant to be sung,” he said, trying to make light of the situation. Priscilla couldn’t argue with his logic. A man as gifted as Tobias couldn’t be expected to understand her plight. To him, writing music comprised creating both words and music. But she possessed a sadly compromised talent. It was like having thoughts without the voice to express them.

  “Didn’t you write these words with the hope that one day they’d be sung?”

  “No, I never imagined it. I mean, I always heard a tune, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I had no way of creating it.”

  “Well, you could have learned.”

  Priscilla shook her head. “No, I couldn’t. I have absolutely no musical ability.”

  “Oh come on, everybody has some innate musical talent. Didn’t you play some kind of instrument in school?” Priscilla shook her head. “Not even the recorder? Ukulele? Kazoo? Nothing? Surely, you had choir. Even if you can’t sing, you can’t get out of choir practice. The teacher always made the tone deaf ones play tambo
urine or chimes,” Tobias reasoned.

  Priscilla wagged her head stubbornly. “Nothing. I was the only kid in my whole grade who was literally prohibited from entering the music room,” she said.

  “No way.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “That’s plain cruel.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So, no musical outlet, but you still wrote reams of lyrics. Why?” Priscilla shrugged.

  “I couldn’t help it. I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I guess it’s more of a coping mechanism than anything.”

  “Really? That’s interesting,” Tobias said. He rose and took a seat on the sofa perpendicular to Priscilla’s, making her feel even more self-conscious. “And you never saw them as poems? Young girls often write poetry,” Tobias suggested.

  “I’ve always heard them as songs.”

  “Well, you’ve got a whole lot of songs in each one of those books. You must have to do a lot of coping.” Priscilla laughed weakly.

  “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  “No, really—did you honestly see writing as therapy, even when you were a kid?”

  “Yeah. It was something that just came naturally to me. I started writing one day and I’ve never stopped.”

  “Was there one specific event that started it?” Tobias asked casually.

  Priscilla had to consider this question before answering. She had yet to make up her mind about this man, and she couldn’t tell if he’d asked it out of sincere interest or idle curiosity. It made her squirm in her seat to think he had poured over feelings and thoughts she never meant to share with anyone.

  Complete privacy had been the chief benefit of never putting her lyrics to practical use. Because of one weird twist of fate, every creative effort she’d ever made in her life was now at the disposal of one extremely talented, cynical and egocentric man, a man whose music had profoundly affected her while she was growing up. The irony of the situation almost made her laugh.

  But maybe fate wasn’t laughing through its hand this time. Maybe fate had donned the benign cloak of destiny and was acting as an ally. With all the weird goings-on of late, she supposed anything was possible. Could it really be that Tobias Jordan was so intrigued by her words because he recognized in them a kindred spirit? Maybe, but she still didn’t trust him yet.

  “The death of my parents,” she said at length. “They were killed when I was ten.”

  “Both of them? Wow, that’s rough. How?” Priscilla looked at him squarely.

  “Car accident,” she said, without batting an eye.

  “That’s awful. I’m sorry,” he said, offering somewhat empty condolences that meant nothing to either of them. “So you were an orphan. Did you have to go through all the foster drama?”

  “No. My Uncle Bob took custody of me. He was a musician, oddly enough. Played guitar and bass. His band was called Trick Monkey,” she said with a laugh.

  “Didn’t your uncle encourage you to learn music? If you were writing all this stuff while you were with him—”

  “I never let on about what I wrote in those notebooks. And I never showed the slightest interest in following in his footsteps. I was their mascot, and nobody saw me as anything other than Bob’s niece, someone they needed to protect and take care of.

  “I don’t think anyone wanted to see me end up the way they had. They liked to pretend their lives were glamorous, but subconsciously they knew they couldn’t carry on like that forever. They managed to get fairly steady gigs, but it wasn’t not like they were ever going to reach superstar status or anything close. Living hand to mouth, or drug to drug, was about the extent of their success.”

  Priscilla stopped abruptly. She was rambling on out of nervousness. She smiled awkwardly and fidgeted, wishing she could disappear. Tobias looked at her thoughtfully for a moment before standing up.

  “Do you want to hear the rest of the song?”

  Priscilla nodded. “Do you mind starting from the beginning? I think I was in shock the first time around.”

  “I’ll do even better than that. I’ll play it on the synthesizer so you can get the full effect.” He pulled the keyboards away from the wall and positioned it so he could face his audience. He set a few controls then began to play what had already become a familiar tune to him.

  “…What’s the point of trying to fight it, when you know you always give in…”

  “See, here’s the really cool thing about this instrument, why it’s invaluable when you’re writing music,” Tobias explained, interrupting his recital as he fiddled with the controls.

  “Now that was kind of a mellow version with guitar, piano and bass. If we want to liven it up, we set the switch and Voila!—we’ve got a horn section. A trumpet. Two trumpets. And an alto sax. And if you want more drama, replace the guitar and bass with cello and violin.” Tobias played the repeating chorus as he demonstrated the different effects.

  Priscilla was so giddy, she felt as though she might faint. She still wasn’t sure if this bizarre experience was the answer to a lifelong dream or the beginning of a particularly humiliating nightmare. She couldn’t fathom why Tobias had been drawn to her in the first place. She didn’t really believe in fate or destiny any more than she believed in reincarnation and out-of-body experiences.

  But having Tobias Jordan wander into her sphere then move in on her life seemed too great a coincidence to write off as accidental. Of all the coffee shops in Manhattan…

  “Could you start it over again?”

  Tobias took his hands off the keys and let the synthesizer play out. “With the brass or without?” he asked.

  “With.”

  Tobias started from the beginning. He played the chorus through twice without lyrics so Priscilla could get a feel for the melody. He watched her intermittently as she absorbed the sounds. A smile spread across her face as she noted the compatibility of words and music. He sang the song all the way through, ending it with a hammy flourish.

  “So, what do you think? Does it meet with your approval?” Tobias asked as he fiddled with the controls, creating random bursts from assorted instruments. Priscilla’s expression of pure joy made answering his questions unnecessary. “Is that how you heard it when you wrote the song?”

  “Oh, God—that was so long ago, I can’t even remember,” she said. “I’ve never heard full orchestration to anything I’ve ever written. There’s always been a basic melody and rhythm, but really nothing much beyond that. I don’t know enough about musical instruments to imagine what they sound like.”

  “How did you feel hearing it with all the bells and whistles?”

  “Ecstatic. I can’t even describe what it’s like. I know nothing to compare it to.” Tobias beamed. He seemed almost as happy as she was.

  “Did you recognize the words right away?”

  “It took a few seconds,” Priscilla admitted. “The last thing I expected to hear was you singing something I had written. I think I’m still recovering from the surprise.” Tobias switched off the synthesizer and joined her on the sofa.

  “You got a kick out of creating music for someone else’s lyrics, didn’t you?” she asked. Tobias crooked one leg up underneath him as he turned to face her.

  “Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact. It was the first time I’d ever tried something like that.”

  “Did it feel weird?”

  “No…it felt completely natural. I’d never contemplated collaborating with anyone other than Brody, and all the lyrics to our songs were solely mine. I don’t think Brody could string two rhyming lines together if his life depended on it. But he is awesome when it comes to arranging.”

  “I’d say you’re pretty good at it yourself,” Priscilla said. Despite her initial nervousness and awe at being in such close proximity to a rock icon, she felt surprisingly comfortable in this rather intimate setting. Tobias was definitely more at ease than she had ever seen him.

  As they sat there, each glowing with their private satisfactions, they
simultaneously became aware of this shared intimacy. The realization caused Priscilla to recoil back into her shell. Tobias, on the other hand, became intrigued by the situation. It had never crossed his mind that he’d be able to open up to anyone besides Brody where making music was concerned.

  He was so private about his creativity, he had shunned all interviews, except the one he had given to Rolling Stone, which he always regretted. That interview and the brief bios she had read over the years were the only clues Priscilla had into the rock star’s personality. But nothing she had read or heard had prepared her for what she was witnessing now.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Priscilla said, trying to hide her grin.

  “What?”

  “This is just so strange for me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Priscilla leveled an incredulous look at him. “You don’t find anything peculiar about what’s happened between us? You wandering into Frank’s Food Hell, me waiting on you…you stumbling into my apartment building and buying my stuff…? Then running into each other right before I left town? Doesn’t any of that strike you as incredible?”

  “I didn’t just stumble into your building. I went there specifically to find you. Besides, weirder things have happened,” Tobias said, a playful grin giving him away.

  “Well, I don’t what to hear about them. I’m having enough trouble with this.”

  “What’s the trouble?” Tobias asked cavalierly. Priscilla was too exasperated to answer. “Hey, sometimes you just have to go where life takes you.”

  “I never thought I’d hear such trite philosophizing come out of you,” Priscilla said reproachfully.

  “Watch it,” Tobias said, an evil glint in his eye. “I seem to recall as few corny sentiments in those notebooks of yours,” he said, making as if to fetch the lot of them to prove his point.

  “No fair. Most of that soppy stuff was written when I was a kid,” Priscilla said, grabbing his arm to prevent him from carrying out his threat.