by Josey Alden
"Chef Cole Jansen."
Ah, not a cook. I'm glad I didn't say it out loud. I made that mistake when I was a kid, and I learned you really don't want to piss off the person in charge of your meals. A good life lesson, in general.
I sit on one of the stools around the kitchen island and watch Cole chop vegetables for an omelet. I sneak a few red and green chunks to chew on as he works. For the first time in a really long time, I'm hungry. Ravenous.
"So, let's go ahead and get this over with," I say. "Are you a Lang Winter fan?"
Cole pauses and looks at me with a wary expression before responding. "Well, my tastes run more on the classical side of the spectrum."
I grin. "Welcome! We're going to get along just great."
The three-egg omelet is unbelievable. I come very close to asking for another one. Mark must have great connections in Dallas to land Cole here.
We talk for a while as he preps ingredients for the week. He would be here for four hours on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week. In addition to the meals he will cook in person, he'll prepare meals to freeze for us. It all sounds heavenly to me. I sit back on the stool with my belly full and happy and look out the over the pool area.
The eggs turn to stone in my stomach. A man I've never seen before is outside talking to Mark. It's clear they are discussing the state of the pea soup pool. I practically run from the kitchen, out the doors, and to the side of the pool.
"Sophie," Mark says. "This is Rick. He's going to clean up the pool and get it working again before summer."
"No," I say.
"No, what?" Mark says.
"No, we're not going to clean up the pool."
An impatient look crosses Mark's face. Rick the pool guy has a tiny grin on his face. Celebrity drama is the best kind of drama.
"Sophie, can we talk over here for a minute?" He grabs my arm and pulls me to a corner of the patio. "What the hell is going on?"
"I might have forgotten to mention it, but the pool stays the way it is."
"For how long?"
"Forever."
"Fuck." Mark runs a hand through his hair. "This is crazy, you know."
"I know."
"And you realize I can have the pool cleaned whenever I want because it's my house, and I'm paying, right?"
I blink at him, trying to find words that will persuade him to leave the water alone. "You know the story," I say, almost pleading. "Everyone knows the story about Lang and that pool."
"I understand what happened. I know this pool has the biggest ghost of all for you," Mark says. "But don't you think it's time to let it go? It's been six months."
"I don't care how long it's been. No one touches the fucking pool," I say as my voice grows louder.
The anxiety starts at my toes and follows my nerves all the way up to my scalp. I'm shaking, and my nose is running. Not exactly crying, but close. And I feel like an idiot. A pathetic, snotty-nosed idiot.
Mark pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment. I stand my ground and wait. Rick can't contain his smile. I wonder how quickly he would sell this little story to the tabloids. "Guitarist Mark Dillon and Lang Winter's daughter fight over green pool."
Mark and I stand there, just looking at each other. I can't stop the tears from streaming down my face. I hate crying in front of people, and that's all I seem to do lately. I especially hate crying in front of people when I want to look strong.
Mark's expression softens, but it doesn't feel at all like a victory.
"Rick, can you come back tomorrow?" he says, not taking is eyes off me.
Scene 22 ~ Mark
I couldn't push her any further. She has to know, though, that this house won't be a Lang Winter museum. Yes, I have an incredible amount of respect for the man. Yes, I bought this house to feel closer to him. But I can't leave a green, insect-infested pool in the backyard. At some point, Sophie will have to deal with that fact and get over it.
She goes back inside without another word. I give her half an hour to get control before I search for her. She isn't difficult to find, sitting on the floor in her closet. I push some clothes aside and sit on the floor a few feet in front of her. Her face is still pink from crying, but it seems like the tears are over for now.
"I'm not an asshole," I say. "At least, I try not to be an asshole. If you feel strongly about something related to the house or your father, I can respect that. But you can't expect me to leave things alone indefinitely."
"I know," she says quietly.
"Hell, I'm the one who wanted you to live here. I get that."
"It's OK," she says. "I was being stupid. I know we can't leave the pool like that. It just hurts."
She touches her chest as if the pain is physically inside her heart. Tears well up in her eyes again.
"Come here," I say. She won't budge, so I move closer and put my arm around her shoulders. She immediately turns her face into my shoulder and let the sobs out of her chest. We sit like that, her tears soaking my shirt, for a long time. I know she's dealt with a lot over the past six months, but something tells me that her issues began years ago. I'm beginning to see that while Lang was a guitar phenomenon, he might not have been dad of the year.
When her sobs calm down again, Sophie pulls away from my arm. She grabs a t-shirt from the floor to clean her face. Somehow, that seems funny, and I can't help laughing a little. Sophie joins in, flashing me a genuine smile for a few seconds before her expression goes serious again.
"Before Lang drowned," she says in almost a whisper. "I was having some problems."
I nod to encourage her to continue.
"College wasn't going my way, and I was questioning majoring in music. Every time I tried to talk to Lang about it, he would give me some platitude that was of no help at all. He never went to college, he'd say. Just find your passion, and that's what you'll do."
She pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them, like she's retreating into a shell.
"It was easy for him. He had the talent, he had the luck, and he had a network of people around him to keep him afloat. Imagine being the child of a legend. No matter what I do, I will always be compared to him. And the way the gossip mill works, when I screw up, I screw up in front of everyone, and my screw-up is ten times worse than anyone else's."
My parents are average, middle-class people. They're the ones who struggled with the new reality of having a famous son, as Never More Alone got big. I watched their privacy shrink and shrink, until my mother refused to leave the house. I had to relocate them outside of Los Angeles.
"I felt awful. I couldn't make myself go to class. The profs dropped me from several courses. I couldn't eat. I went days without a shower. I stopped answering my phone and email," she said. "I thought that I'd failed, and my life was over."
She rests her forehead on her knees but continues speaking in a low voice. "One night, I decided I'd had enough. I turned the pool lights off and walked into the deep end. But I had no idea how violent drowning is. I made so much commotion, I set off the motion lights in the backyard."
Her shoulders go up like she's hiding between them. "It's all right," I say. "Go ahead."
"Hondo knew something was wrong. He dragged me from the pool and wrapped me in a beach towel. A few minutes later, Lang came marching out of the house," I say. "He yelled at me for an hour. But he wasn't angry that I'd tried to kill myself. He was pissed off that I interrupted his song-writing session that night. I didn't even know that's what he was doing at that hour. He told me I was giving him chest pains, and he didn't know how much longer he could survive as a single parent."
"Two weeks later, I got the call from Hondo and came home to find Lang dead. The first thought I had was that I'd killed him with my neediness. I couldn't get that thought out of my head until I started drowning it in vodka."
This time, I don't ask before reaching out and pulling Sophie onto my lap. I hold her tight against me until her breathing returns to normal.
As we s
it here, intertwined, I wonder what the hell our new normal is going to be.
Scene 23 ~ Hondo
It's going to work. I can't believe it, but it is. I couldn't tell Sophie about it until I knew for sure. I wasn't willing to have her see me as a failure. Now, I can tell her what I've been doing at work all this time, "taking meetings" and wearing formal clothes.
I leave the building with my laptop back-pack and head toward my seven-year-old Toyota. Soon, I'll be leaving the building with a leather bag and heading to my new Mercedes.
On the way home, I stop at a florist and pick out an arrangement of yellow orchids in a blood-red square vase. I hesitate when the woman behind the counter shows me the display of cards. I finally pick out a plain red one and turn it over to write the message.
"Sophie, welcome to our new life. Love, Ho"
Fifteen minutes later, I walk in the front door and set the vase on one of the end tables in the living room. Nicole is in the same place she always is, behind her laptop and stacks of mail. I smile at her.
"Have you seen Sophie?" I say.
"Not in a while."
I leave my bag on the couch. I already loosened my tie on the way home—I can't believe how stifling a strip of silk can be—so I pull it off and drop it on my bag.
As I walk to the closet, I take off my jacket, preparing to hang it up.
"Hey, Sophie," I say.
But she doesn't notice me. Sophie and Mark are lying on the floor together, kissing.
I turn around and go back to the living room, where I pick up my bag and tie. Screw the flowers. I can't look at them now.
I tell Nicole good-bye as if nothing's wrong, walk outside to my car, and drive away.
###
Thank you for buying and reading the first episode of the Rock Your World serial.
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Copyright 2014 by Josey Alden. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously.
