by Karina Bliss
“So I’ll talk faster when we’re together.” His cell beeped a text. “Excuse me.” It was his manager confirming a meet that afternoon. “How are we going to structure this thing?” he asked Elizabeth as he tapped a reply to Robbie. “And some kind of theme would be good.”
“Theme and structure reveal themselves through the material. First we need to amass material.” There was an edge to her voice.
He hit Send and glanced up. “I’m not expecting you to wait on my convenience. Go online, you’ll find plenty of interviews.”
She put down her coffee cup. “Do you expect me to regurgitate what everyone already knows about you?”
“Maybe change a few words to avoid plagiarism.” When she didn’t smile, he added, “Joke.”
“I hope so,” she said seriously. “Because I took the job on the understanding we’d delve a lot deeper than that.”
Zander spread his arms. “Doc, I’m on the operating table, shaved, prepped and ready for your first incision.” His cell beeped another incoming message; his personal trainer had arrived. “But not today. Today I’ve got backlog to clear.” He stood, prompting her to do the same. “A debrief with my manager, signing off the PR schedule in advance of the UK concerts.” And finding out how much the latest tour leg had reduced his massive debt.
“I could tag along,” she said hopefully, pocketing her recording device.
No one could know the dollars he’d invested in this tour. Zander put a hand under her elbow and ushered her toward the door. “It’ll be as boring as bat shit,” he said. “Go have some fun exploring another theme park. Dimity will get you a driver.”
At the door she paused and he was hit with the faintest waft of a fresh lemony fragrance. “And tomorrow we’ll get serious?”
He’d thought her eyes brown; this close he saw flecks of greens and gold. “Sure.”
“We’ll need at least two hours a day of uninterrupted time together for interviews.”
Zander didn’t get two hours a day of uninterrupted time with himself. “Check my schedule with Dimity and pencil in sessions.”
His PA could break the bad news.
* * *
The door shut in Elizabeth’s face, shielding her from the radiance of Zander’s parting smile. She stared at the oak paneling. “Did I just get snowed?”
Going in search of Dimity she reminded herself that this was only his second day home; of course he had backlog to clear before he settled into their project. But unease gnawed—the deadline would already be pushing her limits.
She found Dimity in her office, sitting behind an ivory escritoire desk designed in a century when ladies used quills and ink pots and tied their love letters with pink ribbon. The PA wore a tan jersey minidress and her matching sandals had enough leather thong twisted around her calves for Tarzan to play bondage with Jane. Her long, blond mane caught in a ponytail, she was tapping on one of two Apple Macs.
“Good, it’s you,” she said, barely sparing Elizabeth a glance before returning her attention to the screen. “I’m finalizing a press release on your appointment as Zee’s biographer. How’s this for your quote? ‘I’ve always been a fangirl and when the opportunity came up to collaborate on a creative project I leapt at the chance.’”
“It was more like a cautious hop and ‘fangirl’ makes me sound sixteen, not thirty-five. Does anyone around here do verbal foreplay? Hi, Dimity, lovely to see you again.”
Dimity sighed. “You’re going to be difficult about this, aren’t you?”
“Claiming I’m a fan would lead to a discussion of Rage’s music and expose my woeful ignorance. How about taking a ‘two worlds collide’ approach?”
Dimity brightened. “Like fusty historian and hip rocker?”
“Not quite.”
They spent the next fifteen minutes hammering out a compromise.
“Since you’re third biographer off the rank, we’re not doing a press conference,” Dimity said. “We’ll save the major promo for the book’s launch.”
It was uncomfortable talking about promoting an as-yet-unwritten memoir. Elizabeth made her request for interview time and Dimity pulled up a color-blocked spreadsheet.
“Meetings in blue, critical meetings in red and gym, vocal coach and physio in green,” rattled Dimity. “Social functions in gold and media and charity appearances in purple. Dotted purple is still at request stage. Your allocation is blocked in orange.” Glancing at Elizabeth’s hair, she pointed to the screen. “See, you had an hour this morning.”
“It ended up closer to thirty minutes.” Elizabeth stared in dismay at her allocation. Slivers of time when she needed slabs. “This isn’t what Zander and I talked about in Auckland. He said I could shadow him.”
“I doubt that,” Dimity said, “Zee likes his privacy.”
“You wouldn’t think so, looking at this schedule.”
“Keeping himself in the public eye is part of his job. But even I don’t know everything he does… See those crossed squares? They tell me only that he’s unavailable.”
“Can I have a copy of this?”
“Sure.” Dimity printed one and gave it to her. “We need to jazz up your website too. I’ll source a designer and a photographer for new shots when we return to LA after the tour leg. You look way better with makeup incidentally.”
Examining Zander’s schedule, Elizabeth barely heard her. “I don’t see anything scheduled before nine a.m,” she said hopefully.
“Zee’s a night owl.”
“But for the sake of the book? Maybe we can interview over breakfast.” And she could transcribe the interview before their second afternoon session.
Dimity’s normally impervious gaze held a trace of pity. “You can always ask.”
Chapter Six
Elizabeth sat in the library next day, surrounded by Zander’s photo albums and anxiously watching the clock. He breezed in twenty minutes late with a smile so rueful and sweet that she heard herself saying weakly, “It doesn’t matter, we’ll add time onto the end.”
“I can’t be late for the children’s hospital.”
“Oh, of course not, but I have concerns about your schedule.” She picked it up as she spoke, looking for the children’s hospital.
Frowning, he plucked it out of her hands. “This week’s a bitch isn’t it? It’s always this way between tour legs. Next week we’ll do better.”
“Before nine a.m. is always free. We could interview over breakfast.”
“Doc, I’m not a morning person.” Zander stuffed the schedule in his jeans pocket. “This is outdated already, I’ll ask Dimity to print you out another.”
“So about more sess—”
“Shall we start?” he interrupted. “I’d hate to waste any more of our precious time together.” Joining her at the desk, he opened a photo album and looked at her expectantly.
Elizabeth wavered. She could spend the next thirty-eight minutes lobbying for more time or… “Yes, let’s start.”
They worked through the first album. As she’d hoped, it proved a prompt for reminiscences.
Zander had described his childhood as happy and the family photos testified to that. The Freedmans were a striking family, his dad a loose-limbed, fair Texan—here, at the grill; here, balancing the boys on a mean-looking Harley. Zander’s mother appeared less often—probably the family photographer—a slender, dark-haired woman clearly in love with all her boys. Even as an infant, Zander had a lovable rogue grin.
In her normal working environment, Elizabeth stood behind a lectern or sat alone with her files and the only heat was radiated by her overworked laptop. Side by side with Zander she became conscious of a different heat every time his forearm brushed hers as he reached past her to turn pages. His rich voice at her ear sent a prickle of awareness down her spine.
Elizabeth edged her chair away. Maybe his charisma was simply a by-product of his biochemistry, like an electric eel’s? “Where did your musicality come from?” Damn him, he even smelled de
licious.
“Dad played guitar, but he couldn’t sing. I think Mom encouraged my singing to drown him out.”
She’d already noticed his tone warmed whenever he spoke of her. “You’re close to your mother.”
“Oh yeah. I make a point of visiting her at least once a year.” A discordant note made her glance sideways. Zander produced a dazzling grin. “Did you have to be good as a preacher’s daughter?”
Again, the term made Elizabeth smile. “My parents were easy going but you’re definitely under closer public scrutiny than other kids.” An understatement; her childhood was a fishbowl. “Either you rebel,” she thought of her sister Marti, “or you try harder to behave.”
“Wild guess. You were good.”
“I was the oldest and I could see my parents had their hands full, ministering to a large parish and raising four kids. I used to pride myself on being the quiet moment in their day. Dad would say, ‘Praise God, we don’t have to worry about you, Elizabeth.’”
“How awful,” he said bluntly. “Receiving kudos for being invisible.”
“What…no!” Startled, she looked at him and fell into the blue. Edged her chair away again. “It wasn’t like that. And there was a kind of self-importance in being good.” She returned her attention to the album and reflected a moment. “The downside was that I had nowhere near as much fun as my siblings did.”
“Have you ever cut loose?” he asked curiously.
“I came into my own when I spent twelve months in the States on a Fulbright scholarship.”
“Went wild did you?”
“Crazy wild.”
“One-night stands?”
“My torrid affairs last longer than that,” she said serenely and flashed him a stern look. “But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”
He leaned back, hands behind his head. “We’re bonding. Tell me more about your sex life.”
Trying to ignore his impressive biceps, Elizabeth turned another page in the album. “I notice you change the subject when our conversation gets interesting.”
“I could say the same of you.”
She gestured to a photo of him with Devin. “What does your brother make of the new band?”
Zander dug his silver hip flask out of the breast pocket of his denim shirt and took a sip. “Dev would have preferred Rage to die a dignified death. However, he also accepts that dignified isn’t my style. And it goes against the ethos of the band.”
“‘Rage against the dying of the light.’” She’d read that somewhere in her research. A thought occurred to her. “Dylan Thomas wrote the poem for his dying father. Was your choice of band name connected to your own father’s early death?”
“Yeah. Dad was given six months and fought for two-and-a-half years.”
She waited for more, but he pushed the album aside and picked up a different one. “The girl next door was my first love.” He pointed to a pigtailed seven-year-old, smiling bashfully at the camera in a vain attempt to hide her missing front teeth. “Chrissy was the first friend I made in the States. When medical bills forced my parents to sell up and move to a rental we stayed close, even though she wasn’t impressed by the crowd I started running with. She’s probably the only girlfriend I’ve had I can categorically say was in the relationship for me, not my fame or money.”
“How awful,” she sympathized.
“Horrendous,” he agreed. “All those beautiful women using me while I’m just wanting to get to know them as people.”
“I stand corrected, you’re using each other. Do they know that?”
He nodded. “Before we date I say, ‘Darlin, I’m a selfish son of a bitch with a short attention span, but if you’d enjoy a ride on the roller coaster that’s my life, climb aboard. And you can always ease the heartache by selling the story afterward.’ Which reminds me, what are we leaking first? I’m thinking how I lost my virginity.”
Elizabeth said carefully, “I thought we weren’t pandering to prurience in the memoir.”
“Of course not,” he said shocked. “I’m relying on you to edit it into something meaningful.”
Even exasperated, she had to suppress a laugh. “Was the experience meaningful?”
“Not in the slightest,” he said cheerfully, stretching in the chair like a sleek cat. “It was a drunken fumble in a Dairy Queen freezer with an older woman. We both wore our staff caps and uniforms and our aprons kept getting in the way. I’d been trying to save myself for Chrissy, but Tammy had sneaked beer into work and we’d got high—another milestone. I was a day off fourteen and Tammy was seventeen. I was guilt-stricken when I sobered up.”
“Are you making that up?”
He considered. “The regret might be slightly exaggerated.”
Now she did laugh. “I mean a seventeen-year-old being interested in a fourteen-year-old!”
“A small cocky kid with charm wins over an inconsiderate high school jock any day. And don’t be reading euphemisms into small—even if we were in a freezer.”
She could well believe it. He’d been seducing women one way or another since the cradle. “What happened with Chrissy?”
“Next morning I biked to her house to beg forgiveness and then added insult to injury by throwing up over her Dad’s Porsche parked in the driveway. She dumped me.”
“That must have been painful.”
His eyes were guilelessly clear. “To this day, I can’t stand Porsches.”
Elizabeth stood to pour herself a glass of water from a pitcher on the desk. “Your delivery’s so deadpan it’s easy to see why you sometimes garner bad press,” she commented.
Zander shrugged. “Most people are smart enough to understand irony. The rest want to be offended by me, so I oblige.”
She sipped the water, tart from the lemon slices in the pitcher, and looked down at him thoughtfully. “Humor is a shield of sorts?”
“A deflector, like Wonder Woman’s wristbands. Are biographers supposed to sound like shrinks?”
“No idea; my subjects are usually dead, remember? Have you ever seen a therapist?”
“For eighteen years. Dr. Goose, first name Grey.”
She paused mid-sip. “That’s a vodka brand.”
“There’s no fooling you, Doc.” Zander’s watch beeped and he stood. “Gotta go.” As he strolled toward the door, he said casually over one broad shoulder, “Ditch that stuff about Chrissy, no one cares if I had my heart broken.”
“And did you?”
He hesitated. “She was the last link to my old life and I completely fucked it up. But we’re doing phoenix rising stuff, remember?”
After he’d left she glanced down at the desk to the two albums still open. In one shot, Zander was an angelic choirboy, in the other a young arrogant rocker with a “screw you” grin. What had happened in between?
* * *
“If you want to avoid aggravation, stay off the online gossip sites today,” Philippa said a couple days later when Elizabeth walked into the kitchen mid-morning, looking for a snack.
In a slashed black T-shirt over a red lacy bra, her short hair spiked in inky exclamation marks, the housekeeper was contemplating the sprawl of cut flowers and foliage strewn on one of three marble-topped islands.
“You’ve been papped and we’re not talking about the test done by your friendly gynecologist.” Choosing three blue hyacinth stems, she speared them into floral foam at the base of a tall crystal vase.
“Photographed? But I haven’t been anywhere with Zander.” And wasn’t that a sore point. There always seemed to be an excuse why she couldn’t ride along. He was spending the car journey making confidential phone calls; he was taking the opportunity to recalibrate his chakras. “Why don’t you concentrate on the throat chakra today,” she’d suggested this morning as he’d left for yet another appointment more critical than theirs.
He’d turned with an arrested expression. “Excuse me?”
“Throat chakra, responsible for communication
and self-expression. Essential for people being interviewed.”
“But you have been out,” Philippa said now. She circled the hyacinths with shorter stemmed green orchids and studied the effect. “Shopping for a bathing suit.”
“Yesterday in the village square.” Elizabeth picked up a perfect white rose and sniffed, but it had no fragrance. “Are you saying someone photographed me thumbing through a rack of swimsuits?”
“What you have to understand is that you’re a new act in Zander’s circus.”
“A pretty dull act. ‘See the biographer shop.’” Discarding the rose, Elizabeth chose a red apple from the fruit bowl.
“Which is why these scum make up their own captions.” The housekeeper selected delicate sprays of baby’s breath and started filling gaps in the arrangement.
“What could they say—that I’m a beanstalk, carrot-topped nerd? I heard it all in first grade.” Elizabeth glanced at her watch and saw 10:56 with a prickle of anxiety. Zander said he’d return by eleven at the latest. Said he’d be all hers then. Pinning him down was like trying to pin water.
Dimity poked her head around the door. “There you are,” she said to Elizabeth, then noticed the apple in her hand. “If you’re comfort eating you must have already seen this?” She waved the entertainment section of the LA Times.
“If you think fruit is comfort food,” Elizabeth retorted, “then you really need to review your diet.”
“She hasn’t seen it yet,” Philippa warned, “and I don’t think she should.”
“I disagree.” Dimity tapped the newspaper against one honed thigh. “Any young…ish woman working closely with Zander needs to develop a thick skin. And this is nothing compared to what they printed about me when I became his PA.”
“What did they print about you?” Elizabeth welcomed the distraction. It was 10:58.
Philippa answered. “They took a close-up of her slightly rounded stomach and suggested she was three months pregnant to Zander. Come to think of it, Dimity, you have dropped a couple of dress sizes since then.”
