It took him a moment to find his voice. “I’m listening.”
Lawrence grinned. “Come sit down. You look like you could use a drink.”
chapter fifteen
As a small, independent company, Ariel Records was willing to take chances that the larger companies wouldn’t. Perhaps because they had less to lose than the larger conglomerates, they were willing to risk more. And Drew Lawrence, acting on instinct, channeled all Ariel’s available resources into Danny Fiore’s debut album.
Lawrence’s instinct paid off in spades.
That first album, titled Stardust, was a mixture of straight pop and driving rock, balanced off by a sprinkling of blues ballads so funky they fairly peeled the paper off the walls. Again acting on instinct, Lawrence chose for the first single release a catchy, hot little Fiore/MacKenzie pop tune. To the amazement of everyone except Drew Lawrence, Tell Me Lies debuted at number twenty-three on the pop charts, jumped fifteen places the second week, hit number one its third week on the charts, and stayed there for a solid nine weeks.
Ignoring the music industry truism that says an artist who has a monster hit the first time around may never again rival that first effort, Lawrence released a second single from Stardust. Another Fiore/MacKenzie creation, Whisper in My Dreams was a smoky, sultry ballad that climbed steadily up the pop charts to number one before crossing over to peak at number three on the R&B charts. Lawrence timed its release to coincide with a grueling six-week bus tour of the rural South.
***
There was a comforting anonymity in the ethnic mix of Sunday afternoon patrons at McDonald’s. At the next table there were two Indian women in saris, and behind them, a group of lanky black teenage boys was showing off for the two giggling girls across the way. Rob brushed the crumbs off the table and sat down across from Nancy, who was watching the door with an expression so wistful it wrenched at his heart. “Don’t worry,” he said, opening the bag of food and handing Nancy her French fries. “She’ll show up.”
Nancy smiled, but he’d obviously failed to allay her fear that her younger sister hadn’t been able to escape the house and the eagle eye of their mother. As he unwrapped his Big Mac, she delicately nibbled at the edges of her fish sandwich, but her gaze never strayed for long from the entrance.
The instant she saw Mei Ling, her face radiated happiness. Her sister made her way to their table, and the two women embraced and began talking and gesturing rapidly in Chinese.
He’d never met Nancy’s kid sister before, and he studied their animated faces. They had the same eyes, but where Nancy’s face was delicate and birdlike, Mei Ling’s was broad and rounded, with a high forehead. She wore her hair in a chin-length bob, shorter than Nancy’s, but with the same rich color and texture.
When Nancy introduced them, Mei Ling grew tongue-tied. He imagined that at fifteen, cosseted and pampered and kept on a short leash as she was, her experience with white males was limited. Especially given her parents’ value system, which placed all white males just slightly higher on the evolutionary scale than the spawn of Satan. “Would you be more comfortable,” he said, “if I left you alone for a while?”
He could see the answer in Nancy’s eyes, so he took his lunch outside and sat at a table near the play area, where he could still keep an eye on the two women inside the restaurant. As he ate his lunch, kids and parents alike eyed him with distrust, suspicious of any man who sat in the play yard without a child attached. When he finished eating, he lit a cigarette and watched the kids playing. One little girl slithered down the slide and landed a few feet away from him. She gave him a shy smile and he returned it, but her mother spoke sharply to her and she scurried away. The mother grabbed the girl by the wrist and dragged her out of the play area, lecturing her loudly about the dangers of strange men.
An hour passed before Nancy and Mei Ling ended their visit. As his wife forlornly watched her younger sister leave the restaurant, he wondered, not for the first time, if he’d done the right thing by marrying her.
Three days later, he opened the apartment door to insistent knocking. The man who stood on the other side had greasy hair and a stained shirt. “I’m looking for Nancy Chen MacKenzie,” he said.
Rob looked the guy up and down, and squared his jaw. “What do you want her for?” he said.
“I got something for her.”
“I’m her husband. You can give it to me.”
“Sorry, buddy, no can do. I have to deliver it to the lady personally.”
Nancy came up beside him. He put an arm around her, and he could feel her trembling. “I am Nancy Chen MacKenzie,” she said.
“Then I guess this is for you,” he said, handing her an envelope. “Have a nice day, folks.”
Rob slammed the door behind him and tried to read over his wife’s shoulder. “Rob?” she said, her voice rising. “What is this? I do not understand.”
He took it from her, skimmed through the legalese until he got to the part that was intelligible. His throat tightened as he read, and he felt color rising in his face. “It’s a restraining order,” he said, “forbidding you to have any contact with Mei Ling.”
Her face paled, and she sank slowly onto a chair. “They cannot do this,” she whispered.
“They’ve done it,” he said. “Jesus, Nancy, I’m so sorry.”
She swallowed visibly. “And what happens,” she said, “if I ignore it?”
“Then you’ll be found in contempt of court,” he said. “You could go to jail.”
For the first time since their marriage, he was unable to console her. She locked herself in the bathroom so he wouldn’t hear the sobbing she tried to muffle. But he heard. He heard every sound she made. Hands crammed in his pockets, he paced, muttering under his breath, propelled by fury. When Casey came in, he said curtly, “Take care of her. There’s something I have to do.”
***
When the maid opened the door, he strong-armed her aside and followed the singsong of Chinese voices to the dining room. They were sitting around the massive table, the three of them, and they looked up in amazement as he strode into the room. “What the hell kind of parents are you?” he demanded. “How could you do this to her?”
“Mr. MacKenzie,” her mother said icily, “you are not welcome here, and if you do not leave immediately, I will call the police and have you removed.”
“I’ll stay, by God, until I’ve said what I came to say. Why? Why would you do something like this to her? That girl has never hurt anybody in her life. Her sister means the world to her. What kind of heartless monsters are you?”
“We are not heartless monsters,” Dr. Chen said. “We are hoping that Nancy will recognize the error of her ways.”
“If she wishes to see her sister again,” the dragon lady said, “she has only to divorce you. It is not such a difficult choice, is it, Mr. MacKenzie? The family of her birth—” She looked around the table. “—or you.”
“You bastards.” He glanced at Mei Ling, her head bowed low over her soup bowl. It was probably already too late for her. They’d probably already poisoned her mind. His hands clenched into fists. “I don’t know what cabbage leaf you plucked Nancy out from under,” he said grimly, “but I know one thing: she sure as hell didn’t spring from your loins.”
And he left them to their dinner.
***
He broke the news to Nancy on the eve of the tour. “I’m going on tour with Danny,” he said as he thumped his suitcase onto the bed and snapped open the locks. “We’ll be away for six weeks. When I get back, I want you gone.”
Her face paled. “Rob?” she said. “What are you talking about?”
He opened a dresser drawer, took out a stack of undershirts, and dropped them into the suitcase. Deliberately avoided looking at her. “You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “We made a mistake. We did something stupid. It’s over, Nance. We might as well face it and get on with our lives.”
“This is not what I want!”
> He looked at her for a moment. Squared his jaw and turned away. “It’s what I want,” he said.
“Take me with you. I would not get in the way.”
He rolled up a pair of jeans and crammed them in beside the undershirts. “I can’t. There’s no room.”
“But Casey is going.”
Dropping in the only tie he owned, he said, “Casey’s part of the team. She has to go.”
“I do not understand. If I cannot go, I will wait for you. I don’t mind so very much, waiting for you.”
Against his will, his mind drew a picture for him, a picture of his return, of Nancy’s slender limbs wrapped around him in a hero’s welcome. He pushed away the picture and strengthened his resolve. Couldn’t she see that he was doing this for her? “This is how it’ll be from now on,” he said. “I’ll be gone all the time. All the time, Nance. Is that what you want? An absentee husband?”
“You do not love me?” she said.
He squared his jaw and looked at her. “Look,” he said, “we had some fun times together, but I can’t deal with all this shit your parents keep throwing at us. It’s not worth it. I helped you out when you were in a bind. Your next move’s up to you. I just know I can’t be a part of it any more.”
She wet her lips. “I see,” she said.
His insides knotted in agony, he played his trump card. “I couldn’t even promise to be faithful to you,” he said. “A guy gets lonely on the road.”
The silence stretched out between them. He turned away from her, closed his eyes and swallowed hard. I’m sorry, he thought. So sorry. “It’s the best thing for both of us,” he said.
When she didn’t respond, he slammed out of the apartment and began walking blindly, block after block after block, his hands crammed in his pockets, his thunderous expression prompting oncomers to veer out of his path. Only after the pain and the fury had turned to numbness did he go home. His wife was already gone, the apartment stripped of her few possessions. Except for the lingering scent of jasmine, she might never have been there in the first place.
That night, for the first time since he was a kid, Rob MacKenzie cried himself to sleep.
chapter sixteen
At twenty-three, Bryan Silver already had two platinum albums and four hit singles to his credit. He’d survived two broken marriages and had auditioned two dozen or more young hopefuls for the role of wife number three. He had a reputation as a prima donna, an ego to match, and a dusky, soulful voice that could make the little girls weep when it wailed the blues. Born Bernie Silverman in the Bronx, Bryan Silver was Ariel’s biggest success story. And that summer, while Whisper in My Dreams held steady at number one, Drew Lawrence sent Danny Fiore on tour as Silver’s opening act.
Lawrence’s reasoning was shrewd. Names and faces had a nasty habit of being forgotten once their brief moment of glory was over, and one hit record was barely worth the vinyl it was stamped on. Danny needed exposure, and Silver would draw the kind of audiences Lawrence wanted him exposed to.
They were scheduled for thirty-seven appearances in six weeks at county fairs across the South. They lived in an artificial environment, in the close, insulated world of a traveling band: raucous nights and monotonous days of endless interstate highways; cotton candy and fried dough, greasy hot dogs and lukewarm coffee; precious stolen hours of sleep on the bus between gigs; too much togetherness and too little privacy; bottles passed around from mouth to mouth, and the ubiquitous, sickish-sweet odor of burning marijuana.
Between stops, they played blackjack, read newspapers, held impromptu jam sessions, wrote songs, and grew to know each other at their best and their worst. And Casey, who always tried to find something likable in everyone she met, discovered that she disliked Bryan Silver intensely.
Although from a distance Silver appeared attractive, at close range his teeth were bad and his eyes set too close together. When he talked with Casey, he leaned too close, touched her too often. Worse still was his way of looking at her, a slow, suggestive perusal that left her feeling soiled. For Silver, undressing women with his eyes was probably a reflex action, but it made Casey uncomfortable. He never did it where Danny could see, and she pointedly avoided being alone with the man.
Even worse was Silver’s attitude toward Danny. The plan had been for him to play second banana to Silver. But night after night, in one dry, dusty little town after another, it was Danny they were screaming for. The audiences who had come to see Silver were refusing to let his opening act leave the stage. They ate him up, called him back for encore after encore. Silver came off looking like an afterthought, and it made him furious. This was his gig. Danny Fiore was a nobody, little more than a hired hand, and Silver made sure he didn’t forget it. On the surface, the two men were coolly courteous, but beneath that surface simmered an accelerating mutual dislike. By the end of the second week, everyone connected with the tour realized that it would be a miracle if Fiore and Silver managed to survive the entire six weeks without some cataclysmic confrontation.
***
The midway was alive with color and sound, and she clung to Danny’s hand as they threaded their way through the massive throng of people. Smells mingled in the air: French fries and cotton candy, pizza, and the underlying odor of animal dung. Casey paused at the entrance to a garish purple tent. The sign beside the door read Madame Zelda, Palm Reader. “Let’s go in,” she said, tugging on Danny’s arm.
He turned to see what had caught her attention, and his brows drew together. “That stuff is bullshit,” he said.
“You’re not supposed to take it seriously. It’s supposed to be fun.”
He followed her reluctantly into the tent. An ancient woman was seated behind a card table, her silver hoop earrings gleaming in the candlelight. “Come in, come in,” she greeted them. “I am Madame Zelda. And you are?”
“Casey. And this is my husband, Danny.”
“Sit down, my dear.”
Her skin as dry and thin as rice paper, the gypsy took Casey’s hand in her gnarled, brown one. She studied the markings, ran a bony finger along the lines that were scattered like a road map across Casey’s palm. When the old woman’s fathomless dark eyes met hers, a shock like an electrical current ran through Casey’s body, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. “You are a strong woman,” the gypsy said.
The old lady couldn’t possibly know what she was talking about. This was nothing more than a clever parlor trick, designed to dupe the gullible. “You have a long life line,” the gypsy said, pointing. “Here. See? I see many years, much happiness. Children. Grandchildren.” She paused, still studying the lines that criss-crossed Casey’s palm. “I see a time of great turmoil,” she said, “of heartbreak. But you will emerge stronger than before.”
Again Casey experienced the odd sensation that the gypsy could see directly into her soul. “And I see a great love,” the woman said, “one that will last into your old age.”
Shaken, Casey gave up her seat to Danny. He sat gingerly in the chair and the old woman took his hand, closed her eyes and held it for a moment. She opened them, and a slight smile curved her lips. “You,” she said, “are not a believer.”
Danny leaned back in the chair and rested his ankle on his knee. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”
She smiled thinly, then turned her attention to his palm. “Such an intriguing palm,” she said, tracing its lines and whorls with a fingertip. “Full of chaotic energy. I see success ahead of you. But unhappiness, too. You must learn to temper your ambition, or it will lead to your demise.”
He snorted, but the gypsy merely shrugged. “See here?” She touched his hand with her fingertip. “You have a short life line. You must ground yourself, or like a shooting star, you will burn out.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Danny yanked his hand away and rose from the chair. “This is pure bullshit,” he said to Casey. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the tent and back onto the midway.
Outside, the
re was light and noise and confusion. Behind them, tuneless calliope music tinkled from the carousel. “What on earth is wrong with you?” she said.
“I told you, I don’t believe in that bullshit. All her talk about heartbreak and suffering. She’s nothing more than a money-grubbing phony.”
“You’re not supposed to take it seriously,” she said.
He shrugged his shoulders as though to ward off some evil spirit. Pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. “It’s all prepackaged garbage,” he said. “A man comes in, she predicts success and burnout. A woman comes in, she predicts babies and everlasting love. She throws in the turmoil and the suffering because who doesn’t experience turmoil or suffering in the course of a lifetime? It’s still bullshit, no matter how you package it.”
They turned and began walking slowly along the midway, past the crowds and the carnival barkers. “I suppose I should be grateful,” she said ruefully. “After all, she did promise children and grandchildren. Not to mention everlasting love.”
“But with whom? I’m supposed to crash and burn, remember?”
“Hah! You have a bit farther to go, my darling, before you crash and burn.”
***
The bus developed engine trouble in a small town in Arkansas. Amid a chorus of complaints, it was towed to a repair shop, and Bruce, the road manager, booked the crew into a roadside motel for the night. It was a rare opportunity for a hot shower and a real bed, a chance to sit in the dimly lit motel bar and lift a few while listening to a bunch of locals perform mediocre covers of C&W tunes. Although country & western scored low on Casey’s list of favored music, when Danny collapsed across the bed and began snoring before it was even dark, she was bored enough to leave him there and join the rest of the noisy crew in the bar.
Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series) Page 17
