The Legend of Arturo King

by L. B. Dunbar

  That was the thing about women and rockers. The guy always gets the bad rap for fucking the girl, but she wanted to be fucked. She wanted to use me just as much as I wanted to use her, albeit for different reasons. I want to get off. She wants to get on. On the long list filled with ladies who can lay claim to being laid by me, Arturo King. A vision of a different girl from the night before came to my mind quickly and I crassly wondered if that enchanted beauty wanted on the list as well. But just as suddenly I remembered how she ignored me as she crossed the crowded floor, not even glancing in my direction as she made her way through the mass of pumping bodies. She most certainly did not want to be on the list.

  My inquisition the night before resulted in the unanswered questions about my dream-laden enchantress. I blatantly asked around about the vision in white who cascaded through the crowd, and I recalled a brief conversation with Lans.

  “Did you happen to see that vision in white cross the floor during Last Look?” I had asked as I tried to seem casual and took the shot of whiskey.

  “Guinie DeGrance?”

  “No, not Guinie DeGrance. That sexy creature in a floor-length dress.”

  “That was Guinevere DeGrance, Leo’s daughter,” Lans hissed, emphasizing the last two words.

  I thought the answer to be impossible. From what I remembered of Guinie DeGrance, she was quiet, reserved, and judgmental. I couldn’t put a face with her name because she had so often been in the background, overshadowed by Leo’s instruction. She never associated with the rockers of her father’s club. She never partied with the audience or celebrated shows with the headliners.

  “Isn’t she like eighteen or something?” I laughed, but Lans leveled me with a stare.

  “Yeah, like four years ago she turned eighteen.”

  I vaguely remembered her turning eighteen years old. There had been a birthday celebration at my mother’s home for her, but I didn’t see her that night. I couldn’t think about that night right now.

  No, I could definitely say that it couldn’t have been Guinevere DeGrance in that white dress, but if she wanted to ignore me, then I had every reason to ignore her as well … especially if she was Leo’s daughter.

  Guinevere

  I woke each day for a week with the odd sense of being on a school break. It didn’t seem real that I had actually finished, completed school forever. Done. No more. Nothing to do. What I hadn’t ended was practicing my cello for hours daily, but each day I was beginning to feel less and less motivated to practice as long, as hard, as often, as the day before. The dream of moving to Boston and being a member of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra was beginning to set in deeper and deeper, and I was slowly starting to question just what I was going to do. What purpose was I going to serve?

  I took an assessment of my bedroom as I lay on my side. The beautiful graduation dress had been made by me in a costuming class I took as an elective. I worked hard on the design and the embroidery, and the dress had been a labor of love. The teacher encouraged me and my classmates praised me for its intricate work, but sewing, embroidering, and designing were not my life’s desire, even if I felt incredibly sexy in the dress. I had no one to wear such a sensual item for in my life.

  I glanced at the teetering stack of books on the floor next to my bed. It was a piling inferno of to-be-read stories in which now-famous people once did amazing things in a time long ago. The pile also included a few scandalous titles of romance and sexual encounter, which I knew nothing about, but wanted to learn. I wasn’t a hopeless romantic. I wasn’t even truly hopeful of romance in my life, but I did believe in true love and happily ever after, if only to think it could happen for some people.

  I scanned over my beautiful writing desk given to me by my father as an eighteenth birthday present and the sleek modern Air Mac closed on top. I had been told I was an excellent writer in my English classes, but I wrote for myself, not for the public. I was too afraid that my name, recognizable as the daughter of Leo DeGrance, would cause him too much scandal if I wrote what I wanted to write. Not to mention, I didn’t feel I had enough experience to write about such things. No, my writings were for me.

  My eyes focused then on my cello. Still propped against its stand with my comfortable folding chair beside it, the combination made me ache with sadness and the pairing looked lonely. I could be a teacher of music, but it wasn’t what I had aspired to be. I didn’t want to teach; I wanted to play. I didn’t want to share my love of the instrument by tutoring; I wanted to share my love of the beautiful sound by showcasing my talent. A talent I was slowly beginning to think I did not truly possess.

  I turned away from the wooden string instrument that whispered my name and looked at the oversized comfy chair by the tall window. Sunlight would be streaming through that window when I opened the heavy curtain. It would be another gorgeous late-spring day. Summer was coming soon, but it was the chair that struck my attention. It was clean. Yesterday a pile of dirty clothes graced that chair. Today the pile was gone.

  I sighed heavily. I was twenty-one and didn’t still need a maid. Talia had been one of the luxuries provided by my father. She had been a young nursemaid when I was a toddler, a type of governess when I was in grammar school, a source of emotional support while I attended the music academy, and a distant friend when I went to college. Talia was older than me, but it was sometimes hard to remember the age difference. She had filled so many roles for me, but at twenty-one, almost twenty-two, I didn’t want Talia to continue to be my maid. I didn’t need someone to pick up my things, or straighten my room, or help me dress. I was damn well old enough to do those things for myself, which was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to do what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, I didn’t know yet what that was. On that note, I pulled the silky sheets back over my head and closed my eyes for additional sleep.

  An hour or so later, I jolted awake when I felt something brush my shoulder. I had been having the most pleasurable dream that included me wearing my white graduation dress. A man was standing in front of me in the dream and he had just finished kissing me passionately. Not just any man though, Arturo King. He was cascading kisses down my body through the deep V-cut in my dress and I was watching him trail down my front, across my breasts, and over my stomach, as if witnessing the whole experience in a mirror. He was on his knees in front of me and his hands had moved to the hem of my dress. He was achingly slow at sliding the thin gauzy material up my legs; it draped his hands as they climbed upward to warm my skin. I was on fire at the top of this gentle trail he traced and I would have closed my eyes to the mirror image of myself in pure pleasure if not for the fact I didn’t want to miss a single image of him before me. My hands were running through his choppy dark hair, gently tugging at it, and I knew without looking down that this fantasy man was Arturo. My skirts were lifted to fully expose my hips and I felt a hot breath between the apex of my legs … when I felt that out-of-place brush on my shoulder again that sprung me awake.

  “Dad?” I blinked several times, trying to get my bearing.

  Cello – check.

  Oversized chair – check.

  White dress hanging on closet door – check.

  Still in bed – ugh.

  “Guinie, honey, are you ill? Why are you still in bed?”

  I looked to the clock on my nightstand. 11:00 AM on a Tuesday.

  “I … I fell back asleep,” I said as I sat all the way up and ran my hands through my acorn-colored hair. I might have needed a haircut, I thought distractedly. It was getting so long that the natural waves were slipping straight.

  “Are you okay? I heard you practicing after midnight last night. You’ve been rather quiet since your graduation.” My father looked down at me with concern.

  Leo DeGrance was a good-looking man, if not a bit tired. He had worked hard as long as I could remember. My parents had married young and the tragedy of my mother’s death from pneumonia was almost unheard of today. Being a young, attractive man with a daughter mus
t have been difficult for him, and sometimes I felt I did not show my appreciation for all he did for me often enough. He had salt-and-pepper hair that made him look distinguished and sexy in that older male way. Not that I found him sexy. This was my father, but I watched women respond to his presence and even a few of my fellow classmates would comment on how good-looking Dad was. With bright-blue eyes like mine, his face lit up when he talked about a band and their possibilities, but I noticed more often the subtle lines around his eyes and across his forehead, hinting at his age.

  At forty-two, he had lived a lifetime in the dual role as mother and father. Our relationship wasn’t one built on affection or even emotional connection, but I knew he loved me unconditionally, as I loved him. His concern for my feelings, or me sleeping in, was rare, and unwarranted today.

  “I’m fine. Just a little … relaxed and trying to let it all go, you know?”

  My father did know. He knew I didn’t get the orchestra chair I so coveted, but what he didn’t know was how much I desired that space. If he knew, he would have paid whatever, said whatever, or pulled whatever strings he could. But I wanted to do something for myself by myself for once, and that spot had been my focal point for so long, I ignored all other possibilities, like the potential of not obtaining it.

  Dad knew I was disappointed, he just didn’t understand how much, or all the reasons why.

  “I think it’s time for you to get up. How about some fresh air as well? I don’t think you’ve left the house in a week. It’s beautiful outside. Let’s go to Central Park.”

  Central Park was my father’s thing. Whenever I was sad as a child or he suddenly felt he hadn’t spent enough time with me, he would say let’s go to the park, as if a walk through the gorgeous forested space in the middle of a bustling city could solve it all. Often times, it did help though. The fresh air, a push on a swing, and an ice cream cone would make the world seem like a better place.

  “Let me shower and I’ll be ready in half an hour.” I smiled, knowing it was forced.

  His face lit up like it often did when he had something exciting to share. Unfortunately it usually had more to do with some band than with me.

  Arturo

  I sat next to my brother in a black lounger across from Leo DeGrance. I’d been in this office space several times over the course of my growing career and I valued Leo’s opinion, not to mention his personal support in regards to my mother. Today we were discussing an upcoming charity event my mother was hosting for victims of rape, an issue she felt compassionately about. She wanted to sponsor a concert, and I was refusing to play.

  The knowledge of my birth was sacred. Few people knew other than the three men in this room, plus Mure Linn, Hector Sirs, and, of course, my father and mother. I learned of the circumstances resulting in my conception seven years ago, by mistake.

  By the time I was eighteen, I had become a growing sensation with my voice. Under the training of Mure Linn, I developed from an innocent, teenage voice into a raspy, sensual sound and a genius with the guitar. I had met Lans at Mure’s summer lake house, and eventually learned about Perk’s desire to join a band in the surrounding woods. I had developed an understanding with my new fellow college mate, Tristan, and the idea of Nights was founded. By the end of our first semester, the band was beginning to develop a small following across campuses in New York and New Jersey.

  After that fateful day when I was twelve and Mure found me in the high school competition hallway, a friendship had developed between the older gentleman and me as his new charge. Hector Sirs didn’t seem at all concerned that some strange man had appeared one day in a musty high school hallway to claim me and take me under his wing. It wasn’t until I was fifteen that I learned I wasn’t Hector’s natural son. A knowledge I had felt for years regardless.

  But, at eighteen, I learned the truth of my family connections. My father had been named Locke Uther. This I didn’t find out until later. He was from a powerful family of real-estate moguls in New York and the entire New England area. They owned and sold large quantities of buildings and land over the past decades and the Pendragon Empire, as the company was named, was a powerhouse in property.

  In an effort to romanticize the unfortunate event of my conception, I had been told that my father saw my mother and was immediately attracted to her beauty. She had been gorgeous, with chestnut hair, highlighted with bits of fiery red, and green eyes that held a man frozen like Medusa. Unfortunately for Locke, she was engaged to another man through some kind of family-arranged marriage. He was so enthralled with her beauty he had to have her regardless. Seeing her at a social function, he encouraged her to meet him under the premise that he was her fiancé and he attacked her within an empty ballroom while the function raged on in rooms below. My mother eventually tried to soften the shocking truth by saying that my father didn’t beat her, but what sort of man holds a woman against her will and forces her to have sex, whether he hit her or not?

  Ashamed of what happened to her, and uncertain of whom her attacker was until years later, Ingrid Tintagel fled immediately to a family home in upstate New York. She gave birth nine months later and gave the baby to a trusted family friend, who then placed me in the care of Hector Sirs.

  Hector Sirs was selected for his ability to train me in my destiny, and keep me safe until I was older. Mure Linn had apparently been the family friend who took me to the Sirs. It had all been quite too much to handle at eighteen and so I chose not to. I threw myself into songwriting and pushed the band to practice hard, raising our recognition.

  It had all been by accident that I discovered this unfortunate truth. Yet unknown to me, my mother came to visit Mure Linn one day before I was scheduled for guitar practice. I stood outside the man’s door listening to the two voices discussing the future of a young boy. The woman was frantic that it was time to reveal herself as the boy’s mother. She was worried his father would find him and she needed to warn him. Mure was trying to assure the woman that the young boy was well and taken care of properly. She was persistent and insistent in her endeavor to find the young man. It had been eighteen years, she demanded. At this, I pushed open the door. I couldn’t recall what prompted my motion. Was it the desperation in her voice? Was it something else that seemed familiar? I would never know the reasoning, but open the door I did.

  A young woman in her mid-thirties stood tall and slender in a black skirt, prim and proper. A bright-colored shirt highlighted the angry excitement in her face. Her hair was tamed into a twist at her neck and soft pieces framed her face in chestnut-red curls. I instantly found this woman beautiful and familiar in some way. Her green eyes held fear as she covered her mouth and stared at me. When she finally spoke, it was her words that frightened me.

  “My God, he looks just like his father.”

  The history of my birth did not impress me, especially after the success I had gained. I didn’t wish to flaunt in the faces of others that I had been the product of rape yet turned out unscathed. I didn’t feel I had been untouched by the truth of my conception and I didn’t think my mother had been unaffected by it either. What seventeen-year-old girl wants to wake up after such an attack and find she will have a lifetime reminder of what happened to her? Ingrid claimed that not only was she embarrassed by the situation, she felt she had placed herself into it by following the summons to the empty ballroom, but she was also incapable at eighteen of caring for a child. Her parents were sympathetic to her unknowingly maintaining the pregnancy. She didn’t realize she was pregnant until it was too late to do anything other than give life to me.

  But I didn’t see the need to give a giant concert as a fundraiser for rape awareness and support for victims. I didn’t see why a more intimate gathering couldn’t be assumed and I had no disagreement with singing a song or two at a smaller function.

  “You have to understand your mother. She likes things over the top,” Leo DeGrance argued.

  “Well, that’s just it. I rarely do understand Ingri
d.”

  I never called her Mother or Mom. It was too awkward at eighteen to call anyone such a name after a lifetime of having no one to call by that label, so Ingrid and I decided simply calling her by her first name would be enough. It was slowly announced to family and friends that Ingrid Tintagel had birthed a child and was recently reunited with him, which meant it made Page Six immediately. The start of the Nights career was almost overshadowed by the knowledge of Arturo King’s maternal heritage and this spiraled into a leap of recognition in equal proportions.

  Positively, the band was recognized. Negatively, the band was recognized. I wanted the recognition for the Nights musical ability, but the band was getting accolades first for my lineage. The guys talked me into letting the media have their way. It did sensationalize the name of the band from beyond small-time bars and college campuses, and the following of the Nights grew. Slowly people realized the musical talent regardless of the Tintagel family connection and those people became ardent fans.

  “I’ll talk to Ingrid,” Leo sighed.

  “So will I,” Kaye added. He might not have been the headliner he wanted to be, but his name held weight just the same and the guys considered him a vital part of the band. As a bonus, he could soothe Ingrid better than me. Leo could soothe her even more.

  I never understood the connection between Leo DeGrance and Ingrid Tintagel. Leo was a self-made man. He worked hard and earned his own money. He didn’t come from a largely recognized family or inherit a million dollars. His wealth, I always assumed, came from the collaboration of knowing lots of people in the music industry and making friends with people in society. Ingrid Tintagel was part of that society. She did good deeds. She held fundraisers. She worked public policy, all with the Tintagel name behind her and the financial backing of her family.