Between You and Me (10 page)

“Logan,” Michelle says. “Want to walk us through the day?”

Taking a steadying breath, I clap my hands. “Okay, so this morning’s pretaped interviews are at the Vienna Opera House, and it’s a huge honor they’re letting us film there.” Michelle pumps her fists like a toy boxer while Kelsey eats. “You’ll do your usual bits.”

“Who are the local guys?” Michelle asks.

I’ve memorized the answer. “Someone named Franz Schekele. He’s the Austrian Anderson Cooper.”

“That’s so sad,” Kelsey says, leaning forward to take a piece of bacon off Andy’s abandoned plate.

“What?” I ask her without looking at him.

“You work your whole life,” Kelsey says, catching a crumb from rolling down her shirt. “Going from covering the local pig fair to city politics to national news, and you don’t get to be Hans Goatherder, the star, you’re the Austrian somebody else, the Japanese Ellen, the Korean Paula Abdul.” She turns to her mom. “Remember that white woman we were told was the German Oprah? How?”

“You should bring that up in interviews, break the ice,” I say.

“Really?”

“No. And
then
, as a special treat, we’re going across the street to the
Hotel Sacher for a late lunch, and we will have whipped cream on everything.”

“Woo-hoo!” Michelle gets even more excited. “Honey,” she prompts Andy, who has pulled the binder from my lap. “We’re gonna take the girls for strudel.”

He grunts.

There’s a knock at the door, and Michelle lets in Dax, the hair guru, and Binky, the makeup artist who always reminds me of a Swedish ornament. “What’re you wearing?” she asks, her daily greeting.

“Let’s pick,” Michelle says, leading them to Kelsey’s room. Delighted to shift out of Andy’s crosshairs, I follow.

Michelle pulls out the ripped jeans and custom-made besparkled, beglittered tops while Binky peruses the options politely.

“This one feels Austrian,” Michelle says, fingering a hot-pink tank with a parrot across one boob.

Kelsey stands on the other side of the bed, arms crossed, her ability to muster enthusiasm for these shirts, one or another of which she’s been wearing for weeks, fatiguing. Michelle looks down from her daughter’s less-than-thrilled expression. “Kel, just pick one,” she says with a glimmer of impatience.

“I love what Logan has on,” she ventures with a determined casualness, referring to my blue knit with a twisted ribbon neckline.

“Take it,” I say.

“I
love
that idea.” Binky rushes in as Dax nods furiously, mouth full of clips.

Michelle bites her left pointer finger. “That won’t feel boring?”

My jaw opens prematurely while my mind speeds toward a statement. “No! Oh, no, it’ll really allow the costumes you designed to be the focus.” I pull off the shirt and pass it over, shrugging on the discarded hotel bathrobe.

Michelle purses her lips. “But it clashes with my sweater.”

“Then let’s go pick something fun for you!” Kelsey says, as if the trip across the living room is a girls’ day out.

Michelle blinks.

“Michelle?” I ask, putting my hand on her arm. “If you don’t feel like—”

Andy knocks on the door. “I’m not hearing any blow-dryers. We got thirty minutes on the clock.”

“Let’s just keep moving.” Michelle sighs. “We’ll do what Kelsey wants.”

By the time we get
to the Opera House, I have a second voice mail from my mother. “Logan, I just spoke to your office. They said you quit. If you don’t call me back, I’m calling the police.” Trying not to panic as I imagine Greg being thrown onto the bleached carpet and hauled off for questioning, I survey where the publicity rep’s set up Kelsey’s costumes. In this grand space, where Mozart is staged and Mahler conducted, they kind of look like a stripper’s trousseau. While allowing myself to wonder which is preferable, letting my parents think I’m dead or telling them I’m with Kelsey, I switch the garments around so there’s a visual flow by color. I try to keep the mannequins at arm’s length as I work. These are the B-set. The A-set is at the arena right now, being steamed and hung on the quick-change bar. The B-set should be at a dry cleaner’s in Stuttgart. But it’s not. It’s wafting under my nose. There’s a reason people don’t work out in velvet.

In the wings, Binky is giving Michelle a last dusting of powder. Kelsey has started picking at a cuticle. “We good?” I ask as a ping of blood appears.

“I would give my left tit for a cigarette,” she whispers to me.

“Are you sure this sweater is all right?” Michelle asks. “I really felt cuter in the navy one.” Kelsey works her cuticle.

“No,” Binky answers warmly. “I’m loving that color with your eyes.”

“Okay.” I step out from the wings. “Miss and Mrs. Wade,” I announce. Franz Schekele approaches, tapping his microphone.

“Guten morgen,”
he says briskly, as if he’s here to review their foreclosure application.

“Good morning,” Michelle replies with American oomph, while Kelsey just looks to the camera, waiting for the red light.

“Drei, zwei, eins . . . ”
The light glows.
“Wir sind heih mit Kelsey Wade!”
He is suddenly freakishly animated.

“Hi, Austria!” Kelsey matches him, fluttering her fingers coquettishly, and I see that she must have popped the acrylic loose.

“Michelle, you make ze cohstumes?” he asks. “How did zis come to be?”

“Well, first she skated, and I made all those little dresses,” Michelle answers in her foreign-interview cadence, extra bubbly, a little slow. “I didn’t know what I was doing at first, but I got pretty good with a sewing machine, I can tell you!” She does her laugh.

“Zo the theme, theh is a theme?” he asks. “To the show?” he clarifies.

“Oh, yes! Well, Kelsey has always loved dollhouses—”

“Pupen?”
he asks, and Michelle’s face stops.

“Poopin’?” she repeats uncertainly.

“Pupen,”
he repeats. “Dolls!”

“Oh, yes, poopin. Yes. So she thought, why not make the set like a dollhouse? With all these different rooms, and I could dress her like a different doll for every number.”

A dollhouse. I haven’t seen the show yet, but the set looks more like a, well, like a sex hotel. Dollhouse, fine, sure.

“Und, Kelsey, you und your muter are very close?”

Not hearing Kelsey’s usual response I look up from my binder. “She’s my best friend!” Michelle rushes to fill in Kelsey’s sound bite. “Since she was little, I could tell her
anything
.”

“Kelsey?” he prompts her.

She snaps to. “We had a huge sycamore tree in the yard, and we’d sit under it, and I’d tell my momma about my day and my dreams, and we’d make plans for the future. That’s why I sang ‘Dream a Little Dream’ on
Star Search
.”

“Yes, ve have a clip of that.
Vunderbar.
Ve are very excited to have you in Wien and to see the show tonight. Thank you!”

“Thank
you
!” Michelle beams.

“Now, just kiss me on the cheek und say, I love Franz Schekele!”

Kelsey inhales briefly before doing as instructed.

“Great.” He winds the cord around his forearm and walks away like a john who can’t get out of the room fast enough.

“What was
that
?” Kelsey asks.

“His promo,” the rep explains.

“You’ll be spliced in between Johnny Depp and Cee Lo kissing him, if that makes it feel any less ooky,” I add.

“It does, actually.”

Michelle tugs at her sweater. “I think I’m getting itchy.”

“Let’s refresh your sexy eyes.” Binky leads her away.

“Are you okay?” I whisper to Kelsey as she worries the raw stub of her pointer.

“I just went blank for a sec.”

“Yeah. I gotta ask, sycamore tree? The only tree in your yard looked like it was waiting to star in
A Charlie Brown Christmas
.”

“It’s a bit our first publicist gave me cuz of
Star Search,
and I’ve been saying it so long I can see it. Dammit, what am I gonna say now?”

“That you and your mom swapped dreams and gum on line at the DQ?”

“Gross.” She looks down for a moment, dropping her platform heel to the side. “This is so not sex on a pile of floaties.”

“Still no text?” I ask.

“Would you text me?”

“Yes!”

“If you were Aaron?”

“Of course,” I reassure her. But she’s right. Now he’s the backup singer who had sex with Kelsey Wade—which is far preferable to being the guy whose text she blew off. “He’s probably busy.”

“Like you’re too busy to text Finn?”

“Exactly—just like that.”

Binky leads Michelle back.

“Okay, next up is Rai Uno,” the rep announces as a sixty-something woman, in a skirt almost displaying her La Perla, climbs over the orchestra pit in stratospherically high heels.

“Ciao!”
She then spews a barrage of rapid-fire Italian while Kelsey and Michelle stand by awkwardly, waiting to be addressed.

“Thanks for your support with the shirt,” I whisper to Binky.

“I’m surprised they’re even here. Kelsey made it sound like they weren’t coming.” She pulls a brush out of her hip holster, ready for the next touch-up. “Can you imagine doing this with
your
mother?”

I think of the conversation I have coming. I think of the hours
Kelsey and I spent as girls under that sad excuse for a tree. How we used to imagine we were secretly really not just cousins but sisters, never actually saying which parents we’d erase from the equation if we could. “Yes,” I whisper back. “My mother would just smile and say, ‘Hi, I’m Judy Wade, and I’m saved. This is my daughter, Logan Anne, and she, sadly, is going to hell.’”

Even though the interviews ran
long, Michelle insisted we make it to our late lunch. The three of us watch Andy bite into what’s essentially a hot dog and then squint as his eyes tear from the horseradish. Enjoying the challenge and the audience, he makes his final bite the biggest.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Andy,” Michelle says, lifting his water glass to him. He pushes it away as he cracks up, dabbing his eyes with his starched napkin.

“Damn good.” He coughs. “Clears the sinuses right out.”

Having lost her window to rest, Kelsey pours another packet of sweetener into her iced tea and stifles a yawn with Olympian finesse. The management has graciously cleared the Belle Époque dining room, and while the first time we ate at an emptied restaurant felt thrillingly insider-y, it is starting to conjure staff dinners circa my undergrad waitress days. I never realized how much of the pleasure of dining out is watching people. Otherwise it feels like ordering in with better utensils.

“Terrance!” Kelsey practically topples her red velvet chair as she jumps to her feet. Michelle and Andy follow, and I leap up to see Terrance DuGrey—hours ahead of his scheduled postshow visit—moving across the landmark room with an unimpressed air. A multiplatinum hip-hop star in his own right, Terrance retired to oversee the label that made him famous. His iconic hard stare breaks into a grin, and I’m oddly proud of her ability to elicit such a reaction from such a man.

Michelle sucks the chocolate from her teeth. “We weren’t expecting you until tonight!”

“I couldn’t wait to check in on my favorite family.” His arm draped around her, he walks Kelsey back to our table, his two GM
equivalents taking unobtrusive station by the drapes. “Mr. Wade.” He and Andy do a shake-slash-bro-hug, and he gives Michelle a kiss on the cheek. “Sit, sit.” He waves us all down and, before a waiter can get there, flips around a chair from a neighboring table and drops into it.

“How’s business?” Andy asks.

Terrance shakes his head, his smile turning rueful. “I am having a week, Andy. Susan fucking Boyle. Susan
fucking
Boyle. I can’t sell shit right now.” He rubs his eyebrows.

Andy nods, taking this in, and I wonder if Terrance is implying that shit extends to the album this tour is promoting.

“This cake is just amazing, Terrance,” Michelle says, flagging a waiter. “You have to have a piece. Can you please get a piece for our guest? Would you like a Viennese coffee? They serve it with whipped cream, it’s so delicious. Or maybe an espresso?”

“Oh, no.” The tension in his face evaporates like the steam from my cup as he waves off the server and then pats his chunky cable knit. “Got to watch the calories. Thank you, though. You all enjoy.” We immediately resume eating, but I’m guessing none of us tastes anything. “Someone want to introduce me?” Terrance asks in my direction, tempting me to blurt that every guy I ever hooked up with would give a testicle to be me right now. Suck it, Jeff.

“Where are my manners?” Kelsey jumps in. “This is my cousin, Logan. She’s taken over from—as my assistant. She’s doing an amazing job. Just amazing. Isn’t she, Daddy?”

Andy sits forward. “You were in the studio, so I ran it by your team.”

Terrance lifts his palm. “What do you think of our show, Cousin Logan?” His stare back in place, he turns it on me. Frug.

“I actually haven’t seen it,” I admit.

Andy intercedes, “What she means is—”

“I mean that nine
PM
here is noon in L.A., and that’s when I get most of my calls. So I thought it more prudent to devote the time to back end—”

“All business. Okay, then. So, Kel, how’s the grind?”

“I’m having a blast.” Kelsey draws out the last word for emphasis as our waiter places the leather bill in front of her with a half bow,
and she, as she does everywhere, slides it to Andy, who tugs out his wallet and offers up a credit card, even though it goes to her accountant. “It’s such a treat to see you. You sure you don’t want even a bite of this cake? It’s insane.”

“My head of European sales caught the Bucharest performance. He said in the second-to-last number—”

“‘Chemistry Lesson’?” Andy clarifies.

“Yeah. He said you’re flagging.”

“Oh.” Kelsey grips either side of her seat. “Well, I’m switching into the harness in the middle, so—”

“The guy who’s popping a mortgage payment to take his three daughters to see Kelsey Wade doesn’t know about the harness. He just knows Kelsey Wade isn’t bringing it.”