Between You and Me (22 page)

Terrance cracks up as if she’s building upon her original joke. Everyone follows his lead. Am I really hearing about this with Terrance and Cheryl? Is this what Aaron meant by plans? Why wouldn’t she tell me?

“Eric’s wound down over the last year.” Kelsey continues with determined poise. “I think it makes sense for me. Of course, all the merchandising lines will still—”

“Girl, those hormones gone to your head? You’ll be bored in five minutes. Seen it a thousand times.
Oh, T, get me back in the studio, this kid’s driving me crazy!
”

“I think what Kelsey is trying to say.” Her agent leans forward in the awkward silence, her pavé bracelets clinking. “Is that she’s a little baby-brained at the moment. She knows we owe you three more albums, right, Kel?”

Kelsey opens her mouth, but Andy speaks. “ ’Course she does.”

“We want to hear what
you’d
like to see next, Terrance.” The
agent’s silk top flops to reveal the tape unsuccessfully holding it to her bony sternum.

Aaron clears his throat. “I think Kelsey was talking about scaling back mostly on touring.”

Michelle shoots him a silencing look.

Terrance reclines in his chair, his palm flat on the table. “Well, that’s LiveNation’s problem. How many mil you owe them, Andy?”

“Seventy,” he says, folding in the edges of his placemat.

“That was the right contract for someone her age. Madonna, Beyoncé, Pink—they worked the hell outta their twenties.”

A month later, I’m on
the set of the video shoot for the Christmas single, which we’ve been told is going to be a “tasteful” take on “Away in a Manger.” I’m immediately met with a flurry of questions that are morphing my job into something I’m terming Gestational Psychic.

“Logan!” the assistant director shouts. “Will the mom-to-be want to stand or sit—need to focus the lights one way or the other!”

I don’t even bother texting Kelsey, because she will say both are fine. That it is all fine. Even though both will, at some point today, become untenable. Which I’ll only be able to guess when the blood has drained from her face, we have to beg the producer to take a break, and Andy smacks something in frustration.

“Let’s start standing!” I gamble. Today I’ve requested extra ice packs—apparently, this Mary had a thing for Alexander McQueen platforms.

“Logan says standing!” he calls out so everyone knows whose fault the expensive delay will be if she arrives lightheaded and needing to sit.

A girl with random piercings—her face looks as if someone blindfolded chased her around the room with a stud gun—calls out to the crew, “Kelsey arrives in twenty!” Maybe it’s a constellation, I think, as my butt pocket vibrates. A text from Michelle. “K gone AWOL. Needs pick up in Laurel Canyon. ? ? ? Stuck in traffic. Can you? Don’t tell Andy.”

Awesome.

I look to where he’s going over the storyboards and try to dash nonchalantly for the exit. “Just grabbing a sweater from the car!”

I take as many side streets as I can to avoid rush hour, repeatedly dialing Kelsey, but she isn’t answering. I finally make the turn into the wealthy bohemian neighborhood of Mid-century Modern homes. Is she meeting a birthing coach, getting her cards read?

Pulling up to a two-story teak house I hop across the pebbled drive. “Hello?” I call, pushing into a sun-baked room.

“Well, that’s the offer.”

I turn to see a woman wearing a black bouclé suit, her French tips pressing her phone to her ear.

“Kelsey?” I ask.

“And I’m telling you, if you can get an engineer here today, we’ll pay him double.” Without pausing her conversation, she points at the open-sided staircase.

I tread quickly past a Cy Twombly, resisting the urge to grab it in lieu of a banister, and pause above the double-height room. “Sorry, where?”

The French tip, like a weather vane, swings left. In the master suite I spot Kelsey standing on the edge of the balcony, a jetty of whitewashed concrete, below which the Canyon dizzily unspools. “Logan, what are you doing here?”

“Your mom sent me. We have to go.”

“She isn’t coming?”

“It’s rush hour. Kelsey, you’re due on the set, like, now.”

“I have to wait for her.”

“Why?” I pull out my phone, my temples pounding as I see no fewer than five texts from Andy.

“This is my new house.”

“Your house,” I repeat stupidly. “What do you mean, your house?”

“Logan, I love it.” Her face breaks open. “I mean, we have to put in a gate and a guard booth and make those stairs safe and fence the pool, but otherwise, it’s perfect. It’s not too big. You don’t need an intercom. I made Linda downstairs call my name from every corner, and you can hear everyone everywhere. No need for yelling—ever.
I’m so sick of sparkly frames and crystal figurines and trophy walls. All that freakin’ stuff in every room. No more. Just a comfy couch, a dining table, and the piano. And toys everywhere. I can be a mom here, I can feel it.”

“Oh. Okay . . . ”

“What?”

“No, I’m just sorry. I swear to you, I’ve seen every available listing that fit what your mom—”

“Oh, and this ledge will be a terrace. The glass blew away in that last storm, but they’ll fix it or give me an adjustment.”

“What does that look like?” I ask, trying not to glance at the treetops sloping down the steep drop, trying to make my tone as enthused as she’s asking for. “A few thousand off a few million?”

“I suppose. I’ll start her college fund.”

“Cuz I hear that’s getting expensive.”

“Okay.” She crosses her arms. “What?”

“What?” I say.

“I thought you’d be happy for me.”

I let out a frustrated breath. “I am. I mean, how is that not obvious? I am.”

“You seem pissed.”

The corners of my mouth twitch stupidly as my failure sinks in. “Kelsey, you know what I was really doing when your first single went to number one?”

She shakes her head.

“Rooting for you. If I don’t know that you want to move to Oklahoma or like Mid-century or need to sit down, then I can’t do my job.”

“Sorry. Is my getting married and having a baby hard for you? Are you having feelings about that? Because you can take a number and get in line behind, you know,
America
.”

“Okay, that’s not at all what I’m saying.” I shove my hands in my back pockets, hunching against the sting. “And I didn’t think I was America.”

“I didn’t think I was a job,” she responds evenly. I can’t humble myself to clarify the statement. It’s not what I meant to hit her with, but at the same time, it is.

“Kelsey!” Michelle calls from downstairs. Kelsey brushes past me. “What’re we doing here?” Michelle asks as we descend to the living room. “Buying art? Your dad’s head has blown clear off. Why didn’t you return my calls?”

“Ta-dah!” Kelsey declares, splaying her arms like she’s shooting rays from her fingers.

“Ta-dah what?”

“I own it,” Kelsey says simply, taking a seat on a kitchen stool as if it were a throne. “Or I will in a few days. We still need a survey before we take the deed.”

“Here?” Michelle scowls, bewildered.

“I love it.” Kelsey rests her palms on her bump.

“But it’s so small.”

“Yep.”

“How many bedrooms?”

“Just four.”

“How can you do this—buy a house? So fast.”

“I’m an all-cash buyer.” Kelsey looks at the counter as if a stack of contracts waited there. “I spoke to Rich this morning, and he’s ready to transfer the funds.”

“You can do that?”

She fixes her mother with a look I’ve only seen on set. “With one phone call, yes.”

“But where will
we
live?”

Kelsey takes Michelle by the elbow and leads her to the wall of windows, where, a few hundred feet down the Canyon, sits a wood guesthouse nestled in the trees. “Isn’t it perfect? You even have your own driveway.”

“But it looks so dark. Where’s the ocean view? I don’t like it. No, I don’t like it at all. This is all wrong—”

“Well.” Kelsey swings to her. “This is our home, mine and Aaron’s.” Her eyes flash over her mother’s shoulder, spraying her meaning. “And if you want to live with us, you live there. If you don’t want to live with us, that woman on her cell phone is Linda. Linda?” Kelsey calls. “My momma’s looking to buy herself a house.”

Kelsey’s there. She’s sitting next to me in the backseat of a car. It’s night. The tan seats—it’s Michelle’s car. Kelsey’s in her Pocahontas nightgown. People are yelling in the front seat. Grown-ups. Screaming at each other. Kelsey climbs to her feet and starts to sing, but I can’t watch because all at once, I’m frantically trying to pull a shower curtain to block us off from the front seat. Everything depends on my getting this green plastic curtain closed, but it’s impossible. I pull it to one side, and the other opens. Smoke starts to pour in from above, then the sides, then the seams. Kelsey keeps singing, and I don’t understand how she isn’t coughing as I try to keep my grip on the plastic while my nostrils, my mouth, my eyes are burning, and I’m choking on the smoke—and—

—I open my eyes to a mess of white sheets, moving instantly from the frantic adrenaline of my dream to realizing that I really am coughing. I abruptly sit up to reach for water. I gulp, only to inhale another wave of burning air. “Finn?” I jog down the steps, tug a dishtowel from the bar, and cover my mouth as I yank the door open.

In the bright December morning my eyes instantly tear. But I stand under a clear sky. Birds singing. No flames.

“Well, good morning, sunshine!” Travis whirs over on his Segway, the top of his wetsuit hanging off his bare waist.

“What’s on fire?”

“Huh?” He grins.

I yank the towel away. “What’s on fire?”

“The bison I shot! My sous is cumin-searing the carcass in the garage to kick off the holiday season—get some good solstice energy going.” He taps his handlebars, and the intro to the
Bonanza
theme
blasts the property from every foliage-obscured speaker. “You lookin’ for Finn?”

“Here,” Finn says, coming through the break in the hedge.

“You have pulled off some neat shit today.” Travis bows, the sleeves of his suit grazing his feet. “You’re in the groove, little grasshopper.”

Finn salutes him.

Travis backs the machine up to turn around. “Lo, do not, I repeat, do not eat anything this week. No lunch, no dinner, nothing. We’ve got to let Friday’s Bison Fest be consummate, comprende? Da, da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da BONANZA!” he yells as he lurches away.

“Seal it up,” I say, turning toward the house. “I have back-to-back interior-design meetings, and I can’t face Thomas O’Brien looking like I’ve just been dumped.”

“Uncontrollable tearing could be hot on you,” Finn says, wiping his eyes on his sleeves as he pulls the windows shut, helping me to Ziploc ourselves in with the flaming air.

“So, you’ve already pulled off neat shit?” I sneeze.

“The project that’s going to transition Travis—”

“I remember.” I prod with a smile, as this is pretty much all Finn talks about.

“The writer I was trying to get signed on!”

I throw my arms around him. “Yea!”

“Thanks.” He squeezes me tight, his hands sliding up under my shirt. “No bra and still in pajama pants, which means no panties . . . ”

“Sorry, dude, gotta get going. Can I take a rain check for your casting couch?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just . . . still having these crazy intense dreams,” I say dismissively, even as the flutter of adrenaline returns.

“Where the pool table’s trying to eat you?”

“Yeah,” I fib, as their actual content makes even less sense. “I have to stop having chocolate cake at bedtime.”

He kisses me as the air starts to clear. “Listen, I had a crazy idea.”

“Travis should cut an album.”

“You should come with us to New York.”

“Really?” I ask as I fill the coffee pot.

“I’ll be booked with Travis leading up to the premiere—”

“A.K.A. Christmas Day.”

“But I’ll have the next week off and we can do it up in style. Travis is taking a block of suites for his family, and my family’s coming down.”

“I’m in!” I say, jumping at the chance to avoid Christmas in Oklahoma saturated with my parents’ disapproval—not that I’ve been invited.

“Awesome.” He grins. “I know this great little bar in Midtown, near the hotel. You’re gonna love it. They have these old murals on the wall.”

And rather than tell him that’s where I spent my most depressing birthday to date, I circle the island to peel off his sweatshirt, deciding that Thomas O’Brien can wait a little longer to meet my sexy tearing eyes.

By Friday morning, my thoughts
thump across my brain in wagon-train rhythm as I wait outside Chez Watts for Kelsey, doing a last inventory of fabric samples. I never knew there were so many shades of white.

Kelsey, intent on driving home what “just being a job” can feel like, has relegated me to assisting the renovation.

It’s point-blank jarring to look at her across Vicente’s latest sketch of their new bedroom and reconcile the intensity of our connection replaying nightly in my dreams with the generic politeness she makes available to me in real time.