Abby Road

by Ophelia London

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Charlie prefers dogs,” she added, opening one of the coloring books and flipping through its pages. “So where have you been all day? And with whom?” Apparently, my loving sister was in her savage journalistic mode.

  When my answer didn’t come right away, she looked up, wearing a shifty smile. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling back, lowering my eyes demurely.

  “Wow, he must really be something.”

  “How do you know it’s a he?”

  “Ha!” She tossed the book aside. “Because I know you.”

  What was the point in beating around the bush? Besides, way too much time had passed since Lindsey and I shared any kind of conversation like this. I couldn’t help smiling again, suddenly more than willing to girl talk into the night.

  “So, you know that funny little store across the Square from Sundog Books?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one with those weird European surfing posters in the windows?”

  Lindsey squinted then nodded.

  “There was this . . . I mean . . . I met a guy there.”

  My sister had to think for a minute. Then her jaw dropped.

  “Abby, are you talking about Chandler?” she shrieked. “Did you spend all day with that kid? He’s sixteen years old!”

  “Eighteen last month,” I corrected, “but no, calm down. Do you know Todd, the owner?”

  Lindsey pondered for another second, agog expression unchanged. “Todd Camford?”

  “Maybe,” I hedged. “I don’t know his last name, actually.”

  Lindsey finally unclenched. Then a slow grin spread across her face. “Tall? Dark? Gorgeous?”

  “Check, check, check.” I grinned in return.

  She sprang to the couch, right in my face. “Were you with him all day?”

  “Pretty much.” I smiled at the thought, my hands patting at leftover tummy butterflies. “I left here just after nine and rode your bike into Seaside. He was at his store, and we just . . . sort of . . .”

  “Oh! This is too cool. Twelve hours? That’s the equivalent of four dates. Abby, you’ve been on four dates with Todd Camford.” She sounded very impressed. “I heard he used to be a Navy Seal.”

  “Marine sharpshooter,” I was all too pleased to correct.

  Lindsey’s eyes bugged out. “Are you serious? Shut the f-front door.”

  “I know. Why is anything military-related such a turn on?”

  She chuckled sarcastically, moving back to her chair. “Umm, maybe because that means he’s all rugged and focused and . . . he knows how to operate a weapon.”

  “Lindsey, jeez,” I said faintly, looking over my shoulder for prying four-year-old ears. Instead, her husband Steve padded down the stairs. He was wearing his reading glasses on top of his head like women use their sunglasses to hold back the front of their hair. He looked, actually, quite silly. I shot Lindsey a sympathetic glance and could see a laugh spasm building behind her sealed lips.

  “Where are the kitchen towels?” Steve asked sullenly.

  “In the kitchen, hon,” Lindsey replied, winking at me. “What happened?”

  “John tipped a glass of water all over his bed.”

  Lindsey moved to stand up.

  “Don’t worry,” her husband said, sitting her back down. “I got it.” He disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Todd Camford . . .” Lindsey repeated. then lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers.” She gave me another wink. “Did you get a look at his chest?”

  “Easy, Lindsey,” I said. “You’re too old for him.”

  “Never too old to look.” She lifted her chin. “Hey, Steve!” she called toward the kitchen. “Guess who my little sis was with today.” She didn’t give Steve the chance to venture a guess. “Todd Camford from the surf shop on the Square where you got your wetsuit.”

  Steve made some neutral grunt reply from the kitchen.

  Lindsey turned back to me with an even bigger grin across her pretty face. “Todd Camford and you?” She pursed her lips. “Major explosion.”

  I didn’t know whether to agree or disagree, or even what her comment implied, but I went on to tell her about my day. She felt it necessary to relay all of what I said to Steve when he moved back and forth from the kitchen to the boys’ bedroom or to his den or to the back deck or out to his car. I was surprised the whole population of Seagrove Beach didn’t know about my four-date day.

  “There’s this row of trees with little pink blossoms,” I said as my story neared its end. “I think Todd called them redbuds.”

  My sister was meditative, narrowing her eyes, insisting on picturing the exact route where Todd and I had walked by moonlight from the beach back to Modica.

  “He made it his personal crusade to point out everything pink, just to torture me.”

  “Because of the Moulin Rouge ad? Huh. Funny.” She nodded approvingly and lifted her chin. “He’s funny, honey!”

  Steve replied with another noncommittal grunt.

  I continued my story. “Around the corner, there’s that street lined with oaks and sycamores and willows with the long branches that touch the ground and with shallow roots breaking through the cracks in the sidewalk.”

  Lindsey sat wide-eyed, staring at me, elbows on knees, chin in hands.

  “He offered his arm because, you know, I kept tripping over the roots in my bare feet.” I lifted a coquettish grin. “It was almost unintentional.”

  “Nice one.”

  “When I stopped to look up at the moon through some branches, I pulled his arm, and the rest of him, over.”

  “I’ll bet you did—”

  “Linz, babe, stop interrupting her,” Steve implored from his place on the rosewood rocking chair in the corner of the room, Sports Illustrated turned upside down on his lap. “We don’t need your commentary, Ryan Seacrest.”

  Lindsey made the motion of locking her lips and throwing away the key.

  “Go on, Abby,” Steve said, sounding more like Oprah.

  “When I asked Todd what kind of tree we were standing under, he had that look in his eyes.” I addressed Steve. “You know that look?”

  “Yes,” Steve and Lindsey answered in unison.

  “Todd told me the tree is called a Kissing Willow.”

  It was dead quiet.

  Until Lindsey sucked in a breath. “You’re kidding. What did you say?” My sister was leaning so far forward she was practically in my lap.

  “After that, there wasn’t much talking going on. We were kind of . . . at it for a while.”

  Lindsey sighed.

  I looked down at my lap, unable to make my huge, ridiculous smile go away. I was remembering that tender, almost anguished and relieved look in Todd’s eyes when he’d finally pulled me in; how he kissed me once, drew back to look me in the eyes, and then cupped a hand behind my head. For whatever reason, it had been the most romantic moment I could remember.

  After that, the next hour was a blur. Although I did recall, at one point, privately confirming that Todd was indeed the world’s best kisser.

  While I was sampling a taste of his neck, Todd murmured softly in my ear, saying that he’d been wanting to do this all day. I explained to him, in my own special way, that he’d fought back for far too long.

  I kept my eyes away from Lindsey’s expectant face, unable to share with her any further details of where my mouth had gone next and what Todd’s hands had done.

  “And?” Lindsey’s impatient prompt startled me back to the present. She was leaning forward again, pushing her blond hair away from her face. “What happened next?”

  “Umm . . .” I rubbed my lips together, recalling perfectly how Todd had tasted both salty and sweet. “He apologized, actually.”

  “For what?” Steve asked.

  “He said he had to kiss me because of the legend.” As the pair of them stared blankly at me, I wished I’d kept that part of the story to myself.
It was just too cute. “Yeah, well.” I took a deep breath. “Todd was telling me some story about how every maiden who passes under that tree has to get a kiss or she’ll die a heartbroken spinster, but, uh, I probably wasn’t giving him much of a chance to speak.” My cheeks prickled with a blush.

  Lindsey sat back and sighed like Lady Juliet leaning over her balcony.

  “I asked him if he was making the story up, but he said he wasn’t, that it had something to do with Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth.”

  “What?” asked Lindsey, perplexed.

  I shrugged and grinned wider.

  “Did he drive you back here?”

  “He offered, though I told him I wanted to ride my bike to work off the key lime pie. But he was so cute. He was all worried that I’d get lost in the dark. He wouldn’t let go of my handlebars.”

  “I’ll bet he wouldn’t,” Steve said, laughing like a proud frat brother.

  “As I was coasting away, I asked him if he’s working tomorrow. He said he is, but only in the morning, because in the afternoon he has a date with a singer.”

  Lindsey, deadpan: “Marry him.”

  L.A.-based Mustang Sally, the band renowned for back-to-back platinum albums and sold-out tours, is shockingly out of the spotlight this summer. Plans to regroup at the studio in September have set the entertainment press on fire, wondering what kind of musical gem will come out of the notable break. If the next album is anything close to its predecessors, the whole world is in for a mega-treat.

  “Satellite,” the must-hear song that opens their fourth album, continues to dig its melodic claws into your heart and refuses to release throughout the nearly five-minute joint. The highly anticipated follow-up to the previous year’s fantastic pop cheese Nice Going, their album Losin’ Myself was anything but lost. With a combination of piano-led melodies, roaring guitar riffs, plus peach of a singer Abigail Kelly’s irresistibly all-American fusion of sass versus vulnerability, the album is an incessantly catchy guilty pop pleasure. With its hook-crazy, techo-lite beats and super slick power ballads, it confidently displays yet another example of why Mustang Sally is indeed the “something-for-everyone” band to beat.

  In that battle, however, this band has already prevailed, winning public as well as critical plaudits en masse, beginning with their ten-fold platinum début, Mustang Sally. Four albums later, they are still seemingly enduring and unaffected. The hyper-catchy ex-college-coed Kelly takes her listener on a wild ride through the brazenly bubblegum electric track of “I Shoulda Saw Love” to the slightly broader palette of the pop-dance pastel “Stupid 4 U.” Frankly, we can’t get enough of the lyrically trivial as she strains her debutant purr into a Billie Holiday-esque plea that comes across as both ridiculous and wonderful. The difference between obscurity and overexposure is found within Kelly’s own throat.

  Legitimizing a one-time minor garage band, guitarist Hal Richardson, bassist Jordan McPhee, and drummer Kiyoshi Sukuki are anything but minor characters in this story. Richardson’s juicy guitar licks are straight from the school of Jimmy Paige, McPhee’s slap-and-pop method eerily mirrors the likes of Flea and John Paul Jones, while Sukuki, the obvious rule-breaker of the bunch, could easily go toe-to-toe with idol Keith Moon. Kelly stands by her band, living the sunny pop life, while the boys take care of essential rock ’n roll business.

  “The new record will be highly stylized,” Axeman Richardson reports. We hope he’s right. The past albums never mockingly descended into self-parody. “When I Look at You” (a duet with Kelly’s ex-squeeze, Miles Carlisle) has a definite sense of economy and speculation, while “Satellite” is a cathartic pillow for the singer and her listener to cry on. Their last album rounds out with the aesthetically potent “Minor Keys,” a wistful gem in which Kelly chooses music over a lover.

  {chapter 11}

  “AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING”

  “I’m leaving now!” I called out as I climbed aboard the red beach cruiser. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.” Lifting my feet, I coasted down the driveway and into the street. “Probably not too long,” I added under my breath, almost as an afterthought.

  “Wait!” Lindsey shot from the front door. I hit the brakes. She flew in front of me, one hand in a wet lime-green rubber glove. “Where are you going?” she panted, blocking my way.

  I squinted past her shoulder and then down at the ground, looking everywhere but at her eyes. “Into Seaside,” I said, feeling my stomach tighten. “I have a date to keep, remember?”

  Lindsey didn’t reply at first, but she finally exhaled a confused, “Oh.” Her tone made me look at her. Deep concern mixed with disappointment on her face.

  And I knew that she knew.

  I gripped the handlebars. “So I guess you heard me on the phone earlier.”

  Lindsey nodded once. I sighed, squeezing the handlebars.

  It was another hot day, hotter than yesterday, but I’d sufficiently cooled off, having swum for two lovely hours with my nephews. We’d spent the rest of the early afternoon making and sampling homemade snow cones, while Lindsey ran errands.

  And then “Helter Skelter.”

  “What are you going to do?” Lindsey asked.

  “I’m not sure. He wants me back in L.A. tomorrow. That’s why he called.”

  “I know,” she admitted. “I heard you taking. And then . . .” She paused, moving to properly look me in the eyes. “I heard you crying.”

  I dropped my chin. “I wasn’t crying.”

  A white truck screeched its brakes as it rounded the corner and found my sister and me standing in the middle of the street. We moved off to the sidewalk.

  “So? What did Max say? Did he guilt you into doing something again?”

  “No,” I said slowly, feeling defensive. “He was nice on the phone, actually.”

  Lindsey chuckled—heavy sarcasm. “Naturally. He’s nice to you when he wants something. Even I know that.” She sat down on the curb, shading her eyes from the sun with one gloved hand. “What did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t tell him anything.” I kicked at a bike pedal, making it twirl around and around under my foot. “I don’t really have a choice, though.”

  “Of course you have a choice!” Her sudden exclamation made me flinch. “You’re not his little puppet. You can do what you want.”

  I closed my eyes. Not this again.

  “It’s his sick little game.” Lindsey shook my front tire. “Max is manipulating you; he does it all the time. You’re the only one who doesn’t see it.”

  I opened my eyes, only to stare down at my hands twisting around the handlebars. My knuckles were turning white. I let my gaze wander over her shoulder to her tidy front yard. Suburban paradise, I thought, a little resentfully.

  “You have no idea what it’s like for me now—”

  She cut in with: “Because you don’t talk to me anymore.”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  “This is unsolicited advice, Abby, but you need to fix your life or figure out something else to do.”

  “Something else?” I echoed back, unbelievingly. “This is my life. This.” I waved down to myself for some reason. “This is the way it is. He needs me in L.A. If I don’t go, if I don’t do what he wants, it affects everyone.” In the back of my mind, I couldn’t believe I had to defend Max Salinger so zealously. He was the person who started everything, who gave me everything. The band wouldn’t be where we were today without him. Even Lindsey knew that. “If they need me there, I have to be there. If I’m not working, the guys in the band can’t work. We’re a team. I owe them.”

  “You don’t owe anyone.” Lindsey stared at me, her expression unrelenting. “Now, sit down.”

  Surrendering to her “request,” I swung one leg over the bike and let my foot fall onto the sidewalk. I slumped down on the curb next to her.

  “I just miss you, sis. So much.” Lindsey’s voice was normal at first, but the aggression quickly returned. “You�
�ve been away from Max for only three days. You’re supposed to be here all summer. You never get a break. I’m sure that’s a big part of your problem.”

  I shot her my most withering glare.

  “You know,” she rephrased, “why you’ve been so out of it lately.”

  I bit my lip, turned away, and sat motionless on the sandy street corner, knowing there was no way I could explain to her—or to anybody, for that matter—how things were.

  Yes, I was sure part of my “problem” was my job. But that was the bearable part of my nightmare, the part I could handle.

  “You need to make some changes,” Lindsey said, placing a hand on my arm.

  I tossed another scornful glance her way, but she ignored it.

  “For starters, you have to learn to tell Max no.”

  “Please,” I mumbled, looking out at the street. “I don’t need a lecture.” I ran my fingers over my eyebrows, seeking relief from a new headache.

  She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And, stop beating yourself up over Christian. You know it wasn’t your fault that . . .”

  She went on talking, but I made myself zone out: Abby’s Defense Mechanism 101. My entire consciousness was in another place now, inside my head, away from whatever my sister was saying. It was dark and tumultuous where I went, but it was far away. I didn’t want to keep forcing myself inside, but there was nowhere else to go.

  Despite this effort, I was suddenly thinking about Christian, about the last night I’d seen him, a year ago. The band had been leaving for London the next morning for a few quick shows. Christian wouldn’t be coming with me that time like he usually did. I didn’t like traveling without him; I felt safer and happier when my big brother was around. He was my anchor.

  I remembered the airport-bound limo picking me up at five in the morning, after I’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for Christian to return home with my takeout veggie burger—the midnight snack he’d volunteered to fetch after I whined and begged him for an hour.