by Crane, Megan
Not that the mighty Duncan Paradis was paying Jenna the slightest bit of attention. He was far too busy barking orders into a gigantic cellphone that looked as if it required two hands to lift. It was bigger, Jenna thought, than the portable house phone she used in her apartment. It was the size of a book, or one of the small dogs starlets toted about. She was more worried than he seemed to be that it might adhere to his ruthlessly slicked-back hair. Nor could she imagine that the reception was all that great, with the huge antenna sticking out of the top, so long it almost brushed the ceiling of the cab.
Trying to ignore him, Jenna returned her attention to the bright blue bag in front of her. Worrying her lower lip with her teeth, she cracked open the top and peered inside. There was a comb the size of a dinner plate, a selection of mascaras and other cosmetics, a sheaf of papers, the usual pocketbook detritus including a collection of gum wrappers – which made her feel better at once, since she did not chew gum and this therefore definitely was not her own life – and, last but not least, a wallet. Gingerly, Jenna fished the wallet out, took a bracing sort of breath, and flipped it open.
She almost screamed.
Almost.
Jenna kept herself from shrieking out her horror by biting down hard on her own lower lip. And between that and the picture on the licence, she was scarred for life. The sudden, shooting pain in her lower lip, though it made her eyes water, did nothing to dispel the horrific sight of a person who looked entirely too much like Jenna, sporting painstakingly sculpted bangs and what amounted to a mullet. A mullet, Jenna thought as a dull tide of horror swept through her. A hairsprayed mullet with height as well as lustrous frizz on the end. Hideous, hideous, hideous. If Jenna had been asked to describe what her worst nightmare bad-hair day would entail, it was the hair she saw on the driver’s licence in her hand – hair that might as well have been on her own head, that was how much she and Jennifer Jenkins resembled one another.
She would never get the sight of it out of her mind. Never.
Jenna forced herself to close the wallet, and threw it back into the neon blue depths of the purse. The horrendous mullet danced before her in her mind’s eye, however, taunting her. Duncan Paradis’s voice grated as he bellowed orders to some poor subordinate – maybe he was talking to his wife, it was hard to tell. Jenna felt shaken. She tried to shrug it all off, along with another lungful of BO that seemed to come from the seat beneath her, and looked out the window to the city streets.
It was like looking into a kaleidoscope.
Outside, the city looked the same – and profoundly different. It was still New York City, but it wasn’t the New York City Jenna knew. First of all, it was much, much dirtier. There were too many homeless people on the sidewalks, and garbage in the streets. Times Square, which Jenna thought of as practically a Disney theme park with an amusing red-light-district past, was rife with porn theatres and obvious junkies. Jenna was almost dizzy as she realized that the cab was headed down Sixth Avenue, but instead of the superstores she knew, there were only warehouses. She saw what looked like a Keith Haring mural as the cab roared past a warehouse, but then her attention was drawn to the SILENCE=DEATH posters that covered the dilapidated structures. Her stomach clenched, and her breath went shallow, as if her body was accepting a truth she wasn’t ready to face.
As the taxi rounded a corner, Jenna saw a black on yellow street sign instead of the ubiquitous green and white signs she knew, and before she could process that fact and wonder why it bothered her so much, she saw the World Trade Center loom up before her, the towers standing proud and tall to the south. Jenna felt her breath whoosh out of her at the sight of them, and wondered how she’d managed to forget how they’d dominated the sky. She felt a kind of panic rise inside her, clawing at the back of her throat, and knew she was close to tears, or worse. She pushed it all aside, and concentrated on other details – strange-looking advertisements for half-remembered products, like a huge Maidenform ad that featured a leggy blonde who was practically chunky in comparison to the models Jenna was used to feeling badly about. The cars surrounding them on the street were ancient-looking: wide and long. Jenna told herself to breathe, and shut her eyes to keep the strangeness at bay.
Duncan Paradis finished talking on his phone, and turned his attention to Jenna. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up and her stomach knotted. She opened her eyes and snuck a glance over at him. His expression was not comforting, so she returned her attention to her lap.
‘Look at me,’ he demanded then, and Jenna did, because she didn’t like to think what he might do if she defied him. He swept a rude, dismissive glance over her, from her head to the tips of her ankle boots. She managed not to cringe. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Jenna,’ she said. She realized that had come out in what was more or less a whisper, and cleared her throat. ‘Jenna Jenkins,’ she said in a stronger voice.
‘Uh huh.’ Duncan’s dark eyes were cold and assessing. ‘Let me tell you what’s going to happen here, Jenna Jenkins.’ She didn’t care for the way he emphasized her name like that. Like someone might say, Chlamydia. ‘You’re quite the little go-getter, aren’t you?’
Jenna wasn’t sure how to answer that. ‘Sure,’ she said. It was better than pointing out that everything he was saying was patronizing and bordering on mean, because she sensed he was well aware of that fact.
Luckily, he wasn’t really looking for an answer.
‘Great,’ he said dismissively, as if she hadn’t spoken, or maybe he was simply used to instant acquiescence. ‘That was a good idea back there. You really made the most of a challenging moment. But what you don’t know is that the band is in a bad place right now.’
‘The Wild Boys are in the studio, putting the finishing touches on their new album,’ Jenna replied automatically, in her role as Little Miss Fan Club Know-It-All. She fervently wished she hadn’t spoken when that cold, reptilian glare of his sharpened, like he was putting her directly in his crosshairs.
‘Unfortunately, it’s not going well in the studio these days,’ Duncan told her through another fake smile, this one even more terrifying than the earlier ones. ‘There are tensions.’
Jenna happened to know for a fact that this was not true. That, in actuality and according to numerous interviews, the remaining band members marvelled to this day that their final album had gone so smoothly. After twenty years, surely someone would have mentioned it if there’d been tensions. It was in fashion these days to have tensions. The Police talked about their tensions all the time, and still went on sold-out reunion tours.
Not that Jenna was particularly surprised to discover that Duncan Paradis was lying to her. Wasn’t this exactly the kind of thing Tommy had predicted? Though he hadn’t mentioned how unpleasant it would be to bear the full force of Duncan’s attention. Jenna swallowed, and tried to stiffen her spine.
‘I want you to be my eyes and ears in there,’ Duncan told her, his awful rictus grin widening. Apparently, this was his attempt at charm. Jenna wasn’t entirely sure why his attempts fell so flat with her, when the rest of the world talked about his famous charisma ad nauseam. Maybe that was code for scary. But he was still talking. ‘Now that the band has seen how you have their best interests at heart, you can be with them in their more relaxed moments. They’ll trust you in no time.’
‘They don’t trust you?’ Jenna asked. Her stomach was in knots, and her voice was too high. ‘I mean, why do you need me, when they must already trust you, right?’
Duncan dropped the smile, which was a relief. ‘Aren’t you smart?’ he said, and not in an encouraging way. Or even a nice way. She shivered, and tried to hide it. ‘All you need to worry about is keeping me happy, okay?’
That was a losing proposition if ever she’d heard one.
‘By being your eyes and ears,’ she echoed, and then tacked on a smile as if the idea thrilled her, because it occurred to her that things would be easier if he thought so.
‘J
ust tell me what they say in there when I’m not around,’ Duncan said softly, and then Jenna’s blood ran cold because he reached across the back seat and patted her on the knee. It wasn’t a gentle pat so much as it was a reminder. That he was stronger and meaner and could crush her.
‘Okay,’ she squeaked, staring at his hand on her leg. What if he … She couldn’t finish the thought, but she did send up a little prayer of thanks when the taxi careened to the side of the road and discharged her in front of what looked, at a first and traumatized glance, to be a very fancy boutique hotel.
‘Especially Tommy,’ Duncan told her as she went to close the door, leaning across the seat so she could see how serious he was, up close and personal. ‘I especially want to know what Tommy’s doing and saying, do you understand me?’
‘Of course,’ Jenna squeaked, and fled.
7
The hotel was not, it turned out, a boutique hotel. Or any kind of hotel at all. It was instead a four-storey town house on a quiet side street in the West Village, which was impressive enough. It was equipped with a state-of-the-art recording studio, numerous well-appointed guest rooms, a kitchen complete with gourmet cook, a backyard that was more like a garden paradise and included a jacuzzi, and a full service staff including the very imposing butler who had admitted Jenna to the house only after an intensive round of questions better suited to weeding out potential terrorists from airports.
But she soon forgot the indignity of what amounted to an entrance exam, because the butler/bouncer stepped aside and let Jenna in to the marble foyer, where her eye was immediately drawn to a stunning arrangement of lilies in an almost equally beautiful vase, blue and white and nearly taller than she was. Each room of the town house was prettier than the one before – all gilt edges, perfect furnishings, and a riot of art on the walls. Jenna didn’t have to know very much about furniture, antiques, or art to recognize the fact that she was looking at extremely good taste supported by excessive wealth. It certainly didn’t suck to be a rock star.
Jenna followed the butler’s rigid, black-clad back down a set of stairs. He stopped at the bottom of the stairwell, and indicated the door in front of him with a stiff sort of bow, making her wonder for a moment if she was expected to do something like perform a curtsy in return. Luckily, the man backed away before she could commit one way or the other.
Pushing open the door, Jenna stepped into what she’d expected to be the recording studio, but was instead an open-plan living and lounging room that ran the length of the house and opened up to the garden beyond. It took her a moment to get her bearings. The room featured high beams along high ceilings, as if it wasn’t in the basement of the building at all, long couches arranged around a fireplace on one end and a movie projector on the other, and was completely empty except for Tommy Seer.
Jenna’s heart jumped in her chest at the sight of him, and then started beating wildly. She wanted to massage the thump of it with her hand, because she had the sudden, hysterical notion that its crazy beat was visible beneath her shirt, but kept herself from doing it at the last moment.
Tommy, meanwhile, continued to pick absently at the electric guitar he held across his lap like a lover. The notes he played sounded tinny and distant, since the guitar wasn’t plugged into any amp. If he’d looked up when Jenna entered, she hadn’t seen it, but somehow she knew he was perfectly well aware that she was there.
Jenna worried her lower lip with her teeth, surprised to feel the nerves dancing through her limbs. She forced herself to walk closer, and sank down on to the couch facing him. It was so soft and comfortable that she was tempted to sink back into it, relax and put her feet up maybe, but some awareness made her sit up straighter instead.
He still didn’t look up, much less at her. She felt the dance of nerves turn into more of a jangle and ran her palms along the tops of her legs, trying to stave off that jittery feeling.
‘You were right,’ she said suddenly, jumping in, because the silence between them stretched out and she couldn’t stand it. ‘He wants me to spy on you.’
Tommy used a dark brown guitar pick to pluck out a series of notes. He bent over the guitar, and his hair, released now from its headband, fell forward in the sort of careless dark mess that just begged for hands to fix it. Her hands, perhaps. Jenna’s fingers, as if alerted, twitched slightly in response, and she quelled the urge to sit on them.
‘Did you sleep with him?’
‘What?’ She jerked her attention away from the luxuriant spill of wavy hair across his forehead. Then what he’d said penetrated. She flushed. He looked up, and his expression was cynical, at odds with the light tone he’d used.
‘Of course not,’ Jenna hissed, appalled.
‘Really.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Are you sure? Maybe it was just a blow job. Better than a handshake for sealing the deal. That’s a direct quote, by the way.’
‘I did not touch Duncan Paradis.’ She was horrified that he would ask. Then she was more horrified when he smiled slightly, indulgently, as if he didn’t believe her. ‘I would never touch Duncan Paradis,’ she said fiercely. Her skin itched with the force of her mortification.
‘If you say so,’ he murmured, and returned his attention to his guitar.
Jenna sat there, and grew more and more agitated the longer he continued to play, the pick in his nimble fingers coaxing out a melody that she almost recognized. Her breathing went shallow, and she wondered how she could feel so hot with embarrassment when he seemed to have forgotten she was there at all.
‘Where’s, uh, the rest of the band?’ she asked finally, when she thought she might scream if she didn’t speak.
‘Out and about.’ He didn’t look up. ‘More out than about, probably.’
‘Oh. I thought you were recording.’
‘We are. This is called songwriting. It works better without interruptions and idle conversation.’
Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.
As if she did not exist.
Jenna looked down and saw that her hands were balled into fists.
Upon a moment’s reflection, complete with that pluck pluck pluck sound in the background, she accepted the fact that she wanted to take both of those fists and plant them in Tommy Seer’s pretty face.
This was a brand-new, revolutionary feeling. It was also upsetting. She’d never imagined a moment involving Tommy Seer in which she would want to do anything but gaze at him adoringly and love him. Cherish him. Worship him, even. Then again, she’d never previously imagined him to be so irritating.
Not to mention the fact that she was still embarrassed by that cynical look he’d thrown at her, and his assumption that she’d had any kind of sexual contact with the repulsive Duncan Paradis. How dare he? What kind of person did he think she was?
And more to the point, what kind of person was she, that she was still quietly sitting there on that couch, waiting for him to finish being rude to her? At his leisure?
The events of this insane dream whirled around and around in Jenna’s mind then, very nearly making her gasp out loud. Why was she so passive and absurd that even in her own dreams she allowed herself to be led about, condescended to, ordered around, and talked down to in such a variety of ways, by a variety of people, all of whom seemed to regard her as – at best – little more than a pawn in whatever their latest schemes were? None of it made her feel good, despite the brief moment of joy that she’d had something to do with one of her favourite moments in history. But if being bullied left and right was the price of sharing a moment like that, Jenna wasn’t sure it was worth it.
The dream was clearly a metaphor for her entire life, she decided then, comprehension dawning as Tommy’s clever fingers poured melodies into the charged air between them. A very pointed metaphor, involving this man she had adored for so long yet never met, and representing some thirty-five years of going with the flow and not making waves and waiting in vain for something to happen, finally, to make all her bending and contorting worth it somehow.
It represented hiding away in her new single-woman apartment clutching her old Wild Boys concert T-shirts for comfort for eight long months, while Adam gallivanted about Manhattan with his brand-new, flexible twenty-three-year-old girlfriend and never thought at all about the life he’d thrown away.
It represented far too much, and she was sick of all of it, suddenly and completely – so sick of it she felt her stomach clench in response.
And since it was her dream, it was about time she started acting the way she’d be too afraid to act in real life. Otherwise, what was the point? Why dream at all?
‘Do you want me to help you or not?’ she demanded then, and her tone of voice was aggressive enough to surprise even her. She decided she liked it, and that the sudden thrill she felt shoot across her skin was power. Her chin rose in a show of bravado as she waited for his reply.
Her tone also surprised Tommy, clearly, because he lifted his head, his fingers stilling on the guitar strings and those famous eyes narrowing as he dragged his gaze to hers.
‘What did you say?’ He knew what she’d said. She could tell from the arrogant tilt of his head, and that deceptively mild tone of voice.
‘I have better things to do than sit on this couch while you ignore me,’ Jenna announced, in exactly the way she fantasized she should talk to people and yet never actually did. In real life she just … faded away. She even got to her feet, and looked down her nose at him, and doing it made her feel like some kind of warrior. ‘And if you do want me to help you,’ she continued, because why the hell not, ‘you shouldn’t be so rude. You asked for my help. You appeared in my office. You have no reason to get all surly now.’