“Yes, thanks.” She plunked a mug down in front of him. “How come you have so many guest rooms?”
“I bought the place furnished from an older woman who was moving to her Arizona condo full-time and didn’t want to take anything with her. I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with it.”
“Which I guess explains the pink floral wallpaper.”
He dipped his head in agreement. “It’s a ridiculously big house for one person, but it was a steal. As you can see, it’s pretty much falling apart, but it has good bones. I liked the look of it. I had all kinds of plans for it, but I haven’t made the time.”
“Yeah, like you have so many rooms you could keep a few of them as guest rooms, make one a den and still have one left over for, I don’t know, a studio.”
He paused for a moment, consciously working to tamp down his annoyance. “Hungry?”
She didn’t blink. “Famished, actually.”
“On Sundays, I go out to breakfast. Get dressed.”
She rubbed her palms together. “Yay! I can try out my disguise!”
She had spent a long time in the clothing section on their trip to Walmart yesterday, and Evan found himself intensely curious about what she might concoct to hide her identity. He’d seen her eyeing a strapless sundress. It was pretty, but it wouldn’t go very far on the whole camouflage front. She had nearly made it out of the kitchen before he called after her. “Just make sure you don’t look too…”
“Too what?”
“Too attractive.” He paused. “I know it will be a stretch, but try.”
Ten minutes later, Emmy appeared back in the kitchen, and he burst out laughing. She was wearing a huge T-shirt that said, Save Water, Drink Wine. It must have been ten sizes too big for her, so it functioned as a tunic of sorts, flowing over a pair of jeans. The skinny profile of the denim couldn’t hide her long, shapely legs. And even in that tent of a shirt…well, she hadn’t succeeded in fulfilling his “not attractive” request.
But with the black hair, which she had scraped back into a ponytail, and the large, floppy straw hat, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be mistaken for…herself. At least he hoped.
Prayed.
Because if this all went to hell, he honestly wasn’t sure he could deal with it.
She gave a little twirl, distracting him from his doomsday scenarios. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re going to succumb to heat exhaustion in those jeans, but I also think you look amazing.”
“If by amazing, you mean horrible, I am in complete agreement.” She looked down at her body. “I tried to wear some shorts that I bought yesterday, but this shirt is so long on me, it made me look like I was naked from the waist down.”
Naked from the waist down. Now there was image. He cleared his throat.
“Here’s the best part,” she said, walking toward him and standing on her tiptoes to get right in his face.
“What?”
She widened her eyes and leaned even closer. “Color contacts!” she said, fluttering her eyelashes, and indeed, her normally blue eyes had been transformed into dark brown.
It was…startling. More so than the hair. It was like someone had messed with some elemental part of her.
“Oh my God, I’m so excited to go out, I can’t even!” she squealed, prancing over to the sink and depositing her empty coffee cup. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m super grateful to you for letting me hide out for a few days, but I was thinking it was going to get pretty Grey Gardens around here if I never left the house.”
He usually brought a pile of work to the diner on Sunday mornings. God knew, he had enough of it stacked up. But apparently instead of advancing his own cause, he was going to spend the morning with Hurricane Emmy, the tent-wearing pixie goth. “Don’t get too excited. I’m pretty sure Wanda’s place is a far cry from what you’re used to.”
She aimed a million-megawatt superstar smile at him, which looked strange juxtaposed with her schleppy look. “I’m sick of what I’m used to. That’s the whole point.”
“Oh my God, I love this place,” Emmy whispered once they were seated side by side on stools at the counter at the diner, and its proprietor Wanda had departed with their orders.
“It does the trick.” Wanda’s food was reliably good, her pie great. He favored it because it tended to be patronized by locals rather than college people, and he got more than his fill of college people during the week. He was especially glad of that fact today, because if Larry, his department chair, found out he was harboring a famous pop star, Evan could kiss tenure goodbye. Even though Evan had pretty well succeeded in making over his life, in severing all connections to his past, Larry would never let him forget where he’d come from. The man was convinced, irrespective of the facts of the matter, that Evan had gotten his professorial job because of his infamous last name, because of his father’s notoriety in the art world—and passed up no opportunity to remind him of that.
The point was that Larry would never darken the door of Wanda’s. Too plebeian for him.
The ordinariness of Wanda’s Diner didn’t seem to matter to Emmy, though. They might as well have been at a Michelin-starred bistro. She had been continuously delighted by everything from the friendly Great Dane tied up outside to the hand-lettered menus.
When their breakfasts came, Emmy poured a ridiculous amount of maple syrup over her waffles and took a bite. “Unnnhhh,” she moaned through a mouthful. It was like she’d been sprung from prison and was tasting and experiencing life for the first time—which, he supposed, might not actually be that far off the mark.
God. She was so pretty, even in her ridiculous getup. Her fake brown eyes had widened when she’d tasted the first bite of waffle.
“So,” she said, before taking a second bite. “Why don’t you paint anymore?”
He’d been angered by her questioning last night, and annoyed by its renewal this morning, but really, it wasn’t her fault. He’d be curious, too, in her shoes. “It’s hard to explain,” he said, adopting her line from last night and stuffing a bite of his eggs Benedict into his mouth.
“Try,” she said, adopting his and waiting, eyebrows raised, for him to finish chewing.
Reprieve up, he sighed. He’d never actually tried to explain it to anyone before. No one in Dane knew that he had ever painted, unless they’d dug way back in Google. As far as they were concerned, art was a topic of research and teaching for him, not something he did. And he wasn’t in touch with anyone from before, except his mother, who was too busy with her new husband to worry much about him, and his brother, who had always called painting a “pansy-ass pastime” anyway.
“You must know about my father.” At the wedding, they hadn’t spoken about the trial, or about his father. That had been part of Emmy’s appeal: she’d seemed interested in him as him, not as a member of his rich and infamous family. But she had to have known.
“Yeah. I’m sorry about that. Sounds like he was…”
“A grade-A asshole?”
He’d meant to make her smile, to signal that she didn’t have to tread lightly on the topic, because it wouldn’t be possible for him to respect a person less than he did his father, but she only furrowed her brow. Man, she wasn’t going to let him off the hook, was she? He put down his fork and turned to her, preparing to surrender, though he did pause for a second to contemplate how alarmingly easily he was doing so.
“I don’t paint anymore for two reasons. One, if I ever had any talent to speak of, it was all built on lies.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“My family’s fortune was made on stolen and counterfeited art, with a great big Ponzi scheme thrown in for good measure. My father bankrupted hundreds of people. He ruined families.”
“Yes. I read about that. But I don’t see what that has to do with you.”
“Art lessons. Supplies. Weekend trips to the Louvre. My childhood was a lie. Any talent I developed was paid for with blood money.”
“Blood money? Isn’t that a little overly dramatic? I mean—”
He cut her off. He would tell her his tale of woe, but he wasn’t soliciting her opinion. “I don’t deserve to paint, Emmy.”
She blinked again, several times in rapid succession, no doubt shocked by the declaration. He was, too, in a way. He’d never voiced it quite like that—I don’t deserve to paint—but as soon as the words were out, he recognized the truth in them.
“Okay.” She fiddled with a packet of sugar. “What’s reason number two?”
“A more practical one,” he said, grateful that she wasn’t going to protest anymore. “My father disgraced our family name in the art world. Who would buy a painting from Evan Winslow junior when Evan Winslow senior is in prison for crimes against the art world? Who would rep me? Show my work? I’m a pariah by association.”
“But—”
Something in him snapped. He had told her the truth despite the fact that he didn’t owe her an explanation. That she had gotten one at all was pretty unprecedented, actually. So he let his hand fall to the counter, swiveled on his stool to look her in the eye, and spoke slowly, over-enunciating every word. “I. Don’t. Paint. Anymore.”
She reared back a little, almost as if he had slapped her, which made him feel like an ass. But she needed to understand, even though she was only going to be here for a few days. He didn’t need her meddling, thinking she was doing a good deed as she poked and prodded at a wound that had scarred over quite nicely.
It was a hard-won scar, and he was keeping it.
“I want to hear one of your songs,” Evan said as they walked up the path to his house after breakfast, arms laden with groceries. Emmy had been marveling to herself over the fact that there were places in this world where people just walked to the grocery store and bought things with no plan, no list, when the request landed like a punch to the gut.
“All right,” she said, walking through the door he held open for her and making her way back to the kitchen. Dumping her bags on the table, she fished her phone out of her pocket. “What are you in the mood for? A ‘boys suck’ power anthem or a ‘boys suck’ heartbreak ballad?”
He dumped his bags next to hers. “No. I want to hear you.”
What?
“I listened to a bunch of your stuff last night—you have some great turns of phrase—but I want to hear you sing. In the flesh.”
Her instinctive reaction was panic. But… You have some great turns of phrase. Evan didn’t seem like the kind of person who gave false praise.
“You said you’re writing a new album this summer,” he went on. “I heard you fiddling around yesterday after dinner. Let me hear what you’re working on.”
She didn’t do that. No one heard her songs before they were done, except Tony, and, of course, her co-writers. Tony was like a cross between her best friend and the supportive dad she’d never had, and he’d been witnessing her create songs since she was a teenager. The co-writers were harder, but she didn’t have any choice there. To be fair to Brian and Claudia, they had hooked her up with some great writers, but it was still painful to play something that felt half-baked in front of an audience. It was almost as bad as all the tabloid humiliation—it was like baring some tender, ambitious part of herself that she was half ashamed of, half protective of.
“Okay.”
As soon as the word was out, she clasped her hand over her mouth. It was like her body was agreeing with him without her brain having signed off. But he liked her turns of phrase. And, oh, she liked that he liked her turns of phrase. Besides, she sort of felt like she owed Evan. He had told her some deep stuff over breakfast, and he was putting her up for a few days. And, honestly, she was on a bit of a high after their successful outing. She had gone out to breakfast like a normal girl, and no one had spotted her. So screw it. This summer was supposed to be about doing things differently, wasn’t it?
It didn’t mean she wasn’t terrified. After running upstairs to get her guitar, she returned, heart pounding, to find him sitting on the porch swing, a glass of Mrs. Johansen’s lemonade in his hand and another one resting on an end table next to the wicker chair perpendicular to the swing.
She took a deep breath. It wasn’t only the heat that had her wiping sweaty palms on her jeans. But it wasn’t like he was a label exec, or a tour sponsor. And after the next couple days—the next couple days in which she would, hopefully, write a viable song or two—she would most likely never see him again. “Okay, I only have one verse and the start of a chorus.” She didn’t look up or wait for him to respond, just jumped right into strumming the jangly intro before she could chicken out. She’d been trying to evoke the feeling of Dane. The bright blue sky, the rows of corn, the exuberance of the farmers’ market. The sense that even though everything was orderly and tidy, this was also, paradoxically, a place where anything could happen.
She stole a few quick glances at Evan as she played and sang. The first time, she found him staring at her with an intense, almost pained look. Like she was a bug and he a collector with a magnifying glass.
Or like he was a painter, and she was his subject.
The second time she looked at him, though, he had let his head fall back on the top edge of the swing, as if he was asleep. But she could tell by the alert nature of his posture that he was still listening.
As she strummed the last few bars of the chorus, she eyed him. He waited a good ten seconds before he sat up. “So that was not Song 58?” he asked.
She smiled. “That was most decidedly not Song 58.”
He nodded, thoughtful. “Not bad for a day’s work.”
It was only a proto-song, but it had felt promising. But what had she expected? Fawning enthusiasm? She’d come here to do her own thing. To get out of the sphere of influence of everyone else. She didn’t need his approval. Still, his lukewarm assessment stung.
She was trying to think what to say when he stood and made for the door. “I’ve got to run an errand this afternoon.”
Right. But that was okay because she was immune to his indifference. It was the Summer of No Men, right? She didn’t need them in her bed, and she certainly didn’t need their approval on her creative output. That had been the whole point of coming here. “And I’ve got an appointment with Mrs. Johansen and OkCupid,” she said—to herself as much as to him.
Summer of No Men.
She didn’t like how she kept having to remind herself that.
Chapter Six
He wanted to paint the black hair. Unlike natural dark hair, Emmy’s drugstore version was solid, black-hole black, lacking any subtle highlighting. But there were sections near her hairline that were lighter—a kind of muddy dark brown—as well as bits of skin near her ears that were stained with the dark dye.
He dumped the tubes he’d bought on the table he’d cleared in the cluttered attic. He wouldn’t just use Ivory Black Extra, though that would probably be the best way to capture the extremeness of the black. On canvas, it would look too artificial. He had a hunch that, paradoxically, he would need to naturalize the artificiality of Emmy’s hair in order to accurately capture it. It would be an interesting technical challenge.
At least that’s what he’d told himself as he’d hauled his bags of newly purchased supplies up three stories and plugged in a box fan in the stifling attic. He kicked aside boxes and half-broken furniture. The attic was even more of a mess than the rest of his house. It was a mixture of shit that had been left behind and his own forlorn stuff that had been layered on top without any consideration for order.
Enough. This was not the moment to find Jesus with the decluttering. What was he doing? Right. Emmy’s fake black hair. The “interesting technical challenge.”
But as he set up the canvas, he forced himself to face the fact that he was lying. This wasn’t an “interesting technical challenge.” It was a pre-primed canvas, for God’s sake. Surely, a purely technical experiment could have waited for him to properly stretch a
nd prime.
No, he was a junkie, jonesing for his first whiff of turpentine, for the swish of sable against canvas.
He worked all afternoon and evening in a near trance. She was emerging. But he wasn’t satisfied. He thought back to something one of his former teachers—one of the men his father bankrupted—always used to say: “Portraits are about essence.”
There was no essence of Emmy on that canvas. The proto-person staring back at him wasn’t her. It wasn’t the person who had sat before him and sung a perfect little song that was a perfect little puzzle—seemingly about one thing but really about another. How did she do that? Just create such a song like it was nothing? Pull it out of the air like it was easy? Was she planning to churn out gem after gem like that this summer?
He took a step back and dropped his brush. What was he doing?
Because of his father’s fall from grace, Evan had been forced to build a new life. At the time, it had seemed impossibly catastrophic, but from this vantage point, he was glad of it. Everything he had now, he had earned—had worked himself to the bone to get. This rickety dump of a house and its overgrown garden. His PhD. His job—though he wasn’t so sure he’d still have that after his tenure review.
But regardless, underlying the new life he’d created was a promise he’d made to himself after Tyrone’s wedding. The very next day, the bank had repossessed all his parents’ properties—including Evan’s condo—and he’d hit the road with a backpack full of clothes and a handful of résumés, determined to find a job to float him through the rest of graduate school at another university, the promise on his lips like a mantra: no lying. His father was a liar. Evan was not his father. Hence, Evan did not lie. Especially not to himself. Not even when it would be harmless, when lying would bring him a measure of psychological comfort.
And this? He looked at the painting with disgust. This was a lie. He didn’t paint anymore. And yet here was a painting—a crap painting, but a painting nonetheless. Those two facts could not be squared with each other.
Famous (A Famous novel) Page 7