by Kat Turner
Scar tissue healed. Time dissolved. There was only his magical voice, the medicine of his song.
When she returned to consciousness, the car crawled up an incline. They twisted through narrow roads, past an assortment of Georgian mansions, futurist experimental structures, and ranch homes with orange trees out front.
“Welcome to the Hollywood Hills. You’re beautiful when you sleep. Want to visit the sign?” Brian pointed out the window. Past his vector, legendary white letters in an uneven alphabet soup welcomed visitors to LaLa Land.
“Nah, I’m good. I just want to get home. To your home, I mean.” Home. After all of these years, the word was tough to think, let alone say. She shook her head, the pinball re-activating in another round of frenzied banging. Stupid anxiety.
The mishmash variety of houses gave way to pervasive opulence, sprawling mansions and golden gates emblazoned with cursive initials. Bereft in the face of wealth on display, she gaped like a goldfish who’d leapt from its bowl and landed on the floor.
“Me, too.” He hummed, steering the car into a driveway barricaded by a fortress of an iron gate fit to protect a medieval castle. Brian leaned out of his driver’s side and punched a code into a box.
Double doors parted with an electronic groan, and he resumed the drive. A black ribbon of private road unspooled beyond the windshield.
Their path ended at a roundabout with a glittering fountain in the center. Cobblestones abutted the most elegant home Helen had ever seen in person. Three stories of blocky, geometric architecture, lots of glass and metal, piled upon each other in a haphazardly artsy arrangement.
A smattering of interior lights made the palace gleam like an alien king’s castle. Mahogany double doors complete with gargoyle knockers offset the modernist design with a funky, vintage-goth feel.
A car was parked out front. A guard dog of a massive SUV sat in Brian’s roundabout, golden hubcap rims shouting “behold my bling.”
Brian mumbled a string of British curses, his hands tightening on the wheel like he wanted to strangle it.
Sixteen
“Not expecting company?” Helen had zero idea how the rich operated, if Brian could anticipate members of an entourage hanging around his property whenever.
“It appears my daughter has manipulated her bodyguard into ringing her stepmother. Looks like you’ll be meeting the ex-wife this evening.”
“Ah.” With any luck, the encounter would end quickly, and former supermodel Kris King would be on her way.
The forty-five-year-old stunner had traded appearances in top fashion magazines and sashaying down Paris runways for managing acts and making guest appearances on talent audition shows and other reality TV fare.
Yes, Helen had Google-stalked the woman to whom Brian had been married for two years. And she didn’t measure up to Kris in looks, status, wealth, or anything else. Not a huge source of distress, given the magnitude of all of the other shit she had to deal with, but not pleasant, either.
Brian parked his car in front of Kris’s. He looked over at Helen, features drawn in a blotto sort of resolution.
She got it. He didn’t want to leave the cocoon they’d created in his car during their slow roll through Los Angeles. She didn’t want to pop the bubble either.
“Sorry in advance,” he said.
“She’s that bad?”
“No, she knows how to act and be polite, but if I had my druthers she’d bugger off and I’d never see or speak to her again.” The iciness with which Brian spoke, combined with the absolute, unwavering certainty undergirding the words, exposed a hidden side of his personality.
When he cut people off, she bet goodbye was forever. Respectable and intimidating.
“What did she do?”
Brian broke eye contact. A subtle bow of his spine and caving of his chest, like he wanted to protect his underbelly from attack, pinged her radar. “I caught her shagging someone else, walked right in on it. The worst part was her cynical justification, this line about how it meant nothing and she was only doing it to advance her career. To her credit, she was right. I served her the divorce papers the morning after I found her and the other man in our bed, but the following week, she’s on the cover of the Vogue collector’s edition. So she got what she wanted.”
Twinned tendrils of embarrassment and petty vindication curled through Helen. On a lark, she’d purchased the fat anniversary commemorative, a glossy doorstop paying homage to one of her mythical namesakes.
The cover featured Kris, decked out in gossamer robes of virginal white silk and a golden tiara emphasizing rivulets of hay-colored curls, standing on a beach flanked by azure ocean.
The retreating ships were shown only by shadows, for even the thousand-vessel fleet launched on behalf of the planet’s greatest beauty mustn’t compete with the camera’s close-up on her perfect face. Inside the pages, while the battle of the Iliad raged in a background diorama of toy soldiers, the camera made love to Kris’s classic Scandinavian elegance, looks exceptional even by elite modeling standards.
The inwardly directed joke had been self-deprecating, yet another tired instance of trite and pathetic witnessing to Helen’s low self-esteem. Helen of Troy, ha ha ha. Obvious who really deserved such a lofty comparison.
But now, it wasn’t so obvious. Human ugliness skulked behind every unobtainable façade.
“I’m sorry, Brian. I’ve been cheated on, too. It sucks.”
“Royally.”
“Did you love her?”
He moved his head side-to-side. “In a way. She was gung-ho to get involved, and our managers thought we’d be a perfect power couple. So it was easy, you know? Like an arranged marriage. And it did feel more like an arrangement, a business partnership. Which was probably why the coupling appealed to me in the first place. I was still reeling from my first wife’s death and terrified to feel again. What developed was more like a best friend kind of affection than passionate love, but yes I did love her, enough for her betrayal hurt so badly that I barely dated for a long time.”
Helen fidgeted with her fingernails, picked the chipped burgundy polish she hadn’t had the time or energy to update. “It’s easy to push people away when we’re hurt, to shut down. We may want to let someone in, but it’s hard. There are barriers, and they don’t go away on their own.”
He caught her chin with the pads of two of his fingers and tilted her face upward, bringing her eye to eye with him. His gaze burned through the aforementioned barriers. “Are we talking about you and me right now? This thing between us?”
A sense of covering her eyes and backing away from a gory crime scene swooped in. Nothing to see here, do not register or engage. “Which thing between us do you mean? Because there are several. The curse? The clone?”
His stare didn’t waver. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?” She knew what, but “it” didn’t yet have form. Now and then, an impulse, swift and reactionary, swept through Helen and stole her center.
The thieving invasion replaced her integrity, some precious gem nestled in the deepest point in her core, with a corrupt blob of cynicism. An inhabitant fit for the rotten pit.
Said inhabitant had served a purpose in the past, a vicious attack snake poised to snap its fangs at anyone who dared to advance.
Helen dissociated, spaced out hardcore, and fell down the rabbit hole of the snake metaphor. She lost her mind to a wicked, heady version of déjà vu. Nerissa appeared as a snake, a symbolic serpent. Had this been the elder’s motive, to plant a seed, to use the power of suggestion to prompt Helen to examine and analyze the deepest, nastiest aspects of her subconscious?
Brian spoke. “You retreat. Not all of the time, but it’s enough of a pattern to where it’s noticeable. I get close, and right as it seems like a breakthrough is coming, you go away. Then this other version of you comes out, the one that’s prickly and quick with the comebacks.”
Though two halves of Helen fought to join, she stayed detached and d
isintegrated, one part watching the other as if observing a play. In the crack between two selves, a eureka sprang.
“Oh, my God. This is it. This is why Nerissa thought I wasn’t suited to the Left Hand path.”
Disappointment registered in Brian’s face, testimony given in deepening wrinkles, lips rubbed together. “I thought we were talking about us.”
“We were, we are. But it’s connected. It’s all connected. The reason I haven’t been able to do Left Hand work without blowback is because I’m split, fractured, not at peace with myself yet. So like you said, there are two versions of me, and they don’t line up into a harmonious whole. When I try stuff like psyche splitting magic, it doesn’t work right, the results come out weird, because I, myself, am fundamentally split.” Her blood pounded. Pulse drummed. Mind raced, struggling to keep up with revelations.
She’d cracked a code, figured out something huge. Helen wasn’t unsuited to Left Hand spells, but she hadn’t been doing them in the optimal mindset.
“Sounds like you have all of the answers.” He pulled his fingers away and tapped the gear shift twice, a terse gesture devoid of whimsy.
“Don’t tell me you’re upset at me. This is important. For the work we’re doing.”
“Of course.” A false smile, half-formed and watery. Brian opened his door. “Ready?”
“Brian, come on. The stakes of this are massive. I didn’t mean to shut you down. I do want to have heart-to-hearts, but in that exact instant it felt like I needed to work through an insight having to do with my magic. This affects you.”
“I know, I know. It’s your process. I honor and respect that, and I’m aware that the supernatural project needs to take priority. But there’s something more, yes? Something between us that isn’t strictly business?”
Seeking cheap safety, Helen built a wall between her and Brian. “Do you mean the sex?”
“In part, sure.”
“Don’t you do that kind of thing all of the time, though? Bang groupies in your hotel rooms? Be real.” On the heels of the disingenuous question tailored to alienate came a burst of lava, incendiary secretions that cooled into an unpleasant, familiar plaque.
Brian scoffed. “I get it now. You construct a story in your head in which I’m a pig and a user, some caricature it’s easy to judge and disdain, thereby absolving yourself of having to face your own struggles with intimacy.”
Tears assailed her ducts in quick and savage stabs. She’d been exposed. “You have no right to analyze me.”
“Why not? Because holding a mirror to you frightens you too much and reveals too many deep flaws? Forces you to confront the fact that you might need to do more work on yourself before you can be okay, forces you to accept that yoga didn’t cure everything?”
Naked, she drew her cruelest weapons. “Good job. Bravo, Dr. Shepherd, what an enriching therapy session. Did you earn that psychology degree of yours while partying backstage after opening for Def Leppard approximately a hundred years ago?”
The arrow boomeranged, impaling Helen with a gut shot. What the fuck was wrong with her? Regret was immediate and stark. “Brian—”
He silenced her with a pointer finger in the air, swung his door wide, and leapt out of the car. The soft way in which he shut it was worse than the angriest slam.
She sat alone in the passenger seat, a one-inch-tall lump. Sick and scuzzy from drinking her own poison, Helen hauled herself out and followed Brian to the trunk, which yawned open in the sci-fi show.
He removed her bag and placed it on the ground. Next came a package, wrapped in matte paper the color of a violet and tied with a glossy blue bow. Brian handed the box to her without comment. The colors matched those on her L&E business card. Oh, no.
She accepted the gift, those few pounds of weight a boulder of shame in her hands. He’d bought her a present. She was officially awful, the worst.
“Brian, I’m sorry. You’re right, one-hundred percent. I’m a Russian nesting doll of pathologies and maladaptive behaviors, and God help whoever finds whatever twisted gremlin lives in the little one. I don’t open up or show myself easily, or at all really. I have one close friend. One, and I almost managed to sabotage that. And I have no family. But I’ve made gains. I’m capable of change and growth and getting close to people in my own way. My yoga training was not a cure-all, true. But if only you’d seen the freak show I was before I started yoga. I’m not asking you to take a chance on me, but just to hear whatever you can.”
His eyelid twitched. “Apology accepted. I wish you wouldn’t bite my head off, but I understand you’re under extreme duress. I’m here for you. Try to remember that I care.”
“I do. And I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll have you know I met heaps of interesting people on that tour, broadened my horizons and mind, talking to men and women from all walks of life and all over the world. I’ve learned volumes over the years from people. And what gives with the slam about me shagging groupies? I thought I redeemed crucial points from you when you saw that my bus wasn’t a den of sex and drugs.”
“I guess nobody’s tried to figure me out before, not in the way you have. And you’re doing A-OK with points from me. Not that points from me are valuable currency. I should be begging people for points, not doling them out.”
“I started to view them as badges of honor once I realized how difficult they were to accrue.”
“You’re so competitive about everything. Admirable. But breaking through this…” she hoisted the package under one arm and waved a hand up and down the space in front of her body, “and finding the sweet and mushy goodness underneath the armor might be an insurmountable challenge.”
Brian stepped in, closing a couple feet of distance between them. Moonlight and ambient flickers from his mansion reflected in his eyes. “So you’re challenging me to get close to you?”
“I don’t want to set you up to fail. Nobody else has gotten in.”
“Nobody else besides me can claim three separate, original, diamond-certified albums in the States. Not the band you cited. Not anyone’s rock band but mine.” His nostrils flared. He smelled male and cut a swaggering, I-own-the-town presence in the Hollywood night.
“Impressive stats, yes, but trust me. This is harder.”
The upward jut of his chin paired well with a slow nod. “Okay. Challenge accepted, Helen Britney Schrader.”
Brian strode to his front door and keyed in a string of numbers. A click issued from behind the grand entrance of dark wood.
Compelled by an ongoing respect for Brian that continued to build, Helen stepped to the threshold and laid a hand on the small of his back. “We’ve got this. And thank you for the gift. I can’t wait to open it.”
“We’ve got this,” Brian said with confidence.
A sprinkle of fleeting peace rained over her, and she looked into Brian’s eyes, speaking to him with that emotional cousin of telepathy they both understood.
“You’re beautiful, Helen.”
She permitted a little taste of the meaning to enter her system and let go of some crap. No need to deflect, deny, joke, or retaliate. The compulsion to guard, parry, attack, and defend eased. For one sweet moment, she wasn’t bitter. Or split or wounded. Brian saw the best of her, and she let him. “Thank you.”
He dropped a kiss to her temple and opened the front door. Monotonous club beats accompanied by Germanic vocals streamed through the foyer of his grand home. Their tender bit of synergy drained into whatever weird shit was going down. Never a dull moment.
“My daughter’s acting out. One moment.” Brian walked inside at a brisk clip, wheeling Helen’s bag behind him. “Tilly, what’s going on?”
Helen followed him into the mansion. Vaulted ceilings carried the eye high, tempting the guest to gawk upward like a first-timer in the Big Apple. The airy, open layout engulfed her, and gleaming bamboo floors, a sectional couch in white leather matching his car seats, and a baby grand piano presented spoils of fame. Platinum a
nd gold records lined the walls. Several shoebox amplifiers and guitars in floor stands occupied a corner. A slim bookcase boasted a plethora of shiny awards. It was a lot.
The old cramp of being an interloper in someone else’s sanctuary clenched her lower belly. At least they’d more or less acknowledged the impermanence of their situation, meaning she didn’t need to feel bad that he would never invite her puny self to join, in any permanent way, the fabulous life he’d built for himself. Which was fine. She didn’t belong in this prestige den, this pinnacle of architectural and interior design paying splendid homage to one of history’s most famous, beloved, and renowned rock musicians.
The teen girl from the Denver pictures came bounding down a streamlined, angular metal staircase. A sloppy pile of clothes and shoes spilled from her arms, and she galloped like her bare feet couldn’t move fast enough.
“Hi, Daddy.” Following her chipper greeting, she breezed past, on route to the front door.
Brian caught her upper arm, causing a pair of hot pink jeans and a shoe with a heel shaped like the business end of a revolver to fall to the ground. The footwear looked to be made out of upcycled tin cans and maybe a real firearm.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded in a fatherly tone.
“Calm down. I’m just going to stay with Mom for a few days. And watch out. These are designer pieces.” Tilly stooped and retrieved the gun shoe.
“You absolutely are not going to stay with Kris for a few days. It’s too dangerous.” He set Helen’s bag down by the foot of the stairs.
“Quit babying me,” Tilly screeched. “I’m not a little girl. I’m nearly grown. And I can’t stay cooped up like this. How would you feel if I locked you in a tower and told you you could never practice with your stupid band ever again? I got called back for a second audition shoot with Vanity Fair, and if I miss it my life is over. I’m as good as dead.”
“Tilly, you’re being melodramatic—”
“What is the source of this awful squabbling?” A feminine voice, sanded to fit the mold of a blasé trill drained of personality, drifted down the staircase. Kris descended on stilts of tanned legs. Black bootie shorts wrapped her straight hips, and a matching tank top clung to a midriff as flat as a cutting board. She carried a silver clutch no larger than a pack of cigarettes in an alarmingly white-knuckled grip.