Some Kind of Magic

by Mary Ann Marlowe

  She picked her phone back up, opened Facebook, and began typing frantically. I realized what she was doing a minute before she hit Send.

  “Stacy! You can’t put this on Facebook!”

  Her face dropped. “I wasn’t putting anything about the sex.”

  I grabbed her phone. She’d written, My best friend got to hang out with Adam Copeland last night. EEE! And she’d tagged me. I closed the program down before she could send. “No.”

  She slumped. “Okay, but aren’t you dying?!”

  Was I dying? Twenty minutes ago, I was dying over an ordinary guy who was totally in my league, if not below it, and who’d made my knees buckle. I couldn’t begin to process how I felt about learning someone I wanted was wanted by everyone else. Like finding the most beautiful painting at a garage sale and discovering it was a lost Picasso. I pictured Adam up for auction at Sotheby’s. I couldn’t even make the opening bid. But for a time, he had been mine.

  We sat on the sofa late into the night, running all the scenarios from best to worst.

  Option one: Maybe he really liked me and would call again. I hoped this was true but feared I’d never hear from him again. “Out of my league” was a massive understatement. Oh, God. I’d played my amateurish music for him, a professional musician. I wanted to cry.

  Option two: Maybe he liked that I didn’t know who he was and wouldn’t want to see me once I did. I knew that was paranoid thinking, but it was a possibility. I mean, why didn’t he come out and tell me when I asked?

  Option three: Maybe he didn’t care either way and picked up a girl every night. The state of his condom readiness belied this notion. Although maybe he bought the forty-count pleasure pack in bulk from Sam’s Club and had just run out.

  I fell asleep and dreamed I was standing outside a concert hall, screaming Adam’s name as he waved and stepped into a limousine. I tossed and turned all night. God forbid I should ever wait in line to talk to him like a crazed fan. I’d die of shame.

  When I finally woke up on the sofa in the dark of predawn, my mind started racing. Stacy had fallen asleep on the other end of the sofa. I threw a blanket over her and crept to my bedroom to power up the laptop. I had some research to do.

  As I suspected, Adam Copeland was a common name, and in fact he wasn’t even the only famous one. I narrowed it down to Adam Copeland Walking Disaster. God, he had a Wikipedia entry, but all that told me was that he was a Sagittarius from Brooklyn, currently in the band Walking Disaster, and formerly the drummer in some band called the Pickup Artists.

  The band’s discography shed no light on Adam, but I couldn’t resist finding his albums on Amazon and listening to the samples. I downloaded the most recent and set it to play on repeat through my headphones. I was surprised to discover I already knew three other songs on the CD. I’d never realized they were his. I swore I’d heard at least one of those songs in a commercial. No wonder his band was playing the Garden.

  I went back to Google and scanned the image results, trying to reconcile this grungy young musician in Brooklyn with the rock star staring back at me. How had I managed to attract that? Surely he had women throwing themselves at him on a nightly basis. And even if they weren’t, he could certainly shop among the fashion models and other beautiful women of the earth.

  I jumped up and appraised myself in the mirror, hoping to convince myself that anything about my appearance could stand up to the kind of competition I’d be facing if I let myself think of Adam Copeland as a potential love interest. Damn lighting. Surely I wasn’t that pale? With some makeup I’d be halfway presentable. God, I wasn’t even dressed like a girl Friday night.

  The articles that came up from my search didn’t help my growing inferiority complex. The newspaper gossip page tracked him from lunches with other well-known musicians and actors to shopping trips along Madison Avenue, occasionally mentioning his band or his music.

  There was no evidence he was dating anyone, not on the respectable paper’s entertainment pages at least. Surely if he was seeing someone, they would’ve noticed. Still, I Googled Adam Copeland girlfriend and came up with several hits. The first few were other Adams. I knew I shouldn’t be spying on him, and the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach felt like guilt. But he was a public figure, so who wouldn’t peek?

  On the second page of results, my heart stopped. Adam Copeland of Walking Disaster Engaged.

  I clicked through to the article. The name of the site wasn’t familiar to me, and there was no source given, but they had a picture of Adam with his arm around the singer Adrianna LaRue, both dressed formally, like they were standing at a photo shoot before an awards ceremony. She smiled right into the camera while he glanced off to his right, hand up, waving at off-camera fans. He looked unbelievably hot in a tuxedo. She was even taller than him, with plaited blond hair and perfect facial features.

  The article was dated a month prior and claimed that rumors were circulating that the couple had become engaged after the VMAs.

  Googling Adam Copeland engagement and Adam Copeland fiancée brought back tons of hits—blogs, fan sites, fan forums. I read the posts on one forum and found myself nervously caught up in the drama and in-fighting between the faction of jealous teeth gnashers flummoxed over Adam’s alleged engagement and the other faction of levelheaded True Fans who proclaimed it was none of their business. As a poster called Di$a$ter put it, A true fan is in it for the music after all.

  Pumpkin39, presumably a moderator, had stepped in and told everyone the topic was off-limits and locked the thread.

  Good lord. What had I walked into?

  Googling Adam Copeland breakup brought back nothing related.

  I closed the laptop and put my head under my pillow. What the fuck had I done?

  Had I just wrecked someone else’s relationship?

  Chapter 6

  As if I weren’t feeling rotten enough, my mom called at noon to remind me to come over. “It’s Indian Summer. Dress for a June lawn party.”

  It was early October.

  Stacy had gone home, and I had nothing better to do, so I put on a summer dress and drove over. Micah’s car swung into the driveway right behind mine, and we pushed through the gate into the backyard together.

  Both my parents stood to greet us. Mom squealed, “Oh, Micah came!”

  My brother got his height from her, and as she hugged him, their blond hair intermingled, interchangeable, reminding me how, even physically, Micah would always be closer to Mom.

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah, good to see you, too.”

  Micah shrugged. “They see you every week.”

  That comment did nothing to make me feel any better.

  By the time I got to the patio to hug Dad, he’d already buried his face behind a newspaper, his fingers and dark hair the only visible evidence of him.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  He acknowledged me with a brief nod. I scolded him. “You know you young people should look up from your devices periodically.”

  Only Micah laughed at my joke.

  My mom sat back down on the super-uncomfortable wrought-iron chair next to the umbrella-shaded latticed wrought-iron table. Dotted around the lawn, she’d hammered in croquet wires. On the table, she’d placed pitchers of alcohol-free mint julep. Her Hollywood-style sunglasses dwarfed her face and contrasted oddly with her homely church dress, giving her more the appearance of a recent cataract-surgery patient than a silver-screen bombshell.

  “Oh, Eden. I spoke with Connie Whedon this morning. What happened on your date last night?”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Don’t swear, Eden.”

  I fanned my face, regretting my acceptance of her invitation. But who was I kidding? I always came to her parties. What else was I going to do on a Sunday? Watch football? And if I stayed home, I would’ve made myself sick reading articles and hating myself for willing my phone to ring. I needed the distraction.

  I devoutly wished my mom had some alcohol on hand. “Mom,
it was fine. We just didn’t hit it off.”

  “Did you at least try?”

  “I did, Mom. You might consider that he didn’t want to be out with me either.”

  “Well, no wonder if you’re telling him what you do for a living.”

  I threw up my hands. “What else should I tell him?”

  Micah had the stupid grin on his face he got whenever we fought. “You could tell him you’re a sex worker. Then you’d get a second date.”

  “You know, Mom. Maybe I’m not cut out for the exciting life of a dentist’s wife.”

  Micah broke in with the accent of a yenta. “Geez, Eden, you’d think you’d jump at the chance to marry a dentist or doctor. You should be chasing after ambulances.”

  I kicked his foot, but laughed because his imitation of Mom was subtle perfection. Mom had once quite seriously suggested I hang out in the hospital waiting room more often in the hopes of running into a nice doctor.

  She lifted her sunglasses to look at me eye to eye. “You know, it’s just as easy to fall in love with a dentist. You should at least give him a chance.”

  Micah laughed. “Seriously. You’re way too picky, Eden. No wonder you never date anyone.”

  I lowered my voice. “Micah, it was Rick Whedon.”

  “Ew. You went out with Dick Whedon?”

  I turned to go inside and check the fridge for a soda, and threw back. “You know, Micah’s single. Why aren’t you harassing him?” It was a rhetorical question. Of course he didn’t need to find respectable work or look for a wife or settle down. Maybe they had realistic expectations regarding Micah. Maybe it was a compliment to my superior ability to assimilate into society.

  Mom coughed. “Eden. You’re not Micah.”

  I stopped dead and faced her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She tilted her head and pressed her lips together in a downward smile. “Do you remember when we were on the Salvation Bus?”

  How could I forget that? A yearlong nationwide mission trip instead of fourth grade? It kind of sticks in the memory. “Yeah, Mom.”

  “We’d drive hundreds of miles to get from one town to the next, and your brother would sit up front, asking when we’d get there. And once we’d arrive, he’d jump off the bus and run around exploring, making friends with local kids. Half of our contacts were made through him just being himself.”

  Between stops, he’d spent every minute practicing on a secondhand guitar, when he wasn’t complaining. As soon as the bus doors opened, Micah ran around town promoting himself while Mom and Dad contacted the clergy. By six o’clock, he had a small audience. By eight, he had girls trailing him everywhere he went.

  “Yeah, so? He was bored on the bus.”

  “But you weren’t. Whenever we’d get to a new town, you’d slink away at every opportunity to get right back onto that bus and work on something you’d started while we were driving. Remember when you found those snails?”

  Those snails. “Of course.” I’d carried them in a box for a month, feeding them, watching them, fascinated.

  “You’d beg us for small furry animals all the time, but we couldn’t very well take a kitten on the road. So you found those snails and those were your friends.”

  They weren’t my friends; they were my lab rats. “What does this have to do with Micah?”

  “Micah’s cut out for the life he leads—the traveling, the new places, the adventure. But you’re different. You need a stable home life, Eden. You need to find a nice man and settle down.”

  I wanted to argue with her, but maybe she was right. I sucked on my lower lip and sulked.

  Micah stretched, obviously tired of the lecture. “Whatever happened to Caleb, anyway?”

  “Married.” I’d dated Caleb in college, and, just when I thought things might turn serious, he announced he needed the freedom to play the field. I announced I needed the freedom to date men who weren’t self-serving assholes. “He sent me a wedding invitation.”

  “Oh.” He grabbed a mallet. “You wanna play?”

  “Sure.”

  We walked out to the lawn and tried to figure out the physics of the game. Micah hit one of his balls halfway across the lawn. Trying to compensate for his mistake, my first strike barely moved the ball four inches.

  Mom ran out and took Micah’s mallet. “Watch me.” She laid one ball next to another and, with her foot positioned on the first, gave it a solid whack.

  I stood next to Micah and commented under my breath, “Do you realize these sophisticated techniques will likely be completely lost in one generation?”

  Micah tapped his ball with a swish of the wrist. “That’s because this is the worst game ever invented.”

  Once Mom had returned to her shaded throne and I had Micah alone, out of earshot of the few other party guests, I casually broached the burning question. “So Micah.” I smacked a ball, and it went wide of the target. “Why didn’t you tell me who Adam was?”

  He’d been lining up his own mallet, but stopped and blinked at me. “What d’ya mean? I thought you knew.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “You’ve never seen him before? Do you live under a rock?”

  I rolled my foot over the ball to move it more in line with the target. Micah didn’t even notice, so I nudged it a few inches forward. “I don’t pay attention to rock musicians. I’m sure I could rattle off names of well-known folk singers you wouldn’t be able to pick out of a lineup.”

  “You liked him though, right? He seems like a genuinely nice guy.”

  “Yeah, he does. Why were you hanging out with him, anyway? I assumed you were looking for a bass player.”

  Micah snorted. “You thought I wanted to hire Adam Copeland?”

  “Again, I had no idea who he was.”

  “Fair point. Actually, he’s looking for a band to take out on tour with him as an opening act. He said he likes to give talented musicians the exposure.”

  “On tour where?”

  “Europe. A month of concert arenas in Europe.” His eyes glazed over, dreamy.

  “So what happens next?”

  “Nothing right now. Hopefully, he’ll call again, and we’ll set something up.”

  I hesitated a moment and then couldn’t help myself. “Can’t you call him? Don’t you have his phone number?”

  “Yeah, I have it, but he’s hard to reach. He’ll call me when he’s ready to talk.”

  My palms slipped on the croquet mallet handle, and I wiped my hands on my pants.

  “Micah, could you give me his number?”

  He raised an eyebrow, suspicious. “Whyyy?”

  “Nothing. He mentioned hanging out again sometime, and I gave him my number but didn’t get his.”

  “Oh, so now you’ll go out with a musician?”

  “I didn’t say anything about going out with him. Just forget it.”

  “It wouldn’t matter. He never answers his phone. His voice mail is completely full. I’ve texted him and gotten no response. I thought about trying to message him on Facebook, but he only has a fan page. And Twitter’s even worse. The stream of people tweeting at him would be impossible to compete with. I followed him, but he never followed back, so I can’t even direct message him. I didn’t know he was coming to the club on Friday. I’m at the mercy of waiting for him to call me.”

  I giggled at his frustration. He sounded like a woman scorned. “You’d think he’d have private numbers for people who matter.”

  “He probably does. I’m probably not one of them.”

  I wondered if I was. It hadn’t slipped my notice he hadn’t called yet.

  Mom hollered over. “Dr. Steve is here!”

  The nightmare would never end. Reluctantly, I put up my mallet and retreated to the patio to acknowledge the guest. Out of long habit, I ran him through the scanner. His career was a deal breaker for me. It might be shallow and wrong, but I’d never have been able to get past the fact that he was a gynecologist. The image of him crouched
with a speculum between a pair of paper-gown-shrouded knees had already formed and could not be unformed. Aside from that, he wore button-up shirts he didn’t button up all the way. Nor did he wear an undershirt. The result was a clear view of his 1970s chest curl. He was just missing a gold medallion and a pair of white slacks to complete the deal.

  While I poured a drink to have something to hold, Steve flirted with my mother, and I added another demerit to his checklist.

  Mom’s sugar smile was plastered to her face as she informed me Steve had recently bought a time-share in Ocala. “That’s in Florida.”

  I closed my eyes so as to keep them from rolling out of my head. Searching for anything to respond to this news, I blurted out, “Isn’t that completely landlocked?”

  Mom swatted at me and then returned her smile to Steve, covering a slight underlying grimace aimed at me.

  Steve didn’t seem to notice the undercurrent as he directed his comments toward my dad.

  “The price differential on a condo in Ocala as compared to Orlando is worth checking into.”

  Mom added philosophical complexity to the conversation. “It must be quite warm in Florida at this time of year.”

  While Mom had Steve’s attention, Micah grabbed my elbow and waved for me to follow him. He went around to the front of the house and dropped onto the porch swing. Once I was settled, he kicked back with his feet. We both pulled our legs up and closed our eyes. It took me back years. We’d spent a lot of time sitting on that swing when we were kids. It was where I tried my first—and last—cigarette.

  After a few minutes, Micah took a deep breath, and I braced for the big-brother lecture.

  “Eden, what are you still doing here?”

  I knew what he meant, but couldn’t help purposely misunderstanding. “It’s still early. I figured I’d stay through dinner.”

  He looked up at the sky, exasperated. “Seriously, you don’t belong here. You’re twenty-eight and Mom’s fixing you up with Dick Weed? God, I hated that guy when we were teenagers. I can’t imagine what a douche lord he turned into.”

  “I tried to refuse her. You know how she gets.”