by Holly Rayner
“Not enough to hear twenty songs about them,” said Kalilah with the bluntness of youth. “Anyway,” she said to me, “you are the best present I could have possibly gotten. Jamila and Nadia aren’t going to believe me when I tell them!”
“I’m glad you approve,” I said humbly. Somehow the approval of one little girl and her dad meant more to me in that moment than all the raves of the music magazines. “When are your friends getting here?”
“I told them to be here in about an hour,” said Kalilah as she led us into a vast ballroom with a long row of arched windows looking out on the back garden. “Do you think I should tell them?” she added in a mischievous tone, “or should I just wait and let it be a surprise?”
“Gosh, I don’t know.” By now, we had reached a stage near the back of the room, where I found instruments and sound equipment already set up. “Do they know me?”
“Do they ever,” said Kalilah. “Jamila’s mom made her stop listening to you for about a week because it’s all she would play. Said she wanted her to try new things. But she didn’t like any of the new things nearly as much as you.”
“Well, I’m very flattered.” It was always a surreal feeling hearing how my music had affected people all over the world. “Though I think it is good to try new things every once in a while, if only for the sake of your parents.”
“I don’t mind,” said Umar, smiling and resting his hands on her small shoulders. “Kalilah could listen to you all day and it wouldn’t bother me—which is not what I would have said a couple weeks ago, but then, I hadn’t met you yet.”
If I had felt flattered before, it was nothing to what I felt now. Turning away so that he couldn’t see my cheeks burning, I said, “Well, do you mind if I run a sound check?”
Chapter 8
Shannon
To my relief and astonishment, the concert went off without a hitch. I guess I should have expected it: we were in a closed room where security wasn’t an issue and the audience consisted of about a dozen girls who would have been thrilled no matter how well I played. I encouraged the girls to suggest songs and performed “Small-Town Girl” on both guitar and piano because they enjoyed it so much. At the end, I invited Kalilah up onstage and led the room in singing “Happy Birthday” while she stood there grinning shyly and trying hard not to melt into me.
When it was all over, I posed for pictures and some of the girls asked for my autograph. “Can you make it out to me?” asked Jamila, handing me a T-shirt and proceeding to spell her name.
It felt weird to be handing out autographs again, which I hadn’t much done since I had moved home. That feeling of being an impostor rose up again, as insidious and dispiriting as ever. I wanted to take the kids aside and explain that I wasn’t really that much of a celebrity, that I lived in a tiny apartment and on the weekends, returned home to a small suburban house with a garage door that wouldn’t close all the way. But the delighted looks on their faces seemed to suggest otherwise. Maybe they were easily impressed, or maybe they knew something that I didn’t.
“Thanks,” said Jamila when I had finished. She had the same soaring confidence and self-assurance that I had glimpsed in Kalilah. “By the way, are you ever going to record a studio version of ‘Heart’s in Paris’?”
It took me a moment to remember what song she was talking about. “Is that something I recorded? It’s been ages. How did you hear about it?”
“You made a demo version back when you were, like, fourteen or fifteen.” Of course. I had forgotten that those demos were still floating around on the internet. “Anyway, it’s one of my favorite songs you ever did and I was telling Adab I’d love to have it on a playlist for whenever we visit Paristown, but the only versions I have are on video. Adab says her brother knows how to convert it into a song file, but I told her you ought to just make a professional recording.”
“You know, I’d really like to.” I’d wanted to include “Heart’s in Paris” on my first album, but my producer had told me it was “too niche” and “not something the kids today would be interested in.” I’d like to have marched Jamila into that producer’s office and had her repeat everything she had just said to me. A sweet feeling of vindication came over me at the thought that my first instincts had been right, and that I ought to listen to myself more often.
“You should!” said Jamila, who was growing in my esteem by the minute. “You could do an entire album just about all the countries and places you’ve visited.”
I didn’t want to have to tell her that my touring itinerary had mostly been confined to the U.S.
“I bet Shannon’s been loads of places, haven’t you?” said Kalilah. “When you’re a celebrity, you get to go wherever you want to go, and people just give you things for free!”
“What kinds of things?” asked Jamila.
“Oh, free beer, free shoes, first-class flights,” said Kalilah knowledgeably. “I remember hearing about one actress who got a battleship named after her.”
Jamila’s jaw dropped. “Do you have any ships named after you, Miss O’Neill?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.” I managed a smile, desperately hoping they wouldn’t ask too many more questions so I wouldn’t have to lie to them.
“Do you ever have to pay for anything?” asked Nadia, who had been silently gawking for much of the conversation.
“Occasionally—I mean, nothing is ever free, not really—”
“I heard that celebrity planes have saunas and massage parlors,” said Jamila, and some of the other girls giggled. “How is that even possible?”
“Does rich-people food really taste better?” Nadia added with a glower of suspicion. “How can it be that much different from normal food?”
“Kalilah’s dad is rich,” I said, “you ought to ask him!”
“Yes, but he’s not rich-rich,” said Jamila. “Not like you.”
“I don’t know, this is a pretty magnificent house…” Umar was standing on the opposite side of the room quietly talking to the sound technician. I shot him a desperate glance. “Anyway, we’re just people like anyone else. Did Kalilah tell you that I grew up poor?”
“Did you really?” cried three voices at once.
“I did.” It was a relief to be talking about scraping by, which I actually knew something about. “Growing up poor really helped me appreciate what I have now. If I’d grown up being a rich celebrity, I don’t think I’d have appreciated it as much, do you?”
Jamila and Kalilah shook their heads. I could see that for them, this was some bit of inspired wisdom. Seeing the enraptured looks on their faces, I realized I had to keep up the deception, if only to keep them from becoming disenchanted. They needed a hero and somehow, I had assumed that role. I wasn’t about to go breaking their hearts by revealing that I worked at a diner five days a week, and that three days ago, the soda fountain had started spewing frothy liquids and we couldn’t get it to stop. I wasn’t going to tell them that recently I had auditioned for the job of pianist at my church and the job had gone to some other woman. The girls were young and they thought fame and celebrity really could open all doors. Why not let them dream for a little longer?
Luckily, at that moment, I was rescued by Umar, who came striding over, shaking his head in warning. “Are you girls harassing Mrs. O’Neill?” he asked, though he smiled as he said it. “How many questions have you had to answer?”
“Only about a hundred,” I said.
He clucked his tongue in disapproval. “I suppose by now, they must have heard your entire life story.”
“Only some of it.”
Wrapping one arm around Kalilah, he said, “I seem to remember that some of you were due at the spa…” He removed a gold watch on a chain out of his coat pocket, “ten minutes ago. You don’t want the water getting cold, do you?”
“It won’t get cold, Dad,” said Kalilah. “It’s heated by natural springs, remember!”
“Best not to take any chances,” said Umar, beginn
ing to usher them toward the door. “There’s an indoor spa on the ground floor,” he explained to me as we left the ballroom and headed downstairs. “One of the additions I made to the floor plan when I modified Chiswick House.”
“Is this a replica of a London home?” I asked.
Umar nodded, his eyes bright. “Just like everything else you’ll see in Londontown.”
“I’d love to know how you did that.”
“I’d love to explain it—over dinner, maybe?”
Somehow, it took me a moment to register that he was inviting me to dinner. “What? Oh, yes! Of course. I’d love to go, really. Let me just run to the restroom and fix my hair, real quick.”
In the restroom, I experienced a brief moment of panic. I had a plane to catch the next morning and I might have turned down his offer if he hadn’t been so generous and gracious. But I had the hardest time saying no to people. Now we would be going out—there was no way I could get out of it now—and he would want to know about my life and my family and the extravagant lifestyle I had been talking up for most of the night.
It was kind of funny how much I had wanted him to ask me out, until he had actually done it.
Sitting down on the rim of the claw-foot tub, I pulled out my phone and texted Ginger. You’ll never guess what just happened!
I probably won’t, she texted back. Tell me!
Umar just asked me out to dinner!
Not being able to see my face or hear my voice, Ginger couldn’t have guessed how panicked I was. That’s fantastic. Do you think he likes you?
The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. No, of course not. But what if he starts grilling me about my life?
It took her a minute or two to respond. I could sense Umar shuffling impatiently downstairs.
Shanny, I can’t help you with this one, she said finally. You were the one who decided to trick him, and I went along with it because I couldn’t see any way out of it. Try to keep the conversation on him and remember that you’re flying home in the morning. Call me tonight if you have to. It’s still early here.
Right, yeah, I wrote back. I just have to make it through the next couple hours. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?
I waited for Ginger’s reply, but she never answered.
Downstairs, I found Umar, still wearing his tan jacket and gray hat, standing in front of a painting of Charles I. “You ready?” he asked with a smile as he returned his phone to his pocket and began heading toward the door.
“Yeah, I am,” I said weakly. It wasn’t the first lie I had told that night, nor would it be the last.
Chapter 9
Shannon
If I could have just set my anxiety aside for an hour or two, it would have been a heavenly evening. I tried to frame it in a positive way: I was probably the only person in my family ever to have been invited out by a sheikh to a high-end restaurant in a foreign city. The Shannon I was pretending to be, the Shannon who led a glamorous celebrity life and had lunch in LA, dinner in New York, would have taken the invitation in her stride. She would have laughed at all the appropriate moments and regaled Umar with her hilarious stories of running into the president’s daughter in Park Slope. But I wasn’t that girl. As we walked down the drive toward the limo, I felt paralyzed, wishing the night was over, wishing I could convince someone else to take my place.
The limo carried us to a seafood restaurant at least ten times as luxurious as any I’d ever visited. The walls were lined with paintings of shipwrecks and sunken treasure and the wait staff wore blue and white uniforms with polished brass buttons. Near the center of the dining room stood a statue of Poseidon waving his trident and riding a large silver fish that sprayed cold water out of his mouth onto a bed of ice. Seeing it, I was reminded irresistibly of the fountain at work that wouldn’t stop spewing soda. I almost wanted to snap a picture and post it online, tagging all my coworkers, just to make them jealous.
I didn’t recognize half the names on the menu, which sounded like the names of creatures you might see in a Star Wars film. Umar ordered the Fourchu lobster (apparently they were only available three months out of the year and we had come at the right time) and a glass of seltzer water. I wanted to order the Buddha-Jumps-Over-the-Wall fish soup (mushrooms, sea cucumber, actual shark fin), but our waiter informed me that it took five days to prepare. I settled for salmon cakes and grilled halibut steaks.
About midway through our meal, I noticed that a man and a woman, both in black gabardine suits, were seated a couple of tables behind us. I had an odd feeling I had seen them somewhere, but I knew that was impossible because I had only been in the country for a few hours. The table between them stood empty. At first, I thought maybe they were waiting for their order, but this notion was dispelled when another twenty minutes passed and their meal still hadn’t arrived.
Finally, I couldn’t resist whispering: “That couple at the table behind us—they are acting really suspicious.”
Umar didn’t raise an eyebrow. “Oh, yes. That’s my security detail,” he said with a faint flush of embarrassment. “I had to hire them after an incident late last year where I was almost mugged. There are a couple more guarding the palace.”
“Oh, I see. I imagine being as rich and respected as you are, it must feel like walking around with a target on your back all the time,” I said.
“Yes, I imagine you would know a thing or two about it,” said Umar.
“I do,” I said truthfully. “That’s one of the reasons I love coming home, because I don’t have to be guarded 24/7. There have been a couple incidents at my concerts that really put me on edge. You might’ve read about them. One night in October I was just finishing a set when a scruffy-looking middle-aged man in a black bomber jacket rushed the stage. I stood paralyzed, just completely panicked. Luckily, security tackled him before he could do anything, but for a split-second, I thought I was going to die. Later, he told the police he had just been trying to hug me.”
Umar shuddered. “Somehow, that’s even creepier.”
“I know, right? And then a few weeks later, I was playing a set in Omaha when someone threw a glass milk bottle onto the stage. Of course it exploded and milk went everywhere. The noise was terrifying. And then it happened again not three seconds later, and by the time it happened a third time, I was already being rushed off the stage.”
“Yikes. What was that about?”
I shook my head incredulously; even now, I could hardly believe it. “Turns out some deranged fan had built a catapult specifically designed to throw milk bottles onto the stage. I think he may have been trying to murder me.”
“Seems like a convoluted way to do it,” said Umar, taking a swig of his seltzer. It bubbled and fizzed in the glass like champagne. “Did you press charges?”
“The murder charge was thrown out because we couldn’t prove criminal intent, but we nailed him on attempted assault.” I felt a little crazy even talking about it. It was one of those rare moments when I sounded like I was making things up but was telling the full truth.
“Why do people act like that?” he asked. “What motivates them?”
“I don’t know. I think even the presence of celebrity makes some folks crazy. It’s like a switch turns on in their heads. I’ve had to learn to be really careful.”
“Same here. I don’t let Kalilah go out in public unless she’s with me. I wouldn’t even trust my own security alone with her. I knew a man in Vienna whose daughter was kidnapped and held for ransom by one of his own guards. I know it sounds paranoid, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
“No, you just sound like a parent.” There was something oddly warm and reassuring in the way the Sheikh talked about Kalilah, like she was a treasure above rubies. It reminded me of the way my own dad had defended me when a strange man began hanging around the house.
“Hmm, yes.” Umar fell silent, as if thinking. “Have you ever thought about having kids?”
It felt like an odd direction for the conversat
ion to go in—up to now, we had mostly been talking about our professional lives. “I mean, I’ve thought about it,” I said, poking sadly at my halibut. “I just don’t know if it would be feasible with the kind of life I’ve been leading. Being on the road all the time, always flying from one town to another. I just… I think maybe, if I wanted to settle down, but I’m just not at that point in my life yet.”
“Mmm.” Umar smiled at me from across the table and my stomach fluttered ominously. I loved when he looked at me like that, but I hated it at the same time. There was a zero percent chance that I could fall in love with this man while pretending to be something and someone I was not.
Chapter 10
Shannon
Despite my pre-dinner panic, the meal ended up being perfectly lovely. Umar was utterly charming, and I managed to both steer the conversation away from my career and avoiding embarrassing myself too badly.
We ordered a couple glasses of sangria and by the time Umar paid for our meal, the food and the wine were beginning to work their quiet magic. I felt sleepy and relaxed in a way I hadn’t since the night we had first spoken on the phone, which felt like ages ago now.
I wished I could soothe my anxious heart for a few minutes and just melt into the night’s arms. The performance was over. In front of me sat a generous, sensitive, increasingly handsome man who seemed fascinated with my life in all its particulars. The way he looked at me made my heart flutter. And maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was the night and the street lamps, but as we left the restaurant together and began making our way down Tottenham Court Road, I had to resist the urge to lean forward and kiss him on the mouth.
Instead, I settled for the hug he gave me as we stood in Piccadilly Circus, its lights flashing like a neon nightmare. Having flown to this country on business, I hadn’t been expecting a hug from him and by the time I leaned into it, it was already ending. I had to resist the temptation to grab him by the lapels and pull him back toward me, soaking in the warmth of his body.