by M. M. Mayle
“Don’t remind me.”
After Bemus leaves, Colin works the stiffness out of his legs and fumes a bit about the whole new set of questions added to a queue that’s already impossibly long. None are about Bemus or the loyalty pledge he recited before returning to the floor; they’re all about Nate and why the blighter persists in seeing threats behind every happenstance. Didn’t Laurel quote Nate as saying this compulsive practice was more than half the reason he was actually relieved to be let go as manager? Didn’t Amanda recently say that Nate is so up to his neck in financial dealings he hardly goes home to sleep? Then where’s he finding time to make mountains out of molehills?
A powerful guitar riff suddenly rends the air. Then another. And another. The lads are warming up for what will be the first ensemble run-through of “Angle of Repose,” the tune written as an ode to reclaimed life that’s now destined to become a requiem for unexplained loss. Colin still has misgivings about including it on the playlist—especially as performed by the full roster—but he can at least be glad it won’t be distorted into an artsy-fartsy theatrical piece as was “Revenant” when the Institute Award wankers got hold of that tune.
Despite the extra work entailed, there’s a lot to be said for full artistic control, a position he fought for and won over the reservations of a skeptical few. In this capacity, he can make dead certain any elegiac qualities given “Angle of Repose” come from the listeners, not the performers. Similarly, when he fronts his own band for the European tour, he can guard against anything too revelatory creeping into the mix, regardless of Laurel’s comments about what’s now referred to as “Layla effect.”
They’re calling for him now, and, going by the energy some are putting into their arm waving, have been for the last several minutes. He could literally be grandstanding when he descends the risers one slow measured step at a time. His shoes don’t pinch and his legs don’t ache that much, but he’s every bit as wary of making a false step as he was at the Icon show.
The ride from the rehearsal hall to the Dorchester in a cab shared with Bemus, is a swift undertaking at one-something in the morning. It’s quiet as well; no one has anything left to say after fifteen hours of fine-tuning and second-guessing everything from stage setup, to order of appearance, to playlist selection, to distribution of media credentials, to dressing room assignments. And that’s only the beginning. Tomorrow will see tedious stretches of blocking and timing for the live television feed using standins, and the next day will see extensive lighting and sound checks in the actual venue—probably right up to zero hour—with the greatest chance of a cock-up occurring when there’s least chance of setting it right.
In this advanced state of preoccupation, Colin surrenders the last of the day’s details to Bemus, who settles with the cab driver, then provides redundant escort through an underpopulated hotel lobby into an empty lift, and straightaway to the door of an extended suite. Goodnights are implied rather than said when they part.
Colin hesitates a moment before opening the door. Not of apprehension, as would have been the case in another life, but of anticipated pleasure that’s met when the door swings open revealing Laurel in a lime-green kimono and warm smile.
She’s uncomplaining of his sweat smell when they kiss, and of the too many hours they’ve been apart when she follows him into the bedroom to inquire how his day went. She’s unarmed when she runs a bath for him. No grievances are tossed out under a smokescreen of solicitude, and no annoyances surface in any of the thoughtful questions she asks whilst he strips down and slides into the blessedly hot water.
She sits for a while on the closed loo and the conversation drifts far into neutral territory—to the banal—before he starts getting the feeling another shoe’s about to be dropped, even though he may not have heard the first one hit the floor.
“You finish up here while I check on the boys and order something from room service. From what you’ve just said, I doubt you took time to eat. You won’t sleep long on an empty stomach, you know.” She says all this a trifle too fast and scoots out of the room before he can challenge her.
He finishes up sooner than he’d like; he’d prefer to linger until the major complaints have been soaked out of his legs, but that could take till dawn. After toweling off, he pulls on the sweat pants and T-shirt she left for him on the bed and pads barefoot into the sitting room, where she’s pressed herself into a corner of the couch. He takes a seat opposite, the better to read what’s going on. If anything is going on.
“You all squared away with your financial advisor, then? How’d that go? Any trouble finding his office?”
She unties and reties the belt to her kimono, fiddles with the sleeves, smoothes back a wisp of hair. “We met . . . here,” she says without looking up at him. “The nanny was delayed, so I had to make a snap decision. I had to ask him to come here as the lesser of two evils.”
“The greater evil being the prospect of taking the lads into a child-unfriendly environment.”
“Yes.” She looks at him out of the tops of her eyes, obviously expecting him to register objection, and he’s damned if he’ll live up to that expectation even though he does object. Strenuously. Retroactively, therefore stupidly.
“But now you are done with him,” he says through clenched jaws that have felt plenty of practice today.
“No,” she says, “we never got around to the nitty-gritty because I needed to talk about so many other things.”
“What other things? What did you have to talk about with him that you couldn’t talk about with me?”
“Nothing that you don’t know about . . . Nothing of any great earthshaking importance . . . Just what should be done about Mrs. Floss, and about my house, and about my father. Things like that, and the conversation was pretty one-sided. It was mainly me talking, mainly me thinking out loud.”
“So, the great man was subjected to your stream of consciousness and the intrusion of the lads till the nanny showed up.”
“That basically describes it, except the nanny never did show.”
“You’ve been without a break all day? All night? Why didn’t you have the agency send another?”
“I’m going to rebook with an agency that’s just promised a no-show? Or any agency, for that matter?”
“Then what are you gonna do tomorrow, and the next day, or whenever it is you’re to meet with Nate again?”
“I called your mother. She’ll be here in the morning. Early.”
“Wait a minute. Wasn’t relieving her of nanny duties part of the negotiation when you convinced her not to move out?”
“It was, and I now realize it shouldn’t have been. I don’t think either one of us was telling the truth during that negotiation. Not the whole truth.”
“What brought on this revelation? Never mind, I already know. Nate’s behind this, isn’t he, then?”
“He said I’d be making a big mistake if I didn’t ask her to go on the tour, as well. He said I could trust him to know this is the right thing to do.”
“And you do trust him.”
“I do. And if you’re going to be pissed about that, you might as well know that I then asked him to figure out a way to reinstate himself with you.”
“You had to ask? Isn’t he already trying? I heard just this afternoon that he’s resumed beating the bushes for the single bogeyman he thinks is responsible for the Grant, Lester, and Kaplan murders, and is somehow posing a threat to me. Did he bring that up today? Did he mention to you that the New York investigation matched up drugs found at two of the murder scenes? Did he try to brainwash you into believing that’s significant beyond the obvious—beyond both Lester and Kaplan being well-known bottomfeeders?”
“No, he did not. No mention was made of any of that, and he flatly rejected the notion of even marginally involving himself with you again. He repeated what he said the night I hid from you at his house—he restated that he could never again tolerate the day-to-day—which effectively negates wh
at you were told this afternoon.”
“Yeh, I suppose, but—”
“No buts. His interest in you approximates the interest he has in his ex-wife—his words—and I sincerely doubt that involves any extra skulking around.”
“I don’t know whether to be relieved or insulted.”
“I can see where that might be a problem.” She hints at a smile and rather hugs herself the way she used to when the hands-off policy was still in force.
“Can you forgive me for being sorry you and Nate can’t at least be friends? Can you understand that he’ll always be my friend for having given me the nudge that made us happen?” she says.
The arrival of room service spares his having to supply an answer right away. If an answer is even expected to a question so clearly designed to produce guilt. Then the selections she made—cream of tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches that reminisce the only other meal they ever shared in a hotel room—blur the leading edges of that guilt.
“You’re scaring me again, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” she says and offers up a full smile that makes him feel like he should say grace before the meal.
TWENTY-FOUR
Early morning, May 20, 1987
As revealed in early morning light, the shallow indent of her spine may be the loveliest thing he’s ever seen, either in the flesh or as rendered by a master’s hand on canvas. This effusive, wildly uncharacteristic assessment jars him awake more effectively than would have a thrown bucket of cold water, and keeps his hand from reaching across a couple of feet of bed for this new art treasure known as Amanda.
Nate props himself up on one elbow, turns back the sheet to reveal even more of her side-positioned figure. He attempts a less impassioned appraisal and arrives at the same conclusion as before. But might not he be prejudiced by his admiration for what lies beneath this pulchritudinous exterior? Pulchritudinous? He gulps loud enough to be heard. He doesn’t use words like that—not even in thought—and he sure as hell knows the difference between spine and backbone, so it can’t be the high value he places on fortitude and determination that’s influencing his perceptions. Can it?
Amanda shifts onto her back, turns part way toward him, and now he’s forced to debate if her breasts are as lovely as they appear to be with nothing to influence him but the superficial. He grazes one with a knuckle—lightly, experimentally—just enough of a touch to wake her if his hot gaze hasn’t done the job.
She turns all the way toward him, opens one eye at a time, and unselfconsciously submits to his ogling. He’d have to be barking mad, as they say over here, to think the flipside was the loveliest thing he’d ever seen when clearly it’s this side. He inventories wondrous appearing features as though he’d never seen them before—never seen any naked female flesh before—until his mounting ardor is squelched by the ringing of the phone.
The call is for her, as has been nearly every call whenever she’s in residence. This has taken some getting used to, this sensation of playing second fiddle when he’s more accustomed to being the one in demand. But he’d better be damned used to it by the time he attends tonight’s concert. Tonight, he can expect to be as redundant as he was the only other time he attended a major rock event without authority to wield or a band to represent. Recalling the glum occasion when he took a break from overseeing Colin’s convalescence to attend the Philadelphia venue of 1985’s Live Aid concerts, could tempt him to skip tonight’s affair despite pledges given.
Amanda indicates she’ll be on the phone for a while and that he should go ahead and lay claim to the bathroom. He does, but reluctantly, knowing she won’t join him as long as there are calls to be returned. A trait he’d admire under most circumstances. But under most circumstances, he wouldn’t give a shit whether or not a sex partner had good work habits.
The clandestine nature of their arrangement is beginning to bother him, as well. Although an undeniable thrill comes with having to stay under the radar, he’d gladly forgo the thrill and flaunt their symbiosis if doing so wouldn’t jeopardize Amanda’s current status with Colin.
He finishes in the bathroom and comes out to find Amanda still anchored to the phone. He’s fully dressed for business before she heads for the shower with the sheet draped around her, toga style.
“I’m not going to see you again until after the concert, am I?” he says and starts gathering up coat, umbrella, and document case.
“Not unless you come backstage tonight.” She pauses in the doorway to the bathroom. “You can, you know. You have all-access credentials.”
“Yeah, I know, and if I’m seen anywhere near you by the wrong people, wrong conclusions will be drawn.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“From everything Laurel says. When we made arrangements for today’s meeting, she let slip that my presence at her hotel on Monday was frowned upon, and reminded me that Colin’s barely tolerant of my business relationship with her. So, it makes even more sense to stay out of his way. Especially where you’re concerned.”
“Worst case scenario—Colin finds out we’re seeing each other and assumes you’re running things from behind the scenes. Everything’s locked in now. Everything’s a go at this point, so if he sent me packing it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“Sorry, I have to disagree. He’s a rock star, Amanda. He may have changed a lot after the accident, but some things never change. He’s hotheaded, stubborn, and unreasonable in ways you might not be able to predict. But I can. Trust me, if he’s given reason to think I set him up for any of this, he’ll walk. And I don’t mean just walk out on tonight’s gig. He’ll refuse to do the tour as well.”
“Even though it’s all for Rayce?”
“Yeah, even though, hard as that might be to believe.”
“Wow. Laurel would kill him for sure.”
He hasn’t seen her eyes get this round since she stopped blushing three days ago. But that’s the only sign she might be reverting to her former self because she lets the sheet puddle to the floor around her ankles, narrows her eyes, and looks him over like he’s the one standing naked in a doorway.
“You look nice,” she says in lieu of goodbye.
“So do you.”
Her image stays with him on the walk to the Chelsea office, getting in the way of remembering to look for oncoming traffic to the right, and disrupting focus once he’s safely seated at his desk in his London outpost.
Why couldn’t he have said she looked lovely standing there in the doorway like a diminutive latter-day Venus rising from a dropped sheet instead of a shell? He wouldn’t have had to say breathtakingly lovely, would he? Or pulchritudinous, for chrissake. What would have been the harm in telling her she was appealing in both mind and body? Would that have amounted to a lifetime commitment? Or even a length-of-stay commitment?
He squanders another five minutes on this debate before shifting to faulting himself for not kissing her goodbye. But if he had kissed her goodbye, he’d still be there and she’d be getting a late start for what could be the biggest day of her life.
He sends a nameless assistant for coffee and goes through the motions of applying himself to the work at hand. He’s a little disappointed there are no fires to put out, either here or at the New York office. But he may be premature about the opposite shore; they won’t be up and running for another five hours.
Calculating the time difference reminds him he still has half a day to get through before the meeting with Laurel Chandler. He selects at random from the manila folders fanned out on his desk, hoping to find a proposal enticing enough to keep his mind off current events, but an impact study of the nearly completed Docklands Light Rail system doesn’t do the job.
Apparently nothing’s going to do the job, he concludes after leafing through the rest of the material laid out for him. Although a glance at the window shows the predicted rain has materialized, that’s not enough deterrent to keep him shut inside an office where the only things of interest are
the clock and the phone. Ignoring the just arrived coffee, he grabs his coat and umbrella and leaves the office without saying where he’s going or when he’ll be back.
If this trek in the rain had any conscious purpose, it would be to prioritize distractions, and right now he can’t even count them. The first tube station he comes to is Sloane Square, where he considers spending the next hour or two on the underground. But that seems like a cop-out, so he moves on until he’s confronted with the behemoth Victoria Station and its many avenues of escape. Again, he eschews shelter and mechanized transport in favor of self-propelled martyrdom in the rain, and slogs on this way until he’s surrounded by a bland stretch of bureaucratic architecture in Westminster’s Victoria Street.
If he looks up at all, it’s only to notice that the curtains in these buildings are consistently too long and puddle on the windowsills like Amanda’s sheet puddled around her delectable ankles in the bathroom doorway.
The next thing that catches his eye is a middle-aged woman, hunched over on a pebbledash bench, changing from fashionable shoes into black Reeboks, the better to support her tourism. This unattractive sight goes to show how out of place he is in this neighborhood; he’s dressed too well to be either bureaucrat or tourist—more evidence of his redundancy.
He’s crossed Broadway and glimpsed New Scotland Yard before that significance impacts on him. And now he’s the one sitting on a pebbledash bench contemplating change. Change in the way he regards Rayce’s death: Making it out to be foul play instead of either suicide or accident; stretching rational belief to link it with the deaths in the states; imagining how quickly he’d be dismissed—in every sense of the word—if he attempted to bring any of that to the attention of a chief inspector.
After wasting fifteen minutes on this fruitless meditation, he ducks into Sainsburys for a cheese and pickle sandwich. While there, he picks up a container of rhubarb yogurt, Amanda’s new favorite among flavors she’s never tried before.