The Rock Star in Seat 3A: A Novel

by Jill Kargman

  As we drove toward my hotel, I leaned over and kissed his cheek the entire way, dotting the bone with tiny almost inaudible pecks all the way down to his neck.

  “Oh my god, those kisses . . . ,” he said, focusing on the road.

  I made my way back up to his ear and heard his breath quicken. I had no idea where this sex kitten thing came from, but I knew, he being who he was, that the rotating groupie assembly line at the Barbie factory obviously shagged him rotten, so something ignited a passion in me that was like nothing I had ever been seized with. Maybe I was a Mattel factory reject that came out with black hair and pale skin, but like the upside-down airplane stamp, I was hoping that would prove valuable to him.

  “Oh my god, you’re driving me crazy,” he said.

  Maybe better to calm down, I thought. It’s not like I was going to blow him in the driver’s seat. (But the thought had crossed my mind.) What had come over me?

  I sat back in my seat, and he took my hand and kissed it.

  “How was the trip?” he asked.

  “I don’t even remember. It was as if I crashed in a field of poppies like Dorothy. I was out. I think I’ve been kind of sleep deprived.” I shrugged.

  “Me, too,” he said. “A lot of thinking about my little witch’s visit.”

  I had chills. He squeezed my hand. “How was the visit with your nieces?”

  “Great, they’re so cute. So precocious,” I said, shaking my head. I told him Iris’s joke, and he almost crashed he was laughing so hard.

  “I bet you were a little spitfire,” he said.

  “I was, I definitely was,” I admitted. “But I wasn’t as advanced with the language as they are. But I was mischievous.”

  “Like how?” he asked.

  “Not like, lighting shit on fire or anything, I just had some serious ’tude. My report cards always had high marks for academics but they checked poor for behavior. I was restless. Especially in stupid stuff, like gym,” I said, smiling. “Once my phys ed teacher screamed at me and said, ‘MISS LAVERY! THERE IS NO I IN TEAM!’ I calmly looked at her and replied, ‘Yes, but there is an M and an E.’ ”

  “Brilliant.” He laughed. “Wait, why doesn’t everyone realize that?” he asked, confounded.

  “I honestly don’t know! That’s why that expression has always driven me fucking nuts.”

  “You drive me nuts,” he said, patting my leg. “You’re fucking adorable.”

  I felt a surge of heat rush through my chest. “Wait, what are we doing?” I asked.

  “I’m pulling over. It’s been way too long since I’ve kissed you.”

  We pulled into a burger shack parking lot and Finn put his hand on my cheek and pulled me toward him. We kissed and kissed, making out like a couple of teenagers. It was just us, a boy and a girl, so perfectly simple, and simply perfect.

  He pulled back and looked at me. “That kiss of yours.”

  “Yours,” I said. “Ours?”

  He paused, exhaling, looking at his lap. I took his hand in mine.

  “And what about the boyfriend?” he asked.

  Wylie. Gulp. My heart felt a momentary ache. But my head trumped it and sent in the mental broom and dustpan to quickly swoop in and sweep away the dust bunnies of guilt that floated in at the sound of his name. I exhaled my vision of our apartment and the smells of the meal he’d labored over.

  “I care about Wylie, I do, Finn. But . . . you are something entirely new to me, and I need to explore it. This is the most alive I’ve felt. I know I just met you and I know this makes zero sense, but I’ve never felt anything this intense before.”

  “Me neither. Ever.”

  We looked at each other and then my eyes darted to the clock.

  “What time is your first meeting?” he asked.

  “Soon. But I’m fine. I don’t even need to unpack, I’ll just chuck my shit at the front desk, and Clarissa, the local PR and events girl here, is picking me up downstairs.”

  “Well, I get you tonight, so I suppose I can spare you for your work,” he said as I reached my arm around him and leaned in to kiss his temple as he pulled the car out and got back onto the road.

  “How is the album coming?” I asked.

  “Fits and starts,” he added. “Though since I met you I got a few ideas,” he said.

  Moi? Inspiring Finn Schiller? I thought I would swoon and smash into the air bag compartment.

  “I just have so many interruptions because of the tour coming up in Europe,” he added. “I leave in two weeks.”

  “Oh, is it that soon?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. The thought of him leaving made me nauseated, even though we lived in different cities anyway.

  “But it’s a short leg, two months.”

  I felt ill. “Oh, great,” I managed to sputter out.

  “I always write tons of songs on the road and then afterward I just crash for a week or two. I’m fine on time though, so I’m not worried. I just had a little block for the last few months and somehow you trigged the flow to return, so thank you. You’ve quickly become my muse, Hazel.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, cheerfully. “Should I go get a toga and eat grapes and stuff now?”

  “You can, actually. There’s a great bespoke toga haberdashery on Melrose, I hear.”

  So we pulled up to my hotel and I was gripped by an acute pain at leaving Finn’s side for even a few hours.

  “Have a great day, Hazel.”

  “You, too, thank you so much for the special VIP scooping up from LAX. No one in New York does that.”

  “I wouldn’t let my inspiration take a taxi,” he said, motioning for me to come closer. We kissed softy and I swear I had chills through my entire body.

  “What?” he asked, reading my out-of-it face.

  “Nothing, that just—” I gathered my breath. “That just gave me such warm fuzzies. I feel like a Muppet or something.”

  “Well, I can’t wait to unzip your Grover suit later, then,” he said.

  I smiled and blew him a kiss through the window. He mimed catching it, then smacked it on his face as he pulled out, waving good-bye.

  Chapter 24

  Ambition is not what a man would do, but what a man does, for ambition without action is fantasy.

  —Bryant H. McGill

  The attempt to work was pure folly. There was no effing way I could possibly focus, so I sloshed through my day, nodding at information about alcohol sponsors and VIPs and schwag bags for certain celebs, their handlers, stylists, and Svengalis who had promised their asses would be there.

  “Sure,” I said blithely. “Just tell me what you need, you got it.”

  I kept stealing glances at my watch. We went to Finn’s space and did a quote unquote “walk through” with the full team, which weirdly included north of twenty people. My eyes were practically glazing over after the discussions of which hue enormous Chinese lanterns were being used, and the lighting designer was arguing with the floral concept person, and both kept looking at me for cues.

  “Huh?” I asked, snapping back to the moment.

  “Which do you prefer, the bright red or the orange?”

  “Oh, uh . . .” Finn had a bright orange stripe across his all-black CD two albums ago. “Orange.”

  Next we spoke with the caterers, who clearly didn’t understand that the joystick-whacking heathens who were coming to this did not want to hear the words “aioli drizzle.”

  “Look, not to insult your chef’s creative talents or anything, but we just want sliders. Satays. No criss-cut potato galettes please, these are gamers,” I tried to say delicately. But truthfully I just wanted to get the fuck out.

  FINALLY after four hours of round-robin meetings with the various vendors, Clarissa drove me back to the hotel, where I filled a huge bubble bath and soaked. I soaked in my optio
ns and my life and just wanted the lather to wash away all the guilt, all the question marks. The problem was I truly didn’t know what I wanted out of life. But what I did know was that this moment was the single most exhilarating, exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I felt like I could fly. Not in the R. Kelly cheezoid way but just free, like after trudging through the last years I finally had wings. No Red Bull needed.

  Chapter 25

  I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I think children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy.

  —Peter Shaffer

  “You look absolutely gorgeous,” Finn said as I came outside.

  I blushed as the doorman helped me inside and I kissed Finn hello.

  “I know you told me you’ve been dating a chef, so I can’t compete with that. But I do have something up my sleeve,” he said.

  “Honestly, I could eat an S.O.S. pad right now and it would be a five-star dish,” I said. “I don’t even care. I don’t need to eat.”

  He started driving as I recounted the chaos of my day, and I saw we were approaching unfamiliar territory.

  “Where are we going?” I asked excitedly.

  “Remember you told me you cried when John Hughes died?”

  “Yes, I’m still not over it,” I said.

  “I took a page from one of your movies.”

  “What, you’re bringing me to a rich kids party where everyone’s named like Blaine or Shayne?”

  “No.” He laughed. “You’ll see.”

  We approached the looming space-age whiteness of the Getty.

  “I can’t paint for shit but thought you’d like this.”

  He pulled in and stopped the car.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, eyes widening. “Are you kidding me? Are we going into the Getty?”

  “A friend of a friend pulled some strings.”

  We went inside and were greeted by Finn’s acquaintance, who thanked him profusely for the signed T-shirts and concert tickets.

  “I’m the one who needs to thank you,” Finn said, shaking his hand gratefully. “This is spectacular.”

  “Right this way,” the guy said.

  We followed him down the hallways and into an all-glass room with a small table lit with hurricane lamps and covered in flowers and wineglasses.

  “Oh my god, Finn . . . ,” I said, eyes about to water. “I always wanted to be Amanda Jones!” I could not fucking believe this was happening. Kira would keel.

  An attractive server came out, offering me choices a caterer had prepared in the back, and afterward I sipped my incredible red wine and reached over and took Finn’s hand.

  “I can’t get over this. Never in my whole life,” I said, shaking my head. “I am going to wake up now and it’s going to suck.”

  Finn stood up, holding my hand, leading me across the room. “You can take the wine. Let’s walk around.”

  I met his gaze, and he leaned in and kissed me.

  “Oh, and Hazel, you’re not dreaming.”

  We wandered the halls, sticking our noses in such treasures as Leonardo da Vinci’s sketchbook, Dürer and Altdorfer etchings, and Sisley landscapes. I was pinching myself with every step.

  “So who’s that guy? Don’t tell me his dad’s the janitor and you met in detention . . . ,” I joked.

  “No, he’s one of the curators for the museum. One of the trustees is a fan and pulled some strings.”

  Strings? More like steel cables. I simply was in shock.

  We walked back hand in hand and ate our dinner. I was so nervous, not quite knowing how to broach the subject of your place or mine, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to.

  “Let’s walk outside in the garden,” he said as I relished the final bites of the espresso gelato we’d been served for dessert.

  My pulse pounded as I took his hand and followed him down a winding path with a steep pitch under the most stunning of yellow moons.

  “I have a question,” I ventured, figuring there’s no point in playing games. “How many girls have you brought here?”

  He stopped and looked at me, as if insulted. “None.”

  I laced my arm around his. “I didn’t mean to imply there was a revolving door of women here or anything, but you have to admit this is a total snow job.”

  “I don’t think many of the women I’ve hung out with would even care about this.”

  “Trust me, they would. This is amazing.”

  “It’s amazing to you, but many girls just think it’s amazing to be in a hotel suite with a band. They wouldn’t care about art. They think Getty is just a gas station.”

  “That whole Almost Famous ‘I’m with the band’ thing is so not me.”

  “I know. I can tell,” he said, stopping and facing me. I still couldn’t get over the surreal vision of staring at Finn’s face. In the moonlight, no less. In a private garden sequestered from the world, the chorus of fans’ cries, or gasps of passersby noticing their cult-worshipped idol on the street.

  Finn delicately took my face in his hands and kissed me so tenderly and so perfectly I literally felt a charge surge through my body, like I’d been plugged in when our mouths met. My fuse lit with a glowing, blindingly intense light from within as my tongue searched his and I melted into him. I put my hands in his hair and let my finger trace a line down the back of his neck, feeling a tiny mole. I smiled, turning him around to see it, but he was too tall.

  “Bend down a little,” I said. He did, and I kissed the sweet dot as I felt him shiver.

  He exhaled, turned back, and grabbed me, lifting me off the ground and kissing me as he held me in his arms, my legs wrapped around him. I didn’t even know I could be lifted off the ground like a flying weightless cheerleader, but it felt amazing.

  “Wait, Finn, are there cameras and stuff out here?” I asked, looking for hidden lenses perched in the foliage.

  He looked up and around then spied a little cove of trees and shrubs and led me across the path to the other side’s Eden of green grass, flowers, and manicured hedges. It was like our own verdant cave, impenetrable and cozy. He sat down in the grass and pulled me down to him as I laughed at the insanity of the moment, lying on him and kissing his neck and collarbone as I felt his hands slide up the back of my shirt. His skin on mine felt incredible. He somehow snapped off my bra one-handed and moved his hands up my entire back, with such a passion and force it was as if I were clay and he was sculpting me into a Venus. Which is what I felt like—a total goddess. I felt him hard beneath me, and he broke our kiss and looked up at me.

  “God you’re beautiful, Hazel.”

  “You are.” I didn’t know what else to say. He was.

  “From the moment I saw you,” he said, “I thought you were stunning.”

  What? “Let’s not go that far.”

  “Why? You are.”

  He pulled me back down to him, and I lay beside him, kissing in the grass for what seemed like hours as we grew more heated and breathless. Finally I pulled his shirt off and we both sighed when our chests touched and our arms could fully envelop the other in a naked embrace.

  “You feel amazing,” he said. “Your skin . . .”

  “Finn,” I said in a lusty tone I’d never heard escape my mouth. “I want you.”

  He looked at me with a flash in his eyes as he grabbed me and kissed my breast, cupping the other in his hand. I was so turned on it was like all my fantasies rolled into this colossal moment. He reached down and unbuttoned his black jeans and reached up my skirt, yanking off my lace panties. He reached into his pocket and retrieved some sort of sheep condom and unrolled it, looking at me the entire time. Okay good, no awkward convo about my contracting hepatitis F from some backstage roadwhore. Our eyes were locked in the almost kaleidoscopic magic of our shared beat in time, and he pressed into me as I g
asped out loud. He moved so slowly and so sweetly, kissing me with each tender push deeper, that I truly thought I would come right then and there.

  “Finn,” I whispered as he kissed my neck.

  “Hazel, you feel fucking amazing.”

  I looked up at the sky behind him, the glittering yellow diamond moon, the flowers whose vibrant hues I could still make out in the darkness, the botanical bliss of mingling fragrances, the faint chirp of muted crickets. And the taste of Finn’s mouth. It was such a feast for all the senses, but touch. My god, I’d never fucked like this. The sheer ecstasy of Finn being inside me, moving just how I would have directed, made me arch my back in absolute abandon. He started to move faster as I somehow allowed a louder moan to escape my lungs, but before embarrassment could surge I realized he met mine with his own.

  “Oh god, Hazel.”

  We moved in the most perfect rhythm of each other’s wild embrace in some kind of fused holy shared song of breath and wind-blown leaves.

  “Finn . . .”

  “I’m close, Hazel. You feel so incredible.”

  “I’m close, too—” Normally I would close my eyes as I felt the intensity spike and my nerves screaming, but I forced myself to keep them open. I looked at him and the almost glittering setting, as if we were seeing the world with a black light and each color—his blue eyes, the yellow moon, the pink posies—glowed with the phosphorescent glint of a color wheel on acid.

  He moved faster, deeper, gripping back with his hand beneath me, and I heard my name grow from a whisper to a panting echo.

  “Hazel,” he said. “Hazel—”

  “Oh my god,” I said, feeling the surge approaching. “Finn—”

  “Hazel—” He then grew silent and thrust into me so deep my eyes closed as my whole body racked with an ecstasy I had never known.

  He looked at me, glistening and spent. “I don’t think I’ve ever come so hard. Not since I was fucking seventeen, at least,” he said. Somehow when he talked a little dirtily it revved me up even more. I was so flattered, despite not fully believing him.