He waited until midday, hoping the doc would be on a lunch break, and not with a patient. While Phoenix and the studio crew were eating pizza, he borrowed Luther’s cell phone, went outside, and leaned against the side of the building. He needed privacy to make this call; there was no need to spread Casey’s personal business around the studio. He dialed the number, cupped his hand around the phone to muffle traffic noise, and waited.
At the other end, the phone was picked up, and a perky, feminine voice said, “River Valley OB/GYN. How can I direct your call?”
“Hi,” he said. “I’d like to talk to Deb Levasseur.”
“I’m not sure if Dr. Levasseur’s available. I’ll have to check. Who’s calling, please?”
“Rob MacKenzie. It’s about my wife. It’s important.”
“Hold, please.”
He pressed himself against the building, crossed his ankles, and watched a giggling, boisterous trio of teenage girls pass. They eyed him briefly, dismissed him as a person of no importance—undoubtedly someone’s dad—and continued on, chattering like a flock of blue jays.
“Rob? Deb Levasseur. How can I help you?”
“Thanks for taking my call. I’m sorry if I interrupted anything—”
“Are you kidding? I’m sitting at my desk, eating a ham sandwich and dictating patient records for my receptionist to type. Your call is a welcome interruption. Is everything okay with Casey?”
“I guess that depends on your definition of okay. Physically, she’s fine. Mentally, not so much.”
“What’s going on?”
So he told her, pacing back and forth in front of the studio while he talked. Deb listened without interrupting until he was done. Then she said, “I knew something was wrong when I saw her. She was too complacent, too evasive. That’s not like her.”
“I’m scared,” he said. “I think she’s having a nervous breakdown.”
“It’s probably not that serious,” she said. “It’s also not unusual.”
“Not unusual? She’s never done anything like this before!”
“Let me clarify. Although it’s not typical behavior for Casey, it’s not unusual behavior for a woman who’s experienced a miscarriage. Or, in her case, two miscarriages within a short time. And her determination to get pregnant again isn’t surprising, either. She’s nearing forty. Her biological clock is telling her that time is getting short. It’s not impossible, of course. Not yet. But it is more difficult and less likely with every year that passes.”
“I don’t know what to do. I’ve told her she needs professional help, but she refuses. She says she can find the answers herself. So far, she’s not having much luck. She’s so goddamn stubborn.”
“You said she’s refused to use birth control…is there any chance she may be pregnant again?”
“Hell, no. She refused to use birth control, so I refused to touch her. Until yesterday, we hadn’t been intimate since before the miscarriage. She thinks I’m not being supportive. I think that keeping her alive is about as supportive as it gets.” He rubbed his temple, slowly. “She doesn’t see it that way.”
“What happened yesterday?”
“She caved. She decided we were both being ridiculous, and she told me she’d be willing to use birth control as long as we didn’t give up on negotiating another pregnancy.”
“That sounds like progress.”
“It would be progress, for sure, if I hadn’t been the idiot who got carried away and forgot the damn condom.”
“Oh, my. Not the news I wanted to hear.”
“That makes two of us.”
“So you’re still in New York?”
“We are. My job here will be done in a few more days, and then we’re coming home as soon as I can get us out of this place. By Labor Day at the latest. I thought bringing her to New York with me was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to leave her alone after the miscarriage, and I figured that here, I could keep an eye on her. I was more worried about her physical health than her mental health. She seemed sort of brittle when she left the hospital, a little bitter and fragile, but I didn’t see anything really off about her. I thought it was natural for her to feel that way after losing another baby. And I thought New York would get her away from the scene of the crime, so to speak, and she’d be so busy here that it would distract her from thinking about what she’d been through. But it hasn’t worked that way, and the things she’s done behind my back scare the hell out of me. Running through traffic, chasing ghosts, taking trips down memory lane. God knows what else. I’m spending most of my time in the studio. She has too much alone time. I don’t think it’s good for her. It gives her too much time for thinking.”
“Thinking isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It sounds as though she has a lot to work out in her mind. And your older daughter is there, too?”
“Yeah. Thank God. Otherwise, I never would’ve heard about the episode with the little girl. Casey would never have told me about that if Paige hadn’t spilled it to me. So now I have Paige watching her. I don’t like to do that. It feels a little too much like betrayal. But this thing is snowballing out of control. Just thinking about her ducking cars in the middle of Manhattan makes me sick to my stomach.”
“I can certainly understand that.”
“I don’t want to see this get any worse. I don’t know if she needs meds, or counseling, or—I don’t know. Maybe a support group. They must have support groups for women who’ve miscarried.”
“They do. I’m not sure what we can scare up around here, but if she’d be willing to travel to Lewiston or Portland, there would be options. Look, Rob, I can’t tell you what to do, but I admire your husbandly concern. Not a lot of men would be as understanding as you.”
“I just want my wife back. That amazing, smart, talented, confident woman I married. I know she’s in there somewhere. I keep seeing glimpses of her, but then she disappears again.”
“We’ll find her. I’ll give her a call, ask her to come in for a follow-up. While she’s here, I’ll talk to her about counseling.”
“It might be better if you didn’t mention my name when you do that. Or if you do, give me a call, so I can lock up all the knives before she gets home.”
“Depending on how forthcoming she is, I may have to tell her. But I’ll try to avoid mentioning you until she’s sitting in my office.”
“I’ll be on the lookout for the mushroom cloud. Dr. Levasseur—thank you.”
“It’s Deb. And you’re welcome. Thank you. If you hadn’t called, I would never have known what was going on.”
* * *
On a bright and cloudless morning at the beginning of September, they wrapped up the recording. He could finally kiss this place goodbye. Kyle would come up to Maine, they’d finish the mixing at Two Dreamers, and the album would be completed.
And he’d never again have to deal with Phoenix Hightower.
So why was it that on this, his last day in the studio, his stomach was tied up in knots? What the hell was that all about? He didn’t like Phoenix Hightower. Didn’t like his massive ego, his arrogance, his flippant attitude. He absolutely was not, repeat, not, going to foster any warm and fuzzy paternal feelings for the little hood rat. Theirs was a business relationship, nothing more. They were not friends. Matter of fact, they barely tolerated each other. Their belief systems were polar opposites. They came from two different schools of thought, each of them with both feet firmly planted in his own camp. Rob was concerned with making the music the best it could possibly be. Phoenix was concerned with…Phoenix.
He was not going to allow that snot-nosed little turd to burrow under his skin. Except that he had a sneaking suspicion it was already too late. Somehow, this bratty, obnoxious, fatherless, possibly motherless kid had managed to do just that. And he couldn’t figure out how or when it had happened.
The kid reminded him of somebody. It had been eating at him since the first time he walked into the studio and they shook hands. He hadn’t bee
n able to figure it out. Not until the night they sang together onstage, and then he couldn’t imagine how it had taken him so long to see it.
The kid was a carbon copy of Danny Fiore.
It wasn’t his looks, although Phoenix had the perfect hair and the soulful blue eyes that drew in teenage girls like flies to flypaper. It wasn’t his arrogance, although he and Danny shared the same colossal ego. And it wasn’t his attitude, because that was where he and Fiore totally diverged. Danny had been a white-hot arrow, aiming himself directly toward the stars, with no time for side trips along the way. Phoenix, on the other hand, didn’t much care about his career. He was in it for the girls, the money, the partying. His career, his future, the music itself, were of little import. Live for today, to hell with tomorrow. That was Phoenix Hightower’s philosophy. And while on the surface, Danny’s oft-repeated philosophy, Live hard and fast, and die young enough to leave a good-looking corpse, looked similar, it was only a superficial resemblance. Danny’s definition of living hard and fast was working himself to death with single-minded determination to reach out and catch that brass ring.
It was some other place where Danny and Phoenix ran on parallel tracks. Something else that Rob had subconsciously reacted to: they were both broken.
Like Danny Fiore decades earlier, Phoenix was misshapen, twisted. Somewhere in his development, something dark and painful had shaped him into a broken creature who needed to be glued back together.
But was it really up to Rob MacKenzie to play savior to every broken musician who crossed his path? Even if it was his responsibility, was that because he really gave a damn about Phoenix, or did he simply want to assuage his own guilt because he hadn’t tried hard enough to save Danny? He’d stood there and watched his best friend falter, and he hadn’t even bothered to try to prevent his fall. Because in some part of him, he knew that if Danny fell far enough, his marriage, which already existed on a fault line, would split apart at the seams. And when it did, guess who would be waiting to console Danny’s wife?
He’d never really believed that life was about weights and balances. But if it was, his Karmic scale was seriously tilted in the wrong direction. For purely selfish reasons, he hadn’t done enough to help Danny. Maybe he could redeem himself, tilt those scales in the other direction, if he helped Phoenix.
It was a crazy idea. But did it really matter which side of the fence his intentions fell on? If he could teach the kid to ground himself so he wouldn’t crash and burn, did it really matter why he was doing it?
Jesus Christ on a Popsicle stick. Why was he always stuck with these moral dilemmas?
* * *
With what was left of his little studio family gathered around, wearing solemn faces, he said, “So. It looks like we’ve come to the end of the road. I guess it’s up to me to say a few words before we go our separate ways. It’s been great working with you. All of you. Except maybe you, Luther.” They all laughed. “We’ve worked really hard here, we’ve suffered—and survived—a New York heat wave, as well as Phoenix’s, um…moodiness.” Smiles all around. “I’ve even survived a mugging. But the important thing is that we survived. And I think we’ve put together a terrific record. I can’t wait to finish the mixing, so we can all hear the final result.”
Glances were exchanged all around, but nobody spoke. He looked from face to face, then said, “Okay, then, folks. You’re dismissed. Kyle, I’ll give you a call in a few days. Phee, I need to talk to you.”
“Blimey, old man,” the kid groused, “I’ve told you eleventy-hundred times that my name isn’t Phee.”
“And I’ll probably call you that until the day I die. Luther, give yourself a couple of well-deserved hours off, compliments of yours truly. I’m taking our friend here to lunch.”
“You,” the kid scoffed, “want to take me to lunch.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m an ogre all the time.”
“I don’t know, mate. Will it be a step up from a bleedin’ sidewalk hot dog and a bottle of water?”
“Better be careful, or I’ll rescind the offer.” He held out a hand to Luther, shook it, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Go,” he said. “I may end up regretting this, but I’ll take responsibility for the kid.”
“I’m an adult,” Phoenix said. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Truth,” he said.
They took a cab because it was too far to walk, and if he took Phoenix Hightower on the subway, there would be pandemonium. They’d both be lucky to come out of it in one piece. While the taxi driver spent the entire trip talking into his cell phone in some foreign language, Phoenix stared out the window at the unfamiliar surroundings. When they crossed the bridge, the kid said, “Where in bloody hell are we going for lunch? Saturn?”
“It’s called Brooklyn.”
“Brooklyn? Sounds like the punch line to a joke.”
“You say that now, but wait until you taste the food in this place. You’ll be singing a different tune.” A thought occurred to him, and he peered at the kid closely. “You’re not allergic to shellfish, are you?”
“Can’t say that I’ve ever eaten shellfish.”
“You’ve never had lobster?” The kid shrugged. “Clams?” Again, that shrug.
Rob leaned back against the seat and said, “We’ll make sure they have an oxygen mask and an epi-pen on standby, then. Just in case.”
Phoenix just scowled.
The restaurant was exactly as he remembered it, small and sunny, with Formica-topped tables and vinyl-upholstered chairs that dated back to 1963. Two blue-haired elderly ladies sat at one table, a lobster in front of each of them. Another table held a couple in their fifties, sharing a massive King crab. The middle-aged hostess, who doubled as their waitress, led them to a table at the back of the room and handed them menus. “You can take off your hat and glasses,” Rob told the kid. “You don’t have to worry about being seen here. Trust me, nobody here has a clue who you are.”
To the waitress, he said, “We’ll have a pot of steamers for the table, and we’ll each have the lazy lobster. I’ll take whatever you have on draft, and the kid here will have—”
“I’ll have the same.”
“Nice try, but no dice. He’ll have a Coke,” he told the waitress, and handed the menus back to her. “Thank you.”
When she was gone, Phoenix said, “Has anybody ever told you that you’re a humorless dick?”
“Loudly and often. You’ll have to stand in line.”
The kid glanced around and the corner of his mouth drooped. “This looks like the type of place where old people go to eat.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard. That’s where you find the best food.”
“Yes, well, that remains to be seen.”
“Jesus, Phee, do you have to try so hard to win the Miss Congeniality prize?”
The kid snorted, and Rob fought back a smile. The waitress returned with their drinks, and he took a long slug of beer. “Really hits the spot,” he said.
“Sadist.”
“Allow yourself to be a kid, Phee. The older you get, the quicker life moves, and the thing is, when you’re older, you’ll wish you’d appreciated it more, being young. Because I have to tell you, buddy, you can’t go backwards.”
“I’m not a kid. As we’ve already clearly established, I’m eighteen years old. An adult.”
“There’s not a person in this restaurant who wouldn’t laugh if they heard you say that.”
“Yes, well, what else can you expect? They’re all positively geriatric.”
“Has anybody ever told you that you’re a negative Nellie?”
“Clever retort.”
“I thought so. Tell me about the upcoming tour.”
The kid slithered back on his tailbone and crossed his arms over his puny chest. “November first, we open in New York. Madison Square Garden. After that, two dozen other places I’m not familiar with. This country of yours is incredibly spread out.”
“C
ompared to that teeny-tiny island you’re from, yes, it is.”
The kid raised a dark eyebrow. “Is this one of those ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ pissing contests?”
“Make of it what you will. I’m just making idle chit-chat to pass the time while we’re waiting for our lunch.” He took a sip of beer and said, “How much longer are you contracted with Ariel?”
“Two more albums. Why?”
“Just curious. You’re a talented kid, and Ariel’s a one-trick pony. If you want to keep on making bouncy pop records for twelve-year-olds, Ariel’s your label. But if you ever want to start making serious music—” He took out his wallet and pulled out a business card. Handing it to Phoenix, he said, “Give me a call and we’ll see what Two Dreamers can do for you.”
The kid studied the card, then look up with a smirk. “So this is what lunch was about? A solicitation? I should have suspected you had an ulterior motive.”
“No ulterior motive. Just an offer. So you’ll know you have options. That’s what it’s all about, Phee. Choices. As long as you have choices, you’ll never find yourself trapped, with no way out.”
“Thank you for the charming little homespun life lesson.”
“Stop being such a little shit and tell me about yourself.”
“Why in bloody hell would I want to do that?”
“Because that’s what civilized people do, Phee. They talk to each other.”
All he got in response was a sullen grunt.
“Okay, I’ll start. Feel free to jump in at any point if you feel the need to express yourself. I grew up in South Boston, in a family of nine kids. My twin sister and I were number six and seven, respectively. She’s eight minutes older than me and has never let me forget that. Growing up, we didn’t have much money. My dad worked for the MBTA. That’s the public transit system. He drove a city bus. My mom worked part-time, cleaning houses for women with a lot more money than we had. You can imagine how tough it was, raising nine kids on a limited amount of money. But my parents were frugal. Even in those tough times, even with nine kids, they still managed to buy their own house. Matter of fact, they’re still living in it, although their standard of living has improved immensely since I started supporting them. We all graduated from high school, every one of us. Several of us went to college. Maeve is a lawyer. Rose is a social worker. Mom and Dad are damn proud, because neither one of them ever graduated. They both had to quit school and go to work when they were teenagers.”
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