Opening Act Read online

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you calling for Shay Dayton?”

  There was a long pause. Then, “Who is this?”

  “I’m—it doesn’t matter. Is…is he something to you? Shay?”

  An even longer pause. “Who might be asking?”

  Zee considered how to proceed. “He…he was here earlier. He left his phone. And his wallet. I’m feeling a little…I’m feeling like an idiot.” None of this was strictly untrue, she was pleased to note. “If you give me your address, I’ll bring them by, and you can return them to him.”

  “Why don’t you return them yourself?” said Pernita, her voice like razor blades.

  “Because,” Zee replied, “based on this call, I never want to see him again.” And that was true, too. In just the heat of a single moment, she had ceased to be an Underling.

  “I’m in my car,” Pernita said. “You give me your address, and I’ll come by and get them.”

  “I’m at 1477 Londale,” Zee said.

  CHAPTER 10

  The doorbell woke Shay from his nap. He sat up, and a sudden head rush made him feel momentarily swoony. The sun was still very bright. He wasn’t entirely sure what day it was. The doorbell rang again. He lurched up from the couch and staggered down the hall to the intercom. “Yeah?” he said into the speaker.

  “I’ve been calling you” was the tinny reply.

  Pernita. He sighed in defeat.

  “Lost my phone,” he said, scratching his chest. Luckily he had left a set of spare keys with a neighbor, or he wouldn’t have even been able to go home.

  “Can you buzz me up?” she said. “I think I left a shopping bag there.”

  “You didn’t,” he said, scanning the place to make sure, but he buzzed her up anyway.

  She appeared at the top of the stairs, looking as polished and fresh as she had several hours before—like she’d walked through a time vortex from 8 am straight to 4 pm.

  She pecked him on the cheek and dropped her handbag on his orange-crate end table. “Silly,” she said, “how’d you manage to lose your phone?”

  He went and sat down. “Don’t know,” he said, yawning. “It happens.”

  “I think I’d lose my mind if I ever lost mine,” she said, looking around the apartment. “I don’t know who I’d even be without it.” She looked up at him. “The bag doesn’t seem to be here. You sure you haven’t seen it? Blue, with orange lettering? ‘Ornello’s’?”

  “I remember the bag,” he said with just a hint of pique. “I carried it halfway across town for you.” She shot him a challenging look and he moderated his tone. “Pretty sure you took it with you when you left.”

  She looked at him for a while, to the point at which he began to feel uncomfortable. Then she came over and sat in the worn leather armchair across from him.

  “Have you tried retracing your steps?” she asked.

  “Hm?” he asked, confused.

  “Your phone. Walk yourself through your morning. Where did you go, after I left you?” She raised an eyebrow, which had the force of a gunshot. “You told me you were staying in to sleep off the concert high. So whatever got you up and out of the apartment must have been something pretty …singular.”

  She was, Shay thought. But he said, “I just felt restless. Went out.”

  “Where?”

  “Just out,” he said, and irritation crept back into his voice. “I don’t know.”

  She smiled, but in a way that wasn’t reassuring. “No need to bite my head off. I’m just trying to help you remember where you might’ve left your phone.”

  “No worries,” he said, slouching down in the chair. “Sure it’ll turn up.”

  The smile grew wider and colder. Then she said, “Oh, I know it will.” Then she reached in her purse and pulled out his phone. She laid it on the table between them. “Your wallet, too,” she added and she plucked that from the purse and tossed it on top of the phone.

  Shay felt his face burn like a pepper under a broiler. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  “She doesn’t ever want to see you again,” Pernita said, still smiling. “The girl on Londale Avenue. Apparently you neglected to tell her you were in a…nonexclusive relationship.”

  “Goddamn it,” he muttered.

  She sat back, and her smile relaxed somewhat. “Honestly, I don’t understand why you insist on hiding these things from me. Your little ‘adventures.’ I mean, when have I ever said you couldn’t have them? That’s been the agreement between us from the start, and I’ve never…I mean, I can only imagine what it must be like, the morning after a big concert. All that energy and power and testosterone still surging through you, looking for release.” She raised her eyebrows again. “Silly me, I thought I’d helped you work that off this morning. But I guess you had a little extra, huh?”

  He looked down at his hands, resting on the arms of the chair. He used his thumb to push his cuticles back. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

  “Maybe hiding them from me is the point,” she continued, unwilling to let it go and let him stew in his misery alone. “Maybe it’s not exciting for you unless there’s some degree of subterfuge involved. Maybe the secrecy is what makes it hot.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Men are a mystery to me.”

  He imagined the floor opening up and swallowing him, chair and all, plunging him down to drown in a deep, salty sea. It was a comforting fantasy.

  Finally, she got to her feet with a little grunt of exasperation. “Maybe someday you’ll learn to trust me,” she said, and she came over and kissed the top of his head. He remained completely motionless. “I’m not your enemy. In fact, I’m the best ally you’ll ever have. At some level, I’m sure you know that.” She turned and fetched her purse from the end table. “Meet me for drinks tonight,” she said as she slung the strap over her shoulder, “and I’ll prove it. Working on a little scheme that, if it pans out…well, let’s just say, you’ll be happy. Mambo Room, six thirty. We can go to dinner after, if you’re free.” She winked at him.

  I’m not free, he wanted to say. I may never be free again. You’ve got me completely sewn up tight. I’m trapped, and I’m suffocating.

  And then…she was gone.

  He waited till he heard the front door click shut behind her before he moved. And then all he did was to reach for his phone, and hold it in his hands. He was stymied. His impulse was to call Loni and explain. But he couldn’t do that; he didn’t have her phone number. He couldn’t even look it up; he didn’t know her last name. He knew, in fact, next to nothing about her. He didn’t even know if she had a job. If he knew that, he might be able to reach her there.

  Suddenly, her criticism of him—that he talked only about himself—came roaring back to bite him in the ass, and hard. She’d been right. He’d spent what he thought was a wonderful, exciting, life-changing afternoon with her, and when he thought back on it, all he could remember was talking about himself. His tour, his songwriting, his insecurities, his desires. Loni had liked him; he’d sensed that. She’d wanted him; she’d made that plain. But he didn’t really know her at all.

  He felt a sudden welling up in his chest, like he might cry. He was belatedly realizing what a totally self-centered prick he really was. And now it was too late. He couldn’t reach Loni by phone or text, and he couldn’t reach her by Facebook, because she’d blocked him. He had no other way of getting to her, short of camping out in front of her building. He was afraid to do that, because what if she saw him and called Pernita? He had no idea what had gone on between them. There might have been some horrible female-bonding thing, where Pernita had set herself up as Loni’s protector should the predatory Shay come after her again. It was certainly within Pernita’s powers to do that. She could manipulate the devil into handing over the keys to hell while he went off to live in a cardboard box beneath the freeway.

  There was only one slender thread that might still work for him.

  He called Lockwood.

  �
��Favor,” he said.

  Lockwood sighed. “Man, I am so not your pimp.”

  Shay blushed. It was embarrassing that Lockwood just presumed this had to do with a woman. Even more embarrassing that he was right.

  “Pernita got to Loni,” he said.

  Lockwood let loose a stream of profanities. “You’re a piece of work, you know that? You can’t even keep it in your pants long enough to get this tour started. The tour that makes or breaks us. You’re just determined to break us before.”

  “This is different,” he said. “This girl…Loni. Dude, I think this is it. This is…I don’t want to be all melodramatic or anything…”

  Lockwood laughed. “You? You’re like a goddamn Hollywood diva. On your best days.”

  Shay gritted his teeth and soldiered on. “Listen, I just can’t lose this one. Not yet. There’s something there. Something real, man. We have a kind of…connection.”

  Lockwood snorted. “You’re talking, but all I hear is blah blah blah.”

  “I know, I know. It’s a string of clichés. That’s the point. I need to get beyond that. I need to figure out what’s there behind all the blah blah blah. Because there really is something.”

  “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do about it?”

  “You’re still friends with the roommate, right?”

  “Zee?” he said, and barked a laugh. “You expect her to help you? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “It’s all I’ve got left. Just ask her, man. Ask her to please, please, please tell Loni that I can explain everything if she’ll just agree to meet me one more time. Time and place totally up to her. Loni, I mean.”

  He sighed. “Fine. I’ll ask. Just…don’t get your hopes up. The girl’s not your biggest fan, you know.”

  He was a little surprised to hear him say this. Surprised and hurt. “She used to be.”

  “Yeah, and then she got to know you. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

  “I will. I promise. Just do this for me, and I’m humble for the rest of my life.”

  “Fuck that bullshit. What am I, stupid?”

  “No, you’re my best friend. Best friend anybody’s ever had. Thanks, bud. Seriously, I cannot express how much I owe you.”

  “I can,” he said, before hanging up. “And I’ll be invoicing you regularly, so be ready.”

  Zee was feeling restless and uneasy. She was still upset by the inconclusive way her second interview had ended and was now saddled with additional guilt over the way she’d handled Pernita, allowing her to think that she was the girl Shay Dayton had hooked up with, not Loni. Pernita had intimidated Zee almost to the point of paralysis. The girl was so beautiful, so polished, so poised—everything about her screamed finishing school. But there was also something about her that seemed chiseled out of granite. That girl was hard. She had money and power and glamour—everything poor, plebeian Zee lacked. Zee felt like an idiot for having ever thrown herself at Shay. What could he possibly have seen in her, when he had a girl like that to turn to?

  And yet, Shay had pursued Loni. Pursued her, caught her, and taken her down. Though wasn’t Loni, too, someone who outclassed Zee by miles? Loni, with her upper-class cheekbones and her perfect vowel sounds and her computer brain? In a different way, she was as intimidating as Pernita. Zee had known Loni since they were both gangly, insecure adolescents, so she had never realized it before, but Loni had grown into a woman to be reckoned with. If, however, she had to bet money on a cage match, Zee would choose Pernita. She was clearly used to getting everything she wanted and trampling over anyone who got in her way. Loni was still too sweet, too sympathetic. She was still someone who listened when you talked.

  Whereas Pernita had made it clear to Zee—in phrases so sweetly worded and so pleasantly modulated that it was only later that Zee realized the lethal force behind them—that if she ever came anywhere near Shay Dayton again, Pernita would rivet her ass to a concrete block and then kick it off the nearest pier. So, in a way, Zee had done Loni a favor by letting Pernita win. She’d pretended to be angry and hurt by the revelation that Shay Dayton was in an open relationship with another woman—and after all, Loni probably would be hurt and angry—and had told Pernita she never wanted to see him again. Pernita would no doubt go back to Shay, return his phone and wallet, and relay the news that he’d fucked up his chances with that particular piece of tail, and Shay would never come sniffing around Loni again.

  So Loni would be safe from Pernita. Zee had helped her.

  Right? And she should be pissed at Loni anyway! Right? Loni knew how fanatical Zee was about Shay Dayton, but she just went ahead and did whatever she did with him anyway. Probably with not a single thought about Zee and how that would make her feel.

  Except…except if all that were really true, why did she have to keep telling herself it was true? Why did she have to keep repeating to herself that she was the one who had been wronged and she had nothing to apologize for, if she in fact really had nothing to apologize for? If she was really helping Loni, and not just taking even more revenge on her for getting between her and Shay Dayton, why did it take so much convincing?

  Maybe because the Shay Dayton she loved was a fantasy she had concocted from seeing him onstage and on album covers, but the Shay Dayton Loni knew might be a real person?

  She felt itchy in her own skin and wished she could get out of it somehow. But when the opportunity came, she balked. She got a text from Lockwood Mott. Hey just checking in u ok?

  She considered not responding, but after a few minutes of lying on her couch pretending everything was totally fine and failing, she decided what the hell, and texted back, Fine thx.

  He replied: How did interview go?

  She wrote back, OK.

  U get the job?

  Don’t know yet.

  There was a slight pause, and she wondered if that was it. She was surprised by feeling a little flurry of hope that it wasn’t. But when he texted back, Movie?, she drew up her shoulders. She may have wanted some attention—distraction from her seething brain—but not that much. She certainly didn’t want to have to see Lockwood Mott. He wasn’t exactly a guilt-free association for her.

  Cheer u up, he texted before she could think of a reply. Totally NSA.

  She grimaced and texted back, Thx sweet but v busy.

  He replied almost instantly. Understand tk care.

  Zee considered several replies but rejected all of them and was still staring at her phone, wondering if he’d say anything else, when Loni let herself in. One look at her roommate’s face was all it took to snap Zee out of her funk. “Oh, my God,” she said, sitting upright. “What the hell happened?”

  Loni strode angrily into the apartment, her face flushed and her eyes puffy from tears. “Nothing,” she said, and her voice actually cracked. “Can’t talk about it now.” She threw her purse into a chair and headed for her bedroom.

  “Anything I can do?” Zee asked as Loni swept past her. “Get you a hot tea or something?”

  “Thanks, I’m good,” Loni said, then went into her room and firmly closed the door behind her.

  Zee blinked and felt her heart begin to skitter.

  Something had obviously upset Loni—upset her deeply.

  Zee couldn’t imagine what that might be. Her first impulse, naturally, was to assume that Loni had discovered some of what Zee had been doing behind her back. Possibly Shay had mentioned being blocked from her Facebook page, and Loni had figured out Zee was responsible. Though if that were true, Loni was the type who’d confront her with it immediately. She wasn’t shy about that kind of thing. But she’d come in and barely acknowledged Zee, as though anything to do with her was the furthest thing from her mind.

  That at least made Zee feel safe in her little nest of deceit. Still, seeing Loni so distraught—having her right here in the apartment, probably collapsed in tears on the other side of that door—made her incredibly uncomfortable. What if she came out again? What if she wanted to
confide in Zee, come to her for consolation, or unburden herself to her closest friend? What if she wanted to talk about Shay Dayton?

  She felt a surge of panic. The idea of Loni in an extremity of distress counting on Zee, trusting Zee, when Zee knew perfectly well she’d betrayed that trust not once but twice today—blocking Shay from Loni’s Facebook page and pretending to be Loni to Pernita—well, it would just be more than Zee could bear.

  She texted Lockwood: Changed my mind movie sounds gr8.

  A moment later, he texted back, Fantastic, and followed with the theater and show time. Zee quietly picked up her purse and crept out of the apartment. She was halfway down the stairs when she realized she hadn’t even asked what the movie was. Not that it would’ve mattered. She’d have said yes even if it was some typical car-crash-and-explosion dude-stravaganza. The only thing that mattered was that it offered her an escape.

  Loni lay on her bed, feeling utterly destroyed. She’d known Byron would be upset when she turned down his offer after having kept him hanging on for so long, but she had no idea he’d be so completely, off-the-wall deranged about it.

  “How can you do this to me?” he’d raged at her, his face the shade of purple Loni associated with heart-attack victims.

  “I’m not doing anything to you,” she’d said. “I’m making a choice about what I think is best for me.”

  He’d laughed bitterly. “What the hell do you know about anything? The only thing you know about life is what I’ve taught you. I made you, little girl. Goddamn it!” He’d gotten up at this point and stormed around the table, causing other patrons at the coffeehouse to look up in alarm.

  “Well, then,” she’d said, trying to keep her own voice as neutral as possible, “that’s even more of a reason for me to go out on my own. I can’t expect you to be responsible for me forever.”

  He’d sat back down then and put his face into his hands.