Opening Act Read online

Jonah sat next to him, happily spooning up powder into his nostrils and emitting raspy little grunts of pleasure. Yeah, this was definitely not an ideal situation. And yet, any doubts Shay had had about undertaking it had been obliterated the day before, when the only media coverage from his party at Hazzard had been about Jonah and the Wail and its bad-boy mastermind who’d bolted after their first set. Wendii Frontiac’s segment on the party—which ran for an epic thirty-seven seconds, a small eternity in television—had been all about Jonah, the unpredictable boy-genius. In fact, Wendii even showed some footage of the Wail singing forlornly alone, backed by only the upright bass, which had happened after Wendii had already left. How she got those clips, Shay couldn’t imagine, but given the intensity of her ambition, body bags might have been involved. He wouldn’t put it past her.

  As for Shay, who was the whole reason Wendii had been there at all, he only appeared on-screen once, and that was to say how great Jonah and the Wail sounded—a quote Wendii had only because he’d slipped it in right before she told her cameraman to cut. He’d barely made it into the segment that was supposed to have been all about him.

  So in the end, Jonah had been right: the way to rock stardom wasn’t by letting yourself become a performing seal for someone like Halbert or Pernita. The way to rock stardom was to do your own goddamn thing whenever you goddamn felt like it. Even Loni had known that. When he’d first met her in Baby’s kitchen, she’d told him real rock musicians don’t care about the market or publicity. They cared about their passion, about their art.

  Well, all right, then. Loni was Shay’s passion. That much had become clear. His mom had been right when she’d told him to see if all those women on the tour could make him forget her. They hadn’t. He knew now that she was the real deal, she was the one. She was his passion, and he was absolutely goddamn following it.

  He just wished he could be surer of it all turning out okay. Jonah, in the next seat, was well into an endless rant about the treatment of dairy hens, which so roused him to anger that at one point he punched the dashboard several times and came away with bleeding knuckles.

  As for Shay, he kept thinking about the event scheduled for that night, dinner with Pernita and Halbert and a couple of record-label suits who it was vitally important for Shay to impress…or so Pernita insisted. Drinks were at seven. Loni’s reading was at five. Presuming it lasted a half hour, Shay could conceivably make the ninety-minute drive back to LA in time for cocktails.

  But wasn’t the whole idea that he shouldn’t care about the freakin’ dinner and the asshole record-label execs? Wasn’t that the whole point of everything he’d learned from Jonah?

  Well, yes, it was. Except Shay had a sinking feeling that maybe to pull that off you had to be that way from the get-go. He had to doubt whether—having been so visibly Pernita Hasque’s dress-up doll for show-and-tell all this time—he could suddenly go rogue with any conviction. But what did he care? He was on the open road, in his new friend’s rented Mustang GT, and with Loni at the end of the line.

  He settled back to enjoy the ride.

  And then…there she was.

  He thought at first she might be a mirage, an image reflected onto the window by the vibrant, shining picture of her in his mind. So he cupped his hands around his eyes and peered past the glass, into the bookstore.

  And yes, it was her. Beautifully, unmistakably, irresistibly her.

  And she was already reading.

  He muttered a few profanities under his breath. He’d wanted to hear every syllable she uttered. But once they’d reached Santa Barbara it had taken them forever to find a parking space. They eventually settled on an illegal spot (“Let the rental company pay the ticket,” Jonah had said. “Better yet, let Halbert Hasque!”), and then they’d wandered another agonizing chunk of time trying to find the bookstore. Shay had committed the address to memory, but then he’d gone and addled his memory with Jonah’s heinous “party mix.” It was really a miracle they’d found it at all, especially with Jonah insisting on stopping every twenty yards to point all around him and say, “No, seriously, look—isn’t it exactly like being in a Ron Howard movie?”

  But at long last, here they were.

  And here she was.

  Shay took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. His heart was still hammering like a woodpecker on a tree trunk, but he was pretty sure it was mostly from seeing Loni. Even so, he knew he must be a hell of a lot twitchier and more wild-eyed than usual. He didn’t want her to see him this way. The thing to do was to slip into the bookstore and take a place at the back, where she wouldn’t spot him. It was a pretty good-size crowd. About forty people filled all the chairs and spilled over into standing room near the door. It would be easy to sneak in unnoticed, especially given how intently she seemed to be reading, eyes burning into the slender volume in her hands.

  Jonah was dithering a few paces behind him. Shay waved him over and then entered the shop. The door gave a little jingle, but Loni was too much in-the-zone to hear it and look up. He took a place sandwiched between a few other patrons, and Jonah followed, excusing himself more audibly than he needed to. A woman turned and shushed him. “We’re not interested in hearing what you have to say,” she sternly whispered.

  “Then stop breathing,” he whispered back.

  Sweet creeping Christ on a moped, Shay thought. Just get me through this.

  When they’d finally settled in, Shay turned his attention to Loni—Loni! That was actually Loni in the same room as him! Seated on a stool next to a table with a pitcher of water for her to drink with her own actual human mouth!—and tried to focus on the verses she was reading aloud.

  The dampening of sinews, the heady stew of leaves,

  The aroma of corruption in the repining of pine,

  Fallen so long and time, measured out in moss,

  Slows and stills, and gives rise to wonder whether

  A forest no longer upright—a forest uprooted—

  Is a forest yet; and am I—undone—

  Yet myself, no longer standing tall

  But toppled by the blow of your abandonment.

  Holy shit, Shay thought. This girl is really throwing down the heavy. And while the audience applauded, he thought, Wait—was that about me? I hope that wasn’t about me. Then a moment later he thought, Jesus, how wicked cool would it be if that was about me?

  Loni, looking stupefyingly cerebral in all black—black turtleneck with the sleeves rolled up, black jeans, black-framed glasses—turned a page and continued.

  “This is the oldest poem in the book,” she said, “but at the same time, also one of the newest. I started it years ago, struggled…grappled with it, the way one does…and only recently did I get it into a choke hold.” There was a ripple of mild laughter. “I call it, ‘Fracture.’ ” Then she turned her eyes to the page and read.

  A hairsbreadth divide that does not divine—meaning

  gutters when division uncouples a nullity—

  Constant ever, yet aspect alters:

  Your face in starlight—enchantment—

  Your face in daylight—error

  There was a little stir in the crowd. No one seemed to know exactly how to react to it. Someone started applauding, almost, it seemed, as a courtesy, and everyone else joined in, but it was tentative. Loni, seeming a little flustered, said, “Thanks—I know that’s a strange one. And brief, for all the years it took to get it out. But trust me, it’s exactly what it needs to be.” The clapping grew a little more resonant after that, but it still came as a relief when someone accidentally knocked over a cardboard display of Harry Potter.

  Once the laughter over that had subsided, Loni began the next poem. Shay tried to listen, but his mind kept wandering to his game plan. I’ll just wait till she’s signing copies, he thought. I’ll just stand in line and wait my turn, and when I reach her I’ll say, “Make it out to Shay,” and then she’ll look up and meet my eyes, and then I’ll smile, and I’ll turn and go. I’ll just go
, and leave that seed planted for a while. Yeah, that’s it.

  He was liking this plan, liking it so much that he didn’t notice when someone sidled up and wedged between him and Jonah. And when Loni finished the poem and the audience was responding, this interloper—a young skateboard-dude type—turned to Jonah and said, “Hey, you’re the guy!”

  “I certainly am,” said Jonah, his eyes crazy bright.

  “You’re the guy on TV! The guy with the skinny chick—Noah and the Wail!”

  “Jonah and the Wail,” he corrected him. “It’s all right this once. Don’t let it happen again.”

  “The next poem,” Loni said, “is a lighter one.”

  “I seen you on TV!” Skateboard Dude continued. “You were on, like, three channels!”

  “Brother, I’m on every goddamn channel you can name, right at this moment.”

  “Ssh,” said a woman in front of them, over her shoulder.

  “Didn’t you, like, walk out on a gig or something?”

  “Your bravery in battle is your willingness to go,” said Loni.

  “I didn’t walk,” said Jonah. “I ran out.”

  Skateboard Dude laughed. “Yeah! I totally saw that! Radical, man!”

  “Ssssh!” said someone else.

  “Mine is mine to let you,” Loni continued. “To arm you by retracting arms…”

  “Man, I’m only here ’cause my girlfriend dragged me,” Skateboard Dude said. “Hell’re you doing here?”

  “Dying a slow death,” Jonah said.

  Skateboard Dude laughed.

  A few more people shushed them—Shay included—and then someone appeared right in front of them, an older guy with glasses and a receding hairline and a face blazing righteous anger, blocking their view of Loni, who continued reciting, as if blissfully unaware.

  “Do you mind shutting the hell up?” the guy in the glasses said.

  “Are you talking to me?” said Jonah.

  “Yes, you. Will you please shut your goddamn mouth?”

  “You could always shut it for me,” said Jonah mock-seductively, “with a kiss.”

  Some kind of animal rage roared up behind the older guy’s eyes. He drew back his arm in what Shay knew was the windup to a punch, and Shay, not wanting Loni’s reading to be interrupted by violence, stepped in between them—

  —and ended up taking the punch himself, hard, on the side of his jaw.

  “Oh, fuck—ohhhh,” he groaned—as quietly as possible, despite the searing pain. He was still thinking of Loni, whose reverberating voice was even now sounding over the crowd, though more than a few heads had turned away from her to see what was the disturbance was.

  “Get me out of here,” Shay commanded Jonah with as much urgency as he could muster from his wobbly jaw. He was desperate that Loni shouldn’t see him at the center of this ridiculous scene.

  Jonah was only too glad to go, so much so that Shay might have suspected him of causing the whole scene just for that purpose. The older guy in glasses even held the door open for them, then gave them a few angry snorts as they passed through it, like a cartoon bull chasing intruders out of his field.

  Shay felt like his entire brainpan had been jostled. He could barely see straight. Jonah had to lead him back to the car like he was drunk. When they passed a pair of Santa Barbara matrons who looked down their noses at him, presumably thinking he was drunk, Jonah accosted them with, “Get a good look, Stepford Wives, then hurry on home and hump your Mexican gardeners! Yeah, because your shit don’t stink,” which, perhaps predictably, set them running.

  Shay was too disoriented to drive. He couldn’t seem to focus his eyes—was he concussed?—so Jonah took the wheel, but not before another snort of party mix.

  As they sped back on the Ventura Freeway, Shay worked his jaw back and forth, then held it cupped in his hand as though afraid it might fall off if he let go.

  Jonah laughed at him. “You should’a just let me take what was comin’ at me. What the hell? That goddamn bookworm didn’t look like he could punch his way out of a taco wrapper. Plus,” he said, grinning, “my jaw’s built up plenty of scar tissue, having been clocked so many times by Marcia. Most recently, yesterday. See any bruising?” He turned his face toward Shay.

  “None. You mean, she actually hit you? Watch it, you’re drifting to the right.”

  He corrected his steering and said, “Oh, she fucking whaled on me. I pretty much knew I had it coming, the way I left her stranded at…whaddayacall. Razmatazz.”

  “Hazzard. You mean, you knew she’d hit you?” He couldn’t imagine the corpselike Wail exhibiting that much animation.

  “Oh, we’ve been goin’ at it hammer and tongs for years. You’d think we’d learn. Walk away from each other. But. Y’know. That never goes well.”

  “Jesus! I’d think you’d want to walk away from each other, run from each other, if it’s as bad as that. You’re drifting right again.”

  He swung back to the left. “Who says it’s bad? I mean…yeah, it ain’t pleasant. But…y’know. It’s feeling, man. It’s knowing you’re alive. And while we’re takin’ swings at each other, we’re thrashing it all out, getting everything off our chests we’ve been holding in all week, month, however long it’s been. That kind of honesty, it hurts, you know? But it’s necessary. So it kinda makes sense to throw it in when you’re hurting each other physically, too.” He gave Shay a sidelong look. “I’m sure you know what I mean. Gotta be the same for you and your…whatever her name is. Hasque’s little whelp. Juanita.”

  “Pernita. And…actually. Huh.” He fell silent, suddenly and astonishingly ashamed to admit that his relationship with her wasn’t as spectacularly dysfunctional as Jonah’s with the Wail. He tried to imagine Pernita hitting him. If she ever did that, he’d turn on his heel and walk away from her forever, star-making father or not. And if he ever hit her? Hell, he knew beyond a doubt he’d be locked up in a jail before the hour was up.

  “You know,” he said, realizing something else, “I don’t think, in the entire time I’ve known her, that I’ve ever said anything honest to Pernita. Never anything that even hinted at what I was really thinking or feeling. And I’d bet cash money it’s the same for her.”

  “Man,” said Jonah, laughing in disbelief. “You guys, you’re really fucked up.”

  So it had come to this: Jonah Piercon, one half of a living Punch and Judy sketch, had told him his relationship was the warped one.

  But he was right, wasn’t he? Shay knew it; he’d always known it.

  What he hadn’t always known was the thought that struck him now. From the moment he’d met Loni, they had been scaldingly honest with each other. Yeah, sure, maybe she hadn’t mentioned her steady guy and he’d never mentioned Pernita, but the way they’d talked about everything else? There hadn’t been anything in the way. No barriers, no evasions, nothing.

  No wonder he’d immediately thought she was so remarkable. And this was the woman he’d just had to run out on, because he’d gotten into a freaking brawl at her literary event. What the hell kind of black cloud was he born under, anyway?

  “You’re drifting right again,” he said.

  The excitement of the day took its toll on him, and in the monotony of traffic he fell asleep. He didn’t wake up till LA was once again sprawled out before them. Traffic had thickened, so that Jonah was no longer able to barrel along at quite the speed of sound, but he was still maintaining a pretty hell-bent clip. He was also jumping around in his seat as if to the beat of some wild thrash-rock tune.

  But…the radio wasn’t on.

  Shay began to suspect there’d been a little more party mix while he was asleep.

  He looked out the window and saw, coming up fast, the ramp for Mulholland Drive.

  “Uh, Jonah—isn’t this our exit?”

  “What? Oh, shit—” He swung hard to the right.

  “Jesus, wait,” Shay cried. “There’s someone there—”

  Jonah swung left to avoid a collis
ion. The Mustang’s wheels locked and they went skidding, at a harrowing speed, right into the highway’s meridian.

  When Shay awoke in the hospital, he was on a gurney but still in his own clothes. So things couldn’t be that bad. He swung his legs over the side and felt a little twinge in his chest. He’d obviously pulled or sprained something, maybe broken a rib. If it was the latter, that was a problem. The tour started up again in just a few days. He needed to be leaping around onstage. Maybe with enough painkillers…

  He was just wondering how he’d manage this when Pernita entered the room, looking so shiny and burnished she might’ve been sculpted in copper. All at once it occurred to him, she must have come straight from the dinner with the record executives he’d missed because of his sad, stupid attempt to rebel.

  He steeled himself for the first onslaught of her anger and outrage.

  But, amazingly, she dropped her purse onto a chair and came up and hugged him. “Oh, sugar-pie,” she said. “What a nightmare! I’m so glad you’re all right.” Then she stood back and smiled at him. “And a hero, too!”

  He blinked. “A hero?” It hurt his jaw to talk. He gave it a quick massage.

  Pernita nodded. “You were so quick on your feet. Calling for help so soon, the way you did.”

  Oh, yeah—it was coming back to him now. The crash. Jonah, slumped over the wheel. “Is he all right? Jonah?”

  She nodded. “A little banged up. Some broken bones. He’s got some physical therapy to look forward to. But he’ll be okay in time for the Palladium.” She ran her hand down Shay’s arm. “I just shudder to think what would’ve happened if you hadn’t been there. That man’s got a self-destructive streak a mile wide.”

  This was emphatically not what Shay had been expecting. There were no questions about where he and Jonah had gone, or why. No demand that he account for his actions, defend his decisions. No furious accusations of ingratitude, of having missed the dinner she and her father had put together just for him. Could it be that Pernita actually cared for him? That the news he’d been in a crash made her realize the depth of her feeling for him?