“Nice tie,” I said as an opener.
“Thanks.” His tone was clipped and quiet. I knew the guy. He was a percolating case of verbal diarrhea unless he was pissed off.
“I hear they’ve changed to locally grown tomatoes,” I said, “so avoid the caprese.”
“I heard the same.”
“There’s a shitstain on your cuff,” I said. He glanced at me, then away. “Are we dating, Ed? Did I just f**k your best friend or get you the wrong birthday gift or something?”
Eddie, reengaged in the conversation, leaned on the window, spreading his arm over the table so he could fuss with a matchbook. “My boss gets back from a trip Friday. Some last minute thing to look at property up north, and he saw the girl I’ve been pushing. But according to him, I’ve been doing it wrong. My whole marketing strategy? Wrong. So he’s managing her. He’s signing her. Personally. Harry Enrich hasn’t personally managed talent in fifteen years.”
“She’ll be happy to hear it.”
“She shouldn’t be. It’s not all skinny ties and burning CDs any more. He hasn’t caught up to MySpace falling apart. She’ll be on his learning curve when he doesn’t even know he has one. That leather corset’s gonna start looking real comfy.”
The waiter came. We ordered quickly. That had apparently been bothering him, and I needed to clear it up. He was burned. The collection of talent was his job, and a singular voice had been pulled from under him. In a city full of hopeful musicians, voices like Monica’s were impossible to come by. Needles in haystacks. Finding another voice he could use could take him a year or a lifetime.
“Ed, listen. I don’t want any hard feelings. But it wasn’t happening your way. I could have gotten Randy from Vintage Records up there just as easy.”
“Randy Rothstein? Please.”
“But I kept it at Carnival out of respect for you.”
He laughed. I admit I smiled as well. The notion was ridiculous. He was up a creek and had a right to be angry. I had the right to not care.
“You went over my head less than a week after you beaned me,” he said. “I had a headache for a day and a half.”
“I apologized.”
Eddie pushed his drink aside as if it was an actual obstacle. “Listen, ass**le. If you had a problem with me signing your girlfriend, you could have told me.”
“So you could what? Tell me to go f**k myself? She wasn’t signing with you anyway. Not all decked out in leather and chains.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Ed. She was walking. Who’s going to know it better than me? I saved your ass and hers. Now you can all make money together.”
“I got nothing. Enrich can have her. Without a marketing angle, she can sing like a mermaid and it wouldn’t matter.”
“Mermaids don’t sing. You’re thinking of sirens.”
He shook his head and smirked. “You need to go out and find me another girl who likes to get tied up.”
“I have one for you.” I lowered my voice and leaned in. “Nice voice, but she comes with an angle. Might not be as hot as what you had in mind, but it’s like a slot and a tab. She’s got something already going.”
“I swear to god. Where do you find the time?”
“She’s an artist,” I said. “Think Laurie Anderson but drop dead gorgeous. Plays everything. She can play the spoons and bring you to tears. Has the chops for installation and performance work, knows the art scene.”
“Not as commercial,” he said.
“It’s what I have.”
“You got a name?”
The waiter came with lunch, and I wrote the name on a napkin.
Chapter 7.
MONICA
I headed down Echo Park Avenue on foot, phone to my ear.
“Are you in the house?” I asked as I pushed the gate open.
“Just got dressed,” Darren said.
“I’m on my way. No, wait, I’m on your patio. Are you alone?”
He opened the door in jeans and his red Music Store polo. “Yes. How was the trip home?”
“I really, really like that plane.” I pocketed my phone.
He stepped aside, and I entered. My stuff was all over the living room, neatly piled, but the room still looked as if someone had been crashing on his couch without paying rent.
“Did the police question you?” he asked.
I was a little taken aback, and it must have been all over my face. “How did you know?”
“It’s all over the society pages. And the LA Times, you know... It’s news if it’s about rich people beating their wives.”
“She’s not his wife, and he didn’t beat her.” I defended him and his word, knowing that the truth and Jonathan had a passing, convenient acquaintance.
“Not in the conventional sense.” He placed his laptop on the kitchen bar and spun it so I could see the screen. Then he set about making coffee as if he didn’t want to look at my reaction.
The Celebrity section. A section I ignored because Gabby had always read, assimilated, and digested the entire thing every morning, distilling it for me over breakfast. I was grateful I wasn’t in the habit of looking at it because the day after Jonathan was arrested at Santa Monica airport, a picture of him and his ex-wife appeared in Rumors Bureau column. It was the only mention of his arrest anywhere in the news, and it was short, with little but a wedding picture of two people happy to commit to each other. The burning jealousy that bubbled from my gut left an awful taste on the back of my tongue. He was mine. I owned him. Those pictures were lies.
“Monica?” Darren watched me as he filled the pot with water.
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
“It barely says anything. Arrested at the airport on domestic abuse charges brought by his ex-wife. History of kinky activity. Wife declines comment because she’s ‘too upset,’ Oh, and I’m an unidentified female passenger. His little trick f**k whore. Remind me never to look at the internet again.” I pushed the laptop away and turned to my pile of crap. I could have stalled and pretended to rummage through my stuff, but I knew exactly where that manila envelope was. I ran my hands over it, the aged edges, the curled flap.
“That what I think it is?” Darren asked.
“Yeah. Did you open it?”
“It’s long and involved, so I just put it back.” He looked at me over the edge of his coffee cup.