Run Rose Run(51)

You idiot, she said to herself. You’re not hot shit. You’re just—

AnnieLee felt a hand on her arm, and she whirled around, ready to fight whatever purse snatcher had spotted her for the country rube she was.

But it was Sam, breathless and panting. AnnieLee saw now how the assistant’s shirt was too big for her, and her shoes were cheap, and her heart went out to this girl who looked just as lost as she was.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Did you storm out, too?”

Sam gave a grim laugh. “No. I came because they want you back upstairs.”

“What for?”

“They just told me to go get you,” she said. “So here I am. Will you come back?”

AnnieLee pointed to her stricken face. “I can’t go in looking like this.”

Sam reached into her bag and handed AnnieLee a pack of tissues. “I always have some with me,” she said. “But I haven’t cried in the office for a week, so things are definitely looking up.”

People streamed around them as they stood there, AnnieLee drying her cheeks and trying to get her emotions under control while Sam soothed her with small talk about the Pennsylvania town she’d come from and the railroad apartment in Queens she’d been subletting since she moved here nine months earlier.

“You don’t ever think about going back home?” AnnieLee asked as the two of them walked back toward the building.

Sam gestured to the gleaming office buildings, the honking taxis, the whole loud rush of city life. “You know what they say. ‘If I can make it there…’” She laughed, not bothering to finish the lyric.

They walked back through the lobby and rocketed up to the conference room. Tony Graham was the only one left. He stood up when AnnieLee entered, and his smile was genuine this time.

“The thing is,” he said, “whenever I hear someone play—whether it’s in a crowded club or an inhospitable conference room—I close my eyes. And if I can imagine that person playing Madison Square Garden, then I know I’ve found something real.”

AnnieLee held her breath. Madison Square Garden was a damn high bar.

Tony Graham took a gold pen from his pocket and began spinning it on the tips of his thumb and forefinger. “I had a feeling when you left the room, AnnieLee. And that feeling was that it was in my best interest to get you back inside, whatever it took.”

“So you got me,” she said.

“And we aim to keep you,” he said. “By whatever means—or concessions—necessary.”





Chapter

44



AnnieLee burst into the coffee shop shouting, “Ethan, Ethan!”

He knocked over his chair as he ran to her and caught her by the arms. Her hair was wild and her eyes were an electric blue. “Are you okay?” he demanded.

“I’m great. I’m so good! Why are you flinging furniture?”

“I thought something was wrong,” Ethan said, dropping his hands and shoving them into his pockets. “I mean, considering your recent experiences…”

“No, no—everything’s right!” Then she reached out and took his face between her palms and kissed him on the cheek. Immediately she stepped back, embarrassed. “Sorry. I couldn’t help it.”

Ethan bent down to pick up the chair so she wouldn’t see the way he flushed. “It’s okay,” he said, thinking, Do that again and again. “I take it the meeting went well?”

“The second one did,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it. Let’s go!”

He laughed at the way she was nearly bouncing up and down. “Go where?” he asked, following her outside, into the sunshine.

“Let’s just walk,” AnnieLee said. “Let’s walk until we can’t even feel our feet anymore. Let’s look at everything in the city until our eyes start to cross.”

Though he might’ve wished that he weren’t wearing steel-toe boots, Ethan was hardly in the mood to argue. He’d never seen AnnieLee so happy, so alive. And why not celebrate her incredible news? Did she even comprehend how lucky she was?

He decided not to ask her. Instead he said, “North or south?”

“Like I know which is which!” she said, laughing. “Come on!”

Soon they found themselves on Ninth Avenue, walking through the neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen. Passing walk-up apartment buildings, pizza joints, and laundromats, they bought bright-green apples from a fruit vendor. They wandered farther south and west, peering into the windows of the Chelsea art galleries, and then came upon Pier 25, with its playgrounds, fountains, and volleyball courts jutting into the Hudson River.

“Want to get whipped in a round of mini golf?” Ethan asked.

AnnieLee laughed. “Not by the likes of you, no thank you.”

So they kept on going, down into the financial district, where the buildings were so tall and close together it seemed to Ethan as if they walked along the bottom of a canyon of steel. He kept thinking about reaching for AnnieLee’s hand. But he didn’t do it.

AnnieLee had explained her deal with ACD—or at least what she could remember of it, the point being that they’d given her almost everything she asked for, including the purchase and promotion of her self-released single, “Driven”—and now she was chattering on breathlessly, sometimes about what she and Ethan were seeing and sometimes about the kinds of songs she imagined putting on her first album.