Burn (Songs of Submission #5)(2)

Did I look scared? I leaned into Darren’s bathroom mirror. I looked the same to me. I could call him. I could see him just one time. Maybe I would. I put my mascara down and looked at my phone.

It was 8:59 in the morning. In one minute, my phone would bloop with some short, pithy message from Jonathan. He sent me a text at nine every morning on the dot. I never texted him back, and I never told him to stop. I had two weeks’ worth of pings from him, making sure that at least once a day, I thought of him. It was controlling in such a precise and unemotional way that on day four, when I realized what he was doing, I tapped him a livid response. But I never sent it. I thought of him so much more often than once a day anyway.

—Bring an umbrella. It’s going to rain—

I scrolled back. He had reports from DC:

—It is truly awful here—

—Another lunch meeting. Bullshit on the menu—

—You belong with me—

And when he got home.

—Debbie said you aren’t living in the house? Will Santon is going to call you—

—Sea and sky—

I’d replaced my beautiful platinum diamond navel ring with the fake one I’d bought when I got the piercing. I returned Jonathan’s through Yvonne, who had spent a lunch warning me about connections between BDSM and abuse, had left it in his office when no one was looking. The next morning, his nine a.m. text read:

—I’ll hold this for you—

He was so confident I would come back, and all he had to do was wait. It made me crazy. I wrote songs about how crazy he made me, scrawled on the backs of napkins or on my forearm while I raced down the freeway. I wrote verses about his eyes and choruses on his voice. I wanted to exorcise him through music, but I feared I was doing nothing more than keeping the burn in my belly alive.

CHAPTER 3.

MONICA

The restaurant seemed specifically designed to attract entertainment industry types, like an oddly shaped orchid meant for the attentions of a specific species of insect. It was packed at lunch with agents and executives in suits, feeling up writers and artists for their commerciality and ass-f*ckability.

I hummed to myself in the bathroom as I looked in the mirror for something to fix. I was fine, wearing two loose braids, a black dress, big stinking shoes, mascara. I’d even filed my nails. I was there to meet Eddie Milpas, and I looked better than fine. I looked fantastic.

When I walked back into the restaurant, he was being seated. I gave him my sterling silver customer service smile and sat when the waiter moved my chair. The window by our table overlooked the marina. On that windy November day, the boats swayed as if they were on a keyboard, playing scales.

“It’s nice to see you again,” he said. “I ordered appetizers, The calamari is fantastic.”

“That’s great.”

Eddie said, “So, I wanted to talk about what we’re looking for and what you have for us.” I nodded. “Jerry brought me your scratch cut a week ago, and I didn’t listen to it until the night before I saw you at Frontage. And when I did, I couldn’t believe you pulled it off. That song is a hit, Miss Faulkner. Not to be crass, but it has money written all over it.”

My smile went from customer service to nervous and uncontrollable. “I’m happy you like it.”

“I may need you to rerecord it with the right production value added.”

“I have another song I’d like to do.”

“We…meaning me and Harry Enrich, the president of Carnival…we really want that one.”

Two glasses of white wine came. He looked at me over his glass as took a sip. He had nice marble green eyes and brown hair. I may have taken a second look at him ages ago, before Jonathan. But for now, I was stuck. Temporarily, I reminded myself. Other men would appear, or none. Didn’t matter.

I placed my glass on the tablecloth, letting it make a wet crescent in the fabric. “Actually, that song’s no longer available.”

“Did you sell it?”

“No. It’s just unavailable.”

He tapped the edge of his glass. “This have to do with the person you were writing about?”

Eddie had seen me with Jonathan at the club. And Jonathan was aware that Eddie had heard the song. So it wasn’t as general a question as it seemed.

I wasn’t concerned with the existence or performance of the song. It could be played off as a metaphor or a story. Once my past with Jonathan, and his reputation, came into play, the song became about me and what I did in the bedroom. That meant that under Eddie’s gaze, at a meeting about my career, I felt naked and vulnerable. I felt his eyes slipping the dress off my body and his inexpert hands experimenting with pain.

“Look,” he said, “the BDSM thing is really hot right now, and we’re looking to capitalize. We’re going all in with the marketing. You’ll be an icon. Tall, beautiful woman in black leather, belting that thing out. We have more kinky songs ready to go, but no performer with real experience who can pull it off. I mean, the whole thing will fall apart on the Today Show if our singer uses the wrong phrase, right?”

The intensity of his imagination squeezed my lungs, forcing out the air. Everything I feared was happening, right then, and I hadn’t prepared myself for anxiety so strong that every coherent thought ran from my mind like brown specks running from a kicked anthill.