Tease (Songs of Submission #2)(8)

Jonathan took mock offense, looking at his watch. “Don’t you have a gig?”

I sipped the last of my scotch. The ice cubes were huge, so I couldn’t hold one in my mouth for Jonathan’s benefit the way I wanted to. “I do. The late dinner crowd at Frontage awaits. Ed, it was nice to meet you.”

“Oh, that’s you,” he said.

“Maybe. I guess that depends on what you heard.”

“I heard someone’s taking the house down over there.”

“I doubt it was me.”

Jonathan put down his drink. “It’s her. She’s not as modest with a microphone in front of her.” He addressed me, “Come on, let me get you down to the car.”

We said our goodbyes, and when Jonathan walked me out, he put his hand on my back. My skin shivered where he touched.

“Thanks for that,” I said in the hallway outside the elevator. “That guy, he’s important in my world. You put my face in a good context.”

“My pleasure, and just so you know, I wouldn’t have said anything if you didn’t sing the way you do.”

The elevator was empty. I kissed him on the way down, not as a lead into sex, but because he’d moved me by talking about me the way he did. His arms went around my waist and cradled my back, his mouth returning my affections, matching the tone and substance of what I was trying to say. That he wanted my body was enough for me, but supporting my work was a new and different thing, and it required a different kind of kiss. I wished there were more floors, because the doors opened before I’d appreciated him enough.

Lil got out when she saw us approach. I had enough time to make it back to my car and get to Frontage early enough to get made up.

“After your gig,” Jonathan said, “text me?”

“I usually go out after with my friends.”

He looked me up and down as if he was eating me raw, just like he’d done and tried to hide the first time we’d met. Only now he didn’t have to conceal it. “If you don’t mind unfinished business, it’s okay with me,” he said.

I got into the Bentley, and he walked back into the club.

CHAPTER 4

The dressing room at Frontage hadn’t improved a single bit since my first night there two weeks earlier, but my attitude toward it had. We’d begun on a Thursday night, and they’d asked us back for Sundays and Tuesdays as well, until we dried up or found something better to do. Bitch and moan though I might, they paid in cash and didn’t suck us dry for incidentals. After that first show, we brought people in, so they started feeding us dinner and slipping a few drinks our way after the set. I enjoyed being treated like something besides a piece of drink-slinging eye-candy or a desperate whore singing for nickels.

Gabby was already there, smearing beige under her eyes. Tonight was our night. WDE had booked a table. Rhee, the hostess, confirmed it was true, and at my request, she put them by the speaker on the left, which had the warmest sound.

“Did you check your seat for gum?” Gabby asked.

“No gum,” I replied, clicking through the bottles and tubes in my makeup bag.

“Vocal chords attached?”

“I hope you get carpal tunnel.”

“Bitch,” she said.

“Snob,” I replied. We smiled at each other through the mirror.

I’d met Gabby during my first day in L.A. Performing. I was tall but gangly and awkward. Glasses and braces, the whole thing. All the other kids seemed to know each other. They’d all come from a music charter on the west side, slipping into ninth grade at the exalted magnet as planned. I’d filled out my application and bussed myself to the audition behind my parents’ backs. I informed them of where I was going to high school when the acceptance letter came.

So in that first week, while I was getting my bearings, Gabby and her crowd had themselves completely together. Totally unprepared for the competition, I was subjected to laughter that may or may not have been directed at the fact that I was off half a key, fell victim to broken guitar strings, and found a blue gum wad on my drum skin. During last period on my first Thursday, when I sat down on a stool and it broke under me to the music of everyone’s laughter, I ran out crying.

The last person I’d expected ran out after me: Gabrielle. She laughed the loudest, stared the hardest, flipped her blonde hair with the most vigor. Before she fell apart at twenty-two, she was the most together girl I’d ever met.

“What do you want?” I’d shouted when she followed me into the bathroom. “Why are you all so mean to me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You laughed when I fell.”

“It was funny. I mean, you’ve been here a week, and if there’s a broken chair or a guitar with a busted string, you pick it. The guys have a pool about when you’re going to break your glasses in P.E.”

I’d wanted to fight harder with her. I’d wanted to blame her for a week’s worth of misery, but the fact was, I had chosen that guitar because it was blue, and I didn’t check the strings. The gum did look pretty old, but I’d blamed them anyway, and I’d sat in that chair because it was far away from everyone.

“Everyone says you’re a snob,” said Gabby.

“I am not a snob. I’m a bitch.”

I’d chewed the inside of my cheek for a second, because awkward girls weren’t supposed to risk saying things like that to cool girls. After a second, she laughed, and I did too.