Playing Dirty (7 page)

Quentin stood and said quietly to Sarah beside him, “Move, please.” With a quick push on the edge, he heaved the table over.

Instead of dashing its contents across the patio like it was supposed to, the table kept going, and the whole thing fell into the pool. It floated there upside down for a few seconds, then sank.

“Well,
that’s
never happened,” he said, then started to laugh. He didn’t mean to laugh when they were supposed to be fighting, but Owen looked so
serious
that it was hilarious.

“Oh no,” someone said.

He kept laughing and couldn’t stop. Then Owen laughed, and Erin grinned, and Martin shook his head, and Sarah looked at them like they were all from Dagobah.

Erin jumped back into the pool, swam deep down, and brought up handfuls of chips and money and jewelry, which she dumped at the edge.

“Oh, honey, you don’t have to do that,” Quentin said, leaning over the side. “I’ll do it. Or maybe it’ll come up in the filter.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m already wet. Back away from the side, Q, before you fall in.” She went under again.

“I should go,” Sarah called.

“Oh no!” Quentin jumped up, nearly fell down, and braced himself on her shoulder. He was damned if he was going to get drunk and make a fool of himself and be hungover tomorrow for nothing. His beautiful pink-haired girl, gone. “You shouldn’t drive.”

Martin sifted through the growing mound Erin had retrieved from the pool bottom. He handed a short, soggy stack of bills to Quentin and a thick stack to Sarah, along with a torn check.

Sarah waved her wet hundreds at Quentin. “Taxi,” she said.

“No, no. If it comes to that, I’ll call my car service for you.” He put his hands on her shoulders and bent to whisper in her ear, “It doesn’t have to come to that. Stay the night with me.”

She shook her head no. “I was tempted earlier, but I don’t think you’re truly as attracted to me as you’ve led me to believe. You just tried your best to start a fight over your ex-girlfriend.”

“That was out of habit,” he insisted. “I was only pretending to look surprised when the table fell in the pool. This is what we always do at parties. At Christmas we throw a sofa in the pool. For Thanksgiving we
put a chair in the bathtub. You should come back for St. Patrick’s Day one year.”

They both backed away from the pool as Erin climbed up the ladder.

“Let’s get you out of those wet clothes,” Owen said, ogling Erin’s boobs and exchanging a fake look of desire with her that Quentin found too convincing.

As Owen pushed her toward the guesthouse, Erin stopped to whisper in Martin’s ear, her hair streaming water on the flagstones.

“How am I supposed to do that?” Martin asked her. They were talking about Quentin.

Erin whispered to Martin again, then let Owen direct her toward the guesthouse with his hand on her thong.

“Stay with me,” Quentin repeated to Sarah.

“Quentin,” Martin said in warning.

Quentin said in the same tone, “Martin.” Martin had a lot of nerve reminding Quentin not to break Rule Three. They both knew Martin would break Rule One sometime in the next eight hours. Quentin attempted to give Martin the evil eye, and ended up laughing instead. Oh well. “Come on, beautiful,” he said, tugging Sarah’s hand.

“I can’t,” she said. “I mean, I can’t do
that
. But maybe I could stay awhile longer, and we could talk.”

“Talk?” Quentin puzzled.

“Or sing,” she said. “I haven’t heard you sing in person, after I’ve come all this way to save your band.”

“My band doesn’t need saving,” he lied.

“Oh, come on.” She squeezed his hand. “Don’t you love to sing? Why else would you make a career out of it?”

“Hm.” They both took several steps back to avoid the splash as Martin dove into the pool, still wearing his boxers and long-sleeved shirt. After a few seconds, he appeared in the shallow end with the table in tow and attempted to wrestle it up the steps.

Suddenly, after all the lies the band had told to Sarah and each other tonight, Quentin felt compelled to tell her the truth. Or he was so drunk, he was afraid he’d get caught if he told another lie. “I love to sing with the band,” he admitted. “I love performing for a crowd, the bigger the better. I thrive on the energy.”

He must have been grinning like a jackass eating sawbriars, because she nodded expectantly and gave him the most beautiful smile.

“But I don’t serenade nice young ladies one-on-one,” he explained. “That would be weirdly vain of me. I’d rather find out more about
you
.”

“I guess I’ll go back to my hotel, then.” She reached for her bag slung over the back of her chair.

“But for you, I’ll make an exception,” he said quickly. He tugged her by the hand toward the house—more gently this time, so he wouldn’t scare her—and called over his shoulder, “Good night, Martin. Good luck with that.”

“Fuck you,” Martin called back.

Quentin led Sarah through the kitchen and down
the stairs to the control room. By the time they landed on basement level, he had the first few lines and a tune in his head. He amazed himself by still remembering to flick off the control room light before he pulled her into the sound booth, so the glow around the edges of the door upstairs wouldn’t give away to Martin where they’d hidden themselves. He wanted to impress this beautiful woman. He wished he could do more, but it was enough that she wasn’t leaving yet.

It couldn’t have impressed her, though, that he didn’t have perfect pitch like Martin. He sang, “You lost your shirt / I ain’t lost nothinnnnnnnnnnn,” holding out the “nnnnnnnnnnn” and fumbling around the piano keys until he figured out the note he sang was a G. Great! He and the key of G-major were buddies. “Sit down,” he told Sarah, taking his hand off the high end of the keyboard to pat the piano bench beside him. When he felt her warmth at his elbow, he played and sang what was in his head, a simple progression of one chord, four, five, one, repeat, with pretty fills between the lines.

I lost my shirt.

You ain’t lost nothing.

I lost my shoes.

You ain’t lost a thing.

He glanced at her. She watched him with serious eyes. Serious called for replacing the major ones in the middle with minor sixes, so sad.

I want to go

Up into my bedroom.

You had to choose.

We ain’t had a fling.

Now a money note in the melody, up to the higher G.

I want to know

Why I can’t get lucky.

Need the queen of hearts

Always draw a king.

Now the end. The first line repeated the melody he’d established, but the other three lines took a detour into quiet darkness, stopping on a question mark of a major four that made audiences uncomfortable and won Grammys.

I lost my heart

To a lady from the city.

I asked you to dance.

You asked me to sing.

The vibration of the piano strings lifted, leaving him and Sarah alone together.

“I love the way it ends, down low,” she said softly, sexily, nearly a whisper. “I didn’t expect it to go there.”

“Yeah. You try not to get too repetitive. Go in the opposite direction from what your instincts tell you,
to shake it up. Martin taught me that.” Martin had taught him a lot in the twelve years they’d been friends. And now that Martin really needed him, Quentin hadn’t been able to do shit.

“Is it on the new album?” Sarah asked.

“This song? I doubt I’ll remember it in the morning.” That said, Quentin started through the chord progression again. If he could commit it to his sloshed memory, maybe Martin could do something with it.

“You mean you made that up while we’ve been sitting here?”

“Sure, can’t you tell?” he asked over the chords.

“In retrospect, yes. As I was hearing it, I was just thinking it was very appropriate to the situation.”

“Very appropriate, and it sounds super drunk. ‘Strip Poker Blues’ ought to be a jaunty two-step. This is a melancholy ballad.” He looked over at her. Her brown eyes were huge, and her hair in every color fell soft around her heart-shaped face. “Because you turned me down.”

She smiled kindly. “We can’t hook up, Quentin. I get the distinct impression that would drive the band apart. I’m here to keep you together.”

“We’re not breaking up,” he said to his hands spread across a four-octave B-minor chord. He wished this were true.

“You know what?” she asked. “Let’s call it a night. You seem really tired.”

He laughed. “I seem really drunk. I’m so sorry. I’m a terrible drinker. They made me get drunk because it was my turn.”

She was standing beside him then, with one small hand on his shoulder. “I’ll help you to your room.”

He grinned up at her.

“And that’s all,” she said sternly. “Promise me, Quentin. I’ve had a client before who wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Is that where you got that scar?” he asked.

Her big eyes, so soft before, were two cold points boring into him now.

“Sarah,” he said gently. “Nobody in this band will hurt you. There are a lot of things wrong with us, but that isn’t one of them. You’re safe here.”

“I feel safe here,” she said.

“Good.”

After a pause, he felt her tugging on his upper arm. “Well, I said I’d help you,” she murmured, “and I will, like I would help a sumo wrestler.”

“Sorry. I’ll help you help me.” He stood, braced himself against the piano with a smashing of the lowest octave, and held out his hand for the door to the control room. He reached the handle and pulled. The door didn’t budge.

“Fuck,” he exclaimed. “I love Owen. I love him like a brother. I do not want to murder him.”

“Problem?” Sarah asked.

“It’s a mantra I repeat to myself in the hope it will come true someday,” he said. “Owen broke my door. We’re locked in.”

“Oh.” Sarah stepped forward and pulled the handle herself. He didn’t blame her for not believing him,
after he’d tried to seduce her repeatedly. “Isn’t there an intercom to the control room?” she asked.

“Yes.” He hit the button. “MAAAAAAARTIIIIIIIN,” he hollered, but he knew it was futile. “The speaker’s turned off out there, though. And Martin’s gone to bed”—
or was shooting up
—“in a guest room on the ground floor on the other side of the house, so I doubt he’d hear us even if the speaker was on.” Quentin turned to her with an apologetic grimace. “What a shitty welcome to Birmingham.”

“Oh, hush, it’s fine,” she said with such grace that he almost believed her. He wondered again whether she was Southern, and tried in vain to remember what had given him this impression in the first place. She was moving around the room, gathering the pads that draped over the stands and drum set and piano while the band was away on tour. She made a pallet in the corner and held out both hands to him. “Here.”

He stumbled immediately, but Sarah had him, and somehow maneuvered him until he was lying in softness and squeezing his eyes shut against the bright light overhead. He heard her whisper, “Hold on.” He felt rather than saw the lights go out. A cymbal crashed as she tripped in the darkness. Then she was stretching out beside him. He inhaled the sweet smell of her hair and spread his hands across her skin.

S
arah started awake.

At least, she thought she did. Her eyes felt wide open, but the room was black. Her nightmares hadn’t been dreams after all. Nine Lives had locked her up where she’d never be found—

And then she remembered where she was as Quentin sighed behind her. His hand, which had settled inside the waistband of her pants and electrified her as she dozed off, now moved lower. His fingertips stopped at the edge of her mound.

She took a deep breath through her nose, careful not to move enough to wake him, and exhaled, relaxing into his arms. The heat from his bare chest burned her skin where her shirt parted in the back. She’d told him a few hours ago that she felt safe with him, and she did. He’d assured her he wouldn’t hurt her, and she believed him.

But that didn’t mean her heart was safe. His song for her—a song rendered sad not by their missed hookup, but his depression about Erin, she was sure—was regardless the sweetest thing a man had ever said to her. Which didn’t say much for her seven years of marriage to Harold, she realized. The tingling in her lips from his expert kisses earlier in the night hadn’t faded, either. As she listened to his deep, even breathing behind her, she half wished, perhaps three-fourths wished, that everything were different, and that they had made love.

He was good-looking. He was funny. He was vibrant, emanating a life force that had penetrated her and made her feel more alive, too, as she sat next to him getting drunk. Or maybe that was the alcohol. No, she’d never felt the life force while drinking vodka with Nine Lives.

She would have enjoyed hanging out with a good-looking, funny, vibrant man in any case. But it was Quentin’s gentle control that reached inside her and pushed her buttons. He’d tried to hide it from her, but she’d understood the group dynamic by the end of the night. Owen, Erin, and Martin looked to Quentin before making a move. He didn’t return their looks, but everything pointed to him as the group’s leader.