The Girl On The Half Shell (38 page)

“It’s a good thing there are no tabloids here,” I say, prepping my food to eat it. “People would really start to wonder what’s happened to you if they could see this.”

He doesn’t even give me a slight laugh for the effort. He just picks at his food. My Alan radar is not askew. Something is bothering him.

I squeeze some ketchup and ranch dressing into neat swirls on my plate. “So, where are we staying? How long are we here?”

“I own a farm, not far from here. It’s on the lake. We use it as rehearsal space. It’s a good place to chill and other things. I want to stay on The Farm a few days.”

I stare at him. A few days? I don’t have anything with me except my purse, which he tucked into his pack, and my birth control pills. God, Alan, I’m a girl! I don’t have anything with me.

“Why are you frowning?” he asks.

“Because you just did this. You didn’t ask and the only things I have are my darn pills and my wallet.”

He smiles, a touch wicked. “Then you have everything you need, Chrissie.”

“Very funny.”

I stare at my food. I take a handful of french fries and onion rings and angrily dip them into the ranch dressing, then the ketchup.

“Why do you mix your food like that?”

Really? He wants to talk about that?
That
seems important to him.

“When you eat the onion rings with the fries it makes them both taste better.”

He studies my face. I can tell he knows I’m angry. And then, because he’s decided to be irritating it seems, he starts to sing one of my favorite Dylan songs but has changed the verse to “she eats just like a little girl.”

“That was terrible. And it is sacrilege to change the words to a Dylan song.”

He pouts. “I had to. I couldn’t sing that you break. You don’t break, Chrissie. You don’t know that, but you are not the kind of girl that’s ever going to break.”

I stare at him. So, I don’t break? Oh Alan, as much as you understand me, sometimes you don’t get me at all.

* * *

We roll to a stop on the gravel drive. The Farm. It looks like something from a Norman Rockwell painting. Whitewashed wood, with pretty little porches and picket rail fronts. Apple trees. A barn. An old, open framed jeep that is little more than a rust bucket.

I can hear sounds from the two story farmhouse and that’s when I notice that there are cars in the driveway. Lots of fancy cars. Who is here at Alan’s farm?

The front door opens. Linda rushes out in shorts and a tight tank top. She is carrying a margarita glass.

She waves. She smiles. She laughs.

She pounds Alan’s chest with a finger. “You bring everyone up here, and then you don’t show. You were supposed to be here yesterday. Not smart, Manny. Not a good way to start.”

She fixes her laser-focused stare on me. “I’m glad you made up. I’m glad you’re here, Chrissie. I could use a friend.”

The Farm.

The larger dysfunctional family.

This isn’t a date.

I remember the adjective I forgot: mean. Yes, Alan can be mean and this is very mean.

He tricked me. He deliberately dragged me here with him, knowing very well I would never want to see any of them ever again. I watch him ease off the bike, unzip his jacket, and toss it across the seat.

Oh Alan, you make it so easy to hate you at times.
Only it’s not. It is not easy to hate Alan.

Chapter Fifteen

We follow Linda into the house to find the entire dysfunctional family downstairs. The room is spacious, comfortably understated in shabby chic country furnishings coordinated in yellow and blue. From the dark wood floors to the open beamed ceilings, it is vintage Americana, windows of colored stained glass, blue check curtains on black iron rods, and heavy wood everywhere. The farmhouse is charming.

It would probably be a wonderful place to stay if the aged wood walls didn’t feel like they were about to burst from the pressure of containing the earsplitting cacophony of a tight knit cult. God they are loud, and they feel like so much more than ten people. I really hate that Alan brought me here.

“At last the band is together again,” Len Rowan announces, and Alan instantly becomes the focal point of the room among a dazzling display of exuberant hugs and vacant pleasantries.

Alan stays at my side, his hand tightening its hold on me, and no one really looks at me except to give a fast greeting or smile in a move-on-quickly sort of way. It’s unnerving. Something has changed. My standing with these people has changed and it has made them less openly rude and more standoffish. Interesting.

I glance at Linda, and she winks as if in reassurance, her eyes bright and wide. Before I can say anything to her, Alan steps deeper into the center of the room, pulling me with him. The rapid voices swirl all around him as I step out of his hold to remove my jacket, and it’s then that I notice he has that expression again, dominant and aloof and tired of them all.

The strange undercurrent in the room isn’t just about me, part of it is about Alan. I get an internal warning that this little adventure could go either way, peacefully or a total shitstorm. What the heck is happening here?

“Oh my god, Chrissie, where did you get those?” Linda says, her piercing voice punching through the loudness of the room. “They are vintage and I absolutely love them.”

I flush. I’d forgotten about the out-of-style 1970s overalls underneath the jacket, and I am in a room of girls dressed in expensive, provocative chic.
Good one, Linda. Now all the wives are looking at me.

When I turn to hand Linda my jacket, I realize she is sincere and she really does like the darn thing. She grabs me by the hand and pulls me toward the kitchen. “Do you want a glass of wine or something? Dinner is almost ready. Don’t believe that nonsense about Jewish women not being able to cook. I’m an excellent cook.”

As she pushes through the swinging door, I note that whatever is cooking in the kitchen does smell delicious.

Once the door swings closed behind us the chatter stops, she turns to stare at me, and her lively eyes are alertly searching. “Are you OK?”

The way she says that tells me it’s not a casual question and that she’s been worried about me.

I nod. “I’m fine. We talked. It’s good.”

Linda slams open the oven door and shakes her head. “I’ve never seen Manny like he was when he realized you’d left. At first I thought it was just ego. Girls just don’t walk out on Manny…” Linda lifts her brows with heavy meaning. “…And then I realized it was something more. He was frantic, he was going to bail right then in the middle of the party to go after you until Len stopped him. That’s when I knew he must have done something pretty fucked up with that temper of his.”

Frantic? Alan is many things, but he is never frantic. Surely, Linda is exaggerating.

She straightens up and leans back against the counter. “And then when the last of the party cleared out, the fireworks. Oh, Chrissie, you missed one hell of an explosion. Kenny made some stupid comment—nothing new for him, by the way—and then
boom
. I’ve never seen the five of them fight so badly. I thought, this is it. They are over.”

She starts to lift lids from pots to give each an aggressive stir—something that looks like rice and chorizo and cheese, Mexican style refried beans, some kind of spicy red sauce, and if I’m not mistaken, those are enchiladas I smell in the oven. I never expected to find traditional California Mexican cuisine cooking in the kitchen, and then I remember Linda is from LA.

She pushes a glass of wine into my hand. “Then the shitstorm of press started. That’s when things got really interesting.” She turns to pour herself another margarita. “I don’t have to tell you that this is a pretty paranoid group of guys. Every one of them just waiting for the day Manny walks out on the band. You wouldn’t believe some of the shit I’ve heard out of them since he landed in New York with you.”

She shakes her head and takes a hefty sip of her Margarita. “Manny’s drama, exhausting, and then all the strangeness suddenly makes sense. Why he was so secretive and shit after he returned to New York. And so careful about keeping everyone away. You’re Jackson Parker’s daughter and Manny was delusional enough to think he could keep you out of the eye of the tabloid hurricane. Mr. Fucked Up British Superstar with the daughter of an American Icon. Yeah, right? Like that was ever going to happen.”

Oh shit.
I’ve somehow managed not to think about this the last twenty-four hours. Do I have hours, days or weeks before I have my own shitstorm to face with Jack?

“How much print has there been? Is it awful?” I ask in dread.

“Nothing much yet, but its coming. There is no way to stop it. And it’s going to be a lot and it’s going to be ugly. Manny’s made a fortune kicking up black tar ink. The tabloids live for this shit. So now the paranoid lot out there in the living room doesn’t know what to be paranoid about, and the tabloids are picking out your wedding dress.”

Linda starts pulling out blue-edged plates from a glass front whitewashed cabinet.

“So was Manny really just in California with you the entire five months after Rehab?” she asks with a hint of irritation.

I sputter into my wine. Oh shit, he is lying to them and I don’t know what that means or what I should do here.

“Well?” she demands.

“He was in California the entire five months,” I reply with awkward, truthful diversion.

Her eyes narrow on me. “Why didn’t you tell me you were Jack’s girl, and all this drama was just to keep the two of you hush-hush? It really hurts that you guys didn’t trust me.”

I sigh and stare off into space, that last question not even worth making an effort to construct a lie in response. I’ve got my own problems here and Linda, succinctly, with the speed of a machine gun, made sure I’m reminded of each one: a tabloid bloodletting en route to me; a pissed off Jack eventually en route to me; Alan’s confusing never-ending drama…
oh, and the album, Chrissie, don’t forget the album
…and all the things in me that I have to work through when I get home, within my perfectly fucked up life that I just fucked up even more.

Linda points to a drawer. “Can you start pulling the silverware out for me?”

I start to slam knives and forks on the wood block counter.

It’s funny how delusional you can be when you want to do something you know you shouldn’t. How could I have ever thought that Alan would be someone who just quietly passed through my life privately? There isn’t a single thing Alan does that is ever private. I’m delusional. How the heck did I get so deep into a hole so quickly?

“You don’t have to murder the flatware, Chrissie, just because everything is fucked. That’s pretty much SOP.”

Humor has returned to Linda’s voice. I wish I had her emotional dexterity, but then Linda has existed for a very long time in Alan’s epic universe.

Linda slams open the wood shutters above the splash counter and begins to lay out heat mats for the pans.

I stare out into the living room at Alan. He is relaxed in a chair, laughing, long limbs in front of him, disheveled dark hair, shimmering black eyes, an unrelenting centerpiece in any setting, almost too perfect to be real. I jumped into the hole willingly. I wanted to, and I want him.

But wanting him doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be nice if having him didn’t involve all the rest of the complicated shit, if it were something even slightly approaching normal and familiar. A month ago I didn’t even have a boyfriend. How quickly I’ve been swallowed up by Alan and his world. Why does it feel like I’ve jumped a track in my life, that I am speeding on a road where I can’t see where I’m going? Alan and I are just a temporary thing. Why doesn’t it feel temporary?

God, why did he bring me to The Farm? I stare at the wives, and something about how they cluster and cling to the circle makes me shudder inside.

“So, what do the girls do at The Farm?” I ask.

“We get fucked…” Linda lifts her glass. “…and we get fucked up. This is guy world, Chrissie. That’s all there is. Fucking and getting fucked up. There aren’t even phones here. Alan thinks it interferes with their focus. No phones. Not even TV. They have music, their bullshit stories, getting fucked and fucked up. But all we’ve got is getting fucked, fucked up and kitchen duty. Thank god there’s a cleaning girl who comes twice a week or we’d be mopping floors, Chrissie. The ERA hasn’t reached here yet.”

That comment makes me laugh even though it’s repulsive. Linda is funny, even when she is being coarse and vulgar.

“Dinner!” Linda shouts, in a voice the shakes the rafters.

By the time I’ve filled my plate and left the kitchen to join everyone sprawled in the living room eating, there isn’t an inch of empty space near Alan. I don’t really want to be near any of them, I don’t fit in and probably never will, and my anxious glance searches the room for somewhere to sit apart safely.

“Come here, little kitty. Come sit with me.”

My startled gaze shifts to find Len Rowan patting a floor cushion beside him and studying me in a very peculiar way. Oh yuck, I don’t really want to sit all cozy on the floor with him, but I can’t just ignore him and walk away.

I smile and let Len take the plate to set it on the low table in front of him. He puts his hand on my arm to guide me down beside him. I almost pull away, but I forcibly stop myself.

It’s just a friendly touch. Nothing more. Don’t be an idiot tonight, Chrissie. I grab my fork and start to cut into an enchilada.

“You OK?” Len whispers.

I look to find Len quietly probing with his gaze, as if trying to figure out something I must have let show on my face.

“I’m great.” I fill my mouth with a forkful of Mexican. He’s still staring, expectant. Shit, why is he doing that? “Linda is a great cook.”

Len smiles. “Linda’s a great girl. You need anything, you go to her. Linda won’t ever steer you wrong. The rest of them…” He doesn’t finish and reaches for his beer. “So, what is Jack thinking about all this?”

Oh god, from totally ignored girl to let’s have heart-to-heart girl. And what does he mean by all this? I flush and I look at Alan. Thankfully, he’s absorbed in Linda’s overly animated chatter.