The Song in My Heart (3 page)

There was nothing Dess could do for her, Erika was convinced, save for perhaps an autograph and a selfie for her Facebook and Twitter profiles. Really, she’d begged Sloane, there was no point to this. But Sloane, a little bit crazy, a lot independent, had ignored her.

The door opened with a heavy thud, and in its shadow stood the legendary singer—smaller than Erika had imagined, youthful, trim, glowing. She didn’t look at all like a cancer survivor nor even someone in her, what, early forties? No makeup, hair the color of honey that just touched her shoulders. The phrase “natural beauty” sprang to mind. With growing apprehension she watched as Dess’s slate-gray eyes lit up at the sight of Sloane, then narrowed shrewdly and suspiciously at Erika. Clearly, Dess Hampton wasn’t particularly thrilled with her presence here.
Well
, Erika thought,
that makes two of us
.

Sloane and Dess traded a secret look, Sloane aiming a follow-up shrug at Erika that hinted of a shallow apology.

“Come in,” Dess said neutrally.

She probably gives the IRS a friendlier welcome than that
, Erika thought.

She and Sloane followed Dess and her happy, tail-wagging, wiggly chocolate Lab, whom Dess introduced as Maggie.
Forget the dog
, Erika thought, as her eyes helplessly gravitated to Dess’s tight little ass, all curvy and filling out her designer jeans perfectly. She amused herself with the fantasy of firmly cupping that ass, pulling it into her body…oh yes! There was plenty she could do with this woman that entailed not a single note of music or even talk. She had no doubt she could melt that icy demeanor in about two minutes flat. Two minutes
naked
, that is.

“So, you’re Erika Alvarez?” Dess said, turning sharply, not offering her hand.

They were standing before a massive leather sectional in a great room with ceilings the height of a European cathedral. Massive windows looked out over the lake and there was a fireplace that took up an entire wall. Erika could imagine sitting here watching a thunderstorm, or even a snowstorm, as the fireplace warmed them. A bottle of wine wouldn’t hurt. Maybe some soft music…

“Ahem,” Sloane mumbled at her to draw her attention.

Erika swallowed, nervous again. Was she supposed to sit? Kiss the queen’s feet? Make a beeline for the baby grand in the corner and start playing? It was, after all, an audition of sorts, thanks to Sloane and her meddling plan to enlist Dess’s help. She had been instructed to impress, though to what end she wasn’t quite sure yet, and the prickle of pressure brought back memories of her mother dragging her to auditions before brow-furrowed strangers in starched suits, pens poised over clipboards. Her mother always had caustic words of advice for her. “Sit up straight, Erika, breathe, breathe!” Or, “No, no, nina, not
that
song, the other one!” And, “Ay Dios mio, do
not
look at the keys, hija!”

“Yes, this is Erika,” Sloane answered on her behalf. She looked innately pleased, like she’d just discovered the cure to a particularly unpleasant social disease. Sloane was clearly enjoying her role as broker. Or star maker. Whatever. She would indulge Sloane, because Sloane had been good to her and would be indispensible to her on the tour this summer.

“Well, then,” Dess replied, her tone as cool as the lake outside.

A pity
, Erika thought,
that someone so beautiful, so successful and full of talent, had become so imperious, rude even
. As if that were the only option left to her now that her career had disintegrated.
I can’t sing anymore, but I can still play the part of queen if I want
.
Queen Bitch, that is.
I can still act like you’re wasting my precious time
.

“I’m going to make a pot of tea. Why don’t you play something for us?” Dess gestured at the baby grand piano, so shiny it looked wet. Clearly it was an order because there was no accompanying smile, no hint of a question or that it was a friendly suggestion. She might as well just have said, “Do it.”

Erika ground her molars, hard, and took her time getting to the piano. She was used to performing on demand. Had grown up rushing to the piano at the snap of her mother’s fingers. Fine, she decided. As with her childhood recitals, she’d get this over as quickly as possible. It would make everyone happy—well, Sloane anyway—and then she could catch a flight back to Minneapolis and start some serious prepping for the summer circuit. The first festival was five weeks away, and she had at least a dozen more songs to learn with her band, such as it was. So far it was only herself on keyboards and bass or rhythm guitar and Sloane on drums. They still needed a lead guitarist, and she could kick Sloane’s butt for not securing someone yet, like she’d promised. They were cutting it damned close.

At the piano, Erika flexed her fingers, stretched her wrists and admired the gorgeous Steinway & Sons instrument. Antique and top of the line, by the look of it. With rancor, she wondered if Dess even knew how to play it. She’d been in a few rich peoples’ homes before, knew it wasn’t uncommon for them to have an expensive, rarely played piano as a display of their wealth. Same thing, in her mind, as hanging an original Warhol or a Picasso.
Look what I can afford to own!

Without a word, she launched into the opening notes of Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain,” having decided to play something she liked instead of trying to guess what might appeal to Her Majesty. She closed her eyes, gave herself up to the words and the beautiful notes. She went to another place when she sang, a place somewhere between heaven and earth, where everything else fell away and the only emotion was pleasure. No, more than pleasure. Joy. And it came from her innermost being and reverberated through her entire body, pulsing a hot glow in its midst. It was almost like an orgasm, only longer and, more often than not in her experience, more fulfilling.

She was belting out the chorus, feeling it course through her from her gut and up into her chest with hurricane-like force, shimmering past her vocal cords and out of her mouth, when she became aware of the distant shattering of a dropped dish. The intrusive noise took a moment to register, like awakening from a dream, and it was another bar of music before she stopped playing.

Sloane leapt up from the sofa and ran to the kitchen. “Dess, you okay?”

Erika turned and saw that Dess was bent over, picking up pieces of a china cup from the floor.

“Shit,” Dess huffed. “Clumsy, that’s all.”

Sloane had begun hopping around, looking panicked. “You didn’t cut your hands, did you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Thank you, God!”

“Jeez, Sloane.” Dess stood, hands on her hips. “What’s the big deal if I did? It’s not like I’d need stitches or anything. It’s just a cup.”

Sloane fumbled with the broken pieces, leaving Dess to turn her full attention to Erika. She strode purposefully toward her, but when she stopped, she seemed wary, unsure.

“Y-you,” Dess stammered. “Your voice.”

“Yes?” This was going to be fun.

“Where did you learn to sing like that?”

“Like what?”

Jaw muscles clenched, relaxed. A tiny glint ascended in Dess’s eyes. “Like you’re the offspring of Gladys Knight and Karen Carpenter. With a little Whitney and Wynonna thrown in for good measure.”

Erika shrugged. Even from someone as famous and talented as Dess Hampton, the compliment meant little. For most of her twenty-eight years, praises for her singing and musical talents had been heaped on her, but they simply didn’t satisfy anymore. She wanted to be known as one of the best. Wanted to be
known
. Like Dess. Or the legendary singers Dess had mentioned. She not only wanted to perform before thousands, tens of thousands, but to have those thousands prostrate themselves before her. She wanted to transform peoples’ lives, to influence not only the music business, but popular music itself. And not because she was insecure about herself, but because she was completely secure in her talents and in what she had to offer. She dreamed that her voice, her playing, her songwriting, her performances, would be the vehicle by which those transformations might take place. She wanted never to be forgotten. Wanted her music to set a new standard. Of course it was arrogant to think that way, but if she didn’t believe it could happen, it never would.

“Church?” Dess was saying. “Did you grow up singing in a church or something?”

Erika shook her head.

“Voice lessons since you were four?”

“Nope, but piano lessons since I was five.”

“Then where…”

“I sang whenever I could, which was almost always in private until I went away to college. Then I joined a garage band, earned some pocket money singing in bars. Sang at weddings, birthday parties, open mic nights. Any place I could.”

Dess stared at her as though she were an apparition, and Erika resisted a smart-ass retort.

Sloane rejoined them and set down a tray on which sat a teapot, three intact cups, sugar and milk. “Erika’s parents weren’t exactly supportive of her wanting to grow up to be a singer,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Wanted her to be a master pianist or something. Isn’t that right, Erika?”

“Something like that.” Erika didn’t want to talk about her parents and their obsession to push her onto the world stage in an honorable career in the arts that would elevate her and her family past the stigma of immigration and how that career would not—
could not
—be something as common and ignoble as singing. She didn’t want to think anymore about the endless hours at the piano, her cramped hands, her sore back, her mother snapping at her with her whip-like voice.

“Could you sing another song for me?” Dess asked, polite this time.

Erika began playing “September in the Rain,” softening her voice to a warm, intimate tone that spoke of a broken heart still stuck on someone. Inexplicably, the emotions of lost love came easy to her, even though she’d never known the kind of big love that people wrote novels and songs about.
But I will
, she knew with certainty, which was why she could sing about it being spring while it felt like a rainy September in her heart.

When she’d finished, she stole a moment to enjoy the look on Dess’s face—the distinct, momentary melting of the Ice Queen. It was, strangely enough, more gratifying than a screaming audience. Or at least what Erika imagined a screaming audience before her would feel like. There was serenity, rapture, on Dess’s face, like she’d just had a religious experience. Erika sucked in her breath, her lungs tingling at the pure beauty emanating from Dess.
I did that to her
, she thought, and it filled her up with something she couldn’t name. She never tired of how people physically reacted to her music, because it was far more genuine and spontaneous than verbal compliments. It was the reason she sang.

Sloane poured tea, asked Erika to join them on the sectional. “So,” she said, looking every bit the director of a colossal business deal, “I have a proposal for you both.”

Dess’s features had once again taken on a pinched, annoyed look. “Why am I not surprised?”

Sloane plowed ahead, ignoring her friend. “I propose that we work together. The three of us.”

“Work together how?” Erika asked, confused. She was expecting Sloane to ask Dess to offer guidance, advice, maybe make a few calls on her behalf. Endorse her, somehow.

Sloane grinned like it was already a
fait accompli
. “It’s simple. Me on drums, Erika on keyboards or bass or rhythm guitar, whichever the song requires, and Dess on lead guitar. Maybe backup vocals too… Just for this summer tour of music festivals we have lined up, of course. Nothing more.”

As swiftly as a light being switched off, the color drained alarmingly from Dess’s face. Silence stretched out, Sloane looking less and less like the genius she thought she was, and Erika shifted uncomfortably. Clearly, the idea was not going over well with the Ice Queen.

“It’s brilliant, Dess, it really is,” Sloane said, her tone less certain than her words.

“No,” Dess said with asperity. “It’s not brilliant at all. First of all, you
know
I don’t sing anymore, even backup. Second, I have no desire to be back on stage, let alone a circuit of outdoor festivals. Third, my presence would only ruin things for Erika because it would become all about the washed-up Dess Hampton and not about this emerging, wonderful talent here that deserves all the attention.”

Erika blinked. She was wonderful?
Okay, wait. Dess’s compliments don’t mean anything to me… No sir. Not. One. Single. Thing.

“It could work, Dess. In fact, nobody would even have to know it was you. You could go by a stage name—just another anonymous band member wearing tie-dye, a big floppy hat and oversized sunglasses. And your presence would help Erika. Having that experience, that guidance, along for the ride would be priceless. Joining us would give Erika that foundation that could push her career to a whole new level.”

“And I should do all this because why? Because I need the five hundred bucks a week I’d earn? And the adulation of three hundred people sitting on lawn chairs stoned out of their minds?”

Ouch!
Okay
, thought Erika, she didn’t have to be mean about it. It was a crazy idea to have her join the band, though. Dess was right about that. And it rankled that nobody had asked her opinion. Christ, could Dess even
play
the guitar?

As if on cue, Dess and Sloane gazed questioningly at her. Erika shrugged, her confidence deserting her. These two women had played on stages all over the world, had amassed more awards than Erika could even guess at. Who was she, after all, to offer an opinion when something this big was offered to her? Could she afford to say no? Did she have the right to? She was in a jam. She needed a guitarist, and right now she’d take anyone who knew at least six chords.

Her attention back on Dess, Sloane said, “For you, my friend, the reason is simple. It would be good for you. Because music feeds your soul. And you’ve been away from real music for too damned long.”