The Miles Between Us (19 page)

Rob

Ariel Records held
Phoenix Hightower’s eighteenth birthday bash in the ballroom at an upscale Midtown hotel. A high-level private security firm guarded the door, and nobody got in unless they were on the invite list. It didn’t matter if your name was Ringo Starr; if you weren’t on the list, you didn’t get into the party.

Hand in hand,
Rob and Casey stood just inside the doorway to the ballroom, taking it all in. At one end of the room, a live band played bouncy pop music. Overhead, hundreds of black balloons with purple strings hugged the ceiling. A broad, sparkly HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner hung from the ceiling above the band. The place was crawling with celebrities, all of them invited because the record company wanted Phoenix to rub elbows with the entertainment industry’s elite. Sequined dresses and plastic smiles ran rampant. Most of them were here not because they gave a tinker’s damn about Phoenix Hightower, but because it was one more opportunity for a photo op or a little networking.

“I hate this shit,” he
muttered.

“Just smile and nod a lot
,” she said. “That’s how you get through these things. You’ll come home at the end of the evening with a sore face from smiling too hard and vertigo from nodding too much, but any photos that show up in the tabloids tomorrow will make it look as though you had a wonderful time.”

His wife
should know. She was a veteran of these idiotic see-and-be-seen events. As one of the entertainment industry’s elite, Danny Fiore had been obligated to attend. As his wife, Casey had been expected to be by his side, smiling right along with him. Rob, who’d spent most of his career flying under the radar, had managed to avoid all but the most crucial of these celebrity shindigs.

“I don’t know why they wanted me here
tonight,” he said.

“
It’s all politics. You know that. You’re in the middle of making an album together. How would it look to the rest of the world if you skipped out on the kid’s birthday party?”

“I don’t give a damn how it looks to anyone.”

“But the record company does. They’ve invested big bucks in both of you, so whether you like it or not, you dance to their tune. Play the game, make everyone happy, then go home, take off the suit coat, and forget the whole thing ever happened.”

“I’d like to forget the whole thing ever happened.
” He wasn’t good at playing games. Or at wearing formal attire. He’d refused to wear a tie, or to waste money on a pair of dress shoes that would sit in his closet for the next ten years. With the dress shirt and the linen jacket, he wore jeans and Adidas. That was as formal as he intended to get tonight.

“
Stop sulking. And I meant the event, not the album.”

A waiter in a white shirt and black vest, bearing a tray of glass flutes filled with bubbly liquid, stopped before them
. “Champagne?” he said.

Casey took a flute from him and said, “Thank you.”

Rob shrugged. Whatever it took to get him through the night. The waiter handed him a slender, stemmed glass. He tilted his head in acknowledgment and took a sip. It was good champagne; no twelve-dollar-a-bottle supermarket crap for Ariel Records. They clearly intended to go all the way with this ridiculous celebration of a spoiled kid’s eighteenth birthday.

He surveyed the crowd, glanced over at his wife
. “You okay with this?” he said.

“So far, so good.”

Her eyes were clear tonight, her face relaxed. She’d seemed more like herself the last couple of days. Was it possible that the worst of the dark days had passed, and she was on the way to recovery? She flashed him a cheeky smile, and he returned it. “We march forward?” he said.

“We march forward.”

Champagne in hand, his fingers resting on the small of her back, they wound their way through the crowd, exchanging nods and greetings as they went, while the band played a surprisingly decent rendition of Bon Jovi’s
Bed of Roses
.

“There you are!
” A cheerful Drew Lawrence, president of Ariel Records, greeted Casey with a kiss. “Casey, you look more beautiful than ever.” He shook Rob’s hand and said, “Glad you two could make it.”

“We wouldn’t miss it,” Casey said
. “Where’s the birthday boy?”

“Somewhere over there,” Drew said, waving vaguely
. “Taking photos by the cake. You should see it. Really retro. It brings back memories. There’s this little bakery out in Queens…” He paused, apparently realized he was rambling. “So.” He cleared his throat and said to Rob, “You and Phoenix have worked out your differences?”

“
There was really nothing to work out. He called in sick, I got the day off. Win-win.”

“Right.
” Drew nodded to a passing couple, then said cautiously, “It hasn’t happened again, has it?”

“No.”

“I hear things are coming along nicely.” The statement almost sounded like a question that Drew was afraid to pose.

“Probably another week, and we should be done recording
. Then I’ll take the masters home with me and do the mixing there.”

A crease appeared in Drew’s otherwise smooth
, collagened forehead. “Did we know you planned to do that? Is Two Dreamers even set up for that?”

Rob
slugged down the rest of his champagne and said, “We have a fully functioning studio out in the williwacks. Casey and I dropped a fortune on it when we had the new house built. If anything we’ve recorded needs to be cleaned up, we can bring the essential people to Jackson Falls to finish the work. But I don’t think that’ll be necessary. For the most part, the sessions have gone well.”

“Good, good.
” Drew looked immensely relieved, and Rob suspected that he’d been less than confident about this album. “Listen,” the record executive said, “can I steal your wife for a few minutes? There’s somebody I’d like to introduce her to.”

He glanced at Casey, read the acquiescence in her eyes, leaned and kissed her temple
. “If you need me—” he said, for her ears only.

“I’m fine.
” She patted his cheek, then turned and bestowed Drew with a beatific smile. “Mr. Lawrence,” she said, linking her arm with his, “let’s go adventuring.”

He watched them go
. Then, alone, he wandered the room, his attention divided between the party and his awareness, at all times, of Casey’s location. Familiar faces came at him out of the crowd, faces of people he knew, other faces that were familiar only because he’d seen them splashed across the pages of
People
or
Rolling Stone
.

A burst of well-oiled laughter led him to the bar, where he traded his empty champagne glas
s for a Heineken. Leaning against a support beam with his ankles crossed, he nursed the beer and, his finely-honed radar focused on his wife, watched the band perform.

The singer, a zaftig young woman in her late twenties, had a strong, distinctive voice
and an engaging style. The lead guitarist was an adequate player, and the drummer was really good. Add in bass, rhythm, and piano, and they had a pretty good thing going. Not bad, for a cover band. Not that there was anything wrong with cover bands—that was how he and Danny had started out—but if they expected to get anywhere, they needed to be writing and performing original material, not regurgitating music already made popular by other artists. He wondered idly whether they were signed, then realized that if they were playing an Ariel party, they must be. No record company would hold a private party of this size with a band they’d hired from some talent agency. They had to be new Ariel artists that Drew and his minions wanted to showcase.

Unlike the man of the hour, who was nowhere to be seen
. Rob surveyed the room, but there was no sign of Phoenix. Through an opening in the crowd, he caught sight of Casey. His wife wore a form-fitting dress of cobalt blue that left her shoulders bare and showed just a modest amount of cleavage. The hem, on the other hand, was slit up to her thigh, displaying a significant length of slender, shapely leg. He wasn’t sure how she could walk on the five-inch heels, but right now, standing with crossed arms and one shoe peeking out from the hem of the dress, she looked as though she’d been born wearing them. She said something, and the middle-aged couple beside her smiled. Drew Lawrence responded to her words, and she threw back her head and laughed.

There was nobody in this world
whose laugh sounded like Casey’s, and he’d heard far too little of it lately. Tonight, in that dress, in this setting, it was impossible to tell that she’d had more than her share of dark days in the past few weeks. Watching her, he could almost believe that this beautiful woman whose laughter floated on the air wasn’t a doppelgänger, that she was his strong, capable, lovely wife.

But appea
rances were known to deceive. Tonight, she had deliberately put on what she referred to as her company face, which would easily mislead anybody who didn’t know her well. It seemed to be working. Her companions appeared delighted with her company, and he suspected he was the only person in the room who knew that beneath that warm and charming persona was a woman who had crying spells for no reason, nightmares that kept her awake at night, and random bouts of grief so strong they would have flattened a lesser woman. She tried to keep it all hidden, and thought he didn’t know about most of it, but he knew her too well. When she hurt, he hurt, and lately, he’d been hurting most of the time.

Somebody
hip-bumped him. He turned to see who it was, and found Phoenix standing there, holding his own bottle of beer. “I had serious doubts,” the kid said, “that you’d actually show up tonight.”

“
It was a struggle.” He eyed the bottle of Rolling Rock. “And by the way, Phee, you’re not old enough to drink.”

“Too late for that
. I’ve been doing it since I was twelve. No reason to quit now. And stop calling me Phee.”

Maybe
there was no reason to quit now, but that didn’t mean the record company should be supplying it gratis. The kid should at least have to work for it. Nobody was doing him any favors, handing everything to him on a silver platter. He needed to learn the meaning of good, honest work. That was what built character, and right now, the kid could use some character building. He was hovering on the cusp of something, and it could go either way. If he fell on the right side of the fence, his future would be bright. If he fell the wrong way, he might be doomed.

And
, damn it, it wasn’t up to Rob MacKenzie to save the kid from himself. He had enough problems of his own. His wife, his daughters, his marriage, his career. He didn’t need to add any more responsibility to an already heavy load. “Happy birthday,” he said glumly, and upended his beer.

“W
here’s the lovely Mrs. MacKenzie?”

“Drew spirited her away
. Looks like I’m on my own. Where’s Luther?”

“I told him to mingle
. This is a highly secure private party. His services aren’t really necessary tonight. Come check out my cake.” He gestured with his beer bottle. “You’re certainly old enough to appreciate it.”

The kid wound his way through the
room, stopping every so often to converse with his fawning subjects. Rob followed, alternately amused and irritated by the fawning. This bouncy pop crap that Phoenix was singing would not stand the test of time. Where would all these people be in five years, when there was a new kid in town, and Phoenix was just a faint memory?

They stopped in front of the cake
. Ariel Records had really gone all out. The gargantuan cake was a wonder fashioned of sugar and flour and white icing in the shape of an old-fashioned portable record player, the kind that opened and closed like a suitcase. The cover was up, and on the turntable was a 45 record with the Ariel logo and the title of Phoenix’s first hit single. The words HAPPY BIRTHDAY PHOENIX were written in red lettering on the cover of the record player. The damn thing must have cost a fortune. “Nice,” he said.

“You don’t like it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’
t have to say it. What, are you jealous because nobody ever did anything like this for you?”

Stung, he said, “You know what, Phee
? One of these days, you’ll learn to think before you open your mouth.” And he turned and stalked away.

“Hey!
” Phoenix’s voice floated behind him. “I was just needling you. Don’t be so bleedin’ touchy!”

Ignoring him, Rob
shoved his way through the crowd, marched up to the singer, who had just put to bed Laura Nyro’s
Sweet Blindness
, and handed her one of the Two Dreamers business cards he always carried in his wallet. “Great pipes,” he said. “If Ariel Records doesn’t treat you the way they should, give me a call.”

He left her standing there, card in hand and mouth
sagging open, and went in search of his wife. “Excuse me,” he said to her companions, catching her by the arm and dragging her away from their conversation. “I need my wife.”

When they were far enough away for some semblance of privacy, she said, “That was very rude
, Flash.”