Run rose run, p.16
Run, Rose, Run, page 16
“The thing is,” he said, “whenever I hear someone play—whether it’s in a crowded club or an inhospitable conference room—I close my eyes. And if I can imagine that person playing Madison Square Garden, then I know I’ve found something real.”
AnnieLee held her breath. Madison Square Garden was a damn high bar.
Tony Graham took a gold pen from his pocket and began spinning it on the tips of his thumb and forefinger. “I had a feeling when you left the room, AnnieLee. And that feeling was that it was in my best interest to get you back inside, whatever it took.”
“So you got me,” she said.
“And we aim to keep you,” he said. “By whatever means—or concessions—necessary.”
Chapter
44
AnnieLee burst into the coffee shop shouting, “Ethan, Ethan!”
He knocked over his chair as he ran to her and caught her by the arms. Her hair was wild and her eyes were an electric blue. “Are you okay?” he demanded.
“I’m great. I’m so good! Why are you flinging furniture?”
“I thought something was wrong,” Ethan said, dropping his hands and shoving them into his pockets. “I mean, considering your recent experiences…”
“No, no—everything’s right!” Then she reached out and took his face between her palms and kissed him on the cheek. Immediately she stepped back, embarrassed. “Sorry. I couldn’t help it.”
Ethan bent down to pick up the chair so she wouldn’t see the way he flushed. “It’s okay,” he said, thinking, Do that again and again. “I take it the meeting went well?”
“The second one did,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it. Let’s go!”
He laughed at the way she was nearly bouncing up and down. “Go where?” he asked, following her outside, into the sunshine.
“Let’s just walk,” AnnieLee said. “Let’s walk until we can’t even feel our feet anymore. Let’s look at everything in the city until our eyes start to cross.”
Though he might’ve wished that he weren’t wearing steel-toe boots, Ethan was hardly in the mood to argue. He’d never seen AnnieLee so happy, so alive. And why not celebrate her incredible news? Did she even comprehend how lucky she was?
He decided not to ask her. Instead he said, “North or south?”
“Like I know which is which!” she said, laughing. “Come on!”
Soon they found themselves on Ninth Avenue, walking through the neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen. Passing walk-up apartment buildings, pizza joints, and laundromats, they bought bright-green apples from a fruit vendor. They wandered farther south and west, peering into the windows of the Chelsea art galleries, and then came upon Pier 25, with its playgrounds, fountains, and volleyball courts jutting into the Hudson River.
“Want to get whipped in a round of mini golf?” Ethan asked.
AnnieLee laughed. “Not by the likes of you, no thank you.”
So they kept on going, down into the financial district, where the buildings were so tall and close together it seemed to Ethan as if they walked along the bottom of a canyon of steel. He kept thinking about reaching for AnnieLee’s hand. But he didn’t do it.
AnnieLee had explained her deal with ACD—or at least what she could remember of it, the point being that they’d given her almost everything she asked for, including the purchase and promotion of her self-released single, “Driven”—and now she was chattering on breathlessly, sometimes about what she and Ethan were seeing and sometimes about the kinds of songs she imagined putting on her first album.
Ethan was quieter, and not just because he couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He was wondering what sort of person would live in a place like this, surrounded by traffic and noise and lights at all hours of the day and night.
He’d been here once before, when he was very small. On a road trip north with his parents to see family in New Hampshire, they’d driven into the city. They’d planned to spend the day sightseeing, but his parents were so overwhelmed by the crowds and the giant buildings, not to mention the pedestrians who seemed to fling themselves into the streets without regard for DON’T WALK signals, that they’d headed straight back out again.
“Did you ever take family vacations?” he asked AnnieLee as she was perusing the menu outside an Italian café.
“Not hardly,” AnnieLee said.
“We camped in the summers, if that counts,” Ethan said. “Though once we stayed in a hotel in Kitty Hawk. It had a pool and a hot tub, and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I didn’t set foot on an airplane until I went into the army.”
“What flavor of gelato do you think stracciatella is?” AnnieLee asked. “Should we try some?”
She was trying to change the subject, however ungracefully, and Ethan felt what might’ve been a small flare of annoyance. But it was her day—so why not let her talk about whatever inanities she wanted to?
“Sure. One scoop of whatever that is, and another of chocolate,” he said.
“I’ll be right back.”
When she came out again, she had a double-decker cone for each of them. “This represents twenty bucks’ worth of gelato, so it’d better be amazing.” She took a bite and her blue eyes got huge. “It is,” she sighed.
Ethan laughed. The city thrilled her today, and even if she wouldn’t open up to him, he loved watching her delight. Everything seemed brighter and fresher through her eyes. He wished he could tell her so.
But instead, he slung his arm around her as they walked. And when she leaned into him, he felt the world go a little brighter for him, too.
Chapter
45
AnnieLee rested her forehead against the window of her hotel room, gazing out at the jagged skyline, the glittering city lights, and the people rushing by far below. She felt giddy, exhausted, electrified. She couldn’t have imagined a day like this, not ever.
After walking around for hours, she and Ethan had returned to the lavish Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side, collapsed onto the sofa in her suite, and ordered room service—burgers, salads, and Cokes—which they’d devoured while watching the end of Die Hard. Then Ethan had called Ruthanna to give her the report on the ACD deal. AnnieLee heard a gleeful shriek through the phone, and not ten minutes later, a hotel attendant had appeared in the doorway with a magnum of Dom Pérignon.
Which meant that AnnieLee, who’d never tasted champagne before, was now perhaps a little bit drunk on it.
She turned her back to the view and watched Ethan noodling with her guitar on the couch. He was leaning back against the cushions with his boots on the coffee table, and there appeared to be a large spot of ketchup on his white T-shirt.
He was probably half drunk, too.
“Almost heaven, East 77th Street,” he sang, channeling John Denver.
“Velvet sofa, soft slippers for my feet,” AnnieLee sang, pushing away from the window and sitting down on the couch, a careful distance away from Ethan.
Ethan poured them both more champagne, and then he held up his glass. “A toast,” he said, “to today’s great news. And to country music’s future number one star.”
AnnieLee clinked her flute against his. “Oh, Ethan, I don’t know,” she said, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. “It doesn’t feel real.”
“Well, it is,” Ethan said. He lightly pinched her arm. “See?”
“Ow, unnecessary!” She laughed, swatting his hand away. “I mean, the deal’s real. But success isn’t guaranteed.” She took a big gulp of champagne. She couldn’t tell if the wine was making her feel better or worse, but it was delicious.
“Nothing’s guaranteed, obviously,” Ethan said. “But if you ask me, your chances of success are pretty damn good.”
AnnieLee fell back against the pillows. “I’m so tired,” she whispered.
“Maybe I should sing you a lullaby,” Ethan said. “Hush, little baby, don’t you—”
“No covers!” AnnieLee said. “Sing me one of your new ones, why don’t you? I’ll bet you’re writing all the time.”
She watched his profile as he pondered this request. From watching him at the Cat’s Paw, she knew he didn’t always like playing what he’d written; he preferred to hide behind other people’s words. That might’ve seemed strange to some, but not to AnnieLee, who’d been hiding something bigger than lyrics since long before she got to Nashville.
She scooted a little closer to him. “Come on,” she said. “You won’t find a friendlier crowd than yours truly.”
Ethan laughed. “I can think of a lot of words I’d use to describe you, but friendly isn’t way up there.”
AnnieLee crossed her arms. “Oh, really? What is?” This is going to be interesting, she thought.
“Fierce. Ornery. Stubborn—”
“I’m waiting for the compliments,” she said.
“I’m getting there!” Ethan protested. “Talented. Enthusiastic.” He hesitated. “Enigmatic. Gorgeous.”
AnnieLee felt herself blushing. “Okay, you can stop there, Blake. Otherwise I might get a big head. Just sing, why don’t you?”
“What, you’re not going to list my top qualities?” he asked.
She bit her lip. What was she supposed to say? “Well, you’re strong and you’re loyal,” she said haltingly. “And protective…”
“So’s a golden retriever.”
She threw a pillow at him. It was impossible to say more, impossible to tell him the truth—that he was handsome and kind, that he drew her to him like a magnet. That she thought his voice was one of the best sounds in the world. That when he put his arm around her, she felt his touch like an electric shock.
“Oh, just play,” she commanded.
With obvious reluctance, Ethan began to pick an unfamiliar tune. When he started to sing, his voice was barely more than a whisper.
Don’t know why I’ve been lost for so long
Why can’t I write a new life like I can write a new song?
He stopped and looked over at her. “Forget it,” he said. “It’s terrible.”
“Do you really feel lost?” AnnieLee asked. The question startled both of them. They’d never gone deeper than banter and small talk; AnnieLee had always turned the conversation away from anything serious.
Ethan picked a few more notes before he answered. “I used to. I don’t know if I do anymore.”
She didn’t ask him what had changed. What if he said it was her?
Worse, what if he didn’t?
“Keep singing,” she said, and he obeyed.
Sometimes the world seems to move too fast
You find something real but it’s not gonna last
Then he stopped again. “It’s not right somehow.”
“Ethan,” AnnieLee said, “it’s great so far. But it’s so…melancholic.” She giggled. “I know, it’s a big word for a hayseed like me, isn’t it? Tony Graham thought I was dumb, too.”
“I don’t think you’re dumb, you idiot,” Ethan said. “But the best country songs are about heartbreak.”
“Not all of them.” AnnieLee reached over and grabbed the guitar from him. “What if you made it more up-tempo? What if your lost man realizes he was wrong to feel that way?” She began to play, tweaking the melody, making it brighter. “Maybe,” she said, “you could give the song a happy ending.”
Ethan got up and grabbed a beer from the minibar. When he turned around, his expression was almost haunted. “I don’t know much about those,” he said quietly.
AnnieLee’s fingers found a D major open, one of the simplest and most optimistic chords there was. “Me, either,” she said. “But I bet we can write one anyway.”
Chapter
46
So she rented a bridal gown, he rented a tux
A bouquet of blue bonnets in his fancy new truck
Ruthanna was running through the song she and AnnieLee had been working on when her phone rang, and she jumped as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. Then she laughed. Who did she think was calling, the retirement police? Of course it was only Jack, checking in on her the way he did every Sunday.
“How are the roses?” he asked as soon as she picked up.
“The blooms are all gone now,” she said, “but my damask roses should blossom again in the fall.” She nudged the guitar away from her with a painted toe. “What’s shaking, Mr. Holm?”
“I can’t believe you let her go into that room alone,” Jack said, and Ruthanna had barely figured out who he was talking about before he was barreling on. “The last time we talked about AnnieLee, you told me she wasn’t ready for professional representation. And then you sent her all the way to New York—not with a lawyer, either, but with that cowboy guitar player of yours. For all you knew, she might’ve signed an exploitive 360 and offered up her firstborn to those guys!”
“She’s not stupid, Jack,” Ruthanna said.
“But that’s not how you do things,” he said, exasperated. “You know that!”
“Do I?” she asked, affronted. She wasn’t used to being challenged like this. “All I know is that if there were rules, I broke them—my whole damn life. You know who helped me for the first five years of my career? Me—that’s who. I was alone.”
She remembered being sixteen and singing at one VFW hall dance after another, with hair so big and shoes so high she made a six-foot silhouette with a five-foot-two body. God, those were long days, she thought. Correction: they were long years.
She’d sung at county fairs, rodeos, weddings, showcases, and talent competitions; she’d lurked outside radio stations all over the South, accosting everyone who walked in to try to get them to play the songs she’d paid to record. She’d started at the bottom, and rung by rung she’d climbed her way to the top.
“I just meant—” Jack began.
“I worked my rear end off,” she interrupted, “and I never stopped—not until I left the business.”
“Honey,” Jack said, his voice gentle now. “I know that. I know just about everything about you.”
“Oh, do you, now?” Ruthanna was simultaneously offended and touched by Jack’s claim. Of course he didn’t know everything. But he knew more than almost anyone else. Way more.
And then suddenly she wasn’t thinking about her past, or AnnieLee’s career, or anything but Jack, good old familiar Jack, there on the other end of the line.
“I miss you,” she heard herself say.
He didn’t answer right away, and Ruthanna quickly wished she could take the words back. It didn’t matter that they were true.
“Well,” Jack finally said, “if you really mean that, then today might be your lucky day.”
“Oh, yeah? How come?” she asked.
“Because I’m right outside your gate.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Laughing, blushing, Ruthanna punched in the gate code, and five minutes later Jack was coming into the yard, where she sat in a white lacy dress and Balenciaga sunglasses, her hair and makeup perfect. Of course.
“Were you expecting someone?” he asked, glancing around the garden.
“I don’t leave my own bedroom without looking red-carpet ready—you know that. And it’s a good thing, too, the way some folks show up unannounced.” She smiled up at him as he set a bottle of white wine on the table. “What’s that for?”
“A gentleman never shows up empty-handed,” Jack said. “Anyway, don’t we have something to celebrate?”
“What?”
“My management agreement with AnnieLee.”
“You old snake,” Ruthanna said approvingly. “Calling me up to yell at me when you’d already got it all figured out.”
“We’ll bring in PR and a social media manager immediately,” he said. “And she’s got to get a lawyer. Do you think we should go with Nelson at Fox Klein Nelson?”
“Work all this out with her, why don’t you? I’m retired.”
Jack glanced over at the guitar that was leaning suspiciously close by, and then at the new lyrics he could see scribbled on the back of a receipt. But he didn’t say anything; he just gave a little smile, which Ruthanna pretended not to notice.
“Are you going to open the wine, or what?” she asked.
Jack’s smile got wider. “I’ll be right back.”
He returned with the bottle opener and her Riedel stemware. “I saw that AnnieLee’s single is at number thirty-seven. She’s a phenom.”
“Once they took her on, ACD put serious money into promoting ‘Driven.’ Not bad at all for a kid nobody’s heard of.”
“It sure isn’t.” Jack poured the chardonnay into their glasses. “The spotlight’s going to come back to you, you know.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’ve made AnnieLee your protégé,” he said. “Maybe not even on purpose. But think about it: You hear a pretty kid singing in a bar one night, and your interest is piqued. Good Samaritan that you are, you pick her up and dust her off, and lo and behold, you find a star underneath the hillbilly dirt. Hell, not even a star: a potential supernova. People are going to eat that story up like ice cream. And mostly because you’re in it.”
“But it’s not my story,” Ruthanna protested. “It should be all about AnnieLee.”
Jack laughed. “You just don’t get it, do you? People will grab at even the tiniest scrap of information they can get about you, Ruthanna. You left the business when you had the whole world at your feet. You were the biggest star Nashville had, and you just quit. No one can understand it, though believe me, they’ve tried.” He took a sip of wine and made a face; he was a whiskey man at heart. “The world still wants more from Ruthanna Ryder: more songs, more concerts, more everything. And the fact that they aren’t getting any of it? Well, that, my dear, is just one of the reasons why everyone’s still completely fascinated by you.”
She laughed at his words, and at his tiny grimace. “You’re cuckoo. What makes you think that’s true, anyway?”
He waited a moment before he spoke, as if he wanted to make sure he had her full attention. “Because I’m still fascinated by you, Ruthanna,” he said. “And I, of all people, should be damn well sick of you.”
