Playing Dirty (Stargazer 2)

She’d been afraid of this. It was time she put her Southern heritage to use. She knew how to phrase the proposal in terms a Southern male couldn’t refuse. “Be a man, Quentin.”

He gaped at her. “Oh, Sarah,” he finally said, “don’t play that card. Only my sick old granddaddy was allowed to play that card.”

“Be a man.”

He cursed, slid into the driver’s seat, and slammed the door. Quickly she got in with him. He snatched the keys she held in front of his face, shoved them into the ignition, turned the engine over, and burst into reverse. He stomped the brakes.

She instructed him, “You need to gently—”

“I know how to drive,” he snapped, jerking the car backward again. Finally he’d reversed and stomped the brakes enough times that he had room to pull forward down the driveway. He stomped the brakes again while the gate opened, then jerked the car onto the avenue.

Sarah was alarmed, but she didn’t want to alarm him in turn. After all, she had asked for this. “Where are we going?”

Although the morning was still cool and the avenue was shady, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. “We’re going . . . to die.”

He looked like death. It occurred to Sarah that he might not have recovered fully from his illness in Thailand. Maybe people looked like this during a heart attack, face pale. She hadn’t been there when her dad died.

“Quentin,” she said. “You’re going to die of a co**ine overdose. Or an allergic reaction, right? And I’m going to die at the hands of a crazed rock star.” The words were harsh, she knew, but her tone was soothing. “We’re perfectly safe in this car.”

She expressed more confidence than she felt, especially when she saw that he was merging onto the crowded highway. She watched for oncoming traffic so she could scream out in panic for him to hit the brakes if necessary. But he looked out for cars in the proper direction. If he could keep from screeching to a halt in another car’s path, she thought they would stay alive. As he’d said, he really did know how to drive. He just didn’t do it.

She settled back in the passenger seat, hoping she appeared relaxed, and pressed buttons on her phone to view her e-mail messages.

He protested, “If I can cut out on the band for this bullshit, you can cut out on People magazine.” Sweat wet his hair and forced it into curls at his nape.

“I’m not working,” she said. “I’m just checking on my pregnant friend.”

“How far along?”

The question struck Sarah as strange. Wendy’s husband Daniel had seemed well-informed and very sympathetic about Wendy’s condition. But most men in Sarah’s experience thought pregnant was pregnant until the baby appeared.

“To hear her talk, about thirteen months.” Sarah found Wendy’s latest message, chuckled at it, and clicked the phone off.

“What’d she say?” Quentin glanced nervously in the rearview mirror.

“She’s still at home having contractions, it’s not time to get an epidural yet, and this is all my fault.”

“Your fault! It’s been a while since high school biology, but—”

“It’s a long story. A long, passive-aggressive story.”

“I’ve got some time,” Quentin said. He glanced again and again at the rearview mirror. Sarah turned around in her seat to see an eighteen-wheeler behind them, tailgating. Birmingham traffic was like this, and Quentin needed to get used to it.

She watched him carefully. Except for the frequent glances at the rearview mirror, he was motionless. He seemed to be driving fine now, but he stiff-armed the steering wheel, and his knuckles were white. She had to distract him.

“It’s not really my fault,” she said. “It was a collaborative effort. About this time last year, my friend and I were doing well at work, and we were about to turn twenty-nine. We decided that we didn’t want to wake up one day, forty-five years old, professionally successful, and barren. We made a pact to go home that night and inform our husbands that it was time to get pregnant.”

“Husband?” Quentin grabbed her hand and yanked it in front of him so he could look for a ring while keeping his eyes on the road. At least he’d forgotten about the eighteen-wheeler for now.

She wondered whether he was putting on a show or he really cared she wasn’t quite single. How delicious! But she managed to withdraw her hand. She wanted him to keep both hands on the wheel. “A few months later, Wendy was pregnant, and I was getting a divorce. My husband, Harold, got a girlfriend.”

Quentin glanced at her, then into the rearview mirror, and tapped the brakes in warning. The eighteen-wheeler backed off. He glanced at her again. He said in disbelief, “You had a husband, and he cheated on you and divorced you because he didn’t want to have a baby with you? He didn’t want to be with you, when you look like that?”

“I didn’t look like this,” Sarah explained. “This isn’t my natural hair color.”

“Really? I thought you were the love child of Nicki Minaj and Ronald McDonald.”

“Hey,” Sarah said. “I’d enter a bridge tournament if I wanted my mother’s opinion. I’m making myself vulnerable here to take your mind off driving and help you with your disabling codependence, and this is the thanks I get?”

He raked one hand back through his hair, but it got tangled in his curls. He gave up and put his hand on the steering wheel. “I’m really sorry. I’m a little tense. The story helps. Go on.”

“About the time Harold moved out, Manhattan Music started getting reports that Nine Lives was self-destructing in Brazil. Before my breakup, I would have hidden in the bathroom until some other fool was assigned to the job. But I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I could see myself becoming that childless, and now husbandless, professional forty-five-year-old. My friend Wendy and I had a college professor who wore red socks with her purple Birkenstocks and cooked for her dogs. I didn’t want to be that woman. She seemed very bitter. I couldn’t do anything about being childless and husbandless just then, but I didn’t have to devolve into a shapeless mass. So I volunteered to tackle Nine Lives.

“I’d been pretty successful looking like I did, which basically was like a marathon runner after a shower. But I’d never gone up against someone like Nine Lives. Wendy kept warning me he would eat me for lunch if I wasn’t careful. So I gave myself a makeover. As a result, Wendy tried to make me an appointment with her therapist. And Harold decided that he wanted me back.”

“Whoa,” Quentin said. She thought he was about to hit the brakes. Then she realized that he was commenting on her story. He asked, “What did you say to Harold?”

Sarah recited for Quentin the stream of epithets she’d offered Harold.

Quentin laughed and laughed, until Sarah laughed, too. He laughed so hard that he had to wipe tears from his eyes. Slowly his laughter subsided. Finally he asked her almost seriously, “Did you love him?”

“I thought I loved him,” she answered honestly, “but now I realize I didn’t. I loved being married. Or the idea of being married. I liked having someone to do stuff with and plan with. I wanted to have kids. You know? I enjoyed the partnership.”

Quentin probably couldn’t fathom such a thing. He stared through the windshield and asked the next logical question: “Are you glad you didn’t get back with him?”

Sarah sighed. “I’d been with him all through college. I thought marriage would be more exciting, but it got to be kind of a rut. And now . . . Well, I wouldn’t say I’ve been happy, but I’m definitely not in a rut.”

Quentin nodded. “And then what happened?” he asked. “What happened in Rio? You said you’re going to die at the hands of a crazed rock star. That sounds fairly serious.”

Sarah went cold despite the warm sun streaming through the windshield. Reaching down to adjust the air conditioner, she said, “Figure of speech. Enough about me. You tell me a secret. Let’s talk about what happened to you in Thailand, and why you fired your manager, and why Erin ran to Owen.”

“Let’s not,” he said.

“Why not?”

He pulled off the highway to park at an overlook, with downtown Birmingham spread out below them, skyscrapers and warehouses and the complex of university hospitals. He punched the button to open the convertible top, letting in a rush of fresh, warm air.

Then he turned to Sarah and grinned maniacally. “I can drive.”

“You can drive!” She clapped for him.

“I can drive,” he said, still smiling, “and I’m having a great time with you, and the last thing I want to do right now is to go back to Thailand. You know where I want to go? You know where I want to drive, I mean?”

“Where do you want to drive?” she asked happily.

“I want to drive back to my house, and I want you to take me for that ride you promised.”

“I won’t back out on my promise,” she said. “But we agreed from the beginning that we weren’t going to . . . ” Searching for a term, she gestured with her palms out.

He imitated her gesture. “Do it?”

“Right,” she said, relieved. “So what kind of ride are we talking about?”

“Let’s go upstairs and discuss it.”

“Okay.” She giggled in an unsophisticated manner as Quentin backed out of the overlook, without stomping the brakes this time, and drove smoothly across Birmingham. She’d acted angry the night before about Quentin asking Erin to flash him, and—well, she had been. But she’d wanted him to touch her anyway. If it hadn’t been for the prospect of watching Owen get stitches, she would have gone with him to his room then. Now she got that electric feeling again at the thought that he would drive her to his room and touch her.

And she was genuinely happy that she’d convinced him to drive. It was good for her job security that she’d broken through at least this one obstacle barring the band from healthy human relations. Moreover, it was good for her friend, Quentin. It was a hot and beautiful day.

He sped up the driveway of the mansion and skidded to a stop just shy of Erin’s Corvette. Holding Sarah’s hand, he led her into the house. She’d forgotten, and she suspected that he’d forgotten, too, that he’d cut out on a recording session for their date. The door downstairs to the studio stood open. As they came in, the band bustled up the stairs like sleepy parents after curfew.

“We had this session planned with the four of us, Q!” Erin squealed. “Where the hell have you been?”

He beamed at them. “Sarah got me to drive.”

Obviously this news had been a long time coming, because it took a few seconds of silence to sink in. Then, with the first genuine smile Sarah had ever seen on his face, Owen said, “Q, that’s great!” at the same time Erin bit out, “Sarah, you have no idea what you’re doing to us. Why would you put Quentin through that?”

Everyone watched Quentin, who gave Erin a withering look. “Stay out of it.”

Erin seemed unsure, her eyes darting from Quentin to Martin to Owen and back. But only for a moment. “I’m glad you’re driving, Q. But can’t you see that Sarah’s just shooting into trees to see what falls out? All I’ve done is hint at what happened to your mother, and you’ve gone stark white. That’s why we’ve never made you drive.”

Sarah asked Quentin, “What happened to your mother? Why wouldn’t you tell me what was going on?”

He turned on her. “And you’ve been completely honest with me.”

Sarah had just bared some of her biggest secrets to him—things she realized she should never have revealed, because now she seemed weak. She hoped the look she gave him showed him how hurt she was. But gazing into his black-green eyes, she knew he couldn’t see her pain. He wasn’t even in there.

“This is not about me,” she said quietly. “This is about you, and the fact that you left out a pertinent piece of information when I took you for a drive on the busy highway.”

“What’d you think I was going to do? Have a flashback, freak out, cross the median, and kill us both?”

“Q,” Martin said, putting a hand on Quentin’s shoulder.

Quentin shrugged Martin off violently. He turned through the open doorway and stomped down the stairwell, calling back over his shoulder, “I don’t want to talk about it, Erin. It was half my life ago.” The door to the sound booth squealed open and clicked shut.

The kitchen was silent again. Owen looked troubled, a moody Frankenstein’s monster with a row of neat stitches following the curve of his hairline. Martin looked sick. And Erin glared at Sarah, accusing and self-satisfied, defending her territory. She had managed to take a triumph for Quentin and turn it into trash.

Sarah forgot her job. She forgot Natsuko. In a wave of hatred for the chokehold all of them had on each other, and especially for the talons that Erin had in Quentin, a defensive little freshman on the high school track team stepped up and took over.

She yelled in Erin’s face, “Don’t give me that look, girlfriend. You’re the one who cheated on him. Don’t act like you give a shit about him now.”

She escaped into the garage and slammed the kitchen door as hard as she could, without her customary kiss good-bye from Quentin. She was certain she’d never get that kiss again.

Quentin looked forward to Sarah popping back in that day and startling him. She didn’t show. He downright pined for her to pop in that night. Still she didn’t show. When she didn’t pop in the following morning, he finally got the message. She was through with them. With him. Well, he wouldn’t let her get away with that. He drove to the Galleria and let himself into her hotel room.