Chapter 31
Noah
Noah went outside again, that time to take a call from Grace.
It was a shame, since he had just been getting close to a conversation with Aya.
He wondered if the foibles of their aging parents might have been enough for him to get through to her.
That stupid little ceremony! He had thought it was sweet when he was younger but had never thought it would disrupt his life quite so much.
“Winter called,” Grace said.
Noah’s accountant was clever and soft-spoken, seemingly much more conventional than the crunchy parents who had decided to name their three daughters after different seasons. At least they never had a fourth, so there was no Spring. Just Summer, Autumn, and Winter, the youngest.
“Ok-k-kay,” he said. He seemed to be entering another phase of stuttering more. What most of the people around him didn’t understand was that his likelihood of stuttering rose and fell, changing day by day and week by week, often not at all tied to whether he was nervous.
But he was nervous. Calls from Winter were never a good thing. She lived by her spreadsheets, so it wasn’t great news if she had picked up the phone.
“She’s not thrilled, Noah,” said Grace. “Why didn’t you tell me that the festival was supposed to make up such a big part of your living expenses?”
Noah ran a hand through his hair. He would have loved to say he was staying with his parents to help them out. In fact, that was what he had been saying, especially when his California friends teased him for snoozing in what used to be the bedroom he shared with Nobu.
But the truth was that he couldn’t have afforded lodging, even if the festival and the Pilgrimage hadn’t driven up demand.
His credit card bills were mounting, and a good deal of what he expected to make from his albums had already gone into the festival.
It would have been okay if they hadn’t had to move the location at the last minute, but as things stood, he was going to be very strapped for cash in the near future.
And if they had a lot of cancellations, he would be shouldering a serious debt.
“It’s fine,” Noah said. He never thought he would have ended up in that situation.
Before he’d become a well-known artist, he thought his album sales would be more than enough to ensure a comfortable lifestyle.
It turned out that unless you were the most famous musician in the country, that was never going to be enough.
After he gave everyone involved their cut, he had enough to live modestly in LA, and he was always looking for ads and sponsorships to make up the difference.
But they often didn’t like his requirements, which included never speaking more than one word.
Just the thought of recording an ad with his stutter made Noah both anxious and angry.
“It’ll be fine,” he said again. “A lot of successful businesses end up being in the red for the first few years.”
Silence followed. “Noah, you pay me well,” said Grace. “But I hope it’s not at the expense of your ability to eat.”
“My parents will feed me,” Noah said. What was left unspoken was that he really hoped they would keep housing him, too, as not having to pay as many bills for his primary residence was helping him stay afloat.
The mortgage on his house in LA was insane, in part because he had felt compelled to go to a neighborhood that was “quiet” for celebrities.
That part of the plan had worked, but it also meant he was paying for way more square footage than he needed.
And though he had gotten a stylish electric car and a high-end espresso machine, he felt so self-conscious about his income that he found himself hiding half his possessions every time his parents visited.
“Well,” Grace said, reading his silence, “how’s the negotiation going?”
“Not. Aya won’t listen to anything I say. She’s gotten so irritated at me for leaving Love Hollow that she’s being completely unreasonable, which is crazy, because she left first.”
Again, silence came from the other end of the line.
“Well, do what you can,” said Grace. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It occurred to him after she ended the call that he hadn’t told her he was stranded. Maybe since the darkness was gathering, she had figured that out herself.