Chapter 6 Not Long Ago
Not Long Ago
Jace was sitting in her sweats in her home office, a half-eaten bowl of pad prik king on her desk.
She was FaceTiming with her niece Livvy over Sunday dinner, filling her in on all that had gone down over the past couple of weeks.
After several minutes of monologuing interrupted by an occasional “Oh my God!” or “That sucks” from Livvy between her bites of a burrito bowl, Jace slumped back in her Aeron chair and stared into her laptop camera. “So…thoughts?”
Livvy adjusted her red-rimmed glasses. “You know that any sane person would have waited more than twenty-four hours after getting fired from one project to jump into another, even bigger project—for free—right?”
“What has sanity ever done for me before?”
Livvy giggled, and Jace smiled. Jace had instituted their weekly video calls ten years ago when Livvy was a freshman at Northwestern so she could stay in touch with her favorite niece; no disrespect to her older sister, but Kristi wasn’t much of a music fan, and Livvy appreciated that her aunt’s encyclopedic knowledge of deep-cut punk and indie music came in handy for DJing dances and dorm parties.
Much to Jace’s delight, they’d kept up the tradition post-college, even though Livvy was a full-on adult living in Chicago and working for a PR agency, with friends and hobbies and any number of other things that had to be more interesting than chatting with her aunt.
“I see it as a way to settle a karmic debt,” Jace continued, tapping a spring roll into a tiny container of peanut sauce. “Sabine has always been there for me, and it’s the least I can do for her now that she might lose her livelihood.”
“But tracking down a long-lost lover who fucking broke you? That’s beyond karma, Auntie. That’s martyrdom.”
Jace didn’t want to admit that this had crossed her mind as well.
“Can I ask you a question without you calling me an ageist millennial or some shit?” Livvy asked.
“Sure,” Jace replied, marveling at the fact that this was how her niece talked to her now.
With her straight black hair in loose braids, Livvy still looked like the twelve-year-old who had to get her mom’s permission to stay out after ten p.m. to go to a concert with Aunt Jace. “What do you want to know?”
“How old is Sabine?”
This was a topic Jace rarely contemplated.
Ever since they’d first met when they were at either end of their twenties, Sabine had invested a lot of energy into creating a visual persona that transcended age.
The magic of goth was that anyone could find their place regardless of gender, years, or body type as long as they had the patience to hunt down the appropriate garb and cosmetics.
Jace did the math. “She’s ten years older than I am, so sixty-three in June. Why?”
“Just surprised she doesn’t want to retire,” Livvy said.
“That is pretty ageist, Liv.”
“People retire at any age. It’s a fair question.”
“God, no! She loves the Artemis and wants to work there forever. She’s told me many times that running a venue is like hosting a nonstop family reunion, and she adores her family.”
Livvy spooned up some more sofritas and guac. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure this is worthwhile before you commit to doing all this work and reopening a painful part of your life.”
Jace wiped peanut sauce off her fingers with her napkin. “So this means you’ll help me find Paloma?”
“If you’re serious about finding her, you should hire a private investigator.”
“That’s a last resort,” Jace said. “I don’t want this to get weird.”
“It’s already weird!” Livvy said with a theatrical eye roll. “Besides, I do have a job, you know.”
“One that you told me was terminally boring and way beneath you.”
“That’s the definition of ‘job,’ Aunt Jace. That doesn’t mean I have time for this.”
Jace smiled craftily. “Does this mean you’re dating?”
Livvy stared at her. “Are you?”
“I asked you first.”
Seeing Livvy’s dejected expression, though, Jace felt bad for teasing her. “Shit, I’m sorry. I thought that guy in Legal was a sure thing.”
“Well, that guy had a girlfriend he didn’t want to admit to, so…” Livvy trailed off, then looked back at Jace. “Why should I help you find your ex again?”
“You’re bored. You love mystery podcasts about as much as you love indie rock music. And you’re a fan of Paloma Doralle’s.”
“Who says?”
Jace stared hard into the screen. “You’ve liked her music ever since you were five and I snuck you into a sound check.”
Livvy sighed. “You’re right. I didn’t want to be disloyal, but now that ‘Heart Fire’ is on every goddamn TikTok, I can’t avoid hearing her anymore. As much as it pains me to say it, she’s fucking amazing.”
“You could stay off TikTok.”
Livvy shuddered, horrified by the suggestion. “Side note: Why is it that so many punk and indie bands’ biggest hit is a ballad? The rest of Paloma’s catalogue is all muscular and up-tempo, and it wasn’t until she slowed shit down that she got a Top 40 hit.”
“Chicks love to slow dance?”
“Guess so.”
“Anyway, can you do this favor for your favorite aunt?”
“Only aunt,” Livvy interjected.
“And earn your place in the rock and roll history books as the woman who located the biggest enigma in twenty-first-century popular music?”
Livvy reached for a pen and an orange-covered journal, turned to a fresh page, and adjusted her glasses. “Challenge accepted.”
“Thank you,” Jace said, the tension in her shoulders easing.
“To confirm, you need me to research the whereabouts of Paloma Doralle, age fifty-three, last seen publicly at the Ed Sullivan Theater the evening of April 5, 2001.”
“Correct.”
“Is that her real name?”
“Yes. Her mother was a huge Picasso fan, and I think her dad’s family was French Canadian or something.”
“She lucked into a great stage name then,” Livvy huffed. “Where was she living when she disappeared?”
“In Detroit. With me, at the house we were renting in Woodbridge.” Jace had loved that place enough to have looked into buying it before Paloma split; she hadn’t had the heart to drive by it in twenty years.
“You don’t happen to have an old phone number for her, do you?”
“She deactivated it soon after she left.”
“Did Paloma come by the house to drop off the keys or get her stuff?”
“Nope,” Jace said. “Her brother Dustin came by a week later, but he had no idea what was hers, and I’d been too stressed out to have packed anything up, so it took forever. Then I moved to Clawson as soon as the lease was up, and that was that.”
Livvy stopped taking notes and looked straight at Jace. “That’s horrible. I can’t imagine how hard that was.”
Jace nodded, stopping short of telling Livvy that when she was moving out, she’d found a lavender bath bomb of Paloma’s in the linen closet and didn’t stop bawling for the rest of the afternoon.
Livvy set down her pen. “Are you sure you want to see this human being again?” she asked softly.
Jace sighed. “She has the ability to solve a huge problem for me—I mean, for Sabine. Next question.”
“Did Dustin ever tell you where she went?”
“He was her proxy when we dissolved our business ties but never revealed her whereabouts. They weren’t all that close; he may not have even known where she was.”
Once Jace agreed to reach out to Dustin, Livvy continued to grill her about Paloma’s hometown, old roommates, and past jobs.
When that produced little of any use, she asked if any of their mutual friends might know more; Jace assured her she’d asked every last one of them more than once, and they didn’t.
After a half hour of this, Livvy put down her pen.
“I hate to ask, but do you know for sure she’s alive? ”
Her heart froze for a moment before her brain took the wheel once more. “She has to be. It would have had to be in the news, or someone would have told me if…right?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Livvy said with a reassuring smile. “Okay, I’ll get going on this and let you know what I find out. Let me know if you hear anything from Dustin. Love you!”
“Love you, too.” The screen went dark.
Jace hated Sunday nights. By the time dinner was over, it was too late to do anything meaningful but too early to go to bed.
After taking her dishes to the kitchen, she grabbed a beer and plopped on the couch, a black leather three-seater she’d bought with her first major payout from Function Fest. She scanned Netflix for a lighthearted flick to help her downshift and maybe even prevent the insomnia she was sure was coming that evening, given the difficult week of work ahead of her.
As she searched for something frothy and British, hopefully with lots of bustles and plummy Victorian accents, the poster for Olympia, California popped up.
Frowning, she clicked on the image of Greek gods in sunglasses, which brought up the show synopsis and lists of episodes.
Clicking through the menus, she located the finale of the most recent season.
Her thumb hovered above the play button on the remote as she dared herself to find out how “Heart Fire” closed out the episode and thrust Paloma back into the public consciousness.
Instead, she set the remote down and went back into her office. After finding Dustin’s email address in her old AOL account, she opened Gmail and typed a quick message with the subject line: Please don’t delete this.
Hey, Dustin—I hope you are doing well.
I’d appreciate it if you could let Paloma know that Sabine Galanis is in dire financial straits post-pandemic.
I will be producing a benefit concert later this year to ensure the Artemis Club stays open.
Given what Sabine has meant to all the musicians who have worked with her over the years, I hope your sister will come out of retirement and perform a few songs for this great cause.
You can both reach me at the number below.
I wish you and Paloma all the best.
Jace
Before she could torture herself by editing the message or worry about what she’d actually say if Paloma contacted her, Jace hit send. Then went back to the couch, queued up an Enola Holmes flick, and watched until she fell asleep.