Chapter 14 Not Long Ago
Not Long Ago
Paloma stared at the water from her back deck, goose bumps rising on her arms as the breeze came in from the lake.
The clouds had rolled in, preventing the sun from peeking out and warming the late morning chill.
The coffee in her stoneware mug had gone cold.
With only about ten minutes to go till noon, she felt stuck in place.
After a lifetime of huge mistakes, had she just made another one by reaching out to Jace?
When Nolan let her know that Jace wanted to pitch a concert opportunity, for a split second it had seemed like old times.
Back when she and Jace lived in that cute little house in Woodbridge, Paloma could have been doing anything—wrestling with a lyric, cooking dinner, trying a new yoga routine on a mat in the backyard—when Jace would interrupt her, eyes dancing, rocking up and down on her toes.
“You won’t believe where you’ll be playing next!
” she’d announce. At first, it was like she was setting up a bad joke.
Since Jace would sign on for any gig that paid enough to cover the gas in order for Paloma to get exposure, they’d ended up in some very unglamorous locations, from the Plumbers Union Hall in Toledo to the Elks Club in Paw Paw.
After Cutie Pie started to gain traction, the opportunities Jace negotiated became pretty amazing: “The Hideout in Chicago!” “Two nights at the Roseland-fucking-Ballroom in New York!” or “Holy shit, I just got off the phone with the producer of the Millennium New Year’s Eve Concert—they want you to play the Royal Albert Hall in London!
And they’ll pay for the flights and everything! ”
The current situation was radically different, of course.
It had been more than two decades since Paloma had done a high-profile public performance and even longer since she’d enjoyed doing one.
The concert would be in Detroit, a city she’d barely recognize, since it had practically been torn down and reassembled since she’d last set foot there.
It was at the Artemis Club, where she’d played so often with so many different configurations of musicians that she had trouble remembering which memory applied to what show.
And Jace was asking, not telling, her to do this show, not because it was a step forward in Paloma’s career but because it was going to help preserve a part of her past.
Their past. Which by now was long in the past.
Paloma heard her front door swing open. “Hello?”
“Hey!” Turning, Paloma saw Bobbie step into the kitchen and wave. “Ooh, those smell delicious. Mind if I have a scone?”
“Help yourself.”
Carrying her pastry in a paper towel, Bobbie came out to the deck and plopped into an Adirondack chair.
She was wearing her usual outfit of a long-sleeved T-shirt, fleece jacket, khaki Bermuda shorts, and ancient Birkenstock clogs.
Twenty-five years into her retirement, and twenty-two years after Paloma became her next-door neighbor, she had no compunction about dropping by any time she felt like it and saying whatever was on her mind once she arrived.
“What’s Bud up to this morning?” Paloma asked, downing the last of her cold coffee.
“He’s meeting the guys for lunch over at the Cherry Mill, which ought to keep him out of the house long enough for me to vacuum the living room, thank God.
There’s a ring of potato chip crumbs around his La-Z-Boy.
” She tore off a corner of her scone and had it halfway to her mouth before asking, “Has she called?”
“Not yet.”
Bobbie’s brows arched beneath her freshly permed white bangs. “Is that what you’re going to wear?”
Paloma looked down at her ancient black tee and buffalo-check flannel shirt. “Why?”
“Don’t you want to show her how well you’ve been doing since you saw her last instead of looking like a bum?”
Adjusting her faded blue baseball cap with the Visit the Great Lakes: No Salt, No Sharks, No Problems! graphic, Paloma smirked. “This is going to be a phone call. It doesn’t matter what I look like.”
Bobbie chuckled. “She might FaceTime you. She’s got to be curious…almost as curious as you.”
Paloma’s eyes went wide. “Shit. You’re right.”
She rushed into the house and nearly crashed into her acoustic guitar stand on her way to her bedroom.
She cast off her cap, stripped off her shirts, and threw on a cream-colored cotton fisherman’s sweater that made her look casually beachy while masking the belly she’d acquired thanks to the one-two punch of quarantine and menopause.
Checking herself in the mirror, she fluffed her auburn bob and put on a pair of gold hoop earrings.
She didn’t have time for full makeup—she barely remembered how to put it on these days anyway—so she squirted some tinted moisturizer into her palm and worked it into her face, hoping it would ease the lines around her eyes and the parentheses framing her mouth.
She grinned to make sure she didn’t have any bits of blueberry stuck in her teeth, swept on some ultra-moisture lip balm that smelled faintly of honey, and dashed back to the deck to grab her phone. It was 11:59. One minute to spare.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. She stared at it, frozen.
“FaceTime?” Bobbie asked, sounding smug.
Paloma came to. “Yeah.”
“Told ya.” Bobbie chuckled as Paloma dashed back into the house.
Settling into her office chair, she swiveled so her shelves of vinyl records would be in the background. She held the phone slightly above her so her neck looked its best then answered the call. “Hello, Jace.”
“Hey there.”
Immediately, Paloma tried to absorb everything she was seeing and hearing.
Jace’s face was more angular than she remembered.
She hadn’t dyed her hair, and her salt-and-pepper shag was as wavy and thick as ever.
She looked even more intelligent now that she was wearing glasses, and her voice sounded a couple of shades darker than it used to.
She must have been doing well financially, since she was sitting in a well-appointed professional office wearing a periwinkle chambray shirt that was expensive but effortless.
She looked good—guarded, but good. Paloma hoped Jace thought the same looking at her.
“This is weird,” Paloma said.
Jace nodded. “Exceptionally weird. You look great.”
She recalled how much Jace hated small talk, so she probably meant what she said, which was satisfying and surprising.
“So do you.” She was about to ask, “How are you doing?” but didn’t.
If Jace was doing badly, Paloma would assume that was her fault.
And if she was doing just fine, it was in spite of what Paloma did to her. No upside either way.
Since that fateful day in 2001, Paloma had wondered what she’d say if she ever saw Jace again.
During the first weeks and months, she wouldn’t have said anything; her fight-or-flight response would have kicked in, and Paloma would have literally run away, again, to avoid explaining her actions.
A couple of years after she’d left, she was prepared to be curt: “I have nothing to say to you, and what’s done is done. ”
But over the years, as much as Paloma worried about what might happen if Jace ever confronted her, what came to mind more often was the warmth of their past. She found herself having imaginary conversations with Jace when she heard a song playing in a store that caught her ear or saw a news item about changes to the Detroit skyline.
When loneliness crept in during the winter while the beach was deserted and the lake was a frozen slab, she’d replay times when she’d share a song she’d written only for Jace to hear, sparking a movie-star smile and a hug that made her feel cherished.
When she couldn’t sleep at night, her mind inevitably returned to when they were young and unafraid together, chasing across the country not knowing what would happen next, stealing kisses at every opportunity, and letting their hands and mouths roam at the end of a long day.
And there were other times when she’d be driving home from a date that didn’t end well and find herself yelling at Jace in her mind: “Thanks for setting the bar so goddamned high!”
Jace cleared her throat, snapping Paloma back to the present; she realized neither of them had spoken for several moments. Jace looked off camera before squaring her shoulders and adopting a professional demeanor. “Well,” she said, “let me tell you about the benefit concert.”
Over the next couple of minutes, Jace laid out the situation: Sabine needed an infusion of cash to keep the club open, a lot of their old friends had expressed interest in participating, Jerome (that shitty bassist?
Unbelievable…) was committed to shooting a documentary of the concert and the history of the Artemis, and so on.
The details blurred together as Paloma focused on watching Jace speak.
She still had that distinctive cadence to her delivery, like the shuffle groove of a snare played with brushes.
She still talked with her hands, and Paloma noticed she was wearing those chunky silver rings she’d bought for her in LA to commemorate signing with Seal-Eye.
Her flawless Wonder Woman skin was showing some spots and lines around her startlingly blue eyes: evidence of her being in her fifties. So much the same, so much not.
“That’s about it,” Jace said at last. “Any questions?”
The novelty of seeing her jilted lover, and her amazement that Jace wasn’t screaming at her for walking out, was starting to recede.
Jace had always been able to put her emotions in a box and stick to business.
Over the years, Paloma had finally learned to do the same.
“If all those musicians are already committed to play, why do you need me?” she asked.
“For a lot of them, their participation hinges on whether or not you agree to appear.”