Chapter 20 Not Long Ago #3
“Honestly, I don’t have anyone else in mind. She’s available, she knows the material. And for all her attitude issues, she really is the best bassist I ever worked with. But if she’s not worth the hassle, I think there’s a sophomore at Stone Beach High who’s teachable.”
Jace grinned. “I’ll talk her down. Don’t worry; I’ve got this.”
Paloma knew she did. The negotiation table was Jace’s happy place, and she admired her for it. “Have you heard from Colin? I called the last number I had for him, but it was disconnected.”
“Oh, that’s because he’s a monk now,” Jace said.
Paloma wasn’t sure she heard this correctly. “Do you literally mean he’s a monk, or is he just hard to reach?”
“He is a bona fide Benedictine monk,” Jace replied.
“Sabine tried to track him down when a couple of drummers got Covid a couple of years ago, and his brother told her that living through the pandemic gave Colin a chance to sit still for the first time in years, and it was a revelation. He lives in a cloistered order in Oklahoma. Apparently, he’s quite content. ”
“Good for him,” Paloma said.
“Is there another drummer you’d like to bring in?” Jace asked.
Don’t say Kaden, she told herself.
“Let me know if you have suggestions,” she said instead.
“I dunno. It’s getting harder to find people who are willing to play for free. I’m calling in every favor I can to keep the production costs low so Sabine’s overall take is as large as possible.”
“I’m sure you’ll make it work,” she said. “You made sure your clients made oodles of money from their fundraisers. Especially that adoption agency. Wasn’t that the one Joyce used?”
Jace frowned. “Yeah.”
“You don’t sound too happy.”
“I lost them as a client a few months ago.”
“Oh no! Did they have trouble after the pandemic?”
“No, they didn’t like that I shut up an asshole megadonor at their black tie event.”
Paloma was intrigued. “What was he saying?”
“He was on stage making a lot of noise about who ‘deserves’ to have children, and according to him, it wasn’t single people or queer folks. That pissed me off on behalf of Joyce and all the other non-traditional parents I know, so I turned off his mic.”
Paloma wondered if she could segue into talking about having Kaden, damn the consequences. Instead, she said, “Sounds like you did the right thing.”
“Thanks. Someone had to.” The coffee maker dinged, and Jace went to the counter, returning with a creamer and sugar bowl set in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other. “And maybe I did it because I was trying to make up for being such a coward for so many years.”
“What do you mean?”
Jace came back to the table with her own mug.
“I knew I was a lesbian by the time I hit high school, but I was so scared to own my identity. Maybe it was because of that bully in middle school, or internalized homophobia; I don’t know.
But I look back at when we were together, and there were so many times when my fears drove me to push you away.
Not allowing us to hold hands or kiss in public.
Telling people I was your ‘business partner’ instead of your ‘girlfriend.’ That must have made you feel like I didn’t care about you. I’m sorry about that.”
The earnestness in Jace’s gaze was touching. “It wasn’t always safe for us to be out in the open,” Paloma said. “You were protecting yourself and me. It’s okay.”
“It’s more than that, though,” Jace said. “I still think about when you wanted to walk out on the Seal-Eye deal for Cutie Pie and I talked you out of it. If that happened today, I promise you I’d open the door and follow you out, right after I flipped the guy off.”
“I appreciate that.” Paloma smiled in wonder.
Vulnerability wasn’t something she’d ever associated with Jace during their relationship, and she could only imagine how much work this no-nonsense businesswoman had done to be able to open up like this.
That was sweet to see. “So you can say ‘queer’ now without flinching. I’m proud of you! ”
“Yes, I’ve matured.” Jace chuckled. “And losing half my business gave me a reason to reassess what’s important to me at this point in my life. How to live my life on purpose.”
“What have you come up with?” Paloma asked, genuinely curious.
“Not being a workaholic, for one thing.”
“By the time stamps on your texts, you have a way to go.”
“Progress is better than perfection,” Jace said with a sly smirk. “Then I thought it would involve getting back out on the dating scene—nothing serious, just for fun—but that crashed and burned pretty quickly.”
That was welcome news. “Really?”
“I don’t know if you’ve been dating lately, but surveys are required these days.”
Paloma had no idea what she was talking about. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Jace nonchalantly raised her mug to her lips. “Have you been seeing anyone?”
She didn’t mind answering. “Not for a long time, and whenever I was with someone, it didn’t last very long.”
“That’s tough.”
Paloma appreciated her sincerity. “Well, Stone Beach is a really small town, so I ran through all the good prospects pretty fast. And when you’re unwilling to talk about any part of your life that happened more than twenty years ago, it makes intimacy impossible.”
Paloma expected Jace to say something snarky, like, Well, that was your choice. Instead, she said, “I didn’t think, with all my friends and my sister and nieces, I’d still feel so lonely sometimes—a lot of the time, actually. It’s nothing like living with someone you’re in love with.”
“I know what you mean,” Paloma said. “Having that center to your life. Knowing even on your worst days, they’ll still be there.”
“Even when the truth is hard to talk about.”
“Or hard to accept.”
They held each other’s gaze, the cicadas buzzing in endless cycles, the air between them charged and intoxicating. Paloma wanted to pull Jace close, weave her fingers into Jace’s thick hair, press into her, kiss her until she moaned. And all Paloma had to do was reach out.
Then she remembered that she’d need to tell Jace about Kaden first, and that wasn’t going to happen.
Paloma looked away. The spell was broken.
Jace managed a self-conscious laugh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to turn this into a therapy session. We should get on the road soon if you plan to get home before dark. Want a travel cup for your coffee?”
Paloma pushed herself to smile. “Yes, please. Where’s your bathroom?”
“End of the hall.”
After she finished her business, Paloma was walking back to the living room when a large poster hanging in a bedroom caught her eye.
She went in to confirm her suspicions: Yes, it was the broadsheet from the Royal Albert Hall’s Millennium New Year’s Eve concert.
Along the bottom of the midnight blue design with the year 2000 spelled out in stars was a row of black-and-white stills of the performers.
Among the opera singers and titans of twentieth-century classical music were the rock and pop vocalists who were meant to represent the sound of the twenty-first: all men, all Brits…
except for Paloma Doralle. Strangely, the organizers had not wanted them to sing their own material.
Instead, they’d been asked to perform holiday songs, with Paloma being assigned a Christmas ballad, “When the Lights are Brightest.” She’d never felt so elegant as when she stood on that stage, looking out at the lush seats, the swell of a full orchestra behind her.
It was so grand compared to the grind of the concert circuit, such a bonkers fairy princess moment, she hadn’t been nervous for a second.
It had felt as natural as singing in Mrs. Morrie’s annual holiday concert, just with the queen seated in a box seat instead of the school principal sitting in a folding chair.
Jace came to stand behind her, and Paloma pointed at her photo. “One of these things is definitely not like the others.”
“Yeah, you were a better vocalist than any of the rest of them. And less drunk.”
Paloma turned to her. “I’m surprised you kept this after we broke up. If you’d have thrown it and all the other souvenirs on a pile and set them on fire, I would have completely understood.”
“I’ll admit, it’s been in storage for a long, long time,” Jace said. “But lately, I like to look at it. It represents a fantastic accomplishment of ours that I never want to forget.”
Before Paloma could respond, Jace was walking toward her front door, keys in hand.
After grabbing a couple of sandwiches at a shop near Jace’s house, they spent the afternoon driving through the streets of Detroit.
To Paloma, they looked more like a film set than the hungry and hollow-eyed city she’d left in 2001.
The cluster of sports stadiums, the renovated palatial theaters, and the high-end restaurants and hotels that studded Woodward down to Jefferson Avenue were astounding.
The train station in Corktown that had been a windowless shell of Detroit’s former glory was under construction to become a jewel of the city once more.
Even the old landmarks—Rodin’s bronze “Thinker” at the white-stepped entrance to the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Art Deco tower of the Fisher Building—seemed burnished and hopeful.
Paloma had read articles about the city’s recovery, but seeing it in person was astonishing.
When Jace asked if she wanted to drive by their former house in Woodbridge, though, Paloma declined. Some parts of her past were better kept out of sight and out of mind.
They arrived at the Artemis in late afternoon and found a parking place out front. “You ready for this?” Jace asked, putting a reassuring hand on Paloma’s shoulder.
“Is Sabine here?”
“No. She and the staff don’t arrive for a couple of hours. We’ll have the place to ourselves.”
“How is she taking the news that I’m doing the show?” Paloma asked, bracing herself for the answer.