Here I Go Again: A Novel (23 page)

Actually . . . I could probably brush up on my SEO knowledge before everyone gets here. I have a cursory understanding of it from my previous lifetime, but probably not enough to merit the fee they’re paying us. I pull up the video link and press
PLAY
.

Nothing happens, save for an endless loop of buffering.

Argh!

I thought the tech guy fixed the stupid thing!

You know what? Screw it. I realize the company’s having some minor cash-flow issues right now, but I’m the CEO (or am I the president?) (note to self: Check), and if I need a new laptop, then I’m buying one for myself. I probably have someone who does my purchasing around here, but I don’t have the desire to figure out who that might be. I’m stopping at Best Buy the next chance I have.

I’m already in no mood for shenanigans when I arrive in the conference room. ChaCha’s manager and attorney are in the hallway taking calls and I saw her father head toward the bathroom. Apparently these gentlemen are the glue that keeps the whole crew from going all Jerry Springer, for when I step into the room, shenanigans await. ChaCha’s lying on the table while Seraphina Tarzans from the light fixtures and steps on her back. Tawny’s with them but she’s not paying attention, as she’s preoccupied shoving my tiny espresso mugs from the buffet into her bag.

What the fruck?

I grab a chair at the head of the table. “Hello, Tawny,” I announce. “I see you’ve helped yourself to the coffee . . . cups.”

Tawny seems awfully pleased with herself. “Yeah! They’re the perfect size to do shots without using your hands. See? Your mouth goes right around them.” She clasps her hands behind her back and then, like Deva with so many corn dogs, she bends over to demonstrate.

That’s when Nicole enters.

I beam at her. “Good news, Nicole! Our cups are the perfect size for doing shots.”

Nicole pinches me as she passes, as if to tell me to cut it out. Oh, this is rich—the client’s giving our glassware oral and
I’m
the one who’s out of line? While we wait for the adults to join us, I pretend to look busy with my BlackBerry. I have a message from Jean in accounting.

Delete.

Nicole engages in small talk with the moron on the table and her posse while I make fists and imagine punching all of them.

“What happened to your back, ChaCha?” Nicole asks in a tone that indicates she’s sincerely concerned about ChaCha’s welfare. If so, that would make her the one person in this room who actually is. I glower at Tawny, who’s now pilfering our entire assortment of LUNA bars and Bavarian pretzels.

“I had, like, a rilly, rilly bad injury and stuff,” ChaCha replies.

“Ah,” Nicole replies. “New choreography? I was a dancer and I know how hard it can be on your body with the repetition of learning a new move. One summer at cheerleading camp we spent a day practicing cradle catches for basket tosses and I couldn’t lift my arms for a week. Melissa over there had to help me brush my hair and teeth!”

I can’t help but grin at this shared memory. That was the summer after our freshman year, when we were still at LT South. Our high school was divided into two campuses—one for the freshmen and sophomores and one for the juniors and seniors. At South, the clique lines hadn’t yet been drawn and everyone was still friends with everyone, because we’d all grown up playing Barbies and army and freeze tag together. Membership in our club had one requirement: living geographically adjacent. The Belles didn’t even form into a unit until we all hit the North campus. In retrospect, those days at South were simple, happy times and—

“The doctor said she got hurt from texting,” Tawny volunteers.

Oh, my God, who is parenting this child?

“I’m so sorry!” Nicole gushes. “How does that happen?”

Tawny shakes her head, yet her big blond bombshell of a hairdo moves entirely in unison with itself. “Well, Bobby ’n’ me checked her phone and she sends something like four hundred texts a day. I was all, ‘Keep it up, kid! You’re gonna get the Arthur-itis.’”

“Then you took her phone away, of course,” I suggest.

Tawny’s perplexed, like I just asked her to name the square root of pi to the tenth decimal. “Why’d we do that?”

“No one’s touching my frucking phone,” ChaCha declares with her face pressed into the table and her arms folded up underneath her chest.

“You would die!” Seraphina adds. She braces herself by holding on to the track lighting as she traverses ChaCha’s legs. I nervously eye the fixture. I can’t imagine they’re installed to handle any weight. They creak, but for now, fortunately, they’re staying put.

ChaCha snorts. “I know, right? Like, if I can’t tweet and shit? Then how are my fans going to know what I’m wearing and eating and when I poop?”

I’m about to interject when I notice that Nicole’s giving me the mother of all stink-eyes. Okay, fine. Let your not-stepdaughter get the Arthur-itis. I don’t care.

Nicole tents her hands and rests her chin on them so she can gaze directly into ChaCha’s face. “Sounds like this one has an excellent grasp of the importance of engaging in social media.”

“Um,
duh
,” ChaCha huffs. “Justin Bieber follows me. Actually, gimme my phone right now. I’ma DM him a picture of this!”

Tawny reaches into ChaCha’s bag, which I now realize is a Birkin.

Of course it is.

Of course it frucking is.

“One blingy ringy-dingy, baby gurl,” Tawny sings, sliding the phone down the length of the table, leaving many, many scratches in the fine wood.

I’m really, really trying not to come across as aggravated but does no one else consider this whole table-walk thing a problem? Also, those lights aren’t equipped to handle Slutty Spice yanking on them.

I say, “ChaCha, no one’s discounting the importance of building your brand via digital platform. But it stands to reason that if you’re injured, perhaps you could temporarily turn your texting and tweeting duties over to someone else, say, Seraphina.”

“If she’s texting for me, then how would she text for herself?” ChaCha asks.

That’s it. I officially give up.

“You good?” Seraphina asks, hopping off ChaCha’s back with a dismount that involves her supporting her entire body weight on the fixture. I hear an ominous creak. Seraphina then sits cross-legged and sockless on the table. ChaCha rights herself and joins her. Every time ChaCha moves, her vertebrae make the sound of microwave popcorn. I try not to wince. (I fail.)

“There’re plenty of open chairs if you’d be more comfortable there,” I offer, but no one listens.

“What kind of treatment plan are you following for your back?” Nicole asks.

“Doctor said he wanted me to do some physical therapy bullshit and he wouldn’t give me any drugs. Then Seraphina was all, ‘If I, like, walk on your back, you’ll be better,’ so that’s whassup. Still hurts, though.”

“You don’t say,” I interject. “That’s so funny. Personally, I, too, have always found my swagger coach to be more skilled at providing treatment than an accredited medical professional.”

Nicole, your foot had better have just connected with my knee by accident.

Shortly, mercifully, the men join us and the meeting officially begins. We’re about two minutes into Nicole’s explanation of real-time searching when we hear a creak in the ceiling, which is immediately followed by the shriek of metal pulling apart, and then the entire string of track lights comes crashing onto the conference room table inches away from Seraphina and ChaCha.

To say that chaos ensues would be an insult to the very nature of chaos. I’m talking a shit storm of such proportion that it makes disasters such as the
Titanic
sinking, the
Hindenburg
crashing, and all ten plagues of Egypt seem like a jolly old spin around the maypole.

Despite having not been touched in any way, shape, or form by the falling fixture, ChaCha screams about how we’ve broken her back and she’s hustled out the door amid multiple promises of pending litigation.

While Nicole coordinates conference room cleanup, I excuse myself to head to my office, as I should probably prospect for new clients sooner rather than later.

I boot up my computer to discover no less than forty thousand poorly spelled, profoundly indignant tweets about how MCPR almost murdered a national treasure.

I should probably track down whoever handles crisis management around here.

But first I need to buy a new laptop, as it would appear that I’ve just thrown this one against my office door.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Strange Fascination,
Fascinating Me

I’m pawing through Best Buy’s (frankly pathetic) metal CD offerings when a voice behind me says, “Lissy? Lissy Ryder?”

I turn around to find someone clad in a cornflower blue polo shirt and rumpled khakis. The guy seems to be about my age, and from what I understand, no one’s called me that name in years, which is a crying shame. Why did future me stop using it? Melissa Connor is so commonplace, but Lissy Ryder? There’s a certain panache and musicality to that name. Melissa Connor is your ophthalmologist or your neighbor or the name after yours on the phone tree, but Lissy Ryder is someone special. Melissa Connor returns her library books on time, whereas Lissy Ryder’s too busy living it up to read. Melissa Connor remembers to recycle all the bottles Lissy Ryder emptied. Melissa Connor can do your taxes, but Lissy Ryder? She can rock your world.

Anyway, by this person’s knowing me as Lissy, my assumption is that this is an LT alum. (Lion pride!) His outfit says,
I work here
, but the rest of him says,
Mom lets my band rehearse in her garage.
His long, wavy hair is held back with a leather thong (not the underpants kind), and his tattoos, while both graphic and abundant, are strictly amateur. Each finger is wrapped in a silver ring, some shaped like skulls and some like pentagrams, and his wrists are stacked with all manner of woven, studded leather bracelets. His forked beard is an homage to either Scott Ian of Anthrax or James Hetfield of Metallica. (Possibly both.)

I’m trying to place his face. He’s familiar and yet he’s not. LT didn’t have any rockers like this; trust me, I’d have made it my business to know them. But this guy seems tickled to see me and I appreciate that. Between my dad’s big news and the hit my professional liability insurance is about to take, I could stand a little positive interaction. I muster as much fake enthusiasm as I can. “Hey! Yeah, it’s . . . you! It’s been too long!”

He claps me lightly on the shoulder, then throws the horns. “Right? Lissy! Lissy ‘Rock Star’ Ryder!”

Do you see what I mean? He gets it. Lissy Ryder is a patently stupendous name.

He eyes me appreciatively. Again, see? This is the kind of difference adding a splash of hot pink can do for someone’s outfit. “Serendipitous to run into you, girl! I haven’t seen you since graduation! What dirty business have you been up to?”

Okay, definitely a Lion. But which one? Even though we were in a class of almost a thousand, everyone still knew everyone, which is both the privilege and the curse of living in suburbia.

I rattle off the
Reader’s Digest
condensed version of my life and he’s very excited when I mention that I’m a music publicist.

His whole face lights up. “No way! I’m a musician!” He looks over his shoulder all conspiratorially. “Best Buy is just a day job to pay the bills and I’m out of here the minute things break for me.”

“How long have you worked here?” I ask.

“Seven years. But I’m in a Metallica tribute band called the Metallicats. Got a regular gig at Durty Nellie’s in Palatine on Tuesday nights—hey, you should come and check us out! We do a version of ‘Enter Sandman’ that fuckin’ wails.
Rock!
” To demonstrate, he launches into a rather extensive air guitar solo.

Yeah, there’s a hundred percent probability that I’m never going to Palatine for any reason, but I don’t want to sound snotty, so I say, “That sounds great, um . . .”

“It’s Steve,” he supplies. “Steve Ramey. Or Steeeeeve-o, like the rest of the band calls me. Wow, Lissy Ryder.”

“In the flesh.” I give him a little curtsy.

“Funny seeing you after all this time. I mean, since you changed my life.”

I already don’t like the sound of this.

“Yeah, man. I was such a fuckin’ tool in high school. ‘Oh, look at me; I’m in the orchestra wearing my gay tuxedo shirt!’ But then . . .”

He keeps talking while I process this information. Wait, Steve Ramey! Of course! The guy who couldn’t come to the reunion because he was on tour with Maroon 5! Steve—I mean
Steve-o
—was the classically trained pianist who went on to be a huge studio musician in L.A. He’s laid tracks with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Christina Aguilera. The general public may not know his name, but they’ve certainly heard his melodies.

Except that he’s standing here in a Best Buy shirt, so . . .

“. . . and that’s when I gave up the piano for the ax. Best decision I ever made. Come on, the lead guitar gets exponentially more mad naked ass than the keyboard player. If you hadn’t educated me on
real
music, who knows where I’d be?”

Sweet child o’ mine, I know where you’d be . . . famous in your field, well paid for doing what you love, and mad naked ass-deep in Adam Levine’s castoffs.

We exchange a few more pleasantries and I promise Steve-o I’ll see what I might be able to do for him and the Metallicats. I give him my business card (noting that I’m president
and
CEO) and he throws me the horns again.

“Sleep with one eye open, Lissy, girl!”

“You’ve got it, Steve-o.” As I head back to the computer section, I hear him attempting to talk a tween out of a Taylor Swift album in favor of Pantera.

I buy the first laptop that catches my eye and I drive home, so lost in thought I almost miss the turn to my street.

My mind is racing with possibilities, none of them good.
Why
does this keep happening? First Nicole, then Amy Childs, now Steve-o? Who else has gone precariously off-track due to my ripples? I mean, Steve-o seems content hustling CDs at Best Buy and playing hard rock in tiny venues, but if he knew where he could have been, he’d probably want to kill self-comma-others.