In Stereo Where Available (27 page)

“My ride? You mean Madison?”

“I guess.”

I stepped into my high heels and opened the front door. Outside was a black stretch limo with little purple lights running around the bottom.

“Holy cow,” I said.

“God, I’m jealous. I wonder if there’s a bar in there.”

I narrowed my eyes at him as I slipped my arms into the coat he was holding up for me. “Jerry.”

“What? I’m sure they’ve got Coke and stuff, too. That’s all I meant.”

“Yeah.” I kissed him on the mouth, forgetting about my lipstick. “I’ll be home around midnight, I guess. I don’t know. I’ll call you if it’s later.”

“Okay. Have fun.” He leaned his shoulder against the wall, peeking out through the curtains again and sighing. “I think I’m going to cry.”

As soon as the driver opened the limo door for me, Madison screamed and pulled me in by my hand.

“Look at you!” she shrieked.

“Look at me? Look at you!” She looked incredibly good, like she’d just stepped out of one of those magazines I’d been seeing her in for months. She looked like a star. It was a little intimidating, and at the same time, utterly bizarre. She was my identical twin, but I didn’t look anything like
that
.

“I’m talking about your
hand
, goober. How could you just go off and get engaged since I left?” She held my hand up toward the center light, admiring my ring—a simple gold band with a very pretty, modestly sized diamond at the center. Her own engagement ring was a dazzling white-gold creation that covered the entire bottom joint of her finger. The diamond in mine was the size of one of the twelve or so diamonds set into the band of hers, surrounding the three big ones in the middle. I had already seen it half a dozen times in magazine pictures, circled or in close-up, along with all its vital statistics.

“Well, you did the same thing, you know,” I pointed out.

“But I did it for a
reason
.”

I giggled. “Yeah, you’re right. I just did it for the money.”

“Oh, shut up. You know
Playboys
offering me five figures?”

“Playboy?
For what?”

“To pose. Ka
-ching
. We haven’t gotten back to them yet.”

“Like, naked?”

“No, in a chicken suit, doing the Macarena. Of
course
naked. Good thing I had that boob job. I’d hate to have to go on camera looking like—well,
you
know.”

I dug my heels into the carpet, trying to keep from sliding around on the leather seat. “Are you seriously going to do it? I mean, doesn’t Rhett mind?”

“You mean Colby? I don’t know, I haven’t asked him. The offer just came in last week. I can’t imagine he’d care, though. I don’t know. Why?”

“Well, it just seems like the sort of thing you ought to—I mean, Jerry gets all alpha male if I even get a phone call from another guy. Sheesh, Mom is going to
kill
you. Say no, Mad-die. She chewed me out about your video thingy while you were on the show.”

“We’ll see. They’re talking to Marci, too, so that could change things around a little. And if they try to get a shoot with both of us together, then—”

“Oh, God. Maddie,
don’t
. Mom will
die
. And that’s my body, too, you know.”

“It is not. Please.”

“Yes, it is. We’ve got exactly the same DNA. That’d be like
me
posing naked in a magazine. It’d be embarrassing. Sheesh, they should at least offer me a cut. Like how you have to pay royalties for sampling somebody else’s song.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to be twins with you, you know.” She reached into the bar and pulled out a couple of glasses. “You want anything?”

It turned out that Madison and her manager, a breath-takingly gorgeous guy with blinding-white teeth and short dreadlocks whose name was Zane, were taking me out to a club in downtown DC. Over a tiny door with a line about three blocks long trailing out of it, the club’s name was set in understated white typeset letters, all lowercase with a period after them. It said, “angst.”

“Well, I guess it’s better than ‘Götterdämmerung,’“ I said.

Madison narrowed her eyes at me. “
What?
”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t say stuff like that in here, okay? We’re on the list. I’d like to stay on the list.” She got out of the limo with a stylish little swing of her legs, smoothing her skirt down simultaneously. I tried to do the same thing.

Inside the club, they quickly whisked us through a black door that blended into the wall and into a room draped in crushed red velvet curtains and throbbing with remixed Madonna songs. A guy with spiky black hair and an eyebrow piercing sat us down at a little white-marble-topped table and set down an architecturally arranged sushi roll between the three of us.

“Wow,” I said. “That looks yummy.”

Madison rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dorky, Fee.”

“It’s a compliment, Maddie. Anyway, I’m not the one who ate boiled okra with my bare hands.”

“Oh, shut up. Don’t make me bring up that time I dared you to eat a Jerky Treat and you actually—”

“Oh, my God.” I ducked behind Madison’s head and then peeked out past her hair. “Is that C. J. Anastasio?”

She turned around with careless unconcern and glanced at the guy seated at a table just on the other side of the dance floor. “Probably. Looks just like him.”

“Seriously? You really think that’s him?”

“Well, this
is
the VIP room. Hey.” She tugged at our waiter’s sleeve as he set our drinks down. “That’s C. J. Anastasio, right?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Oh, wow.” I wrapped my fingers around my water-beaded Long Island Iced Tea glass. “I wonder if he’d give me his autograph.”

“Why don’t we just invite him over? He doesn’t look like he’s with anybody.”

I gasped. “No way. No, no, no. I’d wet my pants.”

“Oh, come on, Fee. Live a little.” She nudged Zane. “Is it okay?”

He shrugged. “Sure. Want me to go get him?”

“No,” I said.

“Yeah, ask him over,” said Madison.

I watched in slow horror as Zane meandered his way across the half-empty dance floor, shook C. J. Anastasio’s hand, and patted him on the back as he stood up and started making his way over toward our table. He looked pretty much the same as when I had been in love with him, except his face was a little rounder and, of course, he was a lot older. He still wore his blond hair combed straight back, spiking out a little in the front. I was starting to sweat in places I hadn’t realized I had sweat glands.

“I’m absolutely going to kill you for this,” I told Madison. “I’m going to drive straight back to Mom’s and put all of your old Beanie Babies into a bag and set it on fire. Even Peanut. Even Seaweed, the one that cost you four hundred dollars. And then I’m going to take that picture of you in your Friendship Hat and those orange shorts at Girl Scout Camp and send it to
People
magazine with a note that—”

“Hi, I’m C. J.”

Madison smiled and shook his hand while I sloppily wiped mine off on my little black miniskirt. “I’m Grace,” she said. “And this is my sister, Phoebe.”

“Hi,” I said. I could feel the sweat on my hand squelching against his palm. He sat down in the seat next to mine, and my toes curled so hard in my shoes that it felt as though someone was driving finishing nails into my toenails.

“So, have you ladies been here long?” he asked.

“Just got here, actually,” said Madison, raising her mostly full martini glass. “How about you?”

“I just dropped in. I’m staying at the Omni next door. I’m probably heading back there in a few minutes. Not much going on here tonight.”

“It’s early yet,” said Zane.

C. J. shrugged. “I’m not really somebody who waits for stuff to happen. It’s happening or it’s not, you know?”

Zane nodded, playing with a matchbook. “I hear you.”

“Would you mind giving Phoebe your autograph before you go?” Madison asked. “She’s a big fan of yours.”

C. J. grinned and turned to me. I wrapped my ankles around my chair leg and each other like one of my kids double-knotting their shoelaces. “You are, huh?”

“Yes,” I squeaked.

“What would you like me to autograph?”

My eyes darted around wildly on the little table with the untouched sushi roll in the middle. There was nothing to write on or with, and all I had in my purse were my license and keys, a tube of lipstick, my cell phone, a box of Altoids, and an O.B. tampon.

“You need a pen?” Madison asked.

“Yeah. And some paper,” I whispered.

“Not necessarily,” C. J. said, nudging me with his elbow and nearly knocking me off the chair. “Sometimes girls like me to do a little temporary tattoo.”

Madison laughed, taking a pen and paper from her purse and plunking them down on the table. “Go for it, Fee. Your shirt’s stretchy enough.”

“That’s okay,” I said. I bit on the inside of my bottom lip until I winced and tasted blood.

C. J. scrawled his name left-handed in big swirling letters and started to hand it to me, then pulled it back just as I reached for it. “So. What’s your favorite NYC Boyz song?”

I wondered if it was a trick question. It was a little embarrassing, after all, to put my bubblegum music tastes into the present tense. “‘Dancin’ after Midnight,’ I guess. It reminds me of middle school.”

He grinned at me again and handed me the autograph. “Party girl, huh?”

“Well, I also liked—
like
—’Only the Memories.’ They played that one at our eighth-grade dance.”

“You
are
a fan, aren’t you?” He twisted his mouth off to the side, like he was sizing me up. “Tell you what. Why don’t you come on upstairs and hang out a while? Unless you’ve got other plans, of course.”

“We’ve, uh—” I widened my eyes across the table at Madison, pleadingly.

“Got plenty of time,” she finished, smiling. She zipped her little pink baguette purse back up and tucked it under her arm. “Let’s go.”

C. J. Anastasio’s hotel room was a weird, loftlike space done up in chrome, glass, and concrete, with an orange wall here and there. It was at least twice as big as the apartment I’d shared with Lauren. As soon as I walked in, I could hear Jerry’s laughter in my mind, his giggly doubled-over joy when they did a reveal on
Trading Spaces
and led the homeowners into a completely hideous new room. Madison, on the other hand, smiled and gave a happy little shrug of her shoulders, as though she’d just taken a breath of fresh spring air.

“What a fantastic room!” she enthused.

“It’s very nice,” I lied.

“Come on over to the entertainment room,” C. J. said. He was already back at the built-in bar, which looked like someone had put an Airstream trailer through a tree-shredding machine and bolted it to the floor. “Anybody want anything?”

“I’ll have a Cosmopolitan,” said Madison. “What do you want, Fee? Another Long Island Iced Tea?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Have a seat,” said C. J. Madison perched on the edge of a metal chair; I sat down on a puffy orange sofa and felt it half-collapse beneath me like the air coming out of a balloon. Zane wandered around the room, inspecting the décor.

“Pretty cool collection you’ve got here,” he called. He was standing in front of a glass cabinet filled with lunch boxes, blister-packed toys, folded T-shirts, and trophies.

“Yeah, I take that everywhere I go.” C. J. grinned and brought our drinks over to us, then plopped down next to me on the sofa with an icy amber-colored drink in his hand. “I was so psyched when I got my first action figure. It looks like me, don’t you think?”

“Looks like you.”

“My favorite’s the twelve-inch poseable one. The outfit they put me in is totally fly. And it sold better than Derek’s.” He pointed both index fingers at Zane and danced them up and down a little. “Who’s your daddy, D-man?”

Zane smirked. “That’s cool.”

C. J. pulled himself off the sofa and tapped the “on” button for the flat-screen TV. “Say, Phoebe, you ever seen the video for ‘Pink Corsage’?”

“I didn’t think there was one.”

“Only released in Japan.” He winked at me. “Wanna see it?”

I smiled. “Sure.”

He put a DVD in the player. The blue screen of the TV flicked over to all five of the NYC Boyz dancing around on a set that looked like a high-school gym with better lighting. Cut in between the dancing scenes were scenes of Derek kissing a blond girl in a prom dress, her bangs done up in a sticky haze of Aqua Net.

“What do you think?” asked C. J.

“It’s—interesting. Nostalgic.” I laughed. “I can’t believe that hair. How come they didn’t release the video over here?”

“I don’t know. Some legal thing. It went to number two in Japan on the MTV charts.”

Zane’s phone started chirping across the room, where he was standing examining a painting that looked like an old drop cloth someone had mistaken for an original Jackson Pollack.

“So, what’s Derek doing these days?” asked Madison.

“He’s got a ranch out in Mendocino. Last I heard he was writing a memoir about his experiences in rehab.”