Some Kind of Miracle (23 page)

“So you got what you wanted,” he said, and Dahlia’s eyes tested his for any trace of malice in that statement, but there was none.

“I got much more than I bargained for,” she said.

“Because you’re responsible for her care now?”

“Not really. She’s pretty independent. I made her go to a doctor who got her on a regimen of new meds.
That’s all. I just make sure she takes them. No big deal.”

Seth poured the water into the well of the coffeemaker as he smiled at Dahlia and clucked his tongue. “Still can’t admit there’s a soft part of you hidden under all that tough bullshit, can you?” he asked.

“Maybe a speck,” she said, fighting her own smile and turning to get down some mugs from a kitchen cabinet. She could feel that Seth had moved precariously near her now, and when she turned again she was facing him, close enough to smell his chocolate-chip-cookie deliciousness.

“I miss you,” he said. “God knows why, you crabby little bitch, but I do.”

Dahlia loved the twinkle in his eye when he said that, and she put her arms around his neck as the dissonant sound of “Chopsticks” rose from the living room. Lolly had her part down perfectly by now, and Sunny was improvising an elaborate duet around the childlike banging. The sound was lighthearted and bright, and Dahlia was sure that through the kitchen window she could hear Rose, the errant squirrel, chirping along to the rhythm. The music was so loud that, as Seth kissed her, she wasn’t sure whether she actually heard the phone ringing or not, and she hated to move her mouth from his kiss that was so warm and sweet.

“Better get that,” he whispered, breaking the kiss.

“Probably a neighbor who doesn’t like the sound of ‘Chopsticks,’ she said, kissing him again.

“Want me to get it?” he asked.

“Sure, but tell them I’m not home,” Dahlia said as Seth grabbed the receiver.

“Hello,” he said, holding a finger in the other ear to block out the pounding sound of “Chopsticks.” “Yes, she is. May I say who’s calling?” Then he looked at Dahlia. “Someone named Danny Kroll calling from New York.”

Dahlia felt the flames rise in her chest and her cheeks. Her eyes couldn’t meet Seth’s as he handed her the phone.

“Stay by my side forever. Stay by my side, my friend.” Danny Kroll’s voice was singing on the other end of the call, and she knew Seth could tell she was flustered. Even with “Chopsticks” hammering away in the next room she could hear Danny Kroll’s sexy voice say, “Hi, pretty Dahlia.”

“Hold on. I’ll take this in the bedroom,” she said into the phone. Then she pushed the hold button, gave Seth a little squeeze on the arm to say she’d be right back, and hurried into her bedroom and closed the door. But before she put the phone to her ear again, she took a deep breath. She had seen in Seth’s eyes that he knew this wasn’t purely a business call. He knew her well enough to be able to tell by the way she’d avoided his eyes that she had feelings for this man on the phone. What was she going to say to him when she finished this call?

“Hello?”

“Dan Kroll here, Dahlia. Last time I saw you, we had a threesome with your insane relative.”

Her brain was replaying Danny Kroll’s departure the morning after their lovemaking, with a wild-eyed
Sunny in the bed shrieking, and then Sunny pulling off and breaking his reflector glasses, and she felt as embarrassed as she had that day. She’d tried very hard to put the incident out of her mind, never imagining in a million years that she’d ever hear from Danny again after that. And she wouldn’t have blamed him for never calling again after the Sunny incident.

“I’m calling to ask if it would be okay for my agency to use your song ‘Stay by My Side’ in a commercial. We have a client who really wants to use it to sell their product, a health-care policy, and it could be a very big spot for the song. Can I send you some paperwork followed by some money? Or do you have an agent I can call?”

“No, no agent…” She was a little disappointed that the call was all business. Not even a “So how have you been?” Dahlia sat on the sagging bed feeling flustered and uncomfortable talking to this man for the first time since they’d been in the same bed together. And it was especially weird since Seth was in the other room now and she felt as if she’d betrayed him with Danny, even though she and Seth had been broken up at the time. Still, she felt as if, in a way, she’d cheated by being with some smooth operator.

Okay, put that out of your mind, she thought. This is a business call. There was barely a shred of any flirtation in it. All he wanted from her was the song. He was offering her another opportunity for the two cousins to sell the song from long ago. And now Sunny would probably agree to sell it. Only last week Dahlia had shown her an item in a magazine saying that the brilliant Lorenz Hart had left all his royalties
from lyrics to songs he’d written with Richard Rodgers to the United Jewish Appeal. Hart wrote a thousand songs with Richard Rodgers, and every time one of them was sung or played publicly now, the royalties were used to care for the needy. Sunny had read the paragraph after Dahlia pointed it out to her, and when she finished reading it, she’d held the magazine to her chest as if she were hugging Lorenz Hart in thanks.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a yes,” Dahlia said to Danny, “but I’ll have to discuss it with my partner.”

“Long as your partner is saner than that crazy cousin of yours,” Danny Kroll joked.

Dahlia smiled to herself. “As a matter of fact, my partner
is
that cousin. Call you later,” she said, jotting down the number he gave her. When she turned to leave the bedroom, she noticed there was no more music coming from the living room. And when she opened the bedroom door, she saw that only Sunny was there sitting on the sofa, leafing through magazines.

“They left in a hurry,” Sunny said. “Seth looked like something bad happened. Did it?” she asked.

Dahlia sighed, knowing she’d been right about Seth’s guessing why the call had flustered her. And now he was gone. She should have told Danny she had company and called him back later. It was clear that Seth had wanted to find a way to reconcile before that phone call. But the call had meant a fortune to her and to Sunny.

“No,” Dahlia said, refusing to let Seth’s exit taint the moment. “Something wonderful happened, actually. I just found out that you’re going to have even
more money to give away. We’re about to get what I expect will be a big windfall.”

“Really?” Sunny asked, not looking up from an issue of
More
magazine. “Well, no windfall’s gonna keep you as warm at night as that boy that just walked outta here.”

Dahlia decided not to think about it. No. This was a time to celebrate, and her idea of celebrating was to go into the kitchen and look through the Yellow Pages for the phone numbers of house painters.

W
ith the creative fees from the commercial, Dahlia jumped headlong into her project to redo the house. She decided that as long as the painters were coming to paint the outside, they really ought to paint the inside, too. And when they’d finished, the inside looked so fresh she decided that maybe instead of those old-fashioned fifties-style sliding doors in the living room, she ought to have somebody come and put in French doors leading to the backyard.

The new doors gave the formerly dull house a lot of charm, especially when they were thrown open to the backyard. But then the backyard looked shabby, so she decided to put a brick patio out there and maybe even a hot tub. And while the men were installing the new plumbing for the hot tub, she asked the plumber to take a look at Sunny’s bathroom with the idea of putting in an updated Jacuzzi. The new tub in
Sunny’s bathroom was so shiny and good-looking it made the other fixtures look dull by comparison, so Dahlia remodeled Sunny’s bathroom and her own, and before the commercial was even on the air, Dahlia’s share of the money from that check had dwindled dramatically.

But it was worth every penny to her, because the house had never looked better, and certainly, if the day ever came when she had to sell it, it wouldn’t be an embarrassment to show. Of course, she couldn’t let herself think that way, though. She had to stop any thoughts about having to sell the house. Things were on the upswing. She and Sunny were working hard and well together, and Harry Brenner called once a week to ask her how her new material was coming along. The last time he called, Dahlia bit the inside of her cheek nervously when he started talking about her performing at Highland Grounds. No, she thought. I will never do that.

“These record-company guys always say they don’t go to these open-mike nights, but somebody tipped me off that on Wednesday night two of ’em are gonna be at Highland Grounds because some boy band they’re hot to sign is closing the evening. So I figure you slide in there, they just happen on you, and they start thinking they’re the big talent scouts and take the credit for discovering you. It’s not the most sought-after gig in town, but if they see you there, it’s way better than me sending them Faith’s CD or making a demo of your stuff.”

“Harry, you know I’m not a performer.”

“Hey, we’re not looking to make you a concert at
traction, babe. We’re looking to have them hear the songs, get you a publishing deal that means they pay you a weekly draw in exchange for turning out a certain number of songs every month. That would make you happy, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I hate doing those showcase things.”

“Hey, we all do stuff we hate.”

“I’m working with a partner now, Harry.”

“Yeah? So what? Bring her, too. Oh, and only do songs like that Faith song. None of that cute cabaret-style shit you played for me the day you came over here.”

Dahlia hung up the phone and went outside, where Sunny was lying facedown on a lounge chair on the new patio, her white hair splayed in all directions.

“Maybe you should do this gig
with
me,” Dahlia said. “I mean, I
am
going to sing one of the new songs we wrote together, and misery does love company.”

“Not me,” Sunny said. “I could play for the people at the Sea View because they knew me, but not for some real audience. At least I don’t think I could ever feel okay about doing that again.”

Sunny worked with Dahlia on the new song they’d written with Dahlia’s lyrics for Seth, “Knowing What’s Real.” It was a love song, and the lyrics apologized for the cavalier way she’d handled their romance, asking him to see how she’d changed. He hadn’t called since that day he’d followed her back to the house after seeing her at Whole Foods. One day she’d dialed his number, planning, when he picked up the phone, to fabricate some story about Danny Kroll’s just being an advertising exec she’d met
through her massage practice. Partially true. But when Seth’s machine answered, she hung up and spared herself from offering up what really amounted to a lie.

She practiced singing the new song in every style, with a jazzy upbeat delivery, a country twang, a bluesy sadness, and finally she opted for a straight-ahead tell-a-story style, which Sunny said sounded best. But when the open-mike night rolled around, she felt very afraid.

“You’re nervous? What’re you nervous about? You got songs on big records. Compared to most of these people, you’re big-time!” Harry could probably guess what Dahlia’s state of mind was because as he sat at the table with her and Sunny, he watched Dahlia tear each match out of the matchbook that said “Highland Grounds” on it, light the match by the flame of the candle on the table, extinguish the match, and put it in the ashtray. Harry was shaking his head in disbelief as his eyes left the ashtray full of burned matches and scanned the room for what seemed like the millionth time.

Highland Grounds was a dark, noisy club on Highland Avenue near Melrose Avenue. The entry opened onto an outdoor seating area of picnic tables, and the door to the right led to a large room divided by a U-shaped bar with a small kitchen setup behind it. In the far right corner across from the bar in front of a screen, which concealed the door to the ladies’ bathroom, was an upright piano. Dahlia was worried, knowing if she needed to bolt for the bathroom with a sick stomach, which felt imminent, or even if she just
wanted to go there to splash cold water on her hot cheeks, everyone in the club would see her and know how panicky she felt.

She watched all the eager performers laughing and chatting excitedly with one another by the picnic tables, and she hated herself for being there. Sunny sat quietly eating a pizza, and the cheesy smell of it was making Dahlia even more nauseous. She was scheduled to be on after the next act, but she wished she could just run out the door and drive away. Anything but put herself up there in front of this hooting, booze-swilling audience.

Harry was drinking a beer when he spotted the two record-company executives the instant they walked in the door. They were dressed in expensive jeans and black T-shirts. One of them wore a black Armani blazer, the other a leather jacket. Dahlia watched them order mineral water, and one of them held an unlit cigar in his teeth. A few sycophants rushed over to fawn over them, but Harry, who’d said nothing to Sunny all evening, was playing it cool, acting as if he were actually watching the acts that were working.

The first one had been a singer/pianist who was an Elton John wannabe, wearing a sequined cape and singing in a whining voice about how he needed to tear down walls to make his relationship work. After he was finished, there’d been a brief setup for the next act, which was comprised of two teenage girls who looked like runaways, with hair dyed too black and bangs falling in their heavily lined eyes. They had pierced noses, into which they’d inserted a few gold studs. They were playing electric guitars and singing about dying for love.

On open-mike night, the rules were simple. The performers put their names in a hat, and then the manager of the club pulled out the names and posted a list of them on a bulletin board in the order of the draw. Each writer/performer was allowed to sing two songs, and that was it. In return for the performance, the artists were able to hear a live audience respond to their material. Sometimes there was polite applause, sometimes loud cheering, and often the act was so boring that the audience talked loudly through the entire performance.

“Those two guys at that table,” Harry said, elbowing Dahlia. “They already like you. They heard your cut on Faith’s CD, so you’re in hot shape.” Tonight, somehow, she’d find a way to tell Harry who the genius was behind the song.

“Hot blooooood,” the two grungy girls sang as they strummed their guitars. “I got such hoooot blood.”

“My
mother
could follow them and look good,” Harry said through his teeth. Dahlia needed to breathe some fresh air before she went on, so she got up nervously, walked out past the picnic tables, and stood at the open archway of the front entrance facing busy Highland Avenue. Across the wide street she could see the shiny Celica convertible gleaming under a streetlight.

The checks were coming in, and she was living it up. The same day she’d bought the car, Sunny, who had spent a little bit of her newfound money on a few inexpensive jogging suits, repaid Dahlia for some of the cost of living there and then donated a huge chunk of her share of the money to Step Up on Sec
ond, a rehab center in Santa Monica she’d read about, that provided support for adults recovering from mental illnesses.

I’d better get inside, Dahlia thought, I’m next. She started to turn back to the entrance as a Jeep Cherokee pulled up across the street behind the Celica. Some crummy driver might get too close to her hot new car, so she’d better watch. It wasn’t until the lights of the Jeep went out and the door swung open that she realized the driver was Seth, who was waving to her as he crossed toward the club.

“Support your local songwriter,” he said, grinning. “That’s what I always say. What do
you
always say?” he asked as he hugged her.

“A good man is hard to find,” she said, pulling him close and inhaling his sweet scent.

“Sunny called me this morning and said I had to be here,” he said into her hair.

“Next, please welcome Dahlia Gordon. She’ll be singing a song she wrote with Sunny Gordon called ‘Knowing What’s Real.’” Dahlia rushed back inside and made her way through the tables toward the piano. Deep breath. Here goes nothin’, she thought as she sat in front of the keyboard, and after a moment she watched her hands play the first few chords of the tune. The club grew still right away, and then the only sound in the room was her childlike voice singing the new song she and Sunny had written, and she was pleased with the way she sounded singing it.

After the first chorus, she could tell that the song was getting to the crowd. She could feel them settle into their chairs, hear their grunts of approval at her
sentiments in the lyrics, and when she actually allowed herself to look out at their faces, she saw they were rapt as they watched her, even the record-company executives. Across the room she spotted Seth, who was smiling a heartfelt smile at her as she sang the words she’d written from her deepest feelings about him. Now she leaned in to play the last chorus, and all her stage fright was gone.

The applause rose, and she was about to launch into another new song when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to look into Sunny’s eyes. For an instant she thought Sunny just wanted to congratulate her on doing a good job, but it was clear from the way she squeezed Dahlia’s shoulder and nodded that she wanted to join her on the bench. Dahlia understood why and took the microphone in her hand.

“This is my partner and my cousin, Sunny Gordon,” she said into it. Then she drew in a deep breath and took her cue from Sunny’s expression. “We’re going to sing a song that was her wonderful idea and her awesome tune, to which I had the good fortune to write the lyrics, and I’m grateful.” Dahlia’s eyes didn’t leave Sunny’s as she said the rest, “A song that Faith Hill recently recorded. It’s called ‘What’s Happened to Me?’”

Dahlia looked over at Harry and saw his eyebrows screw up in confusion as Sunny played the intro and the two cousins’ voices rose in song. Their blended voices filled the room, and as they went along, they improvised harmonies. Dahlia could feel the energy in the room crackling with excitement and admiration for Sunny’s breathtaking musical style. Sunny improvised a piano interlude, always looking shyly at the keys
while she played and never at the crowd, but her impassioned playing of her blockbuster tune was soaring. She and Dahlia joined together to sing the last verse, and before they belted out the final powerful notes, all the people in the crowded club leaped to their feet, and one of the barmaids jumped onto the bar, and all of them were stomping and whistling and cheering for Dahlia and Sunny and their glorious song.

They held their arms up in triumph and took one bow and then another, flushed with happiness. Then Dahlia worked her way back through the crowd to the table and sat between Seth and Harry as Sunny was being stopped at every table by her new fans. Harry leaned close to Dahlia’s ear so she could hear him above the din.

“
She
wrote the music?” he said, looking confused. Dahlia felt Seth watching her as she looked back at Harry and nodded. “I thought you said
you
wrote the lyrics
and
the music. I have a contract that says
you
wrote this,” Harry said, looking pale.

“It was a lie, Harry,” Dahlia said, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Seth grin. “But you can relax. Sunny says you can be her manager, too.”

“I’m gonna be her manager, too? No kidding? She’s a killer!”

Sunny was getting high fives and hugs of congratulations from everyone in her path. Finally at the table, she looked at Dahlia, then leaned over to hug her. She was sweating, her hair matted against her face, and she hurried to pull Dahlia to her feet and hug her and cry into her cousin’s shoulder. Then she tugged her outside.

“Don’t be mad at me for calling Seth and telling him
you were appearing here tonight. He told me that the day he and Lolly came over and Danny called, he could tell by the look on your face that you had something going with Danny, and he just couldn’t bear that idea. But I told him you never stopped loving him. Was I lying?”

“No,” Dahlia said.

“Then you better tell him that tonight, too,” Sunny said, and they walked back into the club with their arms around each other’s waists. Sunny was still flying from their triumph, looking around the room at the people gazing at her with admiring eyes. It was intermission, and the two record-company executives were heading for their table. Dahlia watched Harry jump to his feet nervously to greet them. She stood nearby with Sunny, trying to overhear the men’s conversation.