Some Kind of Miracle (4 page)

The end of the sentence hung in the air.
“And you don’t.”
Maybe Howie Penn was just trying to get rid of her and hoped that giving her this guy’s number would get her to quit bugging him with her bad songs all the time. He found Jamie Reiss’s phone number in his organizer and wrote it on the back of one of his
own business cards with a Mont Blanc pen. Then he backed the Mercedes out of the spot, and the tires squealed as he pulled away.

Dahlia resisted calling the composer Howie Penn suggested for a week. Instead she continued to sit at the piano, trying to squeeze out a tune that had some kind of magic in it. But nothing worked. It all felt forced. She drove over to Sunset Plaza and parked in the lot behind the fancy shops and restaurants and walked up and down Sunset, hoping a tune would come to her.

The smell of food coming from the line of restaurants made her stomach rumble, so she stopped for lunch at Chin Chin even though she couldn’t afford it, and at the next table she saw a woman in her fifties pull out a plastic accordion of pictures and show them to a woman across the table. The woman who looked at the pictures was not interested but polite. When the older woman said what she said next, Dahlia wrote it on a napkin: “My kids are my life.” Then, while she waited for her moo shu vegetables to arrive, she wrote the lyrics on a napkin. The next day she called the composer and asked if she could bring them to him.

Jamie Reiss was tall and lanky and handsome enough to be a country-western star. He’d had his own radio show in Nashville for years and had recently moved to L.A. to act in a TV pilot for a show that never made it past the pilot stage. He had always made music and wanted to write songs but didn’t have a lyric idea in the world.

“Ah lahk this one,” he drawled as he looked at one of the pages of lyrics Dahlia handed him.

“Great,” Dahlia said, then watched him as he casually picked up a guitar and strummed out a tune at the same time he looked at the paper on which she had transcribed the lyrics to “My Kids Are My Life” from the napkin.

Jamie Reiss’s tune for her words was tender and understated, and the melody was simple and easy to remember. It was a tune Dahlia never would have thought of for those words. But best of all, Jamie knew Naomi Judd’s manager, and in a few weeks Naomi was recording it and singing it with so much heart that Dahlia wept the first time she heard it.

Dahlia lived on the money from that song for a long time, and she’d never sold another since. But tomor
row she was going to. Marty Melman needed her song, and she had found the tape, and pretty soon he’d be begging her for it. Tonight, eight years after the one time she’d had a song recorded, she couldn’t stop talking about what she was going to do after Marty Melman wrote her a big fat check for her second one, babbling to Seth as they made dinner together.

“Once my song’s recorded, I’ll have money coming at me from two directions, like I did with my last one. A check for record sales from the publisher and another from ASCAP for airplay. It’s going to be rolling in, and then I’ll be set. Then I can get a publishing deal where they give me money every month, and I’ll sit here and turn out the hits. We can move into a better place. We can go on vacations. When was the last time we went on a trip?”

Seth washed the lettuce and wrapped it in a dishcloth, letting her ramble. Then he chopped a tomato, peeled a cucumber and diced it, and poured some olive oil into a mixing bottle.

“Why are you frowning?” Dahlia asked as she turned over the chicken breasts in the broiler.

“Because you’re too psyched. Marty Melman isn’t going to buy a song from his masseuse.”

Dahlia bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from saying something mean. But it occurred to her that this was why she and Seth had no future. He was a small-time thinker.

“I wrote a hit once,” she said, unable to keep the anger out of her voice.

“You wrote a nice song. Naomi Judd put it on a C&W album. It did nicely. The Marty Melmans of the
world are looking for huge songs by happening rock groups for their movies. Not a sweet little song by two women in their late thirties and early forties, one who’s in a nuthouse somewhere and the other one who’s his masseuse.” Seth caught sight of her tight jaw. He knew that the reality check would annoy her, but he also knew how she could spin out on fantasies and then get hurt. “Sorry, honey, for the cold light of day. But somebody has to tell you the truth, and I hate to see you do what you always do. You start tripping about how you’re going to sell something, and the next thing you know, you start spending the money on vacations and clothes—and then you get slapped in the face.”

Dahlia turned away and opened the refrigerator, pretending to be looking for something. What she needed was the blast of cold air on her flushed cheeks. Seth was the one who was slapping her in the face. Why did she stay with a man who had a glass-is-half-empty mentality? Maybe when she sold the song, she’d have the confidence to end it with him and start dating some more upbeat, upscale men.

D
ahlia was disappointed when Jamie Reiss decided to go back to Nashville to work in his wife’s father’s car dealership. He told Dahlia it had been his dream to have a song recorded and now that he’d done it, he was moving on. But the taste of success had made Dahlia determined to sell more. She went out into the world with some of her old songs and some new ones. She spent endless hours in reception room after reception room with her tapes, until some sympathetic receptionist took them and said, “We’ll get back to you,” with a look in her eyes that made Dahlia know they wouldn’t. Nobody ever did get back to her, no matter how hard she pushed.

Once or twice someone looked at her résumé and asked, “On that song ‘My Kids Are My Life,’ are you words and music?”

“Just words,” she said and watched them nod disappointedly.

“Mmm. We’ll get back to you.”

Okay, she said to herself. I get it. I hear them. I need a composer. She went to songwriting workshops so she could network, a word she hated when it was used as a verb. She even sat in dingy clubs at open-mike nights listening for composers who had lousy lyrics, hoping they would realize they needed someone like her. But none of them had the kind of tunes she thought were right for her, so she didn’t even bother to approach them.

She met Derek at a workshop, and his tunes had promise. One evening, after she’d read some of her lyrics out loud to the enthusiastic applause of the group, he said he’d like to try to work with her. He drove up to her house in a Mustang convertible, bringing a tape recorder to their meeting, “In case,” he said, “I come up with some brilliant idea and you try to steal it.” Then he laughed as though the laugh was supposed to mean he was kidding, even though he wasn’t. Dahlia listed some of her ideas, and Derek shook his head disapprovingly the entire time. “We’re never going to work,” he said. “Maybe it’s generational.”

She met Carol at Genghis Cohen, a Chinese restaurant in Beverly Hills where they held open-mike nights, but Carol canceled their first work session when she decided to move to Santa Fe with her artist boyfriend before she and Dahlia even tried to work together. That week Dahlia signed up for massage school. Massage seemed to fit the bill in so many ways
for her. Her time would be her own, she would meet unique people, and there was something appealing about the intimacy that developed between masseuse and clients that she felt she needed in her lonely life.

Besides, her hands were strong and she was a good listener, and soon she built up a solid client list. Eventually it was just easier to admit to herself that writing songs was the hobby and massaging was the job. But even after she hadn’t written a song in nearly a year, and she had her massage license and a number of clients, any time she filled out any kind of form that asked for her occupation, she always wrote “songwriter.” And when someone asked her at a party, “What do you do?” she would never dream of answering, “I’m a masseuse.”

Maybe it was embarrassing to say that massage was her career because rubbing people’s naked bodies wasn’t the high-line life she’d always imagined for herself, just the backup job she was doing temporarily. Or maybe in some secret, hopeful place inside her, she knew that one day in the future she would come back and break through again with another song. And this was that day, and now was her chance to do it, no matter what Seth thought.

“Marty Melman Productions” was what the pretty redheaded receptionist said when she answered the phone. And then the person who was calling in must have made a joke, because the receptionist threw her head back so that her gorgeous red hair splashed around her shoulders. “I’ll connect you,” she said, still grinning, but her smile faded when she looked at Dahlia standing in front of her.

“Yes?” she said coldly, as if she were waiting for Dahlia to try to sell her something and she was prepared to call security to throw her out of the building.

“Hi, I’m Dahlia Gordon, and last night I was at Mr. Melman’s house.”

“You were?” the redhead, one eyebrow raised, asked in surprise.

Dahlia promised herself she wasn’t going to say why she was at Marty’s house, hoping the receptionist would think she had been a dinner guest or—yech—Marty’s latest girlfriend. There was already an undisguised sneer on this woman’s face. All Dahlia had to do was say she was a masseuse, which would conjure up pictures of naked Marty and his oily body, to make this bitchy woman smirk knowingly.

“See, I’m a songwriter, and last night, when we were talking, he asked me to drop off a CD for him of a song called ‘Stay by My Side.’” Okay, so he didn’t ask. He snored. But Dahlia wasn’t going to get bogged down in details. She had spent the whole morning running from studio to studio until she’d found one that could knock off a CD from a reel-to-reel tape, and now she had the CD in her hand, and she wasn’t going to let some more-important-than-thou receptionist stand in the way of her getting it to Marty. If the redhead didn’t take it right now, Dahlia would stop by Marty’s house, buzz from the gate at the driveway, pray that Victor the houseman would let her in, and then beg him to get it to Marty for her.

The redhead took the CD and looked at it dubiously. Okay, so it probably looked amateurish. Dahlia didn’t have time to start printing a label for it. So what
if she had neatly printed the songwriters’ names and her phone number in marker on the disc? It wasn’t exactly a great presentation. But she and Sunny singing the song sounded so cute, and the song was really good, so she didn’t want to waste another day worrying about labels.

“I’ll get it to him,” the redhead said.

“He told me he needs it right away,” Dahlia said. Nothing to lose by being aggressive, she thought.

“It’s done,” said the redhead, dismissing her by taking a call and not only averting her eyes but rotating her chair so her back was to Dahlia, making it clear that their transaction was over.

“Why does Sunny act like that?” As a child Dahlia asked her mother that question at least once a week, but Rose Gordon always got that look in her eyes when her daughter asked. It was a look that said, Poor baby, there are no answers. Most of the time she would pull Dahlia onto her lap and envelop her in a big Shalimar-scented hug.

“How come she can’t stop being that way? Does it just happen to her? Could it happen to other people?”

“You mean ‘other people’ as in you? Is that what you mean? I told you it isn’t contagious. You’re not gonna wake up one day and want to rip your clothes off in the shopping center. I promise.”

“She did that? In a shopping center?”

“That kind of thing. You know what I mean. You can’t get it by taking a bite out of her sandwich,” Rose said, running a brush through her daughter’s thick black hair.

“You sure?” Dahlia asked, hoping her mother would offer her a promise, but none was forthcoming. Dahlia could never shake the fear that somehow it would creep up on her, that she would be the next one in the family to get that horrible disease that made her cousin take an ax to the television screen, bite the dentist until he bled, run hysterically around the amusement park at the Santa Monica Pier knocking over trash cans, turning over baby strollers with the babies still in them, destroying the dressing room in a department store where she’d gone to buy a prom dress.

Every headache, every loss of equilibrium, every sad feeling Dahlia had made her worry that it was the onset of “the flying crazies,” as Louie called his sister’s disease, which always made Aunt Ruthie tell him to shut his big dumb face.

Dahlia remembered the morning she was wearing the pretty sapphire ring her mother gave her, an antique that had once been worn by her grandmother on her mother’s side of the family, and Sunny spotted it on her hand.

“Oooh, great ring!” she said. “Such a gorgeous color. Can I try it on?” Sunny took Dahlia’s hand and looked closely at the stone.

Dahlia felt panicky. What if she let Sunny try it on and the craziness was in her hands and she passed it along to Dahlia? Dahlia hesitated and couldn’t look at her cousin, convinced at that moment that it had to be bad luck to let a crazy person wear your jewelry. Maybe the craziness could be transmitted from skin to skin. What if the instant Sunny gave her back the ring and she slid it on, she became the
other
crazy Gor
don girl? Fast, she said to herself that day, think of an excuse.

“It’s too tight to get off,” she lied, praying Sunny couldn’t see how guilty she felt immediately after she said it.

The phone rang, and Dahlia grabbed it on the first ring.

“Ms. Gordon?” the woman’s voice on the phone sounded vaguely familiar, but who in the hell called her “Ms. Gordon”? It had to have something to do with a bill she’d forgotten to pay.

“Yeah. This is Dahlia Gordon.”

“I have Marty Melman for you.” Then there was a long silence, and then there was Marty’s voice.

“Dahlia Gordon?” he said in a formal, businesslike way he’d never used with her before.

“Yeah. Hi, Marty,” she said, wondering why he’d called her by her first and last names. “How’re things going with the three projects?” There was a long silence.

“Wait a second. You
know
me?” Marty asked in an oddly detached voice for a guy she’d been massaging for years.

“Marty. It’s Dahlia, your masseuse.”

Marty was quiet, trying to figure out what was going on. “Did that dumb bitch secretary dial wrong?” he asked. “I didn’t ask her to call my masseuse. She is so fucking dim-witted sometimes. Pepper! I thought I was calling some songwriter, and she called
you?
”

“I
am
a songwriter,” Dahlia said.

Marty laughed. “Yeah, funny. Pepper!” he called out again.

“I left you the CD of a song I wrote,” Dahlia said.

Another silence. Then Marty asked, “With two kids singing?”

“Yeah.”

“
You
wrote
that
song?”

“With my cousin. That’s the two of us singing.”

Marty’s voice was giddy now. “I’m using it in my new picture! I love it! It rocks! It’s the title song. I’m sending it out to J.Lo today.” He guffawed. “This is a killer. Dahlia the masseuse wrote a great fuckin’ song for my picture. Did I know you write songs?”

“I mentioned it many times.”

“Ha!” he laughed again. “This is too much. Maybe my pool man has a screenplay! Ha! And my gardener probably has a three-picture deal at Fox.” That idea really made him laugh, and Dahlia stopped herself from shrieking into his ear that she’d sold a song to a star long ago, way before she started rubbing his marshmallow of a body, but she kept her mouth shut.

“Well,” Marty said, his laughter subsiding, “let’s see. What has to happen next? The studio is gonna want to own the publishing, so I’ll get the paperwork all together, and you can come over here and sign off on it, and then we’ll give you a nice little check, and you can quit oiling up oversexed fat guys for a while and take a vacation. Okay, doll?”

“Uh…okay,” she said, still lost in the unreality of this turn of events.

“I can’t believe this,” Marty said. “Pepper walks in here with this CD, and a little while later I’m on hold with my doctor’s office, so I stick it in the machine, and out come these voices, and they’re singing a song
with the title of my movie in it. And it’s good. So I pick up this CD case, and I see ‘written by Dahlia Gordon and—’” Marty was quiet for a second, then he asked, “Hey, hold it. Who the hell is Sunny Gordon?”

“My cousin. She was the composer.”

“You mean you only wrote the words?” Marty said, with more than a little disappointment in his voice. “Well, then she has to sign off on this, too,” he said. “So I’ll have the paperwork done by tomorrow, and you gals can come on in.”

Sunny. Come in? No chance. “Oh…that won’t work, because I’m not even sure where she is,” Dahlia blurted out.

“Better find her, tootsie. Or no deal. No way we can take a chance she’ll surface later lookin’ to screw us. Bring me two signatures or I’m usin’ some Randy Newman song I heard him do a couple of weeks ago. Talk on ya tomorrow.” Marty clicked off.

Dahlia put the phone down. Shit! Shit! Shit! Okay, it was a stupid idea. Sunny was off in some lockup wacko ward where she’d been for years. Aunt Ruthie and Uncle Max were dead. Louie, Sunny’s son-of-a-bitch brother, was around, but years ago he had stopped going to see Sunny. Probably because he was scared she’d rub off on his kids or something like that.

“Lost cause,” Louie told Dahlia the one time she’d asked him about it. And that was years ago, when she bumped into him at Gelson’s Market in Sherman Oaks. He kept clucking his tongue and shaking his head. “She’s not even really alive. Just existing. What’s the point of going to see her? She doesn’t know me.
She wouldn’t know you. My parents used to go all the time. She didn’t even know
them
. I’m sure it’s why the two of them died so young. They couldn’t bear to go there one more time.”

When Uncle Max died in the eighties, Louie, who had been his father’s business partner, took over their hardware store on Moorpark Street. Somehow, in spite of his abrasive personality and the big discount retailers opening all around him, Louie managed to stay in business with that little firetrap of a store all these years. God, what a schmuck he’d always been to both Dahlia and Sunny. He had been fiercely jealous of their relationship and tortured them because he felt so left out when they didn’t want to play games with him, just wanted to be left alone to work on their songs.

“Who cares about lousy songs from two unpopular scags?” he’d say, passing through the living room on his way to work at the store.

“You’re supposed to be an adult,” Aunt Ruthie would yell. “Leave them alone.”

Once, when they were kids, he put a mouse in the piano while they were rehearsing, and it skittered onto the keyboard and made both girls scream. Dahlia remembered how the screaming had triggered a bad episode for Sunny that day. Another time Louie had smeared oil all over the keys, ruining the mechanism so a specialist had to be called in to clean it, and then he lied about it. And now the nasty bozo was her only source of information on Sunny’s whereabouts.