Famous (A Famous novel) Read online

  “And she wants to, what? Have a friends-with-benefits type thing?” Okay, it was official. He was getting too invested in the love life of his elderly neighbor.

  Emmy paused with her hands in the sudsy dishwater and cocked her head as she looked out the small window above the sink. “That’s exactly what she wants.”

  Evan coughed to cover his shock.

  “She told me that her husband was the love of her life,” Emmy went on, still staring out the window, dishes forgotten. “She says she’s not looking to replace him.”

  Evan wasn’t sure what to say. Emmy seemed to be almost in a trance, to have left the kitchen behind and gone somewhere else in her mind. But then she snapped out of it and turned to him. “Have you ever been in love?”

  Evan almost dropped the dish he was drying. “I, ah, had a pretty serious girlfriend for a couple years back in Miami.”

  She nodded, and didn’t call him on the fact that he hadn’t actually answered her question. “What happened?”

  “She took off when everything blew up.” He snorted. “Or, more to the point, when I went from riches to rags. Dumped me a couple days before Tyrone and Vicky’s wedding, in fact. I got in trouble because they’d already paid for her meal.”

  “Bitch.”

  Evan reared back a little. He’d never heard Emmy speak so forcefully. In fact, he’d never really heard her say an unkind word about anyone, come to think of it.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I just…hate that.” The way she spoke made him wonder if they were talking about more than him. She shook her head. “But okay. What about now? Kaylee’s in love with you, but there must be some actual adult women in this town, too.”

  “Kaylee is not in love with me,” he said, and when she was about to protest he added, “Anyway, I’m too busy for a relationship.” It was the truth. “Tenure is what’s important right now.”

  Maybe if he said it enough, it would stick in his goddamned head.

  “Come on,” she said, passing him the last dish and drying her hands on a towel. “We have a puzzle to finish.”

  Exhibit B on the “Emmy invading his life” front was later that night when, after they’d finished the stupid hot air balloon puzzle she’d bought at the mall and she’d gone to bed, he went up to the attic again.

  He told himself he wasn’t going to paint Emmy. And at first, he hadn’t.

  He started with Mrs. Johansen, going back in his mind’s eye to the night she’d been getting ready for her date with JollyGent. He’d wanted to paint her then. The idea had reasserted itself earlier this evening as they’d all eaten Emmy’s burgers. And when Jace had played the latest incarnation of his song for everyone, Evan had taken out his phone ostensibly to record him but really to get a snapshot of Mrs. Johansen.

  So it wasn’t like he could even pretend that this was an impulsive move. He’d planned it. Premeditated. He’d waited until Emmy went to bed, and he’d snuck up to the attic like a delinquent kid.

  And he’d painted Mrs. Johansen’s date face, complete with the red lips Emmy had painted on her.

  And then he had stared at those red lips for a long time. So long and so intently, in fact, that his eyes started to water. So long that they took on an almost holographic quality, changing from the image he’d actually painted—Mrs. Johansen’s lips, which were somewhat on the thin side and stained a deeper red where the pigment had settled into her wrinkles—and another one. Another set of red lips. Also thin but not as thin as Mrs. Johansen’s. Smooth and curled up into a knowing half-smile.

  He started with her mouth on the second canvas, ignoring the beating of his heart and the dryness of his mouth as he methodically broke one of the rules that governed his life. A rule that was the line in the sand between then and now. Between the life he’d been handed and the life he’d earned. A rule that made him the man he was—the man he wanted to be: he didn’t paint.

  And, worse, when he was finished with one incarnation of Emmy’s mouth, he did it again.

  This time he painted her mouth with smudged lipstick, the way it might be after kissing.

  He worked until he heard the birds start chirping.

  Standing back, looking at two Emmys and one Mrs. Johansen, he tried to make himself destroy the canvases like he had last time. He could still go back. He could still be a person who didn’t paint because he didn’t deserve to, because he wasn’t coasting on entitlement and ill-gotten gains. A person who didn’t capitulate when his presumptuous houseguest started meddling in his professional life.

  He heard the first chords of her new song, as clear in his head as if she were standing in front of him playing.

  He moved the canvases to the far corner of the attic, taking care to make sure they didn’t touch anything so they could dry properly.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Emmy asked as she came to a careful stop at a traffic light outside the gates to Dane College’s leafy campus, which was an island of sorts in the middle of farm fields on the north end of town. “I mean, do you think I’m ready? Am I good enough?”

  “Ready for what?” Mrs. Johansen asked from the passenger seat. “Are we picking up the pope?”

  “I know, but he’s—”

  “Right there,” said Mrs. Johansen, cranking down the window of her ancient LeSabre. “Evan!” she called.

  The emotions that passed over Evan’s face were almost comical. Confusion when he caught sight of Mrs. Johansen on campus. And then, ultimately, bewilderment when he saw Emmy driving.

  But there had been something else in there, in between, Emmy was pretty sure.

  And it had looked a heck of a lot like happiness.

  The idea that he was glad to see her, that her unscheduled appearance on his turf made him happy, if only for an instant before his better judgment took over? Well, that was a pretty great feeling.

  But she didn’t get to enjoy it for very long, because she had to concentrate to park. On previous parallel parking attempts—Dane’s downtown was all street parking—she had ended up either scraping the curb or parked two feet from it. To be fair, though, Mrs. Johansen’s Buick was a tank.

  “How’d I do?” she asked as Mrs. Johansen opened the passenger door to inspect her work.

  “A-plus,” Mrs. Johansen said.

  “Yes!” Emmy pumped her fist, enjoying a surge of triumph. Only then did she look back at Evan. “Hey, stranger. Want a ride to the mall?” Emmy and Mrs. Johansen were getting some driving practice in before Jace’s preliminary songwriting contest. Evan, who’d ridden his bike to the office to get a few things done on a quiet Saturday morning, had planned to meet them at the mall for the performances. But when she and Mrs. Johansen had found themselves near campus, they’d impulsively decided to look for him.

  Evan had a weird expression on his face. She was about to assure him that it was fine, that he should bike to the mall as planned—having him in the car would make her nervous anyway—but then he said, “I’d love a ride,” and hopped into the back seat.

  Evan thought he was an old hand at faking enthusiasm over the questionable artistic output of teenagers. The community center program had honed his poker face abilities. But this. This was awful. Seeing bad art with your eyes, it turned out, was nowhere near as painful as hearing it with your ears.

  To wit, the awkward, bespectacled girl of about fourteen tunelessly lurching her way through a song that Emmy whisper-informed him was a blatant rip-off of “Anaconda” by someone named Nicki Minaj.

  “Do you think she really has a gun in her purse?” he whispered. “Because I would like to use it to put myself out of my misery.”

  “Shhh,” Emmy said, but she was suppressing a smile. “This one looks more promising.”

  Another girl of about fourteen, awkward but less so than the plagiarist, was playing the opening notes of a song on the piano. And Emmy was right—the tune was catchy. And when the girl started singing, he realized with a sinking feeling that the lyr
ics were, too. It was a song about looking up to but also hating her older sister, which seemed to him perfectly relevant subject matter for a kid. “Uh oh,” he whispered, just as Mrs. Johansen leaned in from his other side and said, “Well, shit.”

  Emmy nodded, lips pressed into a severe line and gaze riveted to the girl. She stayed that way through the whole performance, clapping along with everyone else, but not with the enthusiasm of the rest of the audience. The juxtaposition between her grim visage and her applause was actually kind of funny, as was her “disguise,” which today featured a shirt that said, “Did I Roll My Eyes Out Loud” in her usual tent size, along with the jeans and hat. The only concession she’d made was to remove her sunglasses in the dim mall.

  They watched the next two performers in silence. Neither of them seemed to Evan to be real contenders. Jace, thanks to a random draw, was up last. By the time he ambled onto the stage in new jeans and a crisp white T-shirt, Evan’s stomach was a little heavy. But he had nothing, it appeared, on Emmy, who was pressing one forearm into her stomach as if she might be sick. The other hand covered her mouth entirely, like she was the “speak-no-evil” monkey.

  He wondered how many music industry bigwigs would get this invested in the fate of a sixteen-year-old poor kid from Nowhere, Iowa.

  When Jace started strumming, Emmy started nodding. They were little nods at first, but they gradually gained scope and speed, and about halfway through the song she lowered both arms and her gaze darted around. Everyone was smiling and clapping along—because Jace was killing it. Evan watched Emmy realize as much. A smile blossomed, and she joined in the clapping, alternating between looking at Jace and looking at the crowd.

  When it was over and the crowd went wild, she found his gaze. Her eyes glistened and her mouth had fallen open in an O of happiness. That huge shirt concealed a great deal, not the least of which was an equally huge heart.

  They shared a moment as everyone around them leapt to their feet, whistling and carrying on. He was going to say, “You did it,” but he stopped himself when he realized he wasn’t sure exactly what he would be referring to if he said that. The fact that Jace had clearly won the competition, sure, but also that she’d learned to drive. That she’d mastered burger-making. That, judging by what he’d heard over the past month or so, she had half a dozen amazing songs done for her new album.

  She broke eye contact, but not before flashing him a huge, unguarded grin. She jumped to her feet, then kept jumping as she clapped and whistled and waved at her prodigy.

  Jace was a lucky sonofabitch.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Emmy was pretty sure she knew what the word collegial meant. It came from “colleagues,” right? A bunch of friendly people with a joint interest in their shared environment?

  But this group… Well, to be fair, maybe it was impossible to be collegial when your leader was basically Voldemort. But still, the barbeque was worse than a junior high dance. Larry was holding court with Evan’s male colleagues, while the women stood in two separate clumps—cliques, Emmy couldn’t help thinking—at the far end of the yard. Emmy had made the rounds trying to chat with people—chat with them about anything, forget her original plan of trying to make Evan look good. But her appearance in each group had pretty much shut down the conversation entirely.

  “I think maybe more alcohol is the answer,” Mrs. Johansen said, coming to stand next to Emmy in the kitchen, where she’d retreated to catch her breath.

  “The answer to what?” Emmy said, though she knew perfectly well what Mrs. Johansen was getting at. “Wait, let’s play Jeopardy. The question is, ‘How can we take the collective stick out of this party’s collective ass?’”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Johansen, “and I think we should start with Larry. I suspect he’s a mean drunk, but that would at least spice things up.”

  “Good plan,” said Emmy, picking up her phone to google “extremely alcoholic drinks.”

  Mrs. Johansen swatted her away, though, and stood, hands on hips, eyeing the assortment of alcohol that had appeared on Evan’s kitchen table thanks to the BYOB aspect of the evening’s invitation. After a moment of silent contemplation, she nodded decisively, grabbed a few bottles, and said, “Give me a bowl.”

  “Oh my God, this is actually amazing,” said Emmy a few minutes later, sipping from a Dixie cup full of the concoction, which, as far as she could tell from observing Mrs. Johansen’s mad bartender skills, seemed to be thirty percent vodka, thirty percent chocolate liqueur, and thirty percent Kahlua—and one hundred percent alcoholically delicious.

  “Wait!” said Mrs. Johansen, emerging from Evan’s refrigerator with a spray can of whipped cream and depositing a dollop on the surface of Emmy’s drink.

  “Mrs. Johansen, you are a genius,” Emmy said, tipping her head back and chugging the sweet, strong concoction. “An evil genius. Now, let’s set up an assembly line.”

  Whitney Davis was drunk. It took Evan a while to come to that conclusion, but once he did, it was painfully obvious. He had been chatting, or trying to, with his famously taciturn colleague. Though she was one of the world’s foremost experts on Diane Arbus, a photographer who had managed to capture humanity in a way no one before her ever had, Whitney wasn’t known for her people skills. Or her humor. Or anything that might give a clue that she was an actual human being and not an art-history robot. She was on his tenure committee, and he had no earthly idea how she would vote.

  But when she burst out laughing at a lame pun he’d made, he started to get suspicious. He eyed her cup. It was empty.

  As if on cue, Emmy appeared bearing a tray. He’d seen her passing out drinks but hadn’t paid much attention as they looked like the kind of frothy monstrosities he hated. “Another drink, Professor Davis?” she asked, beaming.

  Whitney hesitated.

  Emmy said, “And then when I’m done passing out this batch, will you tell me a little about your work? I’ve heard such great things about it!”

  Whitney smiled. It was a strange look for her. “Oh, twist my arm!”

  Emmy made an exaggerated arm twisting motion, handed Whitney another drink, and started to spin away, throwing Evan a wink as she did so.

  He interrupted her progress by grabbing one of the drinks for himself.

  “Oh, I don’t think these are really your—”

  When he started to down it, she stopped speaking midsentence and fled.

  “Oh my God,” he sputtered, coughing to clear the sickly sweetness from his throat. He was pretty sure Emmy was serving up straight booze disguised as liquid candy.

  “Isn’t it delicious?” Whitney said.

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes following Emmy as she flitted around the party, plying the guests with her lethal drinks. He started to register, then, that the entire tenor of the party had changed. The usual clusters had broken up. A couple people had cracked out the old croquet set that had come with the house. And Larry. Larry was laughing.

  He watched Emmy give away her last cup and head back into the house.

  Well, hot damn.

  “I don’t know if I should be thanking you or…”

  Emmy’s whole body tightened as Evan materialized behind her, speaking low into her ear, which wasn’t necessary given that the only other people in the kitchen were a couple of his colleagues, and they were having a loud debate over the origins of the typography on the Beefeater gin bottle.

  “Or what?” she said, pitching her voice low to meet his. She was almost baiting him, which wasn’t wise, but she was a little drunk, and her body wanted him to fill in the rest of the threat.

  “Evan, man, great party,” said one of the Beefeaters, a man of about forty.

  Emmy felt the loss of Evan’s body behind her as he pulled away, which was ridiculous because he hadn’t even been touching her.

  “Yeah,” agreed the other, a thirtysomething woman she thought might be named Melissa. “Hey, do you hike by chance? A few of us are going hiking next weekend. You free
?”

  Evan started to answer but Emmy intervened. “He is not free.” Evan started to say something, but she talked over him. “He’s taking one of his community center kids to the Minnesota State Fair to compete in a songwriting competition,” she said, smiling brightly.

  “Community center kids?” Dude Beefeater echoed.

  “Yep,” said Emmy. Her brain was fuzzy from one too many whipped cream Dixie cups, and she couldn’t remember if Dude Beefeater was on Evan’s tenure committee. But it didn’t really matter, because they all talked to each other, right? Or at least they did after this party. Hopefully. When they got over their hangovers. Heh. She laughed at her own thoughts, but then, realizing everyone was looking at her, remembered that she was supposed to be talking. “Evan runs an arts group at the community center for underprivileged kids.” He started to object, but she moved—lurched, really, though she’d tried her darndest to be graceful—in front of him to keep control of the conversation. True, she had no idea if those kids were underprivileged. Jace certainly was, but she didn’t know about the others. But she was laying it on thick here. Like a layer of whipped cream on top of the truth. “He mentors them,” she went on.

  “I wouldn’t really say—”

  “And there’s one kid with this crazy musical ability,” she went on, dimly aware that she was practically shouting. She made a concerted effort to tone it down before continuing. “His mom can’t get off work to take him to the fair for the competition, so Evan is doing it.”

  There. She’d gotten it all out. Triumphant, she smiled and crossed her arms over her chest.

  The Beefeater who might or might not be named Melissa was smiling indulgently. “Can I say I think it’s so cute that you have such a supportive girlfriend, Evan? She’s your biggest cheerleader, isn’t she?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Evan said as Emmy was about to say the same thing. It was just that her lips wouldn’t move as fast as his.