Alligators in the Trees (28 page)

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea here, Tob—” Jackson sputtered.

“Shut up, Jackson!” Tobias and Monique cried in unison.

Offended and hurt, Jackson froze mid-sentence. It only took him two beats to register the full impact of the insult. With exaggerated effect, he wiped his mouth and stood up, brushing past the warring spouses in a huff. Tobias mimicked his retreat in a decidedly unflattering fashion, causing Monique to say what she had been thinking all along.

“You’re such an asshole, Tobias,” she said flatly.

“Yes, I know. It’s one of my more endearing qualities,” he admitted proudly. Monique fumed while her eyes bore a hole in him.

“Okay…you’re here…what the hell do you want?” she asked. She was showing signs of exasperation, which puzzled him.

“I need a reason to come to my own home?”

“Since when have you thought of this place as home? It’s nothing more to you than a pit stop between bimbos. And speaking of which, you can tell your latest that if she shows her underage face around here again, I’ll shoot her,” Monique spat. Once again, she had the element of surprise in her favor.

“Simone?” Tobias squawked.

“Don’t expect
me
to keep track of your bimbi.”

“What was she doing here?” he asked, alarmed by the visual.

“She came here to pump Lilliana for your whereabouts, that’s what. Now, if your wife, your concubine, your partner and your business manager don’t have a clue as to where you’ve been hiding, this can only mean one thing,” Monique surmised.

“And what might that be?”

“That you’ve found yourself another bit of fluff to occupy your time.” Finally, Tobias had righteous indignation in his corner.

“Wrong again, dear wifey. This will obviously come as a great shock to you, but I wasn’t lying when I told you’ve I’ve been hard at work since the last time I saw you.”

“That’s bullshit. Brody hasn’t laid eyes on you since you unceremoniously ditched him and your jailbait du jour.”

“I left Brody’s and came back to the city. That’s when I stopped by here. Once I realized you and your decorator were about to turn this place into a construction zone, I packed up a few things and checked into a hotel. You can’t expect me to concentrate on songwriting when you’ve got a troupe of painters and such traipsing through here,” Tobias said indignantly. Monique narrowed her gaze as she tried to divine whether he was lying or not.

“Why didn’t you take your cell phone with you?”

“What, you think if I’m holing up in some obscure hotel trying to concentrate on writing music, I’m going to bring a cell phone with me? Not hardly.”

“You’ve been staying in a hotel?” Monique asked suspiciously. Tobias nodded serenely. “Why?’

“So I can work. I just told you that.”

“How can you work without your equipment?” she asked, still not ready to believe anything he had to say.

“I’ve improvised.”

“What hotel are you staying at? Since you’ve come in empty-handed, I assume you’re still in residence there.” Tobias chuckled as he shook his head.

“Sorry. Why would I want to divulge that information to you? You’d let everyone know where I was and I’d have no peace,” Tobias said smugly.

Monique snorted at the insult. “Fine. You play your little game of hide and seek, but don’t be shocked when no one comes looking for you,” she said. Tobias chortled at her childish warning. She was definitely losing her edge.

“What do you find so fucking humorous, Tobias? Is your brain so irreparably warped that you lost the ability to relate on a human level? Do you think you are so damn superior to the rest of us that we’re obligated to take whatever crap you want to dish out and keep smiling? Where did you get your ego?” she shouted.

Tobias smiled. “That’s more like the Monique I know and love.”

“Go to hell,” she said, as she hurled a sponge at him, regrettably the closest object within reach. “And why don’t you clear all your stuff out of here, while you’re at it. I don’t want you to have any excuses to come back.”

“It’s my home as well as yours. I don’t need an excuse to be here. Do you think you’ve acquired some sort of squatter’s rights? Just because I’ve spent a couple nights in a hotel doesn’t mean I’ve forfeited my right to come and go as I please,” Tobias said, his ire working him into a self-righteous snit. Monique tried to object, but he was on a roll now.

“And you can say what you will about me, Monique, but in all the years we’ve been married, I’ve never once brought my extra-curricular activities into our home. I don’t know what you think you’re getting me back for, but having that overpriced, color-blind fraud of a decorator staying here in my absence is way out of bounds.”

Far from having the desired effect of knocking Monique down a few notches, his tongue-lashing only made her gloat, as if he had somehow overlooked a key piece of information. She seemed absolutely tickled to death as she breezed past him and out of the kitchen.

Stumped and irked, he had no choice but to follow her. He had apparently missed a move and Monique was claiming checkmate. But she hadn’t won, had she? Before he could think of a volley that wouldn’t sound as though he was desperately trying to keep the play in motion, he was stopped in his tracks by the most ghastly transformation of what had once been his favorite room.

“Holy shit,” he gasped as his eyes swam in an effort to take it all in. His hands flew to his face of their own volition, clasping him on his checks with a mild pop. He squinted at the blue and lavender walls, the red-painted slate floor, the absurdly hairy white rugs, the screaming yellow leather sofas and chairs and the hideous paint-smeared canvases that passed for art. Monique could barely keep a straight face as she watched her husband assimilate the bold changes she and her designer had instigated.

“What have you done?”
Tobias whimpered at length. He suddenly felt weak enough to sink onto one of the zebra-striped ottomans, but good taste prevented him from doing so. Monique smiled proudly, evidently enjoying her triumph.

“Isn’t it stunning?” she asked, turning a radiant face to his.

Tobias was beyond words. He shook his head wearily and made a move to leave. Disbelief caused him to turn around and regard the monstrosity his living room had become one more time.

The second look was more devastating than the first. He felt as if he was going to be sick. He turned away again, this time intent on the front door. He was no longer concerned about getting the things he’d gone there for. He’d just have to buy new clothes and equipment.

“Don’t forget to call Marvin,” Monique called out as Tobias reached for the doorknob. “He seems rather anxious about something or other. Money, I would imagine. I’m afraid this little renovation has been more costly than I had estimated.”

Tobias emitted something between a wheeze and a snort before passing out of his apartment. He was so devastated, he didn’t even pull the door closed behind him.

Once he had made it out of the building and into the fresh air, his head began to clear a bit. He had to laugh at himself for thinking his visit home would be an amusing skirmish at worst.

Something foul was definitely afoot. Monique’s behavior, as infuriating as it had been, had a curious tone to it. All that business about talking to Brody and Marvin. And Simone coming by his apartment. Boy, if that didn’t top it all.

Tobias climbed into the backseat of the town car before the driver could assist him. He gave the driver Brody’s address, but changed his mind. Since Brody’s co-op was only a few blocks away, and he needed time to sort out what had been going on behind his back, he told the driver to circle around the park first.

Revelations and grievances chased one another around Tobias’s head as his car glided smoothly down the avenue. He couldn’t decide what pissed him off the most: Brody and Monique with their heads together; Jackson Smythie eating Eggs Benedict in
his
kitchen; Simone sneaking into his building to pry his whereabouts out of his housekeeper; or the outrageously grotesque fate that had befallen his living room. It wasn’t even his home anymore. It had been Monique’d to death. She never did understand the first thing about decor.

Well, he’d buy himself a new apartment once their album came out, that’s what he’d do. Or then again, maybe he’d continue to live at the Amsterdam. It would certainly do for now.

But what was this talk of Brody wanting to drop him from his own comeback? He was the face of
Absent Among Us
. Everyone knew he contributed the bulk of the talent. It was ludicrous of Brody to even insinuate he had any kind of chance making it without him.

It had to be all bluster; he had only been venting to Monique, who no doubt had fueled his discontent. A few well-placed apologies and a little ego stroking and Brody would come around. They had been brothers in song far too long to let insignificant differences and meddlesome women break up their stellar partnership. The car pulled up in front of Brody’s building, but Tobias wasn’t ready to face him yet. “Once more around the park,” Tobias told the driver.

The problem was, Tobias no longer felt sufficiently enthusiastic about the numbers they had worked on up at Brody’s country hideaway. Some of the pieces he had initially thought were so promising now seemed pathetically amateurish, far below their former standards.

The fact that they had so openly embraced them seemed evidence of how difficult it was going to be to get their collective musical career back on track. If they were to come out with an album with songs of that caliber, they’d be washed up before they made the concert rounds. What their fans wanted was more of the same old stuff, only different—a tough act for any band, let alone one that had been away from the scene for so long.

His challenge would be to get back into Brody’s good graces and then convince him their efforts so far were below their standards.
Nothing to it,
Tobias thought sarcastically. He was beginning to regret having left the refuge of his hotel.

Now that he fully understood his next objective, he became too antsy to sit still any longer. He had the driver pull over and let him out on 5
th
Avenue at 81
st
. He walked through Central Park, taking a short cut to Brody’s building on Central Park West.

So focused was he on what had to be done, he had miscalculated the depth of Brody’s alienation. His first clue was in Roberta’s indifferent reception. She had him wait outside the door as if he were a stranger, like some huckster trying to sell magazine subscriptions.

While waiting impatiently for Brody’s appearance, he concluded that Simone had won Roberta’s sympathies in his absence.
I should’ve never left her there,
Tobias told himself just as Brody yanked open the door.

“It is you,” he said flatly.

“In the flesh,” Tobias answered, mildly amused that his behavior warranted such dramatic condemnation.

“What do you want?” Brody asked, as if bored by the intrusion.

“What do you mean, what do I want? We’re working on a new album, aren’t we?” Tobias said, making an effort to sidestep all the melodrama of wives and girlfriends.

“I thought you’d developed a case of amnesia in that regard,” Brody replied, arms folded across his chest in a censorious manner.

“Are we going to keep up this cute dialog in your hallway, or are we going to get some work done?” Tobias asked, making a move to enter the apartment. Brody remained unyielding.

“Look, Brody—we can waste valuable time with this father-son routine, where you act the disapproving parent and I the disobedient child, or we can leave our personal lives out of this and concentrate on the business of making music. For your information, the reason I’ve been avoiding Monique and Simone is because I’ve been locked away in a hotel, working my ass off for the last three days on some really promising stuff.”

“Don’t get huffy with me. I’m not the one who dragged your personal life and all its tawdry complexities into this. Credit for that is all yours, bro. All I wanted to do was bang out a few good tunes, get back into the concert scene, live the high life again for a while, make some nice dosh, be set for my old age.

“Instead, I feel like I’m running a hotline for all your disgruntled and brokenhearted women. Never mind the fact that you took a powder without any sort of heads up for where you were going or when you’d show up again. I haven’t gotten a decent day’s work in, what with all the “urgent” interruptions—first Simone, then Monique, Monique then Simone, back and forth, on and on. Now Roberta’s all over my case for the despicable way you’ve trashed that young girl’s heart. I don’t need this crap, man. I’m a musician, not a therapist.”

“You’re right, man—you’re totally right. From now on, nothing but music. No women, no bullshit—”

“No disappearing acts,” Brody added. Tobias regarded him gravely.

“I’m committed to working. I’ll be here when I say I’ll be here,” he said. Brody seemed to be studying his face for clues to the contrary.

“All right, if you’re really committed to working like
partners
, then let’s get back to business,” he said, holding the door wide to let Tobias in. As soon as he was in the foyer, Tobias distinctly heard the sound of live music.

“Is someone here?” Tobias asked as they moved down the hall to the studio.

“Yeah. Trevor Dix and Lenny Haskell. And Ben Lemeux just got here. We’ve been working on some new stuff of mine. Joe Denny’s here, too.”

Tobias took the news with an almost imperceptible wince. Two of the industry’s top studio musicians and the manager for
Absent Among Us,
getting down to brass tacks in Brody’s studio without Tobias’s knowledge or consent. And Ben Lemeux—how about that? Ben was a remarkable jazz violinist, almost maniacally talented. Tobias always wanted to record with him. It pricked his ego a bit that Brody had thought of recruiting him.

So, what Monique said was true: Brody had been pursuing an alternative comeback plan. And what’s more, Brody was making no attempt to apologize. Quite to the contrary. He let the admission of what he was up to hang in the air, a forthright affirmation that he was going to make it big again, with or without the mighty Tobias Jordan. And by the looks of things, he wasn’t messing around.

Brody pushed open the studio door, unleashing a torrent of sound. It took a few seconds for the trio to observe the fact that Tobias was now in their presence. Once they did, Trevor and Lenny halted their tune abruptly, signaling to Joe Denny to cut the tape. Ben had been sitting this session out, listening to the others through headphones.

“Hey, man…been a long time,” said Lenny Haskell, possibly the best alto sax player on the East Coast, as he warmly extended his hand to Tobias.

“Too long, Lenny,” Tobias said, as the handshake turned into a hug.

“Tobias,” Trevor said in turn, his trumpet dangling from his left hand as he appraised Tobias affectionately. Both Lenny and Trevor had been more or less fixtures in their stable of musicians back in their touring days. It gave Tobias a small pang of jealously to see them jamming with Brody, as if it were perfectly natural to be doing so without the group’s undisputed leader.