Bliss (16 page)

In his spindly graffiti, and with a swordlike flourish under his name, the note read

T
he water
.

A graveled path toward it gave Eva time to think. She zipped her hoodie to the neck. The wind off the ocean was carrying mist.

She found Dart and Sunny at a picnic table on an oval of manicured grass. They had clear plastic cups of juice with straws.

Eva said, “You guys eat?” She slid onto the bench on Dart’s side of the table, but as far from him as possible. Eva was directly across from Sunny, balanced on the edge of California.

“It’s all right I got room service?” Sunny asked, like she was certain it was all right. Dart looked sheepish, and Sunny added, “He ate some of mine. Dart says you used to live out this way.”

Okay. Interview me. Cool
. “I wish. We were a little south of here.”

“I guess you know,” Sunny said, already bored with details, “we’re from San Diego.”

“Dad in the service?”

Dart said, “Mom.”

“She started calling you Sunny?”

“Mom did,” Dart said, looking at his sister and then at Eva.

“Dart started it. I don’t know why he hates to claim his part. We were babies. He couldn’t say ‘Deirdre,’ and Mom hated ‘Dee Dee.’ ”

“Mom said you had a sun face.”

Sunny smiled at that. “Plus there’s the Addison,” she said. “Addi-Sun.”

There was a pause. Eva let it hang. She had the feeling Sunny was one to fill silences, and wondered what she would choose. Platitudes, gratitude, questions? Sunny’s choice would give her personality away quickly. Besides, Eva didn’t use inane getting-to-know-all-about-you chat. She didn’t chase people when they could see her coming.

“Thanks for the rooms and all,” Sunny said without thankfulness. “We’ve been Motel Sixing it.”

“Camping sometimes,” Dart said, like he missed it already.

“Your job pays for this, right?” Sun said it like she might catch Eva in a lie. “Not like it’s out of your pocket.”

Break me down. Feel like you’re breaking me down. I love it
. “Roadshow pays, yeah. They trust me to spend like I should.”

“So I’m how you should.” Sunny tapped her empty cup on the dewy table. “Why?”

Eva had no hesitation before the truth. “Your voice, for one. It’s beautiful. Rich but raspy. Real … strong. And I like your songs—the fact that you write them. I like your act, too, with the yoga and everything—”

“It’s not an act,” Sunny said. “It’s what I’m about.”

“Figure of speech, Sun.”

“Usually it’s a while before anyone calls me Sun.”

“Time’s the only criterion?”

“Time and trust.”

Okay, cool
. “Sunny it is, then.”
Feel like you’ve put me in my place. Act like you’re not loving the love
.

The pause hung powerfully again, and again Eva let it.

“Don’t be finished, though,” Sunny said. “I wanna hear more what you thought.”

Bingo
. “Everything was
right
yesterday,” Eva said, her eyes like beams on Sunny and then, finally, on D’Artagnan. “I was in the right place hearing the right artist singing the right songs. You ripped that shit. Maybe it’s personal, though, too. The fact I’m from this area. My mom’s buried not too far.”
It’s all true
, Eva thought,
in its way
.

Dart looked at her with kindness.

“Your mom died?” Sunny said. “How long ago? I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, it’s cool. When I was seven.”

Dart’s voice was quiet and probing. “How old? How’d she die?” He was suspicious.

Eva’s blood rushed. She felt it pound in her cheeks and neck. “She, um, it was suicide.”

“Why? And you were seven? Or a teenager?” Dart leaned toward Eva.

“Don’t ask that, Dart.” Then Sunny turned to Eva and said, “Don’t pay him any attention.”

“All I can say is she was sad,” Eva said, relieved. “That’s what I remember.” Eva didn’t want to answer any more questions about her mother. She wanted to get down to brass tacks. “What I was trying to say before was that maybe yesterday was … serendipitous. Your voice, the songs, the place.”

“The memories for you,” Sunny said, the tiniest bit pensive.

Dart said, “It could be a sign.”

Sunny blurted, “I want to make an album so bad.”

“How many songs you got?”

“I got binders full.”

“Your brother manages you?”

Sunny looked at her brother and nodded. “I have a lawyer, though.” She added the last hastily enough that Eva took it to be untrue.

Dart was still fascinated. “Who found her?”

And Sunny, too, looked to Eva for an answer, for grounds other than business that might connect them all. A serendipitous story might mean that music was art and art was mysterious and crossed boundaries of life and death and time.

Eva was uneasy, but she said, “My dad did. She left a note.”

“You read it?”

Eva’s left hand twitched at the index and thumb. Hair stood curved and trembling on her forearms. She put her hands on the bench at her sides, and then sat on them.

“Let’s change the subject,” Sunny said, on the line between sympathy and her desire to get to the deal. Eva took in the bright roundness
of Sunny’s face, the damp hair in beige phone-cord ringlets, the shadow of real sun across her curved jaw. There was desperation at the corners of Sunny’s mouth.

“I’m just thinking about this … bracelet she left me.”
Play it right
, Eva thought.
This whole thing could go either way
. Eva put her hands back on the table.

“One of the ones you’re wearing?” Dart wanted to know.

“No.”

Dart said, “You don’t wear it?” He was appalled.

“I told you I lost it.”
Lost almost everything she ever touched a long time ago
.

“But I mean, that’s the reason you liked my show?” Sunny said. “Tied up with your mom?”

Eva moved a bit closer to Dart and was able to look Sunny directly in her face. “Your voice and your performance and your songs—they make anyone in a ten-mile radius remember the loves and the pain of their lives. When you reach for the richest, longest notes, they reach with you. I know I did, and I’ve been in this game a while. Yes, my mother came to mind today, but everybody’s lost somebody, loved somebody, misses somebody. Everyone feels lost and unloved. Yesterday on the pier, you brought each person closer to who they are. You did more than entertain them—though you did that, too. You transformed a tiny part of the universe. Made it safe and warm. Sunny Addison made it warm enough for people to feel things, to remember, to dream, to be who they are and not ashamed of who they are. You’re going to change people. Help people. You’re gonna fucking blow people’s minds.”

Dart touched Eva’s hand under the table. Eva acknowledged him with a quick brush of her pinkie and maintained eye contact with Sunny.

“People’ll get all that,” Sunny wanted to know, “from a CD?”

“If we produce it right,” Eva said. “No fake instruments. Keep it all very real. Let the voice speak for itself. Put it out there, like,
bam!
Like Roadshow isn’t building a star.
No!
Roadshow is giving you
the Sun
.”

Sunny nodded her head slowly. “And my money would be like what?”

“Good money. We can talk about all that. Then I’ll get with your lawyer—”

“I don’t have one,” Sunny said matter-of-factly. “Or I should say I don’t like the one I have. She’s not … I don’t know if she has the experience—”

“I can recommend someone who works with the biggies.”

Sunny nodded again, even more slowly. Eva saw the stun set in. She let the silence deepen until the
rasp-snap
of a gardener’s shears was loud and rhythmic enough to rap a verse over.
Deeper than Atlantis/Deeper than the sea floor traveled by the mantis
. X-Clan, Eva’s mind yelled.
“Grand Verbalizer, What Time Is It?” from the album, To the East, Blackwards. Nineteen ninety
.

Dart said, “So this is all true?”

“Best if you all come to New York.” It was time to paint a picture with tangibles and logistics. “Meet Sebastian and everybody. Stay here another night, though, enjoy yourselves. I’ll have tickets sent over, car will pick you up tomorrow, take you to the airport in San Francisco. We’ll put you up someplace fly in Manhattan, near the office.”

Sunny was suddenly humble before Eva’s poise, the confidence with which Eva put things into motion. “I’m glad for some reason that this is happening with a girl,” Sunny said. “A woman. I talked to other people, but it’s like, maybe you get me. Maybe you see who I am.”

Eva reached her hand out to Sunny’s and covered it. “It’s gonna happen just the way you want it.”

“We have to do something,” Sunny said dumbly, “with our car.”

Her hand still over Sunny’s, Eva looked at Dart. “You got that, right?”

She took his bland look as a yes, and Eva stood. Deal about done, she wanted to get away from the memories of Carmel. She wanted to leave Sunny and Dart pondering the possibilities of success. “So no worries,” Eva said. “I’ll see you guys in New York in a couple of days.”

Dart ran to catch Eva on the path back to the hotel lobby. “I can’t
believe all this is going to just happen. Tickets will show up. Hotel rooms in New York will be booked.”

“Believe it,” Eva said easily.
I feel it
.

“That sun is what freaks me out,” he said grimly. “The one on the bracelet … from your mother. The sun for summer. It’s like … the universe has taken us into consideration.”

A cell phone rang, and Eva heard Sun slyly answer it. Eva’s experience shouted at her to make moves.

“You know what?” She grabbed Dart’s hand and he squeezed it. “Get your sis together. I’m going to make a few calls. I’ll drive us to L.A. We’ll take care of the business part of this there and get Sun in the studio right away. Sebastian’ll meet us.”

Sunny was right there. She took in Eva and Dart holding hands, Eva bright-eyed and focused, Dart looking at Eva with hope and calmness. “I’d rather make an album in Los Angeles,” Sunny said, “anyway.”

This is about to happen
, Eva’s mind screamed at her triumphantly.
This is so fucking about to happen
.

I
n the lobby of the Lost City, Dart ran to the men’s room.

Eva had to call Roadshow. There’d be no going AWOL.

That’s not how I roll
.

“Seb, it’s Eva.”

“Ah. She rises. Miss Bahamas 1998. Good people have called, saying good things.”

Yeah. Fuck you, too
. “It was good. Sun blew it up. And in light of that, I’m gonna take a few days—”

“Few days? Eva, no.” It wasn’t so much a decree as feigned disappointment in her judgment. Sebastian feigned everything except his love of being perceived as the biggest boss. “Now’s not the moment,” he said. “We have this drive now, this thrust—”

“I’ll be back in a week.”

There was a pause. “
Oye
. A lot can happen in a week.”

“Like someone can start a new label? Yep. All kinda moves can be made.”

He was quiet. But Eva was familiar with his strategies.