Playing Dirty (25 page)

Sarah knelt beside him on the carpet and took his hand. She said gently, “Martin, if you OD before you finish my album, I may lose my job.”

“What do you mean—” Then their eyes met. “Okay,” he said, defeated. “Don’t tell Erin or Owen. They’ll kick me out of the band.”

“So I’ve heard,” Sarah said. “You’re making things very difficult for Quentin.”

“I know,” Martin said. “Q doesn’t understand evil like you and I do.”

Sarah went still. She heard her own heart beating. Yes, she’d seen evil in Rio. Somehow Martin sensed this. And he was in a similar evil place now, battling his drug cravings.

He drew her hand onto his chest and held it open with both his hands, rubbing his thumbs over the lines as if reading her palm. “I have a birthday present for you,” he said gravely. “There’s a gun. In my room. In
the top left-hand drawer of my dresser. It’s unregistered. It can’t be traced back to me. Or to you.”

They watched each other for a few long moments. Martin was
not
Nine Lives, yet he’d guessed at another man’s drug-fueled obsession with Sarah.

And he was afraid for her.

“The gun’s there for you if you ever need it.” He smoothed his thumb across her palm one last time, erasing the dark future he saw there.

She squeezed his hand, trying to give him a lot more comfort than she felt herself. “Come on, let’s go get some sunshine.” She pulled him until he reluctantly got up from the sofa and followed her down to the motorboat, where the others waited. And she tried to leave that feeling of foreboding behind.

But now Erin caught Sarah’s eye and patted the empty seat beside her in the bow. Sarah smiled and climbed into the boat, over Owen, toward the inevitable. Quentin backed the craft away from the pier and sped across the glinting water. Crouched below the lip of the boat, Sarah and Erin could hear each other perfectly, while the men couldn’t hear them at all above the roar. Here it came.

Sarah went first. “I’m sorry about what I said to you yesterday. It was a gut reaction. I didn’t know why Quentin wasn’t driving, but I thought it was important for him to get over it. And I thought his friends would be happy for him,” she added, hoping to induce a guilt trip.

Erin wasn’t falling for it. “I know it’s not my place
to say, because Q and I aren’t together anymore. But it pisses me off that you come in here and try to fix everything and act like you know what’s going on, because you don’t.”

“He clearly had a problem. I helped him solve it. How can that possibly get under your skin?” Sarah asked, knowing exactly how.

“You have no idea,” Erin said. “He gets mad at us for mothering him, especially me, but I can’t help it. I’ve known him five years, and I’ve sat with him in the ICU twice this year, thinking he was a goner. I’ve sat with him in the hospital a bunch more times. I don’t know how many times I’ve been with him to the emergency room and they let him go the same day. We do that so often, it doesn’t even register.”

“You feel protective of each other.” Sarah nodded. “But there’s a point at which protectiveness becomes codependence.”

“I don’t think that’s bad,” Erin said. “Q provides the master plan, and comic relief, and food. Owen manages the money.”

Sarah wondered at the wisdom of putting the dumbass in charge of the money.

“Martin has the final say on the music,” Erin went on. “And I—”

Erin didn’t verbalize it, but Sarah was thinking it, and she figured Erin was, too. Every village needed a whore.

Erin brushed her blond hair out of her face against the wind. “I agree that we’re dysfunctional. But we’re
functional, too, in our way. It’s taken an enormous effort for us to record two albums and go on two world tours in two years. We’ve done mostly what we didn’t want to do, when we didn’t want to do it. We’ve been unnatural.”

Erin was trying to tell her something. Sarah glanced up at Quentin behind the wheel of the boat. He might have been watching them, but she couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses. He wore his poker face.

“I’m glad you convinced Q to drive,” Erin said. “It’s not that. It’s everything. We’ve built our relationship as a band over five years, and you want to unravel it in a week.”

Sarah had no idea what Erin was trying to convey to her. She said, “It would help me avoid stepping on toes if all of you would be honest with me and tell me what’s going on, so I don’t have to figure it out piecemeal.”

“We can’t do that,” Erin said stubbornly. “I mean, we all like you, Sarah. I know Q
really
likes you. But you were sent here by the record company. We had a hard time getting a contract with them, and then we had a tough negotiation between the first and second albums. We don’t trust them as far as we could throw them, and that extends to you. I’d like us to be friends, but that’s how it is. Truce?”

Sarah took the hand Erin offered and shook it. “Truce,” she agreed, feeling relieved that she and Erin had made peace. At least for now.

As the boat slowed, they both sat up on the bow
seat. Ahead, a high rock formation covered in colorful graffiti broke the expanse of dark green forest lining the lake. Gathered at the base of the rock were perhaps a hundred pontoon boats and ski boats, with a few sailboats thrown in for good measure. Some were tied together in flotillas. Others wove in and around, drifting away on the current and maneuvering back to see the display. Every few minutes, someone jumped from the highest point of the rock formation amid applause and whistles.

Quentin cut the engine and let the boat drift silently into the mass. A splash signaled that Owen was overboard. They watched his broad back as he swam toward the shore.

Erin asked, “Q, how tight did you tie those knots in his scalp?”

“Not tight enough that his brain should stop working,” Quentin said. “He’s not jumping off Chimney Rock because of that. He’s jumping off Chimney Rock for the same reason he always does. He’s a dumbass.”

Erin said, “I was more concerned that the stitches might come out when he hits the water.”

“Good point,” Quentin said without concern.

Despite the truce, Sarah felt uncomfortable sitting next to Erin. And she missed Quentin. She walked out of the bow and stood next to him at the steering wheel, watching Owen swim toward shore. She asked Quentin, “Did you ever jump off?”

He looked at her over his sunglasses and smiled. His eyes were light green. “When I was a teenager.”

“But you don’t anymore? Did you have a bad experience?”

“Nothing like that.” He wrapped his arm around her waist. “By now, I’ve been near death enough times that I don’t jump off cliffs.”

They watched Owen climb onto the base of the rock formation. He disappeared into the woods. A few minutes later, he reappeared on top of the rocks. A murmur ran through the crowd: “Owen McDonough, Cheatin’ Hearts.” People around them glanced toward their boat and toasted Quentin with their beer cans. A group of boys in a dilapidated boat emblazoned with Greek fraternity letters chanted, “O-wen! O-wen!” Even silent Martin, zonked on heroin or pouting about Rachel or both, sat up in his seat to watch.

Owen held up one arm like a gymnast ready for competition, then leaped into the air. He howled all the way down and landed with an enormous splash. The howl and the splash echoed against the rocks.

Quentin let Sarah go and leaned over the side of the boat, watching the water. Owen didn’t surface. Quentin swore and pulled off his shirt, preparing to jump in. Just in time, Owen appeared, gulping air, and stroked toward the boat. The crowd cheered again.

“Come on.” Sarah reached behind her neck to unclasp the emerald necklace. She passed it to Erin without looking at her, not wanting to rub it in right now. She had other things on her mind.

“What?” Quentin eyed her warily.

“I’m going to jump, and I want you to jump with me.”

“No,” Quentin said.

“Owen went off,” Sarah taunted him.

“Have we told you that Owen’s a dumbass?”

“I believe someone did mention that,” Sarah said. “But it’s my birthday.”

Quentin ran his hands back through his hair and then said, “Okay.”

“It looks like love to me,” Erin sang from the bow.

“It looks like a compression fracture to me,” Quentin said. With a grimace, he jumped into the lake with Sarah.

They swam through the water, cool at this depth, and passed Owen swimming back. Owen stopped and treaded water, watching them in surprise. “My God,” he said to Sarah, “Q would follow you anywhere.”

Sarah laughed as she and Quentin swam the rest of the way to the shore and hauled themselves up onto the rocks. Barefoot, they picked their way up the steep path through the woods. They passed a group of giggling girls and a group of men shoving each other on their way down, jumper wannabes who had chickened out.

Quentin said over his shoulder, “If I jump, you’re going to owe me.”

“I don’t owe you
anything
after those peppers,” she shot back.

They emerged from the trees and walked across the warm, flat rock to the edge. “I mean it,” he said. “If
I do this, you owe me, and I’m going to come get it tonight.”

“Do you promise?” She curved her hands around his back and looked up at him. She’d never seen him so handsome. His green eyes laughed, and his muscular, tanned chest was naked to the setting sun.

He kissed her deeply, his tongue gently exploring her mouth. Far below him, the fraternity boys chanted, “Quen-tin! Quen-tin!” Thirty was not so bad, Sarah thought, pressing her palms to his hard biceps and feeling his hands slide down to her bare waist. Even if this was lust with Quentin and could never be love, she sure was enjoying it. If it weren’t for the threat of Nine Lives coming for her, thirty would be okay after all.

They moved toward the edge of the rock to look over. Sarah started back.

“Don’t look,” Quentin said. “Don’t think about it. On the count of three. One, two—”

Natsuko pushed Sarah off.

Quentin made it the last few one-armed strokes to the boat, released Sarah from the lifesaving hold around her chest, and lifted her up. Owen grabbed her under her arms. She still coughed and laughed simultaneously.

“What’s the matter?” Erin asked, bending over her as Owen laid her on the floor of the boat.

“I got water up my nose,” she coughed out. “
Way
up my nose.”

“At least it’s clean water,” Quentin assured her, climbing up the ladder and into the boat. “They tested it. It’s cleaner than New York City’s drinking water.”

“I don’t know what they tested for,” Sarah said, “but in my experience, New York City’s drinking water isn’t green and full of mud.”

“You know what’s good for that?” Quentin asked.

“If you say
peppers
—”

Owen handed her a beer from the cooler. She held it to her face, under her eye.

A cell phone rang. All five of them looked around for it while Erin announced, “No working today.”

“Mine,” Sarah said. Still lying down, she drew her phone out from under a pile of towels. “Hello? What? Oh, Wendy!” She squealed and stamped her feet on the floor of the boat.

The others stared at Sarah, then at Quentin.

“Her friend must have had her baby,” Quentin explained.

“She has a friend?” Owen asked. At Quentin’s look, Owen said, “Kidding. I’m kidding.”

Quentin started the boat and piloted it fast across the rush of lake reflecting the pink sunset. Occasionally he glanced sideways at Sarah, whom he couldn’t hear over the roar of the motor, talking animatedly with her friend. He’d liked her hair before, but the punked-out schoolgirl look with two pink ponytails at her nape really moved him. He let his eyes travel
to her perfectly polished toenails, up her long legs to her strong, smooth thighs, and he wished for the millionth time that he could make love to her.

As he cut the engine and coasted into the pier at the marina, Sarah was saying into the phone, “I just jumped off a cliff into a lake. Got water up my sinuses and can’t get it out. Which is not nearly as bad as your experience this morning. Or perhaps somewhat similar.”

“Vonnie Conner sighting,” Owen called to Quentin.

Quentin saw the still-buxom still-a-blonde standing at the top of the hill, under the pine trees, with her arms crossed. “She’s up there
waiting
for us?” he asked in disbelief.

Sarah clicked her phone off. “Who’s Vonnie Conner? High school sweetheart?”

Owen said, “Vonnie Conner broke up with Q when he tried to get his driver’s license but couldn’t get into the car. Because of course a girl can’t date a guy who can’t drive.”

“I wouldn’t mention that if I were you,” Erin warned Owen.

“Doesn’t matter that the guy’s mother had just died,” Owen went on. “Vonnie Conner is such a
bitch
!” He said the last word loudly enough that it echoed across the lake.

At the top of the hill, Vonnie couldn’t have heard the first part of the sentence, but she heard the last word, and she knew who Owen meant. She uncrossed her arms.

“Owen, you dumbass,” Quentin said. “Thanks for telling PR more than she needs to know. Again.”

“Hey,” Sarah said, turning Quentin’s chin so that he had to look down into her eyes. She whispered, “Just because it happened when you were young doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”