Still Life with Strings (35 page)

I go to the bar and
prepare Mona’s drinks, which seems like quite a lot for one very slim woman.
Perhaps she’s expecting company. There are special private dressing rooms for
visiting musicians, and I try to push away my nerves as I head in their
direction. When I reach her room, tray in hand, I find the door slightly ajar.
I don’t know why I do, but I pause, taking a quick peek inside.

It’s a good thing I
did, because there’s someone else in there with her right now, and that person
is Shane. She’s sitting on a chair in front of the dressing table, and Shane is
a few feet away, leaning back against a tall closet. His hands are clenched
into tight fists, and I can practically see the tension in the room, it’s so
thick. Keeping a hold of the tray with increasingly shaky and sweaty hands, I
prick my ears to listen.

“Why have you asked me
here, Mona?” Shane asks as she brushes some powder onto her nose, turning her
face from side to side in the mirror to examine her appearance.

Then she swings around
to face him and holds out both her hands. “Do you notice anything missing?”

Shane raises an eyebrow
and replies, “A soul?”

Mona pouts and turns
back to the mirror. “I’m not wearing my engagement ring.”

“And this is of concern
to me why?”

“Justin and I are
over.”

“Congratulations.”

“There’s no need to be
so sarcastic. I’ve been through a terrible time of it lately. You’d think you
could muster a little sympathy.”

“I’m crying a river for
you on the inside.”

Mona sighs. “And the
sarcasm persists.” There’s a long stretch of silence before she tells him in a
soft, sweet voice, “I’ve missed you terribly, Shane.”

“Fucking hell, you’ve
got to be kidding me.” He shakes his head, running a hand through his hair and
pacing the room now.

“I have. I’ve been in
turmoil over what I put you through. I can’t believe my own actions. It was
truly awful, and I want to make it better. I want you to forgive me.”

“Not happening. Are we
done?”

“Shane!” she cries,
standing from her seat and walking toward him. She grabs at his arm, but he
pulls right out of her hold. “Please give me a chance. I know it will take
time, but I’m willing to work at it if you are.”

She keeps on following
him until he’s in the corner of the room and she’s standing in front of him. If
he wants to get by her, he’ll have to physically push her out of the way. My
feet are on the verge of walking right in there and pulling her away from him,
but I remain still. For some reason I need to see how he handles this, and it
feels like everything is riding on it.

He stares at her, eyes
dark, breathing quickly as his chest rises and falls. She takes a step closer
and places her hand tenderly on his arm. “Justin cheated on me, you know.
Several times, in fact. It must have been God’s way of punishing me. I’m a
different person now. I would never be unfaithful again.”

He keeps watching her,
and his breathing slows. “Why are you so intent on destroying me?” he whispers.
If I weren’t listening so hard, I probably wouldn’t have heard him. The agony
on his face, the emotion passing between the two of them, is too much to take.

One of my co-workers is
passing by at that exact moment, so I shove the tray into her hands. “Will you
deliver those in there for me? I’ve something I need to take care of.”

“Sure,” she replies,
taking the drinks from me.

As soon as the tray is
out of my hands, I run.

When I locate my supervisor, I tell her
I’m sick and need to go home. She doesn’t seem too happy about it, but
eventually she gives me permission to leave. I don’t go directly home, though —
I go to the big house in the heart of the city where I’ve spent many an hour
contemplating.

There aren’t too many
people around when I get to Ladybirds. Mary answers the door and invites me in
for a cup of tea. I follow her to the kitchen at the back of the building and
sit down on a long bench painted a muted shade of green. Rubbing my cold hands
together, I watch as she puts loose leaves into a pretty ceramic teapot.

Bob Farrell, the man
who owns the house, walks in and holds a pan under the tap, filling it with
water. Then he pulls a bag of chickpeas out of the cupboard and pours some into
it. His back is slightly hunched over from age, and he’s wearing a brown shirt
with cream polka dots. When he sees me he smiles.

“Ah,” he says, “the
Blue Lady has paid us a visit. It’s good to see you, Jade.”

“You too, Bob.”

“How’s life?”

“Complicated.”

His wrinkly eyes
sparkle. “Stop making me jealous. I remember complicated, exhilarating stuff.”

“Want to swap?”

He grins. “The old
ticker wouldn’t be able to handle it, I’m afraid,” he says, lifting his hand to
his heart.

“Oh, well. It was worth
a try.”

Mary comes over and
puts a steaming cup in front of me. I’m not sure what kind of tea it is, but it
smells faintly of wet twigs. I lift a questioning brow at her and she explains,
“It’s Pu-erh, supposed to be good for when you want to lose a few pounds.”

I laugh. “You trying to
tell me something, Mary?”

“No, no! It’s me who’s
on the diet. My doctor says I need to lose three stone. He’s the one who
suggested the tea.”

I lift the cup to my
mouth and take a sip. It tastes like mud and dust. “Your doctor is a sadist,” I
say, scrunching up my nose. Both Mary and Bob have a good chuckle.

A minute of comfortable
silence passes. Mary drinks her tea — she must be used to the god-awful taste —
and Bob goes about preparing his chickpeas. All of a sudden, Mary leans forward
and takes my hand in hers.

“Something troubling
you, honey?”

I blow air out through
my mouth, enjoying the feel of her soft, pudgy hand on mine. “I think I might
be in love.”

Her answering laugh is
light and tinkling. “Well, now, there’s no need to sound so miserable about
it.”

“He’s way out of my
league.”

“And who told you
that?” Mary responds, her tone disagreeable.

“His mother.”

Bob chuckles some more
as he stands by the cooker, stirring his pot.

“If you ask me, his
mother sounds like a bit of a B-hive,” says Mary.

Now I’m the one to
chuckle. “Is that a mannerly way of saying biatch?”

“The young people
aren’t the only ones who like to make up slang,” she replies, a happy grin on
her face as she takes yet another sip of that disgusting tea.

“Oh, Mary. I don’t know
what to do,” I say, planting my face down on the table to express just how lost
I feel. She leans forward and strokes soothingly at my hair.

“What else can you do
other than tell him?”

“True, but that would
take guts, and I’m a gutless wonder.”

“You’re not fooling
anyone, girl. There’s steel in that belly of yours. Tell him. I can’t imagine
any man would find it a difficulty to have a beautiful woman confess her love.”

“You have such
romantic, old-fashioned notions, Mary, and I thank you for the compliment, but
I wish you were right,” I reply, sitting back up and trying to regain some
dignity after my face plant of despair.

I spend another half an
hour at Ladybirds and then head home. Walking in the door, I shrug out of my
coat and slip off my shoes before going straight up to my bedroom. Checking my
phone, I see that the battery has died. I’m about to grab the charger when I
stop and put the phone back down on my dresser. I need a night of no contact to
get my head on straight, so I decide to wait until the morning to charge it.

It’s going to be
difficult enough sleeping, since a vision of Shane and Mona in her dressing
room, her hand on his arm, has been constantly flitting through my brain. It
wasn’t so much the fact that she was touching him that gets to me, but the way
he’d looked at her. I couldn’t tell whether it was longing or anger in his
eyes. It seems that Justin was right — there is a fine line between love and
hate.

I’ve got a couple of
audiobooks on my mp3, so I browse through those until I find something that
piques my interest. Audiobooks are my Ambien; after a little while listening,
I’m usually on a one way ticket to Snoozeville, but not tonight. Tonight my
brain has other plans, and those plans involve keeping me up until the wee
hours of the morning. I’ve listened all the way to the end of the first book
and have started the opening chapters of book two before I finally nod off.

I wake up with a
headache, and somebody’s licking my face. Sadly, that somebody isn’t a hot
violinist whose name begins with an “S,” but rather another “S” name. Specky
lets out a little yip of excitement and then hops off the bed. Hops back on
again, hops off, hops back on again. The hyper bitch.

What? It’s perfectly
acceptable to call a female dog a bitch.

My bedroom door is wide
open, and April’s standing there, laughing her head off.

“Oh, you’re bloody
hilarious, April,” I mutter as I sit up and rub the sleep from my eyes.

“It’s after twelve, you
know. Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I have the next couple
of days off. By the way, I’m going down the country with Ben, Clark, and Lara
for the weekend, so I want no funny business from you while I’m away.”

She grins like she has
absolutely no intention of behaving yourself. “Can my boyfriend stay over?”

I widen my gaze,
incredulous. “You’ve got a boyfriend?”

“Uh,
yeah
. You
met him the other week, remember?” Her eyes gleam with hope that’s about to be
obliterated by yours truly.

“Right, yes, I
remember. And no, he cannot stay over.”

“Jade, please. I’m
begging you.” She gets down on her knees and puts her palms together like she’s
saying a prayer.

“All right, step inside
my office and we’ll have a nice long discussion about French letters, more
commonly known to you and me as
condoms
.” I sound out the word just to
make this even more embarrassing for her.

She holds her hands up.
“No effing way. I’m not talking about sex with you.”

“Then there will be no
boyfriends spending the night under this roof,” I tell her happily and she
turns on her heel, sulking all the way back to her bedroom.

Unable to keep my
curiosity at bay any longer, I grab my phone and plug it into the charger. I
need to know if Shane tried to call me. I’m hoping he did, because if he
didn’t, that could mean he caved to Mona’s pleadings and decided he’s going to
give their relationship another college try.

If he did, then not
only might I actually be finding my way to a bottle of vodka in the very near
future, but I will also have lost all respect for him.

My phone lights up, and
several missed calls flash across the screen. One is from Ben, and the rest are
from Shane. They span over several hours, and the last time he tried to phone
me was at four in the morning.

In the words of Germans
in bad situations the world over:
Scheisse
.

He never left any
voicemails or texts, so I have no clue what’s going on with him. There’s a
message from Ben, asking me if I’m all set for our weekend away and telling me
that we’ll leave from my house tomorrow morning. I send him a quick message
back saying
I’ll be ready with bells on.
Then I text Shane.

Jade: We’re leaving from my
place tomorrow at ten. You still coming?

It’s the safest option.
I haven’t mentioned his countless attempts at calling me, nor have I made
reference to my ear-wigging adventures last night. I sit back and wait for him
to reply, but when I get no messages right away, I go shower and have
breakfast. Over an hour passes, and still there’s no response.

I have a couple of
errands to run today, one of which involves going grocery shopping and stocking
the fridge with food for when I’m away. Another is giving Alec strict
instructions to make sure April doesn’t sneak any gentleman callers into her
bedroom.

I’m determined not to
dwell on Shane’s radio silence, so I get busy and head to the nearest
supermarket. As I’m leaving, my hands full carrying plastic bags, I spot a
familiar face staring back at me from the magazine racks. I was right when I
predicted they were going to put him on the front cover. It’s the edition of
Hot
Press
containing Shane’s interview.

Standing there for far
too long, I hesitate over whether or not I should give in and buy a copy. I
mean, I overheard most of what was said in the interview, but not all of it.
Perhaps there will be some little gem in there that will enlighten me as to who
he really is. Something that will make him seem less perfect in my eyes, like
expressing a racist sentiment or declaring his support for the neo-Nazi
movement.