Track [9] “Second Hand News”/Fleetwood Mac

Jane

“There she is!” Velvet announced in a peppy tone.

She blinked at the dress she’d picked out for me, which was baggy up top and just the tiniest bit see-through, making my already underwhelming bosom resemble two frightened kittens hiding in a pillowcase. With my clipped hair and sandals, and the walkie and my phone in my pockets dragging everything down like the weight of the goddamn world, I might’ve been mistaken for a lost waif in need of a bowl of porridge.

Had I known I was going to be meeting the Sarafians, I would have summoned up a magical army of singing birds and bugs to help me stitch my own gown from the curtains in my room.

“Serj and Jasmine, this is our Jane Marlow,” Velvet said, smiling it all away. Under her breath to me she murmured cheerfully, “Who didn’t have to wear a walkie, haha.”

Yeah, regretting that now. Norma’s voice barking commands to the staff in my ear only made this worse.

“She’s practically a baby sister,” Velvet said. “We shared a nanny and everything.” Uh, yeah, but no. Where was my dad? I hated when she said stuff like that.… “And now she’s Eddie’s girl. Those sneaky kids have been dating behind all our backs—can you believe it?”

Oh God. No, I cannot believe… that you just said that.

Want to kill Velvet. Want to kill her so hard.

“Jane,” Serj said, mouth turning up beneath his mustache. Friendly. Kind and casual enough, but there was a little formalness to the way he greeted me in his black suit coat and jeans. And as he reached back to grab a glass of wine from the table, his gaze quickly surveyed me, head to foot, and I swear I saw him make a face. The kind of face you make when you want to laugh at something, but you know it’s not the time or place to do so.

He was confused by me. Or didn’t approve. I felt as if something was wrong with me—was it the dress? My boyish cropped hair? A slow and heavy humiliation crept over me. I gave him the best smile I could and canted my head politely as his wife stepped toward me.

“You are Eddie’s girl?” Jasmine said. “I can’t believe he kept this from me. I’m so happy to meet you. Let me see you, Jane. That’s not short for anything, right? How old are you, dear?”

Whoa, a lot of questions. My response got eaten by my word-pixie. I stood mute and nervous, dying a little inside, as Jasmine’s arms emerged from the glittery black shawl draped over her bare shoulders. Her hands were soft and warm as they gripped mine.

“Just Jane,” Velvet offered quickly, seeing that I was struggling. “Freshly graduated from high school back home in L.A. Eighteen.”

“Fennec’s age,” she murmured, steadily holding my hands in hers. She smelled faintly of sweet flowers. Brown eyes ringed with heavy makeup searched mine as if, like her husband, there was something she couldn’t figure out. But there wasn’t judgement from her. Just curiosity. “How long has this been going on with Eddie? I’m just trying to figure out how… logistically. You aren’t in the same cities.”

“Oh, we started talking after my accident at the dam.” I struggled for the words. “After. The festival app. We… just talked.” Privately. He hadn’t told his mother that I existed, apparently, which was freaking me out a little. But how could I judge? I didn’t tell my dad about Eddie until I was introducing them at the airport.

“Online?”

I nodded.

She made an amused noise, as if she couldn’t believe it. “Eddie is no wordsmith.”

That made me laugh a little. I relaxed. “No, ma’am. But he’s nice.”

Jasmine smiled softly. “He is nice, isn’t he? Sometimes. He tries very hard in whatever he does. He wants to be the best, like Serj.”

“No such thing as second place,” Serj said from over her shoulder, raising his wineglass to the Taylors. “Isn’t that right?”

“Competition is for the young. I had a stroke. I just make wine now,” Mr. Taylor said.

Mad Dog lifted his glass. “And good wine it is. I’m the same. Just want to make good music and get paid.” He pointed at Serj. “And the longer I don’t hear from my lawyer on this little seven seas trip your kid took, the longer I’m nervous about that last part.”

“He’ll call, big dog, just relax. Meditate or whatever you do,” Serj said, laughing.

Yikes.

Jasmine didn’t seem bothered by their talk about Eddie. She lifted my hands to her face and inhaled. “Onion.”

My ears burned. “I… helped prep dinner in the kitchen.”

Velvet looked as embarrassed as I felt. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation at the lake, Jas. Sometimes I even help.”

Well. She sometimes ate breakfast in the kitchen and chatted with Exie while she was prepping food. I guess that counted.

“Don’t be ashamed,” Jasmine told me. “Onions remind me of cooking with my mother when I was your age. We would cut up a dozen red onions for her to pickle, and our hands would smell like that all day.” She laughed. “I still like to cook with Ms. Makruhi, my housekeeper.”

“You do?” I felt a little spellbound by her. Maybe it was the tiers of teardrop diamond pendants that spilled down her throat in a neat little row, each lower than the one above. Maybe it was her bountiful hair, all ringlet curls. It reminded me of Fen’s. But on her, it was so glamorous.

“I think you’ll be good for Eddie.” She squeezed my hands and let go, smiling genuinely. “I’m very happy to get to know you. We will be good friends. Come, tell me about yourself.”

Could you fall in love with someone’s mother? I was pretty sure I was in mother-love with Jasmine. She had some kind of weird magnetism, and I wanted to follow her around like a puppy and tell her everything. I didn’t care about my word-pixie tripping me up. I didn’t care about the droopy dress, or that Velvet had left us alone. She asked me just the right questions. My brain unlocked, and I could answer. Before I realized how much I was talking, I’d told her about Frida and graduation, and I’d taken her over to Dad and introduced them.

“We’ve met before at a fundraiser that Mad Dog attended a few years ago,” she said. “You kindly drove me and my son to the ER. He’d hurt his leg, and I couldn’t find Serj.”

I forgot about that.…

“I remember,” Dad said. “You sang to him in the car. Was that opera? You have a beautiful voice.”

“I sing in my church choir; it’s nothing. And my son got a few stitches that day. Kids…”

Kids? She was talking about Fen. He’s the one who rode in my dad’s car and got stitches. I remembered that now. I think I was fifteen, and I’d talked to Fen that day before he hurt his leg.

“You’ve raised a fine daughter,” she told my father. “I’m sure it hasn’t been easy.”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “But she’s worth it. Would do anything for her.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes. The things we do for our children…”

But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Because they’d kicked Fen out of the house.

As they chatted lightly, Norma’s voice crackled in my earpiece. This time, it was much louder and insistent. “Norma for Jane, repeat—Norma for Jane!”

Shit. I turned my head to the side and pressed the talk function on my earpiece cord. “Pool patio,” I informed her in a low voice, reporting my location.

“You have a visitor at the front door of the main house,” she hissed unhappily.

“Go again?” I said, not comprehending how this could be true.

“Unauthorized visitor, front door. Make it fast.”

I didn’t know anyone here, and I didn’t want to be torn away from Jasmine. But it was getting really dark now, and they were bringing out all the small plates that Velvet wanted circulating. If I was going to slip away, now was a good time. So I excused myself, leaving Jasmine with my father—who had heard Norma’s message over the walkie and was giving me the eyebrow arch of the century. I just shook my head, confused, and swiftly headed back through the main house, into the foyer, past the giant floral arrangement.

Making myself small, I peeped through the sidelight at the entrance to see if I could tell who was there.

A dark figure stood on the porch, back turned to the big front doors.

I took a deep breath.

The figure turned around when I cracked open the left door, and the porch light shone down on his face.

Fen.

“Having a fancy party, are we?” he said, hands clasped behind his back and rocking forward on scuffed black low-tops. He was standing at a funny angle, as if he was hiding something. “Must be, if Mad Dog’s got some Ravi Shankar wannabe cranking out tunes. What the shit is going on in there? Are people dropping acid? And why are you dressed like a member of Charles Manson’s cult? This isn’t very metal.”

A storm of confused emotions gathered inside my chest and threw bolts of lightning around my body. I’d just spent the last fifteen minutes talking to his mother. Now he appears?

Had I angered some god?

He shouldn’t be here.

“W-what are you…?” I started.

“Doing here?” he finished, squinting as he pushed hair out of his eyes that was an utter disaster. He nodded toward the cars parked in the gravel driveway: two luxury sedans up front, and past them, a white Jeep with no doors, just a skeletal frame—every flat surface covered in band decals, muddy tires. “Funny, because that’s what I said to myself when I drove up and spotted my parents’ BMW. Did someone forget my invite, or maybe it got lost in the mail?”

“Your parents are guests of Mad Dog.” I was tempted to leave it at that and shut the door in his dumb face, but he was wearing a T-shirt (big block print on the front, PSYCHO KILLER, and in a talk bubble, QU’EST-CE QUE C’EST) with the sleeves cut off, which was infuriating, because it was as if he was trying to show off his arms. Like, Look at me, I’m skinny and muscular—it’s not even hot outside, but I’m going walk around with nude arms, like a swaggery guttersnipe. Ugh! He just set every cell in my body on fire with fury.

“You’re trespassing,” I told him dumbly.

“On the front steps? I rang the doorbell… a mean woman sneered at me and then went to fetch you. That’s not trespassing. A delivery person trespasses far more than me.”

“Why are you here?”

“You asked that already,” he said, pulling out a paper bag stamped with VICTORY VINYL from behind his back. It was crinkled around a long object, and from the shape and the pirate hat sticking out of the top, I could guess what. “Left your phallic toy at my place of business.”

“It’s Captain Pickles. Don’t say it like it’s dirty.”

“Please. First, dogs love me. Second, there are dildos at the sex shop down the street from us that are less raunchy. Maybe your little guy is trying to tell you something. Is he neutered?”

“She is spayed. Her name is Frida Kahlo. Put some respect on it when you say it.”

“Damn, okay,” he said. “Didn’t know she was the reincarnation of a famous painter.”

I tried to take the toy from him, but he held it just out of reach, and I nearly bumped into him trying to snatch it. “She’s not my dog. I watch her for Velvet. It’s my job. I’m her PA.”

“Are you now?”

I crossed my arms over my baggy dress. “What do you want from me, Fen?”

“Nothing, really. Might be nice to continue our conversation.”

“Were we having one? I thought you were yelling at me.”

He held up a finger. “I was, and for that, I apologize. I let my emotions get out of control, and no good can come of that. I’m truly sorry for the shouting. Can we try again?”

“Try what again? The part where you tell me that I’m your enemy because I’m dating Eddie?”

His jaw clicked to one side, as if the sound of Eddie’s name had some kind of power over him.

“And again,” I reminded him, “Eddie told me to steer clear of you.”

“Why would he do that?” Fen asked. “Little strange, don’t you think?”

I did, actually. “I thought we’d already established that you’re the black sheep of the family. Kicked out of the family house. All that. Seems reason enough to me.”

Fen paused. “Do you know why I got kicked out?”

“Not my business why you don’t get along with your father.”

“It’s true. I don’t.” But he could tell by my face that I didn’t know why. And after a short silence stretched between us, Fen offered an explanation. “My brother and I have always been… competitive. It’s how my dad raised us. There can only be one winner. Who loves Daddy more? Eddie does, so he gets a trip to Los Cabos. Fen loses, so he gets no dinner. So Eddie started making sure he’d always get the trip, understand?”

“Um, okay?”

“Things escalated over the last couple of years. Eddie saw that I was happy with someone about a year ago, a girl whose father worked in marketing at Sarafian Events, so Eddie asked our father to have him fired. He made up some shit about catching her father stealing something from the festival offices.”

A small noise escaped my mouth. “Eddie wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh, he would. He does. And he did. The girl’s family ended up moving across the country. She didn’t want anything to do with me after that. And that was the final straw for me. That’s when I went after my father and Eddie.”

“I don’t—”

“I filed a formal complaint with Eddie’s university and said that my father had paid the school thousands of dollars to get Eddie pushed past the admissions board. I threatened to take it to the FBI. They quietly kicked him out rather than get the press involved. Which is when my father told me to get the hell out of the family house. Now I’m in exile.”

“I… don’t believe you.”

He shrugged. “It’s the truth. Ask Eddie if you trust his word over mine. It’s just that I can’t figure out how you got to that.”

“To what?”

“Trusting his word over mine.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “I barely know you.”

“And that bothers me. Because I’ve thought of you every day since you fell in the dam.”

Was he mentally unwell? Or was my word-pixie acting up and I just hadn’t realized it? Had I mixed something up? Should I be concerned?

“We shared something that night,” he said in a low voice. As if he were trying to remind me of a drunken hookup. But I’d definitely remember that. And no. Not with Fen. Definitely not that night at the dam. Events around my fall were a touch foggy in my head, due to my injury, but I’d remember that.

I glanced over my shoulder into the dark, open doorway, unable to see past the foyer, then whispered, “People might hear you. And what the hell are you talking about? I never talked to you that night before I fell.”

“Not talking about before. Talking about after. You really don’t remember? My mouth, your lungs,” he said in a seductive voice. “The gift of life.”

I stared at him. My hands started shaking.

Our eyes met, and a long moment hung between us as frogs sang in the darkening trees by the lake. He was serious now. This wasn’t a joke, and he wasn’t teasing.

“Coming back to you now, huh?” he said softly.

Was it? I remembered him at the dam.… I remembered someone’s face in front of mine when I was choking up water. I remembered someone shouting for help. But I could not see who rescued me. I’d never been able to see that face. Not in the two years since the accident.

I tried to deny it. “You didn’t… did not. You weren’t the one who got me out of the water. Who rescued me?”

It was Eddie. Had to be. When I introduced Eddie to my father, I said, “This is the guy who saved me.” It was Eddie’s only redeeming feature in my father’s eyes.

“I pulled you out of the water,” Fen insisted quietly. “You have to believe me, Jane.”

I believed him. I couldn’t say why, but we both knew it. Some things you can lie about. But the way I was feeling, like my chest was bursting with dam water and the world was spinning around us, like there was nothing but the weight of what we shared… that was real.

We both stood together, staring off at the lake, then at each other.

“Why?” I asked in a small voice.

“Because.” He shook his head, and there was that emotion in his eyes again. He was upset. Over me? “I don’t know why. You fell in the water. I jumped in after you. It was just instinct. I’ve been over it a thousand times. Why me? Why didn’t someone else do it?”

I gripped one elbow against my side to stop the trembling. “You were… just there.”

“Maybe,” he said, shrugging with one shoulder and shaking his head. “For a long time, I’ve been dismissing it as just a random part of my life that just happened for no reason. Then here you are again. Now I don’t think it’s random anymore. I was right the first time. We’re connected, Jane Marlow.”

He tilted his body inward to show me why he’d been standing at an angle. It wasn’t the bag he’d been hiding, but a tattoo on his far shoulder. A tattoo that looked like a pre-Raphaelite painting of a beautiful, drowned girl in a river, surrounded by flowers.

Ophelia, from Hamlet.

“Got that a year ago,” he said.

“Sweet holy night,” I murmured, brain sputtering. “That’s… a dead girl? I’m…”

“I know. I was embarrassed to show you, but there it is,” he said, covering it up with his hand. “It’s weird. I’m weird. I’m screwed up. That’s not fair to you. You’ve been haunting me. And I don’t know what to do about it.” He paced away from me and turned around. “I probably shouldn’t be here, huh?”

“What do you want from me?”

He shook his head. Shrugged again. If he was trying to play casual, it wasn’t working. His eyes betrayed him. There was nothing casual about the way he was looking at me. I didn’t know much, but I knew the longing there. I wasn’t sure how because I didn’t remember Eddie ever looking at me quite like that. Didn’t remember anyone looking at me like that.

I glanced away, flustered. “I’m with your brother.”

“Do you love him?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“What kind of answer is that?” he said, confidence rebounding. “Do you love him, yes or no? Simple question, really.”

I loved the way Eddie looked. I loved the way his arms felt around me. I loved the way people looked at me when I was with him. But none of those were the right answers. And I was taking too long to get to any answer because all I could think about was how Eddie had lied to me about rescuing me from the dam.

My silence said more than I’d intended.

And I could tell by how the corners of Fen’s mouth slowly curled, it said something to him, too.

Heels clicked, and a sweet floral scent wafted behind me. “Fen-jan? My shining star? What in the name of the saints are you doing out here?” Jasmine reached for Fen and pulled him toward her, staining both his cheeks faintly with her lipstick. “What’s going on? Are you upset?”

“Mama,” he protested, sniffling briskly. “I was, uh, returning a dog toy that was left in the record shop.” He awkwardly handed me Captain Pickles with those long fingers of his. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

She gave a cursory glance at the crumpled bag in my hand as I tried to compose myself and hide my wild emotions. She was quick, though. And sharp.

“Small world,” she said in a gentle voice, turning toward her son. “It’s been a whole week, my love. You’ve lost another pound. I’m coming over to your aunt Zabel’s tomorrow to feed you. Tell me how you two know each other?”

“We just met,” I said.

“Again,” he added.

She started to say something, tilted her head, and then thought better of it, biting her lip.

How close were Jasmine and Fen? Closer than I’d realized. He was on the outs with his father and Eddie, but there was a bond between these two. She’d obviously seen his tattoo—I mean, there it was. Did she know about him pulling me out of the dam?

“Jane was actually telling me all about her and Eddie,” Fen said to his mother in a falsely bright voice. “Like how they are going to be shacking up when he gets back to the lake.”

I blinked at him. A sickly feeling gathered in my stomach.

“What?” Jasmine murmured. “Is this true, Jane?”

Captain Pickles was heavy in my hand. If ever a rubber dog toy could maim a person, I wished that time could be now. Why would he say this? After the last few minutes?

“We… that is, uh, Eddie mentioned that…” Oh God. I was sweating now. “He said he wanted to find… a place at the lake for us. Not a house. Smaller.” Damn you, word-pixie!

“An apartment?” she said, not noticing that I was struggling. “Move out of the house? Oh my. This is more serious than I thought.”

“He said he would have to…” I tried to remember Eddie’s exact words. “Run it by Serj first. That he might help out with a place. When Eddie gets back from overseas. That I should think of where I want to live. But Serj would be the final say.”

One hand flew to her heart. “Of course Serj will help. Serj is never the final say.”

“Classic rookie mistake,” Fen said. “Could’ve told you that.”

Jasmine hissed and made a closing gesture with her fingers at Fen, then relented and smiled. “Eddie is like his father. He thinks they are the center of the world. People who think that are fools. But we love fools, because you cannot help the heart, can you?”

“The heart is a big, dumb muscle, Mama,” Fen said.

She smiled softly at him, then at me. “Well, this all very interesting and unexpected.”

“Isn’t it just?” Fen said.

“Well. I won’t say that I don’t have reservations. Moving in with someone is a big deal. At least, it was when I was your age. Maybe it’s different now. Tell me, Jane, is this what you want?” Jasmine said to me. “You want an apartment with my son?”

Uh… What kind of question was that? I didn’t know how to answer. It felt like she was asking, Do you want to sleep with my son? So I said, “If that’s what Eddie wants?”

Fen made a distressed grunting sound.

Jasmine shook her head. “No, no. What do you want, my dear? You.” When I didn’t answer, she held both hands together and said, “Let me rephrase. Would you like to move out of Mad Dog’s very big house and into your own very small apartment?”

I answered. “Yes.”

Fen said something wicked and filthy under his breath. I slid him a glance, but his eyes were so dark and narrow, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. But I knew what I was thinking, and I tried to project it to him with the power of my mind: You’re the one who brought this up, asshole. You! Your fault!

“Very well,” Jasmine said with a curt nod. “We will go apartment hunting.”

“What?” A clammy terror snaked through my limbs.

Fen laughed, but it was the kind of humorless reflex laugh people sometimes make when they’ve just been informed that a person they love has died.

Inside, my head was filled with white, hot panic.

“Next week. Give me a few days to arrange it,” she said. “My sister has an ex who’s a realtor. They can find something nice for a young couple. Let’s go inside and tell your father.”

No, no, no! I absolutely wasn’t ready to drop this on my dad.

Fen gave me dark look that I couldn’t identify—but one that set off a few more crackles of lightning in my chest—and then his mother interrupted what was between us, cradling his face with both hands. “Scram, my Fennec. And you’d better hope your father doesn’t catch you here, or there will be hell to pay. I love you forever and ever, until the sun burns out.”

“I love you so much it feels like the sun already died,” he responded darkly.

Who were these people?

They were nothing like Eddie. Nothing at all. Eddie was all Serj’s boy, apparently.

And I wasn’t sure where that left me.