I can feel Andrew’s muscles tighten beside me, and I know I’ve offended him.
“I just meant—”
Andrew sits up, his body no longer touching mine. “You meant that someone like me doesn’t have any kind of chance of getting discovered.”
“No! Just that maybe this island isn’t the right place for that kind of thing.”
Someone, hundreds of years ago,discoveredShelter Island. Or anyway, they thought they did, but it had long since been discovered by Indigenous people. Before that, by the animals and plants who’d thrived here. Before that, by the sea and air itself. Places don’t actually getdiscoveredany more than people do. People and places getfound.
Andrew takes another swig from the bottle. “You know, the Shelter Shack gets bigwigs. Plenty of important people have second homes out here. They come even in the offseason ’cause they have to for their taxes.”
I nod, even though I don’t know the first thing about what taxes have to do with visiting your summer home in the dead of winter. Gently, I place my hands on Andrew’s back. I press my thumbs into the curve of his shoulder blade, loosening his tight muscles.
He relaxes his body against mine, and I decide to return to safer territory. “Will Evelyn notice you snuck a bottle?”
Andrew shakes his head. When he speaks, his tone is lighthearted again. “Not likely. Besides, she can’t accuse me of taking anything without admitting there’s something to take.” He turns and winks, clearly pleased with himself for being so clever.
He passes the bottle back to me, and I study the label. The words are all (I think) French. “Looks like she gets drunk on good stuff.” At least, I think it’s good stuff. I could never tell the difference. I always took whatever I was handed, whether it was a crystal glass at a party in the Hollywood Hills or a forty in a parking lot on Hollywood Boulevard.
“A discerning basket case,” Andrew agrees, taking another drink, then leaning back against the couch. “I swear, her divorce has tipped her into full-blown alcoholism.”
I imagine Evelyn’s husband, trying to take her business from her while she gets drunk in secret and bosses people like me around.
Sounds like karma to me.
Maybe she’s barreling toward herrock bottom—that’s what they call the worst day of your life in AA—right now. I try to picture what Evelyn would consider a bad day—her hair out of place, dark roots showing, wine-stained teeth, her husband shaking his head with disgust—and compare it to my worst day.
If Evelyn had arock bottomlike mine, she’d need more than wine to numb the pain.
“How do you know so much about your boss, anyway?”
“I’ve been gathering gossip to make you happy.” Andrew smiles like he’s risking his job just to please me. I lean in and kiss him. I can taste the wine on his lips.
“You ready for another verse, baby?” he whispers, his lips hovering over mine.
I reach for my guitar:
How dare you tell me how to live
when your life is a disaster?
All these people want me to be like them —
Don’t they know I’m getting there faster?
Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker,
don’t pretend not to know.
Turns out I’m not the only imposter here;
I just hope you’ll reap what you sow.
Andrew starts kissing my neck. “Sing it again,” he whispers. “Sing it from the beginning.” He reaches his fingers into the waistband of my baggy jeans.
My husband and I used to stay up all night writing music.
Instead of hearing my own voice, I hear the song he and I wrote together before our kid was born, a song about how badly we wanted to become parents, all the promises we made to do a good job. I never guessed that a cowriting credit would start an avalanche of rumors: that he’d written my music all along, never mind that my first album came out before I’d even met him. It explained so much, they said—the critics, the label execs, the fans who turned on me after he left—no way agirlwould write the way I claimed to.
