Danica laughed.
I leaned on the doorframe and watched her hammering up another picture hook.
“Sorry,” she said. “Is the hammering bothering you? I’m almost done.”
“It’s not bothering me. Just curious what you’re hanging up.”
“Well,” she said, blinking her gorgeous eyes at me, “you saw all those pictures of flowers at my place, right?”
“Uh-huh…”
“I’m kidding! No flowers for you. But I did get you a few things…”
I followed her back into the kitchen, where the delivery dudes had left a big pallet lying on the bar. “Help me unwrap it?”
I helped her remove the brown paper and cellophane stuff, and the cardboard corners that were protecting the frames. There were three of them.
“One for the dining room,” she said. “One for your bedroom. And one for the entryway… This will be the first thing people see when they walk in.”
She lifted the first frame and presented the picture to me. The frame was about two feet by three feet, with a white matte inside. And a black-and-white photo of a concert. Packed audience, big stage with lights beaming up into the sky. You could see amps and drums on the stage, and blurs that were probably people, but whatever band it was, you couldn’t tell by looking at it.
I knew the venue, though. The event.
It was DreamWarp festival. Every year, the stage setups were different. That year, it had a Carnival theme.
It was the year I met Dirty… right behind that stage.
I looked at Danica. “What is this?”
Her shoulders dropped. “Damn. You don’t like it.”
“I like it. Where did you get it?”
“It wasn’t hard,” she said. “It’s a press image. From a stock photo site. I just purchased the highest-resolution version they had and got it printed at a lab. That’s you on the stage, I think, with the Penny Pushers. It said so in the credits, but you can’t really tell.”
“Okay.Whydid you get it?”
She turned and propped it up on the couch. “Sorry, it’s getting heavy… Why? Because I knew I wanted to get you a few pieces of art. You approved it in the budget, but I wasn’t sure what you’d like. I thought it would be nice to surprise you, so I talked to DJ Summer. And Dylan Cope.”
I stared at her.
“You talked to Summer,” I repeated. “And Dylan.”
“Yes. You know, your bandmate. And your best friend.”
Okay… that threw me.
This girl had more courage than I would’ve guessed. Not just anyone had the gonads to call up a rock star.
“Um, they were very nice,” she went on, getting fidgety as I stared her down. “I sent them both a message and Summer called me back. Dylan emailed me from Europe. I mean, he was a little harder to reach. I went through band management. They’re pretty responsive with their emails, though. Someone named Maggie helped me out?”
Hmm. Neither Summer or Dylan had let on that they’d talked to her.
Zane’s wife, Maggie, who was Brody’s assistant, hadn’t said a word, either.
“So…” she said, “you and I had talked about the band poster we’re keeping on your living room wall. I wasn’t sure if you’d want more band images, and Summer and Dylan didn’t seem to think you’d be all that keen on images of yourself all over your place…”
I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling a little… exposed? Uncomfortable, maybe, that my friends knew me so well. But they were right. “I wouldn’t.”
