Under the Same Sun (Stone Trilogy) (11 page)

“I’m failing you,” Naomi had said to him during the flight. “I feel as if I’m failing you. You deserve to have this, Jon, a baby, and I’m failing you.”

He had to make her snap out of the depression he could see creeping up on her.

The three weeks she had hidden herself away had been useless.

She could have fooled him as she stood with Sal, chatting, pushing stray locks behind her ears, laughing at something he was saying.

“Oh dear, no,” he heard her say when he came closer. “It’s not a place anyone ever needs to visit. There is really nothing here, nothing. Frankfurt is the most overstated village in the world, just an appendage of the airport. That’s all.”

“How unkind,” Sal replied, holding the car door for her, “I have a friend who is a publisher; she loves to come here every October for the book fair. And I’ve heard the opera is really very good.”

“Why would I want to come here if I can go to the Met?” Naomi said without even looking at him.

“Will you listen to her, Jon? She’s got the Met on her mind. You’ll have to buy a box, I think.” Sal signaled the driver that they were ready to go.

“I remember,” Jon said as the car pulled out onto the highway, “when we were here last time we had those amazing little marzipan thingies. The guy at the hotel told us they were a local specialty, and they really were to die for. And hey, we are in Germany! The beer is really good!”

Naomi threw him a glance so loaded with disdain that he smirked and fell silent.

“I used to go to the book fair with my mother.” She looked out at the cityscape as it drew nearer. There was a group of distinctive high-rise buildings, a cluster of them in the center of the town, shiny like icicles. “We came here while I lived with my parents in Geneva. My mother was crazy about the thing. It is open for visitors one weekend, and then everybody goes; it’s so crowded and exhausting. And very, very frustrating.”

Both gazed at her in surprise, and she shrugged. “You couldn’t take any of the books home.”

The car left the highway and took them into the city. For a while they drove along a broad road lined with elm trees, old houses on both sides, before office buildings took over.

“The venue is right next to the fair,” Sal remarked. “We’ve been there before.”

Naomi smiled at him. “I know. You were here before you came to Geneva, that first time. It was in the papers.”

“But you said…” Jon started and then fell silent again.

“I dreamed of being at the book fair during the week, when all the authors and publishers were there,” she went on. “And I wanted to be one of them. Not a gawker, not a tourist, but one of the authors. I wanted to sit in my publisher’s stall and watch those people walk by, stare at my book, and wonder if I maybe was the writer. It was the only thing I wanted, for a while.”

“For a while?” Sal pointed at the hotel. They had arrived.

“Yes, for a while, before I decided I wanted to study music. I couldn’t make up my mind. The only thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to take over my family’s hotel business. That I knew for sure.” The driver opened the door for her, and she got out.

S
he had been here before, she told Jon as they were waiting in the lobby for Sal to check them in; it was one of the best places in Frankfurt and well situated for a walk downtown. Her uncle and father loved it, and she knew they had thought a couple of times about acquiring it; but it was too big for them—they didn’t like huge houses like this one, despite the history and the charm. There were so many buildings in this area, she said, that had been built from the red sandstone they seemed to favor here. It looked distinguished, made the city look aristocratic in a way; and yet it was a boring town in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even any interesting food.

“Except for those marzipan things and the beer,” Jon replied absentmindedly. His thoughts were on something else, something she had said without even noticing, and he was determined to dig deeper into it.

Their room looked out onto a terrace where coffee was being served, and the street beyond it. There was a lot of traffic at this time of day, but she was right, it wasn’t like other big cities. Everything seemed smaller, provincial, in a way striving to be cosmopolitan but failing. He had never noticed before, never cared to notice; but with Naomi at his side, the world was a different place.

“So you knew.” Jon watched her open the luggage that had been brought from London and pick out clean clothing. “You knew I was in Europe, even before we met. You never said.”

Surprised, she let the skirt she was holding sink. “Of course, what made you think I didn’t? I sent you the lyrics, Jon. I knew who you were. I had a ticket for your show.”

So strange, and he had always thought he had been as much of a surprise to her as she had been to him, and he found himself wishing it had been so. This gave her an advantage in a weird way, as if she had known what she was getting into and he not.

“After I sent those lyrics to your office,” Naomi was saying, “I had this fantasy of you coming to me. I used to lie in bed at night and dream of you showing up out of nowhere at our door, just standing there and asking for me, because you wanted to know who had sent you these lyrics. One day…”—her eyes sparkled at him—“one day I was sick, lazing around on the couch with the flu and all alone in the apartment. My mother had made me tea and left me there to go to work, and I was feeling so sorry for myself. So bored. That was a couple of weeks after I had sent the lyrics. And I lay there in a doze, and imagined you getting out of a plane at the Geneva airport, taking a taxi, and coming to our house. I saw you walking to the entrance, asking the doorman for our apartment, and him letting you in. You took the elevator, and then you stood outside our door. I was excited. I really had spun myself into that reverie. And then the bell rang.”

“And?” It was silly, but he was entranced, could even see himself standing there; and now, so many years later, he wondered why he had not indeed done just that.  He had wanted those lyrics as badly as anything, ever.

“It was the cleaning woman. She had forgotten her key.” From the suitcase, she took a white cotton blouse, much like the one she was wearing just now, much like the one she had worn when they had first met; and for a minute he wondered if she had a secret stash of them, or a seamstress who made them especially for her.

“And if it had been me, then what?” The fantasy was too delicious to drop.

“Oh.” Naomi sat down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. I think it would have been very embarrassing. I was in jogging pants and a sweater, and I had a red nose from all the sniffling. You would have walked away, disappointed.”

“Ah, no, I don’t think so.” She crept away, farther up on the bed, when he came closer. “I don’t think I’d have left, drippy nose or not. I think I’d have whisked you away despite the flu and the jogging pants. I think I’d have fallen in love with you anyway, no matter how red your nose was that day. I would have wanted you, sweatshirt and all, just like always.”

“You’re getting maudlin again.” She giggled softly as he bent over her.

“Nah, not maudlin, just seeing that picture all too well, my dove. I can see you wiping your nose and tugging at your silly pants, trying to collect yourself into a semblance of respectability, and me, staring at your navel, at your stomach because your sweater is really too short; it’s one you’ve been wearing since you were a kid, with Winnie the Pooh on it, in pink, too.”

“Don’t care for Winnie,” she mumbled, and he laughed.

“Yeah, it’s Winnie all right. You’re pulling him down to hide your skin, and he looks like a yellow giraffe when you do that. And me, lyrics forgotten, jet lag forgotten, I want to touch that smooth stretch of belly and run my hand along your waist; and I want to kiss you right there in that posh hallway, and to hell with who might see us.” His lips were close to hers, close enough to feel the caress of her breath on them. “I take your hand and pull you into my arms, and there is no resistance. You just come into my arms, just like that. As if you’d been waiting for that to happen. As if, opening the door to me, you knew exactly what the outcome would be, flu or not.”

“And you catch the flu from me, and there goes the tour. No more singing.” She kissed him lightly.

“Yeah, who cares? Why would I want to sing when I can make love to you instead? Which, of course, I’d want to, after that first embrace. Oh yeah, that’s what I want. And so I whisk you away to the hotel, and you’re mine, no excuses, no delay. It’s all that matters, you and me.”

Jon wanted to drown in that embrace, over and over again, feel the shape of her body against his, her fingers playing in his hair. For a blessed moment, all the worries and fears dropped away and they were once again young lovers, enchanted by each other, locking the world out of their intimacy.

“You have the worst timing,” Naomi whispered. “You know you have to be at the venue, and do the sound check. You know there’s a concert in a couple of hours. Again.”

“Yeah, baby, let the Germans wait. I want to be here with you now.” His hand slid under the blouse.

“They won’t give you marzipan if you’re late. They love things to be on time here,” Naomi said, laughter in her voice.

“To hell with the bloody marzipan,” Jon replied.

S
tanding behind Sal, she watched the meeting with the fan club just before the concert, grinned at the huge package of sweets he was given, lovingly decorated with a white bow, and the stuffed animals. There was a pink elephant, and, of all things, a crocodile.

“I think it’s a hint,” Sal mumbled toward Art; “they want us to go on a tour in Africa,” to which Art snickered and replied, “Only over my dead body. I’m not good with lions and snakes.”

Naomi was fascinated by the rapture in the women’s faces, as if they were not facing a real person at all, not a normal man, but something more, as if he had come down from some kind of Olympus to hold court among his mortal followers. She wished they could see him, just once, early in the morning before his first cup of coffee, unshaven, grumpy, not a star at all.

There was a rigid protocol for these events, one she always observed with a mix of relief and melancholy. The army of security men, the careful screening of the fans, the rope that separated them from Jon—these all were necessary, she knew, but they also felt like a border between real life and theirs.

Jon was all graciousness and charm, accepting the smiles and adoration with kind words and small jokes that sent ripples of giggles through the group. He allowed one of them, and Naomi was sure she had been carefully selected by Sal before, to kiss his cheek and stand beside him for a few photos before he autographed tour books, CD covers, shirts, and even one bare shoulder.

“You may not want to take a shower too soon,” he drawled at the blond, blushing girl, “or all your lovely memories will wash away.”

Naomi had gone up on the stage during a break in the sound check and stared out at the huge, empty hall—the round cupola and the iron rafters like the ribs of a large animal, the many rows of seats—and wondered how it would feel to stand up there when it was packed with people, their attention directed at Jon and his musicians, singing with him, cheering. It had to be the headiest feeling, to look down at all those faces and see the adoration in them.

“It’s like sex,” Jon had told her when she’d asked. “It’s just like that. Only it’s over as soon as you leave the stage, and the silence and emptiness afterward are like the worst hangover in the world. There’s nothing worse than sitting alone in the dressing room after a really good show; you know the audience has floated back home, and all you have is a sweaty back and a sore throat. There is no loneliness like that. It’s the loudest, most silent, loneliness you can imagine.”

He had handed her his guitar to hold and added, “And no, it’s not like sex with you. After loving you I feel whole, and entranced, and terribly hungry for more.”

Sal stirred. “All right, enough smooching and fondling, Art. Let’s get him out of there.”

T
he concert was sold out, as always, and it went as well, as always. This time Naomi did sit in the front row, right among his biggest fans, LaGasse beside her and Alan, his back to the stage, right in front of her, in a row with the other guards. She could see Sal and Art looking her way every so often, anxious, but she wasn’t recognized. The people around her were too busy listening to Jon to even look at her.

There were some reporters around, mostly to the side and under close observation by security, but a couple of them had made their way to the edge of the stage where they could shoot some close-ups. One of them turned around and pointed his camera at her. Alan was beside him instantly, nearly slapping it out of his hands, while LaGasse stood in front of her, shielding her.

Barely anyone else reacted. From the corner of her eye Naomi could see Jon move closer to see what was going on, guitar held tightly, and relax again when he saw Sal rush forward.

The photographer was Parker, a contrite grin on his face and a shrug in her direction when Alan let go of him to hand him over to the local guards. He looked slightly scruffy, his dark blond hair a wild mess, the shirt hanging out of his jeans. He didn’t seem too concerned; but, she had to admit, he was still a handsome devil with a charming smile.

Naomi took a step in his direction, and he stopped to wait for her.

“Why?” she asked against the noise of the music. “Why do you keep following me?”

“You’re beautiful,” Parker shouted back, and walked away with the hovering guards.

“What was that all about?” Sal was there, his hand on her arm, ready to take her backstage to safety. “Is he stalking you? Do we have a problem here?”

“No, no. Everything’s okay.” She had no idea why she was saying that. Jon, guitar laid aside, was about to launch into
Secret Garden
, his voice soft and mellow, pouring over her shoulders like warm maple syrup. She turned to see him standing right above her, singing down at her, a small smile on his face. She smiled back, threw him a kiss, and fled to the safety of the backstage area.