Under the Same Sun (Stone Trilogy) (12 page)

chapter 10

I
t was raining.

Parker stood outside the concert hall, the red sandstone walls rising up behind him like a fortress from the Middle Ages, all alone in the open space. There were a couple of taxis lined up, waiting for the show to end and for people wanting a ride. On the street outside the compound, the evening traffic went by as if nothing at all had happened, the cars mindless of his turmoil and loneliness.

They had not taken the camera from him, nor checked for pictures—a mistake, an oversight—and he cradled it to his chest gleefully, impatient to see what he had gotten.

There she was, in a couple of snapshots he had managed to take before they’d noticed him. She was looking up at the stage, her hands raised to applaud, a soft smile on her face, caught in a blue spotlight. He could not get enough of looking at her, at the fine profile and the curve of her neck, that braid, the slender shape of her shoulder. Everything about her screamed class and breeding, and for the life of him he couldn’t understand why she would be married to someone like Jon Stone, a rock star, a cheap self-taught songwriter, famous for his many affairs and, earlier, even drugs. Now he might run around in silk shirts and hand-tailored suits, but Parker remembered only too well the photos of him at one or another LA party, a girl in one arm and a bottle of whiskey in the other, drunk, laughing, not giving a damn about anything.

And her, by now he knew everything about her, about her wealthy family and their hotel empire; her old, European ancestry and the role she had refused for Jon’s sake. Parker couldn’t understand why she had left that huge inheritance behind just to play groupie to this man and his band, how she preferred to travel with him when she had that incredible family estate waiting for her in Toronto and the ownership of all those hotels at her fingertips.

Jon Stone—Parker shook himself in disgust. So famous, so celebrated, so good-looking and successful, and as powerful as a Mafia boss. He had managed to lure her away from her life, drag her down into his sordid Hollywood existence, and she seemed happy about it.

There was their son; he had used all his influence to find out about him. So well had they hidden the boy, tucked him away with his
grandmother in Brooklyn, and yet Parker now knew everything about Joshua. Their love child from long ago, from when Jon had only just started his career and Naomi had been barely more than a teenager. Supposedly, he was even more talented than his notorious father.

Parker had been about to go to New York and find him and then stopped. He didn’t want to risk being found out and thrown into jail at the wave of Jon Stone’s finger.

With a sigh and a shudder, Parker made his way toward the line of cabs. They would be going to Geneva next, and he wouldn’t follow her there. But he would wait for her in Hamburg, and then he’d try to get her alone.

“
Y
ou don’t have to come,” Jon said at the last minute, just before they were about to leave for the airport. “If you don’t want to go to Geneva, you don’t have to come. You could always go ahead to New York and wait there for me. It’s only a few more stops here in Europe. I’d be with you in a couple of weeks.” And added, with a mischievous grin, “You could get the house ready for us. Do all the shopping you want, baby, right there in your dream city.”

She just shook her head and finished packing her few belongings.

“Your parents will be in Geneva, your father.” He said it gently, as if he was breaking some dire news to her, and it made her look up.

“You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to,” Jon went on. “It’s no big deal. Security will keep him away.”

He saw her touch her side where the scar was and fell silent.

The hotel suite they were in was nothing like what he was used to; everything seemed just a bit shabby, worn by time, though the furniture must have been nice when it was first placed here. Always, through all the years he had been traveling the world, he had hated the German feather pillows and the too-warm duvets. There was something terribly provincial about the beds.

“I liked the sheets at the Seaside, in Halmar.”

Confused by this remark, so completely out of context, Naomi stared at him.

Jon shrugged. “Yeah, I did. Nothing fancy or colorful.” He gestured at the bed with disgust. “I hate patterned sheets and covers. I want my bed white, or cream, or if you’re in it, rose for all I care. But that’s the limit of my color endurance.”

“I’m going with you to Geneva,” she replied.

T
his was different, and for the first time Naomi felt the excitement of being on a tour.

They were all in the lobby to check out and get on the bus, the entire band, Sal, and Art. Security was heavy, the entrance blocked off, and from where she stood by the counter, she could see the fans on both sides of the roped-off path. They were shouting for Jon, brandishing posters with his name on them, waving scarves and shirts bought at the concert.

“You could,” Sal said from behind her, “walk with the band. Or we could smuggle you out the back entrance and pick you up there. You don’t have to do this.”

“It’s a bit late for that, Sal, isn’t it?” There was a bowl of apples right beside her, and she took one. It was a beautiful apple, red and shiny, as if it had been grown as a decoration piece. “I’ll deal. It’s time I did.”

“No, you don’t have to, ever again.”

Surprised, she tilted her head at him.

“You don’t have to walk into public ever again, darling. I’ll see to it, and protect you in every way.” His voice was as gentle as she had ever heard it and the words so strange, coming from Sal, that she couldn’t reply.

“I’ll see to it you have a private and protected life, Naomi, as private and secluded as I can manage.”

Jon, standing with Sean and Art at the other end of the lobby, smoking a cigarette with them and idly chatting, had his back turned to her.

“I’ll never forget that moment when you fell, shot down, and I unable to help you, afraid you would die. It was my fault, and I’ll do anything I can to keep harm away from you.”

She listened, her head bowed, fighting tears, again drawn back to that day in her life, and to the pain. Once more she felt the needles in her body, the tube down her throat, and the burning of her wounds, and heard the remorseless beeping of the monitors beside her hospital bed. It was almost as if it was a parallel world waiting just a breath away, and any little trigger pushed her over the brink into it. It was a world where her body was always hurting and she choked on blood again; and always, always she felt the lure of that peaceful, silent shore she had seen in her coma dreams.

“Naomi.” Jon was there, his arm around her waist, supporting her, glaring at Sal. “What did you say; what did you do, Sal?”

“He didn’t do anything, Jon.” She leaned into him, shaking. “Everything is okay, don’t yell at Sal again. It’s not his fault when I feel
faint, for crying out loud.”

Jon saw how she pressed her hand against her side where the bullet had hit her and how she struggled to breathe, her tongue brushing over her lips as if she was trying to lick something off them, and it broke his heart.

“Come, baby,” he said gently. “I’ll take you the back way. Let them wait out there until tonight.” He couldn’t understand why that offer put the hint of a smile on her face and made her glance at Sal.

S
al came to her in the bus, and, leaning on the back of the seat in front of her, asked, “Are you okay? For a moment I thought you were going to faint.”

Jon looked up from his newspaper but said nothing.

Naomi pulled the jacket she was wearing tighter around her body. “I’m fine, Sal. I just felt sick for a moment. It was…” She gazed out at the highway, for a moment lost in thought. “I guess I’m just tired. The past few days were a little bit much.”

Sal rubbed his forehead. “I know. It’s always like that at the start of a tour. The routine will settle in once we’re back in the States, don’t worry. Europe is always a hassle. The languages and everything. Strange food, strange customs.” He waved at the road outside. “Even different traffic. You’ll feel better once you’re back on home ground.”

That made her smile. “But I’m not American, Sal. I’ve lived all over the world.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be all right, don’t worry. Thanks.” She closed her eyes and rested her head against the window, and Sal left her to return to his seat behind the driver.

T
he plane was waiting for them in a hangar, in an obscure corner of the airport well away from the regular traffic. It was a larger one this time to accommodate all of them: the band, Jon and herself, and the rest of the entourage that had not gone ahead with the trucks during the night.

Someone had provided coffee for them while they waited for their luggage to be loaded. There was even a tray of sandwiches—not the American kind with soft, white bread, but crisp rolls liberally spread with butter and good German sausage and ham, cheeses Naomi had badly missed in Canada and the US, even some pickled herring. She let the raw, tender fish melt on her tongue, savoring the salt and the flavor of dill and juniper, trying to knit it into her memory so she wouldn’t forget it once they were gone. Some things she missed terribly. This was the taste of Norway, of the North, and she had never yet found it in LA.

It made her recall how much of it she had eaten during her pregnancy, how she had crept upstairs to the kitchen at night to steal a couple of jars, together with other sour stuff, and then sat on her couch in the dark, watching the beam from the lighthouse pass over the Halmar bay as she picked out the morsels with her fingers, dripping the brine on her nightgown. Once Joshua had been born her appetite had changed radically, and she had wanted sweets, bread, sugar, all the useless carbohydrates, and most of all, Andrea’s cinnamon rolls.

“What’s this?” Sal had come up beside her and was eyeing one of the rolls critically.

“It’s raw meat,” she replied, and picked it up. So German, so European. “Not tartare, but pork, finely chopped, seasoned, with raw onion. It’s delicious. Try it!”

He walked off again, tossing a disgusted curse at no one in particular. Naomi took a big bite, again thrown back in time. Pastrami was all good and well, but some things could not be replaced.

Jon joined her, eyebrows raised in curiosity. “Sal is pacing across the tarmac like a tiger, telling everybody who wants to hear that you’re behaving like a cannibal, eating raw flesh. What’s this all about?”

She held out the roll to him, and he grinned. “Ah. I see why he’s slightly turned off. I remember Andrea giving you that for breakfast sometimes, and you like the stuff! You’ll never be a proper LA vegan, my dear; good thing we’ll be living in New York in the future. That’s not a trend you’re likely to establish in Hollywood.” Politely he declined her offer to share but remained with her until they were ready to board.

“You know what makes me sad?” Naomi said just as they were about to get on the plane, while Jon was finishing the coffee he had just picked up. “The most wonderful scent in the world is a newborn’s head. I don’t know why that is; one would think it would be disgusting, so fresh from the womb, but babies just smell delicious.”

“Why does that make you sad?” Jon put down the cup.

“Because you’re supposed to smell it on your own baby’s head. And you never will.” She gathered her purse and jacket from the chair, “And you should have.”

H
e had refused to hold little Marisol when Solveigh offered, afraid of dropping the infant, afraid of crushing her; but he had never in his wildest dreams thought of smelling her. Mesmerized, he had watched Russ handle the baby as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if the ability to look after her had been delivered to him the same instant she was born. Solveigh, sitting upright in her bed and eating a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon, had watched her new family with the complacency of a well-fed cat, her face radiant, her blue eyes sparkling. There had been no trace of exhaustion; she was as fresh as a daisy and as healthy as ever. Compared to her, Naomi looked like a ghost, like her own shadow: bloodless, tired, impassive.

Jon wanted to hit somebody. He wanted to feel his fist connect with flesh, break bones, feel something—anything—crumble under his wrath, and for the pain to be transferred from Naomi to that other body. He wanted someone to be guilty, to pay for her hurt, take the burden; only there was no one. If at all, he would have to smash his own face, for of all the people connected with the shooting, he was the most responsible.

Defeated, he climbed the gangway, the last to board.

Their little group didn’t fill even half the plane; they had enough room to spread out for the short flight. Naomi had picked a seat in the back, well away from the others.

“You really want me to divorce you just so I can smell a baby’s head?” He dropped into the seat beside her. “Or are you thinking of becoming a Mormon so I can have more than one wife?”

“I think you would have to become a Mormon for that; besides, they don’t allow that anyway, Jon. No, I don’t want you to have any other wife but me.” Her seat belt was tangled, and she pulled impatiently to close it.

“Ah. So no other wife. That leaves only one option. Divorce. Well then. Let’s get a divorce.” I
t had been said so calmly that it took a while for the words to register with her. Her face paled as if all the blood had dropped from it with one breath, and her eyes closed for an instant. Jon was almost sure he could see her lashes tremble.

“All right,” Naomi said.

The softly spoken word felt like a long, hot needle pushed into his throat.

The plane was moving, taxiing toward the runway. A flight attendant came to check on them, nodded, and left again.

“You would really do that, wouldn’t you? You would jump off this plane just to atone for something that’s not your fault.” Jon gripped her hand hard, probably hurting her, but he didn’t care. “You would divorce me. And what do you think would happen then, huh? Do you really believe for one second that I’d ride off into the sunset with a young nubile maiden and get her pregnant within the next twenty-four hours just so I could hold a baby in my arms? Don’t you understand anything?”

She didn’t react.

“Look at me, damn you. Don’t sit there like a dying swan. I will never divorce you, so you can stop hoping for that. I don’t give a shit about a baby’s head, and you have to stop punishing yourself.” He drew a deep breath. “You can’t go on like this, my love; it will destroy you. You’re torturing yourself every day; you wallow in the pain.”

That shook her out of her distress. Furiously, she pulled her hand out of his to tug at her clothes. “Do you want to see my scar? Do you want to see where they cut me open from top to bottom; do you want another look at the X-rays with the black hole where my lung should be? Would you like to watch the video again, of the shooting, when you were not there, and…”

Jon caught her against his chest when she started sobbing, fighting for breath, cradling her head, just as the plane took off. The land slipped away beneath them, just like his anger; and he wondered, miserable now,
why he had felt the need to lash out at her, dump something as stupid
and painful as the prospect of divorce on her, when he wanted nothing of the kind.