Under the Same Sun (Stone Trilogy) (24 page)

Just like that he hung up on her, and she found herself alone in the parking lot beyond the backstage entrance, with only a couple of security men wandering across the open space and LaGasse waiting next to the door, keeping a discreet distance. Even the fans had left, having wandered around the big building to stand in line, waiting for the doors to open, waiting for the show to begin. It was eerily quiet out here. Naomi could hear birds singing in the trees, a couple of cars passing by on the road beyond the compound, even children’s laughter from nearby; but that was all. From inside, from the auditorium, where she knew the sound engineers were even now testing the speakers and the band was rocking the ceiling, there was not a sound.

She knew Jon was singing right now, and she wondered which song it was. They had never talked about the
Stone Song
; there just had not been the time for it, and the thought made her angry at her parents all over again for destroying something so special and precious by turning up in Geneva. The fury she had felt then was still there, and it had connected itself to that song and hearing it for the first time.

LaGasse stirred when the door behind her opened and Sal stepped out, cigarette in hand, ready to light it.

“Oh,” he said when he saw her. “All by yourself out here? What’s going on?” A line appeared between his eyes as he gazed at her, worried.

“Nothing.” She tucked the cell phone into her jeans pocket. “Nothing, Sal. Just a quick chat with Joshua, but he’s too busy to talk to me.” This, in fact, eased her mood. “He was on his way to breakfast with a group of classmates. There was a girl’s voice in the background.” Sal’s smile made her shrug and grin back. “He’s growing up! Soon he’ll be eighteen, a grown-up young man. My son. My baby. And now he’s living the New York life and has no time for me. I’m getting old, Sal.”

That made him laugh. “Yeah, right. Like hell you are. You’re not even forty; you’re a young chick!” Something like a blush crept up his neck. “
And look at you, as lovely as ever; you don’t look older than twenty-five. Nah, you’re not old.” A new thought occurred to him, and he added,
“Hey, if you are old, then Jon and I are ancient, and I hate that thought.”

“Ridiculous.” Embarrassed, she pulled up her shoulders. “I was trying to say, Sal, that it’s so amazing to see this happen. You have a baby, you raise it, you think all the time that you have a baby: and then one day, quite suddenly, you have to realize you’re actually talking to another adult with ideas and plans of his own, and you’ve lost control.” Sadness washed over her, and she wrapped her arms around her body. “Suddenly, you’re alone again. There’s a new freedom, but it hurts.”

Sal lit his cigarette. “But you let Joshua go quite early, didn’t you? Didn’t you send him off to Geneva to live with your parents and go to that music school or something? And then you let him go to Oxford on his own?”

“Yes.” She had no idea where he was going with this. The smoke from the cigarette hung between them in the still summer air, a thin blue veil that seemed to obscure reality.

Before Sal could speak again the door flew open, and Jon appeared. “Baby,” he called, “we’re taking a break. Want some coffee? There’s cake and stuff. You know, those great German pastries.” He held out his hand to Sal for the pack of cigarettes and the lighter. “Why are you standing out here? It’s hot! Who would have thought the weather would change this much in one day!”

“Joshua doesn’t want to come to Italy.” It had popped out before she had even found time to think about it, and it showed her how much it mattered to her. Always, always since Jon had returned to her life, Naomi felt as if she was walking on a tightrope, one stretched over a very deep drop indeed.

“He said he’s planning to go to LA and spend some time with Harry and his family. And he wants us home for Christmas; he wants to celebrate with the entire family.” She paused to draw a breath. “He’s meeting my parents, Jon. He wants them there for Christmas too. Didn’t you say they couldn’t see him? What happened to the restraining order?”

“I had it revoked.” Jon turned to look at the line of containers, squinting at them in the sunlight.

“How can you do that without asking me?” Naomi stepped in front of him. “How could you do that without talking to me first?”

With a sigh, Jon laid his arm around her. “Naomi, your father asked. He asked very nicely if I would allow them to take Josh out for lunch, and I agreed. You weren’t there, remember? You stalked out of that restaurant in Geneva fuming at the gills, and so I decided on my own. I can’t see any harm in it. Well, not anymore. And he’s never going out alone; there’s always a bodyguard with him. So let them have lunch together!”

“Oh, and now it’s my fault?” She didn’t even know where to turn with her anger and disappointment. “Now it’s me against all of you suddenly? Now I’m the evil one in this story?” A deep, terrible pain was blossoming in her chest, and she had to press her hand against it to keep it in check. “I thought you were on my side, Jon. I thought you wanted to protect me and Joshua more than anything else.”

“And so I do.” Jon waved at Sal. “Go away. This is private, married people stuff.” He waited until they were alone and then said, “I love you more than my life, Naomi. I love you so much it hurts. Every moment of my day centers around you, and you know it. You know you own me body and soul, every fiber of me, every breath.” Gently he touched her face, traced the line of her temple and jaw, her lips. “I want to see you happy and free, and I’ll do anything in the world to make sure of that.” Tears were gathering in her eyes, ready to roll down her cheeks, and he laid his palms around her face. “Part of that is making peace with our past and your family. We can’t go on living with this anger. We can’t avoid them now that they live in New York. And…” He hesitated. “And as much as I deplore it, we’ll just have to let them be part of Joshua’s life. It’s not as if they are criminals, Naomi. You said it yourself when we were in Geneva and you wanted to visit them. They are your parents, for better or worse.”

“But that was before they barged into the concert and messed everything up! Before he threatened to take Joshua away!” Her fingers clasped into his shirt.

“He can’t take Joshua away, Naomi. You know that.” Jon marveled how it could be that she fit so well into his embrace, as if he was holding a piece of himself, a part that belonged to him and yet lived outside of his body.

“Yes. Yes.” She squirmed unhappily, so he let go and took her hand instead to lead her back into the building.

“We’re trying to build a new life,” Jon said as they entered the hallway, “and part of that is accepting who you are. You’ve lived with all your secrets and the silence and loneliness for so long. It’s time to change that.” He waved at their surroundings. “Look, we’re traveling we’re on tour, going to all these places, meeting all these people, and still you want to live the way you did in Halmar. Only it doesn’t work anymore.”

From the catering area they could smell hot food, coffee, the sweet scent of fresh bread; hear the voices of the band, a snatch of guitar music.

“We’ll be going to Naples in a few days. We’ll meet the other half of your family, and I can hardly wait to see if there’s a resemblance, see where Lucia is from. Me…”—he shrugged and smiled—“I’m nobody. My family always lived in Brooklyn, and my ancestry vanished somewhere in the back alleys of New York. At some time they must have crossed the Atlantic, but there’s nothing to remember, nothing spectacular. But you, you’re like a European princess, someone stranded on the distant shores of America, with these clans spread out all over the old continents. You have traveled far and wide, Naomi. You have crossed so many wild oceans in your life, the last of them being the shooting; you need to move into quiet waters with me now. We need to start living. When we move into the Brooklyn house and start working on the musical, I want us to be free and happy, and I know it can be done. If we come to terms with your family and our past, my fame, and turn it all in a direction we want. But the first thing we have to do is accept your father for who he is.” Jon paused dramatically, waiting for a reaction, and when none came added lamely, “A stupid old bastard. But he’s our stupid old bastard, and we have to deal with him.”

For a moment Naomi gazed at him, her hands folded in front her chest as if in supplication, then she sighed.

“I need cake,” she said.

chapter 22

I
t wasn’t that she avoided him, but there was a resigned distance, a silence, floating between them. During the preparations for the show, in the dressing room, Naomi hardly spoke; and as soon as he wanted to touch her she drifted away, pretending to be doing something else.

Jon watched her evade him, watched how she didn’t look his way or even pick up the eyeliner to play with it as she normally did. He held up a shirt to her, teasing about the color and the embroidered sleeves; but she just gave him a cursory glance and shrugged, saying it was his choice, he knew his audience best, and to wear what he felt best in. Brushing her hands on her jeans, she rose from the corner of the table and announced she needed coffee, and left.

The door fell shut behind her with a soft, final snap, and he was alone. Once again alone in a dressing room just before a concert, shirt still in hand, the sounds from the hallway muffled and distant. Her presence lingered, like an echo of her voice, displaced air where a moment ago she had been. Slowly he dressed, standing in front of the mirror, careful not to disturb his hair and the cables.

This was his job, the career he had picked, and for a moment he wondered what his life would look like if he had decided to finish college. His brother, Kevin, came to his mind, a surgeon working at one of the big New York City hospitals and living in the suburbs. Every day he rode the subway to his job, returning in the evening. He had dinner with his wife and son and went to bed, day after day, year after year.

Jon, buttoning his shirt, recalled a conversation he’d had with Kevin last Christmas while they walked along the Brooklyn Promenade digesting the duck their mother had served them for dinner. Kevin had leaned on the railing in the falling snow and squinted at the Manhattan skyline, pointed at the glittering towers, and sighed. “I’m a prisoner,” he’d muttered, “I envy you. You forged out the life you wanted to lead, ruthless enough to put everything else aside and go where you wanted to go, to shape your career; and what am I? Yeah, a doctor. But in the end it’s just a job, a routine, just with more responsibility than some.” He’d balled his hand into a fist. “Do you ever feel this urge, Jon, this drive to be more than just alive? To rise above the masses, leave a mark on the world? Put a meaning to life?” He had looked at Jon and then laughed, and added, “Yeah, you know. You know what I’m talking about, because that’s where you are, right?”

Stunned by his brother’s words, Jon had been about to reply; but Kevin had moved on, shrugging his coat higher up on his neck, talking about baseball and their plans to go to the opera the next day. The moment was over before it had really begun. He remembered going to bed that night at the hotel where he and Naomi had been staying and gazing out at the snow while she was sleeping on his shoulder. For an instant, for a fleeting moment, he had felt that great yearning, the immense pull on his soul, to create something worthwhile, felt the wish to be more than a human, more than one of the horde who went through the daily routine without ever looking up. It was almost like a deep sadness, despair at life itself, a clawing at the fabric of existence, the struggle of a drowning man to rise above the surface. He had to resist the urge to pick up the phone and call Kevin and say, “Yes. I know. It hurts, and it hurts all the time. It feels like being in love, like losing love, like being told you’re going to die, like being told there’s no life after death, like the blackest night. It’s the desire to hold the world in your hand, to take command. And I strive for it all the time.”

But he hadn’t done it. Instead he had wrapped his arms tightly around Naomi, making her murmur in protest, and gone to sleep himself, his last thought the French toast his mother would serve them for breakfast.

The last button closed, Jon turned from the mirror. He was ready to face the crowd. But first, before he went out on the stage to dazzle his fans, he knew he had to find Naomi and see her smile at him.

J
on woke to the sun in his face.

Disoriented, he sat up. The bed was empty, she was gone, and panic surfaced for a moment until he saw her clothes in the open wardrobe, her suitcase in the corner. There was no note, nothing; so often before she had slipped out and left him to fear and wonder where she had gone and whether she would return.

He had been so keen on getting married, convinced that once she wore his ring he would be able to hold on to her, pin her down, make sure she would never run from him again; and here he was on a lovely July day in a Hamburg hotel, and once again he was alone.

He got up and walked over to the window. The sky was a clear blue, the fountain in the lake a white plume against it, and the trees along the street whispered gently in a cool breeze. There wasn’t much traffic, just some people strolling along the water, a sightseeing bus much like the ones in London ambling past. The stores were open. He could see customers walking in and out, and the coffee shop at the corner was doing a good business.

The crazy mood to go out on his own overcame Jon. There was the department store, the shopping arcade leading into the older part of town where he had been with Naomi the day before, where she had bought some perfume at a really nice shop while he stood by and listened to her chatting with the shopgirl in German. For once he didn’t feel like sitting in a hotel, waiting until she returned from wherever the mood had taken her.

T
here was a group of Japanese tourists in the lobby, but no one took any notice of Jon when he walked past and out into the sunshine. For a moment he stood on the steps of the hotel and breathed in the warm yet tart air, wondering where he should go first. A sense of freedom enveloped him, a careless, carefree attitude that made him push his hands into his pockets and saunter across the street right through the traffic, disregarding the pedestrian crossing at the corner and the angry honking of a carhorn.

Standing in line at the coffee shop, searching for German change in his wallet, he noticed how the woman next to him threw him sidelong, puzzled glances. A couple of times she seemed on the point of speaking to him but then stopped and studied the cakes and sandwiches in the display instead. When it was his turn and he stuttered out his order, not sure if his English would be understood, she mumbled, “For God’s sake, Jon, just tell them what you want.”

Surprised, he turned around, but she didn’t look his way and counted her money instead. She was pleasant, a little on the matronly side but dressed in a suit with a computer bag slung over her shoulder, nicely made up, the briskness of a workday in her posture and expression. Her hair was short, hugging her head like a Renaissance helmet, golden and glossy, with a few curls following the curve of her neck.

“Go on,” she said. “Pick up your coffee and move.”

“You know who I am,” Jon replied, and grabbed the paper cup one of the baristas held out to him.