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But he doesn’t.
“You’ve gotten… I don’t know. Hard, I guess, is the word,” he goes on. “And after what you’ve been through with your mom and your manager, who can blame you? But Heather, not everyone is out to steal all your money and flee to Argentina with it like they did. You’ve got to believe me when I say that I never meant to hurt you. We just drifted apart, you and I. We want different things. You want to sing your own songs, and you apparently don’t care if doing so destroys your career—what’s left of it. While I… well, I want—”
“Hey!” yells the drug dealer. “You’re JORDAN CARTWRIGHT!”
I can’t believe this is happening. First Elizabeth, now this.
What does Jordan want from me, anyway? That’s what I can never figure out. The guy is thirty-one years old, six-two, and worth a lot of money—way more than the hundred thousand a year Rachel is looking for in her ideal mate. I mean, I know his parents weren’t exactly thrilled when the two of us moved in together. It hadn’t looked good, two of their most popular teen performers, shacking up…
But had our entire relationship just been an elaborate attempt to get back at Mr. and Mrs. Grant Cartwright for allowing their youngest son to audition for the Mickey Mouse Club, like he’d begged them to back when he was nine, to his everlasting shame? Because of course serious rockers don’t have photos of themselves in Mickey Mouse ears being shown in Teen People every other week…
“Jordan,” I say, cutting him off as he is listing the things he wants out of life, most of which have to do with bringing a little sunshine into people’s lives, and why is that so wrong? Except that I never said it was. “Could you please just go away?”
I jostle past him, my keys in my hand. I guess my plan was to unlock the door and get inside before he could stop me.
With three locks to undo, though, a quick escape is kind of tough.
“I know you don’t take me seriously as an artist, Heather,” Jordan goes on. And on and on. “But I can assure you that just because I don’t write the songs I sing, that doesn’t make me any less creative than you are. I do practically all my own choreography now. That move I did on the ‘Just Me and You Now’ video? You know, this one?” He does a quick step-ball-change, accompanied by a pelvic thrust, on the front stoop of the brownstone. “That’s all mine. I know to you that might not be much, but don’t you think it’s time you took a good look at your own life? I mean, what have you been doing that’s so artistically fulfilling lately? This stupid dorm thing—”
Two locks down. One to go.
“—and living down here with drug addicts at your doorstep… and with Cooper! With Cooper, of all people! You know how my family feels about Cooper, Heather.”
I do know how his family feels about Cooper. The same way they feel about Cooper’s grandfather, who came out of the closet at the age of sixty-five, bought a bright pink stucco brownstone in the Village, then willed it to his black sheep grandson, who’d moved into the garden apartment, turned the middle floor into a detective agency, and offered the top floor to me, rent-free (in exchange for doing his billing), when he’d found out about my walking in on Jordan and Tania.
“I mean, I know there isn’t anything going on between you two,” Jordan is saying. “That’s not what I’m worried about. You aren’t Cooper’s type.”
He can say that again. Sadly.
“But I wonder if you’re aware that Coop has a criminal record. Vandalism. And yeah, he was a juvenile, but still, for God’s sake, Heather, he has no respect for public property. That was an Easy Street marquee he defaced, you know. I’m aware that he always resented my talent, but it’s not my fault I was born with such a gift—”
The third lock springs open. I’m free!
“Good-bye, Jordan,” I say, and slip inside, shutting the door carefully behind me. Because, you know, I don’t want to slam it in his face and hurt him, or anything. Not because I still care, but because that would be rude.
Plus his dad might sue me, or something. You never know.
6
Secret Admirer
I’m your
Secret Admirer
I know how
Much you love
And desire her
And I think
What would you do
If you knew that
I loved you?
If you knew it was true
That I’m your
Secret Admirer?
“Secret Admirer”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Sugar Rush
Cartwright Records
Jordan is pounding on the door, but I’m ignoring him.
It’s cool inside the brownstone, and smells vaguely of toner from the photocopier in Coop’s office. I start up the stairs to my apartment, thinking Lucy—have I mentioned her? She’s my dog—will want to be let out, when I happen to glance down the hall and see that the French doors to the back terrace are open.
Instead of going upstairs, I go down the hallway—Cooper’s grandfather had it papered in black and white stripes, which was apparently all the rage in the seventies gay community—and find the man of the house sitting in a lawn chair on the back terrace, a bottle of beer in his hand, my dog at his feet, and a red mini-Igloo at his side.
He’s listening—as he usually is, when he’s home—to a jazz station on the radio. Cooper is the only member of his family who eschews the screeching of Easy Street and Tania Trace for the more dulcet tones of Coleman-Hawkins and Sarah Vaughn.
“Is he gone yet?” Cooper wants to know, when he notices me standing in the doorway.
“He will be soon,” I say. Then it hits me. “Are you hiding back here?”
“You got that right,” Cooper says. He opens the Igloo and takes a beer from it. “Here,” he says, offering it to me. “I figured you’d need one of these.”
I take the cold bottle gratefully, and sink down onto the green padded seat cushion of a nearby wrought-iron chair. Lucy immediately darts over and thrusts her head between my thighs, snuffling happily at me. I rub her ears.
That’s the nice thing about having a dog. They’re always so happy to see you. Plus, you know, there are health benefits. People’s blood pressure goes down when they pet a dog. Or even a cat. It’s a documented fact. I read it in People magazine.
Of course, pets aren’t the only thing that can help keep your blood pressure down. Sitting in a really tranquil place can do it, too. Like, for instance, Cooper’s grandfather’s terrace and the garden below, which are totally two of the best-kept secrets in Manhattan. Leafy and green, surrounded by high, ivy-covered walls, the place is this tiny oasis carved from a former eighteenth-century stable yard. There’s even this little fountain in the garden, which Cooper, I see, has turned on. It gurgles comfortingly in the late-afternoon stillness. As I stroke Lucy’s ears, I can feel my heart rate returning to normal.
Maybe when I pass my six months’ review, and I’m finally able to enroll in school, I’ll become a pre-med major. Yeah, it’ll be hard to do with a full time job—not to mention Cooper’s billing. But I’ll find a way to make it work.
And then maybe later I’ll get like a scholarship or something to medical school. And then, when I graduate, I can take Lucy with me on rounds, and she can calm down all of my patients. I’ll totally eradicate heart disease, just by having my patients pet my dog. I’ll be famous! Like Marie Curie!
Only I won’t wear uranium around my neck and die of radiation poisoning like I read that Marie Curie did.
I don’t mention my new plan to Cooper. Somehow, I don’t think he’d fully appreciate its many facets. Although he’s a pretty open-minded guy. Arthur Cartwright, Cooper’s grandfather, angered by the way the rest of the family had treated him after he’d revealed he was gay, had left the majority of his vast fortune to AIDS research; the entirety of his world-class art collection to Sotheby’s to auction, with the provision that all proceeds from the sales go to God’s Love We Deliver; and almost all the property he’d owned to his alma mater, New York College…