sip.
“Penny for your thoughts, Ellison.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of inflation?”
The look on Sam’s face tells me that he’s not letting me off the hook. His next words, however, do buy me some time to think, which I desperately need.
“How long can you stay?”
“I have to leave tomorrow morning.”
“If you stay another day, you can see Marie. There’s a big party for Evenstar tomorrow. I know your favorite things in life are champagne and making small talk, so it should be right up your alley.”
“Oh, you know me so well. I’d rather go water-skiing with alligators than go to that party.”
“Figured it was worth a shot.”
“I’m glad you’ve kept that fighting spirit, Sam, now that you’re a big-shot music man.”
“Shut up, Hallie.”
“Gladly.”
We lapse into a comfortable silence. He knows me w ell enough to realize that I need some time to think.
Sam and I became friends, real friends, the kind that don’t dre ss everything up in fancy words and the kind that demand answers instead of asking for them, during the first summer that I spent in New York with Chris after we got back from Prague. Chris was shooting a cop movie in Brooklyn and was on set for what felt like endless hours every day. Of course, I didn’t know a soul in the city besides Sophia Pearce, and I would rather make friends with the Central Park pigeons than call her. Luckily for me, after a very long night in which we drank too much champagne at one of his parties, Sam and I found ourselves singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” and dancing a little Irish jig on his rooftop. I had found a summer soul mate.
The friendship was eventually cemented over a love of early 90s hip-hop (Jurassic 5 was a personal favorite of both of ours) and long days spent wandering around the city and long nights tearing up the dance floor. Despite his connections to Sampson and Sophia and all of the bad memories of my first trip to New York, the friendship had survived, probably because of Ben, who had been Sam’s real soul mate. Marie and I used to take bets on how long they would sit up and play video games when we went to Sam’s father’s beach house in North Carolina. She used to say that as long as they didn’t beat the game, they would still be hammering away on the controllers when we woke up. I usually went the conservative route and bet on 3 or 4 am. She always won.
It hadn’t all been sunshine and rainbows, of course. After Ben died and I was released from the hospital, he and Marie spent two months with Grace and me, holed up in Ben’s father’s house on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, and we had played endless rounds of Chutes and Ladders and Pretty Pretty Princess and Barbies. They had saved my life. My sanity. He and Marie had been married there, in our garden, because Sam hadn’t wanted to waste any more time. Or, as he asked me, who knew if there was time to waste?
The aimless playboy had also turned into something of a workaholic. He had eventually given in and followed his father into the music business. To anyone who would bother to listen, he described his job as being little more than an overpaid nursemaid who had to follow a bunch of half-naked assholes around to make sure that they didn’t get caught doing drugs in foreign countries. In reality, he did something with promotion and marketing, at least until his father had retired a few months before, leaving Sam the apartment and a position as the head of the pop division of Evenstar Records. Even though Sam is always moaning about the lack of music in the music industry, I know he loves it.
Sam glances up again at the picture of Ben and Grace and grins. “How’s my princess?”
“Obsessed with her Uncle Sam’s new band, 4Sure.”
“You really shouldn’t l et her listen to that garbage. It will rot her brain.”
“I lost control of Grace when she turned two. She’s a monster. She thinks the lead singer is, and I quote, ‘the most darling thing
“Penny for your thoughts, Ellison.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of inflation?”
The look on Sam’s face tells me that he’s not letting me off the hook. His next words, however, do buy me some time to think, which I desperately need.
“How long can you stay?”
“I have to leave tomorrow morning.”
“If you stay another day, you can see Marie. There’s a big party for Evenstar tomorrow. I know your favorite things in life are champagne and making small talk, so it should be right up your alley.”
“Oh, you know me so well. I’d rather go water-skiing with alligators than go to that party.”
“Figured it was worth a shot.”
“I’m glad you’ve kept that fighting spirit, Sam, now that you’re a big-shot music man.”
“Shut up, Hallie.”
“Gladly.”
We lapse into a comfortable silence. He knows me w ell enough to realize that I need some time to think.
Sam and I became friends, real friends, the kind that don’t dre ss everything up in fancy words and the kind that demand answers instead of asking for them, during the first summer that I spent in New York with Chris after we got back from Prague. Chris was shooting a cop movie in Brooklyn and was on set for what felt like endless hours every day. Of course, I didn’t know a soul in the city besides Sophia Pearce, and I would rather make friends with the Central Park pigeons than call her. Luckily for me, after a very long night in which we drank too much champagne at one of his parties, Sam and I found ourselves singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” and dancing a little Irish jig on his rooftop. I had found a summer soul mate.
The friendship was eventually cemented over a love of early 90s hip-hop (Jurassic 5 was a personal favorite of both of ours) and long days spent wandering around the city and long nights tearing up the dance floor. Despite his connections to Sampson and Sophia and all of the bad memories of my first trip to New York, the friendship had survived, probably because of Ben, who had been Sam’s real soul mate. Marie and I used to take bets on how long they would sit up and play video games when we went to Sam’s father’s beach house in North Carolina. She used to say that as long as they didn’t beat the game, they would still be hammering away on the controllers when we woke up. I usually went the conservative route and bet on 3 or 4 am. She always won.
It hadn’t all been sunshine and rainbows, of course. After Ben died and I was released from the hospital, he and Marie spent two months with Grace and me, holed up in Ben’s father’s house on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, and we had played endless rounds of Chutes and Ladders and Pretty Pretty Princess and Barbies. They had saved my life. My sanity. He and Marie had been married there, in our garden, because Sam hadn’t wanted to waste any more time. Or, as he asked me, who knew if there was time to waste?
The aimless playboy had also turned into something of a workaholic. He had eventually given in and followed his father into the music business. To anyone who would bother to listen, he described his job as being little more than an overpaid nursemaid who had to follow a bunch of half-naked assholes around to make sure that they didn’t get caught doing drugs in foreign countries. In reality, he did something with promotion and marketing, at least until his father had retired a few months before, leaving Sam the apartment and a position as the head of the pop division of Evenstar Records. Even though Sam is always moaning about the lack of music in the music industry, I know he loves it.
Sam glances up again at the picture of Ben and Grace and grins. “How’s my princess?”
“Obsessed with her Uncle Sam’s new band, 4Sure.”
“You really shouldn’t l et her listen to that garbage. It will rot her brain.”
“I lost control of Grace when she turned two. She’s a monster. She thinks the lead singer is, and I quote, ‘the most darling thing
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