Six ways to write a love.., p.23
Six Ways to Write a Love Letter, page 23
“It was beautiful and vulgar in the best way,” Remy said then told her about the old sex workers and the DANGEROUS COCAINE SOLD TO TOURISTS sign that people who hadn’t watched their brother overdose thought was a riot. Vivi listened, pulling the tray of cookies out and replacing it with a final batch.
“And the places you get drugs—like the places for pot and mushrooms—are all called coffee shops. They have actual menus, like real coffee-serving coffee shops. Like, what to order to make you excited, or happy, or mellow, or whatever you want to be.”
“I think I’d heard about that before. Tuesday does that sort of thing when she comes here,” Vivi said thoughtfully. “She says it’s Amsterdam, that you’re basically required as an American to do mushrooms. She and Noel both, actually…” She drifted off, too skilled at subject changes to stop short—but there it was in the air anyhow. Noel’s name. There it always was.
“People think the song we’re working on is about him. That it’s your Noel breakup song,” Remy said as casually as possible, turning one of the cookies a bit with the edge of his finger.
“Yeah. My publicist told me,” Vivi said. “Ridiculous.”
“Is there—is that what you’re working on though, that you aren’t showing me? A Noel breakup song in that notebook?” Remy asked.
“I don’t…I mean…yes,” Vivi said.
“I’d like to work on that one with you, Vivi,” Remy said carefully, meeting her eyes.
Vivi pressed her lips together. “We will. It’s not for lack of material, where Noel is concerned. I could record a whole album of breakup songs about him.”
“Then break up with him, Vivi,” Remy said. The words spilled from him, not desperate, exactly, but almost demanding—the way you speak to a character on a movie screen. He wanted to bring up Portugal, or the paparazzi, or the stupid haircut Noel had, but really all those points led to the same place: Leave him. Please, leave him. Be with me, in public and private and everywhere in between. Leave him.
Vivi answered, voice soft and worried, “I will. It’s just so much nicer to distract the whole world with something shiny and stupid than it is to give them you. And then, the minute they find out about you, they’ll want our breakup song instead of the love letter I want to write about being with you. It’s a loop. But this moment, this in-between time, it’s like the whole loop just freezes.”
Remy nodded at the countertop but said, “It doesn’t freeze, though, Vivi. This tour—it’ll end. It won’t be like this forever.”
“Right,” she said, so quietly, he nearly missed it. She was still for a few long moments. “When it’s over, Remy—what happens?”
“I don’t know,” Remy admitted.
Vivi nodded, and even though she smiled, it was broken. “It wouldn’t be easy. I’m not in LA. You are. If the world knows about us, your house is going to get staked out. They’ll know when you’re there. They’ll know everything that happens with your brother. They’ll go to your gigs, and people will hire you to mine you about me.”
“I won’t tell them anything—”
“That’s not what I mean,” Vivi said, shaking her head. “It’s not that I don’t believe in this, Remy. It’s just that this, crazy as it is sometimes, is easier than real life. Even more so when the world thinks I’m really with Noel—”
She inhaled, like she’d been about to say more, but the oven timer dinged, signaling that the final batch of cookies was complete. Vivi retrieved them then washed her hands and surveyed the kitchen, silently counting the perfectly symmetrical rows, stalling as long as she could.
“Come on,” Remy said, meeting her eyes. “Let’s go to sleep.”
Vivi’s face lit up in sorrow and hope and relief, and she let her hand slide into his. They walked to the hotel bedroom together; Remy stripped off his shirt and fell into the enormous bed. Vivi took the time to wash her face and complete her complex nighttime beauty routine, which meant she smelled like lotion and honeysuckle when she curled up beside him fifteen minutes later. Her fingers and toes were freezing; Remy pressed her hands against his chest to warm them.
“Thank you,” she murmured, turning her hands over to warm the backs and nestling closer to him. He responded by kissing her lightly on the head, inhaling the scent of her, and wondered why in the world he’d advocated for unfreezing this particular loop.
Chapter Twenty-Six
They planned to pull out of Amsterdam before noon the following day, after Remy helped Vivi pack the dozens upon dozens of cookies in bags individually labeled with the upcoming cities. One of the tour assistants, she said, would freeze them all to keep them fresh then unfreeze them bag by bag as they arrived at each tour stop. Next was Riga, in Latvia, followed by Helsinki and a handful of other comparatively smaller countries and arenas, all of which they’d be driving to. After that, Tokyo, Shanghai, and the final show in Sydney.
“Where’s Parish?” Remy asked as he boarded the bus with the other musicians.
“Walter pulled him out of the hotel lobby this morning,” David said, looking wary.
“Walter? Like, Walter himself? Not his assistant?” Remy asked.
David was mid-nod when the question was better answered by Parish himself. He shoved onto the bus with the threatening weight of a thunderhead. His features were lines—eyes, mouth, brows, even his flared nostrils and locked hands.
“Dude,” David said.
“Some motherfucker told Walter about us going out last night, and even though doing legal motherfucking drugs isn’t mentioned anywhere in the contract, apparently I’ve violated some clause and reflected poorly on the princess of pop and am fucking fired,” Parish said, voice hissing, fingers shaking. He stomped past them and wrecked his bunk, grabbing bags and papers and a handful of clothes he’d apparently made up in the blankets.
“Wait, are you serious? You’re fired?” David said.
“Why the fuck would I joke about that?” Parish asked without looking at him.
“What about Laurel? Did she get caught too?” Remy asked. “What about me and Michael?” How would he explain this to Vivi? Did she even know Parish was fired, or was this beneath her pay grade? And it wasn’t as if Vivi could save his, Remy’s, job, and not Parish’s—it would arouse too much suspicion. But then, Remy hadn’t really done anything wrong—
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe,” Parish said. “I’m guessing one of the Vivi superfan freaks got a photo or something. They wouldn’t even tell me who turned me in—they said they weren’t required to reveal the source. I can’t believe this shit. This is why I shouldn’t tour with women. The stuff Nick Maddon did on his tour would make Vivi’s little virginal heart break.”
“Can you fight it? Is there anything—” Remy began but stopped when Parish glowered.
“Independent contractors. That’s all we are in the end. Fuck this whole fucking industry, man. I wanted to be a musician, not a prop,” Parish said. He lifted his hand; David and Michael shook it vigorously, pulling him in for quick bro-hugs. When Parish got to Remy, he gave him a serious, intense look. “Get yourself a contract, man, if you’re going to keep working with her. She did this to me with a contract, all because some vague ‘morality’ clause means she can. You get everything in writing, or don’t produce another note for her.”
“Right. Yeah, right,” Remy said, nodding, licking his lips nervously. Parish shook his hand then shouldered down the steps and toward a waiting cab.
“That’s bullshit, right there. He parties, but he’s here on time. He does the job. Damn,” David said with a big breath.
“I can’t see how she could justify firing the two of us,” Michael said, glancing Remy’s way. “I had an eye out for photos last night too and didn’t see anyone give us a second look.”
“How’d they get a photo of just Parish and not Laurel, though?” David asked. “It’s gotta be a report, not a photo. Someone turned you guys in—the fucking spy turned you guys in! Who saw you come back into the hotel last night?”
“No one from the tour, I don’t think. Just the staff at the desk,” Remy said. His stomach was beginning to turn faster, faster, a ball rolling down a hill.
“I doubt a guy tripping on mushrooms would be anything worth commenting on to the staff at an Amsterdam hotel,” Michael said. “And the dancers are in the other hotel, so it’s not like anyone in touch with Walter could’ve, like…spied through a peephole or something.”
“Police state. Jesus Christ,” David said. “Think you can do a little digging, Remy, next time you do a producing session? Because I want to know who ratted Parish out, and then I want to make sure every contact I have in the industry hears about what a jackass that person is.”
Michael nodded. “Yeah, do that. And, kid? Parish is right. Get a fucking contract with her now. And make sure it’s void of a morality clause.”
Remy went to his bunk as soon as the bus started off and texted Celeste so quickly, he dropped his phone twice.
Remy Young: Weird question: are there any photos of Vivi’s band circulating from last night?
Celeste Yi: I can check, why?
Remy Young: Parish got fired last night and trying to figure out how he got caught
Celeste Yi: Nothing that I see but it’s possible Vivi’s people stopped the release. I’d ask her
Celeste Yi: can I write about it
Remy Young: I don’t see why not
Telling Celeste she could write about Parish being fired was a cruel sort of freedom—a door slam, a retaliation, bitterness in action. Because, yes, perhaps Vivi’s people stopped photos. But Remy was nearly certain it had nothing to do with photos, or dancers, or hotel concierges. He’d told Vivi that Parish was high. He’d mentioned Parish but not Laurel.
He was the spy after all.
***
“We need to talk,” Remy said during move-in for the Arena Riga—a bright-blue glass building that, if the banners hanging from the ceiling were accurate, was used primarily for European hockey games (something Remy didn’t even know existed).
“Is everything okay?” Vivi asked, sitting up straight on the couch in her dressing room. Vivi’s dressing room looked the same as it always did. White couch. Craft table with health food. Navy-blue mugs and cream-colored fabric draping the walls.
Remy shook his head, leaned against the door he’d just closed. He’d been watching the dressing room with near-stalker-brand attention, waiting for the stylists and assistants and glam squad members to clear out for the alone time Vivi took before the show. If he hadn’t been so angry over Parish, he might have smiled at having the right to punch in the door code and let himself in despite the sanctity of that alone time.
“Parish got fired.”
“I know,” Vivi said, frowning, as if she couldn’t understand why Remy was bringing this up.
“Is it because of me?”
“No, it’s because he broke his contract and got high in Amsterdam,” Vivi said.
“And did you know about that because I told you?”
Vivi’s lips parted in a sort of realization. “Remy, it wasn’t really like that. You weren’t tattling on him.”
Remy exhaled, found he didn’t know where to put his hands or eyes or thoughts. “So it was me.”
“I couldn’t pretend not to know once you’d told me! You said he was crazy high. There’s a morality clause—”
“Vivi,” Remy groaned and grabbed the back of his neck.
“He got a warning early in the tour when he got super drunk. This was his second chance. I can’t just let people do stuff like that, not when they’re performing with me. It looks like I condone it.” Vivi rose, holding her palms out, a pained expression on her face. Not apologetic, not guilty, but rather like a teacher explaining something to a small child. It spiked Remy’s adrenaline; he forced his hands down to his sides.
“I’m not saying you weren’t justified in firing him. I’m saying you used information I gave you to do it.”
“Well…I mean…like I said, I can’t just unknow something once I’ve been told,” she said.
“That was information I gave you not as your employee, but as your…” Remy closed his eyes for a beat. Boyfriend? No. She had a boyfriend.
“Oh,” Vivi said, voice low.
Remy dropped onto the ridiculous Muppet-fuzz chair. Vivi walked over and sat on the floor near his feet, smoothing her skirt out. Remy felt both a pull to take her hand and a pull to rise and walk away from her at the same instant. He resisted both, instead saying, “You can’t have it both ways, Vivi.”
“What?” Vivi asked, voice crushed.
“If you want me to be with you, if you want me to be able to talk to you and keep your secrets and for us to be together, then I can’t be your employee whenever it’s useful for you.”
Vivi looked like he was speaking a different language, one she could only barely comprehend. “Do you want me to hire him back?” Vivi asked when neither had spoken for a few long moments.
“I’m not sure how you could without someone suspecting something’s up. But that’s not the issue right now: I need to know you can keep my secrets as well as I can keep yours. You baited me with that other tattoo story to see if it leaked, right? And you’d have ended things if it had. Well, I unintentionally baited you with Parish. And it leaked.”
Vivi nodded and, for the first time in the conversation, looked guilty. It was some small consolation to Remy and gave him a haunting feeling of hope, one that bounced around his chest and knocked against his heart.
“I’m sorry,” Vivi said in a small voice. She reached a hand up to him, and Remy took it, kissing her knuckles lightly, forcing forgiveness into the action.
“Okay,” he said, breathing against the back of her hand.
“Really?”
“No. But it will be,” he said. She climbed to sit on the arm of the chair, and slowly, slowly, slowly, the rigidity between them began to break to pieces. It didn’t vanish entirely; bits and pieces still prodded at Remy’s corners, but he reached over to pull Vivi into his lap. When she tilted her head back, he lowered his lips toward hers and kissed her, kissed her, kissed her, until he forgot she was Vivi Swan and remembered only that now, in this moment, she was his.
Vivi Swan Guitarist Leaves Tour
With only a few stops left, Parish Wilcox is out and on to greener pastures
Yep, there are pastures even greener than the Vivi Swan Sweethearts tour. The “Better Than” singer allowed her second guitarist (slash banjoist, slash fiddler) to leave her tour in the eleventh hour to pursue a recording opportunity with her label, Blue Robot.
“Vivi knew he’d been hoping to record his own music for a while now, so she hooked him up with some guys at Blue Robot. They wanted him in now, but she didn’t want to get between him and his dreams, so she allowed him to leave before the contract was up,” a tour insider says.
Wilcox will supposedly be recording a few rock-inspired jazz tunes for the label, with a planned release late this year.
Comments: 261
Author: Bianca Treble
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Finland, a country of vowels and gold-and-turquoise-capped buildings. Remy had expected far more snow on the ground and was almost disappointed to see just a scattering of the stuff across the streets. The lingering Floridian in him longed to see big mounds of snow, kids making snowmen, reindeer nosing through holly bushes, polar bears, and ice-skating.
“Have you been here before?” he asked Vivi, looking out her hotel window. They were mending their argument slowly, carefully, each word a stitch pulling tight between them. Working on “Maybe It’s Me” was doubly helpful—like working on that song shored up the foundation songwriting had laid for them back on the bus out of Portland.
“A few times,” Vivi said, lifting her guitar, warm compared to the cool Finland skyline, off her lap. She walked up beside him, arms folded, then tilted her head to lay it against his shoulder, sighing gently when he reached for one of her hands and wound his fingers with hers. “So I was thinking that maybe we could go to one of the saunas tonight? After the show?” she said.
Remy turned, almost causing her to fall off-balance. “A sauna?”
“It’s like their thing, here. The press isn’t bad at all, and it’s a super private sauna. Is that okay?” Vivi asked, looking apologetic, like she was nervous. “We can just go for a walk if you’d rather, but it’ll be cold—”
“Of course that’s okay,” Remy said. “That’s fantastic. I mean, I have no idea what one does in a super private sauna, but still.”
“I think you more or less sweat and pretend to be Scandinavian,” Vivi said, smiling and taking his other hand in hers. “But I’ve heard it’s fun, and I’ve never gone to one before. I’ve never had anyone to go with before. I’m excited.”
“I am too,” Remy said, and smiled at her, then leaned in to kiss between her eyes gently. She turned and went back to the guitar, strumming through the first chords of a song Remy didn’t know.
“Is that something new?” he asked.
“Just something I’m playing around with,” she said with a shrug before opening her notebook and making a few lines with her pencil. “Nothing serious.”
“You’re just trying to keep me from asking to hear it,” Remy said in half play.
Vivi smiled at him. “Maybe it’s about you.”
“Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of,” Remy said, and this time, despite the smile on his face, he wasn’t playing at all.
The Helsinki show was tiny, compared to the rest of the tour—a twelve-thousand-person arena, when they’d been playing ones four or five times that big. Vivi did the show as big and powerfully and confidently as she ever had; the band, jittery from cup after cup of Finnish coffee, played along to a recorded version of the second guitar parts that Parish used to play. Remy didn’t realize how accustomed he’d become to looking at Parish during certain points in the show. Despite the fact Vivi had set him up nicely as penance, Remy still found he missed the guy, bro-factor and all. Parish’s firing meant the rest of Bus Three was on high alert, eager to prove they were doing everything right, that nothing was wrong, that they were models of the Vivi Swan Morality Clause. It made it easier—much easier—for Remy to slip away after the show for his and Vivi’s sauna date, because everyone more or less went straight to bed, hoping to get eight hours before the flight to Asia the following afternoon.
