Page 37 of The Proximity Factor

“Sorry,” said Carlisle.

Zhi knew the man sympathized. His father was the same in almost every way. Though Carlisle had managed to step in and save his inheritance before things got dire. No one knew how bad things were for the Mondego estate. And Zhi wasn’t about to tell.

“You should come and take a break,” said Omar. “It’s just an overnight trip. Parker is rewarding her entire staff with a weekend cruise to our humble homeland. She’s rented out my club for the weekend, too. Come let your hair down before it gets pinned up with planning this wedding.”

Zhi looked again at the magazine. He thumbed it open to the page of Parker’s interview. Further down in the spread, the reporter asked if Parker was looking for a prince charming or a titan of industry. Parker’s answer was neither. She was looking for a person who was compatible. They had to love music, be devoted to their mom, like she was, and not be afraid to get their hands dirty when times got rough.

“What do you s

ay?” asked Omar.

The lump in Zhi’s throat was a little hard to swallow, but he managed. “A little weekend getaway might be just what I need.”

Chapter Six

The lights flared over the ceiling, across the floor, and around the room. The crowd threw their hands up in the air, fingers splayed open as people jumped. It looked like fireworks of the flesh to Spin. She closed her eyes, not needing to see what her own hands were doing. She worked the turntables as though they were her magic trick, and she made each and every one of the people gathered disappear inside her hat, tumbling down into the depths of the beat to escape whatever they were running from.

The party was just getting started at one in the morning, and the fashionably late had yet to arrive. Spin went through her playlist. It was a multigenerational, multi-genre mash up. She layered Funkadelic with Nirvana, Motown divas with pulsing electronica, classic elevator music with jazz.

Music was music, and she hated labels. If the beats lined up, she’d toss them into the mix and watch the crowd go wild. They were near to stampeding as she layered in a nursery rhyme over a thumping House beat. Spin stomped her feet to the beat and clapped her hands in time to the impish lyrics right along with them. After her close call earlier in the day, she needed to get lost.

Music had been her escape all her life. When Spin was a child, her mother, Angelica, had taught her about chords and individual notes and music. Angelica would play the part of the flute. Spin remembered listening to the light, airy notes, chasing after them as they swirled around in her imagination.

Playing the same song, her mother strummed the notes on an acoustic guitar. Angelica’s nimble fingers tickled the keys, shimmying over Spin’s shoulder and making her want to shake her body in time to the music.

Her mother would later sit at the piano or behind a drum set or stand and strum the violin. Angelica was a prodigy who played every instrument. Spin would twirl and dance to each layer, understanding their solo story as well as how each chapter of the songbook went together making a cacophony of harmony.

Spin could pick out each instrument as well as hear them together. She’d closed her eyes and get lost in the melodic ease of the piano. She’d sail away on the notes of the violin. She’d escape behind the pulsing drumbeats. Listening to the music now always brought her closer to her mother. As close as she could get now that they would forever be out of each other's reach.

Spin opened her eyes to the flashing lights and fists punching in the air. Her heart raced as she looked out over the crowd. Not a single face was recognizable, just the feeling that she was being watched, and she’d need to run.

She sped up the tempo until she felt her heart would burst. She'd have to run again. She'd have to slip into the roar of the world until she blended into the pulse of a crowd and couldn't be distinguished from one note to the next.

With her time on stage nearing its completion, Spin brought the music to a dénouement. She lifted the needle on the turntables. The silence lasted a split second before the crowd went wild.

“Spin d’Elle,” they chanted.

She didn't bow. She lifted her hands and pointed out to the crowd, thanking the people for taking the journey with her. Now she had to leave them for a journey of her own. By morning, she’d step onto a new land, find new chords and melodies to mix together a new story.

She was never alone as long as she had her music. There was nowhere that she’d ever called home. She and her mother had moved since Spin had started to walk. She remembered seeing the roots of a tree and asking her mother what the gnarled, spindly thing was. Even as a child, she couldn’t fathom how something could burrow into the ground and stay, never leaving the one spot.

Houses were temporary. She’d never owned a dresser where she’d put away clothes. A suitcase was the only storage she needed. She had hers backstage. In it was all she needed.

Over the year she’d been in Nice, Spin had never acquired more than would fit inside the case. There had been too many times in her youth when her mother would tell her they had to go and Spin would agonize over leaving something that wouldn’t fit in her small Hannah Montana suitcase behind.

She’d learned her lesson well.

Spin looked around as she stepped off the raised platform. She doubted she’d see the tall, crepe-thin man in the makeshift club. Raves were a thing that began in the Generation X days. The man who’d been snooping around her hostel looked as though he could’ve been born at the start of that generation. But he didn’t look like he was the type that had spun glow sticks in his youth.

She collected her thumb drive. All her music fit inside the small digital device. The clubs all had their own setup. She simply needed to plug in and play. She could do that wherever she was in the world.

There would be more auditioning and proving herself in the next place she landed. But it was her only option. She couldn’t stay here and be found.

Where would she go this time? Maybe she should go back to America. But it was too risky. Too many people still remembered her mom.

Hiding in plain sight had been her strategy for a bit. It had worked for a while as she bounced around Europe. But now the jig was up.

She’d hadn’t been to Asia or the Middle East. New adventures, new music, new parties. Whichever fare was cheaper, that’s where she’d go.