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Her shortened name hung like an ornament between them, something for the rest of the room to observe and gawk at. Remy was suddenly aware that everyone here knew about the two of them. How long had they known? No one seemed surprised, not even Walter. Remy felt himself shrinking, growing smaller and stupider under their eyes.
“Regardless, you need to stay with security and the tour all night tonight and tomorrow so we can get you prepped for answering questions,” Aspen said through the pen she’d stuck in her mouth. “And I need your brother’s number—”
“No,” Remy said firmly. “He didn’t do this, and he will absolutely lose his shit if you people start calling him and hassling him about it.”
“They’re trying to fix it, Remy,” Vivi snapped. “Let them fix it.”
“How can this be fixed? It’s the truth. You can’t undo it—let’s just—what if we just admit it, Vivi. What if we go out and let them see—”
“Absolutely not,” Aspen and everyone else in the room seemed to say at once.
“I was talking to Vivi,” Remy said coolly, now staring only at her. He wanted to go to her, to take her hand, but everything about Vivi looked cold and icy, a girl carved instead of breathing. She looked the way he’d imagined her looking back before he met her. “Vivi, I’m sorry. I’m sorry this happened. But we’re in this, so let’s be in it. Come on.”
Vivi looked at him, and for a moment, he thought she was going to nod. She took a breath, though, and put a hand to her head. “I need to think.”
“Any chance the site will reveal their source?” Aspen asked. Remy wasn’t sure who the question was directed at but then realized Aspen was talking to someone off camera in her own office. “Uh-huh. Okay—Vivi, do you want to do an interview with the site that first posted this in exchange for a six month right-of-approval on stories?”
“Yes, yes, absolutely,” Vivi said, nodding through a sharp breath.
“Deal with the devil,” Walter muttered, to which the others nodded in glum agreement.
“We actually have her information—let’s move on this now, before anything else can get posted. Just a phone call, no video, okay? Can we get the room cleared, please, so Vivi can take this?”
“Yeah, yeah—where is Remy going?” Walter asked.
“He can go back to his hotel room, I guess,” Vivi said with a dismissive hand as she sat up taller, primmed herself up a bit.
“Vivi, we need to talk about this,” Remy said under his breath, knowing it was impossible for the others not to hear him—but being unable to care. He rose and took a few steps toward her before her gaze stopped him once again.
At this distance, though, Remy could see that what he’d thought was coldness in her eyes wasn’t exactly coldness—it was shivering, and suffering, and trembling, and sadness. If she was cold, it wasn’t coming from within; it was coming from him, from what she thought he’d done. He’d been asleep. He’d literally been asleep, he hadn’t done this, she had to know—
“Please, Remy. Later,” she said in a broken sort of whisper.
“Viv—”
“I have an interview to do right now,” she said and turned to the phone on the table. It rang; Walter placed a heavy hand on Remy’s shoulder, urging him gently toward the door. Other than that, the others from the room avoided him as they filed out and into the penthouse lobby. The door shut just as a secretary could be heard over Vivi’s speakerphone, talking first to Aspen, then Vivi. The elevator chimed; Remy stepped on just in time to catch the caller’s voice.
“Hello? Is this working?”
“Hi, this is Vivi Swan,” Vivi said in a cheerful voice.
“Hi, Vivi! This is Bianca Treble from Outsourced. Great to speak with you.”
Remy shut his eyes in time with the elevator doors and took a long, steadying breath. Bianca Treble—the woman who scooped the story about Remy and Vivi’s song. The woman who knew about Remy getting the tour job before Remy himself knew he’d be offered the gig. The woman Vivi had said was very, very good at her job. Remy recognized her voice.
“Bianca Treble” was Celeste.
Then
Miller was right—household names did not drive Chevy Luminas. Household names, in fact, didn’t drive anything; people drove them. Limo chauffeurs and pilots and car service guys from Uganda. The van was left in a friend-of-a-friend’s yard in Richmond, along with all the amps, cords, and secondhand speakers Remy and Val had acquired over the years. They took their instruments—Val’s guitar and Remy’s drum set—even though neither were really as nice as they could afford now.
Now. Now that “Everything but the World” was killing it in the eighteen-to-twenty-four demographic and enjoying a tidy success on the demographics on either side of that one. They had a music video with a pretty redheaded girl playing the song’s titular character, even though it’d actually been written about Val. They had a live concert series on a streaming video station. They had interviews at stations in every major radio region, and they even approved a cleaned-up version of the song to be used on some sort of kids-singing album.
The label was working on a “second song,” a term whispered in the industry like a prayer or a curse. They couldn’t simply release what they considered Quiet Coyote’s second-best piece, nor could they just write something new themselves. Weekly, Remy and Val were sequestered in a room with people whose names they never bothered to learn, because it’d be different people the following week anyhow. They’d write one song, or five, hours broken up only when the runner returned with whatever ridiculous grocery list of supplies they’d sent for. A pack of Easy Mac, a bottle of Seagram’s, a pint of ice cream, whatever goes into a Bloody Mary, sushi, and three ounces of weed.
Val wrote like he’d cracked open his soul, like he always did, only now he dug in deeper than ever before, hungry to show the label what he could do. Song after song poured from him; Remy would polish it up, careful to make it sound like his changes were actually someone else’s idea—like the paid songwriters who filled those rooms with them, or the executives, or the more experienced producers who tended to make everything sound the exact same, no matter the artist. The room would celebrate, finish off the weed, send the song to the label.
The label was never “feeling it.” Or they just didn’t think it was “the one.” Or it just didn’t “have it.” Or, on one occasion, they felt like “this isit, but just isn’t reallyit, you know?”
