Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

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"Can I borrow your phone?" Sarah said to Ziggy after we were done with vocal exercises. I was feeling very calm afterward. So calm it was like being stoned.

So calm that I sat there, zoned out, listening to Sarah call her mother. She stood in the kitchen, leaning against the wall, holding the phone to her ear, while Ziggy bustled around her making tea.

"Yeah, no one's picking up at that room. Could I leave a message?" she said sweetly to some receptionist.

Five minutes later she called again and did it again. She repeated the process over and over–maybe ten times in all–until she got the same receptionist a second time. Then she cackled with glee. "I am such an evil bitch."

Ziggy handed her a mug. "What was that all about?"

"My mother's going to eventually give up waiting around at my apartment and go back to her hotel and have an absolute heart attack that she missed all these messages from me." She put the handset back with a lip-bitey grin. "'Oh no, my little girl needed me!' And then she'll be literally nauseous with guilt. And then she'll never admit that where she was all that time was stalking me, waiting for me to come home so she could accuse me of slumming."

"You are an evil bitch," Ziggy said with a nod of appreciation.

"I learned from the best." Sarah took a sip of her tea. "Her."

"If she accuses you of slumming–"

"And catting around, being 'loose,' ruining my reputation–"

"Sleeping with the likes of us," Ziggy said with a sly tone in his voice. "All of which are true. Why can't you just say, yes, mother, that's what I was doing, deal with it?"

"You can take the mom out of the Midwest, but you can't take the Midwest out of the mom. Oh, I know who I should call." She picked up the phone again.

Ziggy brought me a cup of tea. I was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter. I held it between my hands and the warmth felt good on my scarred palm. I listened with half an ear while I started my hand exercises–the ones that didn't need a rubber band. Aha. Sarah was talking to Barrett. The conversation was brief and then she hung up again.

"Thank goodness he's on my side."

"I'm sure he knew you were with us," Ziggy said. "I'm sure Tony kept him up to date."

I piped up: "Tony's good people."

"Since when do you use the term 'good people?'" Ziggy asked.

"Since when do you analyze every word I say?"

"Since forever, dear one." Ziggy took my hand in his and massaged it. My shoulder, which I hadn't realized was so tense, relaxed.

"You two are the cutest," Sarah said. "Life is so much better when you're getting along than when you're not."

"True." Ziggy kissed me on the cheek and handed me a rubber band.

"So what's next?" she asked. "European tou–?"

Ziggy made a shushing motion. "We're on break. No work talk."

Sarah's sharply tweezed eyebrow notched in skepticism. "Seriously? You?"

"Us," I said. "I think the idea was we should take a break while only one of us was a complete physical and emotional wreck instead of waiting until it was both of us."

"You must be going crazy, though," she said to Ziggy.

He sipped his tea. "Yeah, maybe a little. All the sex makes up for it, though."