“Huh?”
“Any night this summer. I’ll make sure I’m covered at The Room. I’ll come stay with you and I’ll cook dinner and you can invite your parents. Elizabeth. Anybody you want.”
I smiled. “How about just my dad,” I said. “And Spike.”
“Deal,” he said. “And I’m going to spend more time in Boston. Mondays and Tuesdays, we don’t usually book bands. I’m going to work it so I don’t have to be there on those nights. I’ll talk to Carll Greenwald. Tell him it’s a deal-breaker.”
Carll Greenwald was the owner of Candy’s Room. Richie and I often speculated about why he spelled his first name with twol’s. “You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“Yes, I do,” he said.
“You love The Room.”
“IlikeThe Room. I loveyou. And you hate the Shore in the summer.”
I stared at him. “How could you tell?”
“Because I know you, Sunny.”
I felt a little choked up. “Thank you,” I said. I wanted to touch his face. I touched the screen instead.
“Wish I could feel that,” Richie said.
“Me, too.” It had been a long day. An exhausting one. Already, I was starting to fall asleep.
“Soon,” he said.
“I can’t wait,” I said.
We ended the call. I closed my eyes. Rosie twitched in her sleep and I put my arms around her.Richie’s changing. You’re changing,I told myself.Elizabeth doesn’t know everything.
I drifted off. It was a deep sleep, velvety and dreamless—the type of sleep that spa folks like Natalie Blythe would have called restorative. I didn’t toss and turn the way I usually did. I wasn’t even sure I moved at all. I just stayed curled up withRosie, the two of us cocooned beneath the cool sheets, until my phone rang and my eyelids fluttered open.
I rolled over to answer it, rays of sunlight poking through my drawn curtains. I looked at the screen. It was Tony calling. It was also seven a.m. I answered quickly. “What’s going on?” I said.
“Good Morning Boston,” he said. “Turn it on. Now.”
Twenty-five
I had to hand it to Melanie Joan. You could tie her down, put her under surveillance, and lock her in a hotel room without access to the outside world—and she would still find a way to fuck up her life.
Having failed two more times to wrestle her phone away from Harold and Tony, Melanie Joan had stayed up well past dawn, waiting for both of them to nod off at the same time. And at about six a.m. by Tony’s estimate, she’d seized the opportunity. Somehow she’d managed to dress, sneak out of the hotel, get a ride to the studio whereGood Morning Bostonwas shot in front of a live audience, and convince the host, Sam Sharpe—who happened to be Spike’s ex—to put her on the air.
I had Tony on speakerphone. He’d gotten a call from Sam’s producer just as the interview was about to start, and so alleither one of us had time to do was brace ourselves and watch. It was like watching a ten-car pileup in slow motion.
Melanie Joan spent two solid minutes trashing Leila Donnelly, while Sam listened, his mouth hanging open in a state of what appeared to be bemused shock. “I take pains to write strong and admirable female characters,” she was telling him now. “Shewrites weak-kneed simpletons. It’s as though she’s a man who can’t get it up and resents all women as a result.”
“Oh, fuck me stupid,” Tony said.
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” I said.
“Melanie Joan, don’t you think that’s a little harsh?” Sam said, once the live audience stopped booing. “Leila Donnelly is currently the top-selling romance writer in the U.S., and one of the top three bestselling—”
“Her books are insulting to all women,” Melanie Joan said.
“With all due respect,” Sam said. “My Last First Lovesold a million copies in its first week of release. And from what I hear, the vast majority of her readers are female. If her books are so insulting to women, then there must be a lot of women out there who love to be insulted.”
Sam’s audience cheered. He beamed at them. “Do you guys agree?” he said.