after the yuppies moved in and gentrified the place and the rents shot sky high. I figured it had to be on par with Park Avenue, where I’d been living with Jordan, and where “those kind of people,” as Jordan calls them, simply don’t hang out.
Which is a good thing, because “those kind of people” apparently can’t take their eyes off Jordan—and not just because of the prominently displayed gold chain.
“Hey!” one of them yells. “You that guy? Hey, are you that guy?”
Jordan, used to being harassed by paparazzi, doesn’t bat an eye.
“Heather,” he says, in his most soothing tone, the one he’d used during his duet with Jessica Simpson on their Get Funky tour last summer. “Come on. Be reasonable. Just because things didn’t work out between us romantically is no reason why we can’t still be friends. We’ve been through so much together. Grew up together, even.”
This part, anyway, is true. I’d met Jordan back when I’d first been signed by his father’s record label, Cartwright Records, when I’d been an impressionable fifteen years of age, and Jordan had been all of eighteen. Back then, I’d truly believed Jordan’s whole tortured artist act. I’d believed him when he insisted that he, like me, hated the songs the label was giving him to sing. I’d believed him when he’d said he, like me, was going to quit singing them, and start singing the songs he’d written himself. I’d believed him right up to the point I’d told the label it was my songs or no songs, and the label had chosen no songs… and Jordan, instead of telling the label (also known as his dad) the same thing, had said, “Maybe we better talk about this, Heather.”
I glance around to make sure his current performance isn’t for the benefit of a hidden camera. I totally wouldn’t put it past him to have signed up with some reality show. He’s one of those people who wouldn’t mind watching his own life broadcast on national television.
That’s when I notice the silver convertible BMW parked by the hydrant in front of the brownstone.
“That’s new,” I say. “From your dad? A reward for taking up with Tania Trace?”
“Now, Heather,” Jordan says. “I told you. The thing with Tania—it’s not what you think.”
“Right,” I say with a laugh. “I suppose she fell down and just happened to land with her head in your crotch.”
Jordan does something surprising then. He whips off his sunglasses and looks down at me very intently. I’m reminded of the first time I ever met him—at the Mall of America. The label—namely Jordan’s dad—had arranged for Jordan’s band, Easy Street, and me to tour together, in an effort to bring out the maximum number of preteens—and their parents, and their parents’ wallets—possible.
Jordan had given me the same intent look then that he was giving me now. His “Baby, you got the bluest eyes” hadn’t sounded a bit like a pickup line then.
But what did I know? I’d been yanked out of high school my freshman year and had been on the road ever since, heavily chaperoned and making contact with guys my own age only when they came up to ask for my autograph. How was I supposed to know “Baby, you got the bluest eyes” was a pickup line?
I didn’t realize it until years later, when “Baby, you got the bluest eyes” showed up as a line from one of the singles off Jordan’s first solo album. It turns out he’d had a lot of practice saying it. With sincerity, even.
It had certainly worked on me.
“Heather,” Jordan says now, as the rays of the sun, filtering through the treetops and apartment buildings to the west, play over the even planes of his handsome, still slightly boyish face. “We had something, you and I. Are you sure you really just want to walk away from that? I mean, I know I’m not exactly blameless in all this. That thing with Tania… well, I know how that must have looked to you.”
I stare at him incredulously.
“You mean like she was giving you head? Because that’s how it looked to me.”
Jordan flinches as if I’d hit him.
“See?” He folds his arms across his chest. “See, that’s exactly what I mean. When we first met, Heather, you never said crass things like that. You’ve changed. Don’t you see? That’s part of the problem. You’re not the same girl I knew all those years ago—”
I decide that if he drops his gaze to my waistline, where I’ve changed the most since ten years ago, I was going to belt him.
But he doesn’t.
“You’ve gotten… I don’t know. Hard, I guess, is the word,” he goes on. “And after what you’ve been through with your mom and your manager, who can blame you? But Heather, not everyone is out to steal all your money and flee to Argentina with it like they did. You’ve got to believe me when I say that I never meant to hurt you. We just drifted apart, you and I. We want different things. You want to sing your own songs, and you apparently don’t care if doing so destroys your career—what’s left of it. While I… well, I want—”
“Hey!” yells the drug dealer. “You’re JORDAN CARTWRIGHT!”
I can’t believe this is happening. First Elizabeth, now this.
What does Jordan want from me, anyway? That’s what I can never figure out. The guy is thirty-one years old, six-two, and worth a lot of money—way more than the hundred thousand a year Rachel is looking for in her ideal mate. I mean, I know his parents weren’t exactly thrilled when the two of us moved in together. It hadn’t looked good, two of their most popular teen performers, shacking up…
But had our entire relationship just been an elaborate attempt to get back at Mr. and Mrs. Grant Cartwright for allowing their youngest son to audition for the Mickey Mouse Club, like he’d begged them to back when he was nine, to his everlasting shame? Because of course serious rockers don’t have photos of themselves in Mickey Mouse ears being shown in Teen People every other week…
“Jordan,” I say, cutting him off as he is listing the things he wants out of life, most of which have to do with bringing a little sunshine into people’s lives, and why is that so wrong? Except that I never said it was. “Could you please just go away?”
I jostle past him, my keys in my hand. I guess my plan was to unlock the door and get inside before he could stop me.
With three locks to undo, though, a quick escape is kind of tough.
“I know you don’t take me seriously as an artist, Heather,” Jordan goes on. And on and on. “But I can assure you that just because I don’t write the songs I sing, that doesn’t make me any less creative than you are. I do practically all my own choreography now. That move I did on the ‘Just Me and You Now’ video? You know, this one?” He does a quick step-ball-change, accompanied by a pelvic thrust, on the front stoop of the brownstone. “That’s all mine. I know to you that might not be much, but don’t you think it’s time you took a good look at your own life? I mean, what have you been doing that’s so artistically fulfilling lately? This stupid dorm thing—”
Two locks down. One to go.
“—and living down here with drug addicts at your doorstep… and with Cooper! With Cooper, of all people! You know how my family feels about Cooper, Heather.”
I do know how his family feels about Cooper. The same way they feel about Cooper’s grandfather, who came out of the closet at the age of sixty-five, bought a bright pink stucco brownstone in the Village, then willed it to his black sheep grandson, who’d moved into the garden apartment, turned the middle floor into a detective agency, and offered the top floor to me, rent-free (in exchange for doing his billing), when he’d found out about my walking in on Jordan and Tania.
“I mean, I know there isn’t anything going on between you two,” Jordan is saying. “That’s not what I’m worried about. You aren’t Cooper’s type.”
He can say that again. Sadly.
“But I wonder if you’re aware that Coop has a criminal record. Vandalism. And yeah, he was a juvenile, but still, for God’s sake, Heather, he has no respect for public property. That was an Easy Street marquee he defaced, you know. I’m aware that he always resented my talent, but it’s not my fault I was born with such a gift—”
The third lock springs open. I’m free!
“Good-bye, Jordan,” I say, and slip inside, shutting the door carefully behind me. Because, you know, I don’t want to slam it in his face and hurt him, or anything. Not because I still care, but because that would be rude.
Plus his dad might sue me, or something. You never know.
