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Authors: Laurie Breton
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beat strong and steady . “We’ll talk about it again,” he said, “when the time’s ready. But for now…you’ll come to New York with me?”
She closed her eyes, exulted in his warmth, his tenderness. And let out a sigh. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll come to New York with you.”
PART II : THE MILES
Casey
New York City , the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, was a loud, congested, smog-filled kaleidoscope. Five years had passed since the last time she visited this city she’d once called home, and although time had wrought changes, some things never changed. Yellow taxis still whizzed past slower vehicles, missing them by inches. City buses still lumbered along from stop to stop, spewing exhaust in their wake. Impatient motorists still honked at other drivers a half-second after the light turned green. Panhandlers still stood on corners, and discarded candy bar wrappers still littered the gutters. What was that French saying? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. That perfectly described New York, where the players might come and go, but the energy level never faltered.
She’d always loved that energy, had thrived on it, but for some inexplicable reason, this time around, it drained her. The city felt hostile, suffocating. Every time she stepped outside, she was surrounded by people in a hurry. Rude, pushy people who looked right through her as they shoved past, intent on their own agendas and oblivious to the fact that she stood there, a living, breathing human just like them. They gave off high-stress vibes that left her jittery and unsettled and desperate to go back indoors, where none of this madness could touch her.
Being Casey, she stubbornly refused to let the anxiety control her. Instead, she forced herself to go out, even though her insides were screaming at her to hide in a safe, comforting place. While Rob spent long hours in the studio, she and the girls visited Macy’s, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. They explored Times Square, Central Park, the Museum of Modern Art. One rainy afternoon, she took them to see a matinee performance of Cats . Another day, they ate lunch in the dining room at the Hotel Montpelier, where she and Danny had once worked, so long ago that she could barely remember being that young.
She spent a morning with Rob in the studio, but her heart wasn’t in it. The music didn’t feel the same. She didn’t understand the stuff teenagers were listening to these days. As far as she was concerned, Phoenix Hightower’s music was little more than canned, electronic noise. She knew Rob felt the same way, but he was being paid well to produce, and that kind of money went a long way toward tolerance. Paige, on the other hand, was slightly star-struck at the prospect of meeting the pop idol. It made sense that the girl was deep into the current music scene. This was her era. She would be a high school senior in a few weeks. Someday, she would look back fondly on the music from this decade and wonder why her own kids listened to such awful stuff. It was the way of the world, the passing of the torch, the circle of life. Casey was a dinosaur, a throwback to an earlier time when pop music made sense, both lyrically and melodically, to her ears. So she packed up Emmy, left Paige there with her father and Phoenix, and returned to the apartment.
Peace . Quiet, blissful peace. Three days into their stay, Rob had managed to find them a furnished sublet just a few blocks from the studio, on the sixth floor of a 1930s-era Art Deco building with an elevator and a doorman and broad casement windows that, after dark, transformed a mundane view of Midtown into something wondrous. If it had been just the two of them, the hotel would have sufficed, but it was too much to expect the girls to be happy cooped up in a hotel for a month or more. This two-bedroom apartment, furnished right down to the towels
She closed her eyes, exulted in his warmth, his tenderness. And let out a sigh. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll come to New York with you.”
PART II : THE MILES
Casey
New York City , the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, was a loud, congested, smog-filled kaleidoscope. Five years had passed since the last time she visited this city she’d once called home, and although time had wrought changes, some things never changed. Yellow taxis still whizzed past slower vehicles, missing them by inches. City buses still lumbered along from stop to stop, spewing exhaust in their wake. Impatient motorists still honked at other drivers a half-second after the light turned green. Panhandlers still stood on corners, and discarded candy bar wrappers still littered the gutters. What was that French saying? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. That perfectly described New York, where the players might come and go, but the energy level never faltered.
She’d always loved that energy, had thrived on it, but for some inexplicable reason, this time around, it drained her. The city felt hostile, suffocating. Every time she stepped outside, she was surrounded by people in a hurry. Rude, pushy people who looked right through her as they shoved past, intent on their own agendas and oblivious to the fact that she stood there, a living, breathing human just like them. They gave off high-stress vibes that left her jittery and unsettled and desperate to go back indoors, where none of this madness could touch her.
Being Casey, she stubbornly refused to let the anxiety control her. Instead, she forced herself to go out, even though her insides were screaming at her to hide in a safe, comforting place. While Rob spent long hours in the studio, she and the girls visited Macy’s, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. They explored Times Square, Central Park, the Museum of Modern Art. One rainy afternoon, she took them to see a matinee performance of Cats . Another day, they ate lunch in the dining room at the Hotel Montpelier, where she and Danny had once worked, so long ago that she could barely remember being that young.
She spent a morning with Rob in the studio, but her heart wasn’t in it. The music didn’t feel the same. She didn’t understand the stuff teenagers were listening to these days. As far as she was concerned, Phoenix Hightower’s music was little more than canned, electronic noise. She knew Rob felt the same way, but he was being paid well to produce, and that kind of money went a long way toward tolerance. Paige, on the other hand, was slightly star-struck at the prospect of meeting the pop idol. It made sense that the girl was deep into the current music scene. This was her era. She would be a high school senior in a few weeks. Someday, she would look back fondly on the music from this decade and wonder why her own kids listened to such awful stuff. It was the way of the world, the passing of the torch, the circle of life. Casey was a dinosaur, a throwback to an earlier time when pop music made sense, both lyrically and melodically, to her ears. So she packed up Emmy, left Paige there with her father and Phoenix, and returned to the apartment.
Peace . Quiet, blissful peace. Three days into their stay, Rob had managed to find them a furnished sublet just a few blocks from the studio, on the sixth floor of a 1930s-era Art Deco building with an elevator and a doorman and broad casement windows that, after dark, transformed a mundane view of Midtown into something wondrous. If it had been just the two of them, the hotel would have sufficed, but it was too much to expect the girls to be happy cooped up in a hotel for a month or more. This two-bedroom apartment, furnished right down to the towels
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