Melody Burning by Whitley Strieber Read Free Book Online Page B

eggs and coffee and bacon. I want to love Mom again.
    I’m not even chewing a mouthful of food yet when Mom says, “Walker is on guitar, and Mickey is on drums again. So what do you have for them, sweetie?”
    Mom is 1,000 percent business, as always.
    “I have ‘So Long, Boyfriend’ and ‘Love Without You’ and two new ones.”
    “Okay.” She puts out her hand.
    “Um, actually, they’re in my head.”
    “You do understand that studio time burns fifteen hundred dollars an hour?”
    “They’re in my head!”
    “They need to be on paper!”
    “When I’m in the iso booth, I’ll do them. You can work with the arranger. We’ll put it together as we go.”
    “So, basically, we have just the two songs. And that’s it.”
    “Mom, we have four songs and probably more, and you have to respect my process! They will come out.” I get so mad I just boil over, and right in front of the damn People lady, too.
    “And who scores? Who turns this crap into music?”
    “Whoever you hired to turn this crap into music!”
    I catch on that she wants the People lady to write awful things about her. She wants to be known as a harridan, a slave driver, because it makes a lot better copy than if she was wonderful and smart and sweet.
    I eat my breakfast and watch her and think about her. This is the woman who came sneaking into my room last night and put her hand on my forehead, then proceeded to leave a weathered old silk rose on my pillow as some kind of odd peace offering. It looks like something off a garbage truck. And now I’m going to conduct an experiment.
    I take the rose from my purse. “By the way, Mom, thanks for this.”
    She looks at it. In the jump seats Julius and Amber gobble more eggs. But Amber is not oblivious. She is doing her reporter thing of disappearing into the woodwork so, hopefully, she can pile dirt on me. As she gobbles, she watches.
    Mom looks at it. “What’s this supposed to mean?”
    Which is not the reaction I expected. “Um, maybe that’s my question.”
    She picks it up. “This is filthy.” She rolls down the window and tosses it out.
    Suddenly I want to scream because I know what it is. It’s from him . He saw me on the roof and he stopped me. Maybe I didn’t need to be stopped, but now I know he can get into our apartment .
    My breakfast comes up all over everything and everybody, and I am horribly embarrassed and totally sick.
    “Oh, Lord, honey.”
    “You want me to stop, ma’am?”
    “No, Louie, we’re fine, don’t stop, for God’s sake!”
    I’m fighting for control, but my body is suddenly not my own. I remember him standing there in the shadows on the roof, and another heave comes.
    Julius gets his arms around me and helps me back into the seat while Mom finds paper towels somewhere under the bar and wipes up. Then she produces a new shirt, which I change into.
    “I have to get out—I’m going to be sick,” Amber yells.
    “Open the windows for her, but do not stop .”
    So we go on down the Ten with the windows open and traffic all around us and the papis frantically trying to get up beside us so they can get a shot of whatever in hell is happening in here.
    We’re going to Reynolds, one of the most legendary recording studios in the world, which I like because it has a real private feeling once you are inside. Plus, the isolation booths are big and comfy, and if I’m going to spend my whole day in one, what I don’t need is claustrophobia.
    “Okay, honey, okay now, it’s gonna be good. It’s gonna be good. Am I riding you too hard?”
    She is cleaning me up, fixing my face, her eyes full of pride and love.
    “Mom, I’m so sorry.”
    “We’re fine. We’re going to have an extraordinary day.”
    I feel the car stop and whisper to Mom, “I’m not scared.” Mom’s look has love in it, but also a sharpness that does scare me.
    The papis are parking on the sidewalk and running toward us.
    “Now just look out the window, don’t say anything, and let