True Colors

  Chapter Six

   

  That song. He didn’t even like it. Too schmaltzy. Too whiny. Why the hell couldn’t he get it out of his mind?

  He liked hip-hop, raw and thumping. Maybe his taste in music—or lack of taste, his parents insisted—had been a reaction to the violin lessons he’d been forced to take as a child. Every week he’d had to trudge down Brighton 7th Street to Mr. Chomsky’s apartment, where he’d spend an hour sawing away on his cheap, battered fiddle while Mr. Chomsky would mutter, “So much talent going to waste because you don’t practice enough! Apply yourself!” Max had wanted to apply himself to the stickball games going on in the street or to the stretch of beach beckoning him from the southern end of Brighton 7th,, not to mastering vibratos and bow positions.

  But his parents were old country, old school, old everything. They might have emigrated from Russia and embraced their newly minted American citizenship, but the only music they considered worthwhile was what Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Stravinksy and Shostakovich had written. They’d hated that their only child listened to that “loud, trashy stuff—I can’t even call it music,” his father would rail. “Not in my house. I won’t allow it.”

  Other teenagers might have been sneaking smokes and booze beneath the elevated tracks of the B train running through the neighborhood. Max had been sneaking Ludacris, Ja Rule and Eminem.

  He sure as hell hadn’t been developing a taste for pop ballads like “True Colors.” Yet that song had flowed from that antique-looking jukebox straight into his skull and settled in for a nice, long stay.

  His accommodations at the Ocean Bluff Inn were spacious and pretty, the walls a muted beige, the bed decadently comfortable, king-sized and piled high with pillows. The room was silent; the windows faced away from the ocean, so he didn’t hear the waves breaking against the sand, and the hotel was clearly not filled to capacity, so no voices seeped under his door from the hall. But he couldn’t sleep, not with that freaking song playing over and over in his head. Beautiful, like a rainbow… So sweet. So cloying.

  It wasn’t just the song that had taken up residence like a squatter in his gray matter. It was the actual squatter occupying his house: Emma Glendon. Emma with her extravagant hair and her astute eyes. Red hair, hazel eyes. Were those her true colors, or did she make use of Lady Clairol and wear tinted contacts?

  Why should he care?

  Damn it, he did care—enough to volunteer to help her find studio space. As if he could possibly be of any assistance in that. He knew nothing about Brogan’s Point. He’d bought a house here only because Vanessa had been from the area—the North Shore, she’d called it—and wanted an East Coast base. They’d been engaged to be married. He’d wanted her happy. She’d picked out the house, and he’d said, “Sure.”

  He’d been a fool then. And here he was, being a fool again, helping that red-headed creature to find a new base of operations once he’d evicted her.

  One big difference between her and Vanessa, of course, was that she hadn’t asked him for his help. She’d seemed started by his offer, as startled as he himself was when he’d made it. He’d been under a spell when he’d spoken, bewitched.

  He was a man of his word, however. His parents may have failed to instill in him their passion for Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, but they’d taught him to honor his commitments, to follow through on his promises.

  So he’d find Emma a place to set up her easel. At least he’d try.

  And then he’d remove her from his house, put the damned place up for sale, and get on with his life.