Chapter One Lacey

Chapter One

Lacey

L ACEY IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE TWO GLORIOUSLY UNSCHEDULED days in New York after MetLife Stadium, only then her mom flies into JFK unannounced with the idea that they should get dinner at Balthazar and go see Moulin Rouge on Broadway , which means Lacey actually has one gloriously unscheduled day in New York after MetLife Stadium. Still, she thinks, snapping a picture for Instagram out the window of her hotel suite, the city already humming fifty floors beneath her: It's better than nothing.

"You want me to set anything up for today?" Claire asks, once she's settled Lacey's mom in the car to the airport and come back upstairs for their morning meeting. Claire has been Lacey's assistant for six years and four albums, an erstwhile engineering major with a septum piercing and a mind like a Swiss watch. "Reservations or anything?"

Lacey hesitates. What she really wants to do while she's in town is sneak into Henrietta Lang's gig at Irving Plaza, to close her eyes and throw her arms in the air and lose herself in the weird, moody folk-rock she's had in her headphones on obsessive repeat the last few months. She could tell Claire that, obviously, and Claire would arrange it in roughly two and a half seconds. But Lacey knows if she does it the whole night is automatically going to be about her and not about Henrietta Lang, and whether she's pulling focus from a less-established artist, and how corny it is the way she's always trying to make New York into her whole personality, and does everyone remember how she started talking about how much she loved experimental jazz all the time right after she started dating Toby? Suddenly Lacey feels overwhelmed by the Discourse, even though it's only eight a.m.

Also, she isn't really cool enough to just drop into a Henrietta Lang show. She doesn't know exactly what she'd wear.

In the end she sends flowers and a good-luck card to the venue and spends most of the day in the cloistered quiet of the spa downstairs at the Mandarin, listening to pan flute renditions of eighties love themes while her bodyguard Javi waits patiently outside. "I'm so sorry," the masseuse says, once Lacey has put her bra back on and stepped into her terry cloth slippers. "I could lose my job for this, but I'm such an enormous fan. Would you mind—?"

"Oh!" Lacey says, hitching the sash of her robe a little tighter around her waist and leaning in for a selfie. "Um, of course."

Matilda texts as she's heading back upstairs in the elevator. How was your Big New York Day? she asks, alongside a flood of apple and taxicab emojis. Still on for a late dinner?

Yes! Lacey writes back, although even an early dinner for Matilda is like ten p.m. and Lacey generally tries not to eat after seven thirty. Still: she did say she was going to have a Big New York Day, which at the very least probably means she ought to leave the hotel. Definitely.

She texts Claire, who sends over hair and makeup. The whole floor is sealed, just Lacey's people, though the dancers had sixty hours off and will meet her tomorrow afternoon in Toronto. Back downstairs Lacey blinks in the flashing lights of the cameras as she waves to the scrum of fans clustered behind the barriers outside the building. "Have you guys been out here all day?" she asks as disbelievingly as possible, though of course she knows they have been. They've been here since she arrived in the city nearly a week ago; they've been here, more or less, for ten years. A few of them have started bringing their own daughters, little girls with pigtails and SECOND-GEN LACEY LEAGUE T-shirts. "I'm going to order you some pizzas."

Matilda is waiting at Via Carota, her curly blond hair sticking up in every direction and her wire-rimmed glasses huge on her heart-shaped face. "There you are, you absolute vision!" she crows, flashing a nasty look at anyone who dares to glance over at them. Matilda just called it off with the guy she was seeing, an impishly unwashed Irish singer who plays the bodhran, so now she hates every man indiscriminately and most women for good measure. Lacey knows from experience that this will endure for roughly as long as it takes for some mustachioed Icelandic playwright to catch her eye from across a crowded room.

They debrief the breakup over grilled artichokes and cacio e pepe, a green salad with a sharp, bracing vinaigrette. Matilda is talking animatedly about the weird sex stuff Eoghan was into when Lacey's phone starts to buzz on the table—her mom back in Cincinnati. Lacey bites her lip. She tries to pick up whenever her mom calls, but they literally just saw each other this morning; her mom slept over in her hotel room last night, the wine-and-perfume scent of her familiar and a little bit suffocating. Lacey tossed and turned until the light turned gray in the gap between the blackout curtains, some animal instinct deep inside her vigilantly attuned to the possibility of a threat.

"What about you, dove?" Matilda asks now, peering at her curiously across the table. Matilda is from England so everything she says sounds sophisticated and a little imperious. "Have you talked to your Saturday Night Bastard?"

Lacey clears her throat. "To Toby?" she asks, taking a sip of her water and tucking her phone facedown underneath her thigh, where it continues to buzz like a coin-operated bed. "I have not."

Matilda tuts. "The baby looks like a tiny goblin, doesn't it."

"You're terrible," Lacey chides through a laugh, though she has privately, in her lowest moments, thought basically the same thing. "The baby looks like a baby. None of this is the baby's fault."

"You should send them an extremely fucked-up little gift," Matilda advises, reaching for her wine. "A crocheted jumper embroidered with your likeness. Or a note saying how flattered you are by the offer to be its godmother, and how delighted you are to accept."

Lacey laughs again, but she's relieved when the waiter comes over to see how they're enjoying everything. She doesn't want to talk about this anymore. There isn't really that much to say. She lived with Toby for almost two years, and then it turned out he had both a secret cocaine addiction and a secret relationship, and also that his secret girlfriend was pregnant with his secret baby, and now Lacey is on an international tour singing a bunch of wildly popular love songs she wrote as she lay in their bed beside him.

So: nothing that unusual, really. Just, like, normal girl stuff.

"Tell me about work," she says to Matilda, once they're alone again. "When does filming start back up?"

Matilda claps her manicured hands together, launching into a convoluted story about two of her castmates who can no longer be in the same room together following an undisclosed incident at a SAG dinner in West Hollywood. Lacey lets her mind wander. She feels restless all of a sudden, a panicky Sunday-night kind of feeling, even though it's the middle of the week. It was just a short break, but she wanted to accomplish something with it, to do something memorable or independent or creatively inspiring, and instead she had an Ayurvedic scalp treatment and watched 4 New York in bed. She's not complaining, obviously—one thing about Lacey is that she knows better than to ever, ever complain—but she's disappointed in herself, in her own lack of bravery. She could have figured out something to wear.

She's startled out of her thoughts by the insistent buzz of her phone underneath her. Lacey reaches down and flips it over, glancing quickly at the screen. Where are you? her mom wants to know. Call me.

Then, a moment later: It's an emergency.

Lacey feels the iron pulse of her own heart at the back of her mouth. "Hold that thought," she tells Matilda, smiling as calmly as possible and hurrying off to the bathroom, already dialing. "Mom," she says, once she's shut herself inside and locked the door, "are you okay?"

"There you are," her mom says pleasantly. "Are you out?"

Lacey shuts her eyes, just briefly, leaning back against the sink in irritation and relief. "I'm at dinner," she says. "What's the emergency?"

"What?"

"You said there was an emergency, Mom."

"Oh," her mom says. "Did I? No, I just got back to the house and I hate all my furniture. Do you still have the name of the decorator who did your place in Nashville?"

Lacey grits her teeth so hard she feels it in her neck. "Sure," she says. "I'll text you her contact info in the morning."

"Who are you with?"

"Just Matilda."

"Oh, I love Matilda!" her mom exclaims, though they've never actually met each other. Lacey finds it's best to spend time with her mom one-on-one. "Tell her I said hello."

Back at the table Matilda is taking video of the bustling restaurant, brow furrowed in concentration like Martin Scorsese with an iPhone Pro. "One more drink?" she asks. "There's a place near Hudson Yards that's supposed to be fun."

Lacey hesitates. She's got a flight out first thing tomorrow morning, the first of six shows over two weekends in Toronto tomorrow night. She should go back to the hotel, do her hour of potions, chug her dutiful liter of water, and go to sleep with the white noise machine humming on the nightstand beside her.

"One more drink," she agrees, and tucks her phone back into her purse.

Outside the restaurant a small crowd has gathered: a few photographers she recognizes and a trio of girls in TEAM LACEY T-shirts, plus some curious tourists lured by the promise of a celebrity sighting. Lacey glances up over their heads at the tops of the buildings and thinks of Henrietta Lang stepping onstage a few blocks from here, her red hair long and wild and her voice like a flamethrower in the darkness. The night isn't over yet, Lacey decides, feeling suddenly impetuous. There's still time for something to happen.

"A spinning wheel," she announces, raising her voice so Matilda can hear her over the sounds of the screaming, flashbulbs still exploding all around them. "That's what I'm going to send."