Susan Andersen - Coming Undone

"-so stay tuned," the DJ said. "This is Dan the Man McVann and the morning crew. We'll be right back to talk a little smack with Priscilla Jayne after these brief messages from our sponsor."

The man didn't find them all that brief and he fidgeted in his seat as he waited for the interminable commercials to cease. He'd written three letters to Priscilla Jayne this spring but hadn't received so much as a single reply in return. They'd been wonderfully flattering notes, too-well, at least the first two. The one he'd written last Saturday had rightly taken her to task over her lack of respect for her mother.

"And we're back!" The DJ's voice broke into the man's growing agitation. "This morning's guest is Priscilla Jayne, whose new CDWatch Me Fly we've been watching fly off the shelves at an amazing rate since hitting the stores last week. Welcome!"

"Thank you, Dan," said the raspy voice the man remembered from the show he'd seen her on. "I'm happy to be here."

"As I just mentioned to our listeners, your new CD is burning up the charts."

"Yes, isn't it great?" Her laughter rolled out of the speakers. "It seems to be doing very well, and I'm so grateful to my fans for their support."

The man, who had found himself smiling at the rich sound of her laugh, scowled. "Then you might try responding when they go to the trouble of writing you."

"Your critically acclaimed debut albumOutside Looking In spent a record ten weeks atop the Country Albums Chart and has been certified double platinum for sales in excess of two million," Dan the Man said. "Do you find it daunting knowing how much your sophomore album has to live up to?"

"It scares the bejeebers out of me if I let myself think about it too long or too hard," she agreed. "But I try to just take everything day by day. I'm very proud ofWatch Me Fly and hope my audience will find the album as singable as I do. I love the entire project, but if listeners take away nothing else I have faith that they'll at least enjoy a song or two. I believe we've got some really great singles on this CD."

"I guess so!" the DJ heartily concurred. "'Let the Party Begin' debuted at number three on Billboard's Country Album Chart and 'Crying Myself to Sleep' at number seven."

"It's been an excellent week," she said in that easy, friendly voice. "Unfortunately, I spent most of it driving cross-country to get to Portland, where I played my first concert on the new tour last night. So I haven't had much time to savor it."

"Speaking of your cross-country drive, I wonder if you could put to rest a rumor that's going around," the DJ said.

The man went on alert but instead of asking about Priscilla Jayne's mother the way he should have, McVann said, "Some of the journals are claiming you were spotted playing all kinds of bars across the West last week. True or false?"

The DJ's "morning crew" chimed in with their guesses, but the man ignored them as he awaited Priscilla Jayne's response.

"That's actually true," she said. "I got my start playing honky-tonks and clubs. Plus, growing up I lived in-man, I can't even tell you how many wide-spot-in-the-road towns. I had a week to kill on my way to Portland, so I stopped along the way at some taverns in a few small towns and jammed with the local bands."

"That must have thrilled them."

"It thrilledme to play with so many gifted musicians. The truth is a good part of this business comes down to blind luck. There's so much talent out there, even if much of it never goes any further than playing gigs at local taverns."

Dan the Man didn't appear to have much interest in non-platinum-selling performers. "So are you driving yourself from concert to concert?"

"No, I'm traveling on the bus Wild Wind hired for us. Concerts are scheduled almost daily, so for the most part we'll finish one performance, get on the bus and sleep while Marvin, our driver, delivers us to the next destination."

"What did you do with your car, then-leave it in Portland?"

"No. It's being driven back to Aspen."

"That's where you live these days?"

"Yes. I'm a brand-new home owner-or at least it still feels brand-new. I bought a house last year."

"You mentioned earlier that you moved around a lot."

"I did and I hated it." Then she laughed. "And I know choosing a career that puts me on the road for a good part of the year when I've spent most of my life craving a home I didn't have to up and leave at the drop of a hat must sound like a-whatchamacallit-a paradox. But having a place I can call my own makes all the difference."

"Because it'll always be there for you to go back to when the touring is over?"

"Exactly!" Her raspy voice was full of warm approbation that he understood her feelings so well.

There was an infinitesimal pause, then the DJ said, "So if a stable home life is so important to you, why did you fire your mother?"

The man in the car let up on the gas pedal as he sat straighter in his seat. "Excellent question."

Dead air filled the airwaves for several long seconds. Then Priscilla Jayne said in a voice not exactly cold but definitely no longer warm, "Excuse me while I pull the knife out of my heart." She gave a theatrical grunt. "There-and only the minimum of blood, too, as long as I keep my finger in the hole."

Laughter came from the morning crew, but the man didn't understand what they found so amusing. He didn't find the singer's flippancy one bit appropriate.

"I gotta hand it to you, Dan the Man," she said. "You slid that blade in slicker than the devil."

"Yet still you didn't answer my question."

"Noticed that, did you? Well, let me see if I can put this in a way you'll understand. My personal life is exactly that. Personal. I don't mind putting it all out there in my songs. I do mind flopping my private business onto the table for wholesale consumption by a bunch of people who don't know the first thing about it." Her voice warmed. "Marina, you still there?"

"You bet," replied one of the sidekicks.

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure, I guess."

"What's your relationship with your mother?"

"Why, it's fi-that is, it's:nothing I care to talk about on the radio."

"I hear that, sister. And I rest my case."

"Yetyour mother has gone on record to state you broke her heart," the DJ insisted.

"Well, what can I tell you, Dan?" she said lightly. "There's just no pleasing some people."

The interview wound up a minute later but long after the radio crew signed off, long after the man clocked in at work and commenced his rounds, he continued to seethe.

Because this was wrong. This was just plain wrong. Priscilla Jayne lacked all reverence for her mother and she shouldn't be allowed to get away with such flagrant disrespect.

Well maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't. Because he had several weeks of vacation time coming.

And he just might use them to teach her a lesson in honoring her parent.

"HEY, IT'S ME,"Jared said the moment his brother-in-law answered the phone. P.J.'s concert filtered faintly through the thick walls of the San Francisco arena behind him. "I need the name and number of the suit who hired us for this assignment. I've been leaving messages at Wild Wind for the past three days, but either he's dodging me, which doesn't make sense, or I'm not asking to speak to the right guy."

"We have a problem?"

"Aside from wasting our time playing watchdog for a clueless client, you mean?"

"O-kay." John's voice was slow and easy. "You wanna expound on that a bit? But make it quick, wouldja? Sympathetic as I am to the plight of the poor working stiff, I don't count myself among your number for the next fourteen days."

Jared felt the tension that had been building over the course of the past week begin to unwind at John's mellow voice and offbeat sense of humor. "You heading up to the cabin?"

"Yep. In about twenty minutes. Just me and Tori."

"No kids?"

"Well, okay, me and Tori and Grayson and two of his very large, always hungry and extremely loud friends."

Jared grinned at the thought of his nephew and his friends wreaking havoc with John's downtime. "Es staying in town?"

"Yep. Running her and Gray's and your future children's inheritance into the ground while I wet a fishing line or two. Which, in the interests of getting this vacation on the road, brings us back to your request. Why do you feel we're wasting our time accompanying P.J. on her tour?"

"It's make-work, Rocket. There's not a damn thing for me to do here-an illustration of P.J.'s face oughtta be next toconsummate professional in the dictionary."

"I'm not sureconsummate professional is actually in the dictionary," John murmured. "Not linked together, anyhow."

He ignored the interruption. "It's clear to anyone with eyes in their head that this tour is important to her. She doesn't need anyone to get her to her concerts, she sure as hell makes her sound checks without assistance and with the exception of the first show in Portland, where we had the only two-night engagement so far, she's been on the tour bus within a half-hour of each show's closing."

"So what do you think compelled them to hire us?"

"I honest to God don't know." Leaning against the arena's concrete exterior wall, Jared settled his shoulders more squarely to absorb the residual heat still stored from the day's high-eighties temperatures, enjoying the warmth that seeped through his T-shirt to the slowly relaxing muscles below. "Wild Wind has a bundle tied up in this tour and there's a lot of negative press out there making it sound as if P.J.'s unreliable. But it's common knowledge it's been stirred up by her mother, so why the hell would they take Jodeen's version of the situation as gospel?"