Free The Song Remains the Same by Allison Winn Scotch Page B

through the lot of them. They’re semi-abstract paintings—if you look hard enough you can see the shape of a woman’s breast or the ampleness in her butt cheek or the curve of her chin in almost all of them. They are in glaring, blinding colors—cherry red the shade of fresh blood, vibrant blue so vivid you couldn’t find it in nature, a yellow that forces me to squint.
    “My dad’s, I take it?” I ask. “I thought he did pop art?”
    “This was his early work. And it wasn’t easy to find. Rory blew me off when I asked about getting some prints and your mom flaked on me twice. I finally called a friend of a former colleague who’s an assistant art professor at Columbia. These were from some of your dad’s old shows.” He pauses. “Anything look familiar?”
    “I’ll give you two guesses.” I pause and cock my head, turning one of the images vertically. “Still, though, I can tell he was amazing.”
    “Rory told me—curtly, I should add—that you were his apprentice.” He shakes his head. “No, maybe she said muse.”
    “I could have been. I wouldn’t know.” I look again at the photos. “But these aren’t of me. Not if he left when I was thirteen.”
    “No.” Jamie reaches for a postcard and examines it. “These predate you.”
    “My mom, maybe?” I suggest helpfully.
    “Maybe,” he says, handing it back, refocusing. “But that’s not the point. The point is American Profiles .”
    “Well, you’re not making your point about it.” I pause, examining the scattered postcards, of the archaeology that Jamie has uncovered when no one else has. “So what exactly is your point about American Profiles ?”
    “I think they’re going to make us an offer: you, me, Anderson—none of their regular anchors—a four-part series tracking your recovery, your transition back into the real world. I’m still negotiating it.”
    “Shouldn’t people be sick of us by now?” I say this, and yet I know they are not. I still hear the calls to the nurses’ station, can still see the media trucks parked on the street outside my window. There have been no other national catastrophes since the crash and until there is—a bomb threat, a sports star scandal—I’m still it.
    “If I’ve learned anything in my job, it’s that people get stuck on stories that resonate. I mean, you were just some up-and-coming thirty-something woman whose life was wiped out, which to a lot of them seems like a blessing, not a curse—a second chance but also an unwanted chance. And they read about you and think, ‘What if that were me? What then?’ You are them, they are you. That’s what they’re thinking every time they see you.”
    “I get it, I know.” I do get it and I do know. I want the laugh track! “Anderson will never agree. He wants anonymity now, not more hype.”
    In fact, Anderson had just been released from his rehab center early last week, his body healing at an unexpectedly remarkable pace, and had flown back to New York to regroup, to see if he could pick up the shards where his life left off. His sister and mother came down from Boston to help him acclimate.
    He called two nights ago, after getting settled. I was watching Fatal Attraction, an ill-advised selection, to be sure, but a pop-culture classic all the same, and Rory had told me we used to watch the boiled-bunny scene over and over again, partially to terrorize ourselves, partially because we knew it was coming and would start giggling five minutes prior.
    When the cell phone vibrated, I was taking the movie a little toopersonally, letting it hit a little too close to my core, and all of those initial doubts about Peter were firing at full throttle—despite my mother’s plea for forgiveness, despite Peter’s own. I stared at Glenn Close and her savage eyes and wild, curly hair and wondered if that wasn’t Ginger, wasn’t Ginger exactly. And then I wondered if Michael Douglas could go back and do it over—before she boiled his bunny,