The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) (DRAFT)

The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) 23, Taboo

Chapter Twenty Three

Taboo

I still had that creepy feeling. Like I was being watched. I looked around. 

Daith was arranging two oranges, a fennel bulb, a bag of large, meaty walnuts, the rest of the salmon and some other grocery items on the black granite countertop. I knew what he was doing. I had watched Aja do it thousands of times. Guys who know how to cook get it all ready, then make a big to-do of it, like a fussy conductor at a symphony. 

I looked at Daith. He clearly couldn’t see me. I was trying to stay invisible. I had figured out that I seemed to appear when I was either really upset, and not paying attention, or when I tried. I had to concentrate. Well, except for that kid at the park. I guess some people could see me and some people couldn’t. It made sense. 

I thought about the fist-sized white cubes still sitting on the table. It was like an obsessive thought that kept hitting my head, almost as if someone, or something, were whacking me with the idea. If I shook those cubes at Daith, I got to go live in a palace, instead of haunting the streets as some moaning, miserable ghost. In all of this confusion after my death, this one thought seemed clear. 

But I still hesitated. I had had such a longing for my Leader of the Pack. I had fantasized about this guy, written songs about him, made up poems about him, sung about him and dreamt of him since I was about nine. 

It was a dream that at times I gave up on. I had good reason. I knew from the time I was little that guys would court me someday just because my Daddy was supposedly a billionaire. At least on paper. 

A certain type of man was already flirting with me at my parents’ parties when I was around thirteen. I remember leaving one very cute and dapper fellow in his 20s, dressed like the Cheshire Cat at my Mom’s annual Halloween bash, and looking in the bathroom mirror. He had said I was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen, and that he planned to marry me. I looked into the huge, hand carved gilded mirror, and like a true best friend that evening my pretend magic looking glass said I had a gawky, blotchy face and thick ugly glasses.  I knew right then that true love likely would never happen to me. 

When I ran away, I called my Grandpa King.  He said he didn’t blame me. He hated my parents, too. After promising he would talk to my Dad, he added, “You remember what I taught you about boys, now. Don’t ever tell ‘em you’ve got a trust fund. They all want the money, little Allie Cat. Don’t trust anyone. Even your best girl friend.”

My worldly, sexy “together” attitude, as I got older, was just a cover for my inner, fragile nerd, I came to think. I wrote a song about it. “Unloved Me.” Maybe my whole need to be out on my own, loved for who I am, was insecurity. Maybe I needed to prove to myself that I could do it all on my own. It wasn’t my parent’s money that made me who I am. 

I looked around Daith’s Superguy apartment. Between this place, my own cozy El Cid guest house, and Aja’s very cool two-story bachelor pad and artist’s studio, maybe I didn’t need a palace. I decided to just watch Daith for a while. Maybe hang out here with Shadow, who kept looking at me and purring. And rubbing against the chair, since my hand seemed unsatisfactory for a good kitty rub.

Daith looked very familiar with the kitchen, and yet like the kind of guy who shouldn’t know how to cook. Men who wore $125,000 watches and slipped old Quoddy mocs on inside the door usually ate in places like Ta-boo. Yes, he could be a guy eating dinner in Ta-boo, I thought, noting what looked like a Dolce and Gabbana’$1,495 hand-painted T-shirt, the heavy gold chains, the expensive jacket. The coat looked Italian. Maybe Gucci.  

Ta-boo was the kind of place I didn’t go to. Technically, I was too young to hang out at the bar on Saturday nights, but I had fake IDs. The real reason I didn’t go there is I knew the trash that hung out there. Palm Beach old money trash, Euro trash, new money hedge fund trash, and trash wannabees. A huge pile of superficial famous or rich types who want to see and be seen. And the ones who want to meet them. Ta-boo was that kind of place. The food was great and the drinks were good, at least until the bartender decided you were too drunk and began giving you soda water with a twist of lime when you ordered a vodka tonic. 

I had another reason I avoided glitzy rich bars like Ta-boo. The famous Palm Beach hangout had so much scandalous history that every time you walked in the place you put yourself at risk for making news in the Shiny Sheet. That’s the local name for The Palm Beach Daily News, the island’s society newspaper, best known for running front page gossip and how much your neighbor’s mansion cost.  So Ta-boo, for me, isn’t really a safe place to get trashed or find a lover for the night. 

My family didn’t like publicity. But others in Palm Beach do. The Kennedys, for example, always did. Ta-boo was the place Joe Kennedy locked himself in the ladies room with his former amour, silent film star Gloria Swanson. We always loved Palm Beach actress stories as kids because whenever someone started telling the old Hollywood stories, some of my Dad’s relatives would start acting out famous scenes they remembered from old Palm Beach days.  

“Oh no, darling,” one of my Dad’s sisters, Ada, fawned at one party, pretending to be Gloria. She waved a cigarette in one hand and a glass of a champagne cocktail in the other. “I just let everyone think that. The truth is he was making a play for me again and I was sick of players that night.”

“Oh seriously, Gloria,” she added in a different voice, pretending to be another woman, Gloria’s best friend, Tatiana Loren, another old silent film star. “All the men love you so much.”

“Oh, this wasn’t love, darling,” the pretend Gloria said, as she walked around the room, posing and then sashaying. “It was money.”

Nowadays, Ta-boo was the kind of place you could buy a drink for author James Patterson, wiggle up next to the Royal Family visiting from Great Britain, and stand a little to close to Rod Stewart. It was a place known for date rape lounge lizards, too. 

I wondered why Daith would be such a puzzle to me. The smells in the apartment said he had a way with salmon. The Louis Armstrong and his choice of wine said either educated taste or old money. But the watch shrieked nouveau riche at me. 

None of this really mattered to me anymore. I was nearly 17, and I was fairly sure I was looking at my Leader of the Pack. After all these years of fantasy and dreams and imagining, here he was. Fixing dinner, his shoulder length black hair making him look like some sort of knight in a movie, accidentally dropped into a downtown West Palm Beach penthouse kitchen and cooking a fish just flown in from Alaska. 

I completely forgot I was dead.