The Girl On The Half Shell by Susan Ward Page A

again.”
    “It’s hard to plan a future. To know if it’s right. I’ve worked toward Juilliard my entire life. My mother went. She wanted me to go. It doesn’t seem right to change the plan now.”
    “You have to live for yourself. Not your mother or your dad.”
    “Yes, but I’m afraid what I would prefer is too normal. Not interesting at all.”
    “Normal is interesting. I don’t even know if it still exists.”
    “I don’t even know if what I want is normal. I don’t want to be anything. I don’t want to spend my life absorbed in trying to be anything. I just want to go to UC Berkeley with my best friend Rene. Study something. I don’t know what. Maybe meet a nice guy. Maybe get married. Maybe have lots of kids. And just be. Be more focused on living than trying to be something. Why is it so important to ‘be’ something? I just want to be and be happy.”
    “I was almost ready to sign up. It sounded charming right up to the point of ‘lots of kids.’”
    “I take it you don’t like kids.”
    Something in his face changes, a sudden harshness and something else. “If I had my way there would be an abortion clinic on every street corner.”
    “That’s an awful thing to say.”
    “Why lie? We don’t know each other well enough to have to lie.”
    “It’s still awful. You shouldn’t say things like that.”
    To make a fast shift in conversation, I point at two logs touching in a V-formation. “Do you want to sit down for a while?”
    He shrugs and sinks down on a log. I settle beside him and stare out at the ocean. He doesn’t seem to want to talk anymore so I respect the silence. I look at him and a single laugh escapes me. There is something in how Alan sits that tells me the beach is not his thing and that he’s a little uncomfortable with whatever it is we’re doing.
    After a few minutes I slip from my perch and lie back in the sand. I stare into the fog above the ocean, seeing the gleaming tinge of the moon. He watches me and then follows, copying my posture, lying on his back, arms crossed beneath his head as a pillow, staring at the sky.
    I fight not to look at him. “Isn’t it beautiful? Every so often the fog pulls apart and you can see a star. Then pouf it’s gone. One minute a star, then nothing.”
    I glance over at him. Holy crap that was a really dumb thing to say to an international superstar in crisis who thinks he’s trashed his life and career.
    Change the subject quickly. “I want to stay here until morning.”
    “Why?”
    He’s suspicious again.
    “I want to see the sunrise,” I explain.
    He relaxes.
    “Don’t you have an early plane? Jack said he was taking you to the airport in the morning. I leave tomorrow too. I offered to let you travel to New York with me, but Jack didn’t think that was a good idea. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want my daughter in a private plane with me.”
    His head turns fractionally toward me and my heart rate goes through the roof as my head spins. I could be winging my way to New York with Alan Manzone if Jack hadn’t killed the offer. It’s a lot to absorb, especially with him lying beside me in the sand.
    “I do have an early plane,” I explain to cover my shock. “But I want to stay awake until the sunrise. If I stay awake all night I’ll sleep on the plane. I really hate flying. Being shut in, surrounded by people. And don’t take Jack refusing your offer personally. A private jet would violate his ideology. We always travel commercial. Proletarian normalcy. Jack is committed to proletarian normalcy.”
    Alan gives me a small laugh. “This is proletarian normalcy?” he mocks playfully. “You live on a beachfront estate in Santa Barbara.”
    “Jack is committed to the ideal. He is not always philosophically consistent. If you’ve spent enough time with Jack to be worried that you’re spending too much time with Jack you should have picked that up by now.”
    Alan laughs. There is silence again for a long while.