A Bit of Color
At first, Lenny had hesitated, but she couldn't actually explain why it was a bad idea, so they went with it. They named the twins Marilyn and Arthur Smanks.
Lenore had tried to prepare him for the babies, so he wouldn't be confused when they came out. Ned had to remind her that he had once been a biracial baby and had pictures of himself when he'd been all white expect for his balls and ears. He was well glad that hadn't lasted. That would have made things really awkward in the showers, and when he got off with birds.
It wouldn't have been that bad with Lenore, though. She didn't seem bothered by anything about Ned, really. She often made a face she said was 'quizzical.' Ned wasn't sure what it had to do with quiz shows, but it wasn't an angry face. If Ned had looked like Nathan Barley with his clothes on but was rocking some dark chocolate junk, Lenore would have looked quizzical, but she wouldn't have laughed. She was special that way.
The jury was still out on how much flavor the babies would have. Marilyn was pretty pale, but Arthur had those big black balls. Ned had been secretly hoping for a boy with his own buttery caramel skin color and a pasty white girl, like in cartoons where all the girls take after their mums and boys after their dads. It would be yet another parallel between their lives and Lady and the Tramp.
Lenore said it was important for new parents to get a lot of help, and Ned was amazed by how many people volunteered to step up when he told them he would be spending a lot of time alone with the babies. They had a schedule for when people would stay at the house, so they didn't have to put up twenty people at a time.
Elizabeth and Rufus took the first shift, because they both had a lot of little brothers and sisters and were well skilled in the art of changing nappies. Lenore was worried that Rufus was too stupid to take care of a baby (she used the word eccentric instead of stupid, but Ned wasn't so eccentric he couldn't tell what she meant). Elizabeth was super smart and Lenny trusted her, so she could get a little sleep when Elizabeth was in charge. Rufus was mainly in charge of food and nappies. Lenny had kicked up a fuss when he brought them sushi until she realized he'd actually done a good job n'all, getting only cooked and vegetable sushi.
Claire and Nathan came next. Claire had done some babysitting as a little girl, and when Nathan was seventeen, his dad had a baby with his brand new seventeen-year-old wife, so he knew a thing or two about babies as well. Even better, they brought over Jay-Me with them one day, so the babies already had a photo op with celebrity before they were a week old. Jay-Me had lots of little brothers and was well skilled with babies. Her singing voice was good, even without help from a studio, and she sang loads of songs to the twins. It was like a personal concert, except she didn't do any of her hits, not even "Lonely Girl". She just sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and other kiddie songs. Having a celebrity singing kiddie songs made Ned feel like he was on the real Sesame Street, one of his lifelong dreams. Being a daddy was brilliant.
Dan and Jones were the most recent installation at the house. Dan said he'd tried to sell Claire when was she was born and hadn't been allowed near her after that, and Jones didn't know anything about babies. Ned had to show them everything while Lenny slept, like how to hold their wobbly heads up and which parts of their skulls were still squishy. Lenore was breastfeeding both babies and it was making her tired and even weepier than when she'd been preggers. She didn't even need to see a sad commercial to burst into tears. Ned made sure everyone looked like they knew what they were doing when she was awake, so that she could relax once in a while.
Both babies took to Dan straight away. Ned noticed all babies were like girls: they liked men who didn't pay them any mind. Dan rarely held the babies, but if he was close enough for their little eyes to see, the twins would stare at him while Ned and Jones went about the business of keeping them alive.
They didn't need to be distracted when they were with Lenore. Somehow, the babies knew their mummy and knew they could trust her. Lenore said it was because she was dribbling milk everywhere like a "disgusting fountain," but Ned thought it was more. It wasn't just the babies that were more relaxed when Lenore was around. All of them: Elizabeth, Rufus, Claire, Nathan, Dan, Jones, and Ned breathed a sigh of relief when she came in the room, because she was a proper grown-up.
Dan and Claire's parents were coming soon to spend a whole week. Ned figured it was a good idea since they'd raised two kids who were well smart and talented and successful, but he was also a bit worried, because the Ashcrofts were scary. It would be hard to potty train someone who could stare him down without saying a word.
xxx
Jay-Me had learned a lot in England. She loved it so much, she'd decided to start spelling color with a u.
She wasn't as happy with the article in E-lite as she'd hoped, but Claire assured her it was an important part of her "character arc," and it would make her film all the more interesting.
Jay-Me couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it first. A documentary was obviously the way to go. Once again, Madonna had already paved the way; Jay-Me only needed to follow. Jay-Me had seen Claire Ashcroft's "Down in Londontown" so many times, she could understand nearly all the accents. The documentary about Jay-Me had been Nathan's idea, but it was Claire that would do all the artistic stuff. She seemed to have a real understanding of the person Jay-Me wanted to be, maybe because she had some of the same ambitions.
Jay-Me liked Nathan, even if he was a bit of a jerk sometimes. The first time they'd met, he had tried to get Jay-Me into bed and then cried like a baby and begged her not to tell his girlfriend when she told him he didn't stand a chance. When she'd realized his "girlfriend" was Dan's sister, Jay-Me had been torn. After meeting Claire, she knew to keep her mouth shut. If there was one thing Jay-Me had learned from her mother, it was that you couldn't tell a woman that she was wasting her time on a loser. Sometimes a girl just needed to beat her head against a wall for a while before the truth sank in.
And Claire looked like she knew how to throw a punch.
In the meantime, Claire was filming Jay-Me as she toured London and gained inspiration from the culture and the landscape. While trying to find a song they could work on together, Jones had pointed out that all of her songs were "shit." She'd cried, but then he had brought Dan in to give her a few writing tips. He'd told her that she didn't need to write about her feelings, that they would come out in her writing no matter what she wrote about. He told her she could write about shoes and it would be personal, because it would be her point of view on shoes.
So she wrote a song about her Manolos. It was the song Jones had agreed to help produce. When she'd played it for Dan, he'd said, "There you go. That's a song about... something." It hadn't been released yet, but there were "leaked" versions in clubs all over the world.
When she wrote the song, it was about the one pair of Manolos in her closet and why they were significant. Now she had a dozen pairs, so she could be shot all over the world wearing them. Life was funny like that. The song was about her real life, but now she needed to change her life to be more like her song.
Jay-Me had the junkie choir open for her at Wembley. They went on before Jones. Jay-Me was on her way to being a significant artist.
xxx
"When life blows,
put on those Manolos,
like the Sex in the City hoes,
'cause those bitches got style."
Dan smiled (and cringed) as the sound of twisting metal and nightmares wove through the cheerful melody. Even the radio version of the song was a bit scary, though it had nothing on the full-out, nightmare inducing, properly brostep club version Jones had produced.
Jones had been getting offers from other artists, but he didn't really care for recording his music. He said it was like mounting a dead animal to preserve its beauty: equal parts creepy, morbid, and sad as hell. Jones preferred his music to be alive. He also had no interest in promoting himself. Dan had been willing to pack up his life and follow Jones wherever he went. He could write for any rag; he just needed to be with Jones. They had toyed with moving to the States, until Lenore decided to stay in London. Jones never wanted to be too far from the twins. Now that Lenore was going to the London School of Economics full-time, Jones was often at the Arthur-Smanks home. It was a gorgeous house, and completely baby-proofed. Dan hated being there alone, because he couldn't figure out any of the childproof locks. If he ever really wanted to quit drinking, he would dry out at Lenore's. He couldn't even climb out of a window; they were all secured in case of an "Eric Clapton situation."
Dan wanted to ask Jones to produce a track for Madonna, in exchange for her burning her 15Peter20 shot of Dan pissing on a wall, but he'd done enough to fuck up their relationship. In comparison to being without Jones, his humiliation seemed minor. He hoped that when Jones read his book, he would understand why Dan was so bad at being a boyfriend.
The book was helping Dan understand himself a little better. He'd taken Lenore to Leeds to do some research on his past. He'd been surprised by how poorly he remembered his own childhood. He didn't remember having such good grades, or so many friends. He'd tailored his memories to suit the fuck-up he became, but there had been a time when Dan had actually made his parents proud.
Then he'd turned fifteen, and the self-loathing began. It ate at him night and day until he started drinking and smoking pot and doing everything he could to drown out the constant negative voice in his head saying he would never be good enough. He'd never really moved past his adolescent approach to coping.
Lenore said he was depressed and should look into a combination of talk therapy and antidepressants, in addition to working on his substance abuse issues. Then she gave him a hug and said she loved him the way he was. Then they sat in awkward silence, because Lenore had used the L-word. It had been while Lenore was still pregnant and chock-full of hormones, so they had agreed to ignore it. Dan had tried to break the tension by showing Lenore some photos of himself when he was young. He dopily agreed to show her pictures of himself at sixteen, not realizing what she was after.
He waited for her to laugh as she took in lanky, scrawny Dan with his oversized head and hands and his longish, floppy hair.
"Wow," she murmured. "You were..."
"An ugly fuck?" Dan supplied.
"No. You were cute. It's just..."
"What?"
Lenore shrugged. "You look so young and innocent, and all I can think is... gross."
It was fair. Dan had no idea why Marilyn Arthur had chosen him to sleep with, or if her pregnancy had been a mistake or intentional. She was a brilliant and respected author, and Dan had looked like an animated scarecrow. Maybe Marilyn saw potential in him. Maybe she just figured he was chock-full of semen.
Like getting a baby sister and having sex with a dude, finding out he had a daughter had sounded horrible but turned out to be amazing.
"No more store brand,
mock-ups, knockoffs..."
"God, this song is everywhere," Sasha groaned as she dropped into the seat across from Dan. "Is Jones happy, or is he sick of it?"
Dan shrugged. "A little of both."
Sasha had left E-lite to start her own PR company. E-lite paid for her to represent Dan, so he now had a new PA, and his old PA was his new PR agent. Sometimes he felt like that Talking Heads song Ned and Lenore liked so much.
How did I get here?
They only met during the day and in public. There had never been another incident, but Sasha had decided to play it safe. She was happily married and expecting another child. She wasn't giving herself any opportunities to fall back on her Sugar Ape ways. Jones had been all for Dan maintaining professional ties with Sasha.
Jones was so perfect, Dan sometimes wanted to shrink him down and carry him around in his pocket. Pocket Jones. Love made Dan go a bit weird in the head.
"You need to write about the song, and you need to write about your sister's film. This is brilliant cross-promotion. You'll be a household name before your book is finished," Sasha began, prepared as usual. "How's the writing going, anyway?"
Dan shrugged, knowing Sasha would take that to mean the worst. He'd actually written three hundred pages so far, but he was keeping it quiet. There were two hundred pages he might end up burning.
Sasha looked stern.
"Dan. You're a good writer. You have an interesting story and a voice that brings people in. Don't doubt yourself so much," she said gently. "I believe in you."
"Other than telling me what to write about and when, clearly the job of a public relations expert..." Dan waited for physical abuse, but simply got an icy stare. He would have preferred a punch. "Why am I here?"
"The new Kevin Alexander article. Do you want to release an opinion or stay silent?"
Dan smiled to himself.
"I like it. Can I officially like it?"
"Can you expound upon that opinion?" Sasha asked.
"Not really," Dan admitted. "I just thought it was a good article. Good for him."
"And how are the grandbabies?"
Dan flinched at the word. It was still too bizarre.
"Grandbabies..." he sighed. "They're wonderful. They're so tiny and... They're so tiny. You can't hate them."
"Babies are like that," Sasha agreed.
They chatted a bit more, but they spent most of the lunch in a companionable silence. They hadn't been kids together, but working at Sugar Ape was like being a child. Their shared past had its roots in childish impulses and indulgences. Dan was still indulging, but they weren't the same people they had been. They were adults. Dan was surprised to find he didn't hate it.
Lenore had tried to prepare him for the babies, so he wouldn't be confused when they came out. Ned had to remind her that he had once been a biracial baby and had pictures of himself when he'd been all white expect for his balls and ears. He was well glad that hadn't lasted. That would have made things really awkward in the showers, and when he got off with birds.
It wouldn't have been that bad with Lenore, though. She didn't seem bothered by anything about Ned, really. She often made a face she said was 'quizzical.' Ned wasn't sure what it had to do with quiz shows, but it wasn't an angry face. If Ned had looked like Nathan Barley with his clothes on but was rocking some dark chocolate junk, Lenore would have looked quizzical, but she wouldn't have laughed. She was special that way.
The jury was still out on how much flavor the babies would have. Marilyn was pretty pale, but Arthur had those big black balls. Ned had been secretly hoping for a boy with his own buttery caramel skin color and a pasty white girl, like in cartoons where all the girls take after their mums and boys after their dads. It would be yet another parallel between their lives and Lady and the Tramp.
Lenore said it was important for new parents to get a lot of help, and Ned was amazed by how many people volunteered to step up when he told them he would be spending a lot of time alone with the babies. They had a schedule for when people would stay at the house, so they didn't have to put up twenty people at a time.
Elizabeth and Rufus took the first shift, because they both had a lot of little brothers and sisters and were well skilled in the art of changing nappies. Lenore was worried that Rufus was too stupid to take care of a baby (she used the word eccentric instead of stupid, but Ned wasn't so eccentric he couldn't tell what she meant). Elizabeth was super smart and Lenny trusted her, so she could get a little sleep when Elizabeth was in charge. Rufus was mainly in charge of food and nappies. Lenny had kicked up a fuss when he brought them sushi until she realized he'd actually done a good job n'all, getting only cooked and vegetable sushi.
Claire and Nathan came next. Claire had done some babysitting as a little girl, and when Nathan was seventeen, his dad had a baby with his brand new seventeen-year-old wife, so he knew a thing or two about babies as well. Even better, they brought over Jay-Me with them one day, so the babies already had a photo op with celebrity before they were a week old. Jay-Me had lots of little brothers and was well skilled with babies. Her singing voice was good, even without help from a studio, and she sang loads of songs to the twins. It was like a personal concert, except she didn't do any of her hits, not even "Lonely Girl". She just sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and other kiddie songs. Having a celebrity singing kiddie songs made Ned feel like he was on the real Sesame Street, one of his lifelong dreams. Being a daddy was brilliant.
Dan and Jones were the most recent installation at the house. Dan said he'd tried to sell Claire when was she was born and hadn't been allowed near her after that, and Jones didn't know anything about babies. Ned had to show them everything while Lenny slept, like how to hold their wobbly heads up and which parts of their skulls were still squishy. Lenore was breastfeeding both babies and it was making her tired and even weepier than when she'd been preggers. She didn't even need to see a sad commercial to burst into tears. Ned made sure everyone looked like they knew what they were doing when she was awake, so that she could relax once in a while.
Both babies took to Dan straight away. Ned noticed all babies were like girls: they liked men who didn't pay them any mind. Dan rarely held the babies, but if he was close enough for their little eyes to see, the twins would stare at him while Ned and Jones went about the business of keeping them alive.
They didn't need to be distracted when they were with Lenore. Somehow, the babies knew their mummy and knew they could trust her. Lenore said it was because she was dribbling milk everywhere like a "disgusting fountain," but Ned thought it was more. It wasn't just the babies that were more relaxed when Lenore was around. All of them: Elizabeth, Rufus, Claire, Nathan, Dan, Jones, and Ned breathed a sigh of relief when she came in the room, because she was a proper grown-up.
Dan and Claire's parents were coming soon to spend a whole week. Ned figured it was a good idea since they'd raised two kids who were well smart and talented and successful, but he was also a bit worried, because the Ashcrofts were scary. It would be hard to potty train someone who could stare him down without saying a word.
xxx
Jay-Me had learned a lot in England. She loved it so much, she'd decided to start spelling color with a u.
She wasn't as happy with the article in E-lite as she'd hoped, but Claire assured her it was an important part of her "character arc," and it would make her film all the more interesting.
Jay-Me couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it first. A documentary was obviously the way to go. Once again, Madonna had already paved the way; Jay-Me only needed to follow. Jay-Me had seen Claire Ashcroft's "Down in Londontown" so many times, she could understand nearly all the accents. The documentary about Jay-Me had been Nathan's idea, but it was Claire that would do all the artistic stuff. She seemed to have a real understanding of the person Jay-Me wanted to be, maybe because she had some of the same ambitions.
Jay-Me liked Nathan, even if he was a bit of a jerk sometimes. The first time they'd met, he had tried to get Jay-Me into bed and then cried like a baby and begged her not to tell his girlfriend when she told him he didn't stand a chance. When she'd realized his "girlfriend" was Dan's sister, Jay-Me had been torn. After meeting Claire, she knew to keep her mouth shut. If there was one thing Jay-Me had learned from her mother, it was that you couldn't tell a woman that she was wasting her time on a loser. Sometimes a girl just needed to beat her head against a wall for a while before the truth sank in.
And Claire looked like she knew how to throw a punch.
In the meantime, Claire was filming Jay-Me as she toured London and gained inspiration from the culture and the landscape. While trying to find a song they could work on together, Jones had pointed out that all of her songs were "shit." She'd cried, but then he had brought Dan in to give her a few writing tips. He'd told her that she didn't need to write about her feelings, that they would come out in her writing no matter what she wrote about. He told her she could write about shoes and it would be personal, because it would be her point of view on shoes.
So she wrote a song about her Manolos. It was the song Jones had agreed to help produce. When she'd played it for Dan, he'd said, "There you go. That's a song about... something." It hadn't been released yet, but there were "leaked" versions in clubs all over the world.
When she wrote the song, it was about the one pair of Manolos in her closet and why they were significant. Now she had a dozen pairs, so she could be shot all over the world wearing them. Life was funny like that. The song was about her real life, but now she needed to change her life to be more like her song.
Jay-Me had the junkie choir open for her at Wembley. They went on before Jones. Jay-Me was on her way to being a significant artist.
xxx
"When life blows,
put on those Manolos,
like the Sex in the City hoes,
'cause those bitches got style."
Dan smiled (and cringed) as the sound of twisting metal and nightmares wove through the cheerful melody. Even the radio version of the song was a bit scary, though it had nothing on the full-out, nightmare inducing, properly brostep club version Jones had produced.
Jones had been getting offers from other artists, but he didn't really care for recording his music. He said it was like mounting a dead animal to preserve its beauty: equal parts creepy, morbid, and sad as hell. Jones preferred his music to be alive. He also had no interest in promoting himself. Dan had been willing to pack up his life and follow Jones wherever he went. He could write for any rag; he just needed to be with Jones. They had toyed with moving to the States, until Lenore decided to stay in London. Jones never wanted to be too far from the twins. Now that Lenore was going to the London School of Economics full-time, Jones was often at the Arthur-Smanks home. It was a gorgeous house, and completely baby-proofed. Dan hated being there alone, because he couldn't figure out any of the childproof locks. If he ever really wanted to quit drinking, he would dry out at Lenore's. He couldn't even climb out of a window; they were all secured in case of an "Eric Clapton situation."
Dan wanted to ask Jones to produce a track for Madonna, in exchange for her burning her 15Peter20 shot of Dan pissing on a wall, but he'd done enough to fuck up their relationship. In comparison to being without Jones, his humiliation seemed minor. He hoped that when Jones read his book, he would understand why Dan was so bad at being a boyfriend.
The book was helping Dan understand himself a little better. He'd taken Lenore to Leeds to do some research on his past. He'd been surprised by how poorly he remembered his own childhood. He didn't remember having such good grades, or so many friends. He'd tailored his memories to suit the fuck-up he became, but there had been a time when Dan had actually made his parents proud.
Then he'd turned fifteen, and the self-loathing began. It ate at him night and day until he started drinking and smoking pot and doing everything he could to drown out the constant negative voice in his head saying he would never be good enough. He'd never really moved past his adolescent approach to coping.
Lenore said he was depressed and should look into a combination of talk therapy and antidepressants, in addition to working on his substance abuse issues. Then she gave him a hug and said she loved him the way he was. Then they sat in awkward silence, because Lenore had used the L-word. It had been while Lenore was still pregnant and chock-full of hormones, so they had agreed to ignore it. Dan had tried to break the tension by showing Lenore some photos of himself when he was young. He dopily agreed to show her pictures of himself at sixteen, not realizing what she was after.
He waited for her to laugh as she took in lanky, scrawny Dan with his oversized head and hands and his longish, floppy hair.
"Wow," she murmured. "You were..."
"An ugly fuck?" Dan supplied.
"No. You were cute. It's just..."
"What?"
Lenore shrugged. "You look so young and innocent, and all I can think is... gross."
It was fair. Dan had no idea why Marilyn Arthur had chosen him to sleep with, or if her pregnancy had been a mistake or intentional. She was a brilliant and respected author, and Dan had looked like an animated scarecrow. Maybe Marilyn saw potential in him. Maybe she just figured he was chock-full of semen.
Like getting a baby sister and having sex with a dude, finding out he had a daughter had sounded horrible but turned out to be amazing.
"No more store brand,
mock-ups, knockoffs..."
"God, this song is everywhere," Sasha groaned as she dropped into the seat across from Dan. "Is Jones happy, or is he sick of it?"
Dan shrugged. "A little of both."
Sasha had left E-lite to start her own PR company. E-lite paid for her to represent Dan, so he now had a new PA, and his old PA was his new PR agent. Sometimes he felt like that Talking Heads song Ned and Lenore liked so much.
How did I get here?
They only met during the day and in public. There had never been another incident, but Sasha had decided to play it safe. She was happily married and expecting another child. She wasn't giving herself any opportunities to fall back on her Sugar Ape ways. Jones had been all for Dan maintaining professional ties with Sasha.
Jones was so perfect, Dan sometimes wanted to shrink him down and carry him around in his pocket. Pocket Jones. Love made Dan go a bit weird in the head.
"You need to write about the song, and you need to write about your sister's film. This is brilliant cross-promotion. You'll be a household name before your book is finished," Sasha began, prepared as usual. "How's the writing going, anyway?"
Dan shrugged, knowing Sasha would take that to mean the worst. He'd actually written three hundred pages so far, but he was keeping it quiet. There were two hundred pages he might end up burning.
Sasha looked stern.
"Dan. You're a good writer. You have an interesting story and a voice that brings people in. Don't doubt yourself so much," she said gently. "I believe in you."
"Other than telling me what to write about and when, clearly the job of a public relations expert..." Dan waited for physical abuse, but simply got an icy stare. He would have preferred a punch. "Why am I here?"
"The new Kevin Alexander article. Do you want to release an opinion or stay silent?"
Dan smiled to himself.
"I like it. Can I officially like it?"
"Can you expound upon that opinion?" Sasha asked.
"Not really," Dan admitted. "I just thought it was a good article. Good for him."
"And how are the grandbabies?"
Dan flinched at the word. It was still too bizarre.
"Grandbabies..." he sighed. "They're wonderful. They're so tiny and... They're so tiny. You can't hate them."
"Babies are like that," Sasha agreed.
They chatted a bit more, but they spent most of the lunch in a companionable silence. They hadn't been kids together, but working at Sugar Ape was like being a child. Their shared past had its roots in childish impulses and indulgences. Dan was still indulging, but they weren't the same people they had been. They were adults. Dan was surprised to find he didn't hate it.