Page 52 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
On TV, the news had already turned Rimbaud’s escape into a national drama. A headline scrolled across the screen: “Ryder’s Plea: $10,000 Reward for the Return of My Rimbaud.” Then the camera widened and there he was—Zane Ryder. Silk robe in deep purple, sunglasses on indoors, hair sticking up like he’d just won—or lost—a bar fight with the wind. He spoke from the lobby of the Vellum Hotel, surrounded by microphones and flashbulbs, with the solemnity of a man who was not joking.
Tess, perched on the couch, didn’t blink once. “I don’t want your pathetic money. I want your heart, your brain, and your soul.”
Rimbaud, curled on her shoulder, snoozed in blissful contentment. In a matter of hours they’d become inseparable, like a pair bound by a secret decades-long pact.
When the broadcast shifted to other stories, Tess switched off the TV and turned to me. “Okay. It’s time.”
She grabbed her phone and dialed the Vellum. “I just saw the news. I think I’ve found Rimbaud. He’s at my place.”
The voice on the other end, brisk but polite, explained they’d been flooded with calls—false alarms, wannabe heroes, straight-up scammers. First, she’d have to prove it was really him.
“Where are you calling from?”
“Brooklyn. I spotted him on a branch in Central Park East. He looked scared, in trouble, so I brought him home.”
“Color?”
“Red-headed.Amazona autumnalis, to be precise.”
I gestured frantically for her to keep it short—because that sounded a lot less like “lucky find” and a lot more like “premeditated kidnapping.”
“Any distinguishing traits?”
“He never shuts up. And he only speaks in rhymes about Zane Ryder…” She delivered it with theatrical boredom, as if it were the biggest nuisance in the world. “Listen, I’ll give you my address. But I want Ryder himself. I don’t trust anyone else. Too many people looking to cash in on this story…”
“Says the kidnapper,” I muttered.
The second she hung up, reality hit me like a cymbal crash. “Oh. My. God. Zane Ryder is actually about to walk into my apartment!”
“Calm your hormones,” Tess said. “We’re not like his brainless groupies. We have a method.”
“Okay, fine. But how exactly are we supposed to just casually bring up his idol—what was his name again?”
“Lev Mirov.”
“Right. We can’t exactly fake a casual conversation while he just happens to be standing in our living room. He’s literally about to knock on our door!”
“Exactly. Which is why the plan changes now.”
She knelt in front of the TV stand, yanked open the bottom drawer, and began rifling through a stack of vinyl records, flipping through them like someone who’s spent a lifetime collecting music that doesn’t exist on Spotify. Finally, she pulled one out with a cover so ridiculous I would’ve sworn it was conceptual art: a skeletal man with curled mustache, draped in a peacock-feather cloak, standing on a windswept cliff while a salmon-pink hot air balloon drifted into the horizon behind him.
“Here it is. Lev Mirov’s very first record. It’ll be spinning when Ryder walks in…”
“Isn’t that a little on the nose? Feels too… staged.”
“Staged? Bea, I combed half of New York to find this. I finally dug it out of a flea market from a guy who was literally packing to move. Not even Ryder’s number one fan has this record. Probablynot even Lev Mirov’s own mother. He doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. That’s how underground we’re talking.”
“Okay, boss. You win. Put it on. I’ll just tidy up the apartment a little—”
“Stop right there. Tidy up? No. If anything, we should make it look messier.”
“Why on earth would we do that?”
“Because in this grand story of love and deception, we have to ask ourselves one question: what is the one thing his fans wouldneverdo?”
“Never do?”
“Exactly. Picture his life. He wakes up in a silk king-sized bed, last night’s girl still wrapped around him like plastic wrap. She purrs, she clings, she begs. He finally gets rid of her—maybe pays her off, maybe has a bodyguard walk her out—and boom, in comes the butler with breakfast and a hundred perfumed letters, all sealed with lipstick. And they all say the same thing: I love you, I want you, you’re my god. Then he opens Instagram, Facebook, TikTok… and it’s the digital version of the same garbage. Idol, soulmate, best in the world, blah blah blah.”
