In Twenty Years: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

Lindy Armstrong Through the Years! —a portfolio of pictures from every year she’d been famous. It wrapped with a recent photo of her leaving a London nightclub with her fingers linked with Tatiana’s. Lindy didn’t linger on the spread, but she glanced quickly enough to recognize the very first shot—the one from when she’d just started out. When she was twenty-four and landed a one-off gig as the opening act for the opening act of a Tim McGraw charity concert in Nashville. Everyone—all five of them—had flown down to cheer her on.
    Forty.
    Her sister tells her that it’s time for her to figure out what she wants out of life. Lindy tells her sister that she’s a goddamn superstar—what else could she possibly want? Her sister sighs heavily and tells her to take care of herself. But her sister has two dirty-fisted toddlers and a minivan, so it’s not like she has any idea, not like she can relate one iota to Lindy’s life. And yet when Lindy hangs up the phone, she’s also semi-aware that her sister isn’t entirely wrong: that Lindy often has no clue what she wants—or wanted or should have wanted—and spends a lot of time regretting things she was sure she coveted (but didn’t) and things she was certain she should have left behind (and later wished she hadn’t).
    That’s what rock ’n’ roll is! Not having any fucking idea about anything other than the music! She’s long since forgotten that her first love was country music. And not that her music matters that much now anyway.
    She stares at her bloated, exhausted reflection and hesitates.
    This fuck-all sentiment used to be true for her, but now, just for this passing second, she wonders how honest it really is. If you were to make a graph on where Lindy’s truths lined up these days, you wouldn’t exactly get a straight arrow.
    She turns from the window and checks her phone.
    Annie still hasn’t texted her back, which, Lindy thinks, is so goddamn typical.
    Her text beeps just then, and she swipes immediately.
    It’s from Napoleon.
     
Blow off the walls tonight at the show.
     
    She checks the time: two hours until the car picks her up.
    “Christ.” She exhales. “Like I need this right now.”
    Lindy has no idea what she actually needs right now, though a text from Annie would help, and the premiere taping of Rock N Roll Dreammakers surely seems like it won’t.
    When they’d approached her to be a judge, Lindy immediately said no.
    God, she’d said to Tatiana, a reality show? Have they ever found anyone remotely decent on a reality show? What happened to busking? What happened to earning your goddamn stripes? Everyone just shows up with an acoustic guitar and says, “I can sing ‘Hallelujah!’ so make me famous!”
    Tatiana, a seasoned publicist (though not Lindy’s—don’t shit where you eat, and all that), pointed out that plenty of remotely decent people had been discovered on reality shows and that Lindy herself had been helped by exploding on MySpace back when not everyone exploded on MySpace. Lindy saw her point but was only swayed when her manager informed her that they were offering her $4 million for the season. Also, it would really bolster the fall tour (thirty-two cities in six weeks—Lindy has no idea how she’ll have the stamina to endure it).
    Lindy ignores Leon’s text and instead Googles “Catherine Grant.” Maybe Catherine’s checked her mail, gotten the FedEx too. But if everyone’s checked their mail, she wonders, why hasn’t anyone called her ?
    She taps her phone into her palm and debates whether she should be offended. She is offended, come to think of it. Catherine had been such a bitch at her wedding, after Lindy had endured mind-numbing phone calls and e-mails about calla lilies versus tiger lilies, about those hideous plum ( “eggplant,” she remembers Catherine insisting) bridesmaid dresses, about first-dance ideas, about party favors. Sure, maybe Lindy’s attitude wasn’t exactly sparkling