Surrender 01 - Surrender

holdover. Its customers were holdovers, too. Nobody would deliberately seek it out unless they already knew it was here.
    Which was, in a way, a very good thing.
    It meant that none of Emily’s siblings—and certainly not her father—were likely to wander through the door. As far as they knew, she was working for a private art collector who insisted on remaining anonymous. On the occasions any of her family came through New York, she’d dress up, plaster on a smile and meet them at whatever hotel or restaurant they suggested. Her place, she always said gaily, was being painted. Or the floors were being scraped. Or it was crowded with catalogs and brochures she was searching before buying something new for her employer.
    Emily segued into an overblown version of “Hello, Dolly.”
    Not that she lied to her family, exactly. Or, OK, maybe she did. But they were well-meaning lies; otherwise she’d have to tell them stuff that would upset them. Stuff they didn’t need to know. Why tell them she’d dropped her last name in favor of her middle one? Why tell them she lived in a building that, like the Tune-In, was waiting for a real estate revival? Why tell them about her none-too-stellar job?
    Being the underachiever in a family of overachievers was hell.
    Until she’d come to New York, she’d never lied to anybody , but what choice did she have? Her father would go into full command mode if he knew the truth. Her brothers would go crazy. Even Jaimie and Lissa would get into it.
    At the very least, they’d all inundate her with advice and cash, and that was not what she wanted.
    One way or another, she was going to make it on her own.
    Which was why she was here, playing at a bar the Board of Health or at least the Board of Good Taste should have condemned.
    Nine weeks ago, she hadn’t known the place existed any more than she’d known you could make a living playing piano. Well, not a living, exactly, but you could make enough to get by.
    It had happened strictly by accident, the way a lot of things did in New York.
    Her roommate, Nola, had invited her to a party. Though they shared an apartment, they were acquaintances more than friends. Emily didn’t know a lot of people. Nola knew everybody.
    “This party’ll be fun,” she’d said. “Come on, Em. You need to get out more. Maybe you’ll meet a guy.”
    “Thanks,” Emily had said, “but I don’t know if I can make it.”
    Not true.
    She’d had nothing to keep her from going, certainly not a date. She’d pretty much given up on New York men. Relationships with them tended to last not much longer than a New York minute, and she wasn’t into the latest crazes—one-night hookups or the weirdness of communicating via smartphone, you in one bar and a guy you’d met online in another.
    Why party if you didn’t want to connect with a man? But Nola had kept urging her to go and at the last minute Emily had thought, why not? At the very least, you could always scrounge something resembling a free meal at a party.
    So she went.
    The party had been in an old brownstone in her own East Village neighborhood. The apartment was small, the rooms were jammed with people. She didn’t see a familiar face, not even Nola’s. There wasn’t any food aside from a bowl that held what appeared to be potato chip crumbs and a smaller bowl smudged with what she figured had been dip.
    After twenty minutes, she’d headed for the door, but the route to it was crowded and instead of getting closer to it, she’d been pushed back and back and back until she’d almost fallen into an old Baldwin upright in a distant corner. To her surprise, a guy was playing it; the noise in the apartment had completely drowned him out.
    He’d flashed her a smile. “Hi.”
    “Hi.”
    “I don’t suppose they’ve put out any food yet.”
    “Not even a hot dog,” Emily had said, laughing. “I thought I was the only guest who’d noticed.”
    The piano guy had assured her that he wasn’t a guest. He was the entertainment. “Not that anybody noticed that, either,” he’d added.
    “You mean, you’re working?”
    “Yeah. Hell of a way to make a buck, isn’t it?”
    Emily, who had just lost yet another waitressing job, had assured him that playing the piano looked pretty good to her.
    “So what do you do?” he’d said.
    She’d slumped down on the bench next to him and sighed. “Nothing right now.”
    “Yeah, that sounds familiar. Well, what can you do?”
    “Good question. I