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Up From Here	By : aliciakristine Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Eminem/Marshall Mathers Views: 3454 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know Eminem (Marshall Mathers). I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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02.

Marshall
showed up at the office around eight-thirty the next morning, tired and
stressed. Hailie and Laney had still been sleeping when he left, but he left a
note taped to each of their mirrors that promised he'd be home earlier than
usual. He loved both of the girls with all of his heart, but Hailie was his
baby girl, and standing beside her bed while she slept peacefully made his
chest ache. He missed her so, so very much, but she was only a couple of feet
away. He didn't know how to cross that distance anymore, how to be a father
instead of a businessman. He hated who he'd become.

He stood
around and bullshitted with the security guards for a couple of minutes, picked
up his messages from the receptionist, and closed himself in his office. It was
huge, unnecessarily so, but he wanted the sheer size and richness of it to be
intimidating. He wanted to come across as a powerful man, one that was capable
of launching careers - or ending them. He looked around, grinning to himself
despite his bad mood. Gold and platinum CDs lined the walls, some of them his
own, some of them D12's, some of them belonging to kids on his label.
Waist-high bookshelves lined the wall, but instead of books, they were full of
CDs and magazines. Behind his oak desk was a picture window looking out over
Detroit, but the steel-colored shades were drawn against the early morning
light.

He sat
down in the thick leather executive chair and kicked his feet up on the desk,
flipping through the messages. Only I would get a dozen calls after nine at
night, he thought, sorting through them. A few people looking to book
studio time - his studio at Aftermath was state-of-the-art, and the rappers
signed to his label had to reserve time there in advance - and a couple
publishers looking for him at the office when they couldn't reach him at home.
And then one, on the very bottom, the time marked 11:49.

Tara
Allister, the name
across the top was scrawled. He read the message, his heart accelerating as he
did. Tara? No fucking way. Tara was married to some hot-shot lawyer in Boston,
the last he heard, living a Martha Stewart lifestyle. The two hadn't talked in
years, but he kept tabs on her for awhile until it just got too hard. She had a
kid with the dope, and that was the last straw for Marshall. He hadn't even
thought of her in months.

Will
call back at 1pm Sunday, the message said, and he looked everywhere for a return number. He
even flipped the sheet over, but there was none. "Fuck," he said
aloud, and then, angrily: "Fucking hell!" He dropped the message on
the table and stood up, his nerves shot. He didn't know what he stood up for,
so he sat back down and picked up the phone, dialing Dre's cell number by
heart. His friend was in California, he knew, but he had to talk to someone.
His mind was reeling.

"'Sup?"
Dre answered sleepily, and Marshall remembered too late that California was two
hours behind him.

"Hey,
dawg, it's Em."

"The
fuck? Someone die or sum'n, dawg, it's early as a mutha-fucka."

"Tara
called Aftermath last night," Marshall said.

"Tara?"
Dre repeated, slowly waking. Marshall heard him grunt as he sat up in bed, his
wife ask him who was on the phone. "It's Em," he said to her, and
then, "Tara? You talkin' 'bout the same girl that married Dumbass and
moved to New York or some shit?"

"Boston,"
Marshall said. "Yeah. That Tara."

"That's
crazy, dawg. What'd she say?"

"I
didn't talk to her. She's supposed to call back at one today."

Dre
yawned, and then Marshall heard the flicker of a lighter and his deep breath.
"You're as bad as I am, Dre, hittin' that shit before you even roll out of
the fuckin' bed."

"It's
that thug life," Dre said, and they both chuckled. After a brief lull in the
coversation, Dre asked, "What are you goin' to do, man?"

Marshall
couldn't answer.

"I
don't know, man," Dre finally said, exhaling. "I don't fuckin'
know."

"Me,
either. I can't think of what she wants."

"Why
do ya'll fuckers always think someone wants somethin'? Maybe she just wants to
hear your voice."

"She
could buy one of my albums," Marshall said, suddenly grumpy.

Dre's
chuckle was cut off by a fit of coughing, and Marshall could hear his wife in
the background telling him to quit smoking while she treid to sleep. He was
lonely, achingly so, and hearing the affectionate way Dre told her to hush only
made him more aware of the fact. It had been more than a year since the last
time he and Kim had slept together, and the string of faceless women after that
did nothing to sate his desire for intimacy.

Marshall
rarely let himself become depressed. Instead, he channeled into anger. Anger
was much easier to handle than sadness.

He felt
himself become angry.

"I'm
gonna get off here, dude," he told Dre.

"You
okay, dawg?"

"Yeah.
I promised the girls I'd be home a little earlier today, so I gotta go get
busy. Ain't no time for sittin' here gettin' all sappy over some bitch I ain't
even seen in years."

"Tara
ain't just some bitch," Dre said, and his tone would have been soft if it
were anyone else speaking.

"No,"
Marshall said wearily, "she is just some bitch. Maybe once she wasn't. But
she sure as fuck is now."

The day
passed slowly for Tara, who, unlike Marshall, had nothing to occupy her time
with. She sat in her cheap motel room until check-out at ten-thirty, then sat
in her car with the windows rolled up and a thick jacket on. Her funds were so
depleted that she didn't even want to sit with the car idling to use the heat -
her gas guage was between half and quarter of a tank, and who knew how long
that gas had to last her. After thirty minutes, her body adjusted to the cold
and she stopped shivering.

At noon,
she drove slowly to a gas station and bought a hot cup of coffee for sixty
cents, dumped in four packets of sugar and three little buckets of creamer, and
went back out to her car to sit and sip slowly. For a moment, she looked
through the back seat for a book to read or a magazine to thumb through, but
she knew she wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything but the minutes
ticking slowly by.

She
stared at the time, counting the seconds with taps of her thumb against her
denim-clad thigh. Time had seemed to slow to a crawl. Her mind, on the other
hand, raced. What would Marshall do when she called? What if he didn't even
come into the office today? It was Sunday, after all. Would he be angry with
her, disgusted? The last time they'd seen each other, things had been so
complicated...

"Damnit,"
she said aloud, sipping her coffee. It was still too bitter, but she drank it
anyway. Tara had never been a coffee drinker. Her sleep had been fitful the
night before, though, and she wanted to be as alert as possible when she talked
to Marshall.

Finding
the number to Aftermath had been difficult, and she'd finally called a mutual
friend, Lewis. Lewis hadn't heard from Marshall in years, but he rooted around
in his desk a little and found a Christmas card with Marshall's office number
on it. Then Tara had to fight with the receptionist for what seemed like hours
to have her even take a message. At the time she was furious, but now she could
understand - she was sure hundreds of young women called for him every day,
asking if they could please get his home phone number.

What if
Marshall didn't get the message? What if, after all this worrying and planning
what she would say, she couldn't even get through to him? The thought struck
her and she closed her eyes, suddenly terrified. Her money was gone, and she
was stranded in Detroit. Even if she did find a way to afford the trip back to
Boston, she doubted her Thunderbird would make it. It was already six thousand
miles overdue for an engine change, and the knocking in the front end just kept
getting worse.

And what
if she did get through to Marshall and he refused to help her out? She probably
deserved it, but she was counting on his loyalty. They'd known each other for
ages and he'd never been one to refuse her. But he was famous now - famous and
filthy rich. What if he'd changed? What if he wasn't the same skinny white kid
anymore, what if he didn't want anything to do with her?

She
watched the clock. Watched the clock, worried, and sipped her bitter gas
station coffee.

Finally,
at ten minutes to one, she got out of her car and put her hood up against the
harsh March Detroit wind. The phone booth was across the parking lot, and she
walked as slowly as she could, both dreading and anticipating the sound of his
voice. She wondered if he'd sound the same, then laughed at herself. Of course
he would. He was still Marshall. She knew that he still sounded like
himself - she owned a copy of every single one of his albums, and she knew all
of the words by heart. Whether or not they kept in contact, she was still a
fan.

The phone
booth cut off the wind and she stood huddled in the protection of it's glass
walls for a minute, her hands trembling. Then, before she could talk herself
out of it, she put two quarters in the slot and punched in the number she'd
memorized almost instantly.

It rang
twice, and then, "Aftermath Records, may I help you?"

"Marshall
Mathers, please."

The woman
hesitated, then said, "He's away from his desk at the moment, but I'd be
happy to take a message."

No!
No! "He's
expecting my call. This is Tara Allister."

"Oh.
Oh, Miss Allister. One moment, please." The line clicked, and a
computerized voice told her that her call was being transferred. She bounced
from one foot to another, terrified. She heard a phone ring once, twice, three
times-

"Yeah?"

Oh, God.
Oh, God. Nothing could have prepared her for the sound of his voice on the
other end of the telephone wire. A flood of memories crashed over her and she
could do nothing but stand there mutely.

"Hello?"
he said again, annoyed already.

"Um...
Marshall?" It came out in a squeak and she worked her tongue furiously in
her dry mouth.

"What's
up, Tara?"

"I..."

She'd
been planning this conversation for weeks, but now that he was on the other end
of the line, she had no idea what to say. Her mind went blank and she felt like
crying. The stress of the last few years washed over her, dragging her down.
Her knees buckled and she grabbed the side of the booth, gasping.

"Tara?"
he asked, sounding worried.

"Marshall."
Just saying his name was almost overpowering, but she said it again and again.
"Marshall, Marshall, Marshall." Somewhere within herself, she knew
that she sounded absolutely maniacal, but hearing his voice cut the last tie to
sanity she had left. A sob broke off in her throat and she felt like she was
suffocating.

"Tara?
Tara, are you okay? Where are you?"

"In
a phone booth," she managed to say around the wedge of emotion in her
throat.

"Where?
Tell me where, Tara."

She
looked wildly around her, looking for street signs or stores. She told him what
was around her and he said, "Hang up the phone, Tara. I'll be right
there." The line went dead in her ear and she was alone, alone without his
voice, alone in a phone booth on the corner of a street on the south side of
Detroit. She stumbled out of the phone booth and sat on the curb, hugging her
knees to her chest and rocking. He was coming. He was on his way to see her.
Marshall was coming to save her.

He left
his office immediately, stopping for only a second at his receptionist's desk.
"I won't be in for the rest of the afternoon," he told her.
"Don't direct anyone to my home office number."

"Yes,
Mr. Mathers."

He rode
the elevator to the parking garage beneath the building, nodded at the security
guard sitting in a booth just outside the main gate, and waited impatiently
while the guard pushed a button in the booth to swing the gate open. His
Navigator was parked just outside the gate and he jammed the key in the lock,
wrenched the door open, and jumped inside. He'd left his jacket in his office
and the parking garage was cold, but he didn't wait for the truck to heat up.

The tires
squealed as he left the parking garage and pulled out onto the boulevard in
front of his building. Waiting at a traffic light, he turned on the navigation
system and entered the street names she'd given him. The map on the small
plasma monitor guided him to a rough side of town and he stomped on the gas,
revving the engine and squealing away from the intersection.

The
OnStar system predicted eleven minutes, but he made it there in six. He pulled
into a parking lot and looked around for her familiar honey-brown hair, but he
didn't see her. He didn't see anything, and he punched the steering wheel
angrily. "Fuck, Tara!" he yelled at the silent interior of his car.
His adrenaline was pumping, his palms sweaty, and he wiped them on his jeans
before stepping out onto the pavement.

It was
cold, and he wore nothing but a thin white t-shirt and jeans. "Tara!"
he yelled, not caring who heard, and turned around to look behind him.

Stepping
out of an old sand-colored Thunderbird was Tara, smaller than he remembered,
her face streaked with red. He stood frozen, immobile for a moment, and then
reached inside the truck to grab his keys out of the ignition before starting
across the lot towards her. She stood behind her open door and watched him
approach.

She'd
changed so much, but she was still the same Tara. Small, compact, with huge
slanting green eyes and full lips. Her skin was paler than he remembered, her
hair darker, her lips chapped and her eyes red-rimmed. But she was still
beautiful. A brown beanie was pulled down low over her forehead and the hood of
her parka was pulled over it. He found himself hoping foolishly that she hadn't
cut her hair.

"Hi,"
she said, sniffling. Her nose was red.

"Are
you okay?" He sounded almost tender and he hated himself for it. This girl
- woman, now - had caused him more heartache than anyone else (with an obvious
exception of Kim), yet his heart broke when he saw her standing before him.
"Why aren't you in Boston?"

"Marshall,"
she whispered, and stepped around the door. "Please hold me."

Before he
could open his arms, she'd leaned heavily against him, wrapping her arms tight
around his torso. He didn't know what to do at first - he was so unaccustomed
to physical contact from anyone but his girls that he couldn't move for a split
second, but then he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.
"Tara," he said against the side of her head, "are you
okay?"

She shook
her head no, and he didn't say anything else for a minute. She cried against
him and he stood there, not sure what to do or say. It had been so long since a
woman leaned into him for strength - years, really. His and Kim's relationship
was so full of pride and arrogance and blame and denial in the last few years
that they hadn't gone to each other for anything but a strenuous fuck and
someone to scream at. Hailie and Laney came to him when they were upset, but
they were still children. They crawled onto his lap and cried for awhile, and
he made them smile and everything was okay.

He
doubted he could make Tara smile right now, and he doubed even more than he
could make everything okay for her.

"Come
on, Tara, come with me." He was freezing and wanted to smoke a blunt more
than he had in months.

She untangled
her arms from his and stood back, sniffling and shivering. "Okay,"
she said, and pushed her car door shut with her hip. She jammed her hands deep
in the pockets of her parka and sniffled again, wiping her nose with the back
of her hand.

He led
her to his Navigator and opened the door for her, something he didn't do for
many women. She silently stepped up into the truck and sat down in the plush
leather bucket seat, wrapping her arms around her waist. He stood for a moment
with the door open, looking at her, and with heavy lids, she turned her eyes
towards him. Looking into her eyes never failed to spark something electric in
his stomach, and this was no exception.

After a
long second, he slammed the door shut and jogged around the front of the truck.
It was still warm inside and he didn't turn the engine back on, preferring the
silence. Traffic was thin for a Sunday afternoon, and they sat quietly, neither
of them sure what to say. Tara was embarrassed, but that embarrassment wasn't
nearly as strong as her desire to be held by him again. But she kept her arms
wrapped around herself, chewing on her already chapped lips.

"Tara?"
he asked quietly. "Do you mind?"

She
looked over, saw the blunt in his hand, and shook her head no. "Of course
not."

He lit it
and hit it three times before offering it to her. She stared at it. It had been
years since she'd even been around the stuff, but she took it from him and
inhaled a tiny bit. Surprised that she didn't choke, she took a bigger hit and
held it for longer before blowing it out. The inside of the SUV was already
smokey, but he didn't crack any windows and neither did she.

A memory
stabbed at her side. She'd hotboxed plenty of cars with Marshall, driving the
back roads around Detroit, parked in her parents' driveway, parked in alleys
and behind buildings. None had been this nice, though. She remembered
specifically his old Caprice with a hole in the floor and way they'd take their
shoes off to cover it so no smoke would escape. When they'd finished, he'd roll
the windows down and the smoke would roll out. The two of them, stoned with
burning eyes, would laugh until their sides hurt, and then they'd roll the
windows back up and talk until the windows fogged.

She hit
it again, inhaling deeply. The taste was different than what she remembered,
but she was sure he got much better weed now. He was Emin-fucking-em. Of course
he had better weed now.

He took
the blunt back from her and they sat in silence while the SUV filled with
smoke, parked in the middle of an abandoned parking lot with the motor off. It
occurred to her how suspicious they must look, but Marshall didn't seem to
care. His eyes were closed as he sucked in smoke. The cherry of the blunt
glowed orange for what seemed like minutes before he handed it back to her. She
watched him exhale a stream of smoke so big she was surprised he didn't choke,
but he just reached for a bottle of water on the floor between the seats and
took a sip.

They
smoked the entire blunt together without saying a word, and when it was too
little to hit anymore, he put it in ashtray already full of blunt and joint
roaches. She almost laughed when she saw them.

"I'm
fucking ripped," she said after a minute, and they looked at each other
and smiled.

"I
bet," he said. "I got a buzz, and I smoke more fuckin' weed than you
can imagine."

He put
the truck in gear and rolled out of the parking lot. She put her seatbelt on,
not because she didn't trust his driving but because she felt as though she'd
slide right out of the seat if she didn't have something tying her to it. When
she told him that, he laughed.

"Tara?"
he asked a minute later. She remembered Detroit enough to know he was taking
the long way around town.

"Hmm?"

"What
do you want?"

She wiped
her nose again. "I'm so stoned, Marshall, all I want is some french
fries."

He
grinned. "You're still fuckin' cute."

"I
do what I can."

They went
through a McDonalds drive-thru and ordered value meals and shakes. After they
finished eating and threw the trash away in one of the cans in the parking lot,
he pulled back out on the road and repeated his question. "What do you
want, Tara? You gotta tell me what's goin' on."

"Rob
left me," she said.

He was
silent.

"Not
recently," she hurriedly added, afraid that he'd think she'd come for a
rebound. "A couple of years ago."

"Why?"

"Why
not?" she asked, shrugging. "He was made an associate at his firm,
got a pretty huge raise. His salary quadrupled in two and a half years. One of
the partners has a daughter named Penelope. They call her Cocoa." Tara
turned and looked out the window, then back at Marshall. "They had an
affair for a long time."

"Where's
your son?"

Surprised,
she looked at him sharply. "How do you know about him?"

"I'm
fuckin' Eminem, Tara. I know everything." It was supposed to be a joke,
but she didn't see any humor in it.

"You've
been keeping tabs on me?"

"No.
Not since your kid was born."

"His
name is Cameron," she said, her voice softening. "He's four now. Rob
took him away from me."

Marshall
reached into his pocket for another blunt and lit it without saying a word.

"He
cut me off from our joint accounts. I couldn't afford a lawyer, not one as good
as he is. He had all the partners to help him, he'd gone to law school. He
pulled out all the stops, and he was awarded full custody." She wiped her
nose again, but her eyes were surprisingly dry. Maybe she should have started
smoking weed again a long time ago.

"I'm
sorry," he said, and handed her the blunt.

"He's
so beautiful, Marshall, so smart..." She trailed off and hit the blunt so
deeply that she choked for a minute and a half. Her eyes were red and she took
a long drink of her shake.

"You
got any lungs left?" he asked, smiling at her, making a random turn. He
wasn't worried about getting lost - Detroit was his city, and if all else
failed, he had OnStar.

"One,"
she said, and smiled back.

"So
is he married to that bitch now?"

"Yeah.
We were officially divorced for six weeks when he married her. I guess she was
planning it long before he even told me about the affair."

"What'd
you do afterwards?"

"I
got a settlement, a hundred and twenty five grand. It sounds like a lot, but graduate
school's expensive. I ran out of money a semester away from graduation."
She omitted the parts about Roger and the way he'd split with almost thirty
thousand dollars of her money.

"And
that's why you're here." It made sense to him now, and anger bubbled in
his stomach.

"No,
Marshall. No. I'm not here to ask you to pay for my school, I'm not here to ask
you to pay for anything." She touched his arm, scared that he'd take her
back to her car. She saw the anger tighten in his face.

"What
are you here for, then?"

"I'm
so alone," she whispered, and looked down at her lap. God, this was too
fucking deep to get into while she was as fucked up as she was, but she tried
anyway. "I don't have any money. I have seven dollars left, and that's
about it. My car's about to break down, and I'm stranded in Detroit with
nowhere to go. But I could have stayed in Boston. I could have stayed there,
worked, managed to get by for awhile. But I wanted to see you. I needed to see
you. You don't understand how lonely I've been, even when Rob and I were still
married. I regretted marrying him before we'd ever divorced. He was never home,
never showed any interest in me or Cameron. He didn't want me going back to
school because of Cam, so I just... sat home all day. I thought about calling
you all the time, but I was afraid of losing the life I had. I got caught up in
everything I had, the stupid designer jeans and the landscaped front
yard. So I swallowed my loneliness and shaped my life around Cam. Do you
understand how much I loved him? As much as you love Hailie. But you have your
career, Laney - I had nobody else. Nobody but Cam."

"And
then he took him away from you."

Tara
nodded. "Yes. He took him away from me."

The anger
was still in Marshall's face, but this time it wasn't directed at Tara.

He turned
into a parking lot, swung back onto the street, and started heading the
opposite direction.

"Where
are you going?" she asked him.

"You're
coming home with me," he said, and that was that.
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