“Here it come, here it comes, Vee,” Iris said, clutching her friend’s arm and watching her face as a clip of A.J. sprawled on a stage floor, suggestively thrusting his hips, passed across the screen.
Vee just smiled and shook her head while the others jostled and teased her. Amidst it all, it was Elle who noticed their car turning into a restricted area and heading directly up to some doors that weren’t crowded at all.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” Elle asked.
“Hmm?” Vee said.
“We’re moving. How’d we get through there?” Elle questioned.
Vee offered her a slow, sleepy smile, but said nothing. Linda and Iris craned their heads to look out the smoked glass windows of the car, seeing that they had full clearance directly up to the arena.
“Vee-vee, what’s up with this?” Linda asked.
“I know someone who knows someone,” Vee said, her finger tracing the curve of her champagne flute, sending out a high pitched tone that filled the car. Her eyes looked down into her glass as if she were searching for something, before she raised them to look at her friends. “This should be fun tonight.”
“I’m feeling the VIP treatment coming on,” Linda said under her breath. She squirmed in her seat a little bit. This was so like Vee to make something as simple as going to a concert into an event. They could have gone anywhere to see the Backstreet Boys. Genevičve had become so engrossed with them Linda knew that she would have flown for miles for a show, but instead she had waited and waited until the very last minute for this, not finalizing their plans until she had it confirmed that they would be ending a leg of their tour in New Orleans. If Linda didn’t know any better she would have believed that Vee had machined it all just to have the ‘boys’ spending some time close to her home.
“Mais bien sűr!” Vee said with a little laugh. ‘But of course, but of course.’ Tonight was special and Genevičve had made sure to all of it; she had planned and provoked the entire evening. It was a sort of culmination, and she was looking forward to savoring every moment of it, too.
The car came to a halt and someone opened the door.
“Mademoiselles,” a deep, rich voice said. A large, dark hand held itself out to them, and Iris was the first to take it.
Genevičve remained in the car, leaving instructions with her driver, Gorge, to wait for them. When she got out of the limousine the man who had helped the others took her in his arms for a hug. They spoke together in rapid French. It was a dialog that neither Linda nor Iris could follow, and that Linda could barely understand, her French being Parisian and Vee’s being some cracked, local version of something that might not be French at all, but wasn’t the full bayou speak of the Cajun’s either.
“This is Martin,” Vee finally said, introducing him to each of them separately. “Martin has made it his personal pleasure to see to it that we have a good time this evening.”
“Mais oui,” Martin said with a grin. He was a tall, imposing black man with a lilting voice as thick as syrup. “I hope that you enjoy yourselves. I have passes for you, yes. Yes, one for each of you, bien, bien, here, yes,” he said, passing out the laminates and showing them how to hook them onto shirts or wear them around the neck. “You must have these, too, so you can go everywhere, see everything you came to see, yes?” he said with a laugh. He gave them each yet another pass, a patch that was worn unobtrusively, that was clear on clothing but showed up under the ultraviolet light they would pass through.
“What IS all this, Vee?” Elle asked, smoothing the clear patch over a place on her shirt.
“This is how one goes about hunting wolves,” Vee said. She smiled so deeply that her eyes became fringed crescents. Then Vee laughed, and it sent a chill straight through Elle. For an instant, Elle wanted to turn around and leave, but it only lasted for a brief second; for no amount of time at all. Vee’s charm, that certain something about her that had always been beyond definition took over and wiped the moment of trepidation right out of Elle’s mind. It was almost as if it hadn’t happened.
But it had.
“Show us the way, Martin,” Vee said, letting the man take her hand while she reached her free one for Elle.
“Certainement,” Martin said, with a laugh similar to Vee’s as he led them into the building.
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A.J. walked through the corridors that surrounded the dressing rooms, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he passed people on his way to nowhere. There was a steady thrumming sound coming from the arena, the sound of music blaring off the concrete walls, the sounds of screaming voices. It gave him a constant case of chills.
This was what he lived for.
This was the sum total of everything he was.
The anticipation of the stage was eating at him, driving him on. It didn’t occur to him that the cocaine had anything to do with it. What it felt like was the usual mixture of stage fright and longing. It was the closest thing he knew to ecstasy, the thing he craved the most from his life. More than sex, more than fame, more than money, he wanted these moments in his life; the building up of the excitement that led to those precious few hours that he was up there. Out there. Feeling the intense gratification he could only find on a stage, under lights, with thousands of faceless people urging him on to open his mouth and sing. He had never been sure if it was the building up to that point or the actual time he spent basking in the glory of others that he yearned for the most, but it didn’t matter. It was all part of the same package.
And lately, just recently, it was the only time that he wasn’t bothered by the dreams and images that were haunting the rest of his nights and days.
This was his salvation. He was in his church now, ready to pray to his self appointed gods.
He kept walking, trying not to think, trying to stay focused on what was expected of him and what he expected from himself over the next three hours. These last minutes before the show started were the most excruciating for him, when the inner tension prepared to meet the outer tension, and he was never quite sure what was going to come out of meshing of the two furies.
“C’mon, A.J.,” someone said, pulling him by the arm. He looked up to see the black visage of Marcus, his bodyguard, hauling him off to wherever it was he was required to be. That was all right, that was fine. Because he was in another arena that looked like all the other arenas and he was flying now, adrenaline mixed with coke, and didn’t know exactly what to do or where to go. But that was okay, because that’s what they paid the Marcus’s for. To make sure they were safe and unharmed and where they were supposed to be.
“Time?” A.J. asked, even though he knew it was ‘time’. He never trusted that, ‘time’. Lot’s of times when it was supposed to be ‘time’ it ended up being ‘sit and wait’ instead and he hated ‘sit and wait’. Hated it with a passion. He needed movement and speed, and he needed everything that was about to happen.
There was a circle of light ahead, through the halls that were lined with people. Faceless, nameless shadows of people that he was sure he knew. It didn’t matter if he recognized them or not, all that mattered was getting to the circle of light where the others were waiting on him. It didn’t even matter that he couldn’t feel the floor beneath his feet. All he felt was Marc’s hand on his arm, the palpable electricity in the air, and the rumble of twenty thousand pairs of feet stomping on the floor above them.
And then he felt something else.
Another hand, a tiny caress of a touch, and he turned his head, paused and caught the eye of the person who had touched him.
She was beautiful, that struck him instantly, along with the knowing. He knew her.
He knew a lot of people, but he was sure with every fiber in him that he KNEW this person who had reached out a soft hand and let their long fingers make a hot, tender line up the length of his forearm. The face, the touch, it was all familiar. He didn’t want to move, in fact he stopped where he was and stared hard to see this person more, to see them through the strange, subterranean light of the corridor, to see beyond the dark and the haze of sparks in his brain.
Lovely. She was lovely. A mocha cream face with clear green eyes that shone. Her teeth gleamed white as her face broke into a smile.
Then she was gone. Marc was pulling him and the crowd was closing in behind them and she was gone from his view. Brian and Nick had hands stretched out to him. He took them without thinking and bowed his head in the ritual, the habit of a pre-show prayer, but his mind was still seeing those eyes and that smile and the dark, dusky skin surrounding it. A.J. didn’t even hear the words that Brian was speaking, heard nothing but a rush of blood in his ears and what he imagined to be her laugh, because a light, tinkling ripple of laughter was easing itself down the hall away from him.
A.J. turned his head once again, turned away from the circle of men he was in to look back down the hall. A flash of yellow was all he saw as the woman, whoever she was, walked down the hall and turned a corner.
The insistent pressure of fingers on his pulled him back, pulled him close into the crush of familiar faces around him as they all scrambled to take their places. They were ready. It really was time. A.J. found himself distracted again by small details: a monitor check, a costume tweak, the make-up girl dusting his cheeks one last time before it was really ‘time’.
The house lights came down.
A roar erupted in the arena above them.
A.J. felt the hydraulic floor beneath his feet lift him up into the darkness, into the cacophony of sounds that waited for him. It was the same as every time; he wasn’t sure if he was going into heaven or hell.
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Vee knew that they would miss the opening sequence of the show if they remained under the arena for any length of time, and she had offered to stay there alone, but the others had stayed with her, as much out of curiosity as loyalty.
It came as little surprise that they would end up in the tangle of hallways and corridors that led to where the members of the group would be. Martin led them with confidence, showing them the dining area and offering them drinks, showing them a place where they could play video games, shoot billiards, or sit in silence. Every room, makeshift and otherwise, was filled with people. People who worked for the Backstreet Boys, people who worked for the arena, people who were providing any number of services, and people who were like them: those that had no purpose, but were there because they knew someone.
It was exciting and intriguing. Linda and Iris, who were fans of a sort, locked their heads together and kept and eye out for any stray ‘boys’. Elle kept her eye on Vee, who was walking arm-in-arm with Martin and carrying on a quiet conversation that Elle couldn’t hear.
They found themselves in a long hallway, and were told to stay against the wall.
“What the hell is going on?” Elle asked Vee.
“They’re going to come through here,” Vee said, leaning against the cold, damp concrete.
“And you’re waiting?” Elle questioned.
“And I’m waiting,” Vee replied. She offered Elle a smile. “So are you.”
“Are you going to try to...” Elle began, but her question was drowned out in a roar from above. The lights in the hall dimmed a little, and she saw that the objects of the audience’s desire were walking past, led by large, burly men with serious faces. Two tall men, two slight. Two dark men, two fair. It happened quickly and it was too dark to get a really good look at them, but Elle could tell that they were all a little smaller than she imagined.
So much to do for so few people.
Then ‘he’ came down the hall in the wake of a large man.
And Vee reached out her hand, ran it up the length of ‘his’ arm.
Elle was shocked. Not at Vee’s boldness, Vee was often bold. Their being there was boldness in the extreme. Not even by the gesture, the gesture struck her as profound, as did A.J.’s reaction. He looked stunned, saddened, and then almost relieved. Longing. He looked like he wanted to say something, he even stopped, his mouth gaping silently, but the man with him moved on, taking him away.
No, she was shocked by her own reaction, by the sadness that pervaded her in that singular, swift moment. There was something sad about this person, this A.J., and it hurt her, and she didn’t know why.
After that, there was no time to question. Vee turned away and led them through the corridors as if she knew them, led them out into the arena where the sound was deafening. They found their seats amid the flashes of light and dark that filled the huge, enclosed space, which Elle considered a small miracle in itself. And for the duration of the show Elle watched the performance with the distinct feeling that A.J. was not only aware of them in the audience, but was in some way grateful for their presence. For the first time since her arrival in Louisiana, Elle was grateful to be there, too.
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A.J. could see her in the audience, the woman in yellow with the bottle green eyes. She was close, close enough that he imagined he smelled her above the crowd, above the rancid smell of his own sweat as it poured down his face and into his eyes. He felt that her eyes never left him, that he was performing just for her.
It had happened before, it had happened often, this keying in on one person in the crowd, but it had never felt so strong, or so right, or so necessary. Time and again, song after song, he found himself coming back to her, back to her side of the audience to make sure that she was still there. As the minutes passed and the hours ticked by, he hoped that she would be backstage again when it all was done, because he wanted to meet her and talk to her. He wanted to know who she was, because every time he looked at her, every time she looked back, he was sure that not only did he know her, but she knew him, too.
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© 2002 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2002 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
