by R. J. Jacobs
“Shit, shit, shit,” I hear her say, as Owen dabs at the wine with some of the cocktail napkins Malik had laid out earlier. My stomach tightens. Part of me wants to look away. What am I seeing? She has looked woozy before, but never like this.
It’s like it’s not even her.
The gossip I’d overheard earlier reenters my mind with a sharp sting.
Owen glances at Shelly and frowns with his eyes, though his mouth keeps the smile I’ve seen on a dozen magazine covers. His teeth gleam. He stretches his neck to one side, like it’s stiff.
Shelly’s hair catches the light as she pulls it off her neck with one hand while fanning her face with the other. Even in whatever strange state she’s in, she is breathtakingly beautiful—a person who seems created to be looked at, watched, admired. She dabs at the sheen of sweat on her nose. In the middle of her neck is the tiny butterfly tattoo she got the year before—I remember it from a magazine I saw in the grocery-store checkout. It is a simple blue outline with a few tiny orange stripes. The article had called the tattoo a “marker of Shelly’s mid-life crisis,” but it looks very pretty to me. Sometimes at home, I’ve tried to draw it on myself with a pen.
For a moment, everything seems to calm down. Owen settles beside Brian. I watch his lips move as he begins to talk. From where I’m standing, I can only understand about half of what he says, but I fill in the pieces I can’t hear with bits I’ve read in magazine articles, heard in interviews, and listened to in overcrowded arenas. Any fan knows Owen grew up riding his bike around “Nashville’s leafy streets,” listening outside its honky-tonks, playing guitar, and “daydreaming beside the Cumberland River,” where the wind carried his mistakes away.
“Where is everybody?” Shelly asks, suddenly.
Heads turn.
The women sitting across from Shelly look at her strangely.
“Everybody?” one of them asks. Even more guests have arrived, and now at least fifty people are milling about on the deck and in the backyard.
It seems as if Shelly meant to ask something, but the wrong question came out of her mouth. She sweeps her hand toward where Sean is leaning against the trunk of an enormous oak, and Finch leans against him.
I see Owen swallow. He drapes his arm around Shelly’s back. He winks at the others with an uneasy smile as his hand becomes more of a grip around the point of her shoulder, as if he’s holding her in place.
My heart skips a beat. I think about the exchange between Shelly and Finch I overheard in Orlando. I’ve read rumors online about “substances.” I didn’t want to believe them, but I know what I’m seeing. The strained expressions of the people sitting near Shelly tell me that I’m not seeing this wrong—she’s acting strangely.
Her fans see her as a self-made rebel. They admire her as a woman who speaks her mind. And she does speak her mind, it’s true. She’s the real thing. The year before her first record broke, seven of country’s top ten artists were male. Sixty percent of country’s audience was female, and the stereotype was that women bought records from good-looking men who sang them love songs. Shelly turned that around completely. She took on interviewers, sometimes calling out reporters who asked inappropriate questions. Once, at an airport, she snatched a camera from a too-close paparazzo and tossed it down a flight of stairs. People actually applauded when she turned and faced the man, her hands on her hips.
But that rebel energy feels different tonight. Her movements seem sloppy and her eyes appear unfocused as she shifts restlessly in her seat.
Lane Peterson stands up slowly and comes toward me. I busy my hands so she won’t know I’ve been watching so closely.
“Jessie,” she says. I can’t believe she’s remembered my name. “I think Ms. James might like some sparkling water and I forgot to put any out. Could you check the refrigerator in the garage? I think there are some cold bottles in there.”
I hurry through the kitchen to the garage and close the door behind me. For a second, all the sounds hush. The garage smells like grass clippings and gasoline and rubber boots. As my eyes adjust to the dark, my fingertips connect with the light switch, and a blue-white light the color of skim milk fills the space. Light reflects in crescents off the hoods of three vehicles. I don’t know much about the makes of cars, but they all look heavy, sleek, and expensive. What Ken said about how much money Brian has seems more and more clearly true.
I take the handrail and start down the stairs, feeling like I might fall, but also like I should hurry. I spot the refrigerator Lane Peterson meant against the back wall and weave between two of the three cars. The paint of each of the cars looks like liquid in the faint light—two huge SUVs and a small white convertible that I lean to squeeze behind. My fingertips trace the letters above the taillights. P-O-R-S-C-H-E.
I open the refrigerator, and the escaping light is blindingly white. Inside, cans and bottles are arranged with the tidiness of a well-kept grocery store. I don’t know which type of sparkling water to grab, so I take two different types, close the refrigerator door with my hip, and head back up the steps. The cold bottles chill my chest through my uniform shirt. As I pause at the door, a whoop of laughter reminds me of the world on the other side—the James family and fifty people I don’t know, any of whom might recognize me from the concert.
Lane Peterson meets me in the kitchen.
“Thank you so much,” she says, taking both bottles. She sets one on the counter and takes the other back to Shelly James, who looks as if she doesn’t understand what’s happening, as if the thing Lane Peterson means to hand her makes no sense at all. Like she’s being offered a houseplant, or a scarf. Shelly eventually accepts the water, gives it an odd look, then sets it on the coffee table.
Then, a chill passes through me. Another person has joined the party in the short time I’ve been out of the room: the Jameses’ manager, Robert Holloway. Even from behind, I would recognize him anywhere—his lanky height, the stoop of his shoulders, his full head of longish red hair. The evening just got much more dangerous for me. I glance at my watch and pray that wearing a uniform and avoiding Robert will be enough to keep his eyes from settling on me. I need to go outside.
Of anyone, Robert would be the most likely to identify me immediately. He spoke to the police—both on the tour and later, and at the station following my arrest. He was present at my sentencing hearing, smirking with folded arms from across the courtroom. All it would take tonight would be for him to look up at just the right time. To catch my eye. To call out my name. That would be the end of my new life.
I catch another glimpse of him before I circle back to the chafers. He wears a button-down shirt despite the heat, so well-pressed it looks made of metal. He leans toward Owen with an elbow propped on the sofa. His legs crossed, his cowboy boot jiggles over his knee.
But Owen faces away from him. When Robert speaks, Owen seems to pay no attention. He keeps his arm tight around Shelly’s shoulder. I see him glance at his watch, then squint toward the backyard. Someone asks Owen a question and he clears his throat.
“The album? It’s almost finished, actually. The recording is done, I’m just mastering it now. Fortunately, I have the convenience of working from home.”
“They called James Brown the hardest working man in show business, but it’s actually Owen James,” I hear Robert pipe up.
Owen’s face stays still, showing no recognition of Robert’s comment. Instead, he says, “And luckily, Shelly’s right there, too. Also very convenient for the process. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve asked her to come upstairs and re-record a vocal.”
Shelly nods and smiles.
My heart thuds. I can’t believe I’m close enough to hear this.
Close enough to hear Owen’s voice.
As I walk away, I notice something aggressive about the tension in Owen’s hand on Shelly’s shoulder, his veins twisting like tiny rivers. He leans for the bottle of water Lane brought her, unscrews the cap, and sets it back in her hands. Shelly rub
s the side of the water bottle over her forehead. A drop of condensation runs to her chin and hangs there for a long second, like an icicle.
Outside, I nearly run into Malik, who quickly steps aside to avoid a collision. “Everything good in there?” he asks, a look on his face that tells me how busy he’s been. I nod and smile as I pass and mutter something about checking the ice, which is just my excuse to move away from the Jameses and Robert. My head is trying to process what I’ve seen—not just Shelly’s behavior, but Owen’s too.
This evening, he seems so much more serious than the Owen I’ve watched before. For a second, I’m reminded of an event more than a year earlier, before I’d even started working for Ken. I’d hidden at the back of a banquet hall as waiters in black jackets buzzed over burgundy carpet while onion-shaped crystal chandeliers rained glittery light. I’d followed Owen inside, just wanting a harmless glimpse. It was a fund-raiser and there was a raffle. I leaned into a curtain while Owen chewed his fingernail before crouching beside a boy at the last table. I was close enough to see the boy show a red ticket to Owen, who nodded and tousled his hair. When Owen went to the stage and reached into a black box, he squinted at the ticket in his hand and called out a number. The boy from the back of the room jumped up and rushed forward to take a signed guitar. My heart fluttered like a bird’s wing because I’d just watched magic.
Where is that Owen tonight, I wonder?
My head spins. I retreat to the van, pretending to take a break.
I flash to the summer I was arrested—the darkest time in my life. Darker than abuse. Darker than my closet year. In there, I was safe. Out in the world, I got lost.
Memories flood me.
* * *
When I left foster care, I moved to a room in a house where a lot of people lived, but I didn’t like other people being near my things. I didn’t like the no-control feeling. I kept a bed there, but it felt strange being inside with everyone coming and going.
Sometimes, I slept outside in the car I’d bought—sometimes parked in the house’s driveway, other times behind a grocery store where it was very quiet.
I didn’t tell the other people who lived in the house, or the tall lady who’d helped me find a job, or my manager at the kennel, because I knew they would say my staying outside was unsafe. Different things feel unsafe to different people. I kept a knife under my seat.
I saved the money I made at the kennel and barely spent time at the rooming house. I wanted out. No, just out. I’m not embarrassed to say that I wanted to be a part of what felt like a family. I knew that Owen and Shelly James would start a tour early that summer, and I knew I would quit my job to follow them. It may … the word for very, very sad … It may sound pathetic, but they were more my home than a physical place. Owen and Shelly’s music was like a home inside me.
But I did have a few problems. Freedom, for one. How do you explain freedom as a problem? Free-doom was how I thought of it. There were no walls restraining or protecting me, just the dizzying sense of balancing on top of something tall, on one foot, waving my arms to keep from falling. Freedom was terrifying.
Then there was money. Despite having saved, I was running out I tried to think about that as little as I could. The state had given me an allowance when I graduated from foster care to “get started.” The lady in the long dress had explained that it was more than the usual amount because of what happened to me when I was eleven. I’m not smart, but I know subtraction, and I was moving through what I had very quickly.
Luckily, I didn’t need very much. My phone, gas for my car, food, and concert tickets—I figured out how to buy single tickets resold through an app on my phone. Sometimes I could manage to buy one from a scalper just before the show started. Three times, I snuck inside.
That summer was the hottest on record, and everyone kept saying it. For two months, my body never stopped sweating. During the daytime, I would wander through suburban shopping centers, eating free popcorn. No one bothered me if I watched TV in Walmart. There were always news channels on, stories about concert safety, about people firing into crowds. They seemed to flash constantly on the screens. The images made my stomach tighten. In the spring, a man in Kansas had rushed at Jason Aldean on stage. His security had swarmed to take the guy to the ground, but they found a buck knife in his pocket that he said he’d forgot he had on him. Maybe he had forgotten, but you never know what people might try. Sometimes people want to make other people feel pain. I never understood why.
After a while, all the cities began to look the same, especially the outskirts. I knew people complained about sameness—I heard them—but for me, sameness was comfortable. It helped me know where to find food, where the safest places were to park and sleep. I wasn’t going to ask someone. This was before Ms. Parsons. Before trust existed inside me. I had to figure out everything on my own because I was on my own, and the whole world felt new. I felt like maybe I was losing my mind, but I didn’t care. I had nothing to go back to. I told myself I was like the groups of kids who followed festivals around, except I did it alone. I didn’t speak to anyone. I didn’t want to explain myself because I knew no one would understand me. I carried my knife like I always had.
So, following the tour didn’t feel very different from how I had been living. I washed myself in the sinks of fast-food restaurant bathrooms, lost track of daylight in dusty suburban public libraries. I napped behind shopping centers in my car, or under highway overpasses, traffic rumbling overhead like steady but distant jets. When I got to the venues, I would look at faces on posters for long stretches—country stars from every decade. I knew them all of course. Some looked stern. Some smiled like they knew something I didn’t. In Owen’s and Shelly’s posters, they looked right into the camera. Shelly’s eyes said they would be sad if I’d stayed home. Owen looked like he was thinking. He seemed to want to tell me something.
I kept my phone charged in my car and would scan the “ticket” inside each time I went into a venue. The scanning beep sounded the same in every city—a short, high chirp of a tiny robot bird. My heart leaped each time it welcomed me home.
I saw the whole tour, starting in Boston. Fifteen cities. Then, the last show, back in Nashville. Home. Most of the security team worked for the venue where the concert was held. Only a few followed the tour. I knew their faces. I was sure they knew mine. Auditoriums smelled like popcorn, even outside. Also, like sour-sweet dried-up beer on concrete, and like hair products. The crowds are seas of yellowed trucker caps and black-and-white T-shirts and denim and smells that are salty but also like perfume at times, and sway when music begins—sometimes, in unison, like one enormous organism. Most of the modern venues look like narrow shopping malls. They have columns so high you can’t see the top and banners of whatever sports team plays there waving under giant vents. And they all have metal detectors.
I always tried to look bored when I went through security. I’d keep my mouth open a little, my knife taped to my leg, as I stepped through the metal detector. I went through eleven times and only got stopped three. Each time I found a way to play dumb. Only once did I flat out have to run, but still my heart raced every time, so loudly sometimes it felt like the guards could hear the liquid swooshing in my ears or see the thumping under my shirt.
The night of the last concert, I went through beside a family—an older couple and a kid who was maybe their granddaughter. The grandfather looked at me once, like I smelled. Behind him, someone spilled a Coke across the floor. Bits of half-melted ice and syrup-water spread everywhere. Everyone turned and looked at it for a minute, like the way people freeze when someone drops a plate in a restaurant.
“Goddamnit,” a guard said.
I shoved my way to the middle of the family and emptied my pockets into the plastic bin that was passed around. Two of the security guards were busy with the spilled Coke when the metal detector whined. The one who was paying attention fiddled with a toy car that belonged to the little girl, glanced at the line forming
behind us, then waved us forward. I collected my keys from the bin and went to the ladies’ room, where I found an empty stall and locked the door. I could hear water rushing from the line of sinks. Someone was humming a song I didn’t recognize, the sound going around and around the room like a pinball machine.
I pulled off the knife I’d taped to my leg, wincing, and slipped it into the back of my jeans. I let my shirt fall over the handle. When I left the bathroom, I went dim—staying near the wall, behind groups of people, but not too close behind. I found a seat in the last row where I could see most of the stage and most of the stands.
I watched for an hour. The warm-up music was the same at every arena. The sound check was a rolling thunderclap inside the auditorium. I’d memorized the order of the songs and sang along inside my head as I watched. The stage crew looked like the shadows of ghosts—they wore black shirts and black pants that seemed to blend in against the floor. They checked the blocking, the tuning of instruments, the order in which everything was to happen. I didn’t know their real names, but I’d made up names in my head: Grey Ponytail, Tall Skinny, and Grandpa.
Robert Holloway stood at the side of the stage too, his back to me as he barked orders at the other three, pointing. Without the houselights turned down, I felt vulnerable even at that distance. I knew Robert from old press releases. He’d been Owen’s manager since 1994. By then, I was pretty sure he knew me from security flyers I’d caught a glimpse of my own face on one after sneaking in through a loading dock halfway through the tour, and it took my breath away. I figured those started after I was chased out by security in Orlando. I’d read blogs that described Robert as stern and unforgiving, which fit the way he talked to the crew. Even if security would more likely recognize me first, something about Robert’s presence filled my gut with fear. I exhaled when he faced the other direction.