by Anne Calhoun
“I love you, too!” she called back, vaguely aware that lurking behind the adrenaline rush of performing was the knowledge that tomorrow she’d feel like someone had taken a stick to her legs and back. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her manager, Chris Wellendorf, standing in the wings, tight shoulders and unsmiling face telegraphing his nervous tension. He didn’t like it when she got too close to the fans without security personnel at hand. All it took was one crazy person to break a finger or stab her with something, one interaction gone wrong to spread all over social media.
She straightened and stepped back, automatically adjusting both bracelet and guitar again, then held up her hands. “Thanks for coming, everyone. Happy holidays. Drive safely, and good night!”
The wave of applause carried her offstage, and continued until the lighting engineer cut the stage lights and turned up the houselights. Breathing hard, Cady washed up against the wall. Around her, the band was efficiently packing away the instruments. Next, the road crew would take down the set, then the stage. By the end of the night, the auditorium would be empty, waiting silently for the next event. Given the time of year—early December—probably a Lancaster College basketball game.
“I can’t sing it again.” She turned to look at Chris. “I can’t. If I have to sing Love Crossed Stars one more time, I will go out of my mind.”
“That’s the end of the tour talking. Love Crossed Stars will be your cash cow for the rest of your life. Besides, you think Paul Simon doesn’t roll out Sounds of Silence or Graceland or Mrs. Robinson at every show?”
“Paul Simon has dozens of songs he can use for a final encore,” Cady said. “Dozens. All of them brilliant. All of them telling profound stories about the human condition. Are any of them love songs? No.”
“Paul Simon is Paul Simon, with fifty years of singing and songwriting behind him. You are just starting out. Be happy. It was a good show,” Chris said.
“You always say that,” Cady replied, looking around for her water bottle.
“And I always mean it,” Chris said smoothly, producing a bottle from his jacket pocket and restoring the normally impeccable lines of his suit. In concession to the casual concert venue he’d stuffed his tie into his pocket and opened the top two buttons of his shirt. A single strand of his dishwater blond hair escaped from the gel slicking it back, giving him a vaguely rumpled look. “This time was different. Normally you’re dialed up to eleven on the scale. Tonight you were around fifteen.”
“These are my peeps,” Cady said after she swallowed half the water. She hooked her thumb in her guitar strap and hoisted it over her head. “I’m home. I’ve been playing for them since I was fifteen, busking in SoMa.”
“Usually without a permit,” came a familiar voice next to her.
“Eve, hi!” She backed away a step when Eve reached for her. “No, you really don’t want to hug me. I’ve sweated through my jeans.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Eve said, and swept her up. “That was amazing! I loved the new take on Summer Nights. Where do you get your energy? You’ve been on the road for weeks now!”
Cady hugged her back, just as hard, so grateful for her friend’s early and vocal support. Chris was checking Eve out, not all that covertly, either. Eve had that kind of impact on men, even in jeans, ankle boots, and a crisp white button-down. “I’ve been on the road for months. We did the state fair circuit over the summer, where I ate every kind of food on a stick you can eat.”
“Including fried candy bars?” Eve asked.
“All the fried candy bars,” Cady said. Performing burned so many calories she could eat whatever she wanted and stay in shape. “I drew the line at a Twinkie log on a stick, though,” she added, then finished the rest of the water.
“You’ve got standards,” Eve said, still smiling. “Oh, it’s so good to see you!”
“You, too,” Cady said. Absently, she introduced Chris and Eve, peering around the rapidly dismantling backstage, looking for her sister and mother. She heard Emily before she saw her, high-pitched voice, the clatter of heels as she rounded the corner and made straight for Cady.
“You’re home!” Emily shrieked and launched herself at Cady.
“You’re taller!” Cady laughed into Emily’s hair as Emily wrapped her arms around Cady and pulled her close. “Great outfit,” she said when Emily let go long enough for Cady to lean back and get a closer look.
“She tried on everything she owned,” her mother said, coming in for a hug.
“Hi, Mom. Thanks for coming,” Cady said over Emily’s protesting Mom.
“Ah, good to see you again, Mrs. Ward,” Chris said.
Her mother smiled at him and reached for Cady to give her a quick hug and kiss. “We need to get home soon,” her mother said. “It’s a school night.”
“Mom,” Emily groaned.
“It’s a school night,” she repeated firmly. Cady remembered this from her adolescence.
“It’s Cady’s homecoming concert! We talked about this. I’m going to drive Cady back to—”
Chris shot her a warning glance. Emily transitioned smoothly, “—home.”
“You said you were going to do that, and I said I don’t want you driving late at night.”
“Mom,” Emily started mulishly.
“It’s fine,” Cady said, snagging her guitar case from the roadie who’d appeared beside her. Best to head off a fight at the pass. “I’m coming home tonight, so Emily will get a good night’s sleep. Right, Em?”
Emily had the good sense to be gracious in victory, giving their mother a big hug and standing demurely by Cady’s side and holding the guitar case for her. “You really like the outfit?” Emily asked.
Her sister was five ten without the three-inch heels, slender as a wire coat hanger. She wore a black skirt with carwash pleats, a slim grey turtleneck, and grey suede over-the-knee boots that left a good four inches of thigh bare. The outfit would have been sleek New York professional except Emily had gone for broke with her makeup, layering in smoky eyes, a hint of blush, and dark lips. She looked far older and more sophisticated than the gawky girl Cady remembered from her last visit in February. Emily had been trying on styles for a couple of years now, trying to find who she was as a growing woman. “You look amazing,” Cady said.
“I made the skirt,” Emily started. “The sweater’s from—”
A mic stand tipped into an equalizer before crashing to the floor just before a man stumbled out from behind a wall of boxed equipment. He untangled his feet, then tripped again as the mic stand rolled back in his direction. He got himself upright and looked around with the fierce concentration of the stupidly drunk. He caught sight of Cady and everyone stopped talking.
“Maud!” he yelled. He stretched a hand toward her. “Maud, I just want to talk to you!”
“Who’s that?” Emily said.
“No idea.” Cady quickly scanned the backstage area for an exit strategy. The last thing she wanted to do was bolt onto the stage, where a crowd still lingered, with their phones and cameras. Her back was literally to the wall, and her little sister stood beside her in heels that Cady would bet her favorite guitar Emily couldn’t run in. As unobtrusively as she could, she stepped in front of her little sister.
“Security. Security!” Chris shouted, looking around wildly.
Great, Cady thought. That’s going to play well on TMZ.
“Hey, big guy,” she said easily as she swatted at Chris to make him shut up. “What’s up?”
“Maud, I love you. I love you, and I want to be with you, and I’ve written some songs for us to sing together.”
Once, just once, I want a man to confess his love for me using my real name. Not Maud “Really? I could use some new material,” she said, because keeping him talking was obviously the right thing to do, and because behind the drunk, two men in police polos with badges and guns clipped to their belts had materialized. One had reddish brown hair and a lean build that would be easy to underestimate.
The other man had a good six inches and fifty pounds of muscle on the other guy and shoulders as broad as a steer’s that tapered to a narrow waist. His dark brown hair swooped back from his forehead, emphasizing a square face dominated by cheekbones and a fighter’s chin.
“Hi, Matt,” Eve said, lifting a hand in a casual wave. Her tone was totally relaxed, but Cady knew that Eve’s Matt was a detective with the Lancaster Police Department. Her attention switched between the admirer, stumbling into boxes and amplifiers and lighting rigs, and the two men stalking him from behind. Cady was pretty sure Matt wasn’t Shoulders, who’d drawn up silent as smoke just behind the drunk guy. She got a flash of slate blue eyes when he flicked a glance her way. Distract him.
“Um … what kind of songs?” she asked.
“A sequel to Love Crossed Stars. It’s about our love. Because I love you.”
Beside her, Chris snorted. “Uh-huh,” she said. Shoulders was inches from his back, so she flashed her brightest smile, gave him a bobblehead nod, and lied through her teeth. “That’s my favorite song. I’d love to sing a sequel.”
When Shoulders’ badge and gun registered in her admirer’s alcohol-soaked brain, he swung out wildly. Shoulders ducked an ineptly aimed backhand and stepped right into the drunk’s body, shoving him off balance, then caught his arm on the forward swing.
“Hey,” Drunk Guy said, indignant, struggling. “Get the fuck off me, man. I just want to talk to her.”
The taller cop got the guy’s other arm in a firm grip, then locked eyes with Shoulders over the flailing drunk’s head. “One … two … three.”
Shoulders thrust his leg behind the drunk’s knee. A neat twist of hips and shoulders, and they took the drunk down, face-first on the floor. A grunt, then a high-pitched yelp. “Ow! Maud!”
“Hey, Romeo,” Shoulders said, snapping a cuff around the man’s wrist. “You think this is your best move? Coming backstage where you don’t belong, smelling like a frat party?”
“I just wanted to talk to her,” the drunk slurred. “I love her. We’re going to make music together.”
Shoulders clicked the other cuff around the second wrist, then nodded at the taller cop. Together they hoisted the guy up and set him on his feet. It was an impressive display of strength, given that Drunk Guy had a significant beer-and-wings gut spilling over his belt. All Cady could think about was the way the band around the sleeve of his polo choked his biceps, the way the muscles in his forearms shifted as he easily controlled the prisoner. Just like that, her brain shifted from tour mode, when sex was easily forgotten, to rest mode, when it was all she could think about.
“How about you write her a nice letter from jail?” Shoulders said. “No, I’ve got this,” he said to the other cop. “You stay with Eve. Come on, Romeo. You can serenade the rest of the drunk-and-disorderlies in the van.”
Everyone watched him guide Drunk Guy through the maze of equipment, including Cady’s suitcases. She cast them a loathing look. Tonight was the last night she’d live out of her suitcase. Tomorrow she would unpack in her own house, eat food from her own fridge, sleep in her own bed.
“Cady, darling, the only reason we let Evan go was you saying Lancaster was safe. That nothing ever happened here. That you were no big deal here,” Chris muttered.
Evan had been her bodyguard on the tour. An obsessive workout that required two hours a day in the gym meant he had the strong half of strong silent type down, but he talked almost incessantly, a running commentary mostly on his workout and diet that, over the course of the tour, drove Cady nuts. “It is. It was,” Cady replied, fingering the bracelet in a habitual nervous gesture before she caught herself. “And you know Evan had to go. I was ready to kill him in Topeka.”
“Barbecued beef tongue is delicious,” Chris said, back on his phone.
“It’s tongue. It’s gross. I didn’t care that he ate it. I cared that he wouldn’t freaking shut up about it.”
The chestnut-haired cop strode over to the small, frozen group. “You all right, Ms. Ward?” he asked, his gaze skimming the group before settling on Eve.
“I’m fine,” Cady said. Her voice sounded almost giddy. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved the guy was gone, or that this was obviously Eve’s Matt. “Thank you for handling that so quickly. Please tell the other officer…”
“McCormick.”
“Please give Officer McCormick my thanks.”
“I will,” he said.
“Cady, this is Matt,” Eve said, as if the smile on her face and the delight in her eyes didn’t give it away. “Matt, meet Cady.”
“Nice to officially meet you,” Matt said with a nod. “I’m a big fan.”
“Thank you. I’ve heard so much about you from Eve,” she said.
“That’s not good,” Matt said easily.
“It wasn’t all bad,” Cady said, to laughter.
“He’s been a fan almost as long as I have,” Eve said. “Your first Maud concert was when?”
“The Slowdown, five, no, six years ago,” Matt said.
“Wow, that is a long time,” Cady agreed. She’d been nineteen, on her father’s shit list for refusing to go to college, singing wherever she could get a gig and eating ramen noodles out of styrofoam cups. “I was still singing covers at that point.”
“Yeah, but you had something,” Eve said. “We all knew it.”
“Thanks,” Cady said again. She was too tired to think of something more creative to say, but with Eve she didn’t have to. “I really need to get going. Emily has school tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Eve said. “Get some rest, then come see me. I’d love to have you at Eye Candy when you’re ready.”
“Ms. Ward won’t be taking any engagements for the next few weeks,” Chris said smoothly.
“It’s not an engagement,” Cady said. “It’s a favor for a friend. A very dear friend.”
He gave her a look reminding her that she needed to rest her voice. Only a few people knew about the upcoming album for which the label planned a surprise Beyonce-style drop around Valentine’s Day, less than three months away. The thought made her stomach turn a slow loop. Chris chalked it up to nerves, to exhaustion, to creative fatigue, to anything but Cady’s growing uncertainty that the album was the right thing to release now.
Chris broke the silence. “We can talk about it tomorrow, when you’ve had a chance to rest up. I’ve booked a car for you.”
“Hello, remember me? I’m taking her home,” Emily said.
“I remembered,” Cady said. “Let’s grab my suitcases and we can head out.”
Cady, Eve, Matt, and Chris scuffled over who would carry the two enormous suitcases she’d lugged on tour buses and the occasional plane for the last eight months. Matt and Chris finally won, and followed Emily’s runway catwalk stride through the backstage area to the arena door. Eve and Cady trailed behind them.
The cold air instantly froze the sweat still drying in her clothes. Cady shivered, and Chris immediately pulled her back inside. “No way are you going out there without a coat and a scarf,” he said. “Emily, pull the car around for her.”
He unzipped one suitcase and flung the lid back. The thick, spiral-bound notebook she used as a diary and scratch pad for songwriting slid out of the unzipped mesh pocket, onto the floor. Cady crouched down and gathered it up, tucking it back into the pocket along with an assortment of cocktail napkins and scraps of paper.
“Working on anything new?” Eve asked, helping her gather the loose paper. She’d been around Cady long enough to know that her process was firmly twentieth century.
“I am,” she said, shooting a defiant glare at Chris across her suitcase. With a total disregard for her privacy he rummaged through a stack of underwear and her nightie, shifting heels and Converse, two of her favorite T-shirts, in search of her scarf and coat.
“She’s always writing,” Chris said, extracting the thick green scarf and her down jacket from the bottom of the bag. “Put these on. Hot water wit
h honey. Bed.”
“I know the routine,” she said. She shoved her arms into the coat sleeves and wound the scarf around her face and throat.
“Part of the routine is me reminding you,” Chris said.
Properly mummified, Eve opened the door again. Em’s Corolla was idling by the arena’s loading dock. Matt and Chris stored the suitcases in the trunk while Cady slid into the passenger seat. Heat blasted from the vents, almost making up for the cold air billowing in the open door.
“I’ll call you,” Chris said, leaning over the frame. “We need to talk about your security.”
“No we don’t,” Cady replied.
“My flight’s at four,” he said implacably. “I’ll call around ten.”
“Fine,” she said absently. She wanted to ask Eve’s Matt about Shoulders, but couldn’t think of a way to do it that wouldn’t set a bad example for Emily, so she called, “I’ll see you soon!” to Eve and Matt, and closed the door on Chris’s yelp about not raising her voice.
Emily zipped out of the parking lot and turned onto Tenth Street, then braked hard at the red light. Cady’s shoulder harness jerked. She shot Emily a glance, but her sister stared straight ahead. In the streetlight her eye makeup was starting to smear. Cady couldn’t even imagine what her face and hair looked like. After a show her face could resemble melting plastic as the lights and sweat worked away at enough makeup to animate her facial features.
“What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t introduce me.”
“You know Chris,” Cady said, bewildered. “You’ve met him a dozen times. And Eve.”
“To the hot cop. Eve introduced you to him, but you didn’t introduce me.”
Cady blinked. “To Matt? He’s Eve’s boyfriend, and he barely noticed me. Eve’s in a league of her own. No one notices me when she’s in the room.”
“Oh, he noticed you, Queen Maud of the Maud Squad,” Emily said. “You could have introduced me to him.”
“Things were happening so fast,” she said. “Next time, I promise. Thanks for getting the house ready for me. I’m so excited to see it. How about we plan on having you sleep over this weekend? You can help me decorate.”