by Katia Rose
Sherbrooke Station didn’t even have a name yet, and it took us another month after finding JP to get Cole on board, but that was the night the band became more than just an idea in Matt and I’s heads. We saw JP performing at an open mic, and we knew we had to have him. The guy is a crazy motherfucker, but he’s also one of the best musicians I’ve ever heard.
For the next two years, we went back to the same bar and did a song at the open mic to mark the anniversary. The place got turned into a KTV bar after that, but JP still makes us keep going back. Photos of him standing shirtless on stage with some Korean businessmen hang our rehearsal room walls to this day.
“I told you, I have something on,” I repeat.
“So cancel it. It’s karaoke time, bitches!”
JP reaches for the bottom of his shirt, and Matt yells at him to keep it on.
“Mais pour de vraie,” JP continues, “what is more important than this? Only really nice boobs could be more important than this.”
I haven’t told the guys about Stéphanie yet—not even Matt. Whatever is happening between her and I feels too fragile to put into words, like I’m walking around with a bomb in my hands.
“Wait a minute.” Matt’s watching me carefully. “Is this about some really nice boobs?”
“Your mother has really nice boobs,” I shoot back, pulling my guitar strap back over my head.
Matt clutches his chest. “Wow, I’m really insulted. You’ve wounded me so deeply I can’t even pay attention to the fact that you’re dodging my question.”
“I’m going to a show, okay?” I mutter.
“Perfect!” JP shouts. “We’ll all go to the show, and then we’ll go to karaoke!”
He grabs a microphone that’s lying around and starts singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ in the world’s most disturbing falsetto.
“I am really starting to regret inviting Kay tonight,” Matt groans, watching the performance. “At least she’ll have Roxy for moral support.”
“Roxanne isn’t coming tonight.”
We all turn to look at Cole. He’s sitting on one of the beaten-up couches, bass still resting in his lap, and staring at the outdated carpet like he’s hoping a black hole will appear in the fabric to swallow him up.
“Here comes breakup number seventeen,” JP whispers.
Cole glares at him. “You know I can hear you, right?”
JP vaults over the back of the couch and lands on the cushion next to Cole. “Sorry, man. That’s rough. Look, let’s just all have a good time tonight. Screw everything else. We’ll go see whatever show Ace wants to go to, and then we’ll fuck around at KTV. It will be great.”
“What show is it?” Matt asks me.
There’s no way around this. I know they’re not going to let it drop.
“It’s, uh, a dance show.”
I’m surprised no one has called the cops on us yet. The suburban families waiting in the lobby are staring at us like we’re escaped convicts. I guess in their eyes, we look the part. In the sea of khakis and polo shirts, our dark jeans and tattoos stand out just as much as orange jumpsuits would. Even Kay is getting dirty looks for her Nirvana shirt and Converse. She’s one of the only women not in a dress.
“Remind me why we’re here again?” she asks, sliding her glasses father up her nose as she inspects the program in her hands.
“Because Ace is en amour!” JP shouts, earning us a few more death glares.
“Actually, we’re here because none of you have any respect for personal boundaries,” I seethe. “I never invited you to come with me.”
“But we want to see hot yoga chick in tights!”
Now I’m the one giving JP a death glare.
“If I hadn’t promised myself I’d never write a story about your band again, I would definitely be writing a story about this,” Kay muses.
I tried to pass off my being here tonight as a simple act of supporting a friend, but the guys saw right through it, and somehow we all ended up standing here outside the high school auditorium where the showcase is being held.
“Fuck it,” I grumble, heading over to where a stand is set up for people to buy flowers.
I hear the guys hooting behind me.
“I’ll take that,” I tell the woman at the stand, pointing to the first bouquet I see. It’s a half dozen light pink roses.
“Parfait! Would you like to keep them with you, or should I send them backstage to someone?”
I give her Stéphanie’s name and pay for the flowers. The woman hands me a small card to write a message on, and I scrawl a quick note:
Does it sound bad if I tell you I hope your kids all break a leg? –Ace
When I’m finished, the auditorium doors have opened. I rejoin the group so we can find our seats. Mine is on the edge, beside Matt. He turns to face me, blocking us off from everyone else.
“You really do like her, huh?”
I shrug.
“I know you like her. We’re at a fucking ballet show, Ace. I just wanted to say...I’m happy for you. You haven’t missed a rehearsal or been late for a meeting in weeks. Whatever this girl is doing for you, it’s working.”
The house lights dim, and we all focus our attention on the stage. Some woman with a frizz ball of hair comes on and makes a prolonged and overdramatic speech, and then a dance number finally starts.
And then another one.
And another one.
The shit goes on and on until I swear I’m going to start throwing things at the stage if I have to see one more kid dressed like a flower jump around to a Katy Perry song. I scan the program and see there’s still four more numbers to go until something choreographed by Stéphanie comes on.
Somehow, I survive the next fifteen minutes. I sit up straighter in my chair when some piece of classical music I recognize but can’t name starts playing through the auditorium speakers. A few girls who can’t be any older than six start skipping onto the stage in pink outfits.
The one leading the group seems to forget she’s supposed to keep moving once she reaches the middle of the stage. All the others bump into her like a cartoon pileup. The audience laughs. I try not to groan out loud.
Then Stéphanie steps onto the stage.
She’s in a black leotard and white tights, with a translucent pink skirt type-thing wrapped around her waist. Her hair is in a bun on the top of her head, and when she moves, I can see every perfectly defined muscle in her body flex.
She does some kind of twirl that gets her to the middle of the stage in a few steps, and then starts leading the train of girls through their routine. They don’t do much besides point their feet in front of them and spin around with their hands on their shoulders, but even in those simple movements, I can see how skilled Stéphanie is. I doubt even the kids’ parents are watching anyone but her right now.
She’s perfect. She’s absolutely, breathtakingly perfect.
Once she’s skipped off stage with the girls, I turn to find Kay and the guys all staring at me. JP flashes me a thumbs up. I give him the finger.
When the intermission is finally announced, Matt hums the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus and leads the way to a vending machine in the lobby. While the guys get chocolate bars and bags of chips, I scan the growing crowd. Parents are giving flowers to kids wearing terrifying amounts of makeup. I can see a few people who seem to be dance teachers shaking people’s hands, but I don’t catch any sight of Stéphanie.
I pull out my wallet to see if I have any coins to get chips with, and that’s when I feel a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey.”
I turn around and she’s standing there, a printed black dress thrown over her tights and leotard. She’s holding the bouquet I bought. I feel my jaw drop.
“Sorry.” She laughs at my reaction. “I know the makeup is kind of scary. You have to overcompensate when you’re on stage.”
She does have a shit tonne of makeup on right now, but she manages to wear it like a supermodel instead of a clown.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.” She shakes her head from side to side so I can get the full effect. “Thank you for my flowers, by the way. I can’t remember the last time someone sent me flowers backstage. Now everyone’s asking who my mystery man is.”
“These guys won’t shut up about you,” I tell her, jerking my thumb towards the group behind me.
They’re so caught up in the fact that the machine gave Cole two Mars bars instead of one that no one has noticed Stéphanie yet.
“You brought your friends?” she asks, taken aback.
“They brought themselves,” I tell her. “They don’t really understand the meaning of the word ‘no.’”
“Oh! Are you Stéphanie?” Kay joins us, holding out her hand. “I’m Kay, Matt’s girlfriend.”
Before she can grasp the hand Stéphanie offers her, JP slides in and takes hold of it instead before bringing it to his lips.
“Bon soir, mademoiselle. I am Jean-Paul Marc Joseph Bouchard-Guindon, but you may call me JP.”
Stéphanie looks between JP and I, clearly at a loss for how to respond, but Kay intercedes and swats JP away.
“Don’t mind him. He’s harmless. Mostly.”
“You can knock it off with the French charm thing,” I tell him. “Stéphanie is Francophone.”
His eyes light up, and in French, he asks Stéphanie if she’s ever been to KTV before.
“Uh...non?” she answers.
Matt and Cole come introduce themselves after that, and before we have time for the awkwardness of small talk, an announcement sounds, calling all the performers back stage.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you!” Stéphanie exclaims, just before she rushes off. “One of my students couldn’t make it tonight, so I’m filling in on my next choreo. You’ll get to see me do something more impressive than be the driver of a human shuttle bus.”
We sit through another five numbers before the program says Stéphanie’s choreography is due on stage. We have to have made it through the entire Katy Perry discography by now. Even the tap dancers danced to Katy Perry.
The lights dim as the group before Stéphanie’s shuffles off. When they come back on, the stage is filled with half a dozen dancers arranged in an elaborate, interconnected pose. Their limbs are so tangled it takes me a moment to pick Stéphanie out among them. The students are older than most of the other performers, all somewhere in their early or late teens. A few soft piano notes sound, and they begin to slowly shift out of formation, expanding away from each other to fill the stage like an unravelling knot.
A woman’s voice joins with the piano, singing about fire and cold winds. Now that I’m sure which arms and legs belong to Stéphanie, I can’t look away from her. She moves like she’s somewhere else, like the music has picked her up and carried her away to the dark, secret place that all sound comes from. Her body echoes every swell and lift in the song, and I recognize the look of rapture on her face.
I feel that same rapture down to my very bones every time I’m up on stage, when I hear the crowd roaring, their arms waving in the air like the limbs of one giant beast moving in unison to a rhythm only I control. In those moments, there’s no past and no future, nothing tugging me out of the present. There’s a certain kind of stillness to it, a power that also brings peace, and I feel it now as I watch Stéphanie dance.
The rest of the show is easy to sit through after that.
“Stéphanie was so good!” Kay exclaims, as we join in the train of people shuffling back out into the lobby.
“She really was.” Matt thumps me on the back and raises an eyebrow at me. “Are you bringing her to KTV?”
“I’d actually like to see this girl again,” I tell him, “and I doubt she’ll want to keep talking to me if she experiences what you’re all like at KTV.”
“Oh come on,” Kay urges. “I’m going.”
“Yeah, but you and Matt are basically married already.”
That gets them both off the subject fast. For two people who are clearly going to end up married, they sure do fucking love to pretend the opposite when anyone brings it up.
“I’m just going to text her and see if she wants to say goodbye,” I announce, stepping away from the group once we make it into the school’s front parking lot.
I’m about to hit send when my phone gets ripped out of my hands.
“JP, what the fuck?” I demand.
He bounces away with my phone and starts typing something on the screen.
“Yoga babe is coming to karaoke!” he crows. “I just told her you’ll buy her drinks all night if she does.”
“You asshole. She doesn’t even drink.”
JP looks back down at the screen. “Oh, she just replied: ‘You’re bad at convincing people. Did you forget I don’t drink? And why are you texting in French all of a sudden? I can’t say no to karaoke with Sherbrooke Station, though. My roommate would kill me if she found out I turned that down.’”
JP starts doing some kind of Latin-inspired celebration dance. It distracts him enough that I can steal my phone back. I type out an explanation to Stéphanie and tell her she doesn’t actually have to come. Her reply arrives a moment later:
Just give me a few minutes to change. Also I am NOT SINGING.
“Is this...normal for him?”
It’s almost midnight. The karaoke place is fuller than I’ve ever seen it, which isn’t saying much since I only come here once a year. Matt and Kay are whispering together at the far end of our booth, Cole is staring down at the bottom of his whiskey glass, and I have my arm around Stéphanie’s shoulders.
“I wish I could say no,” I tell her, answering her question, “but yes, this is normal for him.”
JP found a table full of people from his hometown and is now standing up on said table and leading them all in a rendition of ‘Since U Been Gone.’ Seeing five very French Canadian guys stumble through the lyrics of a Kelly Clarkson song is not something I’ll ever forget, no matter how much I might want to.
“I’m surprised he still has his shirt on,” Cole mutters from beside me, breaking about an hour’s worth of silence.
“Hey, it speaks,” I joke.
“And it leaves.” He drains the rest of his whiskey and stands up. “I’m heading out, guys.”
“Cole, wait!” Matt calls, but Cole just shakes his head and takes off toward the exit.
“Is he okay?” Stéphanie asks me.
I trace the swell of her shoulder with my thumb. She’s still got her stage makeup on, and the purple bar lights reflect on the glitter in her hair. She looked stunning before, but in this lighting, with her thigh pressed up against mine, she looks sexy as hell. I’ve barely paid attention to anything other than her mouth all night.
“He will be,” I tell her. “He’s having issues with his girlfriend, but they’ve broken up like five times before, and they always get back together.”
“Why do they keep breaking up?”
I shrug. “He doesn’t really get into it with us. They’ve known each other since Roxanne was just sixteen. She came to Montreal all by herself, and Cole helped her through some shit. Cole has this...can’t live with her, can’t live without her kind of thing when it comes to Roxy.”
“Ace! Ace! Ace! Ace!”
We all turn to where JP is holding a microphone, still up on the table and leading all his new best friends in the chant.
“What the fuck do you want?” I shout over the noise.
JP does a Jackie Chan type jump-kick off the table and then runs up to me with the mic.
“You’re up!” he announces. “R.E.M. or Bruce Springsteen?”
“Neither,” I say firmly. “Make Matt sing.”
“Dude, no one wants to hear me sing,” Matt pipes up.
He’s not wrong about that. I’ve heard Matt sing before, and there’s a good reason JP is the one who does backing vocals fo
r the band.
“I will make those mecs over there keep chanting your name until you sing,” JP says cheerily.
Stéphanie nudges me. “Come on! You saw me dance tonight. Now I want to hear you sing.”
“You heard the lady!” JP shouts.
And that’s how I end up singing ‘I’m On Fire’ in a Montreal KTV bar, stone cold sober, while people whip out their smart phones and I try not to think about all the places this video is going to end up. I just stare at Stéphanie from the raised platform that serves as a stage, watching her watch me as the rest of the crowd cheers.
At first I’m only fucking around, adding an extra rasp to the words and playing up the sexuality in the lyrics to the point that it’s funny, but something changes the further I get into the song. The slow build of the synth—the tension that rises and rises but never quite breaks—catches up with me, and by the time I get to the long, wavering howls at the end, I can see Stéphanie’s chest heaving even harder than mine. I know I’ve got to get her out of here soon or some shots of me singing aren’t the only photos that that will show up on the band’s Facebook page tomorrow.
I hand the mic off to JP. He pounds me on the back and shouts something in unintelligible French before running off to find his next victim.
Stéphanie’s already on her feet, waiting for me. She slides her hand up my chest when I reach her and tips her head back so she can whisper in my ear.
“Take me home tonight.”
I don’t need to be told twice.
“Grab your purse and let’s go.”
She does as I ask and tells me she’s just going to step into the washroom before we leave. Kay’s up getting another beer, so for a moment it’s just Matt and I at the table.
“Smooth,” he comments. “I doubt R.E.M. would have had the same effect.”
“I don’t know, man. ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’ always gets me in the mood.”
He laughs. “So she’s taking you home now, I gather?”
“Actually, I’m taking her home.”