“I told you this earlier,” Mitch continued. “This is a singing competition. Your pretty blue eyes and dimple might get you through the first few couple of weeks, but you can’t expect them to carry you through the whole show.”
“Wow!” their host, Jonathan King, exclaimed. “Don’t hold back, Mitch! Tell everyone what you really think.”
Mitch growled at him while the audience laughed.
“Whew!” King continued. “I had no idea when I got up this morning that it was going to be this kind of season. Fawn, what do you think?”
On stage, Rick braced himself for another round of criticism. He needn’t have bothered. Fawn never said anything bad about an act. It was as if she believed people would stop liking her if she ever told anyone what she really thought about a number.
“Rick, I can see you have a lot of potential,” she said.
“He needs a lot if he’s going to recover from this performance,” Mitch muttered into his mike.
“Now there’s no cause for that kind of comment,” Fawn told him. It really wasn’t a take down because her voice was too sweet. “It’s my turn with the microphone.”
She turned back to Rick. “Now where was I? Oh, yes, you have plenty of potential. The trick will be tapping into it in the coming weeks. I think Mitch is right in that you have wonderful blue eyes and a great smile. The trick you have to master is tapping into those assets with your music so you can reach your audience better.”
Ember stopped her eyebrows from furrowing in confusion, knowing that the camera would be on her next. What the heck was Fawn talking about? How would tapping into eyes and a smile actually improve Rick’s music? Did her statement mean anything at all?
“Thank you,” Rick said to Fawn.
“And how about you, Ember?” King asked. “What did you think of our opening performance?”
“You sang better in the tryouts,” Ember told him. “You got off key about a third of the way through the song and had trouble from that point on. I’ll bet this is your first time performing to such a large crowd—not to mention the millions of people watching from home on their television sets.”
Rick nodded. His white face looked even paler than it had when he was singing.
“Stage fright is something you’re going to have to overcome. Your performance was better than Mitch would have you believe, but it wasn’t good enough to win this competition. If America’s willing to give you a second chance, you’re going to have to sing through your nerves and take ownership of that stage.”
For some reason, Rick looked paler and more ill than he had when Mitch had berated him, so Ember decided to throw in a bit of encouragement. She smiled warmly and added, “I believe you can do it.”
Instantly Rick’s smile returned full force. “Thank you, Ember,” he shouted. “Next week I’ll show you all what I can do!”
Jonathan King took control of the stage again. “Thank you, Rick, you can exit this way. America, if you’d like to vote for Rick, call or text the number at the bottom of the screen as soon as our show ends this evening.”
Week Two
“Ember! Ember!”
Ember twisted about to see Rick Rogers hurrying toward her from way down the hallway. He had shockingly good looks: blonde hair hanging down just far enough to almost cover his clear blue eyes; a lean hard body which probably resulted more from good genetics than from workouts in the gymnasium; and of course, that dashing smile that seemed to infuriate Mitch Daniels so much.
“Ember!” Rick called out one more time before coming to a stop in front of her.
“I thought you were supposed to be rehearsing in the studio,” she said.
He smiled sheepishly. “I’m on break. With the show tonight they aren’t working us as hard as they did the rest of the week.”
Somehow, Ember doubted that. The singing coaches would be pushing their talent harder than ever to make certain their baby wasn’t the one who got cut this week. Rick’s coach would be more worried than most, because even though America’s votes had kept Rick out of the bottom three, he really hadn’t given a very impressive performance last week. The kindest thing she could do for this young man was get him back to practicing—that and give him some fashion advice. That shirt with the horizontal stripes looked like something a ten year old should wear.
“What can I do for you?” Ember asked.
Rick smiled again. Whatever else you could say about his comments, Mitch was right about Rick’s smile. It was dangerous and probably explained more than any other factor why this young man was still on the show. “I, um, just wanted to thank you for what you said to me last week. After Mitch got through with me, I was almost ready to hitchhike back to New York City, and Fawn…well, I don’t really understand what Fawn said. But you really encouraged me and well, every time it’s gotten difficult this week I’ve remembered you saying: I believe you can do it!”
Rick’s comments genuinely touched her. “It is so sweet of you to tell me this. I meant every word.” She hadn’t at the time, but it would be cruel to tell him that now. Besides, she knew from her own career that sometimes the strongest encouragements appeared unexpectedly. The path to fame was often dark and arduous. She decided to try and give Rick’s spirits a little more of a boost. “You have it in you to be phenomenal tonight.”
“Yeah, I really hope I do,” he said.
“Now you’re not sounding so confidant anymore,” Ember told him. “You listen to me! I was facing live crowds ten times this big when I was younger than you, so I know what I’m talking about here. When the lights go up tonight, and you start to feel nervous, you look at me! And you know what you’ll see? You’ll see me smiling at you. And you know why?”
“Why, Ember?” He looked so nervous, like the thought of going out on that stage again was starting to seem unbearable.
“Because I still believe in you!”
Impulsively, she gave him a slight peck on the cheek. His skin was warm beneath her lips—not feverish, just pleasantly warm. “Now go out there tonight and make us all proud of you!”
With his smile lighting up the hallway, Rick turned and walked away.
Ember turned back around and found Fawn looking at her, a mischievous smile on her face. “Didn’t Fox warn us about kissing the contestants?”
“He’s a sweet kid,” Ember told her.
“Yes, he is!” Fawn agreed. “And he’s got a great ass too!”
Instinctively, Ember followed Fawn’s gaze to Rick’s body just before the young singer turned the corner of the hallway. It was a great ass—tight and firm and just begging to be squeezed and fondled.
Then she remembered it was Fawn who had said it. She pivoted to examine her friend. There was something off about her smile. It was just a little bit goofy. Could she be high?
“I bet you’d like him to kiss you back,” Fawn mused.
“Who wouldn’t?” Ember asked her as the two started down the hallway after Rick.
She imagined what that would be like for a moment, Rick Rogers taking her into his young strong arms and looking down into her face with that awesome smile. Then his lips would dip towards her and…
“I sure as hell wouldn’t mind,” Fawn muttered beneath her breath.
Ember shook herself out of her little daydream to look again at her friend. Fawn had a wistful little smile on her face that probably wasn’t all that different than the one Ember wore herself.
Oh well, there was nothing wrong with dreaming, was there?
Mitch took his turn at the microphone. “Zach, I’d like to tell you that was absolutely awful, but it just wouldn’t be honest.”
Zach started to smile, but something in Mitch’s eyes must have warned him off and the smile faltered.
“Because you made awful look good this week. I truly don’t understand what Fawn and Ember see in you.”
The Zach Donderhue fans in the audience groaned.
Mitch was undeterred. “This is a professional competition
, Zach! And if this is your A-Game, you’re not going to be here very much longer. You’re not singing church songs or old Sinatra hits. This is Rock Idol and you’ve got to put some muscle into your lyrics.”
“It wasn’t all that bad, Mitch,” Fawn protested.
“Yes, it was!” Mitch insisted.
Jonathan King ushered Zach off the stage with the usual spiel to vote for him by calling or texting the number on the screen.
Mitch took the time to look over his shoulder at the audience. “Who’s next again?”
Fawn glanced at her notes. “Rick Rogers.”
Mitch groaned and shut his microphone off. “They ought to let us drink out here if they’re going to make us listen to clowns like Rick Rogers. I mean, is that a real name? And if it isn’t, who’s he trying to make us think of, Roy or Ginger?”
“It’s still not as bad as Donderhue,” Fawn observed.
“That’s not saying a whole lot, Gladys,” Mitch retorted.
“Shush,” Ember whispered. “He’s coming out.”
“I can’t see why he’d do that on stage when a Facebook posting would serve just as well,” Mitch muttered. Ember had to squelch a grin at Mitch’s remark, but Fawn just looked confused.
The spotlight caught Rick in the center of the stage standing nervously in hot leather pants and a dorky striped shirt. Not that dorky was a word Ember wanted to use anymore. It was so old it was past passé, but unfortunately it perfectly described Rick’s upper outfit. Who in wardrobe would let him be seen in public in such a thing? And why on earth were they still working for Fox Atwood?
Rick looked around as the music came up and for just a moment, Ember thought he was going to give in to his panic. Then his eyes met hers and she remembered to smile her encouragement.
Rick smiled back, brightening the whole stage. He didn’t look away from Ember as his foot began to find the rhythm and his body eased into the mood. He sang the whole song—beginning to end—without once glancing away from Ember’s face.
“Rick Rogers, America!” Jonathan King proclaimed as the young blonde man took a second bow to the cheers of the audience.
When he straightened again, Rick’s face had flushed with excitement, giving a rosy hue to his otherwise pale cheeks. His eyes gleamed and his smile continued to light up the stage around him. He looked incredible. If not for the stupid striped shirt, he’d be halfway to mastering the look and gravitas of the Rock Idol mantle.
King started his post act mini-interview. “Rick, you got off on the wrong foot last week. How do you feel about tonight’s performance?”
“I feel incredible!” Rick shouted, throwing one fist up into the air in symbol of victory. “I really wanted to get my heart into the music and show America what I can do and well, I guess it’s up to America to decide, but I feel I hit it one hundred percent.”
“That’s wonderful,” King told him, “but let’s see if our judges caught your enthusiasm. Mitch?”
“Well, I’m not as excited as Rick is,” Mitch announced. His short salt and pepper haircut made him look especially severe. “While there’s some definite improvement here, you started out at such a low level last week that that was almost inevitable.”
Several young women in the audience began to boo, which made Fawn smile at Ember and wink.
“Now I’ve been in this business a lot of years,” Mitch reminded everyone, “and I’m just calling them the way I see them. Your performance this week probably elevates you to the bottom level of talent in this competition, but in my opinion you’re still relying on your smile and your baby blues. I mean, you aren’t even dressing well. That’s a heavy load for a couple of eyes and a dimple.”
The audience began booing again and Fawn took her turn at the microphone. “Mitch is right in saying your performance is far better this week. You touched something in yourself that let you touch something in all of us as well.”
She stopped talking and looked at Ember.
Jonathan King was caught flat-footed by the short speech. “Thank you, Fawn. What did our final judge think?”
Ember smiled as the camera came in for a close up. “Fawn is right, Rick. This is a whole new level of performance for you. The sort of singing that got you into this competition. Last week you weren’t certain you wanted to be here. This week you’ve begun to take ownership of the stage. You’re still hitting a few notes off-key, but this was an encouraging step forward. If there’s one piece of stagecraft you should keep in mind next week, I’d suggest that it’s remembering to sing to the whole audience, not just the judges’ table.” She’d save the observation about his terrible shirt until she could make it in private. There was no need to embarrass him.
The audience cheered wildly at her comments.
She’d be very surprised if Rick went home this week.
Week Three
“Fawn? Are you in here?” Ember asked as she opened the door to her friend’s dressing room.
A confusion of sounds greeted her ear and what might be a chair falling over.
“Fawn?” Ember called out with greater volume and more urgency. She let the door swing closed behind her as she hurried inside. Someone had pulled a rack of dresses into the middle of the room so she couldn’t see Fawn’s dressing table.
“Ember?” Fawn sounded disoriented—confused. “I’m all right! Stay back!”
But it was too late for that. Ember had already hurried around the clothes rack to find Fawn in her slip, trying desperately to pile makeup containers over something on her dressing table. Her chair had tipped over and lay on the floor behind her.
“Fawn, what’s wrong?”
Frightened as her namesake, Fawn looked up at Ember and unintentionally revealed the whole story. White powder decorated her upper lip below her nose. Fawn was using cocaine again.
“Oh, sweetie,” Ember said. Her disappointment was intense and underlined with a trace of fear. Ember and her ex-husband had snorted away half her fortune. She did not want to start down that path again!
“It’s not what it looks like,” Fawn told her.
Ember took charge, coming forward and picking up Fawn’s chair. “What it looks like is a cry for help! You didn’t even lock your door, Fawn. You wanted someone to catch you.”
“I…thought it was locked,” Fawn insisted.
Ember wondered if she knew how lame that protest sounded.
“Let’s clean this up and then you and I are going to talk.”
She grabbed some tissues and quickly wiped the powder off the table, then dumped the mess in the toilet. She didn’t bother to search Fawn’s purse for more of her stash. She wasn’t the woman’s mother and frankly, if Fawn wanted to buy more coke she would.
Fawn watched her do all of this without moving, nor did she resist when Ember cleaned the powder off her face and flushed that tissue as well. It wasn’t until Ember sat her down in her chair and leaned against the dressing table facing her that Fawn saw the need to try and regain control of the situation.
“I’m not hurting anyone, you know.”
“Oh, sweetie, I’m not here to judge you. I’ve been where you are. I know nothing I say is going to make any difference to you. It’s like any other bad relationship we can find ourselves in. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide when to get out of it.”
Clearly suspicious, Fawn didn’t say anything.
“I’d just like to know—to satisfy my own curiosity—why did you start using again? Things are going so well for us now. What made you think you needed the coke?”
“They’re going well for you!” Fawn corrected her.
“Yes, they are,” Ember agreed. For the first time in twenty years things were going right for her. “But aren’t they going well for you, too?”
Fawn began to fidget, like a guilty witness being cross-examined on some courtroom TV show. “I, I guess so, it’s just—”
“Just what, sweetie?”
“They keep making fun of me!”
“W
hat? Who?”
“The tabloids! They keep making fun of me!”
Ember laughed. She couldn’t help it. The mirth just bubbled out of her.
“Don’t you laugh at me!”
Ember tried to get control of herself. “Oh, sweetie, I’m not really laughing at you, it’s just…making fun of people is what tabloids do!”
“They don’t make fun of you!”
“Of course they do!” Ember said. “They’ve made fun of me for twenty years. And I hate it, but you can’t really get mad about it. It’s just what they do!”
“They’re not making fun of you now,” Fawn insisted.
“Sweetie, just a few weeks ago they were running stories about my secret wedding in Tahiti because I was seen having fun with a guy.”
“That’s not making fun. That’s just…” Fawn struggled to find a word to describe Ember’s situation. “That’s just human interest.”
“Fawn, one of the papers, I think it was The Global Tattler, reported that Bill Clinton flew out there to beg me to marry him instead. If that’s not making fun of me, I don’t know what is. Now what’s really bothering you?”
Fawn mumbled something far too low for Ember to hear.
“Sweetie, you’re going to have to speak up if we’re going to talk about this.”
“They think I’m a terrible judge,” Fawn repeated.
That was true and Ember agreed with them, but she wasn’t going to tell Fawn anything close to that. “Oh, sweetie, you can’t take that sort of thing personally. They’re always making up that kind of shit.”
Now that she had begun talking about the issue, Fawn was not going to be dissuaded. “They say I can’t say anything bad about anyone and that most of my observations are either completely obvious or incomprehensible drivel.”
What did Fawn want her to say? That analysis was one hundred percent accurate from Ember’s perspective. Still, she had to say something to help her friend. “Sweetie, you are the sweet judge. Mitch is the asshole. These are roles we play. America expects you to like the music and Mitch to hate it.”
Rock Idol (Reality With a Twist Series) Page 2