by Sharpe, Elle
As soon as he handed her the glass she downed the contents in one gulp.
“Norah, is everything all right? Did I do something that bothered you? Because if I did I’m-”
“Gah!” she huffed, with a level of annoyance that surprised me. “Why would you ask that?”
“I’m a bit concerned...you’re acting a little...Norah, you’re shaking.”
She set the glass back down, her hand quivering like a leaf.
“I may or may be having a panic attack, but it’s no concern of yours. Good day, sir.”
“Okay, I think you need to go lie down somewhere maybe. There’s a lounge right down the hall here. Why don’t you come rest for a second?”
“I don’t...I can’t…”
Her breath had started to grow more shallow. I looped my arm around her and started to guide her out of the room.
“Come on,” I said gently. “Twice is definitely too many times to stop breathing in one night.”
I led her out of the banquet hall and into the empty lounge a few doors down. We made our way over to a couch in front of an unlit fireplace.
“Here,” I said. “Sit. Put your head between your legs. Deep, full breaths. Good.”
I passed rhythmic strokes over her back to help her slow her breathing. Gradually I heard it return to normal.
“There, see, you’re okay.”
She nodded, still leaning forward, looking at the floor.
“Do you want to tell me what that was all about?”
“I…” she started. Her voice was soft, and it quickly faded away.
Then abruptly her hands clenched onto the edge of the sofa. With a jerking motion she shook my hand off her back.
“Why…” she muttered. And then her voice raised and became unexpectedly hostile. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
She was angry at me. Again.
For being nice?
“I...what?
Norah
“Why do you have to be so nice right now?” I repeated. My voice was bitter and edged with panic. “This is not helpful!”
“I’m...sorry?”
“Gah! Stop apologizing!”
I could feel my breath starting to speed up again. It took a huge amount of focus to keep it steady.
“Oh my God…” I murmured. “I don’t think I can do this.”
I couldn’t sing. I knew it. My throat was already doing the stage fright thing, collapsing in on itself. And I wasn’t even on stage yet!
I’d felt it creep up on me during Ronan’s mother’s speech. All that stuff about honing artistry, taking art seriously. For some reason those words landed inside me like heavy weights. I wasn’t a real singer. Not like those award recipients. I wasn’t good enough for this crowd. My voice refused to function because it knew the truth. I couldn’t give them what they expected. They would hear me and shake their heads in disappointment.
“You can’t do what?” Ronan asked. The comforting tone of his voice only made me more irate.
“Sing,” I murmured. There, I’d admitted it. I kept my eyes on my shoes, so he couldn’t see my face burning with shame.
“Uh, you definitely can. I’ve heard it with my own two ears. Your voice is beautiful.”
Beautiful. Ronan Baylor thought my voice was beautiful.
Why did that only make my throat clench more?
“Stop complimenting me,” I growled. It came out harsher, wilder than I’d meant it to. Wow, I was seriously losing it. Something I could not afford to do right now.
I took in a deep breath and looked up at him.
“I need you to insult me.”
He blinked at me.
“What?”
“Come on,” I prodded. “You’ve been so tame all night. You must have some lines you’ve been saving up. Some ‘observations?’ List some of the things I’m worst at, all the things you like the least about me. Come on! It should be fun for you.”
“Norah.” He sounded frustrated, impatient. That was a start. “I don’t know where this is coming from. I thought we were finally getting along.”
“I can’t afford to get along with you, Ronan.”
“Afford? Is this something to do with money? You’re uncomfortable with the idea of something happening between us because I have more money than you, is that it?”
The idea of something happening between us. My brain tried to race past those words, but it couldn’t. I felt the tightening feeling expand out of my throat and grip my entire body.
“No! No. I...look: I have to be out there on that stage in half an hour. If you don’t do something to piss me off soon, I’m going to stand up there, open my mouth, and nothing is going to come out.”
Just thinking about it made my throat close tighter. Pretty soon I wouldn’t even be able to speak.
Ronan stood, walked a few feet away from me and looked back, like I might make more sense from a distance. He shook his head. Apparently it hadn’t worked.
“Okay, now I am well and truly lost.”
“I have stage fright.”
He waited a beat for me to continue. When I didn’t he folded his arms in exasperation.
“Yeah, that clarifies absolutely nothing. You want me to insult you...because you have stage fright? And no, you don’t. You sang perfectly just a few nights ago. “
“Because I was mad at you.”
He rubbed his hand over his mouth. For a second or two he was too full of disbelief to speak.
“Are you telling me that being angry at me cures you of stage fright?”
He sounded incredulous, and on the verge of laughter. And not, “Haha, what a quirky conundrum” sort of laughter, but harsh, mocking laughter. And I couldn’t even fault him for it. The theory did sound pretty crazy, now that I heard him say it out loud.
“I think so,” I said. I felt about two inches tall.
And then the laughter he’d been holding in came out: a mean hard cackle.
“You,” he said, “you act so high and mighty, calling me a bad person. But I’m just some sort of symbol to you, aren’t I? The ‘classic rich jerk.’ Or some kind of...what? Thought exercise? Something to project all your weird feelings onto, to help you do the thing you want to do.”
He turned an accusing finger towards me.
“You, Green, are so messed up.”
Get angry at him. I told myself. Now’s your chance. He’s looking down on you, just like you always suspected. Prove him wrong. Defy him. Channel your rage.
But the tightening feeling in my throat and chest wasn’t going away. If anything it was getting worse.
I couldn’t defy him. Because I was pretty sure he was right. And...it wasn’t just derision that I heard in his voice. There was also offense. Hurt.
This was not what was supposed to happen. I was an absolute idiot.
He suddenly walked back to me, knelt down and put his face up close to mine.
“So you want me to insult you, do you? You want me to figure out all your weaknesses and exploit them? And get you all riled up? Is that what you want, Norah?”
He still sounded angry, resentful, even as his voice went husky and low. His breath huffed hot out of his mouth, onto my lips. I felt my heart squeeze, like he’d reached inside and wrapped his hand around it.
He looked at my face, frozen in fear, and sighed. With a swipe of his hand through his hair, he stood back up again.
“Well, too bad. I don’t want to insult you. I know you seem to think that I’m some supervillain who delights in the pain of others, but I’m really not. And as much fun as it can be when we pretend to hate each other, I don’t want you to genuinely hate me.”
He had the nerve to look...sad? Vulnerable? No. No no no no. This was the opposite of what I needed.
“I’m not pretending!” I threw the back at him. It was like I thought I could make the words truer by saying them as forcefully as possible. “I do genuinely hate you. And everything we’ve done together-“ my voice faltered, “I do
n’t understand it, and it disgusts me, and I wish none of it had ever happened.”
His eyes darkened. He looked stung. But then he lowered his eyebrows at me, and stared me down with his supernatural powers of perception.
“I know what you’re doing Norah. I’m not taking the bait.”
“Come on,” I groaned, frustrated. “You hate me too. I know you do.”
He shook his head. It almost felt like he was delivering bad news.
“No, Norah. I don’t.”
“You look down on me.”
“I don’t. I never did.”
He held my gaze.
“I like you, Norah. I actually really, really like you.”
For some reason that made me burst into tears.
“Norah…”
The anger on his face gradually cooled, as he watched me sob pathetically. After a moment he handed me a handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket. I made a revolting sound as I blew my nose into it. I hated myself so much for coming apart like this in front of him, and I didn’t even know why it was happening.
“What am I going to do?” I sniffed.
He came and sat down next to me.
“What about your social media thing?” He asked. “How are you able to do that?”
“It’s complicated. And silly. It’s this sort of...loophole...that I discovered. My ‘shtick’. I based my whole YouTube channel around it. I don’t totally know why, but for some reason, under a very specific set of conditions, my stage fright goes away.”
“So why don’t you just do that?”
“If it was that simple, do you think I’d be freaking out like this right now? I can’t do it here. Not in front of this crowd. It’s completely loose, and wacky, and unpolished, and unprofessional. That’s sort of the whole point of it, actually.”
Ronan looked thoughtful for a moment.
“Does it involve profanity?”
“No. I mean, not usually. It doesn’t have to.”
He raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t comment.
“Is it insulting or harmful to any groups or individuals?”
“No.”
“Then it can’t be that bad. You should just do it, Norah.”
I shook my head vigorously.
“No, you don’t understand.”
“Norah, these people aren’t as uptight as you think they are.”
I’m not as uptight as you think I am, seemed to be the unspoken implication.
“Can you guarantee that?”
“If anyone complains about you, they’ll have to deal with me.”
I squirmed under the softness of his gaze. I wasn’t used to him speaking to me like this.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to do yet.”
“I trust that you’re not a psycho. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be fine. And if some people don’t like it, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just a dinner.”
Just a dinner. Those words jangled against my perception of reality.
In some ways it was a ridiculous thing to say. This was hardly some ordinary dinner. This was a very expensive, very fancy dinner, with some very expensive, very fancy people. To Ronan this might be “just another dinner,” but for me this whole evening had been a trip into another universe.
But in another way, the words rang true. In the end this was one evening, in a room, with food, with a subset of human beings, on the surface of the planet earth. It would be fine. Nobody was going to die as a result of me singing some songs tonight. The planet wasn’t going to fall out of orbit.
“I think...maybe...you might be right.”
“Me? Right? That’d be a first.”
I let out a single giggle. Ugh. I sounded so girly and unguarded, but I was too emotionally-wrung out to care.
I gave my nose another wipe, and saw a hint of black mascara on the handkerchief when it came away. My make-up was surely ruined.
“I need to go fix myself up before I get on stage. I wouldn’t want to look any less than my best while I’m embarrassing the hell out of myself.”
I stood and tried to gather all of my far-flung wits together.
“I’m sure you’ll be great,” he said. Almost tenderly.
My instincts told me: GET AWAY. If I was really going to go through with this I needed to put some distance between me and Ronan, ASAP. Right now he was nothing but a confusing, dark-eyed, smooth-voiced distraction. If he kept looking at me the way he was looking at me now, I would definitely lose my nerve.
I’d been perfectly right about what I’d told him. I couldn’t afford to like him. But if he wasn’t going to let me hate him, liking him—or something close to it—might be the only option left. It didn’t seem possible to feel neutral about him.
“Oh,” I said, as I moved towards the door. “And that whole thing about ‘really, really liking’ me?”
His face became very alert.
“You might want to pause your judgement on that for the next few hours. You know, just in case.”
I ran off to get my face into decent condition. And to find the event planner. It was only fair to give her some warning.
As dinner ended people got up to drink and mingle under the shimmering lights of the chandelier. This was my cue. It was time for me to get on stage.
I was very aware that this could all fall flat. I was also very aware that it might not. I might be making a huge deal out of nothing. In the end, worrying so much about everyone else’s reactions might be the thing that made me ridiculous, not the show itself.
I did have a way of overthinking things. Assuming the worst about situations.
For instance: I’d spent a lot of time obsessing over Ronan disliking me. Looking down on me. And then he went and told me that he liked me. Really really.
How long had that been true?
And was it true, really? Really really? Or had he just convinced himself that he really really was a “nice” guy. Nice enough to like a girl like me despite my craziness, my messiness, my lack of a “plan”?
If he ended up thinking that my performance was a pathetic shambles, he wouldn’t be able to hide it. And you know what, that would probably be a good thing. At least then all our cards would be out on the table.
Well, I thought, here goes nothing.
I knew what I was about to do, so I didn’t feel the throat-closing-down feeling as I walked on stage. I still felt nervous though. Just the normal kind of nervous—excited little jumps inside my belly. I once asked my singing teacher when stage fright—normal stage fright—finally went away. She’d laughed her ass off and said, “Probably when you’re dead.”
I still didn’t know why this particular “shtick” only gave me normal stage fright, when everything else seemed to shut me down completely. But I thought it must have something to do with the set-up. The spiel that went with the shtick. The speech I gave beforehand, to lower everyone’s expectations.
I strode out onto the stage, now carrying my trusty bucket. When I reached the piano, I gave one last look around the room. People had noticed my arrival and started to look my way, breaking out of their post-dinner conversations. Some people had even made their way towards the stage, dutifully following the event program. Now was the time when the beautifully embossed cardstock told them they would be entertained, and they were ready.
I sat myself down on the piano bench.
“Hi there, everybody!” I said into the microphone that pointed at my face. I tried to sound confident, like I knew what I was doing, and deserved to be there. I think I mostly managed. “I am your entertainment for the evening, and my name is...well...some people call me JukeBox Girl.”
I felt ludicrous saying these words, and started talking faster. “I have to apologize in advance, because I have a feeling I’m not quite the type performer you were expecting. You see, usually a musical performance is a one-way thing. I sing, you listen. But what I do is more of a back-and-forth kind of a deal. So I’m humbly asking for your assistanc
e: I can’t do this without you.”
This was a pretty similar introduction to the one I usually gave when I performed live as JukeBox Girl, which I’d been doing more and more often. But the tone was usually more tongue-in-cheek at those gigs, since most people there knew me and knew what they were getting themselves in for. Now the “I apologize,” and the “I humbly ask for your assistance,” felt very real and very necessary.
I ploughed on.
“Here’s how this works: it’s a little bit like-” I hesitate on the word but push forward. “A game. That we all play together. What you have to do is think of a song—any song you want to hear, as long as it’s from the western pop music canon, 1960s to today. Write your selection on a slip of paper and put it in the bucket. And then I try to play it for you. Like a human jukebox. If I can recreate the song from memory, point to me. If you stump me, point to you. Sound good?”
I looked around the room to see how many people I’d lost. A good few, it seemed. Some people looked up from their wine glasses in open confusion. Others still looked indulgently expectant—they didn’t understand what’s going on yet, but they were holding out hope that they would at some point.
“Now, as you can see,” I continued, swallowing down the skittish lump in my throat, “I don’t have a lot on hand. Tonight I’m working with just a piano, and I have to confess to you, my piano skills are not that great. But I also have a secret weapon.”
I reached down and removed my high heels, without explaining why. My bare feet arranged themselves over a series of buttons hidden below the piano.
“And if you want to find out what that secret weapon is, there’s only one thing left to do: feed the bucket.“
I reached out and extended the bucket to the crowd—either in a welcoming or a pleading gesture, it was hard to tell. This was the moment of truth. People were either going to be into this nonsense, or they really, really were not.
A few seconds passed and nothing happened.
I noticed that some of the fancy people were watching Cora Baylor subtly out of the corners of their eyes. They wanted to see how she was reacting to this whole thing. Unlike some of her neighbors, who wore their bafflement on their fancy sleeves, her face was a cold, unreadable mask. It was a face that seemed to say, “I don’t like what’s happening here, and I refuse to give you any clues about how you can fix it. You should know better.” The rest of them watched her stillness, and were still themselves.