Alex said, “We’ll need to alert Boris. I’ll bet he has something special for you to wear.”
GRAYSON
Xan Valentine
Xan paced through the hallways of Madison Square Garden, uneasy. All of the logical, professional reasons to not cancel the concert swirled in his head. The old catchphrase that “The show must go on,” battered him, deafening him so that the pattering of his footfalls on the corridor tile were only dim green flashes at the corners of his vision.
Oh, God, Rade.
The jagged edges of pain sawed at his chest, and he was dying to curl up in a dark hotel room with a bottle and drink until it hurt less, but the show must go on.
A door in front of Xan was tagged with a sign, Mr. Grayson Jones.
Xan sighed and knocked.
Footsteps shuffled toward the door, and Xan didn’t like the sound of them. Drunks stumbled like that. Junkies dragged their feet.
Grayson might have gone back to his dressing room and shot up.
Angry needles of dark scarlet lanced through Xan, and the rage thickened. Damn them both.
Xan looked back down the hallway, where he had come from.
Adrien stood in the hallway, and his hunched shoulders looked tense. His right hand hovered near his stomach, ready to reach under his left armpit.
Yes, well, it was understandable that Adrien looked overwrought. Xan waved, and Adrien waved back. He might look mollified.
Grayson’s door opened, and a fog of cigarette smoke rolled out of the dressing room, stinging Xan’s eyes and nose. The blue fog was just cigarette smoke, Xan noted.
The white parts of Grayson’s hazel eyes were bloodshot, but his pupils were only a little wide from his earlier cocaine use, not collapsed to pinpricks like they would be if he had shot up heroin.
The red slivers of rage retracted.
Grayson rubbed his face, a grief-stricken gesture, not the rapturous stroking like if he were on ecstasy. “What do you want?”
“I came to see how you’re doing,” Xan said.
“I feel like shit.” Grayson walked into the dressing room. Xan followed, sipping the air. Every cell of his body reached for the smoke, wanting to drink in the nicotine in even this second-hand smog, even after two years, but he needed to protect his throat.
Xan left the door open, ostensibly to air out the room. Adrien sniffed the air and took up residence outside the open door.
“That’s natural,” Xan told Grayson, sitting on the other end of a long couch that Grayson had collapsed on. “It was a shock.”
“I got him that shit,” Grayson said. “I should be in jail for murder.”
“He was a drug addict.” Xan sucked in as much ashy air as he could handle. “So are you.”
“No, I’m not.” Grayson held his teal and blue hair back from his forehead with his hands and blinked his shocked-wide eyes.
“Grayson, after this show, right after, I’ve ordered a car for you. I’ve found a good rehab facility in upstate New York.”
“I don’t know anybody around here. My friends are all in California.”
Exactly. “This place has a good success rate. They can save your life.”
“I don’t even get the shakes when I don’t get the stuff. I was clean for two weeks when you were hawking me, and I didn’t get the DTs or anything.”
“Then you don’t need detox, which is excellent.”
“I’m not going.”
Xan would throw him bodily in the car if he had to. If that didn’t work, he had three days off before the show moved overseas for the European leg. After Xan found a replacement bass player, he would cajole, bribe, threaten, or abduct Grayson to get him into that rehab center. “We’ll discuss it after the show.”
Grayson turned, his eyes widening. “What show?”
“The show tonight. Here. In Madison Square Garden. The web-streamed culmination of the tour.”
“No fucking way,” Grayson said. “Rade died. His body isn’t even cold yet.”
Xan leaned forward, clasping his hands and bracing his forearms on his knees. “We must do this show.”
“No fucking way. I’ll leave. I’ll walk out of this building. It’s an insult to Rade’s memory.”
“It’s an insult to perform the songs he loved? To do the job he aspired to his whole life?”
“To go on stage as if his death meant nothing! To perform as if we don’t give a shit!”
“We’ll dedicate the show to him.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“This show will be sold on DVD and streaming video. It’s a lasting tribute, not an ephemeral one.” Xan could feel a cultured British accent creeping into his voice as he argued logic with Grayson, which was folly. He dropped his voice farther down in his throat. “Rade fucked up, and he fucked up one last time. I won’t let him fuck over the band, too.”
Grayson narrowed his eyes. “You always hated us.”
“No, you guys are the wild heart of the band. No other front man would have put up with your shit while we were a rising band. No other front man would have cancelled shows while you guys went to rehab three times and waited for you. I had a thousand chances to replace you guys, but I didn’t.” He shrugged. “Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have thrown you out of the band so you had to sober up.”
“I wouldn’t have,” Grayson said. “I would have gone back to my girlfriend in Malibu and shot up with her because she’s on the shit, too. I would have died in a bathroom with a needle in my arm and blood on the walls. Rade would have done the same thing.”
Grayson covered his face with both hands. Xan barely heard him mumble, “That poor bastard never stood a chance. It was fate. He was going to die, no matter what. Being in the band probably gave him extra time.”
Xan reached across the couch and laid his hand on Grayson’s shoulder. “We have to go on tonight. We’ll dedicate the show to Rade.”
“We can’t play without keyboards. The music sounds thin.”
“I’ve got that taken care of.”
“My whole body hurts. I feel like I’m being crushed.”
“That’s grief. It’s real. When someone you love dies, even if it was an accident, even if you have blood on your hands, even if you hated them for what they did to you, it hurts. The pain is real. You can’t stop feeling it, but you can express it through your music. Every time you hold the guitar, you’ll express your rage and pain and searing grief for him.”
Grayson nodded, wiping his eyes.
“We have a few hours before the show. Band meeting will be in the green room in an hour. Don’t use, okay? Feel the pain. That’s your tribute to Rade. Dulling it with drugs would be an insult to his memory.”
BAND MEETING, MINUS ONE
Georgie
Georgie’s first official band meeting as a fill-in musician was somber, quiet, and she sat in one corner of a deep leather couch in the green room, clinging to the arm and watching Xan.
The walls of the green room—like most green rooms the world over—were painted white, while the couches were dark brown leather.
Xan’s shoulders were hunched as he held a sheaf of paper, the set list, in his hands. “So, here we are. This isn’t the band meeting I thought we would be having.”
Cadell sat at the other end of the couch from Georgie, holding his head in his hands, while Tryp lounged in a chair, wrapped around his tiny, blond elf of a wife, who stroked his arm the whole time.
Grayson huddled in a chair while the backup singer Rhiannon crouched beside him, speaking softly.
At the back of the room, Jonas consulted a tablet, shoving it into Yvonne’s hands. She tapped out notes and handed it back. Jonas’s jaw clenched so hard that Georgie thought she could hear his molars grinding from across the room, and bulges in his jaw muscles looked like knots on the sides of his face.
Posters on the walls—like windows to other, vibrantly colored times—commemorated triumphant concerts at Madison Square Garden: Johnny Cash’s
live album recorded at MSG in 1969, Led Zeppelin’s 1973 concert film, the 12-12-12 star-studded concert for the victims of Hurricane Sandy that lasted five and half hours, Lady Gaga’s Emmy award-winning film for her Monster’s Ball tour, The Police’s final show of their reunion tour in 2008, The Concert for New York City following the September 11 attacks, Elton John’s concert on his sixtieth birthday, and Billy Joel’s record-setting run of consecutive concerts at the Garden.
The Garden was a rock and roll shrine, and Georgie wasn’t the musician who should be sitting on that green room couch. She was beyond an interloper. She was an impostor, a classical sheep in a rocker wolf’s pelt, or she would be when Boris trussed her into her dress for that night. He had already clipped and sewn hair extensions into her hair until it was impossibly full, luxurious, and streaked with platinum and pink.
Xan handed her a set list, and the paper rattled in her grip as she took it from him. She wouldn’t be able to play the piano if her hands didn’t stop shaking.
His handwriting wasn’t as neat as usual, though it was legible. Spikes sharpened the tall letters, and the capital L’s on the first song, “I Choose Love, I Choose Life,” wobbled.
When Cadell saw the list, he covered his face with his long, callused fingers and sucked a deep breath into his chest.
Grayson accepted the list, scanned it, and clutched it to his chest.
Tryp took the page without looking at it and laid his cheek on his wife’s blond hair.
Xan made it back to the front of the room and sat in a wingback chair, the extra set lists crumpled in his fist.
“I can’t believe that Rade is gone,” he said, his working-class British accent clipping his words. “Eighteen thousand people are streaming into this arena. Some of them know what happened, and they might forgive us if we put on a lousy show. Maybe. The rest of them don’t know that Rade chose today to kill himself.”
Everyone in the room flinched except Grayson, who had curled his long legs and arms up into a miserable ball and couldn’t wind himself any tighter. He had pressed his face to his knees, and his teal and blue hair curtained whatever pain might have registered in his eyes.
“I want to fucking choke him,” Xan continued, “and yet my heart bleeds because I miss him so much. I want to call his goddamn phone and shout at him to get his sorry ass to band meeting so we can go on tonight. I’ve gone to his dressing room twice because I can’t believe that he isn’t in there, smoking a joint before the show.”
Xan’s ragged breath wavered. “I want to cancel this show and run away somewhere to grieve.”
Cadell flopped back on the couch, rippling the leather under Georgie’s back. His hand still covered his eyes, and she swallowed a lump in her throat.
“But we can’t,” Xan said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “We don’t have that luxury. Music is a bitch mistress, and tonight she’s handed us a hell of a lot of pain. Eighteen thousand people are here to see us play. Millions more will watch on the internet, and that video will be available for years, probably forever.”
A shiver hit everyone, including Georgie, that all those eyes would stare at them that night.
“I want to read something to you.” He plucked a sheet of computer paper from his hip pocket and unfolded it. The paper crackled in the silent room. “Madison Jaipur emailed this to our fan account fifteen minutes ago. She wrote how sad she was about Rade’s death, and then she wrote, ‘You guys are so strong to play the show tonight. I’ve had my ticket for four months, and I’ll be in Section One Hundred Seventeen, Row Fourteen. I’m praying for you, for God to give you strength. I’ve been at church for an hour, saying a Rosary for Rade and for you. I love you guys, and I’m crying for you and for Rade, but I’ll send you all my love tonight.”
Xan folded the letter and tucked it into his back pocket, and he turned to pick up a stack of papers from the table beside him. “Thousands of people like Madison have already written to us, saying the same thing.”
He stood and passed out papers, ending with one to Georgie. When she took the page from him, she looked up. Fine, red veins creased the whites of his eyes.
Xan said, “The ones who know, the ones who have heard about Rade, they’re here to support us, to buoy us up in this terrible, terrible time. They don’t want to see us go down in flames. Usually, we give them our souls every night. Tonight, we have to lean on them. We have to ask them to carry us. Their love will flood the stage tonight because that’s what fans do. They give us back what we’ve given them. Read what they wrote to you.”
Georgie read the page in her hand, written by a guy, Mark Mancini, in New Jersey. My dad killed himself last year when I was seventeen, and I nearly followed him. I held a gun in my hands one night for hours, but your songs got me through it. “I Choose Love, I Choose Life” played on repeat through my earphones for months to keep me going. I’m getting on the train in Asbury Park to Penn Station now. I’ll be there for you guys like you were there for me.
Georgie’s eyes burned, and the paper in her hands blurred. She blinked hard and sniffed, stretching the sleeve of her tee shirt to wipe her eyes.
At the other end of the couch, Cadell held the page close to his face, reading it. He creased the paper in eighths and tucked it into his back pocket.
Xan said, “We’re not playing this show for us, and we’re not playing it despite Rade’s death. We’re playing it for them. We can’t give up on them. They want to support us. In their grief, they want to give us their strength. We’re going to dedicate the show to Rade, but we’re playing for the fans.”
Xan folded the printed email from Madison. “I’m keeping this with me. I’m playing for Madison tonight, out there in section one-seventeen, row fourteen. She’s been in church praying for me, and I owe this to her.”
Georgie folded hers and slid it into her jeans pocket. She might not be a band member, not really, but Mark Mancini deserved to hear “I Choose Love, I Choose Life” as well as she could play it.
Tryp and Grayson folded their sheets and pocketed them. Rhiannon held hers to her chest for a moment before she tore away the extra paper, creased it into a tiny ribbon, and wound it around her ring.
THE GARDEN
Georgie
From the dressing room, the white-painted corridor stretched in front of Georgie, leading toward a black, star-lit hole that roared with noise. Green and red lasers lanced through the air.
Georgie trailed her hand over the stripe of blue padding running down the walls, designed to keep the paint and cement blocks from getting bashed by the carts and set pieces wheeled through this tunnel to the stage beyond.
A small, electronic box hung on the back of her dress’s belt that led to the in-ear monitors dangling over her shoulders. They were just generic ones, not molded to fit inside her ears but like earbuds with plastic supports that curled around her ears. A lavaliere microphone was attached to the right earpiece, even though there was no way in hell she was going to sing. They had all agreed on that.
The screaming and thundering of stomping boots intensified as she got closer to the black hole at the end of the hallway.
She glanced back. Xan walked behind her, conferring with Jonas. His long stride jittered with energy. He looked every inch a rock star eager to take the stage, not a cultured aristocrat, not a violin prodigy consumed by music.
Georgie clutched the sides of her long skirt in her fists, holding the hem up so she wouldn’t step on it with her very high-heeled strappy boots that Boris had bought for her.
Ahead, the roaring black hole sucked the air out of the tunnel.
Those people out there were screaming so loud that the air swirled and they were actually sucking the oxygen out of the tunnel and no matter how she opened her mouth and gaped like a fish she couldn’t breathe.
Georgie fell sideways and slammed her shoulder against the cement wall.
The tunnel closed in on her as the blackness at the end loomed, eating up the space around her. The note fr
om Mark Mancini weighed, wrapped around her belt and pinned because this couture dress had no pockets. It wasn’t Georgie’s music that had helped him. She was just a pathetic fill-in, not a band member, and she couldn’t even be that.
Hands gripped her arms and hauled her up.
“Georgie?” Alex’s concerned eyes loomed in front of her.
“I can’t go out there,” she gasped.
Slams echoed through the tunnel, bass reverberations that shuddered in her chest.
He said, “Tryp has begun the beat. The show is starting.”
Her head rang with every pound of the drums. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You need to take the stage, Georgie.”
Her hands jittered. “I can’t. Thousands of people out there. The lights. The sound. I can’t.”
“Georgie, listen to me. Listen to my voice. They’re not there. Don’t play for them. Play for me.”
“That won’t work. This isn’t a tiny, private wedding. This is Madison Square Garden and there are thousands of people out there staring at me.” Her chest pumped, trying to get air.
Xan sighed hard, and his fingers curled into claws on the wall beside her.
She said, “I’m sorry. I just can’t do this. You have to do it without me.”
“This is the most important night of my professional life. Hundreds of people have staked their careers and livelihoods on this performance. Those people out there need us to play tonight, to tell them that death won’t win. I need you out there.”
She shook her head, but it was a flail from side to side. “I can’t. I’ll fail. I’ll choke. I can’t breathe now.”
Xan looked upward, studying the ceiling. His body stilled for a moment, even his hands going motionless on the wall.
After a moment, he sucked a hard breath in and looked her straight in the eyes. His square jaw clenched hard. “Forgive me.”
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