Behind the Curtain

by BETH KERY

  The waitress returned, serving them their appetizer of moules à la biere. This time, Asher did take notice of her warm smile and cautious but engrossed glances at him from beneath heavily mascaraed eyelashes. He tried to work up some returned interest but failed. Maybe he’d lost the talent for casual flirting. He’d been seeing Claire Moines, a German television correspondent based out of Istanbul, for over three years before their long-distance romance had finally fizzled out. Between a grueling work schedule and Claire as a placeholder girlfriend, he’d grown pitifully backward in the skills of wooing a woman. Rudy took over, smooth-talking the pretty waitress. His charming grin and rapid-fire one-liners were stale as old beer to Jimmy and Asher but apparently fresh and appealing to the waitress.

  “Hey, you know what might get your mind off your doomsday meeting with Clark and Madeline tomorrow?” Rudy asked. He pulled his gaze off the retreating waitress’s swaying ass with apparent effort. “Yesenia.”

  “What’s a Yesenia?” Asher wondered, digging into the mussels they’d just been served.

  “Oh, yeah. Yesenia,” Jimmy said, his usually somber expression growing animated. “The singer. She performs over at the State Room. They converted the old State Theatre into a nightclub, and Yesenia headlines there.”

  “What’s so great about her?” Asher asked.

  “She’s supposed to be incredibly talented, for one. I read about her in Inside Chicago recently. She writes her own music: jazz, blues, pop, R&B. She just got a recording contract too, from an indie studio.”

  “Forget all that. All you need to know is she’s supposed to be hotter than Hades,” Rudy interrupted. “I read a small article about her in the entertainment section of the Times. She’s starting to bust out of the local scene and is getting some national interest. I’m dying to see her show. You’ll get what I’m saying when you see her, Asher. Or more accurately, when you don’t see her.”

  Asher paused with his fork in midair and gave his friend a half-amused, half-exhausted glance. Rudy grinned slyly.

  “See, that’s the whole thing that Jimmy failed to mention—”

  “I thought her music was the most crucial thing,” Jimmy interrupted.

  “Yesenia performs behind a curtain,” Rudy continued as if Jimmy hadn’t spoken. “It’s a sheer curtain, so you can make out her smoking body and the way she moves and everything. But you can’t really see the details of her face. Her performances and lyrics are supposed to be off-the-charts sexy, but in an understated, unique way. The press has taken to calling her the Veiled Siren.”

  “Why does she sing behind a curtain?” Asher asked, thinking the whole idea sounded ridiculous.

  Rudy waggled his eyebrows. “No one really knows that, do they? That’s part of her mystique. Her allure. She makes people wild to tear down the curtain and get a good, hard look at her, if you know what I mean.” Asher rolled his eyes. Rudy’s grin widened. “There are rumors about why she does it. Supposedly, she has some pretty bad scarring. She doesn’t want anyone to see her face. But—” Rudy nodded down to the chair where he’d set his camera case. As a talented freelance photographer specializing in celebrity photos, Rudy was rarely without the primary tool of his trade. “The Veiled Siren can’t stay under wraps for long, as popular as she’s becoming. What do you say we try to get a glimpse behind the curtain tonight? She’s right on the cusp of becoming famous, it sounds like. I’ll probably get a good buck for an unmasked photo of her.”

  “What’s your plan? Have Asher and me jump on the stage and jerk down the curtain while you snap photos?” Jimmy asked sarcastically. “We’re thirty, Fattore, not eighteen. You’re not putting me at risk of getting arrested. Again.”

  “What are you complaining about? Tiger Woods never prosecuted, did he? Don’t worry about it. Let’s just go to Yesenia’s performance and we’ll see if any opportunities arise for a photo,” Rudy suggested with fake innocent casualness. He noticed Asher’s doubtful look. “I’m not gonna do anything illegal,” he said. “Come on. Are you guys in?”

  Asher shrugged. The woman’s performance sounded distracting. It might keep his mind off the dreaded morning meeting. For a few minutes, anyway.

  “I’ll go for the show, but I’m with Jimmy. You’re not roping me into any of your stupid schemes. I still haven’t forgiven you for that extremely personal case of poison oak you gave me when you insisted I hide with you in the woods to get that picture of Jennifer Lopez leaving that vacation house in Big Sur. I swear I feel a rash coming on every time I hear her name.”

  “At least you weren’t arrested,” Jimmy muttered in a beleaguered fashion under his breath.

  “Yeah, and it’s not my fault you exposed the general because you had to pee,” Rudy told Asher.

  “What was the logical outcome of that scenario? There was nothing else to do but drink that Jim Beam you brought while we were sitting there like idiots in the woods. I’m just saying: No. Stupid. Stunts,” Asher repeated succinctly.

  “You better believe it,” Jimmy said sternly.

  Asher smirked at Rudy’s wounded-puppy-dog expression.

  Chapter Two

  Asher was fondly familiar with the State Theatre. His grandfather—Grandpop—had taken him there for several plays when Asher was a kid, and once for a behind-the-stage tour of the historic building. Grandpop was the only person who had ever really made him feel connected to—and even a little proud of—the Gaites-Granville family history. Christian Ambrose Gaites-Granville may have been one of the shrewdest CEOs of the GGM empire, but he was also an amateur historian. Asher always suspected that he enjoyed and identified much more with his weekend hobby of research and explorations into Chicago history and his family tree than he ever had his role as ruthless executor of GGM. His hobbies had certainly been the means by which he’d bonded with his only grandson. Asher had adored Grandpop. Walking through the ornate front doors of the old theatre caused a sharp pain of loss to go through him.

  The old theatre had stood empty for years until, according to Jimmy, a slick European entrepreneur nightclub owner and musician manager had reopened a portion of it as a club. As he and his friends entered the showroom of the posh venue, Asher recognized the remaining Art Deco panels and crown moldings intermingling with the modern finishes. A gorgeous, sophisticated-looking hostess showed them to a four-top at the back of the showroom. The show hadn’t begun yet, but the place was going to be packed. He gave his drink order to a waitress and examined the well-heeled crowd. Apparently, Rudy and Jimmy hadn’t been exaggerating about the woman’s popularity. As they waited for their drinks, a man with a microphone introduced Yesenia.

  The opening notes of an evocative bluesy number resounded throughout the club. Everyone grew hushed with anticipation. Despite his preoccupation, Asher found himself catching the mood of the crowd. The heavy indigo curtain parted.

  Another curtain was revealed, a sheer crimson one that was hung to the center and to the right of the dimly lit stage. A four-piece band was situated to the left of the curtain, the musicians’ faces fully revealed to the crowd. Manufactured wind gently blew across the red veil, making it ripple in a liquid, sinuous movement. He squinted to see behind it. Was there an outline of a woman emerging from the matrix of light and shadow, or was his imagination playing tricks on him?

  Suddenly, her voice filled the club in a low, velvet seduction. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He sat forward in his chair, straining to see behind the undulating veil. The prickling on the surface of his skin amplified, as if his nerves had jumped to life at the sound of her smooth, resonant voice. The vague shadow of her grew clearer, the outline of a woman’s body as she subtly moved to the beat of the music.

  The outline of a beautiful woman’s body.

  “I told you,” Rudy muttered smugly to the left of him, but Asher was too focused to respond. He searched for details obsessively while her clear, soulful
voice echoed in his head and throbbed in his veins. The lyrics were poetic, fraught with longing and very sexy. The music was bluesy and unique, involving a combination of notes he’d never quite heard before. She wore some kind of pale, clinging dress. The material flowed over her body almost lovingly, caressing every lithe curve. She glided closer to the veil, her hips swaying and pulsing gracefully in time to the music. He realized that like the curtain, the dress she wore was partially translucent. Beneath the two sheer boundaries, he could make out long, shapely legs and the outline of her shifting pelvis and hips as she moved to the beat. The uncommon prickling of his nerves transferred to his sex. He hardened with amazing speed.

  “Jesus,” he muttered under his breath, a little floored.

  “She’s incredible, isn’t she?” Jimmy breathed out.

  “There’s an Arab influence,” Asher whispered to himself at the same moment he made the realization. Of course. Yesenia was an Arab name, wasn’t it? That was what made her music so unique. Among the jazz, blues and R&B influence in her song, he recognized the rhythmic intervals he’d often heard in Arabic music during his years in the Middle East and North Africa. For some reason, the realization added an element of uneasiness to his enthrallment.

  “What did you say?” Jimmy whispered as the band played the final lingering notes of the ballad, and Yesenia stilled. Asher didn’t respond. Every nerve in his body tingled. His cock throbbed sharply, as though her voice itself had been caressing that sensitive flesh, and it now protested at her silence. He craned forward in his seat, increasingly irritated by the veil and space that separated him from the singer.

  What the hell is wrong with you?

  Then the music began again—this song having a more pop feel to it—and her liquid, velvety voice flowed over him, both agitating and soothing his nerves. Admittedly, it was sexual, what he experienced in that moment. But something else had awakened inside him at the sound of her strong, fluid voice and the vision of her beautiful body and pulsing hips . . .

  . . . Something Asher had thought had died in him that summer eight years ago.

  • • •

  They stood huddled in the dark alley outside the State Room.

  Idiots, all three of us, Asher thought darkly.

  No, just two fools were present: Jimmy and him, for letting Rudy talk them into this. Rudy was just being himself.

  Rudy had herded them out of the club following Yesenia’s third encore. She’d held the audience completely under her spell for the entire performance. Perhaps Asher most of all, a fact over which he was increasingly confused and irritated. He’d finally allowed Rudy to push him out of the theatre when it became clear Yesenia wasn’t returning to the stage.

  Outside in the alley, the setting was worthy of a horror film: a chilly, damp, foggy autumn night. The nightclub served food, Asher realized. His nose crinkled in distaste when he inhaled the smell of rotting garbage from a distant Dumpster.

  Sure, he’d told Rudy he wouldn’t be roped into anything stupid. But when Yesenia’s electric performance had ended, he’d chosen to forget his protest. He’d agreed to join Rudy at the backstage exit. Maybe Rudy had known all along that the Veiled Siren would make him curious. If so, he’d been right.

  Rudy reasoned that since no one could get a photo of Yesenia leaving the theatre by traditional means, then she must exit night after night secretly through the back entrance. And even though part of Asher thought the plan was imbecilic, he’d gone along with it.

  Why?

  Because by the end of her performance, his desire to see that singer was ridiculously sharp and strong.

  Yet another part of him was increasingly uncomfortable, though. Not just because of how stupid he felt hovering in a deserted alley, ready to pounce on an unsuspecting woman. Yesenia clearly didn’t want to be seen. And with every second that passed, Asher found himself growing pricklier.

  He didn’t want Rudy to photograph her. He didn’t want Jimmy—or anyone—seeing her, for that matter.

  Himself? Well, that was a different matter altogether.

  Suddenly, all he wanted was to get his friends out of that alley. The sluggish rain that started to fall was the final straw.

  “She’s not coming out this way. Let’s go,” Asher said, his tone not inviting argument.

  Rudy shifted his readied camera and peered at his watch. “Just a few more minutes—”

  “I’m going,” Jimmy interrupted bluntly. “So is Asher. Come on, Fattore, it’s late and I’ve got a court date early in the morning. I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” He turned and stalked toward the distant lit street. Rudy lingered, casting an undecided look at the back doors of the theatre.

  “She’s not coming out this way,” Asher said. “Trust me. This is a waste of time.”

  Rudy wavered but then relented. He walked up next to Asher, putting his camera away in its case. He looked a little downcast but then rallied with his typical Rudy optimism.

  “At least the show was worth it, right?” he asked Asher as they exited the alley.

  “Yeah,” Asher said, looking straight ahead at Jimmy’s tall, retreating figure. “I’ll give you that.”

  • • •

  The next morning, Asher noticed the sun breaking through gray clouds and streaming onto the Chicago skyline as he headed back into the city. The image penetrated his furious, agitated state. He glanced dazedly at the dashboard clock. It was just now eleven a.m.

  He hadn’t even made it a full hour in Winnetka with his parents before all hell had broken loose.

  A sharp pain sliced through his volatile state, making him grip the steering wheel hard and clench his teeth. Asher had tried to be gentle with them. He loved his parents. Didn’t he? They were the only family he had.

  If you care so much about them, how come you couldn’t bring yourself to even shave your beard before you showed up at their house? In the end, you couldn’t even make the smallest concession for their comfort, could you?

  He’d been kidding himself in thinking that the meeting would be difficult and unpleasant, but bearable. Only seconds after they sat down at the table and he stated his plans, everything had exploded. Or more concisely given the stiff, WASP restraint of his parents, it had imploded.

  For seemingly the hundredth time, he recalled his father’s pale face and hurt, bitter blue eyes.

  “How is it possible that every time I imagine you couldn’t disappoint me more, you find a way to do it, Asher?” his father asked him, each word a quiet, piercing bullet. “This childish scheme you’re imagining will not occur.”

  “How does being offered the New York Gazette’s European bureau chief position in London before my thirtieth birthday equate to childish?” Asher wondered, floored by his father’s immediate, total rejection, and mad at himself for being caught off guard. Why did he continually believe there was a chance that one day things would get better between himself and his parents? “It’s a highly respected job, one that plenty of men and women twice my age want. You know that, Dad.”

  “I could have given you the equivalent of that job at any one of our papers years ago.”

  “I didn’t want to be given it. I wanted to earn it.”

  “You’re a Gaites-Granville. You were born with newspapers and news in your blood. You don’t need to earn anything.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Asher stated as calmly as possible. His mother hissed his name repressively for cursing.

  His father was ignoring both of them, already thinking up obstacles to Asher’s plan. “The Mandor Media Group may be our biggest rival, but—

  “I’ll never understand how you could have taken a job with them when you knew perfectly well how much it would hurt your father. It was like you willfully stabbed him in the back and left him here to bleed while you gallivanted across the globe, only thinking about yourself . . . even changi
ng your name merely to Gaites. What would your grandfather think of you lopping off half of your family history, all for the ease of a byline?” his mother asked in a quivering voice.

  “Mom—” Asher began, wincing at her choice of words.

  “Dick Brannigan still owes me a favor or two,” his father continued ruthlessly as though Asher and his mom weren’t even there. His dad referred to the CEO of Mandor Media, the New York Gazette’s parent company. “I’ll be contacting him later today. That position in London isn’t going to be available any longer. Not to you, it’s not.” His father rose from the elaborately set dining table and stalked away several feet, mumbling under his breath the whole time. “Of all the nerve, trying to undermine me by bribing my own flesh and blood to continue working with them. And you—” He’d spun suddenly and glared at Asher. “To go along with it all. Don’t you know Mandor Media and the Gazette just want you as a war trophy, stealing away the heir of their rival? They’re doing this to spite me, and as usual, you’re giving them exactly what they want.”

  Asher flew out of his chair at that, rattling the silver on the table and startling his mother.

  “That’s right, Dad. It’s all about you, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

  “Asher, please don’t shout,” his mother murmured, glancing in the direction of the kitchen, where the cook and the maid were. Asher had been spoon-fed the idea that only the most common, coarse people ever showed emotion in public. But he continued, undaunted.

  “The Gazette only wants me because I’m your son, not because I’ve worked my ass off reporting about complicated truths and convoluted class, religious and socioeconomic realities in war-torn regions, or that I found a way to tell those truths, despite heavy censorship; not because I’ve won a Medill Medal for my writing, or because I’ve built up one of the finest networks of informants and contacts in the Middle East for a Westerner. Not because one of my pieces has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. No. They only want me because I’m your fucking son!” he bellowed.