by Julia Kent
We were going to have some fun.
“One of the stagehands says the owner okayed a little prop action right at the opening,” Darla said, scaring the fuck out of me by appearing out of nowhere.
“What? What’s the prop?”
“Uh, Mavis the Chicken.”
We both started giggling. “A live chicken?” I asked.
“Yep. Mavis and Esme.”
My laughter died in my throat. “Oh, c’mon. Nobody wants to see a sex doll and a live chicken on stage with us.”
Her eyes bugged out like I was the stupidest man on earth. “That viral video of you was the best fucking promo for the band. Ever.”
“Too bad no one strapped a helmet cam to Trevor’s head the day we took all that peyote and he stole Mavis.”
Darla chewed on the end of a pen and pulled it out, scribbling furiously on a piece of paper on her clipboard. “Good idea,” she muttered, walking away.
“One minute!” someone called out.
We scurried into positions, stage lights nice and low, theater lights flickering with warning. The crowd began the slow, rumbling warmup of fire and excitement, and I felt it in my bones.
In my heart.
And then:
Showtime.
Charlotte
Garrett turned out to be fabulous company, smooth and eager to impress me. Sybil’s exact opposite. I assumed Liam had told his mom about the pregnancy, and if he had, she hadn’t said a word. Not one word.
You would think…
“You doing okay?” Garrett asked, as gentlemanly as Liam about my condition. “Would a ginger ale help? The morning sickness phase is really rough on you girls.”
Ignoring the “girl” reference (do girls have breasts? No. So I’m not a girl), I nodded. “I’d love one.”
He hailed a server like it was nothing, managing to snag the attention of an overworked young woman, and within minutes two sodas appeared. “I got you two in case it gets too busy,” he explained.
“Thank you.” Sweet. Like Liam. I hadn’t spent much time around Garrett when we were younger. He was always so busy with his dealership, but he’d been friendly enough. Shallow was the word my mom had always used, and I could understand why. He came across as a bit fake. Insincere.
But right now? He was trying. Hard.
Just like Liam.
The opening song got the crowd to their feet, catcalls, whistles, and deafening applause making me weep with joy, driving out my nausea.
This was the life we were meant to live, me and Liam. And while the baby had been a complete accident—long shot of long shots, as Liam often said—it was going to be all right.
It was going to be better than that.
The second song was a soulful ballad, one Liam told me Trevor had written for Darla. My heart cried as the chorus rang out:
When a naked soul finds you
You don’t have a choice
You have to stop and pause
You can turn away and never look back
But it will yank you back, because
Random acts of crazy draw you in
Random acts of kindness draw you in
Random acts of love draw you in
I was shaking, and it wasn’t from nausea. Fat, round tears dropped down the curves of my face and I reached for a cocktail napkin, one half soaked with condensation from my drinks, but it had enough dry spots to help.
“Wow,” Garrett said with a shaky out-breath, his hand washing over his chin in a contemplative gesture. “I had no idea they were this good.”
I just smiled.
“No, I mean it.” His face went serious, eyes troubled. He looked old, like a Dad, and less like an aging rock band follower. “I haven’t seen them perform since they were kids in the garage. They’re…good. Really good. They could break out and really make the big time.”
I stayed silent. Liam hadn’t told his dad anything about this performance, or the other one in December. He’d chosen to buckle down and work at the dealership, insisting to me that he needed to have a salary, health insurance for the baby, and for me if I would consider marrying him.
Marrying him.
That was another secret we were keeping from people.
He’d proposed. No ring, but…
I hadn’t given him an answer yet.
My mind went blank every time we talked about it. No firm yes, no firm no.
“He shouldn’t be behind a desk,” Garrett murmured to himself as the final, soulful chords rang out. “He should be up there.”
The house lights went down, and then a single spotlight lit on stage.
It showcased…a live chicken? Wearing a sign around its neck.
Bawk! Bawk bawk bawk! it clucked.
The crowd tittered.
“New keyboardist?” someone shouted. The band didn’t have one; it was a running joke.
A second spotlight lit up Trevor, who was gulping from a huge bottle of water. He froze.
“Speaking of random acts, Trevor, we’re so proud to bring you the reunion of a lifetime.”
He set the water down and got an Oh, shit look on his face, but smiled and played along.
“Mavis the Chicken”—oh, that’s what the sign around its neck said!—“is back,” the announcer explained, “and she wants you to make an honest woman out of her.”
Liam’s laughter rang out above the crowd. Darla walked up to Trevor and put her arm around his waist.
“And Liam, we found your lost love, too!” the announcer added in a revved-up voice. A third spotlight flashed on Liam, who held up two fingers and grinned. Sweat poured off him, his tall legs flexed in tight jeans.
“What’s he talking about?” Garrett asked.
Esme 2.0 appeared at stage left, a fourth spotlight on her. Same helmet of plastic, brown hair, same cockhole for a mouth, same irreverent, passive self.
“You never saw the video?” I asked, clapping along with the crowd.
“What video?” he shouted, but what happened next drowned out everything.
“Esme misses you, Liam,” the announcer shouted. “So we have a reunion to beat all reunions.”
A stagehand came out from the dark of the stage as Sam and Joe crowded around Trevor and Darla, Liam slightly to the right of them. The dude carried something in a big cat carrier. He bent down and opened it, pulling out an enormous, fat snake.
The crowd went crazy, jumping to their feet and chanting “RAOC rocks! RAOC rocks!” I realized it was a play on #RAOCROX.
Garrett and I joined them, my howling laughter rendering me speechless.
A giant movie screen clicked on above the stage, showing the various YouTube videos of Esme’s violation by the boa constrictor and Liam’s high-pitched screams.
“That’s the video!” I shouted to Garrett, who watched with great amusement.
“Haven’t heard sounds that high from him since before puberty!” Garrett said with a belly laugh.
While the audience went nuts, half laughing and cheering, half transfixed as they watched the video, three things happened at once:
1. The band on stage, and Darla, all suddenly leaped backwards by a few feet, faces changing from amusement to horror.
2. The stagehand was met by the rush of two men wearing khaki outfits, all shouting at each other in low, tight voices.
3. Mavis the Chicken made a series of squawks, and then a flurry of feathers appeared as she scrambled around on stage, squeaking.
The television screen cut to a live feed and grainy, out-of-focus camerawork showed what was going on, the cheers dying out as isolated screams of terror punctuated the night. We were close enough to hear scuffling, and then Darla screeched:
“What the hell kind of snake is that?”
The live feed showed a large, slithering snake creep up to Mavis the Chicken and, in what seemed like less than a second, open its jaws impossibly wide and strike, curving up and over, the burnt-orange and red beak gone in a flash, covered by slick, shiny
grey and two slitted eyes.
“Mavis!” Trevor cried out with a little too much emotion. Joe reached for him and wrapped his arms around the guy as Trevor struggled and Darla gave him a vicious look of such whatthefuckery that I burst out laughing, even as my stomach clamped down and a wave of nausea hit.
I reached for my ginger ale and drained it dry, sipping from the second one, grateful to Garrett for his careful planning.
“She’s just a chicken!” Darla shouted as Trevor broke free and ran to the chicken-snake wrestling competition.
The snake stopped moving, and the camera zoomed out for a wider, panoramic shot, showing all the band members, Darla, the stagehand and the two guys in khaki in a freakish pose, like a stylized Vogue cover.
The spotlights all moved to the snake, who was now one long, smooth line of reptile with a chicken-shaped bulge at its head.
“Dinner and a show,” Garrett gasped through a mortified giggle.
Some lighting technician with a sense of humor turned a spotlight on Esme 2.0, who flopped helplessly on a stool, her face appropriately surprised. Someone nudged her enough to make her fall within a few inches of the snake’s head.
It reached by biting her, the ensuing hiss of her popping like a giant fart.
Trevor jumped on the snake and straddled it, right over the giant bulge o’ Mavis. The chicken was clearly thrashing and the two men in khakis screamed orders at him, but Trevor was a blur of focus. Like a trained navy SEAL (do they train them on removing a chicken from a snake?), he pulled the snake’s head up just enough for a very angry chicken to emerge.
Mavis walked over to Esme and began pecking at her dead, deflating eyes.
The men in khaki quickly subdued the snake and Trevor picked up Mavis, whispered something in her ear, and turned to Darla with a look I couldn’t describe if promised the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in exchange for the words.
“That’s not really your fiancée!” Darla screamed.
The crowd jumped to its feet with a roar of approval and clapping and catcalls so loud you’d think they were calling for an encore.
Which they kind of were.
Liam
“Upstaged by a chicken, a snake, and a sex toy doll,” Joe groused during intermission. “We’ll never live this down.”
“How’s Mavis?” Trevor asked nervously.
“It’s not like the handlers were getting out the jaws of life for her, honey,” Darla snapped. “You went out there and nearly killed yourself over a chicken that isn’t even the one you kissed!”
Several techs turned their heads at that one, but wisely said nothing.
“She’s fine,” Sam said with finality. “What the hell happened out there? The handlers were idiots.”
“It’s not the handlers’ fault,” Darla said with a weird, sheepish look on her face. Her eyes were shifty, and it made the hair on my neck stand up.
“You arranged this?” I asked.
She looked at me with surprise, then a kind of admiration that I figured it out. “Yes. I just told them to bring a big snake and a chicken…”
“You just put a hit out on Mavis!” Trevor shouted. “Are you seriously that jealous of a chicken?”
“It’s not the real Mavis, you dumbass!” she argued. “And she was your fiancée! You and Joe have particularly poor taste in who you propose to.” Memories of Suzy and the island of Eden hit me.
“She’s got a point,” I said to no one, because they were ignoring me.
“But it…what? Then why did you…?” Trevor seemed truly perplexed.
“You need a shrink, dude. You’re abnormally attached to that fucking chicken,” I said.
“Fuck you.”
“Doesn’t make it any less true.”
The animal handlers had removed the snake from stage, and Esme had futt-futt-futted out into the crowd, where people were blowing up #RAOCROX on Twitter and Facebook. Snapchat was full of pictures from the performance, and Darla couldn’t keep up with all the new videos on YouTube.
We even got a quick visit from the venue’s general manager, who couldn’t stop laughing. “Glad the animal handlers have liability coverage for that one, because the chicken’s owner is furious.”
“We can pay for a new chicken,” Joe said.
“It’s a trained chicken, so our estimate is around $5000.”
“A $5000 trained chicken? How do you train a chicken?” Darla asked. “Teach it to cross the road? Make it flap its wings? Have it learn the fine art of happy ending massages? For five thousand dollars I’ll breastfeed a chicken from birth and train it to do play Mozart on a kazoo.”
“I’m thinking it wasn’t just the peyote that made you fall in love with a chicken,” Joe mumbled, looking at Trevor with a wary eye.
“Great work!” the general manager said, giving Darla the hairy eyeball. “You’re welcome back here any time. Just don’t bring anything too dangerous.” His laughter rang down the hall as the crowd began to chant louder. And louder.
We got ready for the second half of the performance, but who the hell could top that?
Charlotte
“That show was finger-lickin’ good,” I said.
Liam’s groan was my reward.
The drive from the concert to Liam’s new place was mercifully short, and the ginger ale and pressure-point combo, plus my weird nocturnal rhythm that made the nausea go away late at night, meant this was probably the best hour I’d had in weeks.
The craziness of the chicken-snake-Esme incident had faded into a profound sense of exhaustion in me, and three times Garrett had gently nudged me awake in the second half of the concert. Liam didn’t take any offense from it, fortunately. I’d woken at the end to thunderous applause and my cheek resting on Garrett’s jacket, which he’d stuffed under my face as an impromptu pillow.
Eight weeks into the pregnancy and everything looked fine. Two more weeks and I’d be at the same point I was at more than five years ago. Liam was with me now, and we were making the leap into the unknown, but we were doing it together.
“Garrett thought that was amazing,” I told him, yawning.
“We’ll never top it,” he said bitterly.
“Maybe a cow and a sword swallower…”
“Ha ha.”
“He really thought you were so good,” I added.
“Great.” He focused on the road and I struggled to get my point across. Being blunt was best.
“You don’t have to work for your dad,” I said as he pulled into a parking spot on the road, right in front of his building. I took that as a sign of great luck.
“Huh?”
“You were amazing on stage. A rock star.”
“That’s kind of the point.”
“No, Liam,” I whispered, and touched his arm. He went still. “I mean it. You belong up there with the rest of them.”
Conflicted chaos greeted me, those bright eyes so alive and full.
His palm reached for my belly. “I belong right here,” he said gruffly.
“You can be here without being chained to a desk at your dad’s dealership. I have health insurance. I can work. We’ll find day-care—plenty of residence life people have kids and families. You can move in and—” I stopped cold. We hadn’t talked about this at all, but it had been spinning in my mind since that day he came to find me, dressed up and so eager to make this all work. So responsible.
So there.
He wanted to get married, to make it all official, but I needed more space. It was too much, too soon, and a part of me was, well…
Still not quite convinced this was all really happening.
His head turned slowly toward me. Sweat tickled the ends of his hair at the neckline, where it was still so short. He looked more like a Special Ops military dude back from field training than a guy who’d just spent an hour and a half grinding on stage.
“You want that?” His words were low and choked with emotion.
“Yes.”
The hand that reach
ed for me was sure and steady. “I can’t move in with you and not be the one to take care of the family. You don’t have to work,” he said.
“I want to work!”
The laugh that poured out of him was one of mirth and overwhelm. “I didn’t say you couldn’t work. I don’t have the right to dictate that! I’m just saying you don’t have to work. I’m here for you. I’m this baby’s father. I never, ever thought I’d be able to do this, Charlotte. You’re giving me a gift I didn’t know I could receive.”
The car felt stifling, like I couldn’t breathe. I needed air. He sensed it, opening his car door and walking around to help me out.
“I can get out of a car without help.” I laughed.
“You won’t say that in eight months!” His arms cocooned me and he smelled so good, like fire and sweat and dust and work. His chin rested on the top of my head and I relaxed into the embrace, just starting to let myself trust that this really was happening. That Liam was here, our new baby was here, and that I could just be.
“In eight months the only reason you’ll have to be out at 2 a.m. will be to go and get me pickles and ice cream.”
“My dad said my mom’s big thing was shrimp rolls and pork rinds.”
“Ewwww.”
He shrugged. “It built a body this awesome.” He preened. I punched his shoulder and he led me to his new place.
Which was—and I’m being generous, here—the size of a janitor’s storage closet in my residence hall.
“Um, wow.”
“Don’t get lost.”
“I need a trail of bread crumbs.”
“Uh, you do that and the roaches will come.”
“Nice. See why I want you to move in with me? Where would we put the baby?”
He pointed to the wall next to a window. “I was thinking a nice hanging basket, right there.” He got another punch for that one.
I yawned, the tug of the little futon so inviting. My head spun a little with dizziness, and my stomach had settled down, leaving me with a strange, not-quite-normal feeling. I was that tired.
“You need to sleep,” he said softly.
“I need more than sleep,” I said, contradicted by yet another invasive yawn.