7. Welcome Home
IAN
We were even walking in rhythm across the parking garage.
It wasn’t planned. We were just so in tune with each other that our footsteps cracked along the concrete like Mal’s crisp percussion.
“Sheree hugged me,” Archer said again. “She hugged me!”
“I was there,” I said, not even trying to hold back my half grin. “I saw.”
“She said we were brilliant!”
“We were brilliant,” Mal added.
“Fuck yeah, we were!” I pumped a fist into the air and slapped a hand against an overhead sign. Kai Takahashi hadn’t said anything, but he’d nodded at me. He’d seen me.
“‘Lizabella, dance with me!’” Mal sang, and Archer and I joined in the harmony, hitting every note as we had been all night long. The sound filled the garage and echoed back like praise.
“‘When you are dancing, I feel free,’” we sang, and then Mal broke off to once again replay what had thrilled us for the last four hours.
“Did you see them coming in from the concourse? They weren’t just milling around waiting. We got them in their seats!”
“Fuck that,” Archer said. “We got them dancing!”
“Yeah, we did!” I climbed onto the bus and grinned with my half-a-mouth at Ken, who didn’t seem to care.
We piled on, full of piss and vinegar, and I saw Nicky sitting in the kitchen banquette. Confusingly, she held one finger over her mouth to shush us.
I stopped short, and Archer and Mal piled up behind me like a cartoon. “What’s up?” Archer asked. He peered past me and saw Nicky.
She was smiling but doing a hush hand gesture. Then she flicked a finger at Archer. C’mere.
He went, and Mal and I followed.
We peered over the edge of the table to see a very large, soot-gray sweater on the seat beside her.
Then the sweater sat up abruptly, banged its head on the table, and eyed us alertly.
“What the hell is that?” Mal asked.
Archer slid those snaky hips of his into the booth next to Nicky and reached past her to pet the dog. “Dude! Look at this little beast! God, he’s awesome!”
Nicky looked a little dizzy to have Archer pretty much in her lap, but she pulled it together to correct him. “She. Her name is Charlotte, and she’s a Great Dane.”
Mal tucked into the booth on the other side and ran his large hand down the dog’s flank. “I thought Great Danes were really big.”
“They are,” she said. “This one is only three months old. She’s a puppy.”
Charlotte, proving she was a true female, fell in love with Archer as soon as he stroked her head. She wriggled over Nicky’s lap until she got her head up against Archer’s shirt and rolled over to expose her belly to his caress.
Typical. Just like all the other women in his life. It made me laugh out loud, which wasn’t something I did too often, since my right cheek wouldn’t pull my mouth up anymore.
Nicky looked up at the sound and I turned away quickly, but she didn’t seem to mind. “Isn’t she glorious?” she said. “Someone gave her to Sheree, and Basc Newton is seriously allergic. Sheree’s going to find Charlotte a new home, and I guess we’re going to keep her until that happens.”
“Wait, what? Give her up? Why? She can stay here with us, can’t she?” Archer had pulled Charlotte into his arms like a baby. She lay absurdly happy, all four legs stuck in the air and long tail wagging.
“Yeah, we should keep her.” Mal reached past Nicky to curl his hand along the barrel of Charlotte’s chest. Nicky was happy to cuddle closer to Archer to give Mal room. I grinned. Archer was having a very good day.
I leaned forward to talk to the driver. “Ken, you got any problem with a dog on your bus?”
He turned around in his seat to look at us. “You clean up the mess, I got no problem with it. No pooping on the bus,” he said sternly to Charlotte. She licked Archer’s grinning face in agreement.
“All right, then,” I said. “That’s settled. Any reason why we’re not on our way, Ken?”
“I was told to hang out. I’m hanging out.”
So, okay. I took the swivel chair across from the kitchen table and waited my turn to cuddle the biggest puppy anyone had ever seen.
It took another forty-five minutes and Charlotte had fallen asleep in Archer’s arms (he refused to put her down), but then I heard a voice from the front door. “Hiya, Ken! How’s doing?”
“Sweet thing. Nice to see you remember me!”
“Like I could forget!”
Up the stairs came . . . yeah. Sheree. On our bus.
I hid my gasp and made sure my hair was tugged over my scar. She was oblivious. Followed by a tall, lean man in black, she came forward to see Charlotte in Archer’s arms. “How is she?” she asked. “I was going to ask if I could take her for a walk.”
Archer’s eyebrows were in his hairline. For once, he was speechless. Mal’s mouth was hanging open. Only Nicky had any cool.
“Hi, Sheree,” she said cheerily. “Charlotte is great. We took her out a little bit ago. Want to see the stuff we got for her?”
Sheree spoke to the blade of a man, the blade spoke into his wrist and then to Ken, and Ken pulled out, following the star coach out of the garage and into the night on the way to New Orleans. Sheree sat on the floor.
Sheree. Sat on the floor. Of our bus.
And then Charlotte woke up and insisted on squirming out of Archer’s arms to get to Sheree.
The world’s biggest rock star laughed in delight as Charlotte covered her face in eager licks. “I had to promise Basc I’d take a full shower in that tiny bus bathroom before he saw me again, but oh, this is so worth it! Hi, baby!”
Nicky nudged Archer until he let her out of the banquette—perhaps the only time she would have wanted to leave his side—so she could pull out the dog bowls, food, toys, beds, books, and whatever else she’d gotten for the dog.
She and Sheree cooed over every item, and Archer ended up on the floor with them. The blade and I had the two swivel chairs, and Mal commented from his post, kneeling backward on the banquette and facing the puppy pile at the front of the bus.
“Okay,” Sheree said. “What are we going to do about this baby dog?” She regarded us all. It wasn’t hard to catch anyone’s eye. We were staring at her as surely as if she were spotlit. “Do I need to find someone to take her?”
Our gazes shifted. Archer, Mal, and I had a moment of silent communication. Archer spoke for us. “We want her. She’s an Aftermath dog now.”
Sheree’s beaming smile was our reward. I could put it on my professional resume: Once I made Sheree perfectly happy.
“Good,” she said simply. And then the discussion was done, but not the puppy cuddling.
It took a while to lose our awkwardness around Sheree, but the dog had a lot to do with bringing us all to a more even footing. The security guy was Emmett and turned out to be a pretty regular human, even if he did look like he could kill you with a spork.
Nicky spoke up bravely. “Sheree, I’m supposed to do social media for Aftermath, and having you in their feed would really help a lot. Can I take some candids?”
“Thank you for asking. Take all you want, but please run them past my manager before you post them. Have you met Clinton?”
Nicky beamed and wrote down the manager’s contact information when Emmett provided it.
As the conversation rose and fell naturally, I considered how easy it all felt. Just another part of a day when all the gears meshed. When the current and amperage matched. When efficiency was effortless.
After Charlotte fell asleep with her head on Sheree’s crossed ankles and her butt snugged up against Archer’s thigh, Sheree sighed happily. “Isn’t this the best? Lots of people hate touring, but I really like it. I don’t have too many chances to meet people anymore, do I, Emmett? You guys were on tonight.”
We couldn’t help but grin, even if I had to turn my head away so she didn’t have to see my lopsided face. “It felt so good,” Archer said. “Thank you for giving us this chance.”
“Oh, you guys had me at ‘Lizabella.’ I love that video.”
Mal was particularly pleased. She pressed and found out that he’d written the song, and Archer’s then-girlfriend had starred in the video.
“Not a girlfriend anymore?” Sheree asked archly, looking from Archer to Nicky, who was curled up at his side.
“Well, we’re still friends,” he said, missing her matchmaking entirely.
“Leave them happy, huh?” Sheree was one of the first women I’d ever met who didn’t instinctively smolder at Archer. Must have been because she was newly married to a pretty good-looking guy.
“If I can.” Archer shrugged. “No cause to hurt anyone.”
Archer had no idea how many women in his wake were not at all happy with his departure.
“That’s good.” Sheree stretched and leaned back on her hands. “This was a good concert tonight. Every event is special, right? Like, we’ve got two insanely good jazz musicians who are going to play before you guys in New Orleans, and I’m hoping they’ll play with me on my cover of ‘Born on the Bayou.’”
“I bet they’ll jump at the chance,” I said. “Playing with you can make or break a career. I guess we’re proof of that.”
“Nah,” she said easily. “You guys are doing fine on your own. You’re going to be huge. I can tell.”
She put a stop to the conversation with that statement. The three of us were too overwhelmed to respond.
She went on as if she hadn’t reoriented the globe for us. “I wish I could do something special for the two shows in Miami. Do something that would tell those audiences that I knew I was there and not just giving them the same show everyone’s getting, you know? Like, did someone just hand me a cue card so I could say it’s so great to be in . . . fill in the blank. Right?”
“Like what?” Nicky asked.
Sheree shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t exactly imitate the Miami sound, you know? Not without looking like an idiot.”
I wasn’t the only one chuckling at the idea of Sheree looking like an idiot. Mal offered a suggestion. “What about singing something in Spanish?” he asked. “Big Latino population down there.”
“I thought of that,” Sheree admitted. “But what, is the question.”
Nicky sat straight suddenly, startling Charlotte, who wagged her tail twice and went back to sleep. “These guys do a Spanish song! You could do that song!”
“‘Perfidia,’” Archer offered. “It’s really gorgeous. We could teach you.”
Sheree looked interested, but I couldn’t let that go. “No, no, don’t do that. That’s totally wrong.” They looked at me, and I had to go on. “Just because it’s in Spanish—I mean, that’s like saying—” I couldn’t come up with an analogy. I shrugged, uneasy with them all looking at me.
Sheree was the one who pushed. “Like saying what? What’s wrong with the song?”
I ducked my head and winced. “First of all, the song was written by this brilliant Mexican composer. The original sound is classic Mexican. Tight three-part harmony, three guitars—it’s as Mexican as it could be. You play that for a bunch of expat Cubans and they’ll boo you off the stage. You’ll look like . . .” I couldn’t tell Sheree she really would look like an idiot, but she would. “Besides, it’s from a man, singing about the woman who broke his heart. It’s all wrong for you.”
That was as much as I’d said, including hour-long visits to a therapist, in about a year, and I didn’t like it.
“Well, okay,” Sheree said. “Good to know. What, then?”
They all looked at me. Even the dog raised her head to regard me.
I sat back. “Well, something Cuban. I mean, obviously. And that’s not easy to—you need Celia Cruz. I mean, if you can pull it off.”
“Celia Cruz,” she said thoughtfully. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”
I forgot my broken face. “Because she was awesome. Absolutely awesome. I mean, here. Listen to this.”
I pulled up “Quimbara” on my phone. Even through the shitty little speaker, the pulse, crackling percussion, and astonishing, joyous energy was electrifying.
“Oh my god, I love this!” Sheree said. Mal was already drumming on the table, and Archer was wiggling his tiny hips. “Is this the one I should learn?”
“Hang on,” I said. “Let me pull up . . .”
By the third song, she’d gotten Ken to radio bus three, and suddenly, her percussionist and drummer were climbing our bus stairs. Mal looked like he’d died and gone to heaven.
We’d narrowed the possible songs down to either “Oriza Eh” or “Cao Cao Mani Picao” when I noted she wasn’t getting anywhere without a brilliant horn section. That necessitated a call to bus four, where her trumpet and sax were both going to sleep. Soon our crowded front lounge was filled wall-to-wall with brilliant working musicians, all of whom were digging Celia Cruz.
As they should’ve been.
“Archer can sing the Johnny Pacheco parts,” Sheree said casually. By now, Archer, Mal, and I were standing in the back of the front lounge to get out of the way of the band. “You wouldn’t mind, would you, Archer?”
He shook his head woodenly. “Mind,” he said as if hypnotized. “Mind—no. Not at all.”
“Great. And . . . I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten your names.” She looked at Mal.
“I’m Mal,” he said. “That’s Ian.”
“Great. Mal and Ian. Thanks. You guys will sing backup with my singers?”
We both nodded robotically. She could have asked us to clean the toilets and we would have done it. Sing onstage with Sheree? Um, yes please.
Her sax player (he’d introduced himself as Leo) told her there was no way he and Eric could cover the part. “You need some Cuban horn players to fill out the sound.”
“I’ll get Clinton on it,” she said, pulling out her phone. Who the hell was Clinton? There was too much going on to keep track. “You’ll all help me audition them, right?” We didn’t know who she was talking about, but whatever you want, Sheree. Whatever you want. “Marco is going to love choreographing something for the dancers. I hope I can pull off my part.”
It was dazzling watching them work. By the time Charlotte woke up and began barking to go out, they had the bones of “Oriza Eh” worked out, and Sheree insisted on taking the dog for a walk along the side of the highway, Emmett never leaving her side.
The musicians said their good-nights like we were all old friends. They filed out to their buses, now rumbling in a waiting line behind ours.
Nicky was next to me as the four of us stood by Ken to peer out the window. “Do you suppose it’s like Air Force One?” she asked. “Were we bus one as long as she was aboard?”
Ken was in a good mood. “Anything you want. Unless it’s number two. I told you.”
We all chuckled, and Sheree brought Charlotte back on the bus. Overhearing Ken, she made sure to hand him the neatly knotted poop bag. “Take care of this, won’t you, Ken darling?”
“Oh, you brat!” Only for Sheree would Ken allow such talk.
She was laughing as she turned to depart for the evening, but she stopped by me. On my right side. I tried to look away, but she caught my eye.
“After Miami, we’ve got Montgomery and Louisville. See if you can come up with some suggestions for songs I could personalize to each city. I’d love to hear your ideas. In fact, take a look at the whole tour. Would you mind?”
I laughed, crooked and ugly, but she didn’t mind. She smiled back when I said, “I don’t mind. Louisville has a huge blues tradition. Are you?—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t get started now. I’m full of Cuban rhythms. We’ll talk later. Good night, you guys.”
She went down the stairs and picked up her Emmett shadow.
We sighed as one as Ken closed the door and waited for the star coach to take its star back and lead us down the road. “She’s awesome,” Archer breathed. We all nodded.
Time to come back down to earth. It was four in the morning. I shook myself. “All right. Where’s this dog sleeping tonight?”
Archer and Mal both spoke up, but Nicky overrode them. “She needs her own den,” she said. “The books say that’s good for her. I have baby gates. I’m going to wall off the kitchen table.”
“Not on her first night,” Archer said in that voice that made women melt. “She can sleep with me.”
“If you teach that dog to sleep with you,” I said, “before you know it, she’ll take over the bed.”
“This angel? This little darling?” Archer cuddled Charlotte, who licked him sleepily. “No way.”
“It’s a bad idea,” I warned, but he wasn’t listening.
Nicky tried again. “You can’t. You’re in a middle bunk. If she gets up while you’re asleep, she’ll fall out.”
“Then I’ll sleep in the bottom bunk across from Nicky. Tonight Charlotte and I are sleeping together, aren’t we, lover?”
Nicky looked a little breathless at Charlotte’s good fortune, but at least she would be beside Archer. Was that better than being under him? Hard for me to judge.
I grabbed Mal as he headed back to the can. “Dude, sleep in the back lounge with me.”
“The fuck?”
“Come on. I slept so well when I had someone sleeping beside me.”
He paused. “You mean you haven’t . . . since the bike crash?”
I shook my head, hiding my embarrassment. “You think someone wants to sleep next to this? No. No one.”
“Ian. It’s been months.”
I glared at him. “I’ll have you know that one of the side effects of insomnia is a lessened desire to . . . sleep next to someone, so you can shut the fuck up. I don’t want to spoon you. Just sleep on the sofa.”
“Quit ordering me around. I’ll be back there in ten minutes.”
I chucked him hard on the shoulder, knowing he’d realize I was thanking him. Another good night’s sleep, and I would own New Orleans as surely as I had owned Charlotte.