Chapter Four #2
I don’t, but I say, “No problem, thank y—”
I’m whisked down another long hallway before I can finish the words. I guess my lucky jeans and white tank will have to do. We pass a swath of dark curtains where I can hear scaffolding and instruments being moved around on the other side. The stage must be out there. My stomach drops—
No, flutters. Stay away.
As we hurry down a dark hallway lined with posters of great blues musicians, Lionel talks while texting.
“Molly will be in there waiting for you. She can help with makeup. Here’s my cell—” My phone pings in my back pocket.
“Text me if you need anything. And turn that off before the show, obviously.”
And then he’s gone, down another hallway, yelling at someone who is only holding six coffees, not seven, and I’ve been deposited before a door marked Women’s Dressing Room.
Try as I might to fight them, the flutters have definitely arrived.
As has heart racing and dry mouth. I don’t get stage fright, and I’m not even nervous about meeting new people—what I am is in way over my head.
There is no statistical way I don’t mess up horrifically.
I haven’t rehearsed. I don’t know the lead singer.
I’ve only ever performed to a crowd of hundreds.
But there’s nothing I can do now. Time is of the essence, and I cannot fail my mom and Mike and Everly and Jen and Lionel and all these people who are counting on me…or who just think I’m “kind of hot.” I suck down some fortifying breaths, turn my phone off as instructed, and push my way inside.
The dressing room is far mellower than I expect. Probably because Lionel is a frantic tornado of chaos, and in here it’s actually quiet. Peaceful, in fact.
There’s only three other women inside. One who’s scary gorgeous, with luxurious black curls and flawless bronze skin, wearing a dark slip dress over mesh long sleeves.
She’s applying eyeliner perfectly in the mirror under the soft fluorescent bulbs and gives me a sup head nod when I close the door behind me.
Lying on the couch reading an old Newsweek is a woman I’d guess is in her late forties, wearing beat-up, untied Doc Martens, baggy cords, and chewing a toothpick.
“Hey.” Her voice is raspy and deep. “Are you the backup singer?”
“Yeah.” My heart rate lowers with her energy. “I’m Clementine.”
“Wren,” she says around the toothpick. “Make yourself comfortable.”
The last girl has a braid hanging down her back and her freckled nose buried in a laptop. She’s sitting cross-legged on a stool pulled up to a fold-out table in the otherwise bare, windowless room. “Give me two secs,” she says, eyes still on the screen.
“Take your time.” In fact, I appreciate the breather.
Some Bluetooth speaker is playing the Spice Girls, which I have a gut feeling was Freckles’s choice, and a single drugstore candle is burning next to mesh-top gal. I take a seat in the other red plush chair before the mirror.
“You can use my makeup,” Mesh Top offers.
“Thanks.” The word comes out a bit high-pitched.
“Molly,” she says, sticking out one hand while applying bronzer with the other.
I shake it as I say, “Clementine.”
“And I’m Indy,” Freckles adds, closing her computer. “Sorry, had to upload some last-minute shots.”
My expression must betray my confusion, because Indy clarifies. “I’m not in the band. I take all the photos and videos and run Halloran’s socials while we’re on tour. Wren plays drums and Molly is lead backing vocals.”
A knock at the door has both Indy and me turning, though Molly and Wren don’t bother.
“Come in,” Indy calls out.
The guy who enters looks like he barely made it through the doorframe. He’s probably just about six feet, but he’s almost wider than he is tall. And by the looks of it, that’s all beefy muscle. He has some long-since faded tattoos on his biceps and is rocking a backward baseball cap.
“Mic check,” he says with a thick Boston accent.
“Pete, this is Clementine, the replacement vocalist,” Indy says. “Clementine, this is Pete. He’s our sound guy.”
“And I keep everyone entertained.” He grins. I do, too—his smile is contagious.
When Molly makes an unimpressed noise, he adds, “Don’t listen to her. Molls thinks I’m hilarious.”
Molly sighs a tune that sounds like Hm, do I? She doesn’t even look at Pete as she applies bright red lipstick, smacking her mouth provocatively and rubbing the pad of her ring finger along her lower lip ever so slowly.
Pete’s utterly entranced, swallowing thickly, and frankly so am I. Even Wren has finally put down her Newsweek .
I’m still studying Molly even as I begin to apply mascara in the mirror, and nearly poke my eye out. I make a sound like a baby mouse.
“Don’t worry,” Indy says, fingers tapping on her computer once more. “Molly has that effect on everyone.”
“Damn straight she does,” Pete mumbles.
Other than that, my makeup looks decent, though my ashy blond waves and huge brown eyes have nothing on Molly’s beauty. She’s like a panther or a black widow—gorgeous in a might-kill-you kind of way. I can see why nobody can take their eyes off her.
And Indy seems friendly and helpful, and Wren is calm or maybe just doesn’t give a shit, either of which I can appreciate. I already have so much to tell my mom. She’s going to get one hell of a voicemail tonight.
Pete hooks us up with our microphones and I go over the lyrics in my head once more.
It’s an eighteen-song show—sixteen of which require backing vocals—followed by a three-song encore ending with “If Not for My Baby.” Since Cara Brennan isn’t on tour with Halloran this time, Molly will sing her portion of the song each night.
Eventually, the last two members of the band filter in.
Turns out this venue has no greenroom, so we all cram comfortably into the women’s dressing room, and a stagehand checks all the instruments before bringing them out to the stage.
While Indy shows Molly some of the photos they took from the night before, I meet Conor, the bassist, and Grayson, who plays the keys.
Conor’s Irish brogue is so thick I have to nod along to half the words he says and just hope I’ve not agreed to some kind of Satan-worshipping orgy.
Which feels possible given his pierced lip, pentagram tattoo, and spiked belt that’s a lot more intimidating on him than when I dressed as Harley Quinn for Halloween.
“Don’t mind him.” Grayson grins when Conor asks me if I’ve ever given a lash to a manky tour the likes of this one. “He knows you can’t understand him.”
Conor laughs hard into his beer and finds his way over to the couch Wren has commandeered. He lifts her legs easily and sits, before she lays them back down over his lap, still reading.
“Conor and Halloran grew up together. I think they actually make each other more Irish.” I laugh and Grayson laughs, too, his eyes warm on my own. There’s something familiar about him and it makes me feel a little less homesick. “We try to keep them separated to stop them misbehaving.”
I detect a slight southern twang in Grayson’s voice and ask, “Are you from Texas?”
Grayson shoves his shaggy brown hair out of his face and a dimple reveals itself on his cheek. “Georgia, but good guess. You’re from Texas, though. I can tell.”
“Correct.” I grin. Everly was right. This keys player is definitely cute. “So where is Halloran?”
Grayson weighs his answer, running a casual hand over his dark green Henley. “He doesn’t really hang out before the shows. Sort of an introvert that way.”
I only nod to Grayson and say, “Makes sense.”
But something about it rubs me the wrong way.
He’s the leader of this team, and he doesn’t spend time with them before his gigs?
Everly had said he was quiet—but not even a word of encouragement before the first show of the brand-new tour?
That was such a big part of what I loved about theater—the comradery felt among all the actors right before we went onstage.
The vocal warm-ups, the traditions and superstitions.
The nervous laughter and racing hearts. Especially growing up just my mom and me, it was my way into the big, loving family I’d craved my whole life.
Twenty minutes after a Memphis-based blues singer makes his way off the stage to lukewarm applause, we begin our ascent.
Through the dark curtains, I can hear the crowd cheering.
Thousands and thousands of people.
My heart begins to thump rapidly, but I embrace it. I haven’t felt anxious to perform in years. And if I’m being honest, I’ve missed the rising excitement and tangled nerves every single day since I stopped doing musical theater. How had I not let myself feel that?
We make our way onto the stage, and the lights are nothing short of blinding. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. I blink rapidly, then raise my hand to shield my eyes and take in the roaring audience.
The venue is a two-story art deco–style theater that has apparently hosted everyone from Al Green to Johnny Cash. It’s one of the smaller venues we’ll play, and still seats six thousand people.
Six. Thousand. People.
You think you know what six thousand people looks like, from movies, from going to big shows but…
it’s nothing compared to staring out at a sea of them.
A bellowing, blossoming mass. The sheer number of blinking phone lights and handmade signs astounds me.
Six thousand people means twelve thousand ears that are going to hear me sing tonight.
I’m stunned—I’m dizzy —I’m…feeling somewhere between more gratitude than I know what to do with and the urge to steal Lionel’s Skechers and run for my life.
I follow Molly to take our places behind the mics.
When she adjusts her stand to her height I do the same.
Grayson sits down at his keyboard and women in the front row scream his name so loudly I fear for their vocal cords.
Conor gets a fair amount of love, too, and I catch a woman flash her breasts at him.
Conor tips the neck of his bass toward her in appreciation.
And still, no Halloran.
But this audience…it’s not just the size of them.
I’ve been to concerts. Everly and I have seen the biggest pop stars in Austin, we’ve belted stadium country, we’ve even attempted a mosh pit—I’ve never seen an audience so feral for someone before.
The women especially…they’re practically foaming at the mouths.
I’ve listened to the music. I understand his lyrical gift and his angel’s voice and his outrageously tall, long-haired, indie-god thing.
I’ve seen videos of women weeping before the Beatles and fainting at BTS shows.
I am moved by music more than anyone I’ve ever met, and even still , the level of mania I’m witnessing seems a little excessive.
I turn to Molly as if to say, This is nuts, right? But her eyes have fallen to stage left.
The crowd has ratcheted up to an even higher decibel than I thought possible. The lights go down, drowning the theater in deep, sensual red. Artificial fog billows in soft clouds across the stage floor. Conor strums the first, bone-chilling note on his bass.
And then…Tom Halloran walks out.