Chapter 12 Not Long Ago #3
That was better than another no. “Thank you. I really appreciate it. Have a good night.”
“You, too, Jace.” He hung up, and Jace put her head down on the desk.
Livvy and Rennie popped their heads in the door. “Everything okay, Aunt Jace?” Livvy asked.
Jace stood up and smiled, attempting to shake off the stress that was knotting her shoulders. “Nolan said he’d consider giving Paloma my number, so that’s progress, right?”
“Right!” Rennie seconded. “There’s still hope!”
Jace reached for her computer bag. “Ready to go eat, and maybe drink?”
“Anytime,” Livvy said.
They opted to go to an unpretentious Mexican place on Woodward, and soon they were installed in a wooden booth plowing through chips and salsa and sharing a pitcher of margaritas.
Jace rarely went out with anyone more than ten years outside of her age group, so she was glad the alcohol had washed away enough stress for her to enjoy herself, even though she wasn’t 100 percent sure about all the slang.
At first, she’d assumed that when Livvy said she was going to “get that bag” by starting her own PR firm someday that she meant she wanted to buy an expensive purse.
If nothing else, Jace was thrilled to have a conversation about something other than heartbreak and financial peril.
Especially since Rennie was eager to hear tales from her concert days.
“What was the craziest shit you’ve seen happen during a show?” Rennie asked.
“Wow, there’s a lot to choose from,” Jace said, thinking it through.
“Here’s one: At the end of Paloma’s first show in Boston, she threw one of her guitar picks into the crowd.
Two girls dove for it at the same time, crashed skulls, and knocked each other out cold.
An EMT was in the audience and hovering over them when they came to.
Then one of them realized the other one had the pick, so she jumped up to take a swing at the other girl and clocked the EMT.
Law enforcement were involved shortly thereafter. ”
“Ouch!” Livvy laughed.
“Oh, and then there was this show Paloma did at an outdoor venue just outside of DC in July. They didn’t go on until ten, but even at that hour it was hotter than hell and so humid the instruments were going out of tune halfway through each song. And no one had told us it was flying ant season.”
“Ewww!” Rennie said, fluttering their hands in front of their face in disgust.
“Swarms of them started flying around the stage lights,” Jace continued. “Thing was, Paloma and Mary were performing as if nothing was wrong, but Colin? He didn’t see the bugs at first because he was head down in the drums, but when he looked up, he shrieked and ran off stage.”
“I don’t blame him,” Rennie said, sticking out their tongue.
“I remember the weirdest show we went to, Aunt Jace,” Livvy chimed in.
“You took me to a four-act bill at the Artemis to celebrate my eighteenth birthday, with the Little Vettes going on last. The first band was a bunch of kids who looked younger than I was. One of the guys started hitting on you after they got off stage.”
“He just wanted me to buy him a shot of J?ger,” Jace said with a grunt. “Then the DJ blew out two of the house speakers playing punk over the PA between sets, so Mo had to run home to get more equipment.”
“Right!” Livvy said, bobbing her head. “It was still so noisy, no one noticed there wasn’t any background music until someone started singing ‘Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.’ We got down to ‘two bottles of beer’ by the time Mo got the speakers set up ahead of the Little Vettes coming on stage.
It was one in the morning by then, and everyone in the room had had plenty of time at the bar, so we were all rarin’ to go. Then the lead singer—”
“Cora Vette,” Rennie said.
“That’s right,” Livvy said, lifting her margarita skyward in tribute.
“Cora Vette gets up there, dragging on her vape pen, and sings three or four songs. She’s chatting with the audience in between numbers and looking fine in a leopard-print getup.
Then, in the middle of the next song, she walks off stage mid-lyric.
The rest of the band is vamping and cracking jokes, and it’s clear they have no idea what the fuck happened to their singer.
Cora finally comes back a few minutes later like nothing happened.
Then she tells the audience, ‘Clearly I’m not as punk rock as I used to be. I don’t throw up on stage anymore.’ ”
Rennie guffawed. “I love that! MOTHER!”
Jace nodded, not completely sure what they meant but assuming they were calling her a badass, which Cora Vette most definitely was.
“I wish I could go to more concerts, but no one wants to do them the right way,” Livvy said.
“I haven’t found anyone in Chicago who likes the same music I do who’s also willing to stand in line for an hour before doors open and protect our two square feet of standing room for the next four hours to be near the stage but not too close to the speakers, and hang out to chat with the band afterward.
Doing all that by yourself is fucking depressing. ”
“It’s hard to be an aesthete,” Jace said, smiling into her margarita.
“Do you see many shows these days, Aunt Jace?”
“Not often,” she admitted. “Function Fest took over all my free time. I was always prepping for an event, at an event, or recovering from an event. Besides, I don’t know anyone with the patience or stamina to deal with general admission; if there isn’t seating near a bathroom, they aren’t going.
So I don’t go either because, like you said, Liv, seeing a concert by yourself is fucking depressing. ”
“Sorry I can’t be your Detroit concert buddy,” Livvy said, frowning.
“You always have friends at the Artemis,” Rennie said.
“Sure, but there’s not really anyone to hang with anymore.
Sabine has her hands full running the place.
Mo rarely stays long because she has to get up early for work.
Louis has priced himself out of the Artemis’s range and works at the Fox and the Fillmore when he doesn’t have an assignment through me.
And there’s been such a revolving door of bartenders and house staff, I can’t keep track of who’s who. ”
Rennie patted Jace’s hand reassuringly. “You can always hang out with me, unless I’m on stage. Then you get to be right up front!”
“Thanks,” Jace said, appreciating their sincerity.
“Do you miss being part of the scene?” Livvy asked. “Managing a band. Going on the road and being at clubs night after night. Being part of the chaos. It has to be better than the corporate America homophobic bullshit you’ve had to deal with.”
“If I’d had the hits that you did with Paloma, I never would have looked back,” Rennie said.
Looking at Livvy and Rennie, Jace realized they were the age she’d been when her burgeoning career and her romantic relationship coalesced into a shimmering, upward arc.
At the time, she had been certain that her entire life would be a never-ending series of performances, record deals, and world travel, with her relationship with Paloma at the center of it all.
Together, they’d ride the trends from decade to decade.
They’d be a power couple within an elite group of rock stars who earned respect and sacks full of cash while maintaining their street cred.
They’d beat back lesbian bed death with an optimistic mindset, a stockpile of sex toys, and gallons of K-Y.
Their tattoos would never sag with age, and they’d look fierce with gray hair and wrinkles.
It had all seemed like a foregone conclusion.
“Sure, I miss it,” Jace replied. “How could I not?”
“Would you ever go back?” Livvy asked, her eyes hopeful.
She wasn’t going to admit it to her present company, but for the first time in a long time, Jace allowed herself to accept that she’d been thinking about getting back into the whole shebang: the Artemis, talent management, the music biz. “Let me see how this show goes first.”
They stayed for another hour, sharing more memories of shows gone by over burritos before going their separate ways.
Jace got in her car and plugged in her phone to find a soundtrack for her ride home; after her iPod’s demise, she’d uploaded a portion of her music library as a temporary solution.
Finding herself in a Little Vette state of mind, she went to search for their debut album when she saw she had a text from an unfamiliar number with a 231 area code.
She read the message and immediately felt like she’d plunged through a hole in a frozen pond and came back to the surface, gasping for breath. It said:
I’d like to talk
Call me tomorrow at noon
P