Chapter 13
The atmosphere in the lodge was briefly stalled by Erik’s arrival. Helena noticed the low voices, strange glances, and groups of drinkers talking with their heads bent together. But soon enough the music restarted, the guitarist turned up the amp, and the party buzz returned.
Maggie got to her feet and Helena watched her weave through the room toward the stage, hair swaying at her back.
Helena loved drunk Maggie. Her body became completely boneless, as if she were dissolving beneath the love she felt for everyone around her.
“What’s she doing?” Liz asked.
Maggie, standing on tiptoes, whispered something into the singer’s ear. Then she turned, looking back toward their table, pointing, beaming.
Helena nudged Joni. “Think your night off is over.”
Joni looked up.
Across the room, Maggie was grinning, beckoning Joni.
“Oh God . . . ,” Joni groaned, shaking her head at Maggie, mouthing, Don’t!
But the singer was already leaning into the mic, announcing in lilting English, “I am told we have one special guest in the room tonight.”
Several pairs of eyes swung immediately to their table.
Liz, cigarette tucked behind an ear, placed her forearms on the table.
She leaned forward until she was nose to nose with Joni.
She slapped one palm against the table, then the other.
She eyeballed Joni, a steady drumbeat beginning to build, as her face split into a wide smile. “Joni Gold! Joni Gold!” she chanted.
Helena picked up the rhythm, her rings clinking against the table edge, champagne glasses trembling.
At the bar, another group joined the chant. “Joni Gold! Joni Gold! Joni Gold!”
The voices grew louder, everyone looking in their direction. Liz stood, reached out her hand, and pulled Joni to her feet.
Joni grabbed her champagne, tossed it back, then let herself be led across the room as the crowd cheered.
At the front, Maggie was clapping delightedly as Joni squeezed past the amp.
The musician said something in Joni’s ear, then unhooked the guitar from his neck, and Joni put the strap around hers.
Helena picked her way to the front, standing with Maggie and Liz.
“I can’t believe she’s going to do this!” Liz said, beaming wildly, as Joni checked the tuning of the guitar.
“I can,” Helena said. Applause was Joni’s sustenance.
She’d never been the girl calling, Hey, look at me over here!
She waited until she was wanted. Until her name was chanted.
Until the tables were pounded and everyone in the room was swept up in the excitement and was hoping, hoping that she’d perform.
Then—and only then—would she step forward.
Helena studied Joni. She wore an old T-shirt with a pair of ripped shorts, her slim legs stuffed into heavy boots.
A sleeve of leather bracelets flocked up her right arm, and her septum was pierced with a silver bar.
She wore just a flick of kohl around her eyes, her prominent cheekbones and sharp green irises doing the rest of the work.
Everyone was watching. The stage was hers.
Joni closed her eyes; her body began to rock, the rhythm already playing in her head. Instinctively, she angled her face toward the microphone. With her mouth almost touching it, her lips parted, her eyes opened. “Hey.” One word, smoky, low, deep.
The room fell silent.
And into that silence she began to sing.
Oh, Jesus! That voice.
Dusky, deep. The resonance ripping through the lodge, sending shivers down Helena’s neck.
She was a rock star.
Every pair of eyes was trained on Joni. As she strummed the guitar, the music drew the crowd forward, heads nodding, hips swaying, feet moving.
No one could take their eyes off her. That was the thing about Joni: her talent was shocking.
You could feel it, raw and beautiful and throbbing.
You wanted to reach out, touch it, because you understood that what you were witnessing was something special.
Helena’s skin buzzed with the electricity in the room.
Watching Joni perform was mesmeric. Her voice was textured—gravelly and deep one moment, then soft and haunting in a single note change.
It was like she was singing not just with sound, but from a place deep inside her.
The guitar became part of her, her long fingers dancing instinctively across the fretboard, strumming chords, picking notes.
You could see the song moving through her body, the flex of her spine, the arc of her neck, the mellow close of her eyelids. She became fluid, transformed.
Joni didn’t play music. She was the music.
The room swelled with energy. Helena let the music flood her body, her spine softening. She took out her phone and hit the Video button.
Liz tugged free her hairband, shaking loose her ponytail. Maggie swirled, expression ecstatic, dress lifting around her knees. Behind them, a girl whistled, fingers thrust hard between her lips. A man with a shirt unbuttoned to his navel threw his hands in the air.
Maggie’s arms circled Helena and Liz, the three of them leaning in together.
Helena turned the phone briefly on them as they grinned, and then at Joni, who looked up from the mic, straight at them, and beamed.
They could have been twelve, or eighteen, or twenty-five.
That was the magic of old friends: the years were stripped away.
Joni was theirs and they were hers. All the hurt and anger and resentment disappeared because Joni shone so bright that her light banished the darker memories, left Helena so dizzy and struck that she forgot to be mad.
At the song’s end, the crowd burst into applause.
Joni smiled, eyes shining, revealing perfect white teeth with the tiniest gap between the front two.
Her first manager had asked for her teeth to be corrected and Joni had said, “Sure. Right after you have your personality corrected.” That was the thing about Joni, she didn’t take shit.
She did what the hell she wanted—and it was intoxicating.
It was meant to be one song. That’s what Joni had said. Just one. But Helena felt the heat of this crowd. There was no way they were letting her go. As Joni removed the guitar strap from her neck, the previous singer stepped forward to the crowd, asking, “Who wants another?”
The room erupted.
“Me!” Liz yelled, jumping up and down on the spot. “Play ‘Black Shell’!”
Liz’s shining pride in her best friend was lovable. She was never jealous of Joni’s beauty or success or fame. She accepted her long absences with grace, not complaint. Liz seemed flattered that, despite the glamour of Joni’s world, she’d still get on a plane for her.
“This one is for my girlfriends,” Joni said huskily into the mic. Then she strummed the first chord of “Black Shell” and the crowd surged.
Helena loved this song, too. She remembered being sent the track when it was fresh from the recording studio.
“Listen to this,” she’d told her mother, playing it for her.
Tears had filled her mother’s eyes, her hands pressing to her heart as she’d listened.
“Tell Joni I’m so proud of her. She must visit when she’s home next. ”
In their teenage years, Joni had come over to Helena’s after school most weeks.
Helena’s mother had taught her how to play the keyboard, how to read music, how to use the incredible range in her voice.
For Joni’s seventeenth birthday, her mother had spent her wages on a Moleskine notebook, pressing it into Joni’s hands, saying, “For writing your own songs.”
When Helena’s mother died, she’d left Joni her old keyboard and an antique wooden box containing the sheet music that they used to practice together. Helena had planned to give it to Joni when she returned for the funeral—only Joni had never shown up.
The crowd writhed, but Helena remained still.
If her mother were alive, she’d have been cheering Joni’s name.
She would have waved away her hurt that Joni hadn’t called or visited when she was sick—because her mother had always seen her talent, her beauty, her vulnerability, her fragile confidence, and she’d wanted to protect her.
Her mother would have forgiven her. Like everyone did.
But Helena couldn’t.
Near the exit, someone was leaning back against the wall, not dancing. She turned her head more fully.
It was the man from the bar, Austin. His ice-blue eyes weren’t on Joni Gold.
He was watching her.
Helena met his gaze. Could sense the desire in his expression. His gaze slid to her mouth. She felt the drum of anticipation begin to beat in her chest.
The crowd surged again; drinks spilled; arms were raised to the ceiling. When the crowd poured back, Austin moved away from the wall toward the door. He held it open, eyes on her. An invitation.
Helena glanced briefly toward her friends, who were lost to Joni’s spell, and then she was slipping through the crowd, other bodies closing the space where she had been.