Chapter 43
PIA
“Go, Pia, go!” Martin barks at me as we pull up to the stage door. Mickey is there, waiting, and as soon as my feet hit the ground, he has a hand on my elbow. Taking long strides, he ushers me through the throng of photographers and fans and straight inside the back entrance of Shrine Auditorium.
“Your dressing room is this way,” he says, still with a firm grip on my arm.
“How long do I have?” I ask, thinking maybe I should ditch getting changed and just go on like this, in jeans and one of Cassie’s sweaters I stole. Even though I haven’t washed it since I took it because I wanted to savour every last possible atom of her scent.
“You have about fifteen minutes,” he says, glancing at his watch.
“Okay, I can work with that,” I tell him and myself.
“Hair and make-up are already there, waiting.”
“And Cassie?” I say, and that has his head swinging back to me.
“I … I don’t know,” he says with a small frown. “But I assume she’ll see you on stage.”
“Oh,” I say, disappointment heavy in my stomach. “Fine.”
“Do you need me to get a message to her?” he asks, and I wonder how much he knows. I wonder how much anybody who works behind the scenes knows. In that moment, I want him to know.
“Yes, please,” I say, and then we’re at my dressing room door and he’s holding it open. I stop before stepping inside because I know as soon as I do I’ll be getting poked and prodded by hair and make-up. “Tell her I’m here. That I’m sorry I’m late. And I can’t wait to sing with her on that stage.”
Mickey nods. “Roger that.”
“Oh, and do you know where we’ll be sitting in the auditorium?”
Confusion flashes across his face. “Well, you’re sitting on a table with Martin and the rest of Femme Fatale,” he says. “I … I don’t know about Cassie.”
“Right,” I say, hoping he doesn’t see just how foolish I feel for thinking, no, assuming that Cassie and I would be sitting together. Because why would they sit two rivals next to each other, even if they are in the running for an award together?
“Okay, thanks Mickey,” I say, and then I head inside to the chaos.
Much to everybody’s surprise, I’m ready before the knock on my door. So ready that it’s me who answers the door to the shocked-looking stagehand who then leads me to the performance area.
As we move through the burrow that is backstage, I am oblivious to the noise and movement around.
There are people everywhere. Some call out my name, a few reach out a hand to touch me, others no doubt give me a wide berth or a heavy scowl.
But I don’t notice any of them. My focus is on the back of the stagehand’s head because that is the person who is leading me to Cassie.
We come to a standstill on the side of the stage, hidden by thick curtains made of red velvet.
Lots of people are busy on the still-hidden stage, setting up two microphones on a small circular platform, and someone else comes up to me with an earpiece in their hands.
He instinctively goes for my left ear, which is closest to him, but I stop him, reveal my hearing aid by pulling back my hair, and then offer him my right ear.
I don’t look at him to see what he thinks of this.
I don’t give a crap. It’s made my life infinitely easier, and fuck anyone who tries to make me feel shame for that.
As the man fiddles with my earpiece and receiver, I take a moment to check my dress, a short black mini dress covered in silver spikes that I had specially designed.
You might choose to describe the silver metal spikes as a kind of armour, or a weapon of sorts.
Maybe, yes, it is protection. Or maybe it’s just a fuck-off dress, because I believe every woman needs one of those.
And yes, I absolutely plan to take it off as soon as Cassie and I are alone.
Once the person fitting my earpiece has finished, I look around, searching.
I don’t see Cassie.
“Where is she?” I ask the nearest stagehand who is mumbling into his headset.
“Who?” he asks, covering his mic.
“Cassie. Cassie Everard. I’m performing with her!”
“Oh, she comes on from the other side of the stage.” He points across the vast wooden stage. I follow his finger and then see, opposite me, hiding in the side curtains, is Cassie.
I stop breathing.
There she is.
I swear there shouldn’t be a light on her as she’s waiting in the wings. But for whatever reason, Cassie stands there facing me, illuminated.
She is a vision in all white. A white dress that is more form-fitting than her usual style, and shorter too.
Its hem kisses the middle of her thighs, and while it has a modest neckline and her sleeves are long, there are also long white tassels hanging from each arm that give her look more edge than I would have expected.
She’s still Cassie. But she looks different.
More confident. More poised. More aware of both herself and the world around her.
It’s when I take in her trademark golden waves, flicked out from her face, that it seems like she has a halo around her. Like an angel.
A memory hits me out of nowhere.
Asponsi, the Buddhist angel-spirit my mother would talk about and set up shrines to in our two-bedroom Stockholm apartment.
Half-woman, half-lion, she was a protecting figure.
My mother called upon her to watch over us when money got tight, when the winter snow didn’t let up for days, when it was our birthdays, and for weeks and weeks before I left for Amsterdam.
I never paid my mother’s praying, shrine-making, or offerings much notice growing up. It was one of the many ways she was different from all my Swedish friends’ mothers. It was embarrassing. It made me feel even more othered than I already did.
But now I wish I had paid attention, because I swear, I am looking at Asponsi in human form, here on Earth. For as beautiful as Cassie is, as feminine and womanly as she is, she is also fierce and brave and strong. That halo of hair framing her beautiful face could just as easily be a lion’s mane.
As a small smile is crawling over my face, Cassie looks up and catches my eye across the stage.
As our gazes lock, everything else fades away. The people bustling around me, the muttering in my earpiece, the awards’ host at the front of the stage warming up to introduce us, the stagehand starting a countdown next to me.
It all disappears. There’s only her, looking at me while I look at her.
Her expression creases into one of uncertainty, like she’s holding her breath. Like she doesn’t know what to expect. And I can’t blame her, which is why I try to ease away some of that fear.
I raise my hand in the smallest, most out-of-character wave I’ve ever offered anyone.
As I do, her shoulders straighten and then fall. A sigh of relief, perhaps. Just as small and subtle, but its power has my stomach flipping.
She lifts her hand too, but it’s not in a wave. She has her two middle fingers folded down with her thumb out.
“I love you” in ASL.
I copy her and sign “I love you” back.
I can’t stop my smile. And neither can she.
But then I’m nudged forward by someone, and so is she.
We both start to walk towards each other and each step gets easier and easier, lighter and lighter, until we reach the platform and stand up on it together.
Temptation has me wanting to keep walking past my microphone and straight into her arms, but the stage curtains are opening and there’s a roar of applause, and in my earpiece the opening bars of our song start to play.
Cassie turns to the audience just before I start to sing, but I don’t. I keep looking at her. I sing my words straight to her pretty, English rose face.
Blonde hair, big blue eyes
You look good in a bed of lies.
Truth hurts, don't ya think?
I'm ready to fight. You ready to sink?
By the third line, she’s looking at me too, her lips slightly parted and her eyes wide with admiration. She has never looked more beautiful.
And then it’s her turn. She shifts the angle of her body so she also sings to me. I have no doubt that this was not the direction she was given in rehearsal, and I give absolutely no fucks.
Black hair, thin dark stare
You look good trying not to care.
Big lies, wry little smile,
I've known about you for the longest while.
I absorb every word she sings. Her voice is as memorable as ever. So deeply powerful and yet with this fragile tone that you just can’t fake.
Why haven’t we done this before? I ask myself.
Why did we wait nearly a year to sing this song together on a stage?
Why did I bail on her for the press tour?
Why did I waste all that time trying to stay away from her when I knew that very first night she had crawled under my skin and made a home there?
And why, oh why, oh fucking why am I not shouting how much I love her from this fucking stage?
It’s time to sing the chorus together, with me taking the lower melody in the harmony. Just as I open my mouth to do so, Cassie abandons her microphone stand and steps closer to me, sharing mine.
It’s all the invitation and the confirmation I need.
I pour all the love I have for her into each word I sing. I look only at her. Even with a microphone stand between us, and without a single part of my body touching hers, the music connects us. Our music and our love binds us together.
What I want, is to know my love is true
What I want, is to stop feeling so blue.
What I want, is a love that's only mine.
What I want, is that for the rest of time.
We’re still singing to each other. Our eyes never straying away from the other. On the last line of the chorus, I shift my body, coming closer and grabbing the microphone. With just the quickest glance at my fingers, Cassie does the same thing, her hand landing on mine.
I maintain our eye contact as I dive into my second verse, feeling every single word break free of its roots in my heart.
Pretty girl, you smell sweet
Your scent likes to linger on my sheets.
How long, will you wait?