Chapter 44
Sarah didn’t want to leave the Sanctuary until she was sure that Keith was okay.
Corey could complain to JackRabbit—he probably would—but Sarah knew that Keith wouldn’t have thrown a punch without good reason.
She certainly didn’t flatter herself (or Corey) that his hitting on her was the only cause.
Sarah waited in the hallway for a minute and listened to Keith and the guest talk.
It seemed safe. She didn’t have any Boy Talk tattoos and wasn’t decked out from head to toe in homemade merch—sometimes the fandom was louder than others.
Sarah had worked enough meet and greets to know the faces of the desperate.
This lady seemed normal, and it was Keith’s idea.
And fuck it, Sarah had already done like three things that could get her fired today—why not one more?
They all needed a break. She took the stairs back to the lido deck, going up two steps at a time, until her heart was pumping. Tyler called on the walkie-talkie.
“I’m almost there,” Sarah said. “Everything okay?”
“Everything okay,” he said, and he was so incapable of convincingly telling a lie that Sarah slowed down and walked the rest of the way.
—
The lido deck was as packed as ever. Women held their drinks high over their heads as Sarah squeezed through.
She avoided the morass of the lido deck as much as possible on all the cruises she worked, the actual heart of it, around the stage, but she had to get from one side to the other, and she didn’t want to wait for the elevator or a security guard to help push people out of the way, and so it just was what it was.
Bodies were warm, and they were dancing.
Shawn was at the center of the stage jumping up and down to House of Pain’s “Jump Around,” which Sarah didn’t think had ever played at any proms, not even in Boston.
Terrence was deep in a pocket of women who had opted for the skimpiest versions of prom dresses, and all together they waved their arms from side to side while jumping as instructed, some of the women with one hand flat against their bosoms as they bounced.
Scotty was in another pocket and had already taken off his tuxedo pants to reveal a pair of tiny gold shorts underneath.
Corey—face clean, smile wide—was perched on the staircase, where women stuck their arms out for him to touch, with no hope of connection if he didn’t reach back.
The Talkers reached anyway—they always would.
They could do it without Keith. Sarah felt disloyal for thinking so, but it was true.
The women who loved him best would still love him best. It wouldn’t be precisely the same, but it would be mostly the same.
The Talkers wouldn’t forsake them. They would, in fact, forgive Keith.
On one cruise, a heavy metal drummer—one of the best in the business, a legend—had OD’d and gotten airlifted to a hospital in Miami from a tiny helipad in the Bahamas.
Sarah had found another drummer within twelve hours.
The band didn’t miss a song or a beat. Was it exactly the same?
No. People weren’t replaceable, Sarah knew that—every single person brought something unique, especially when it came to music.
Still, life happened. Life changed. It was madness to expect anything human to stay the same forever, like it was made of marble.
Boy Talk could be the four of them. Or they could hire someone else—someone else these women already loved, another handsome guy from another band from the era, or someone younger, even—to come in to sing Keith’s parts.
It was sacrilege, Sarah knew, what she was suggesting, but hadn’t they all had disappointments before, things they had to get used to?
It wouldn’t be her, it couldn’t be, to say it.
That was Bobby’s business, she guessed. And she was glad it wasn’t hers.
“Come up” crackled in her walkie. Sarah looked up to the balcony and saw Bobby wave, his face hard and tight. She nodded and kept pushing her way through the Talkers, who jumped on her feet over and over and over again. Pain was part of the deal.