38
We arrived backstage with all the grace of three lost tourists crashing a wedding just as the cake was being cut.
Security guards gave us a look equal parts suspicion and resignation, letting us through only because someone had apparently left word that “the two girls and the guy with the sax” were expected.
Inside, the air was thick with overheated cables, sweat, and adrenaline.
Techs darted back and forth, shouting orders and waving their arms. We moved in single file: Tess in front, marching like she was headed toward a foregone triumph; me behind her, zigzagging through crates and microphones; and finally Bernie, nudged along by a backstage hand, sax slung over his shoulder, wearing the fixed expression of someone who had been brought there entirely by mistake.
We found him in a corner, perched on a gear case as if it were a makeshift throne. Zane Ryder still wore the sweat of the just-finished show, black shirt open at the chest, eyes burning with stage afterglow. An assistant handed him a towel, but he didn’t take his gaze off Tess for a second.
She approached with slow, deliberate steps, as though crossing an invisible runway. She didn’t speak. She didn’t even smile. She just looked at him—the way you might look at a work of art you weren’t sure you wanted to buy.
I stayed at a safe distance, watching the silent tension stretch tighter between them—until a flicker of movement distracted me.
Bernie, a few feet away, was locked on a beer bottle sitting on top of an amp, his eyes as focused as a hawk’s.
After a few seconds, he snatched it up, popped the cap, and downed it like water.
Then, satisfied, he let out a cavernous grunt that bounced off the metal walls.
No one said a word. Not even Zane. But his eyes flicked toward Bernie for a moment, as if wondering whether he was part of the band or some kind of alcoholic apparition.
“Hey,” Ryder said, seated like he was posing for a GQ shoot.
“Hey,” Tess replied.
Zane wiped his neck with the towel, his gaze still locked on her. “How was the trip?”
“Fine,” Tess said. “The Gulfstream IV isn’t bad as planes go, but I prefer the Gulfstream V. More elegant finishes, almost no turbulence. Feels like flying inside a work of art. ”
Ryder’s eyes widened. “You’ve flown on a Gulfstream V?”
“I’ve done plenty of things in my life…” Tess said.
Sure. This from the girl who, up until a week ago, considered “luxury” to be a subway line that wasn’t on strike. Now she talked about private jets like she was the Queen of Qatar.
Ryder smiled, lowering his voice. “I don’t doubt it… Did you like the show? Florida’s got this crazy vibe, you can feel it in the air—like electricity.”
“Your show?” Tess pursed her lips. “Sorry, I didn’t catch it. We just got here.”
Silence. The man who’d seen oceans of fans scream his name looked like he’d just taken a dagger straight to the chest from three simple words.
“What? I thought you got in this afternoon.”
“Yeah,” Tess nodded calmly, “but we went straight to the beach. You can’t come to Florida and skip the ocean. One mojito led to another, and… well, we were late. Very late.”
He gave her a half-smile, equal parts challenge and invitation. “Shame. I would’ve played better.”
Tess stepped closer—enough to shrink the distance, but not enough to look eager. “You sure you can impress me?”
Zane tilted his head, weighing her. “Depends how hard you are to impress.”
Behind me, Bernie grunted again—louder this time—and dropped the empty bottle to the floor. The crash cut through the tension for a second, but Tess didn’t flinch.
“You listened to my last song, Room Without Windows ?” Ryder asked, his eyes glowing like a student waiting on a grade.
“I made time for it, yes,” Tess said, calm as someone pouring a gin and tonic without looking at the glass.
“And… what did you think?”
“Not bad,” she said, tilting her head. “You’re getting better.”
Ryder frowned. “But…?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“No, please. Tell me.”
Tess sighed, as if deciding whether to snuff out a candle or burn down the whole room.
“It’s just… it feels like you’re writing your songs at a desk.
Like you’re filling in boxes: verse-chorus-verse.
Impeccable precision, yes, but missing the kind of imperfection that cracks your heart open.
The kind that makes you say: there, that’s me. ”
Ryder stared at her, strung tight like a wire about to snap.
She allowed herself the faintest smile. “You should let yourself be guided by intuition. By chaos. That’s how Lev Mirov did it. He didn’t write music. He wrote truth.”
Then, with timing worthy of a stage director, Tess turned slightly, motioning gracefully toward the man behind her as though presenting the ambassador of some obscure republic. “Zane, meet Bernie.”
Bernie, who at that moment was examining a road case as if it were interactive art, merely turned half his profile and let out a low, guttural grunt devoid of any recognizable emotion.
Ryder looked at him, then at me, as if checking whether this was a joke. I shrugged: the universe had just decided Bernie was part of the script, and our job was to roll with it.
Meanwhile, Tess carried on, unfazed. “He’s an extraordinary saxophonist. He’ll never tell you that, but his music is… pure. No compromises. No concessions.”
Bernie, as if to prove the point, grabbed a tambourine sitting on the case and gave it a lazy shake.
Unfortunately, the open mic nearby amplified the sound like a maraca explosion in a crowded elevator.
A stagehand popped out from the wings and shot him a look that said touch that again and I’ll break your hand.
Ryder inhaled slowly, a half-smile tugging at his lips. “Fascinating.”
And in the silence that followed, I thought it was the first time in my life I’d ever seen a man use fascinating as a synonym for I have absolutely no idea what the hell is happening.
Tess took another step closer to Ryder, lowering her voice as if revealing a secret reserved for a chosen few.
“What you’re looking at is… a survivor. Bernie has played in the worst places at the best times.
He shared a stage with Miles Vannister in New Orleans, back in ’92, when the club had a hole in the roof and rain was pouring in—but people kept dancing anyway.
Once, in Chicago, he finished a solo while the stage was literally on fire.
And he’s never—never—recorded an album. He says music should die in the air, like a stolen kiss. ”
I glanced at her sideways, wondering how many of those stories she was making up on the spot. Ryder, on the other hand, seemed entranced—or at least intrigued—following the thread of her tale.
“And you know the most incredible part?” Tess continued, brushing her fingers lightly across Bernie’s saxophone as though it were a holy relic. “He doesn’t play for the audience. He doesn’t even play for himself. He plays for the only thing that matters.”
Ryder leaned forward just slightly. “Which is?”
Bernie, who had been motionless until that moment, let out a loud grunt and crunched on an ice cube he’d fished from an empty glass.
Tess smiled, perfectly synchronized. “The present moment.”
Ryder stared at Bernie for a few seconds, as though trying to solve a riddle in an unfamiliar language. Then he ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair and gave a faint smile. “So… an artist of the moment.”
The words sounded neither ironic nor convinced—more like an attempt to label something that didn’t fit into any known category.
“Exactly,” Tess confirmed, with the poise of someone who’d just planted a bishop in the center of the chessboard.
Ryder stood up from the road case he’d been sitting on and took a step toward Bernie, studying him closely. “You know, you remind me of someone. No—actually… it’s like you remind me of an idea I had when I was younger. The kind of musician I wanted to be, before I…”
He stopped short, as if he’d almost said something too personal. Then, pointing at the saxophone, he asked, “Will you play something for me?”
Bernie stared at him for a long moment, then lowered his eyes to the sax and grunted.
Ryder chuckled softly, a little uncertain. “I don’t know if that’s a yes or a no, but… I like it.”
And right then I realized Tess’s trap had just snapped shut: Zane Ryder was officially intrigued by a man who, barely an hour earlier, had been trying to convince a seagull to give back his sandwich.
Ryder turned to one of the assistants and gestured for a mic. “Come on, play me something,” he said, nodding at Bernie’s saxophone.
I looked at him the way you look at someone about to stick their fingers in an electrical socket, but Tess didn’t flinch. This was the moment she’d been waiting for.
Bernie lifted the instrument with a vague air, as though he couldn’t quite remember what it was. He raised it slowly, took a couple of deep breaths—or maybe it was just a stifled hiccup—and then he started to play.
It wasn’t jazz. It wasn’t blues. It wasn’t anything recognizable, and yet… there was something there. The notes stumbled out crooked, sluggish, tripping over each other, but they carried weight, flavor. Every pause felt like a door half-opened, then slammed shut.
Ryder watched him like a child seeing fireworks for the first time. When Bernie finally stopped—or maybe he just paused to take another swig of beer—Ryder shook his head, almost moved.
“He’s got truth in his breath!” he declared, with a conviction that made me suspect heatstroke or recent head trauma.
Tess nodded, as if that were the most obvious statement in the world. “Told you.”
I stayed silent, wondering exactly when we’d stumbled into an episode of The Twilight Zone.