But the most interesting thing about her, besides her eyes, was her legs. They seemed to go on forever, like a colt’s legs do. All legs and then the body. She always wore skin-tight pants and jeans, so I always got to appreciate their shape all the way from her boot heels to her hips.
Elahah was one of the back-up musicians the band used when they toured. She took care of keyboards, percussion and even the rhythm guitar when Brody just wanted to sing. She had music in her veins the exact opposite of the way I did. She seemed to be able to play anything. I’ve even seen her riff on the drums when she thought no one was looking. So she always did the sound check for Brody’s guitars.
That night, she strummed a couple of chords, getting a feel for it, then broke out into a rip-off of one of the band’s most popular songs, “Kiss Across Time”, except she didn’t just settle for the basic progressions. She added layers and fancy stuff that made the song sound like something you’d hear in a concert hall with an orchestra and a conductor.
My heart did a funny little flippy-dippy thing as I watched. I don’t have a drop of talent, but I think that’s why I can always see it in other people. I got ripples up my spine like I always do when I watch her play.
That’s why I missed the first part of what Donald said. Too busy watching Elahah. Then the clunkhead’s voice and what he was saying got through.
“I tell ya, I’m not making it up. They all came out of the same bedroom and I swear they were all naked under their robes.”
I turned around to look at the small group of roadies sitting and standing around the front row of seats. Most of them had finished eating, but a few had gone back for seconds and thirds or more and still had plates in their hands, or cans of soda. Loren was nowhere to be seen, which was probably why Donald figured he could get away with talking about it.
They were all staring at Donald with blank expressions. No one was encouraging him.
“I swear!” he said heavily. “She was in bed with both of them.”
The crew shifted on their feet or looked down at their sodas, suddenly awkward. See, this is the bit I was talking about, where things were weird. I already knew that Taylor was married to both Brody and Veris, but I had also figured out a long time back that I was in a special sort of position where I’d got to know that. So I never said anything to anyone else about it.
It took me a bit longer to figure out that almost everyone else had clued into Brody’s private life, too. There’s not much you can hide when you’re living hip-to-hip with people for months on end. But like everyone’s secret story, that was just something else that people didn’t talk about.
I told you I wasn’t so smart. It took me until then to figure out that if Loren wasn’t here to shut the idiot down, someone else was going to have to do it. From the way everyone was looking embarrassed or uncomfortable, it wasn’t going to be any of them.
Donald leaned forward, like that would convince people he was serious. “I really think…just from the way they were acting and talking to each other...I think all three of them are into each other.” He nodded like everyone around him had dropped their jaws in shock, but in truth, no one had so much as twitched. “Guy-on-guy,” he intoned.
I’d had enough. “Donald, you’re working for the wrong fucking band if you’ve got a problem with gays and bis.”
Donald rolled his eyes. “I don’t have any issues with Alice and Midas.” Alice was Midas’ boyfriend and so effeminate he regularly cross-dressed just for fun and, I think, sometimes just to shock people. “They’re open about it. But those two.…” He wrinkled his nose.
“‘fraid you’ll get cooties, Quack?” someone asked and someone else laughed.
That might have stopped someone a bit smarter right in their tracks, but not Donald. That was when I started to realize how stupid he really was. I opened my mouth. “You don’t have a problem with Alice, who weighs about ninety pounds soaking wet, even wearing his dress, but you’re going to get your nose out of joint over two guys who could both cream you into next week without raising a sweat? You’re a moron, Donald.”
Right about then, with almost perfect timing, the other back-up musician, Johnson, rattled out a roll on the drums. It made it sound like I’d made An Announcement.
Donald flushed. “I don’t give a fuck if they’re doin’ each other every night and they prob’ly are, but what I don’t get is the three of them. Together! She don’t look like a whore in those expensive clothes, but—”
That’s all I let him get out. I didn’t think about it. I just swung my fist. I was standing and he was sitting and that was his bad luck, because my uppercut caught him under the chin and just about lifted him out of his seat. His Coke rolled across the concrete, fizzing yellow-brown foam everywhere.
Everyone took a step or two back out of the way, but not me. I was ready to give it to him, no problems. The first punch hadn’t even hurt. I could feel it in my chest and my belly—I had more where that came from. I almost wanted him to keep talking, just so I could have the fun of finishing it off.
Donald pushed himself up off the floor with his hands. His butt was still in the chair, but only just. He grabbed his face and looked at me, his eyes bugging out. “—’t fuck?” he said, his voice thick.
A heavy hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed. “Back off, Andy.” I recognized Loren’s voice and tried to uncurl my fists. I realized I was probably in deep shit. But I also didn’t care much. I just wanted Donald shut up permanently on the subject and I was still trying to figure out how to do that. But getting my boss pissed at me would mess that up, so I backed up a step or two.
“Hey, Andy didn’t do anything wrong!” That was Budd, sounding pissed himself.
“So he can go cool off while this gets settled,” Loren said.
Someone grabbed my elbow and yanked, pulling me even farther out of the circle surrounding Donald. I staggered sideways then got my feet around the same way I was being dragged.
Then got surprised all over again, because it was Elahah doing the dragging. For a little thing, she sure had some muscle. I’m not exactly tall, not like Brody and Veris were tall, but Elahah came up to just past my chin, yet she had nearly hauled me off my feet.
“I can walk by myself,” I told her. “Been doin’ it since I was two.”
“Walk then.” She let go of my elbow. “Over here.” There was a set of stairs up to the stage off to the far side of it. That was the stairs the band used during the show, not the metal ones on wheels that got pulled up in front of the stage between shows. She plunked down on the third step and stretched out her legs. “Sit,” she told me. She wasn’t smiling.
I sat. I’d like to say I did it because then I’d be next to her in a dark corner and that had some serious potential. But truth is, I suddenly got shaky, in my gut and my hands. All that pasta was sitting like a rock in my stomach. So I sat and tried to breathe through it.
“That was really stupid,” Elahah said quietly.
I nodded, because from where she was sitting, it probably did look stupid. There weren’t too many rules the band insisted we live by. They didn’t mind a little weed, or even harder stuff if that’s what got you through the day and everyone drank like fish in their off hours. Partying hard was just part of the life. But they were super sensitive about violence, because so many touring metal bands had left behind them stories of their security beating up fans, putting them in hospital, hitting up little kids and more. Everyone was careful about leaving a good impression behind, so violence of any sort tended to get squashed flat at the first outbreak.
But I needed Elahah to see my side of it. Not because it was her, although that was part of it, but because I wanted just one person to understand. “No one should get to talk about someone else like that, not someone they don’t know and don’t understand. And they pay his fucking checks. It’s…disrespectful.”
Elahah nodded. “Does your hand hurt?”
“Huh?”
She picked up m
y hand and I think my heart might have stopped for a second. Did I mention she smelled like sweetness and spice all at once? I don’t think it was perfume, either. It was just her and breathing it in made me feel a bit dizzy. Her warm, clever, musical fingers on mine were almost too much.
I swallowed and looked down at my hand in hers’. The knuckles on my first two fingers were split open and bleeding. “Damn,” I muttered. “That’s not going to help with break-down tonight.”
Elahah laughed and it was a low sound. “Because that’s what you should be worrying about right now.”
“No point worrying about anything else,” I said. “I’m already fired…or I’m not. Nothing I can do about it now.” I shrugged.
Elahah just looked at me. Given how beautiful her eyes were, that really meant something. “You’re not worrying about me?” She said it in a way that sounded like teasing. But there was a funny note in her voice.
“Should I be?” It was a serious question.
“I’m sitting next to you.” She smiled. “That would scare a lot of people.”
“You pulled me here.” But she was trying to change the subject, I could tell. Making it light and funny and I’m-just-teasing. So I shook my head. I wasn’t going to let her pass it off. “No, really, is there something wrong?”
Her smile faded. “I didn’t say there was anything wrong.”
But now I could see that there was. Now that I could look past the fact that she was holding my hand and that her hip was barely an inch from mine…now I could see the worry deep in her eyes. “Tell me,” I said urgently. “Maybe I can fix it.”
Elahah laughed again, but this time she didn’t sound amused at all. “You can’t fix this.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said, thinking back to the humungous great mess of trouble that had ended up with me getting this job and a change of name. “I was in at the deep end once and didn’t think there was a way out. That got fixed. Try me.”
“That’s just it,” she said softly, looking down at my hand. “I thought this had been settled.”
I kept my teeth together even though the urge to talk was overwhelming, because I could tell from the way she was squaring her shoulders and breathing deep that she was going to tell me. She was just winding herself up to do it and if I said anything, that would bump her away from the telling. So I shut up hard and waited.
“Six years ago,” she said quietly, “I was living in Mashhad. I was caught holding hands with a boy.”
“Isn’t that, like…bad, there?”
“Very bad,” she said simply. “I was pronounced a whore. They were going to stone me to death, but my mother…” She drew in a breath. “My mother arranged things. She paid a lot of money and I was smuggled out of the country.” Elahah looked at me. “To Berlin,” she added.
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I asked carefully. “I mean, it’s bad that you had to leave your family, but it’s good that you’re still alive.”
“Alive is good,” she agreed. “My mother gave me a lot of money that I carried with me. It helped me when I got to Berlin. I paid for a new identity and papers for America. The people who brought me out of the country didn’t like that very much, but they had been paid by my mother, so I refused to give them more. I only stayed in Berlin for a month and I watched over my shoulder every day.”
I knew something about looking over my shoulder. It made you sick most of the time. Sick with worry and stress and knowing that someone wanted to do bad things to you. “Bet you were glad to get to America, then,” I said. Then it clicked. I told you I’m not smart. It had taken that long to put it together. “Shit. Damn. And we’ll be back in Berlin in three weeks.”
She nodded, her eyes wide.
I gripped her hands. I hadn’t done more than let my hand rest in hers until now, but now I turned my hand and actually held onto hers. “Does Brody know?” I asked. “I bet he could do something and even if he couldn’t, he deserves to know.”
“No! You can’t tell anyone,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “You can’t. If word gets out then they’ll know I’m not who I say I am and everything will come out about being an illegal alien and they’ll kick me out of the country and you can’t say anything, Andy. Promise me!”
“Okay, okay,” I said quickly, for she was almost vibrating with upset. “I promise,” I said.
She calmed down a little bit. “Besides,” she added, still speaking in a low, tight voice, “it’s not like anything has happened. It’s just me being silly about going back to Berlin. I don’t even have the same name as I did when I was there last time.”
I put my arm around her. I wasn’t making a move, I swear. I just figured she needed that sort of comfort and she did, because she leaned into me. “I’m still frightened, though,” she whispered.
I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to cheer her up by taking her mind off it. We talked about music, about the band, about her wanting to write her own songs and sing them and maybe get a contract with a big label. About her name, which everyone pronounced as e-lay-ya, like a fancy form of Leia from Star Wars, but it was really supposed to be said a different way and when Elahah said it properly, I could almost hear the way she would sound speaking her own language.
After that, Loren came around the front corner of the stage and grumpily told me to get back to work, which is how I figured out I wasn’t fired.
I didn’t see Donald again and I only found out what happened to him later that night when the front doors had opened and the fans were filling up the seats and all the crew except stage-crew were backstage, relaxing. Loren came and found me again and told me to get my ass into the wings and take care of the instruments for the show.
That was Donald’s job—or it used to be. I reported to the stage manager, who showed me where the herd of guitars and accessories was all laid out on stands and trays. There was a cue card, which said what band member was to be handed what instrument or accessory, for what set of songs. I read through the card, sweating a bit, because it wouldn’t be good to give the wrong guitar to the wrong guy—or girl, for Elahah’s rosewood guitar sat with the rest of them, too, while she stayed at the keyboards.
We were into the second set and I had just started to relax, figuring I had this all sorted out, when Veris appeared next to me. It really was like he just magically appeared. The music was loud, even back here where there were no speakers, but Veris had a way of just showing up silently like that. I nearly went through the roof, then took a few deep breaths and read the card again, to make sure I had the next set of gear set up ready for when the band needed it.
Veris nodded at me then watched the band for a few minutes. Then he held out his hand. “Show me,” he said, lifting his voice to be heard.
A little cold shiver ran down my back. He’d already heard about this afternoon. Jesus.
I lifted my hand up so he could see the scabbed-over knuckles. He took my hand and turned it this way and that, so the lights from the stage fell on the scabs. He was checking them out as the house doctor. Then he gave me my hand back. “Congratulations on not breaking your thumb at the same time. At least you know that much about throwing a punch.”
“Learned it from my mom’s boyfriend, before he tossed me out of the house.”
“He taught you?”
“He hit me. I took notes.” I shrugged.
Veris nodded. He watched the band a bit longer, not saying anything. The next set was coming right up, so I turned to check—again—that everything was ready to go. When I looked back, Veris was gone.
So, the band knew what had happened. Apparently, they didn’t like it much, either. I never saw Donald again and I figured that was the end of it.
There were nineteen dates between Rome and the four nights booked for Berlin. I worked my dogs off, but life was good for those three weeks. Elahah talked to me more and more, not about anything important and especially not about Berlin, which seemed to hang over us like a monster in the dark no
w that I knew about it.
But I got to know a lot about how much she loved music—all sorts of music including screechy opera, which she got me to listen to. Really listen to it, I mean. Some of those high notes the sopranos hit made little fingers walk down my spine, but I’m not ever going to sit still for a whole opera.
After a week or so of Elahah and I just running into each other, we started setting up little meetings. Neither of us had much spare time, so we’d agree to meet for a can of Coke each in the left wings just before show time, or for a breath of fresh air out the back of the auditorium after close of show and before I got to haul speakers around. We’d just talk, picking up where we left off last time, sharing gossip and stuff about the band, the crew, the town we were in.
Took a whole ‘nother week for it to dawn on me that we were basically dating. And that made my heart start pumping, for sure, because the idea of kissing her was a long, long way off in my head, even if the rest of me thought it was a really good idea. Then I started worrying about was she waiting for me to kiss her? Was I letting her down when I didn’t? What if I did try to kiss her and she shrieked her head off because she hadn’t even thought of it and I’d gotten it completely wrong?
I spent a lot of time trying to work out what she might be thinking…if she was thinking of me at all. Around then was when I’d wish it was up to the girl to figure this sort of shit out. They seem to be so much better at it.
The pace of a concert every night started to show. People were short on sleep, snarly with each other and anxious. Berlin was sort of like the peak of the tour. The fans there were whooping up a storm in anticipation, the media had been following us around since Austria and feeding the frenzy with all sorts of stupid coverage, including following Midas around for a whole freaking day, although Alice loved it, showing off his wardrobe for the cameras. There was stuff all over the Internet and scalper’s prices were hitting four figures for front of house tickets and that’s really saying something for Euros.
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