A Cruel Kind of Beautiful

by Michelle Hazen

  I blow a kiss to the TSA guards as I fast-track it through the pre-screened lane and stride past shops offering kitschy sweatshirts, tiny packets of peanuts and Stephen King’s latest.

  I recognize my targets before I even double-check the gate number. The lead singer is a long stretch of pretty shoulders, Italian shoes, and dark blond hair. He leans against a wall of windows while he talks to a girl who can’t keep her eyes off his pecs. The petite drummer is curled up against a pillar, texting while her feet play a very backseat-of-the-minivan game of kicking footsie with the bassist, who slouches in a chair at the end of the row, his black beanie pulled low over stray chunks of hair the same color.

  I throw a quick wave at the crew arrayed throughout the waiting area. I’ll catch up with them later, but they all understand the talent pays the bills, so the band gets my attention first. I start forward with a professional smile and the drummer glances over, and bounces up off the floor to greet me. The bassist closes his eyes and leans his head back against the chair, completely uninterested. Great. That’s not going to be a pain in the ass or anything.

  “Are you the new tour manager?” She sticks out a hand with a big smile. She’s cute, with some high-dollar sun-streaky highlights, and curvy as all hell: a combination the fans are going to love. That teacup-sized Marilyn Monroe body is topped off with loose, country-singer curls and a punk-rock wardrobe. Perfect.

  “It’s so great to meet you.” I shake her hand. “Kate Madsen.”

  Normally, by the time we’ve made it to an airport, I’m besties with everyone from the lead singer’s mom to the light tech’s third nipple. But this tour isn’t mine. It’s a hand-me-down I lucked into from a fellow road wrangler who is currently in a hospital bed, drugged up to his toupee to help his body forget that until this morning, it had an appendix.

  Which means I’ve got to cram four months of prep work into the eighteen hours before the curtain rises on the first show. No sweat. The problem, as always, will be convincing the band to go along with changes proposed by a twenty-five-year-old tour manager.

  “I’m Jera McKnight. The uh, drummer.”

  Weird name but interesting. I remember the story from talking to the band manager, who just so happens to be her daddy. It’s an acronym, some guitar aficionado’s pot-smoke-scented idea of a moniker made from the four great namesakes Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Roger Waters, and Art Garfunkel.

  “How is Bill?” Jera asks, sounding genuinely concerned for the previous tour manager she probably only met once.

  “He’s resting comfortably, but the surgery recovery is going to put him out of commission for at least a week or two.” I give her a sympathetic smile. “Tours aren’t a great place to recover your strength, so he probably won’t be able to join you guys on this run. But he had a friend send me all the relevant documents so we should be able to avoid most of the hiccups of a last-minute change-out in management.” Okay, that statement was so optimistic it should have come out spangled with fairy dust, but as long as I don’t sleep until I have everything in order, Jera will never know what kind of a whopper I just told her.

  “Of course. So what can I do to help you get up to speed? Our first show is tomorrow night, and the next one is in...” She bites her lip and reaches for her phone.

  “No worries.” I flash her a smile. “I’ve got the logistics handled.” The show tonight is in San Diego. We’re meeting up in San Francisco, where their record label is based and also where I live when I’m off work, but these guys just flew down from their home in Portland. I’m well-used to keeping up with the geographic musical chairs of a concert tour, but it gets confusing for the musicians, who are already overloaded with the stresses of performance and publicity. It’s why I try to simplify for them whenever I can.

  “We’ve got some, ah, details we need to discuss.” Their last tour manager left me a cleanup job more on the scale of a HAZMAT team than a Swiffer, but if I don’t build rapport before I break out the bad news, they’ll probably just give me the boot in favor of someone with a decade-longer resume. “But that can wait. Right now I’d just like to get to know you guys.”

  I especially need the scoop since this band is two guys to a girl. Chances are, she’ll fall into bed with one or both of them when the pressure gets to be too much and I’ll have to talk everyone out of their Jerry Springer moment before they cancel their show dates and flee for home.

  “Oh, okay. Well, this is Danny...” Jera gestures at her motionless bandmate. He’s thin, with the slouched posture of a pre-teen and apparently the manners of one too, because he doesn’t open his eyes even after she says his name. Maybe he can’t hear through the noise-cancelling headphones, but I doubt it. He’s sharply handsome, dressed in worn jeans and a black discount-store hoodie, and the only interesting part about him is his hands.

  Long, agile fingers sprawled on his knees, with a man’s thick knuckles and an artist’s delicate bones. On the lowest joint of his index finger is a midnight-colored tattoo of a bass clef and that finger taps restlessly while the rest of him is quiet. I’ve always been a sucker for hands and those ones I can picture all too clearly: deft on the frets of a guitar, or sliding into a pair of panties. Awareness trickles beneath the cups of my bra.

  I pull my gaze back to Jera, letting her make the unnecessary introductions because I can never manage to say, “I know who you are” without feeling like the star-struck autograph hound I used to be.

  She tips her chin toward the window. “That’s Jax.”

  I follow her gaze in spite of myself. A lot of celebrities look like shit in person. Take away the Photoshop and the photogenic and you come to the realization that the camera loves some people the naked eye would never look twice at. Jackson Sterling is not one of those people.

  Jera doesn’t look impressed, though, rolling her eyes as Jax laughs, shaking his chin-length hair back. “I’ll squeegee his fan club off a little later so you can meet him,” she says.

  I smile. “No problem. So what about you?”

  “Me? Ah, I’m easy. Give me my drums, my band, and my boyfriend and I don’t give a shit about anything else.” Her eyes brighten. “Want to see a picture?”

  “Sure, I’d love to!” I brace myself for a photo tour into the foreign dimension of domesticity. In a good year, I spend three hundred plus days on the venue circuit. No relationship can keep up with that, even if it could compete with the thrill of living and breathing music.

  Jera steps toward an empty seat just as a woman with a fedora pushes past us and the handle of her stroller bumps my purse, sending it swinging. The bag drops from my shoulder to my elbow, ricochets off the stroller hood and bursts onto the floor in an explosion of this-is-not-fucking-happening. I hit my knees and Jera drops beside me, the harried mom’s apologies disappearing into eyebrow-raised silence when she catches a glimpse of everything that’s on the floor.

  There’s no good way to explain that it’s not mine, because only addicts and felons ever try that excuse.

  In my case, though, it’s true. A tour is a war, every venue is a battlefield, and my purse acts as my primary weapon. Forty-five calibers of drug-dealing nanny, dispensing aspirin and wet wipes, vitamin-boosted energy drinks, three shades of foundation and two of eyeliner to save face before the predictable paparazzi ambushes. Condoms. So many condoms. And lube, because really? We all know that one-night-stand sex is a little dry and more than a little disappointing, and the last thing I need is my lead singer wince-dancing because he has groupie-burn on his johnson.

  Jera dumps a double-handful back into my purse: tampons and miniature pliers, plus a tube of Super Glue that’s stuck to a tin of breath mints. I give her a little half shrug and a smile, because it could be worse. On the bus tours, I carry whiskey to keep musicians’ hands from shaking on guitar strings, and I’ve got a secret pocket to hide the harder stuff, but I don’t take that shit through airports.

  All appearances aside, I have morals. I just apply them to myself, no
t to the musicians I work for. I don’t touch drugs but I can produce just about anything, on cue and under the radar, thanks to the second piece in my personal arsenal that should be safely velcro’ed into a side pocket right over—

  My heart tries to climb up into my throat. “Oh God, where is my phone?” I duck my head to peer under the stroller, glance behind Jera to the oblivious bassist, and dump my purse out all over again. My fingers frantically mine the pile.

  My iPhone is pistol and bullet, trebuchet and tommy gun. It’s the whole damn armory and it is worth more than the GDP of most developing nations. It holds contacts for everyone from record label execs to escorts, diplomats, and cocaine slingers from sea to shining sea. It video chats to the family back home for when I find the backup singer from Kansas in the ladies’ room, clicking her heels together and sobbing into the single-ply airport toilet paper. Plus, its microphone records the brilliant song idea somebody had in the alley of a club on Day Sixty of the tour. The idea that becomes the anchoring single for their next album and without my intervention, would have been lost in the haze of the hotel-tile-print hangover memorialized on the drummer’s cheek the next morning.

  I finally spot smooth black plastic under the chair next to Jera, leaning past her to snatch it up. No bedazzled rubber case for me, thankyouverymuch. Otter Box. Waterproof, mosh-pit-proof, blood, sweat and tears proof—and fully tested on all five claims. I’d chain it to my spleen if I could.

  I start to breathe again. Give me a smartphone and an overstuffed Michael Kors purse and I can make live music history without ever playing a note.

  “I’m so sorry,” Fedora Mommy apologizes again. “I love this stroller but it’s terrible to try to get through an airport.”

  “No problem.” I climb to my feet and smooth back my hair, tossing her a smile. “Hey, I needed to clean my purse out anyway.”

  Jera coos over the baby while I check our flight boarding time—we’ve still got an hour—and then we claim a couple of seats next to her dozing bandmate. I lean in to watch while she scrolls through four billion pictures of a little blond kindergartener and a guy with a Calvin Klein body and Mr. Roger’s gentle eyes.

  “So this is my boyfriend, Jacob, and this is our daughter, Maya.” She laughs self-consciously. “Well, I mean, she’s not really. I never know what to call her. She’s Jacob’s little sister but we share custody of her with his older sister.”

  I already had my game face on and a whole symphony of appreciative coos queued up, but actually I could look at pictures of this guy all day, and the kid’s not half bad either. “He is a little bit gorgeous, isn’t he?”

  “I know, right? It’s kind of ridiculous.” Jera beams, blushing.

  “Yes. Absolutely ridiculous,” I say, trying to keep a straight face. Considering the looks of the two guys in her band, it’s no wonder she ended up with some crazy high standards.

  “It’s going to be really hard to be away from him, but we’re prepared this time. When we did the last tour, opening for Abyss, it was just...” She sucks in a breath and shakes her head. “But we’re ready this time. We’ve been preparing Maya for months, and we’re going to have a visit halfway through, so...”

  I smile back, mentally scheduling her for a breakdown, circa Week Three, and probably another during Week Five. I make a silent note to check the budget for airline ticket money for Jacob.

  Just then, her phone rings and another picture of the same guy pops up. This time he holds up Maya, who wears a bright red pea coat and a reindeer antler headband. Both siblings are flipping devil’s horns at the camera, tongues out in full KISS style. Jera’s face lights up like somebody just plugged her in.

  “Sorry, I gotta take this.” She jumps up and slaps the headphones back off Danny’s ears. His head comes up—finally, signs of life—and she hisses, “Warn her about Jax.”

  I brace myself. Off his meds? On his heroin? Stage fright? Brand-new herpes diagnosis? I try to remember if I packed any Valtrex in my luggage. If not, it’s gonna be a bitch for everybody when Jera falls into bed with his soulful smile and bimbo-worn dick.

  But then Danny opens his eyes and I freeze as their intensity crackles down my body and nails me straight in the panties. He is pure, dark sex appeal, full-strength delicious kink.

  He’ll be the man Jera breaks for. Week Three, Week Five, and possibly tonight as well, cute boyfriend and fake stepdaughter be damned.

  He shrugs himself straight in the chair and everything that looked wiry before transforms itself into a lean pull of muscle with that single, lazy movement. The edge of his hoodie rucks up to reveal a languid hipbone and in its stillness, I sense the tension that gathers right before the thrust.

  I cross my legs. Mental note: Get laid. Preferably before we go wheels up in the next city.

  “And you are?” Danny asks without inflection.

  Another artist who couldn’t give a shit about his support staff. What a surprise. Unfortunately, I kind of need him to respect my professional opinion and that might be a hard sell for this guy, even though he is—for once—even younger than I am.

  “Your new tour manager.” I hold out a friendly hand. “Kate Madsen.”

  He ignores my hand. Only his eyes move, flicking dismissively over my face and only bothering with the most cursory of circuits below that. My lips tighten. Even if I could sing, I know I’d never make it to the evening gowns and golden gramophones of an award ceremony. I’m nightclub pretty: good enough body and bone structure that with low light and a push up bra, my dark brown hair and gray eyes can rank a seven, even though under the fluorescents I’m more like a five and a half.

  I’ve made my peace with that math. But no girl likes a look that judges her and records a “no score.” I drop my hand.

  “Your job seems very complicated and intensely boring,” he says.

  Keeping my smile in place costs enough energy that my blood-latte levels are starting to register in the critical levels. “I believe people have said the same to Stephen Hawking.”

  His lips quirk.

  I straighten up and dig deep for my customer service voice. “Besides, a tour’s a monster with a lot of moving parts. Somebody’s got to keep them all cranking along.”

  “Yeah, so that’s the problem with Jax. He just quit UPS and he’s jonesing for something to organize. To him, the world looks like one big algorithm of moving packages and we’re all just glorified cardboard boxes.”

  I peek over at Jax, who bends to kiss the hand of a blushing redhead while her friend shamelessly takes pictures with her phone. That guy used to work at UPS? Jesus, I’m way overdue to sign up for Amazon Prime if that’s what comes with my two-day free shipping.

  I shrug and turn back to Danny. “I’ve dealt with backseat drivers before.”

  “Not like Jax. He’ll break into your hotel room just to peek at your day planner.” Danny shakes his head and I can’t help but snicker.

  At the sound of my laugh, his vivid eyes flare with pleasure and I have to admit I don’t know if I’ve ever seen irises like his before. They’re a secret, mossy green that melts to caramel at the center, rimmed with something dark and dramatic that makes me want to lean closer to identify the shade.

  “Here’s what you do.” Danny leans back and props an ankle across his opposite knee. “Give him schedules, lists, whatever you already have on paper for yourself. Just bury him in triplicate and when he starts asking questions, flirt.”

  “Um, what?”

  “Don’t worry, he’ll stay out of your pants because you’re a tour employee, but if you flirt, it kicks his brain off and turns on his...” A lazy smile crosses his face. “Well, it breaks the cycle.”

  His lips are the most X-rated thing I’ve seen in twenty-five years of pornography, erotica, and a very healthy sex life. What cycle is he talking about again? Krebs? Addiction? Spin?

  Screw it, I couldn’t care less. I want to set my iPhone to silent, drag him into a storage closet and fuck all the languid spra
wl out of that lean body of his. By the time I got finished with him, his face wouldn’t even remember how to form the irritatingly dismissive expression he greeted me with.

  I wonder what kind of instrument he’s packing behind the fly of those worn jeans.

  My gaze doesn’t dip below his chin but he reacts as if he heard my thoughts loud and clear. His eyes spark and then narrow slightly, his focus pricking my nipples like he just locked them into steel-banded clamps.

  This is so not good. My personal Kryptonite comes in two flavors, and the first and most strictly forbidden is musician. The notes of a rock song slide into my heart faster than any pretty eyes or wide shoulders, but I can’t afford an affair that might turn messy when I’m still trying to build my career. Still, I won’t let this guy think he can use his sex appeal to throw me off my game.

  Instead of backing off, I let the sudden chemistry between us sizzle and allow the silence to grow, the air gaining weight until it feels like a sentence. Danny remains completely still but behind his eyes I can see exactly how fast his mind is moving. Finally, he blinks.

  I don’t.

  He leans forward, the movement so tight that it takes everything in me not to react. “Look. I want you to understand something,” he says.

  I arch one eyebrow and wait.

  “You’re a travel agent,” he says. “And a manager of everything from hours to pennies to roadies.”

  I tick my chin up a fraction of an inch in reply, though I’m a hell of a lot more and if he took off his headphones once in a while, he’d know that.

  “And you’re a babysitter. You work for us, but our label sent you, and it’s the labels that keep you in business when the bands fade away.”

  My attention sharpens but I don’t respond. Apparently he doesn’t have those headphones on all the time. I know twenty-year veterans that don’t understand the complex, under-the-table interplay between tour managers and A&R execs.

  “I don’t need a babysitter, and I’ve got no use for a spy,” he says. “I’ll take care of my band. You do the paperwork, forget I exist and we’ll all be very happy.”