by Greg Jolley
The air brakes released a gasp. Outside Uncle Tim’s window were the unfamiliar faces of the venue’s staff and crews. Israel was among them, glaring at the windshield, perhaps at Brian.
Beside Israel was a new face, a lovely woman with straight mahogany hair and calm watchful eyes. She wore a white hooded sweatshirt with a tropical scene embroidered across the chest. Israel spoke to her and Uncle Tim took in her thin, tan legs, pouring from the green cargo shorts. She had a pencil in her left hand and nothing to write on. With her shoulders hunched, she was giving Israel a relaxed smile with steady, beautiful chocolate eyes.
Uncle Tim was curiously smitten and felt a rare emotion, like rediscovering a sentiment that lay under years’ of dust. He didn’t know what to think, so he simply continued to stare.
Israel stepped away from the woman. The RV door opened, and he climbed in.
“Dude...” he said to Brian, not looking at him. “Is she sleeping?” he asked Uncle Tim.
Uncle Tim turned slowly from the window and looked to his good friend. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and looked back out the window. The woman was walking to the auditorium through a group of workers. A man joined her. He had a roll of blueprints tucked under his arm. It looked like he was talking and she was listening, but not replying.
“We have rehearsal at one and the sound check at four,” Israel said.
Uncle Tim nodded. The woman floated up a walkway. When she entered the doors, he looked away.
Israel sat down on the couch, “This is nice,” he said, patting the comfortable leather.
Uncle Tim turned his tablet off and simply said, “Yes.”
“Better than sharing that four-year-old SUV. This is good. You deserve it—well, not you, but Karen does.”
Uncle Tim grimaced, as expected.
“How’s the work going?” Israel looked to the binders on the table.
“Huh?”
Israel chuckled. “Okay, what’s up? You love that stuff.”
“There was a woman. Just now.”
“Yes?” Israel encouraged.
Uncle Tim looked out the window. Israel straightened his back and looked. There was usual crowd of work crews.
“Which one, Uncle Tim? There are a few,” Israel asked, trying to align his eyes to his friend’s eyes. He replayed the past few minutes.
“Never mind,” Uncle Tim said to the window.
“Really?”
“Really. Do you have tonight’s lighting schedule?”
“Sure. Yes.” Israel took a folded piece of paper from his pocket.
Uncle Tim pressed the schedule flat on the table.
“I’m hazarding a guess,” Israel said. “The stage designer. Her name is Paula Tue.”
Both men turned to the sound of the click of a bedroom door. They heard a second door closing, most likely the bathroom.
“Well, well. The wonder has risen,” Israel smiled.
“Paula Tue,” Uncle Tim said the woman’s name softly, not loud enough for Israel to hear.
The shower began to run. The RV shook. Israel stood and looked out. The road crew and Brian were unloading the cargo bays alongside the vehicle, taking out crates and instrument cases.
“I’ll go help,” Uncle Tim said.
“Let ’em. You’ll just get in the way.”
Uncle Tim went anyway, looking for a distraction.
KAREN DIDN’T PLAY WITH the opening band. Because Wyde was headlining, she stayed alongside her bandmates. Jen Clair handed out the night’s song list, and they rehearsed a second time wearing headphones so they could hear one another as the opening band performed.
Wyde was a varied collection of musicians, all from entirely different schools and styles: jazz and blues, blue grass, and country rock. They were a happy bunch, but also serious, all sharing a desire to play and explore musical visions and passions. Beyond sharing their talent, they were to a man and woman delighted in their efforts to stretch their combined sound wide across the stage, wide between the speakers, for their audiences.
Uncle Tim sat on a folding chair and listened to the rehearsal through a spare pair of headphones. The mid-stage curtain was down, dividing Wyde from the opening band. When the first band finished their set, the main curtain drew across the stage boards, muting the audience applause. The stage crew for Wyde quickly went to work as the mid-stage curtain raised. The two crews worked together efficiently, one tearing down, and the other setting up.
The main curtain, a royal blue velvet, remained closed. Uncle Tim watched Karen wander and warm up among her bandmates, who remained in their comfortable gaffer-taped places.
His eyes traced Karen as she barefooted to Sej. Beyond her, in the far wing, he saw the woman from earlier, and guessed she was Paula Tue. She stood still in a beehive of activity, sketching with a pencil on an oversized clipboard. Uncle Tim watched her as she paused to take two cell phone calls. She smiled when she shook her head, indicating, “No.” She frowned when she seemed to say “Yes.” Her lovely, focused eyes were steady within the fall of her dark hair.
Two women were paying close attention to her and appeared to be answering her questions as she pointed to various areas of the stage. She listened without comment and drew on her clipboard. Her cell phone rang again, Uncle Tim saw it glow, and she handed it to the taller woman with a wave of her hand.
Brian sat down in the folding chair at his side. He was holding the pool business binder that Uncle Tim put together for him. He had questions, and Uncle Tim removed his headphones and they tried to talk but gave up quickly. Someone called out, “In two!”
Wyde and their crew removed their headsets as the MC on the other side of the blue curtain began a rambling introduction of the band. Paula Tue disappeared into the shadows.
The band began playing before the curtain went up. Brian was going on and on, inaudible and insistent. Uncle Tim reluctantly agreed to go out to the RV with him. He took a final glance at Karen, who was concentrating and playing in the safety of her bandmates. They entered a cloud of reporters where Israel was happily shouting and the reporters were not writing. There was only one camera raised; some tall person standing back away in stylish fashionable clothing with his face shadowed by a fedora and one of his Nikons. Uncle Tim looked him over, wondering why photos of Israel were worthy. Brian nudged his shoulder, and they moved past.
They climbed up into the RV and went past the galley table to Uncle Tim’s desk. Brian reopened the FedEx box of the day’s mail, pulling out letters, invoices, bills and the like. He placed a second FedEx carton in his lap and began a struggle to open it. Uncle Tim smiled and relieved him of the white box and sliced it open.
They talked for the next hour, going through the invoices, reviewing current projects and editing the advertisements for the new maintenance side of the pool business. They discussed Brian’s concerns about his departure from the tour in four days. He would be traveling to the pool company’s store up in Northern California. Brian wrote detailed notes on swiped motel stationary as he questioned Uncle Tim. He and Uncle Tim had a lot of ground to seed.
WYDE’S NEXT CONCERT WAS three nights later. During the break, Paula Tue’s stage design was constructed and put in place.
The venue’s fifteen hundred seats sold out. There was a radio station MC that night. The theatre lights dimmed and Wyde began to play. The curtain swept into the wings and Wyde was playing in a kitchen and family room. The bass player was in a recliner, facing a television turned away from the audience so that his instrument was cast in a gray glow. Sej was playing the family room upright, under family photographs aligned across the piano top. Beside him was an end table, a glowing reading lamp, and a stack of magazines. Jen Clair was on the couch, hemmed in by end tables with lamps and coffee cups. Her black boots were up on the coffee table, tapping.
Each band member was cast in a matching golden glow from above. Before the audience could take this in, the drummer joined the song from stage right, in the well-detailed garag
e. Kendal was by the stove playing his banjo, a shimmering cluster of notes that shaped the melody. The others joined in, and the music widened with complex colors.
Karen was also in the kitchen. The table was set for dinner with plates and bowls of food with rising steam. Her silver dobro cast glares out into the audience as she selected a glass slide from her plate and joined in.
In the dark stage left, Israel broke out in delighted laughter. Brian began to clap his hands to the beat. Uncle Tim was staring.
On the opposite side of the stage, in the wing, Paula Tue was dancing badly but with spirit. Her crew was grinning, nodding, and giving her dancing room.
Uncle Tim recognized the song Wyde was playing and playing well, a bit quicker than in rehearsal. The song sounded crisp. To his right, fifteen hundred people were bobbing, weaving, and dancing like one big happy family. Uncle Tim noticed this as he continued to stare—through the family room and past the musicians and his daughter—to Paula Tue, who was twirling with her beautiful eyes closed.
WHEN THE SHOW WAS over and the theatre empty, Israel and Uncle Tim went out back into the cool night air.
“And?” Israel asked.
“Told you already.”
“Tell me again.”
“I’m pleased by what she did for Karen and the band.”
“It’s a does, not a did.”
“Huh?”
“She now works for Karen and Wyde. I hired her away from her current gigs.”
Where’s Karen?” Israel asked, his voice harsh, barely under control. He had climbed up into the RV and was looking down the short hall in the back. All the doors appeared closed.
“I think she crashed on the band’s bus,” the driver answered, waking from sleep on the galley couch.
“I think doesn’t work anymore,” Israel said, voice rising.
Uncle Tim stepped out through the bathroom door. “What’s up?”
“Not sure if it’s related. Some lunatic swiped a guard last night. So far, it’s just a missing person report, but she had a ride waiting and vanished instead.”
“Maybe she’s with the band?” Uncle Tim suggested with a half-smile.
Israel didn’t smile back. “Checked. Did a double headcount. Everyone’s there except Sej.”
Israel’s phone rang. Uncle Tim listened to him and a groggy sounding Sej. He heard the piano player describe Karen as dead to the world asleep in bed. He was on the couch, and she was in a tangle of blankets with his young sons.
Israel smiled and put the phone away.
Uncle Tim relaxed and sat down at the table.
“Guys,” Israel said to the driver and Uncle Tim. “As of this morning, we’ve grown a shadow; sort of, and not by choice. It’s a cop. With the file, asking around.”
Uncle Tim looked out the window. “He’s out there now?” he asked.
“The cop is a she and yes. Being pleasant and discreet. Not gonna rattle the teams. She’s a good person.”
Uncle Tim looked for a cop in uniform.
“Where’s Brian?” Israel asked.
“No idea. Well, he might be in the motel pool.”
Israel shook his head as though in pain.
“I’m going to have Zack talk to him.”
“And who’s Zack?”
“The cop.”
“Well, Zack better … what? Grill him? She better move fast, he’s leaving the tour today.”
“If last night’s kidnapping was related to the others, he can’t just—”
“Israel? This is Brian we’re talking about, Mr. Daydream.”
“I know, but hear me out. The fan thefts became somewhat of a pattern about the time Brian joined the tour.”
“You can’t really think Brian is involved.”
“I know, I know. But part of the pattern are the girls’ descriptions of a big guy. And floating. And we have mister-gotta-sleep-on-water.”
The two men looked away from one another.
Uncle Tim broke the silence. “What does the cop say?”
“I haven’t mentioned him yet. I wanted to chat with you first. She seems more focused on prevention.”
“Sure enough, Brian will be eating pancakes the next time another girl is taken. If another girl is taken,” Uncle Tim said.
“I hope so—I mean, I hope not. I—I don’t know what I hope for except no one getting harmed.”
Uncle Tim nodded in agreement. Out the window there was a crowd moving about the backstage doorway. “This could be sad,” he said quietly to his dear friend, “but I’m betting on ‘no.’”
‘I’ll double down with you. Brian seems to be a good guy. Sufficiently odd for this merry business, but these kidnappings are drop-dead serious.”
Uncle Tim spotted Brian off to the right placing his folded air mattress and blanket on the sidewalk.
“Here he comes now.”
“Okay. No more talk about a big bad bear.”
Before Uncle Tim could say anything, the bus door opened and Brian climbed up inside. “Hi guys,” he offered pleasantly. “Who’s driving me to the airport?”
Israel turned away from Brian, saying, “Not me.”
Uncle Tim raised his hand to Brian in reply. His stocky nephew stood there in his bathing suit, damp t-shirt, and work boots embracing his zip-lock bag of letters.
Uncle Tim stood beside two large rough tables pushed end-to-end. In the center there was a flat monitor displaying a bird’s-eye view of the stage with different colored lines and shapes identifying where props and walls belonged. A stagehand came over and tapped the display, and a new level, a new layer, was revealed; this one more detailed and complex. The woman traced a rectangle with her finger, and it changed hue and she studied the indicated path shown by a pulsing arrow. She called out “baby blue” to the young guy rolling the kitchen wall and door in place along a path of pale blue gaffer tape.
Paula Tue stood beside Uncle Tim. Her strong hands finished constructing a yellow refrigerator, complete with a gray handle, out of Play-Doh. She placed the icebox within a yellow square on the rolled out blue print of the stage. A woman stepped between them and looked at the Play-Doh automobile, cut in half, noting its location. She asked Paula Tue a question, got a nod, and walked away.
Paula Tue looked up from her work, scanned the stage, and turned to Uncle Tim offering him a blink of a smile.
“Hello,” he offered.
She tilted her head, one time.
“You’re Karen’s dad?” she said quietly, tapping the flat monitor and changing the layer of the 3D display.
“Yes. Well, adoption dad, yes.”
The distinction didn’t appear to be relevant. She tapped her cell on the table and a call dialed.
A voice answered, “Lighting.”
“Hey,” she said and tapped the phone again. A third voice joined the call.
“Yo, Props.”
The three talked of timing, mood, and theme changes. Paula Tue tapped the cell a third time and a male voice answered, “Paula? I’m standing right behind you.”
She turned and offered the prop guy a lopsided grin. “Whoa.”
Uncle Tim stepped back to one side and watched Paula work; she looked lovely and lost in thought and conversation. The discussion was complex; prop movements and timing, lighting changes, contrasts, shadows and hues. The prop guy reached in and nudged Uncle Tim another step back. The bump shook his attention, and Uncle Tim turned to the edge of the stage and looked to the front row of seats where Israel and Karen sat shoulder-to-shoulder. Israel was talking and gesturing, and Karen was smiling and nodding. When she did speak, it was brief and Israel paused each time and listened carefully. When she pointed, he looked.
An arm went around Uncle Tim’s shoulder. He turned and there was Paula, her beautiful eyes steady, offering Karen and Israel a wry smile. Uncle Tim tightened ahold of his last breath. He wanted to blink but didn’t.
“She’s a wonder,” Paula said.
Before he could find a few word
s, her hand and arm moved away. She crossed to center stage, raising her phone. Behind her, the backing curtain was unfurling from the scaffolding high above. The canvas was stage-wide and painted with the details of the family room and kitchen, complete with windows, wallpaper, doors, and hometown art on the wall. The garage was to the left, complete with shelves and yard tools, a lawn mower, a washer and dryer, and a detailed workbench.
FROM THE OTHER SIDE of the big curtain, waves of audience voices were washing against the velvet. The lights dimmed, and the crowd grew louder. The drummer began playing with brushes at a heartbeat pace.
The main curtain swept away to the sides, revealing the members of Wyde playing acoustical instruments. The bass guitarist added four notes, introducing the familiar chord structure of Wyde’s last near-hit, ‘In Memory of Elizabeth Reed’. All the band members joined in loosely defining the opening melody.
Wyde appeared oblivious to their setting—the drummer in the garage, Karen seated at the kitchen table. The bass player stood at his upright in the warm glow of the open refrigerator looking in and playing. Kendal was on the couch, which he was sharing with Jen Clair, playing banjo. Sej sat sideways on his piano bench drawing long notes on a lap slide. Wyde was instrument focused and head nodding the song along.
The lighting on the musicians changed, coming from the wings, coloring them in dramatic shadows and focus.
During their second song, ‘Dreams’, Karen left the breakfast table during her solo. The audience encouraged her as she walked slowly to the bass player. The two of them played while gazing into the refrigerator. Kendal entered the melody joined by Jen Clair. Karen lifted her bow and lowered her violin as the guitarist began to solo. Her hand went inside the pocket of her flour-sack dress and she put on her pair of sunglasses for the first time. When the drummer sang the second verse in his husky world-weary voice, Karen joined in humming harmony lines. The audience was swaying and forming ocean swells of appreciation for the familiar melody.
The song ended with all of Wyde in the melody; a cluster of notes that trailed off slowly like spraying embers.
