AXEL

Is it a cliché to talk about how good a woman smells? When I swept Ricki up into my arms I got a good lungful of the nose candy that was her scent. If that was what cocaine smelled like, I could see why people got addicted. I didn’t want to put her down. I wanted to carry her right to a dressing room in the back and see if she tasted as good as she smelled.

Sakura, that lion-tamer, gave me a “down boy” look as I set Ms. Hamilton onto her petite feet, though. Okay, fine. I reminded myself I was there to work, not to play, and this wasn’t some groupie: this was a woman who could buy and sell me and my band ten times over.

She was still a woman, though—not a robot or made of actual ice even if she had an ice-queen reputation. I caught her looking at me a few times. I caught her leaning toward me.

Maybe the playboy image had something going for it, after all.

Fantasizing about her was a great way to distract myself from anxiety about the awards. When her date didn’t make it to the seats before showtime began, I felt fully justified rearranging everyone’s seats and making sure she was conveniently next to me. The show handlers filled in the empty seat with someone I didn’t know and didn’t pay attention to. I paid attention to the way Ricki’s slender, bare shoulder looked nibble-able. Her evening gown left her neck and arms bare except for the diamonds she wore, which I assumed were real. That didn’t stop me from dreaming about tearing her necklace away so I could get at the tender places on her neck that would make her sigh, make her moan. Down, boy.

How was I supposed to keep my libido in check when it was, literally, my job to be sex on wheels tonight?

Before I knew it they were taking us backstage to get ready to perform. I changed out of my tuxedo and into what was waiting for me.

Christina looked critically at the way the skintight faux leather clung to my legs, making me turn in a circle to inspect my ass. I crossed my arms. “If they’re not tight enough the only alternative I can think of is to actually paint them on next time,” I said.

“Great idea!” she chirped. “They can do that with liquid latex, you know? But it takes a long time to apply and to dry. Not practical for a show like this.”

She never gets my jokes.

“Well? Do I pass muster?”

She tapped her lips with a manicured nail. “It’s still missing something.”

Mal came and looked over her shoulder. “What’s he missing?”

“Something. I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry about him, Chris. You know he always turns it on when the lights come up,” Mal told her.

It was true. People often said I seemed like I took it to a whole different level on stage. Wilder, sexier, on top of the world. That’s the real me, I wanted to tell them. That’s who I’ve always been waiting to be. But it took work to remember sometimes that I wasn’t the shy outcast I’d looked like when Mal and I had started writing songs together as kids.

“I know what the outfit needs,” I said.

“What?” Christina insisted.

“Go check on Ford and Sam and I’ll show you when you get back.”

She grudgingly went to see if the others were ready while I closed my eyes and imagined heiress Ricki Hamilton was wearing no underwear under her designer gown. I slipped a hand under my waistband and heard Mal chuckle while I “adjusted” myself.

When Christina came back she looked me up and down. “Now you look good! On fire! What’s diff—? Oh.” She noticed the outline. “Good God, Axel, I didn’t know you were circumcised!”

Yeah, that’s how tight that costume was.

“Perfect!” she enthused. “You know the camera at the foot of the stage will be right there!”

Yes, I did. We’d already had a whole argument about how the producers didn’t want me playing rhythm guitar like I usually did on this song when we played live. They wanted more “dynamism,” more “mobility” from me. We’d even rehearsed it once with a headset mic, but with no mic and no guitar I felt like I didn’t know what to do with my hands. So they gave me a cordless handheld mic. At least they weren’t making me lip sync.

A tablet-wielding PA led us to our places. The band was on one part of the stage and I was on another, hidden from the audience by a set backdrop that would lift up while the daises we were on would glide forward. The stages were made of clear Lucite with tiny lights embedded inside. It was like standing on top of a giant cubic zirconia gem.

There’s a moment before every performance where a bubble of nervousness expands in my throat, threatening to choke me. Like this time it’s going to be too much. This time I’m going to fail. This time I’m going to fall. This time it’s going to turn out that I really am just that nerdy, lonely outcast nobody liked and not the man who can set the whole world on fire with my voice and my moves.

But then the lights come up, the drums kick in, and that bubble bursts. And I explode like the firecracker that the band needs me to be.

This time was no different. I heard the hostess give the intro. “And now, performing their number one hit ‘Kidnap My Heart,’ here’s The Rough!” The backdrop went up like it had in dress rehearsal, and I hit that opening note clear and true.

I stumbled a little, though, as the stage section I was on ground to a sudden stop far short of where it was supposed to go. Well. The directors had said they wanted me to have “mobility,” right? Sometimes you have to improvise. I leaped off the dais and ran to the front of the stage, hitting and holding a high note with my free hand high in the air. The red light on the camera at my feet glowed and I hoped they got the crotch shot that Christina wanted. Nothing like making love to millions of Americans right through their televisions, right?

A hit song is usually three to four minutes long. Those could have been the longest four minutes of my life, given what I was planning. But they weren’t. They went by in a blur. The backup dancers the producers had added to the number kept to the script: they were stuck partway back on the stalled stage section. That would only make my plan easier to implement. I ignored the choreography and worked the lip of the stage like this was Madison Square Garden and the seats were full of screaming teenagers, not politely nodding entertainment industry people. Actually, a lot of them looked like they were really getting into it.

See, I had plotted a little surprise for the end of the song that not even my bandmates knew about.

As the climax of the song approached, I leaped off the stage into the aisle. I gestured for people around me to jump up and clap. Amazingly, they did. Of course they did—they’re showbiz, they’re Hollywood, they thought this was supposed to happen and they would go along with the show. I danced my way up the aisle, looking for that face, that bare shoulder …

There she was.

The plan was, of course, to “kidnap” Sakura. I was supposed to grab her and carry her out of the auditorium. The publicity stunt would help her establish some celebrity for herself, and more notoriety for me; we’d be the talk of the town and we’d be able to skip out of the rest of the award ceremony before I gave myself an ulcer. I didn’t want to be there to face the record company when we didn’t win.

But that isn’t what I did. I didn’t stick to the plan at all. I got my arm around the waist of Ricki Hamilton, danced her into the aisle, and then swept her off her feet and ran away with her.

Sakura was going to kill me. Later.