Chapter Six
Elly
Tristan actually acted somewhat normal today while he was in the contestant waiting room. He didn’t touch me or kiss me. He actually barely acknowledged me. He said hello and talked to a few of the other guys before finding a quiet spot in the back of the room and going over his sheet music. I did my best to not look over at him every two minutes, but it was hard. He looked really good. He’d showered and worn a black muscle T that showed off his tat’s with a pair of jeans that showed off the rest of his assets. His hair was clean and styled and he had just a spattering of a five o’clock shadow that looked really hot. I couldn’t help thinking about the sex in the janitor’s closet. My belly was full of butterflies and my pulse raced and I felt tingly between my legs when I remembered how he felt….
“Earth to Elly!” It was Keith. He’d been trying to get my attention, I guess. Tristan is finally behaving and I’m going to act stupid and screw it up.
“Yeah, sorry Keith, I was deep in thought.”
“I can see that,” he said. “Hey Jake called the trailer and he said to ask you if you can come see him when you get here tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, sure…thanks.” I wondered if Jake was going to offer me the production job when the top ten went on tour. I’d all but decided that if he did, I was going to take it.
“You okay, Elly?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks, Keith.” He looked like he wasn’t ready to let it go, but the stage manager’s voice floated through my earpiece…
“We’re ready for Tristan,” she said.
I stood up and told Keith, “I have to get back to work.”
“Okay, Elly. Let me know if you need to talk.” I smiled at him; it was nice of him to worry but Keith and I were definitely not close enough to talk about what was worrying me.
“I will thank you.” I told him with another smile. Then I walked half-way over to where Tristan was at.
He still had his head down and I had to find my breath before I said, “Hey Tristan, they’re ready for you on set.”
He got up and for the first time all morning he made eye contact and smiled at me. I smiled back, that was acceptable I think I smiled at the other contestants all the time.
He looked a little nervous and before he stepped through the door I said, “Good Luck.”
He took a deep breath, winked at me and went on. That little wink sent shock waves through my body. I closed the door and went over to the television monitor where I could watch. Tristan had a full band, a piano, bassist, drummer and banjo player. He played his guitar along with them, and at first the music was beautiful. Then he started singing and I was taken back to that bar the first night I’d seen him after so many years. I think I may have actually grimaced. He wasn’t singing…he was yelling. It was a rock song and it called for the yelling, I guess but I was cringing inside because I knew that it wasn’t something our judges were going to care much for. The purpose of this show was to showcase talent…vocal abilities. This song didn’t do that at all. It also seemed to go on and on and on.
When he finished, he looked confident. The judges were all looking like they didn’t want to be the one that had to talk first…that wasn’t a good sign. My chest ached a little because I knew what they were about to say and he looked like he had no idea. I think it would have been easier if he’d known how bad it was. The country star got stuck with the short straw.
“I’m sorry Tristan…for me that was…I just didn’t like it at all.” I had my eyes trained on Tristan’s face on the screen. He flinched a little, but that was it, he didn’t say anything. “The music didn’t seem to match the lyrics and the lyrics were hard to understand because you weren’t actually singing them…you were yelling them. You have a great voice, but this just didn’t showcase that in any way.”
The “Diva” went next. She looked like she was going to cry as she said, “I really like you, Tristan. You’re one of my favorites and you have so much talent. Wow, I hate having to say this baby but…that was just all bad. You were all over the place….” She stopped there and said, “Sorry baby.” Tristan had kept his eyes on her the whole time, but his facial expression didn’t change at all. He looked at the last judge then, the harshest one.
The aging record producer simply said, “I hated it. It may well have been the worst thing I’ve ever been forced to listen to.”
The country singer started saying something else. I think he was going to talk to him about the importance of song choice, but Tristan wasn’t going to listen to any more of it. He picked up his guitar and walked off the stage. He came out the wrong way, back towards me. I’m guessing he didn’t want to ham for the cameras and answer the emcee’s stupid questions. I don’t think he was making a lot of points with my colleagues. I tried to say something to him as he walked by. I just wanted to tell him that there was always next week…but he brushed past me like I wasn’t even there. Before he went out the door into the hall, he slammed his guitar into the wall, hard. Pieces of it went flying.
The assistant producer, a man named Tony ran after him.
“Tristan, man calm down. Their opinions aren’t always what matters man. All you can do is your best and then wait and see what happens with the votes.”
“Fuck that! I did my best. That was a fucking great performance! I wasted my whole week working on that just to be told it was awful by three tone deaf mother fuckers! This damned show is rigged. They all have their little favorites and they’re trying to skew the audience in their favor by talking shit to the rest of us.”
The A.P. chuckled and said, “Come on, Tristan, you don’t believe that.”
“The hell I don’t. Fuck this stupid ass show and fuck you!”
He turned to storm out again and I said, “Tristan, wait!”
I hated seeing him like this. I felt so bad because even though that kind of music wasn’t for everyone, and it wasn’t what he did best, I could tell that he’d worked hard on it. I went over and put my hand on Tony’s arm. I had a feeling that Tristan related better to women.
“You should get back out there, Tony. I’ll talk to Tristan, okay?”
Tony looked at Tristan and back at me. I could tell he was worried that Tristan was going to get violent.
“It’s really okay,” I told him.
“Alright,” he said, finally. “Remember security is right outside.”
“Oh fuck you!” Tristan yelled at him. “I scared you ya big pussy? You have to call security on me?”
“Tristan, hush!” I said. He was his own worst enemy and he didn’t even know it. I turned back towards the P.A. and said, “Go ahead Tony, I’ll be fine.”
Tony reluctantly left and I said, “Come with me, Tristan.” He continued to stand where he was. I think he was already pissed at me telling him to hush. I softened my tone a little and I said, “Please.”
He grudgingly followed me into the conference room and I closed the door. “Tristan, you really need to calm down. If they feel threatened by you, they can kick you off the show. It doesn’t matter how far in you are….”
“Let them kick me off. I don’t need this shit. This show is a fucking joke anyways.”
“Oh come on, Tristan. You can’t just give up. Surely you’ve had constructive criticism before.”
“Constructive? They said it was terrible…on live television. You don’t think that’s going to skew the votes?”
“Sometimes, it works the opposite way. People get pissed at the judges and vote for the one they like whether or not the contestant did well. The general public is smart enough to know that sometimes even professionals have an off day.”
“Whether or not they did well? An off day? You sound like you have an opinion of your own.”
“No, Tristan please stop. We are not all against you. The judges had an opinion, it’s not fact. And okay, I have an opinion too, it isn’t my favorite kind of music and I like…no, I love your voice when you sing the softer stuff. It just seems to suit you better.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. This whole time I thought you were just a behind the scenes lackey. I didn’t realize you were some kind of music expert.”
“Tristan…” His attitude was pissing me off. I don’t know why he thought it was necessary to be rude to me. Instead of focusing on that though, I was doing my best to keep it professional. We had more than one class on handling difficult artists and I was trying to put some of that education to good use.
“I need to get out of here,” he said. “I can’t breathe in here. This is all fucking pointless anyways. None of you know anything about music, you all make me sick.”
“Tristan!” My voice landed on the closed door as he slammed it in my face. He wasn’t going to give me a chance to show off my education, go figure. This was the man I haven’t been able to stop thinking about for even a second in the past twenty-four hours. My judgment in men had gone from questionable to: What the hell were you thinking?
I sat there for a few minutes, trying to regain my composure before I went back out and had to face everyone. Taking several deep breaths to calm my nerves I finally pulled the door open and went back out into the contestant room. Molly and Keith were awesome, they’d jumped in and handled things for me while I was dealing with Tristan the tyrant.
“Are you okay?” Molly asked me.
“I’m good, thanks,” I lied.
I got back to work and a few minutes later when there was a break in the action out on stage, Tony came back out.
“How’d it go with Tristan?” he asked me.
I had a clipboard in my hand with absolutely nothing I needed to look at on it. I looked down at it like it was super important work, hoping it would ward him off.
“It was fine, he calmed down.”
Tony leaned over to make me look at his face. I looked up at him and he said,
“Are you sure? He seemed like the type who would leave and come back with an automatic rifle and take us all out.”
I laughed. “I doubt it,” I told him. “He was really fine by the time he left.”
Tony didn’t look convinced, but he let it go. After he walked away, I thought about what he’d said about the automatic rifle. I laughed to myself again. The thing about Tristan was that I got the impression that he genuinely didn’t care enough about anyone or anything to go to that much trouble. That was a sad fact.