Chapter 8
Since Eden had said I could bring a friend, Zion insisted on escorting me to her show. I couldn’t tell if he was hoping I’d get to hang out with Micah again or if he was actually concerned for my health. But either motive was invalid. He had no reason to expect Micah to show up for his sister’s show. And I could take care of myself. I wasn’t likely to forget to eat again after last night. My pocketbook held sandwich bags filled with emergency snacks.
The entrance to the club hid under scaffolding, but even without the obstruction, the door was nondescript, dark. A neon sign lit the window behind a curtain of advertisements and posters. Zion pushed the door open, and I followed him through, unsure whether I should hold my breath. The room was so murky, I assumed there would be smoke, but the delicious aroma of coffee and food hit me. Underneath that, I could detect a slight underlying stink of cigarettes and body odor—the smell of dark places.
Several feet in, we approached a podium where an Asian woman leaned on her elbows watching us. “Tickets?” she asked.
“No, uh, we—”
“This is a private show. Tickets required in advance.”
Zion spoke for me. “We’re on the guest list?”
She scanned the page. “One minute. You stay here.” She left us and dropped farther into the club. We probably could have simply walked in, but it seemed bad form. And I would have rather been admitted properly. After all, we were invited.
The woman returned, trailing a man wearing a Pussycat Dolls T-shirt and sporting well-groomed facial hair. He put his hand out to me. “Hi, I’m Tobin. You must be Jo?”
I nodded. “And this is my friend, Zion. Eden said I could bring a guest.”
Zion put his hand out in the way he did like he was at a debutante ball and he’d been asked to dance. Or like he was the Pope, and he expected someone to kiss his ring. It always made me blush, but I’d long since stopped trying to cajole him into normalcy. He told me it was like a white cane for a blind man. It was one way to test out the world.
Tobin took Zion’s proffered hand, and to my surprise, he leaned forward and planted a kiss right on the tops of Zion’s fingers. Zion flashed me a satisfied side-eye. You see? Tobin looked up into Zion’s eyes for the first time, and the two appraised one another. I felt distinctly invisible. And with the darkness of the club, I practically was. Tobin led us toward the stage.
An alcove held several tables with merchandise for sale—T-shirts, CDs. I saw Eden’s album and stopped for a minute to pick it up and flip it over. A woman behind the table asked if she could help me, but I didn’t want to buy anything.
I caught up with Zion, who’d found a seat close to the stage. The club provided tables or stools along the bar, but the stage area held nothing but rows of chairs. I threw my camera over the back of one. “Do you think I should look for Eden?”
He shrugged. “I wish you’d let me bring my camera. I bet there will be some interesting people here tonight.”
I shot him a warning glance. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. And I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t asked to do this privately.”
He craned his neck around. “Hey, isn’t that Adrianna LaRue?”
Sure enough, on the other side of the room, the pop singer preened on a chair no different than the one I sat in. But somehow she made it look like a throne. Her enormous hair eclipsed the entire row to her right. She was the definition of larger than life. Something struck her funny, and when she giggled, she covered her face with both hands and leaned back. And then I saw him sitting beside her. Micah Sinclair twenty feet away from me, breathing the same air.
Zion saw Micah at the same time as me and pulled at my sleeve. “Come on. You have to introduce me.”
I swatted his hand away. “You’ve interviewed him before, Zion. You’ve talked to him countless times I’m sure.”
“Yeah, but I’ve always been a nameless face, a reporter. I’ve never just sat and talked to any of these people. And Adrianna. Oh, shit. You should be shooting pictures.” He sat back into his chair and pushed my camera bag at me.
Despite my earlier protestations to the contrary, I gratefully wrapped my hand around the strap and unlatched the clasp. “I totally shouldn’t be doing this.”
Once I had my camera poised, I cut a glance over to where Micah sat, but his chair was now empty. Before I had a chance to spin my head around, surreptitiously of course, to relocate him, I felt a hand kneading the muscle between my neck and shoulder like the start of a massage. I dropped my head back and looked straight up at the bottom of Micah’s chin. His face was upside down. His smile was a frown.
“I saw you over here. Why don’t you come sit with me and Ade?” He gestured toward the other side, and Zion was already up and moving.
“Micah, this is my friend Zion. Zion, Micah.”
Micah put his hand out to Zion, and Zion forgot to offer his dainty handshake. He clasped Micah’s hand and said, “It’s great to meet you.”
Adrianna stood as we came over. I couldn’t make my brain process that she was a real person, hanging out in this dingy club, wearing a massive boa with a blond afro teased out about a foot in every direction. She was like a living Barbie doll, a freaky living Barbie doll. Zion was about to bow down before her.
Micah intervened to make introductions. “Ade, this is my friend Jo-Jo from Georgia. Or should I call you Anika?”
I knew he teased, but he couldn’t know the depths of my anger toward that name. “Please don’t. That’s what my dad calls me. I go by my middle name.”
“You have many names, Jo Jo.” He turned to Adrianna. “And this is her friend Zion.... Where are you from, Zion?”
Adrianna lifted her hand up in the exact same way Zion had earlier. He took her fingers in his hand and lifted them to his lips for a benediction, but his eyes were absorbing every detail of her hair, and I knew he was trying to figure out how he could re-create that. I’d tell him later it was probably a wig. He couldn’t make his real hair do what her fake hair could do. But right then, it was all possibilities. Right then, he was working out how many times he’d have to bleach it to go from midnight black to virgin white, and his eyes were saucers.
Adrianna cooed, “Aren’t you adorable?”
I answered Micah’s question for him. “Zion lives in Williamsburg. You dropped me off at our apartment last night.”
“Right.” He tsked. “But I only saw the sidewalk. You left in a bit of a hurry.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I wasn’t feeling well.”
Micah sat down and indicated a chair to his right. I moved around Adrianna and sat beside him, on the end. That left Zion alone with Adrianna. From the looks of things, I didn’t think he’d mind. I couldn’t tell if it was the celebrity or her mesmerizing beauty, but Zion was a goner. I hoped I wasn’t gawking at Micah so openly. I was thankful for Zion’s complete loss of composure since it took the focus off my own.
“Zion from Williamsburg.” Micah said that as though he were considering the title of a novel. “Nope. I can’t work with that at all. Surely he’s not from Williamsburg. Nobody’s from Williamsburg.”
“No. He’s from down South. Like me.” I’d already Googled the basic facts about Micah and knew his family lived somewhere in New Jersey, but for the sake of conversation, I asked, “And where are you from?”
He scrunched up his nose. “Sometimes I wish I could say I’d been born and raised in West Philadelphia.”
“Huh?”
“Like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?”
I stared at him blank. No clue.
He frowned at my silence. “It’s a TV show.”
“Oh, right. I didn’t watch that.”
His eyes opened wide. “How old are you?”
I snorted at the impertinence of the question. “I’m scandalized.”
The dimple in his cheek made an appearance when he laughed. “I mean, you must be a lot younger than me if you don’t remember The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
I sat up to my full height as if that would make me look older. “I’m the same age as you.”
“Thirty-two?”
“I turned thirty-three in May.”
“Hmm.” He scratched his chin. “You’re older than me.”
“Only by a couple of months. You’ll be thirty-three in a few weeks.” My face flushed with the realization I’d basically admitted to stalking his online bio.
“You’ve done your homework.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “So how’d you miss out on a classic nineties sitcom?”
A memory stirred. I used to sneak out to my neighbor Kelsey Bennet’s house to gorge on ice cream and forbidden TV, before my diagnosis. “I do kind of remember that show, but I wasn’t allowed to watch sitcoms. Brain rotting.”
“What a sad childhood. We’ll have to make up for it sometime. You should come over, and we’ll marathon all the junk sitcoms and eat all the junk food.”
I appraised him to figure out if he was being serious. It would be embarrassing to say yes if he was only fooling. “Sounds fun.”
He clasped his hands in supplication, like he was praying. “Think about it. Crappy food and television. You totally want in, right?”
“Yeah?” I fiddled nervously with my camera lens.
“If it would entice you more, you could do a whole photo spread of me eating pizza and watching sitcoms in my boxers at home.”
And there it was. I cringed at how easily I’d let him convince me he was hitting on me. I’m not sure why he wanted to float pictures of himself being a regular guy. Maybe he’d talked to Hervé and found out what I’d said about that. But I drew the line at shooting pictures of guys in their underwear anyway.
I settled in my chair, trying to pretend I couldn’t feel the gravitational pull of the hot celestial being to my left. He leaned over and started to say something else, but a movement caught my attention. Two women had taken seats behind us, and one of them tapped Micah’s shoulder before they fell back, heads together, giggling. When Micah looked at them, they burst into full hysteria.
The one with short-cropped gray hair said, “I’m sorry. My girlfriend thought that was you.” She was still recovering. “She wanted me to ask you for an autograph.”
Micah had already turned around with a hand outstretched. “Hi. What are your names?”
“I’m Martha,” said the gray-haired woman. She had incredible skin. It made me wonder if she was prematurely gray or if she had great genes. I had no idea how old she was. “And this is my friend Lynn.” Lynn had long brown hair, tied back at either side of her face. They both wore loose yoga wraps over tighter T-shirts and jeans. Lynn had accessorized with dangly earrings.
“Do you have something for me to sign?” Micah waited, and both women knocked each other as though he were on display at a museum and couldn’t see them.
Martha looked at Lynn. “Do we have something he can sign?” Her face contorted like she was stifling another onslaught of hilarity. “Here. Can you sign my arm?” She held out a ballpoint pen.
Micah took it with a dubious scowl. “I can, but you have to promise you won’t go and get a tattoo of it or something. Just take a picture. Trust me.”
That sent Martha into a convulsive fit, and she held her stomach. She obviously couldn’t believe she’d been so bold tonight. Her friend held her arm out and shoved up the sleeve. Lynn was the brains of the operation apparently.
Micah wrote, “What a crazy night that was. Micah Sinclair.” Or I assumed it said Micah Sinclair. Only the M and the S were legible.
Lynn showed it to Martha, and Martha shoved her sleeve up, too. “Me, too?”
“Sure.” He wrote, “We’ll always have TriBeCa,” and the same scrawl of a signature. Anyone could have scribbled that on their arms.
Lynn fished out her phone. “We have to get a picture with you. Our friends are never going to believe us.” She handed the phone to me. “Do you mind?”
Suddenly a part of this situation, I took the camera and leaned back so I could get all three of them in. Martha and Lynn held their arms up so the signatures were visible. I said, “One, two, three.” The camera clicked, and the two ladies flopped into their seats, content. The invisible boundary went back up.
Micah faced forward again. His face registered no difference in attitude, but I felt his shoulders sag and the energy seep from him.
“That seems exhausting,” I whispered.
“Better than flipping burgers.”
“Good point. How’d you end up a musician anyway?”
“When I was in high school, I started a band with some of my friends and let my sister sing with us sometimes.” He cut his eyes at me. “I never told her our audience doubled if we announced that she’d be singing. I didn’t do great in high school, but I worked summer jobs and saved up money so I could move to Brooklyn and join up with some guys who were looking for a front man. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“What else do you do? I mean when you’re not onstage, at a party, or supporting your sister?”
His eyes narrowed briefly. Did he think I was trying to get him to talk about all those women he dated in his spare time? Would it be horrible of me if I was? But he relaxed back into that cocky half grin. “Music takes up about eighty percent of my life. I’m either touring or rehearsing or writing or going to see other musicians. I spend the rest of my time blowing off steam—or sleeping.”
“How do you blow off steam?” I was incorrigible. But I wasn’t asking as a journalist. I really wanted to know.
A wry little devilish light gleamed in his eye, and I knew I’d pushed too hard. “Treks through the Amazon mostly. You know, saving the rain forest.”
I pushed his shoulder, but he didn’t budge. His shoulder muscle was hard as a rock. “Tease.”
He pretended to be pushed over, a second later. “Yeah? Then why was I the one left standing on the sidewalk last night?”
Before I could formulate words again, the sound quality of the air changed noticeably. People stopped milling around their chairs and all settled in. If there’d been a cue, I’d missed it, but moments later, the lights dimmed. Eden had advised me that there’d be an opening act that I could use to set levels on and get in some test shots. She also told me to get up and move around, but all the chairs were full, and people were leaning against the walls on either side. I’d be in someone’s way anywhere I went. But I was being paid to be in someone’s way.
Tobin, the guy we’d met up front earlier, hopped up on stage to a smattering of applause and a couple of catcalls. He pulled the mic up and scanned the audience. “So good to see so many familiar faces out here tonight.”
More applause.
“The fact that you were all so willing to give up five times the normal ticket price for this event just goes to show how much you all take advantage of me.”
The audience laughed.
“Starting tomorrow, the cover charge will be adjusted accordingly.” Tobin smiled. “Seriously, though, I’m appreciative that all of you were willing to come out tonight. The proceeds will go to a great cause:”
Tobin paused for a minute, and the smile faded from his face. He cleared his throat. “Some of you here remember my mom, Elena.” His hand rubbed across his cheek, almost of its own accord, brushing off a tear maybe. “Mom fought a long hard battle. She was my fiercest supporter. She stood for things and made a difference despite her own frailty. She had so much strength, but—” He took a deep breath and heaved it out as though he couldn’t contain it.
Someone in the audience hollered. “We love you, Tobin!” And others applauded and shouted encouragements.
Tobin raised his hand to indicate a banner hanging behind him for an organization that specialized in muscular dystrophy research. “Together we’ll find a cure.” His voice was pitched and the tears fell unchecked. “Let’s give a huge round of applause to Eden Sinclair and Kelli Hind for volunteering their own time for this special evening.”
The applause from the crowd was powerful and clearly in support of Tobin more than in support of the fund-raiser. I got the feeling these people would’ve come there if he’d asked them to support clown school. Even though I didn’t know Tobin, his speech affected me. My heart constricted at his loss. I fought the urge to go back to the door and pay my way in. But I didn’t have a hundred bucks on me. Or in my bank account.
When Micah leaned over and asked if I’d ever seen Kelli Hind, I shook my head, afraid to speak for the lump in my throat.
At last Kelli took the stage, gave her own short speech, and started to play. I lifted my camera and shot off a picture. Hearing the shutter open and close, I cringed. I glanced at Micah, but he continued to nod his head to the music. I hoped that I was just being hypersensitive to the noise and shot another. Then I checked the pics and readjusted for lighting. After I was confident I had the right settings, I relaxed and enjoyed the music. It wasn’t the style I usually listened to, but the woman sang and played well. It beat leaning against a wall out on the street hoping for a celeb to wander by. Or flipping burgers.
I turned my head slightly so I could take in Micah without him noticing. He was completely rapt by the singer. Even his fingers tapped along. His blond hair shook lightly in time with the beat. He was so pretty I couldn’t even stand it. The cord running down the side of his neck tightened and relaxed along with subtle changes in his mouth. He moved his lips slightly like he wanted to sing along. Like he was singing along to himself.
My skin sparked with the awareness that he sat half a foot from me. I didn’t know if I’d ever be that close, that comfortable, that familiar with him again. I wanted to bump him, pull his hair, pinch his arm. Anything to be able to put a hand on him.
Like a wish come true, he brought his arm around the back of my chair and leaned over without turning his eyes away from the stage. “What do you think?”
I didn’t know how he managed to make me hear him without disrupting anyone else around us. I couldn’t trust myself to speak at such a perfect volume, so I made a show of twisting toward him, as if I hadn’t been staring at him, and whispered close to his ear, “She’s good.” I wanted to push my shoulders against his forearm, but I also hoped he’d forget to move away from me. If Andy knew I was sitting this close to Micah and hadn’t asked him a single investigative question, he’d crucify me. But what Andy didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Micah said, “Yeah. Wait till you see Eden.”
But right then, I only wanted to see him. And I wondered how I was going to do the one thing I’d been asked to come here to do while Micah Sinclair had his arm across my shoulders in a dark club. I sat back a little farther, experimentally, and his fingers grasped my arm, tightening with a little squeeze.
Kelli sang about the shadow of a feeling, and I wondered if she’d written that song about me.