Cassie
“Check one,” I called to the empty bar, late-afternoon light hitting the dim neon and gilded walls. Any other day this would be a triumph, imagining my music hitting the bodies that would fill the tiled floor. But Luke’s shocked, bitter face haunted me. Drugs and threats and my mother’s broken windows. Luke drawing my leg across his lap. A drop of drool falling from his opiate-slack mouth. His nightmares. His calisthenics. The way his big hands flopped to his sides when he told me the truth. Everyone who he had lied to, everyone I knew and didn’t, following him like ghosts everywhere he went. I had brought poison into my home. The memory of Luke’s lips on mine sent a chill through my bones, the kind of staticky, tipping feeling I got before my blood lacked sugar, or the feeling I used to get when I couldn’t make rent.
But my rent was paid, and I had checked my levels in the bathroom.
“Cassie?” Nora was saying. “Up, down? That sound good to you?”
My keys loomed white, anonymous. I pressed a chord, and a surge of power leaped through my fingertips. He could walk through the door any second. I was scared that he would, scared that he wouldn’t. A man’s laughter across the room made me jump. Just the bartender, setting up. The door behind him swung back and forth, then shut. Why was I disappointed it wasn’t Luke? Of course it wasn’t Luke. I closed my eyes against the image of him laughing. I imagined him lying on the floor in front of me, motionless. Good. Stay where I can see you. So I know you aren’t out there, where you’ll hurt me again. I pressed another chord to drown him out.
I turned my head to where Nora stood, waiting behind me. “That sounds great.”
The hours flew, the lights went off, the neon clicked on. People were arriving, and I stayed in the corner, playing silent chords on my thighs so I would have something to occupy my flighty hands.
Nora asked me questions. No, I wasn’t that nervous. I was nervous, but not that nervous. Yes, I wanted to go on. I wanted to helm this block of concrete like a raft into space. Yes, I was pleased with the lighting. I liked how it looked like we were in the middle of a giant blood orange. How many did I think were out there? Oh, I didn’t know. It sounded like it was at capacity, that was for sure. Yes, I’d heard from the Wolf Records guy. His plane had landed earlier today. No, I didn’t know what he looked like.
Oh, shit, was I not saying any of this aloud?
The realization seemed to click on the sound. For me, and for the world. It rose in an electronic din, like that Dolby sound bite they play at the beginning of movies in the theater.
“Sorry,” I said to Nora, who had now dragged me into what appeared to be a supply closet. “I’m all out of whack.”
“Cassie, thank God, you were just, like, silent,” she said, her plump lips dark purple and sensuous, like two plums. “You look like one of those women who dies of consumption in the 1800s. Are. You. All. Right.”
“Yes, I—” I began, but with the sound turned up, some of the emotions had started to trickle back in. I bit my lip to keep it back until the show started.
“If you’re not, we don’t have to do this,” Nora said.
“Oh, yes we do,” I said. We did. This was a chance to leave all the bullshit behind. And you know what, fuck it. If I thought the dissolution of the fake marriage would stop me from playing the biggest show of my life, I didn’t deserve a record deal. Control was overrated. I played because I loved to play, that was it. If I wanted control, I wouldn’t be here. Regardless of what happened, we had worked too hard to let it go now.
I pulled her close by the collar of her long, black sheath dress. “I’m ready. You ready?”
Nora took me by the cheeks, and planted a huge purple set of lips on the spot right between my brows, which I didn’t wipe off.
We left the closet. I checked in with Toby, who winked, banging out his warm-up. So far I’d been able to avoid him. I had no idea what to say to him, how I felt. Had no idea what would happen to us. But all that would have to wait.
From the wings, I scanned the crowd. There, in the corner, her bag clutched on her lap, her navy Crocs perched on a bar stool, sat my mother. Rita turned around from the bar with two glasses of white wine, handing her one.
I caught Mom’s eye. Her calm smile stopped my shivers, my doubts. This would be the first show where Mom wouldn’t want me to walk offstage and be someone else.
Nora picked up her bass, drawing three deep-end-of-the-pool notes.
I stepped up to the keyboard. Whatever intro music they were playing at the Sahara had ceased, and the crowd began to bellow.
My heart had just been ripped out, leaving a gaping hole.
But sometimes that just meant more room for the music.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for being here,” I said into the mic, the keys’ soft weight against my fingertips as familiar as the Casio I had as a little girl. I looked straight into my mother’s smiling eyes. “We’re The Loyal.”
