The Gemini

37 - Here

May 7, 1989

"Where is she?" Roger demanded of the blonde standing in front of him. Though he kept his tone even and smooth, inside was quite the opposite.

"I can't tell you that." Candy said.

Audibly he puffed at her thinking that she had a choice. "You can and you will."

"I'm sorry but no."

"You're fired."

Eyes widening, mouth slightly agape. The woman taken aback, "What?"

"I didn't stutter." Roger retorted. "You wanna try again?"

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Candy was torn. Her job or her friend? In the end, however, she knew what was right.

Decided, she shook her head. "I cant."

Wordless, Roger switched his glare from her to the door. A non-verbal order for her to leave. Watching her do so, he immediately felt the regret. But to hell with feelings. They weren't doing shit for him anyway. Nothing but cause him trouble.

Back at square one he was. The only difference now being that he held a piece of the world in his hand. People recognized him. They knew his face. Screamed his name, even thought he still didn't have one. A month ago Roger finally told to Rolling Stone that Gemini wasn't his real name.

"Obviously it's not." He had said. When the rather gutsy interviewer asked why it was that he lied and then tried to lecture him on being inauthentic, Roger responded coolly. "It was never intended for anyone to think that. And as for being inauthentic, no. You assuming something doesn't make me untruthful. I never said it was my name."

Despite all of that being said, he continued to remained mum on his actual moniker. When the media referred to him now it was either by "The Artist" or, if they were feeling particularly petty, "The Artist known as Gemini". Roger found it humorous. His management didn't. They advised him to cut out the ruse or else it would hurt his image. His album sales said otherwise.

'Gemini' was sitting pretty at number 2 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums list. Around the world was just the same. It took him a good minute to let that sink it. His success was now international.

The forsaken kid from Minneapolis.

The broken man from Chicago.

Cut that out.

He barely had time to think about what he now considered another past life. Each day Roger put another little piece of his former turmoil behind. Or so he thought anyway. Busy was the key word in his life nowadays. In fact he had never been to this level of busy. If breathing wasn't something that happened naturally, he would be hard pressed to fit that in his bustling schedule.

Among the mix, there was ongoing talks of a tour. Roger was all for it and so getting his boys tight was number one on the agenda. He had already ran it down to them; there was no way he was gonna go out and be any less than the best there ever was.

Bullet point number two on the agenda: the movie. Roger was more than determined to make it happen. Even more so now that he had pitched it to Warners, who responded positively and showed interest in the idea. The way they saw it, 'Gemini' had become a much bigger success than they had imagined. Anything Roger wanted at this point was almost guaranteed to be greenlit.

While that was all fine and dandy, there was one problem. The script wasn't complying. Nothing was shaping up as he had imagined it. The loss of the film's muse put a major dent in his plans. So he was forced to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch.