The P.A.

Chapter 50: Going Native

💖🇬🇷💖🇬🇷💖🇬🇷💖🇬🇷💖🇬🇷💖🇬🇷💖

"You need to calm down!" Heath used the harshest voice he could, which really wasn't very harsh. The truth was he could hardly bring himself to raise his voice to her, so it really was ridiculous to think of him being harsh to her in any way. He put his hands on her shoulders to stop MJ from hopping from one foot to the other.

MJ nodded, while chewing the side of her thumbnail and looking out at the crowd as Meredith sang. She could see her father and his brothers, like four matching Stalins, sitting in the roped off VIP section, mustaches practically bristling as they watched, arms crossed, expressionless and unmoving.

Tasos had gotten the whole story about the stolen song from Heath and Meredith, though Heath's contributions, colored by all the ouzo he'd drunk, were very incoherent, impassioned, and kind of funny. Tasos had then told his brothers all about it, probably adding a few embellishments of his own, so who knew what they'd actually heard. All MJ knew from talking to her uncles very briefly before the show was they all hated Meredith and had even prevailed on one of the toothless Greek grannies from the church to cast some weird curse on her.

MJ had told them in no uncertain terms that they had to be at least respectfully silent after she sang the song.

"Uncles? UncleYanniUncleSpiroUncleCostas?" MJ looked from one face to the next as she said their names, rapid fire, from years of practice. "I let you come, so please, please, don't do anything embarrassing, okay? Please?" She turned to her father. "Dad? Promise?"

He looked at his brothers, then his daughter. "Yes, I promise."

"We're dealing with it legally," she repeated for about the tenth time. "Heath knows all about this stuff, and he has the best lawyer in the world, and we're taking care of it, I swear."

She put an arm around Heath, who nodded and smiled.

"And you got Yaya Agathi to put the evil eye on her, too, right?" MJ continued, mentally rolling her eyes. "So it's all good, so please behave?"

And that was the best she could do. So she was now standing backstage, fidgeting with Heath, Archie, and Poppy, watching her father and uncles, just hoping they didn't start throwing tomatoes at Meredith during the song.

When the end of the show came, Meredith didn't introduce Jason, and MJ realized that she hadn't seen him around that day. MJ looked out at the crowd and was surprised to see quite a few empty seats, which was weird, since the show was very sold out, to the point that scalpers were asking exorbitant prices out front.

"So, I'm going to try something different with my new song, Meredith said to the nearly silent crowd. "I've been playing it really modern and uptempo, but I'm going to slow things down a bit, try it out as a ballad, what do you think, guys?"

There was tepid applause that started somewhere in the back of the arena.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Archie said, folding his arms in disgust.

MJ, too, was surprised into standing still.

"Sawyer? Come on up, buddy, you're on," Meredith called. Sawyer, one of her guitar players, moved forward and picked up an acoustic guitar and strummed it, making sure it was in tune.

Meredith perched atop a stool, much like MJ and Heath did, a few feet away from Sawyer, who'd done the same thing. The only difference between what she was doing and what MJ and Heath did was that she didn't have a guitar, because of course Meredith didn't play.

"I thought this might be nice, because of course a 'lament' is a passionate expression of grief or sorrow, usually about someone's death, right?" Meredith made her voice quiet and low as she spoke to the audience. "I thought a more quiet, thoughtful version might speak to you more."