Resurgence (24 page)
Her mouth forms a silent “o” when she sees him closing in. Then her expression shifts from surprise to wariness as he slips a proprietary arm around her waist and bends down to kiss her. She complies, but only for a moment.
“Omigod,” she says loud enough to be overheard. “I thought you said we shouldn’t—”
“I’m guessing he said you shouldn’t be seen together in public or I’d get wind of it, think he was behind this whole bleedin’ affair, and act accordingly by takin’ a walk. Am I right?” Colin says from somewhere behind him.
Amanda’s stricken face mirrors the full-bore glare she must be receiving from Colin. Not for long, though. Her chin comes up and her mettle surfaces.
“Yes,” she says,” squaring her shoulders. “That
is
what Nate predicted and I didn’t want to believe him because that doesn’t speak very well of you.”
“Indeed it does not!” Laurel materializes from behind David, who has now crowded in to see what’s going on.
The moment for direct confrontation with Colin has arrived. It won’t get better than this; it couldn’t get better than this, because when he turns to face Colin, it’s obvious that his revised estimate was on the money. Colin’s cowed reaction to Laurel’s reproach confirms Amanda’s early morning assumption that Laurel would figuratively kill him if he pulled any typical rock star shit. Valuable information to possess should the need to use it ever arise.
Now Colin’s back to glaring. But before the little drama can escalate beyond an exchange of daunting looks, David taps his watch face and disperses nonessentials either to seats in the audience or less congested backstage areas.
With only ten minutes until show time, there won’t be an opportunity to give Amanda much of an update, but he pulls her aside and whispers just enough to make her eyes widen with the potential he describes.
He’s filled with something like hope himself when he slips into one of the last seats in the VIP section, just in time to see the large video displays go live with towering images of the honoree at the peak of his powers. “I’m on it, dude,” he’d like to shout and probably could without being overheard as the audience erupts in cheering to befit a World Cup soccer win.
Laurel is watching Nate when the concert begins. They are seated at opposite ends of a VIP row on the floor of the arena. Now that the audience is on its feet, raving approval of the Rayce Vaughn performance footage emanating from huge video screens and countless speakers flanking the stage, she has to crane her neck to see Nate at all.
She’s been stealing glances at him ever since his blatant display backstage with Amanda suggested he was deliberate about seeking a confrontation with Colin and confirming rumors of his relationship with Amanda. Odd behavior for such a buttoned up individual unless he had another purpose. A purpose she’ll have to guess at later because a booming voiceover stifles those thoughts and quiets the audience with a summary of Rayce Vaughn’s accomplishments.
As the unidentified narrator booms on, comparisons to the Tavern on the Green tribute are inevitable. Anyone who attended that portentous event is forever doomed to remember it as a preamble to this one—and wonder if Rayce grasped it as an opportunity to appear live at his own wake. But that wouldn’t be true unless Rayce did commit suicide, an inadmissible thought under any circumstances, least of all these.
Laurel bows her head for a minute as though to apologize for entertaining such a notion. Susa Thorne, seated next to her, assumes she is overcome with emotion and offers a tissue and an understanding pat on the wrist.
She is overcome, but the emotion coursing through her doesn’t match the occasion. Something stronger than worry and weaker than fear has crept in. For no good reason, because the boys are in the competent care of their grandmother, the security around Colin is three deep, and she is herself within the protective custody of venue personnel.
Earlier today, routine calls to her brothers and sister and her father’s nursing home determined them all to be in fine fettle or unchanged and stable, as would apply. And a subsequent call to the Kent manor house established everything there to be under control. So what’s the problem?
This afternoon’s scuffle with an overambitious fan when Colin left the hotel didn’t amount to much; the near incident a little while ago when the crowd broke though police ranks at Albert Hall was just that—a near incident. For having relieved him of Colin, as they once joked, has she now taken on Nate’s overdeveloped concerns for him?
She again glances in Nate’s direction, relieved that he’s still blocked from view in case he’s giving off some sort of visual contagion only she can see. The event announcer recaptures her attention with the sepulchral declaration that Rayce Vaughn now belongs to the ages, has now been added to that elite registry of rock and roll heroes claimed by gross misadventure.
Gross misadventure? That term might be stretched to describe the deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, Duane Allman, and Jim Croce, to name a few of the better known crash victims. But what of Elvis, Janis, and Jimi? And how about Mama Cass, Keith Moon, John Bonham, and Jim Morrison? Where do they fit in?
Are drug overdoses, choking incidents, and heart attacks nothing more than extreme bad luck? Should John Lennon’s death be attributed to nothing more than happenstance? If so, is anyone immune? Is anyone ever safe? Should she be on constant lookout for someone carrying a copy of
Catcher in the Rye
, ever vigilant for those advocating helter-skelter, and the all-purpose reprobates distributing free samples of illegal substances?
Perspiration beads along her hairline. She wipes it away with the tissue Susa gave her and casts about for another form of relief. She thinks she’s found it when the narrative tapers off in a eulogy laced with more verbal filigree, and the first act takes the stage to renewed crowd roar.
They are from the States, a young attractive band whose name escapes her at the moment. The name of the song they’re performing doesn’t come to mind either, but the mournful tone of a refrain likening rock bands to outlaws, catapults her thinking back to where it was and expands the death toll to include politicians and other public figures. The assassinated Kennedys come first to mind, then Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Harvey Milk, and George Moscone.
After that category, she counts woundings and near misses: The Pope, of course, then, in no particular order, President Reagan, George Wallace, Larry Flynt, Gerald Ford, Margaret Thatcher, and the less prominent souls targeted because of what they believed in or what they represented to a warped mind.
The American band follows up with another song containing lyrics that could be bent to serve her present mindset. To resist that impulse, she remains silent when the lead singer exhorts the audience to join in on the final chorus of “Surviving Chance.”
“Ridiculous,” she whispers into the tissue, thereby dismissing the whole unfortunate word association game.
But a British group, introduced as Slice, offers up their current hit, “You Died In My Dreams,” and she’s helpless to resist the images these prompts suggest.
In the name of self protection, she tunes out the next three acts—all headliners among headliners—and barely listens to Alliance, the Australian band that’s traveled farthest to participate.
She’s still on guard when a supergroup with a Biblical name comes on stage to deafening crowd noise; she’s only wavering on wary when they’re followed by Irish chart toppers, who are upbeat in every sense of the word. She’s ready to pay full attention when a lone female artist struts into the spotlight, her spectacular physique commanding as much attention as her ability to belt out soul classics and contemporary rock.
When an acknowledged guitar god teams with the female superstar for a duet that’s as much about competition as harmony, Laurel is absorbed to the extent that she’ll be able to supply an accurate account to her siblings, who will forever bemoan school schedules that prevented their attending the concert.
The guitar god remains on stage to perform his signature tunes, one of which contains a gun reference she’s able to ignore in favor of his breathtaking skill. She pronounces herself free of the dread that still has no logical origin, and warms to a local band’s renditions of a pair of crowd favorites that jibe rock stardom. Midway through their second number she thrills, as does the entire audience, to the surprise appearance of another solo artist who needs no introduction when he lends his highly recognizable falsetto to the chorus.
Now she’s hit her stride; now she’s ready for anything. But that’s not the case when the stage lighting dims to a single spot washing over the surprise guest as he renounces falsetto to deliver a stripped-down, deeply affecting interpretation of the Eagles’s great standard, “Desperado.” A gut-wrenching interpretation.
Susa is weeping when the song ends. So are most of the other wives and girlfriends seated nearby. The hush imposed on the audience seems to last for minutes. But once the audience reconciles what it’s heard with what it feels, the proverbial rafters are shaken with a response that does last for minutes and sets the stage for the final act, the reunited Verge.
Transition from peak volume to excited buzz takes a while. During that period, personnel move back and forth on the dimly lit stage like tacitly invisible Kabuki stagehands. A grand piano is wheeled into prominence, mike stands are repositioned. The drum kit is customized and guitars poised on widely spaced tripods and A-frames. Cables are checked, foot pedals tested, a ripple in an oriental rug smoothed away.
Impatient whistles and catcalls break through the buzz. Three years was long enough to wait, they seem to say. They also seem to say that the Verge reunion is the primary reason the hall is filled to capacity and about to explode in wild anticipation.
Laurel isn’t sure how long she’s been on her feet or at what point she began jumping up and down and waving her arms over her head—behavior she would ordinarily scorn. She’s also unsure how long she’s had hiccoughs that are becoming painful.
Colin, Chris, Lane, and Jesse file onstage with a noticeable lack of theatricality. Their clothing isn’t that remarkable either, although Lane’s pants could double for pajama bottoms, and Chris’s outfit glitters with metallic embroidery.
For simply removing a mike from its stand, Colin receives an ear-shattering ovation. For unbuttoning the cuffs of his ordinary white dress shirt and rolling up the sleeves, he gets another. Chris and Lane are awarded similar response when they strap on their respective instruments, and Jesse gains an extra measure of approval when he issues a rapid-fire drum roll like a warning shot.
With passionate audience encouragement, Verge performs two songs from their early years; two that predate the Aurora period and are closely associated with Rayce’s advocacy, as Colin explained when he first showed her the playlist. Then the band reminds the audience what everyone’s here for with a medley of Rayce’s greatest hits, followed by “Angle Of Repose,” already destined to be a huge posthumous hit.
As the song plays out, various members of the earlier acts drift back onstage to lend their talents to a spirited reprise. They form a previously undreamt of ensemble, a veritable pantheon of greats performing in egalitarian unity. Lead singers humble themselves together in chorus; guitar and keyboard virtuosos share instruments; featured percussionists collaborate to produce a mind-blowing, goosebumping tribute to their fallen brother.
Her earlier fear that the word “repose” would be heard in a funereal sense and evoke images of open caskets, is dispelled in the contagion of joy that’s sweeping the arena. She should have known better. Just as the lyrics to “Revenant” hold forth promise, the lyrics to “Angle Of Repose” are nothing if not hopeful in outlook.
The stage has not yet emptied when Bemus comes for her.
“How’d she do?” he says to Susa.
“She’s right lost it, luv—her concert cherry. Bit reluctant at first. Wary, she was. Then she settled down and proper got into it. Done her homework too, because she never once asked who was onstage or questioned what was happening. Didn’t even blub when they turned the heartbreaker loose on us, and far as I can tell, didn’t pee her pants when her boyfriend hit the stage. Got the makings of a real trouper here—not that I ever thought we didn’t.”
Susa reports all this in a readily overheard voice, so when Laurel is shepherded away by Bemus, it’s to the approving shouts and understanding laughter of the elite sisterhood she’s just joined.