Brian was backstage with the band, discussing Earle’s poems with him. Some poems Earle chanted, some he sang, and some he rapped. Brian couldn’t say if the poems were brilliant or not, but they fascinated him. Earle was massively talented.
Zanz spun around on his new sneakers and stopped, shaking his head. “Cho, Trevor’s gone.”
Brian said, “No, he’s around. Whenever I’m looking for him, there he is, following me. Or else Trevor will be right beside me, waiting to see how long it takes me to see him there.”
“Me too.” Leon nodded.
“He’s like a spider,” Earle said, “dropping from its web.”
“You see him now?” Zanz asked.
[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]
The Avalon’s manager told them that “Awake” opened in ten minutes. They could hold back five more, if they chose, but it would cut into their program.
Brian looked for Trevor from the catwalk. The crowd, which was huge, clapped and whistled. Trevor’s long time fans. Brian caught Angelina’s eye. She was sitting in a booth on the second tier, her arm around Polly, who was dressed in white and flecks of gold. Amazingly, Polly, who had acted more surly than usual lately, with Brian and the Jamaicans and undoubtedly with Trevor, was sitting politely across from Kaya, her sworn enemy. Kaya, who was Angelina’s lover, when Brian first moved into the lodge, had left with little warning—none certainly to Brian—Alec Olsen, an English professor. Alec and Kaya seemed to be chatting and drinking with Angelina and Polly, whose mood may have changed this week, settling back into a dormant acquiescence. Brian knew Polly’s patterns. After a quiet phase, her anger would run riot.
In any event, Trevor wasn’t with them. And he wasn’t with Hailey, who was dancing with two girlfriends. Brian managed to signal both Angelina and Hailey and learned through gestures that they hadn’t seen Trevor at all: Easy communication. Who else would Brian be looking for?
He saw Carla at the main bar with Jacob, Andrew, Royce, and Lloyd, but no Trevor.
Backstage, Leon said, “We’ve got to do this without Trevor. A local rapper’s on after us—big special effects. So we’re stepping up fast.” They needed a voice harmonizing with Earle’s on most songs. “Hailey,” Leon said. “She and her friends will be awesome. Can you find her, Brian?”
“Easily.”
Hailey and her friends Jazmine and Destiny followed Brian, their high heels tapping. Naturally they could sing back-up, Hailey told her brothers. After all, they had done it for years. But they wouldn’t do it now unless he agreed to let Jazmine close the show, singing the lead on “Don’t Let Me Down.”
Of course. Leon pointed toward the dressing room where the ladies could re-do their make-up.
Marvin wondered if Trevor would show any second. “He got us this gig. A steady spot unless we really stink it up tonight. Are you gonna tell Hailey ‘another time, sis’ if I turn around and Trevor’s there?” Marvin turned around as if demonstrating, voila. But no.
Zanz suggested that Trevor might have planned it like this. With half the crowd calling for him, maybe Trevor had an intimation—best if he step aside this first gig. So the crowd can connect with the band and not just one man.
“You think so?” Brian asked. “Or maybe he drove into a pond like last week.”
Leon adjusted his laptop to modulate the new back-up singers.
And the band was great. A very pretty Chinese girl in a deep pink dress danced beside Brian, and then with him. Between songs he asked her name. “Ya-Ya.”
The crowd grew ecstatic and Brian danced with Ya-Ya song after song. Brian had never felt so uplifted, so integral to a thousand people expressing pure joy that—just no stopping him.
When Brian didn’t seek out Carla—she had seen him see her standing at the bar—she took to the catwalk, which was also crowded. She couldn’t see the stage, though. Just Brian dancing with a girl with long black hair.
Later she found Andrew buying some girl a drink. Too bad—Carla wanted to dance. “Please, mon?” she asked. He smiled at the other girl and even whispered something to her. On the dance floor, Andrew treated Carla kindly, as she knew he would. But then—what was she thinking? Carla hated kindly!
Earle sang “Inna Di Lights,” which he wrote. And Carla kindly excused herself from Andrew and stepped outside. She hadn’t seen Trevor sneak off, but through all the lights and sound and proud, happy bodies, she had closed her eyes and seen him grin—like a wave good-bye, at least in retrospect.
She leaned against Brian’s car and another car passed, illuminating the car windows. Traces of smoke hovered, the wispiest of plumes, inside the Honda.
It unsettled her and after the set when everyone was milling around, filled up with fun and lust, Carla told Angelina, “Something’s obviously happened to Trevor.”
What happened was clear from Trevor’s text on her phone. Sorry ’bout the botheration, Angelina. But I’m at the police station and they won’t let me go until you personally come and get me.
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