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Chapter Twelve
Life on a massive arena tour was, alarmingly, similar to life on a small bar tour—boring and suitcase-laden in the morning, followed by a rush of adrenaline in the evenings. While Remy tended to the whiplash of those sensations, Vivi flew all over the country, constantly being rushed into and out of cars, appearing on morning shows filmed on the opposite coast, being photographed with Noel Reid in LA.
After all the frenzy, no one spotted Remy leaving Vivi’s bus. Rather than being relieved, Vivi considered it a near miss and didn’t ask Remy for any more late-night visits to her bus. There were days, in fact, where the only time they really saw one another was the tiny moment of eye contact they always made in the seconds before Remy’s platform began ascending onto the stage. Vivi would take her place in her glittering pearl-colored dress and nod at the stage manager. Remy’s platform would grind then start to climb. Vivi would look over and smile, and Remy would catch her eyes and smile back until her face vanished from his view.
It was such a small thing, but the look felt like an ember inside him—smoking, threatening a flame, but never quite catching. He hated it until the moment it happened again, at which point it felt like sunshine in his chest.
The morning they arrived in Dallas, Remy lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling as the sunshine feeling dissipated and the frustration returned. He rolled out of his bunk and climbed down the ladder. The rest of the musicians and singers were spilled around the lounge, watching an oldBehind the Musictape that supposedly showed David shirtless, with a six-pack, having panties launched at him. David insisted it was just lighting, that there were no panties; Michael insisted that he’d been in the audience, and there weren’t just panties but bras. The tape, which to Remy’s amazement Walter’s assistant had hunted down for them (and the VCR to play it), was supposedly going to prove who was correct once and for all.
“Here it comes,” David said. “Here we go.” He took a long swig of a lime-flavored beer then used it to motion to the screen.
“No, it’s not here. It’s later,” Michael said. “It’s when you start that shitty song.”
“Man, these areallshitty songs,” Laurel said, laughing.
“Wait, you played with 78 Devils?” Remy asked, when he realized just who the band young (and indeed, six-packed) David was playing with.
“My first tour. Talk about parties, man. Being on tour with them was the kind of thing you have to train for. Like, don’t even board the bus if you can’t down a case yourself and still play,” David said, shaking his head. “And then we’d drive all night, hardly any sleep, with girls on the bus, and play another show the next day. No wonder Declan got on coke. How else would the guy have stayed awake?”
“My brother and I loved this band when we were kids!” Remy said, sitting in the center of the floor between the rest of them.
“Fuck, man, way to make us feel old,” Michael said, shaking his head.
Remy laughed. “Seriously, though—we weren’t allowed to listen to music like this, but we found out our parents secretly had cable, they just never plugged it in. So, when they left, we’d hook it up and watch MTV. What was this, 1996? I feel like I saw this video a thousand times.”
“I think 1996. Maybe 1995?” David said. “A lifetime ago. I was so new. We were all so new. We had no idea what was ahead—”
“There! See! Panties!” Michael said, pointing at the television.
There was some debate, some rewinding, some slow motion. Shirtless Young David duckedsomething, though they were either very large panties or a wad of paper towels. Later on, however, the entire bus—driver included—agreed there was definitely a bra being thrown, which led them to suspect the first toss was, indeed, underwear.
“Fine, fine, maybe it was. My money’s still on paper towels, though,” David said grouchily, shaking his head. “I mean, no one throws panties at the keyboardist. That’s for the guitarists.”
“Got that right,” Parish said, and he and Michael high-fived, grinning.
“Come on, assholes—these guys, not you, ladies. You’re not assholes,” David said, rising and running a hand over his hair. “Let’s get moving.” It was nearly three thirty, which meant the unload was almost finished and sound check was about to start. They all had to shower or shave or arrange their hair into the Vivi Swan Sweethearts Tour–approved styles.
The dressing rooms were elaborate and, as per usual, immaculate. Remy skipped showering—he got so sweaty drumming, there was hardly any point—but carefully pulled on one of the many short-sleeve, label-less (yet designer) T-shirts the tour had provided him. Walter’s assistant had handed him a new stack of ripped jeans back in Kansas City, saying the ones he’d been wearing had become “too ripped.” He wondered if this was an observation straight from Vivi or from Walter.
Remy had just grabbed a bottle of water when he heard a quiet acoustic guitar being played, a tune he recognized—the one he and Vivi had been working on. He stood still and listened for a few moments. The music was coming from behind Vivi’s dressing room door. He took a few steps closer, closed his eyes, and leaned into the sunshine feeling that washed over him.
She played it again, stopped. Again, stopped. He heard paper flutter—was she writing on it? He eased closer, and rather than the sound of a pen clicking or theslinkof her returning to the strings, he heard a heavy sigh. Not a frustrated one—a sad one. A sigh that felt on the verge of tears or perhaps in the middle of tears. He frowned and, before he could second-guess himself, knocked softly on the door.
“Yes?” Vivi called out.
“It’s Remy,” he said. The words fought his lips, and he took a breath. Knocking on the talent’s dressing room door—especially over something like this—was not professional. Listening to the talent songwriting was not professional. Inquiring about the talent’s potential tears was not professional.
But he spoke again anyhow. “I was just walking by and heard you working and, uh…”
There was a noise, sort of a mix between a laugh and a sniff. “You can come in. The door code is four-two-three.” Remy looked down and realized there was a keypad. The band dressing room didn’t have one, but then, the band didn’t include anyone who looked like Vivi Swan. He fingered in the numbers, and the door gave a mechanical click, a light on top of the knob glowing green. He pushed into the room.
To his surprise, Vivi Swan looked perfect—the kind of perfect she looked onstage, not the kind of perfect she looked when they were alone. Her face wasn’t red, her mascara wasn’t tear-streaked, and she wasn’t curled in a ball on the pristine white sofa that sat opposite the door. She was smiling, lipstick perfect, eyes perhaps the tiniest bit glassy from the tears he’d heard before—but deniably so. He lifted an eyebrow as he stood in the doorway, intentionally not letting the door click shut behind him. Being on the bus alone was one thing—there was a driver, after all, so they were never truly isolated. Being in a closed, locked dressing room alone was quite another.
“What’s up?” Vivi asked cheerfully.
“I thought I heard you crying. And playing,” he said, motioning to her and the guitar and back again. Had he lost his mind entirely? This girl hadn’t been crying, clearly.
Vivi shrugged, smiled a little, then nodded at the coffee table—her black Moleskine notebook was there, open, with a ballpoint pen splayed across the pages. “I was working on that song. Trying to put some lyrics to it. It’s funny how this is one of those songs—the melody, not the lyrics—that just works. Like, it can be cheerful or sad or angry. There aren’t many of these. Golden songs.”
