When the techs were finally done, I asked into the mic if I could have a minute to play.
“Sorry,” came the voice I’d started thinking of as the Director, since he hadn’t bothered to introduce himself. “No time.”
I remembered standing on this stage, playing for myself and nobody, in the last minutes before the world changed. This was the problem with trying to re-create a memory: the overwrite took the memory down with it.
The Director himself approached from the booth, carrying a printed set list with times for our songs, and a stack of lyric sheets. I’d submitted it all two weeks before. “This is all still good, right? No changes?”
“No changes, unless you’ll let me drop ‘Blood and Diamonds,’” I said. It sat there at the end of the set, taunting me. The one thing SHL wouldn’t budge on: no show unless I closed with it.
He opened his mouth.
“I’m kidding,” I said, before he could tell me what I already knew. “I wouldn’t dream of dropping the big finale.”
Maybe because of my joke, he insisted we go over details for every song in the set; by the time that was over, it was almost time for the doors to open. For all twenty people.
A nice spread awaited us in the green room, every single item from the ancient rider I’d sent them. Rosemary’s doing, I was pretty sure. The room looked the same except the pictures were gone. I looked around the space remembering other people, another time, the last minutes Before. When I sat on the couch, a cloud of dust rose up around me. “Tell me one more time why we’re here?”
“Dude,” Silva said. “You keep asking that like this wasn’t your doing. I have no problem with it, and I hope it goes down like you’re planning, but maybe it’s time to own it either way.”
“I know. I know. It’ll be worth it. It’s not selling out.”
“It’s kind of selling out,” Marcia said, “but that term needs redefining anyhow. This is temporary selling out for a good cause. It’s not a permanent state.”
“That helps a lot,” I told her, sticking out my tongue. “Hey, Silva, what happened to the eight-by-tens?”
He surveyed the bare nails on the walls, then turned and winked at me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m sure nobody who worked here would have taken them home for safekeeping.”
Somebody knocked on the door, and my stomach flipped. This is not a conjuring, I told myself. It goes down differently.
Marcia said, “Come in,” and Rosemary entered. She looked nervous, but not upset. I waited for her to tell us to turn on the news. “Do you need anything?”
Relief washed over me. “An audience.”
“There are twenty very excited contest winners on their way.”
“You know that wasn’t what I meant.”
“I’m doing what I can, Luce. And I did the other thing! Everyone who shared the Harriet video knows that’s you now. I’ve been gearing them up for this for weeks. I said if they waited for the end of the show they wouldn’t be disappointed.”
I kept forgetting the audience I couldn’t see.
“SHL is kind of confused about the numbers, to be honest,” she said, as if she’d heard my thought. “Way more first-time viewers than they expected, and the demographics are wild in every category.”
Huh.
She ducked out of the room again, and I squeezed into the bathroom to change. Nobody had cleaned the toilet in years.
“Isn’t that a little on the nose?” Marcia asked, pointing at my shirt when I emerged. I’d painted “Is this real?” on the front and “This is not real” on the back.
“You should’ve seen the runners-up.” I’d made and discarded “Fuck StageHolo,” “Burn yr Hoodie,” “Ask me about my corporate overlords,” and “You are a wholly owned subsidiary” before deciding they might blur those out.
Another knock on the door. Another moment where I steeled myself for bad news, but it was only a tech giving a five-minute warning. Silva left the room to tune his bass and my guitar one more time, so they’d be ready when we stepped out. Marcia and I followed.
The last time I’d been here, the last time I’d looked out from this same wing, I’d wondered how to perform at all on such a broken night. I didn’t know how to address the crowd. I remembered every single song I’d played that evening, every word I’d said. That audience and I, we’d needed each other.
The room had looked empty with so few seats filled that night; I’d called them all forward. Now it was far emptier. Two people sat in metal folding chairs near the room’s center. The rest—eighteen of them, I presumed—had scattered in pairs in such a way that they were near the barrier but nowhere near each other. A phalanx of cameras filled the space between the barrier and the stage.
“How are we supposed to play to that?” I asked. “They won’t even come near the front.”
“They’re fans, Luce,” Marcia said. “Even if they only know the one song. Even if they’ve never been to a show. Don’t judge them.”
She was right.
“Here we go,” said the Director’s voice in my in-ear monitors.
The house lights dimmed. Three spotlights waited for us, ringed by cameras. When we walked out, they shifted to make a path for us, then shifted again to close the route behind us.
We were greeted with a scattering of applause from the scattered audience.
The Director spoke in my ears. “Don’t worry, we’re beefing up the crowd noise for the simulcast.”
I hoped we weren’t going to have to listen to him through the whole show.
“The second you step to the mic, you’re on,” the Director said. He’d told me twice earlier. I wanted to tell him to shut up and leave me alone in my head.
I lingered outside the light. I couldn’t see the empty room, but there was no mistaking the silence; a full house could never be this quiet. I had to pretend. Pretend this was a 2020 show, or one of the dozens of tiny spaces I’d played alone or with the new band. Those places were sometimes empty, too. It wasn’t lack of audience wigging me out; it was lack of response. The moment I started playing, we’d be beamed to millions of Hoodies expecting me to pretend I was playing directly to them. I needed to feel them, and there was no way to do that.
The techs had taped a square where they wanted me to stand except for the times they’d scheduled movement. Taped down my set list. Taped exact channels where I was allowed to roam to interact with Marcia and Silva at the specified moments. Lots of shows were choreographed, I reminded myself, even if mine never had been. I’d agreed to all of this. Why?
Without triggering the cameras, I called to the room off mic. “Come closer. Please.”
Nobody moved. I gave Silva and Marcia a panicked look over my shoulder, which they didn’t return.
“Treat it as a practice,” Silva said. “We can just have fun.”
“Luuuuuuuuuuuuuce!” came a ragged shout from nearby. I shielded my eyes and spotted Rosemary standing front and center. Play to Rosemary. She had to be the one person in the room who was there to hear me, rather than the ghost of who I used to be. Play to Rosemary. Play.
I stepped forward.
The first song on the set list was “172 Ways,” which I’d written specifically for this new trio. Before I could think myself into another corner, I kicked into the opening riff. The band joined me after four repetitions, Silva matching my guitar two octaves lower. We ripped through the song. I relaxed a little. The sound boomed through the room, but it didn’t sound awful. Play it to Rosemary; maybe she’d be excited to hear something she hadn’t heard before.
We let the last chord ring, and Marcia drummed through the transition between songs, as planned, seamlessly switching beats. No surprises. She counted off, and we moved from “172 Ways” into “Don’t Even Think About It.” A 2020 audience would have screamed at that point, but I didn’t hear anybody, even Rosemary. No applause in the transition, either. In a real live show, we might throw a few extra bars in here to build, but we’d been warned not to do that. Stick to the plan.