Cadillac Couches (21 page)

“So did you guys all see the full moon last night? I mean
WOW
, I don't know about you, but I felt a bit hairy. I started scratching and sniffing and, man, pretty soon I was a werewolf. I sat on that little balcony and did some howling, because . . . well . . . it felt good! I think us humans are too caught up in our minds, we need to get back to our bodies, back to our animal desires. You know what I'm saying?”

The crowd cheered and barked and howled and honked up at him.

“And you know for some weird reason the moon makes me think about Christmas . . . you know, in that kind of holy way that I think we should see more of all year-round. So in between howling at the moon, I sang a song, maybe you know it . . .”

With no other instruments he started singing “Silent Night.” It was so surprising, like eating strawberries with ground pepper. And so even though it was a super-humid August summer afternoon with a blue sky and green grass, the crowd joined in.

It didn't feel odd or wrong to be earnestly singing “Silent Night,” it felt wonderful.

By the final chorus, I opened my eyes and felt sick with love for him. It was almost too much pleasure. I couldn't go outside to get some air, this was outside. But I knew I wasn't going to pass out this time—I was beyond that.

Isobel turned to me, wiping the sweat from her brow, still singing, “Ho-oh-ly Night, Si-eye-lent Night, All is calm, all is bright . . .” Once she realized that everyone else had stopped singing, she stopped and said, “Wow!”

Behind her then I saw something that jolted me out of ecstasy. I caught sight of the Guy from the Rear-view Mirror. Was he wearing a red jacket? In this heat? He had no hat. Why did I think he was the same guy?

I dismissed the paranoia by switching channels in my brain and visualizing Finn. I wondered how he was doing. I wished he was here for our impending rock-star encounter Number 3. After Hawksley graciously and deliciously played five encores, the crowd reluctantly let him go, only because he was sounding a bit hoarse.

It was time to go backstage.

Finn had doctored our media passes from the Bern caper so we would be able to have access to the green room. Except there was a lineup as long as the North Saskatchewan and it serpentined forever through the park. An infinite tail of girls and women from early teens to the seniors. Big ones, little ones, spiky-haired, curly-haired, big-hatted, small-skirted, tight-T-shirted, boob-tubed, gum-snapping, perfume-wearing, eyelash-batting women! All of them were flushed and had that just-got-Hawksleyed look. And they were meandering all the way from the stage to the St. Lawrence. The seagulls were hovering above the queue, like they were lined up as well.

The disturbing thing was, when I looked closely, it looked like several of these women had media passes just like ours. I could make out bits of plastic in their hands and T-shirts with newspaper logos on them. Low-down, stinking Liars, all of them. And their faces, their blushing red faces. We were all interlopers.

I had allowed myself to forget how ridiculous a mission this was. How being a fan among thousands is unpleasant. How degrading it was to realize I really was just one in a desperately long line of Hawksley-eyed gaga women. I looked them up and down. I couldn't possibly muster enough superiority to rise above them all. He belonged to all of us.

I knew I had allowed myself to get wooed. Wowed and wooed. But I don't know when exactly I got reckless and pelted myself across the line from normal listener to girl chasing boy. Willingly letting myself fantasize about Hawksley and me together, of the possibilities. Once I was on the other side, there was no going back. Being delusional was enjoyable. He was a love evangelist, and I was converted. I had given up on love after Sullivan, and Hawksley had saved my soul.

I watched them fanning themselves. I felt like throwing up as we waited in line. I looked at the sky and concentrated on cloud-sculpting. My epic delusion was revealing itself to me, I could now imagine an advertising blimp trailing a banner across the sky in upper caps:
GIVE IT UP, LET IT GO, HE'S JUST A ROCK STAR, YOU'RE JUST A FAN
. He would never be mine alone. It was wrong to try to hoard him. But I didn't even like sharing him with Isobel, let alone all of these strangers.

But we were finally here, so I had to go through with it, for the sake of resolution. I needed closure, goddammit.

My stomach was all nerves, still jumbling and rumbling, and my heart was still pounding too fast. I ignored the chorus in my head saying,
WALK AWAY, LET GO
. There were only thirty more women ahead of us in the lineup to speak to him.

Two hours later, and with hope now in the minus department, I felt like we were all a herd of baby turtles making our way to the big sea trying to avoid being attacked by birds knowing that once we arrived, any number of predators could drown us. The line was barely advancing. I was worried about heat stroke, and Isobel was worried about lipstick melting. I was grateful she hadn't run out of patience. Our media pass hadn't helped at all.

The whole set up wasn't how I'd imagined it would be. I wasn't going to be spending the night with Hawksley somewhere. I wasn't going to entertain him with my funniest jokes, perform my entire repertoire of good stories, or impress him with how wild and charming I was. He wouldn't care that I was his biggest listener, how I was the one for him. He wasn't going to fall madly in love with me. The more I looked at the other women, I saw that they were fans in love with his Hawksleyness, just like I was.

Tears streamed down my face. A girl beside me said, “He's going to love your panda eyes, darling.” Her friend, who was also crying, told her to shut up.

I didn't want to share him anymore with these crazy chicks, but I felt my motivation already leaving me, saying, See you later, cowgirl. I was going through the motions, but I knew I would just keep doing that because there'd been too many kilometres; Alberta was too far a place to come from to stop now. Like when I was with Sullivan, a part of me needed the humiliation of rejection to truly put my obsession back in perspective, maybe even squash it forever. I drummed up the last of my delusion to fire myself up—I pictured kissing him in a bubble bath.

I stared at the backs of two heads in front of me. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but Hawksley was laughing and they were swaying. Sounded like one of them was reciting a poem. Talented cows! How was I going to vie for his attention?

The girls ahead of us said their goodbyes and smiled smugly at us as they walked dreamily away. Isobel lunged forward. I felt venom rising up in me as I watched her arch her back coquettishly and purse her lips in that new way she'd been developing lately à la French actrice (like a slow-mo pout).

I hadn't said a word, and she was already chatting him up in her strange-bordering-on-offensive way: “Can you believe all this?!” she said, gesturing to the crowd of people surrounding him and the lineup, including me. “I mean, what's the fuss all about—it's just
you
!” she said laughingly like they were old friends. It was classic Isobel behaviour; she resented anyone else's fame.

But she went too far when she had leaned toward him, offering her hand like a princess for him to kiss. She was taking over. She didn't possess the grace to not be the centre of attention for once.

I decided violence was the way forward.

With as much subtlety as possible, I put a big smile on my face and simultaneously crashed down on Isobel's cranberry-painted toes. It was my most assertive act ever. Izzy stifled a screech and backed away gracefully, understanding the code.

At last, there he was . . . in front of me . . . alone in all his curly-haired glory.

He looked strangely smaller, subdued, and tired; this was him offstage. But he was so familiar to me. I ran through all the things I wanted to say to him in my head, how I loved him madly, how in “You Me and the Weather” I know exactly what he meant, how we could have a great time together, how . . . But what could I say that was any different from the fifteen hundred girls behind me?

“Is, is, is that episcopal purple you're wearing?”

He leaned forward and giggle-whispered, “Actually, I think it's more of a penis purple.”

Oof—I didn't know how to respond to penis talk! I didn't have anything rehearsed so I did the only thing that came to mind.

I got down on one knee, and, offering him a bagel (which was the only thing in my bag resembling a ring), I said: “Hawksley Workman, you don't know me yet, but I've got a confession to make. I feel that you would soon realize how I am your listener, the one who gets everything you are saying . . . This obviously isn't the time to get into it. But do you think you might like to marry me?”

He laughed.

A gorgeous, kind laugh that ended with a smile. It warmed my heart and deflated the whole situation. He cleared his throat and said, “Oh, honeysuckle, that's a charming offer . . . Come here . . . I need to tell you a secret.”

I crawled over and leaned close to him. He smelled like leather, sweat, and honey.

“I'm pretty much very married already and I'm mad about her. I'm sorry,” he said as he kissed my cheek. I got to my feet. Then he gestured to come closer again. I approached. As I leaned toward him for the second time, it dawned on me: he looked a hell of a lot like Sullivan. The hair, the sultry eyes, the full lips. Weird that I hadn't noticed that before.

“Nice snapdragon!” he said to me, winking.

I walked away with Isobel limping along beside me. She threw her arm around me in solidarity. “Chin up, mon p'tit coeur. You might not think so right now, but that was a magnifique thing you just did there. And the bagel thing, pure brilliance! No one would have guessed what you said to him.”

“Come on, that was the most teeny-boppy thing I've ever done, Iz. This beats it all. I was crawling, for fucksakes . . .” I pulled out the snapdragon from my hair.

“No, trust me on this. You were very brave. You took a risk you knew would probably result in a crash and you went for it! Besides, he's not that cute close up. He kind of looks like Sullivan. Did you notice his bald patch?”

“It's hardly a bald patch, just a mild thinning in the clearing. How are your toes?”

“Let's not speak of it. It's a shame you wear those clunky boots, not just from a fashion perspective, the stomp factor is high—sweet Jesus!”

“Sorry.” I didn't feel
that
sorry.

“Shush! Now let's go shopping at the merch table. A nice concert T-shirt might make it all better.”

We made our way past the still-long line of girls anticipating their Hawksley blessings. I think Isobel knew she'd been offside when she'd quasi-flirted with Hawksley, so she wasn't angry about my toe-stomping outburst. But when I noticed the blood creeping up her toe I felt bad.

“Isobel, stop walking, we need to fix that.”

“Mon Dieu, it's bleeding! It's fine, I'm fine, I'll rest it in the car. We'll get a little ice and it'll be healed tout de suite.” She gimped along cheerfully.

The guilt added to my general feeling of self-loathing. I needed redemption. I wanted to go home and sleep for a week and then get up and start again, put it all behind me. There was no more anticipation left to fire me up, just thousands of kilometres west to be travelled.

We stopped at the merch table. Previously I'd always avoided these tables, somehow feeling holier-than-thou and not wanting regular fan merchandise because I was much much more than a fan. Those pretensions were long gone.

I fondled the T-shirts and
CD
s and book of poems that I already owned and then I stumbled on a miniature Hawksley statue with a bit on the bottom that you could peel off and stick to the dashboard of your car! I grabbed two, one for my mantelpiece at home. It was liberating not being proud and too good for this stuff.

Choosing stuff at the table made me think of choosing in general and how I chose this infatuation. I chose to use delusion to get over Sullivan. And my fan worship wasn't much different than my love worship I'd felt for Sullivan.

Isobel chose a pair of thong panties, which she could wear because she was tall and skinny. I tried not to think of it as blasphemy; Hawksley on her crotch. Then I saw a shadow on the table of a giant fried-egg shape. I turned around.

In full bright red Royal Canadian Mountain Police regalia stood a determined and boiling-looking man.
THE GUY FROM THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR
!

Oh crap, now we were going to get arrested.

“Young ladies, do you own a pink-coloured Volkswagen Beetle?”

“Uh . . . maybe,” I said, imagining horrible fines for the foul fumes it had emitted across the country or for parking badly in Montreal, or maybe we'd trashed our hotel room more than I realized back in Wawa, or, worst-case scenario, for hitting something and not realizing it? Or maybe
VISA
had called him?

“Take me, officer. Annie has a future, she got much better marks in university than me and is super kind and has great potential as a future singer/songwriter guitarist or
DJ
! Take me to jail if you have to, let her go free!” I was touched by Isobel's sincerity.
DJ
, could I be a
DJ
?

“Hey, take it easy, I'm not a real
RCMP
! I'm wearing a bow tie! You guys must have watched way too much
Due South
; I'm just a singer in a band who dress like Mounties.
RCMP
don't actually dress like this on regular duty. You've maybe seen a few of us around? I was on the highway too and saw you girls a couple of times.”

“Officer, I have a minor toe injury,” Isobel said as she lifted her tanned leg up for him to see the wound. I think she might have flashed him a bit of panty and a whole lot of thigh. Bless her.