Coming Undone

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NELL WAS JAZZED AS SHE headed down the tunnel to the arena, her clipboard in hand. No one had been around this afternoon to appreciate her Cinderellalike transformation but that was about to change. Primed to show off her new do and duds, she was through sitting in the tour bus all by her lonesome. She had work to do, people to see. Hell, she was mere moments away from a captive audience and she intended to capitalize on it.

Sometimes a woman simply had to strut her stuff.

It had been a long time since she'd felt like strutting anything, but she felt attractive tonight. Smart. Stylish. Almost:sexy.

Showing her badge to the guard, she tested her wiles by making eye contact and shooting him a flirtatious smile. She got an appreciative grin in return.Oh, yeah. Striding through the arena's backstage area, she beamed.Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Nell Husner. Tour manager. Songwriter extraordinaire.

Last of the red-hot mamas.

Hey, who cared if the guard was eighty-five if he was a day?

Gigs that ran at the same venue for longer than one night were rare on this tour, but this was day two of one of them. That meant she didn't have to reinvent the wheel, which made her workload lighter than usual. She made her usual rounds and checked to see that everything was running with the same efficiency she'd set in place yesterday. But this evening felt as if it were more about having her ego stroked than doing her job. Because everywhere she went people complimented her on her makeover.

She could hardly wait to hear what Eddie would have to say about it.

He hadn't yet arrived when she strode onto the stage, but that was hardly news. Hank was there, however, and she crossed the stage toward him.

He had his butt perched against a wooden stool, his left leg stretched out and his foot in its scuffed boot planted firmly on the floor to brace himself. His right knee was raised to support his banjo, his boot heel hooked over one of the stool's higher rungs. Head bent over the instrument, he adjusted the second fret, his hat brim concealing all but his lower lip with its little underlying soul patch and the strong angle of his chin. Then almost as if he felt her scrutiny he looked up.

For an instant he merely gave her a blank look, as if she were a stranger who'd wandered onto the stage by mistake. Then slowly he straightened and rose from the stool. Without looking behind him, he reached back to set his banjo on the seat he'd just vacated.

"Holy shit," he breathed. "Nell? Is that you?" He watched her approach with intent eyes then walked a circle around her. Stopping when he came full loop to face her once again, he looked her over from head to toe, then reversed the journey back to her face."Wow." Then he shook his head, dull color climbing his throat. "Sorry. I'm not exactly Mr. Articulate. I must have been standing in the wrong line the day they handed out the silver tongues."

"Could have fooled me," she said as warmth radiated from her heart to her farthermost extremities. "Wowis exactly the way I'm feeling today. That makes you sound pretty darn eloquent to me."

He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. "You look fantastic. Well, you always look great. But now you're even:more so. I didn't realize you were so-" his hands sketched a vague outline of her curves "-uh, so:"

"Plump?" Some of her pleasure dimmed and for the first time she felt uncertain about her decision to give up her comfortable baggy clothing. "Fat?"

"No, are you kidding me? Lush. Man, God, so lush. Did you hang on to your old clothes? Because I think we oughtta cover you back up. You're giving me a heart attack here."

She grinned at him. "I decided I'm shooting for the red-hot-mama look." A zaftig red-hot mama perhaps, but still.

He nodded earnestly. "You hit your target."

"And you say you're not articulate," she scoffed, giving his stomach a poke. The rock-hard surface made her recall the look of him with his shirt off and, heat stealing up her face, she immediately retracted her fingers.

One of the extra musicians came over and asked her to settle a dispute about the seating arrangement in the horn section. When she got back from forging a compromise that pleased both parties, P.J. and Jared had arrived. They looked different than they had a short while ago, more content somehow, less edgy. But Nell barely had time to register the impression before Eddie strolled onto the stage and blew it clean out of her mind. Her heartbeat picked up its pace.

He greeted P.J. first as he always did and complimented her sleekly straight hair.

"I'm enjoying it while it lasts," P.J. said. "Which is pretty much until I have to wash it. I sure don't have the patience to wield a blow-dryer for the time it takes to get it this smooth myself."

Eddie turned to Nell. "And you, sweet thing. You're looking particularly radiant tonight. You lose some weight or something?"

Heart stilling, she simply stared at him for an instant.

"Christ, Brashear," Hank muttered. "Could yoube a bigger idiot?"

Omigawd,was her first clear thought.He doesn't know the first damn thing about me. She'd spent nearly two years mooning over Eddie Brashear, with his dirty-blond hair and his bedroom eyes, and he had obviously never paid her the slightest attention in return. Which really shouldn't catch her by surprise. She was a far cry from his usual barely legal blond bimbo.

"You are an idiot," P.J. agreed and Jared stepped up to Nell, sliding an arm around her shoulders and walking her away.

"What?" Eddie demanded in a baffled voice. "What's everyone so bent out of shape about?"

"Well, don't I feel like a fool," she murmured as Jared escorted her to the wings.

He squeezed her shoulders. "Don't. Hank called it right. The guy's a complete moron."

Stopping in the shadow of the left wing, she stepped back to look at him. "Well, you know, thinking back, it occurs to me that this isn't exactly a new phenomenon. I've simply ignored the fact that every compliment he's ever given me has been a variation of the same theme. So who's the real moron here, Jared?You're glowing andyou're radiant are clearly the currency he expends on the plump, pushing-forty crowd. I'm the one who read into it what I wanted it to mean. Every damn time."

He shrugged. "You can't choose who you fall in love with."

A sharp laugh that was dangerously near hysteria escaped her and she clapped her fingers to her mouth. She quickly got herself under control but her lips retained their crooked slant when she dropped her hand and looked up at him. "Well, here's the thing. Being in love would at least be a decent excuse. What I felt for Eddie suddenly feels more like some crush a none-too-deep thirteen-year-old might have developed for the cute new boy in school." She looked Jared in his pretty green eyes. "Which-and here's how much depth I've gained at thirty-eight-is now stone-cold dead."

"That's actually a good thing," he said without sentiment. "I'd hate to think of you carrying a torch for the guy. Because have you everlooked at the girls he hangs out with? They may be cute and they're certainly built. But if even half of them have graduated from jailbait, I'd be very surprised. And talking about deep, don't you have to wonder if that's because he knows that one conversation between him and a real woman would send her screaming into the night?"

"Come to think of it, I don't believe I ever have had an actual conversation with Eddie." She smiled crookedly. "I was too busy lusting from afar." Feeling much better, she reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. "Thanks, Jared. You're a nice man. I, on the other hand, am not so nice. And I do believe I'm going to spend the night writing a new song. One about a man that a goodhearted woman thought was a diamond, but who turned out to be nothing but a pretty piece of paste." A melody started tickling the back of her mind and she smiled. "I'll have to give it some thought, because I especially want this song to be one of P.J.'s top sellers."

"Whoa." His eyebrows rose. "Let me guess-so Eddie can play it night after night on the next tour and hear it getting airtime on the radio and never have a clue it's about him?"

She smiled at him approvingly. "You're much quicker than he is."

"And you are one diabolical woman. What will you name it?"

"I don't know. Carly Simon already took 'You're So Vain.'" She shrugged. "But I'll come up with something. 'Eddie's a Blind Jerk Jackass' is probably a little obvious. I think I'll shoot for something more along the lines of a little inside joke that only a few of my closest friends will understand."

Jared studied her for a moment then shook his head. "Remind me never to piss you off."

THE MAN SLAMMED THEtelephone receiver back in its cradle and stalked a short path from one end of his motel room to the other. This was wrong, just plain wrong! He should have won a ticket and a backstage pass to tonight's Priscilla Jayne concert by now. Instead, even though he'd diligently called every time he'd heard the opening notes to "Crying Myself to Sleep," he had yet to manage getting through to the radio station. It was frustrating, irritating, and the busy signal that assaulted his ear with every attempt was beginning to make him very, very angry.

"Forgive me, Father." Sinking to his knees beside the bed he prayed for patience and the Lord's guidance. He apologized for his lack of faith when he knew perfectly well that his quest was just and his Creator would provide the means to contact Priscilla Jayne in His own way and on His own schedule.

Early evening waned without the man ever reaching KPIX, but by then he had mastered acceptance. Because giving himself over to a higher power had opened a space in his mind that allowed an alternate idea to occur to him. He let himself out of his motel room and headed toward Hollywood Boulevard a half-block over.

He hadn't been pleased about having to stay this close to California's Sodom and Gomorrah and had kept his distance from the famous street. Given a choice, he'd prefer not to rub shoulders with so many sinners. He wasn't made of money, however, and at least his motel was clean, within reasonable proximity to the place he needed to be and relatively inexpensive.

It was ironic, then, that this boulevard of broken dreams and perversions might now turn out to be exactly what he was looking for.

Except:Hollywood Boulevard wasn't at all what he'd anticipated. Where were the string of tattoo parlors, the scandalous lingerie stores, the hookers and the dealers? He tramped street after street but saw nothing but a clean new shopping complex, an equally new metro station and restored hotels and shop fronts. He should have been pleased that such a corrupt town was cleaning up its decadent neighborhoods. And he was.

But for just this evening a decadent neighborhood had been the kind of place where he could reasonably expect to find what he needed.

He sure couldn't find it in this new and improved district, and he was ready to call it a night and head back to the motel when he saw the devil's handmaiden leaning against a light standard. He stopped short on the sidewalk. Glancing up at a street sign, he realized he'd walked all the way to the seedy beginning of downtown L.A. He stared at the woman on the opposite side of the boulevard.

Clearly she would know where he could find what he was looking for.

Still he hesitated, because even understanding that she was a sign sent to him from above, he didn't want to approach her. With her huge shock of brassy hair, her makeup that looked as if it had been slapped on with a spackling knife, her inch-long squared-off fingernails painted a Jezebel red and at least six tattoos, she reminded him of his daughter, Mary. And that was a personal failure he didn't care to revisit tonight.

Time was growing short, however, and he didn't have many options left. All he could do at this juncture was command himself to keep his gaze above the woman's neck. But her great, bulbous breasts in their low-cut, skintight, zebra-print top and her skirt so scandalously short it barely covered the essentials were lures designed to tempt the virtuous from their path. The long, muscular snake draped around her neck had more volume to it than her entire wardrobe combined.

By rights she ought to hang her head in shame. Instead, when she saw the disapproval he could not completely disguise, she mocked him with her salacious behavior. She laughed a husky siren's laugh, proposed indecent act after indecent act and shook her whore's teats in his face. He longed to take her in hand the way he once had Mary, to do what he had been unable to do for his own daughter and set her feet firmly on the road to redemption.

But he forced himself to swallow the inclination and be civil. He needed information and he'd learned the hard way that a soft voice was more effective than thundering threats of hell and damnation.

But if ever a female cried out for punishment it was this unrepentant harlot before him.

She refused to give him the information he sought until he paid her thirty dollars. When he then discovered that he would have to drive down to Yorba Linda for his purchase he longed to unleash the power of his righteousness upon her, to castigate and renounce her for the hell-bound sinner she was. He choked down that impulse, as well. Instead he thanked her for her time and hiked back to his motel. There he collected his uniform, tidied it with a lint brush and carried it out to his car where he carefully laid it on the pristine backseat. After consulting his map, he drove back to Hollywood Boulevard, where he turned left and headed for Highway 101.

There was an accident not far from where 60 East merged with 57 South and the snarled traffic barely inched along for the next forty-five minutes. The longer he was stuck in it the more he stewed about the store closing before he could get there. Why hadn't he called for the shop's hours before he'd set out to drive these heathen freeways?

But he received yet another reminder that the Lord was his Shepherd when he arrived with twenty minutes to spare before the store closed for the night.Oh, ye of little faith, he chastised himself as he marched through the door.

The clerk was dressed head to foot in black, had green and black hair, a tattooed asp on her neck and multiple piercings. She was also a nonstop talker who followed him around the store extolling the virtues and drawbacks of her merchandise. The man would have preferred a little privacy to mull over his choices, but he gave in with good grace when it became clear he wasn't going to be granted that wish. He made his selection and talked pleasantly to the clerk as she boxed up his item. Ten minutes later he was on the freeway back to LosAngeles.

He was pushing the far boundaries of the timeframe he'd set for himself when he finally neared the arena where Priscilla Jayne was holding her concert. All the same he pulled into a service station and changed into his uniform. The restroom's disgusting condition made his skin crawl and he washed his hands three times before letting himself out. Even then he couldn't relax until he'd also gone over them with one of the antiseptic wipes he kept in his glove box.

He drove around the peripheries of the arena until he located the tour bus he'd identified as belonging to Priscilla Jayne. It was in the lot near the backstage tunnel, and, parking his car in the shadows of an alley half a block away, he sank low in his seat to observe the bus for signs of occupancy.

All was quiet. A faint glow filtered through a couple of the black tinted windows, but he couldn't see any activity going on behind them. Which made it impossible to tell who was on the bus. That was unacceptable. He was on a mission and he needed to know that Priscilla Jayne and her entourage were elsewhere while the bus driver was on board. Was that so much to ask?

Considering that without the driver, his mission fell apart.

Well, perhaps the driver was on the bus. It was even probable. There was only one way to find out, however. Climbing from the car, the man straightened his uniform, settled his hat low over his forehead and reached back into the vehicle for the package. He set off with a purposeful stride for the bus.

He was about fifty yards away when the sound of approaching laughter floated up the ramp from the arena entrance down below. He melted into a shadow until he could see who emerged. To his surprise and momentary pleasure, Priscilla Jayne herself walked into view, hugging a large plaque to her chest. She whirled at the top of the ramp, and he watched her skirt lift up to twirl around her legs. She laughed and slapped it down, dancing backward in front of a cigarette-smoking man who was likely a drug user by the dissipated look of him; a woman with short, messy brown hair and full-figured curves that ought to be decently covered by clothing much less form-fitting than what she had on and a tall man with a loose-limbed walk but a vigilant air about him.

Like the moon pulls the tides, the man's gaze was drawn back to Priscilla Jayne. She was so animated, even prettier and more joyous in person, that it was difficult to look away.

Then he gritted his teeth in disgust. The attraction of the flesh was thelast thing he should be thinking about. That was the devil, whispering temptation in his ear.

"Get thee behind me, Satan," he muttered. So close. He had been soclose! Anger at being denied his goal was a slow fire inside of him that threatened to burst into full flame.

He firmly stamped it out. Turning away from the noisy group, he headed back to his car. It was disappointing, yes.

But there was always tomorrow.