taking any chances.
But I wasn’t paying any attention to him by then. I was looking the other way, my eyes on Ella, who was standing on the other side of the entrance, staring at me with a look of shock on her face.
After we were firmly escorted from the Garden (I re-creating Joan of Arc being led to the stake, the noble head held high; Ella staring at the ground in case someone she knew passed by), we hung around outside with the thousands of other wet, ticketless fans who were mobbing the street. Even if there hadn’t been so much noise we wouldn’t have been able to hear what was going on inside, but we could sometimes hear snatches of shouting and conversation and the occasional drum roll or guitar riff. I didn’t care. I was as happy as a person who is missing the last performance of a legend could be. I might not be able to see or hear them, but I was standing on roughly the same piece of ground as Sidartha; I was breathing the same toxic air. The same rain that poured down on me would pour down on them as they ran to and from their limousines. Once someone must have opened an inside door, because I was sure I heard Stu’s voice, his actual, warm, rich, unrecorded voice, break into the night like a flame to heat our souls. “What the hell is that supposed to be?” it said.
Even though she wasn’t the one who got caught, Ella was still shaken by our close encounter with the law. She stood beside me, shivering slightly, the only island of silence in the sea of shouting fans.
“You know,” I said, trying to cheer her up, “you’re not such a bad actor yourself.”
Instead of panicking when she saw me with the guard, Ella had faked outrage and marched to my defence. “We’re together,” she’d called out. “What seems to be the problem?” She was so convincing that he didn’t even think to ask to see her ticket. But not convincing enough, unfortunately.
“You almost had me believing I had lost my ticket,” I praised her.
Ella jammed her hands into her coat pockets. “I was so scared, I think I almost convinced myself.” And then she kind of froze the way someone in a horror movie does when an axe suddenly smashes through the front door. “Oh, my God, Lola… It never even occurred to me… What if they’d arrested us?” Her expression of terror deepened as the axe shattered the door a second time. “Oh, my God, Lola… What would my mother say if I was taken home in a police car?”
She probably wouldn’t say anything; she’d just die from the shame.
“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you aren’t being taken home in a police car.” Not yet, anyway.
Ella, however, wasn’t really in a state for the cool balm of logic and reason. The thought of pulling up to 58 Birch Hollow Drive in the back of a police car with the blue light flashing while the neighbours all gaped through their blinds and her father tried to revive her mother was too much for her.
“Maybe we should just go home now,” Ella said – again. “Before anything else happens.”
“Before anything else happens?” I waved my arms. “Ella, nothing’s happened yet.”
“Yes, it has,” said Ella stubbornly. “We’re soaked, you almost broke your neck, we lost all our money, we were almost arrested, and now we’re standing in the rain outside the concert. I call that something.”
I re-adjusted my hood, though it was so wet by then that there wasn’t really much point. “You can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs,” I said philosophically.
Ella smiled, thinly.
I changed my approach.
“Oh, please,” I begged, grabbing her hands. “We’re so close, El. Stu Wolff’s only a few yards away from us. The concert’ll be over soon, and then he’ll be in the same room with us. We can’t give up now. Where would we all be today if Columbus had given up and gone back to Spain? If Paul Revere had decided to stay in bed instead of warning everyone that the British were coming? If the Wright brothers had decided to stick to bicycles?”
Ella looked like she was about to answer me, but I didn’t give her a chance.
“Nowhere!” I proclaimed. “That’s where we’d be. There’d be no America. There’d be no satellites. No television. No microwaves or mobile phones. No mesquite crisps.” Ella loves mesquite crisps. “We’d be sitting in mud huts in Europe eating weeds, that’s where we’d be.” And anyway, we were in so much trouble already that we might as well go on.
Ella looked thoughtful. She’s a great believer in sticking things through.
“I didn’t say we should give up…” she murmured.
She was weakening. I moved in, stealthy as a panther.
“Don’t you want to see the look on Carla’s face when we turn up at the party? Don’t you want to see her stop smiling when she sees us talking to Stu? Don’t you want to see what happens when everyone finds out that we did go, and Carla looks like the fool for a change?”
Ella nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
“Great.” I slipped my arm through hers. “In that case, it’s time we went downtown.”
According to Carla’s invitation, which I’d had such foresight to commit to memory, the party was in Soho. Where else? Soho is New York’s artistic soul (and, therefore, America’s), and Sidartha was its voice. Besides, everyone knows that Stu Wolff lives in Soho.
Our plan was to be outside Stu’s building when the guests started arriving so we could choose our moment to meld in with the crowd. I figured it would take us at least an hour to get down there on the bus and then find the address, especially with the rain. If we left before the concert actually ended, we’d have plenty of time to reach Soho before everyone else, and even be able to go to a coffee shop to dry off and repair what damage we could.
“Can’t you read?” The bus driver pointed to the sign. “Exact change or tokens only.”
I felt myself blush. I’d been in the wilderness of Deadwood for less than a year by then, and already I’d forgotten how to ride a city bus. It’s my father’s fault; he insists on walking everywhere.
Ella started digging through her pockets, but I kept my eyes on the five-dollar bill in my hand.
“Please,” I pleaded, the shadow of tears in my eyes and voice. “It’s my sister.” I raised my voice. “She broke her foot, but she can’t go to the hospital to have it set until we get there to mind the babies.”
“I have a dollar forty in coins,” said Ella, dropping several of them on the stairs. “How much do you have?”
I knew how much change I had without looking: fifty-eight cents.
“It’s not enough,” I said in a voice thick with sadness. Ella started picking up the coins she’d dropped. I turned my unhappy eyes on the driver. “Please… She had to crawl to the phone to call us. She—”
“Take a cab,” said the driver. “It’s quicker.”
“But we don’t have enough for a cab.”
There was a shriek of disgust behind me.
“Oh, my God!” screamed Ella. “I just saw a cockroach.”
No one paid any attention to her. A cockroach on a city bus isn’t exactly news.
I waved the bill at the driver. “Don’t you understand?” I was practically sobbing. “My poor sister’s all alone with three little babies and a broken foot, maybe even a compound fracture… She’s lying there in pain, waiting for us to come and save her.”
Ella straightened up. “I almost touched it,” she squealed. “I almost touched it with my hand.”
This statement didn’t catch anyone’s attention, either.
“Look,” said the driver. “This isn’t an ambulance, it’s a city bus. You have to have the exact fare.”
Bitter tears of frustration welled in my eyes. “But the littlest is only two months old,” I wailed. “Two months old, sir. Do you have children? Do you remember when they were two months old? How they’d lie in their little cribs crying and crying until their mother picked them up and took them in her arms…?”
“Look,” said the driver, sighing heavily. “It isn’t my bus. I just drive it—”
“You do remember!” I was nearly sobbing. “You do know what it’s like.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Anybody got change for a five?” he called.
