Chapter 6: She's The One

Stan had warned me and the girls that during the summer, the club scene would be much quieter. People were off on vacation or just enjoying the longer summer days. They weren't so motivated to go to a club as they were during the fall, winter, and early spring. We were still booked during the days we were available, but The Palomar had no problem covering for us when we were at one of the outdoor events.

The other factor was that much of our new outdoor sound wasn't suitable for the club scene. It was too loud and would have blasted people out of the room. We had to have two different sounds; a club sound and an outdoor sound. More work. But again, Fran, with Gina's leadership, worked on the transition and bit by bit, we had enough music for both venues. I contributed, as did Stan and Bud, but the real grunt work was done by the girls.

There had been a change in my relationship with Gina after her now-famous rant. She had become much more aggressive on stage and I found I didn't mind it a bit. I realized she and Fran were becoming performers, not just singers. They had worked out dance steps and body actions to use on their routines. We were adding an element to the band we didn't have before. As I saw it, we were selling ourselves to the audience. In the meantime, Gina was still selling herself to me. I wondered if she understood that she had already sold me. We were doing a lot more face to face singing and the message wasn't lost on the band or our audience.

Gina and Fran continued to work on their interpretations of songs we could use in our sets, but nothing would be included without the general approval of the whole band and, of course, appropriate rehearsal.

In mid-May we were two weeks before our first outdoor gig, a Memorial Day thirty minute session on the campus mall at Eastern Washington University in Cheney. We had no idea who we would follow or who would follow us. Our audience would be mostly college kids just finishing their year. We knew that we had to tailor our play list to that group. Aside from Stan, Bud and Thad, the rest of us were in our twenties and not long removed from the age group we would be entertaining. This time, Gina, Fran, Al, Rollie, and I worked on the play list. Thirty minutes gave us room for seven, maybe eight songs, we estimated. We could extend our big finish if we got the response we hoped for, so rehearsal would be directed at achieving three things: a sound that the young audience could relate to, recognizable tunes, and one more intangible that I thought would add the finishing touch: audience interaction.

I was sure Fran and Gina could present themselves in such a way as to get the audience into the act. Encourage them to sing along, clap, dance in the aisles, whatever it took to make them feel they were part of the show. What I didn't count on was just how far Gina and Fran were willing to go. When I saw what they planned to wear, I wondered if those young kids were ready for this. Gina was flat out going to flaunt it, and Fran was a willing accomplice.

Memorial Day dawned bright and sunny in the Palouse. It was going to be hot during the afternoon, hopefully cooling a bit by the time we were scheduled on at just before nine that evening. As a group, we were nervous. It was our very first outdoor gig and although we had a ton of experience at the club scene, we were brand new at this kind of venue with what I could see was a large audience. If we stunk, we'd be lucky to be booed off the stage. But we'd been getting ourselves ready for this, our first of now seven outdoor concerts between Memorial Day and Labor Day. We'd better give it our best shot.

Stan reverted to his theory that when you have a short program like ours, there was no point in singing lullabies. As he so eloquently put it, "We need to kick their ass right off the bat, and keep kicking it until we're done." We all knew what he meant, so our eight songs all had to have some bite and power. The two most important choices were the first and last ones. We debated this for a while until we got general agreement on what we would begin with. Bud put it best. Give them something they recognize and drive it home. We would open with Kelly Clarkson's Stronger.

There are times when things happen that drive a chill up and down your spine. A few seconds into our first number, I felt that chill. The crowd, at least five hundred I guessed, reacted ... and it was positive. As soon as we got that feedback, I could feel the whole band pick it up and just let it rip. Gina and Fran hammered out their lines with Bud, Al, and I backing them. We had them. We had them in the palm of our hands. Now ... don't let go.

The thirty minutes seemed to fly past in seconds. I knew we were going to finish big, and I was eating up the love from the audience. Our third from the last was Amanda Marshall's I Believe in You, a duet with the girls, with the usual suspects backing them up. Gina must have had her Wheaties that morning because she belted it out like I'd never heard her sing before. Then, when she moved to the front of the stage with Fran right there with her, they got the audience waving back and forth in time. Bud, no stranger to getting in some extra licks, gave the crowd a full minute of virtuoso picking to their delight. The girls finished the song and the reaction of the young crowd was amazing. By the time we knocked down our finale, Little Red Wagon, there wasn't much left to give them. We'd sold out, as the saying goes. They got it all and the crowd told us just how much they appreciated that.

The eight of us spent a couple of minutes acknowledging the applause, whistles, hoots and hollering before we left the stage. I could hear all kinds of calls for "more" and "encore," but that wasn't on the schedule and we had to get off the stage to let the next act get ready. I felt sorry for them. We were going to be a bitch of an act to follow.

We sat in the big open room off the mall where we could get a cold drink and relax before packing up and heading back to Spokane. We were spent. We'd given everything we had in those eight songs and we'd got the response we were hoping for. I was wondering how we'd top this before I remembered we had a whole summer's worth of these venues, most of which were only twenty minutes or so. Aside from the money, it hardly seemed like any time on stage at all. On a dollars-per-hour, we were getting rich. But I also thought we needed more music. We were going to be playing three and four day sets, and I thought we should try not to just repeat the same program each day. It was something to talk to the group about.

As I cooled down, Gina came and sat beside me, leaning on me. I was tempted to put my arm around her, but didn't.

"You don't want to do that, girl," I chuckled. "I'm soaked in sweat."

"Me too," she said, her voice betraying just how exhausted she was. The girls had been the smart ones. They had dressed in tank tops and shorts with heeled sandals. After all, most of the young girls in the audience would be dressed similarly.

"I'm soaked to the skin," she said, "and this bra is chafing me." With a time-worn move, she reached behind her back and undid the bra clasp and removed the offending undergarment, laying it beside her. "There, that's better."

I saw Al, Bud, Rollie, and Thad's eyes bug out in astonishment. Fran was sitting beside Gina, saw her move, shook her head, closed her eyes and leaned back. Stan was sitting on the floor and his eyes were closed as well, so he missed the show. I was sure he'd hear about it. As for me, I wasn't surprised. Gina often paraded around our apartment in little or nothing aside from a t-shirt and panties, so I wasn't seeing anything I hadn't seen before. There were times when I was pretty sure she was doing this to attract my attention. But tonight, I think she was as wiped as the rest of us.

We finally got all our gear later that evening just before the fireworks. We had cooled off by then, but all of us were desperately in need of a shower. We decided to beat the traffic and headed out about half-way through the pyrotechnics and gratefully, the traffic was manageable. There would be more than a few fireworks shows over the summer.

I was glad that the store and our apartment shared air conditioning and a sixty gallon water heater. The girls took a while to get the sweat and grime off them and I whiled away my wait with a couple of long necks for fluid replacement therapy. When they were finally out of the bathroom, I was informed it was my turn and I gratefully headed for the shower. The girls hadn't said much on the short drive home from Cheney. I think, like all of us, they had given that session their all. There was nothing left in the tank. I know that's how I felt.

The shower felt wonderful as I sluiced off the layer of sweat from our effort. I felt good. Hell, I felt better than good. We had accomplished everything we had set out to do. How could you not feel good about that? I dried myself off and headed for the bedroom and found the night table lamp on and Fran fast asleep with just a sheet over her topless form. I found a clean pair of briefs and a t-shirt, switched off the lamp, and headed back out to the living room. I wasn't ready for bed yet. The adrenalin was still flowing.

I stopped in the kitchen for one more beer, then moved toward the living room. I was surprised to see Gina sitting on the sofa.

"I thought you'd be in bed by now," I said quietly. "Your sister is fast asleep."

"I think tonight took a lot out of her," Gina nodded.

"What about you. You gave it everything tonight. You should be exhausted too."

"Too charged up," she said. "Tonight was something I'd never experienced before. I've felt like I was high on something."

"I know what you mean. I felt the same way."

"Yeah," she smiled at me. "I got that. You gave it everything tonight, Ed. I mean everything."

"I was feeding off the crowd."

"I know. So was I. But I was also feeding off you."

"Me?"

"Uh huh. Ever since I had that melt-down a while ago, you've been a different guy on stage."

"Different how?"

"More confident. More powerful. More in control. Sexy."

"Sexy?"

She nodded, looking at me with narrowed eyes. "Yeah. Sexy. Like you were projecting sex. Fran and I have been working on getting some personality in our act. You hardly need to do anything and yet you put out that message. I was watching those young girls in the front rows and they had their eyes fixed on you."

"Huh. Maybe I should have hung around afterward and checked them out," I kidded.

"Don't you dare," she said immediately, smacking me on the arm.

"Easy girl, I was only fooling. Besides, I've seen the drool coming off the young studs up front as they fix their eyes on you."

"Those boys don't have a chance ... and you'd better be just fooling," she warned.

"Oh ... uh ... and that's because?" I asked not so innocently.

"You are mine!" she said, turning toward me and straddling my lap.

"Oh ... since when?" I might as well see this to the end.

"Since ... a long time ago," she said, now seemingly flustered.

"Spit it out, Gina. What are you telling me?"

She had a hard time looking me in the eye. "You just are. I keep waiting for you to make a move, but you never do."

"Gina, you know I won't do anything to upset you or Fran. Both of you are too important to me."

"That's just it. I want you to do something ... anything. I want you to feel something more than just ... protective. I want you to want me."

"Hey, that sounds like a good title for a song," I kidded, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work.

"Don't make fun of me," she snapped. "I'm serious. You're ... you're..."

"I'm what?" I smiled, my arms now going around her.

"You're what I want. I want you, Ed. But it's no good if you don't want me," she groaned.

"What makes you think I don't want you?"

"I told you. You don't make any moves toward me. That hurts, you know."

"I don't want you to hurt, Gina. That's the last thing I want for you. But you have to tell me how you really feel before I'm willing to tell you how I feel."

"Why won't you go first?" she whined.

"Because that's the only way I'll know if I'm right. You won't understand, but trust me, that's what I want to know first."

"I ... I ... I'm in love with you, Ed," she said, tears now showing.

"That a girl. That's what I wanted to know," I smiled. "And that's a good thing ... because I've fallen in love with you too."

"You have? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because until tonight, I wasn't sure it would be returned. I had to know that the way I felt for you wasn't in vain."

"Oh," she said, realizing what I'd implied.

"When did you know," she asked.

"About the time you ripped me a new one in rehearsal," I grinned.

"Really? I don't get it."

"If you didn't care about me, you wouldn't have gone off on me that way. It was a very personal attack, and at first I was hurt. But ... when I thought about it, you showed a lot of courage and determination. And more importantly, you were right. I was just a passenger. But you cared enough for me that you insisted that I do more. You wouldn't accept me giving you less. I think that's when I realized there was something happening between you and me."

"I think you're full of shit," she said with a frown. "I was pissed off, plain and simple."

"Wait a minute. I just gave you the storybook ending you were looking for. Were you just toying with my affections?" I said with as straight a face as I could pull off.

She smacked me on the arm again. "This is serious, Ed. It's not some joke. I just told you I've fallen in love with you and you've told me you are in love with me. What's with the smart-aleck jokes?"

"Okay ... truth time. I don't exactly know when I fell in love with you. Maybe the day I met you. Well ... maybe not. That was more lust than love. I can't answer that question, Gina, but I can tell you this. I know ... I know for certain ... that I am in love with you. You are all I think about all day long. And I don't mean only sexually. I knew you cared for me because you kept doing and saying things that told me so. It wore on me until one day, in the dim recesses of my mind, I began to see the light. You felt for me the way I felt for you. I guess that's when I knew. But ... I didn't time stamp it. Sorry."