Chapter 11

I'd heard Liz Larimer sing a couple dozen times before she became a star. I had seen her first public appearance when she was 14 years old on the stage at the high school. I had seen all or parts of her performances in two productions at the amusement park near the township where we both grew up.

I thought I knew what to expect when she took the stage. I stood with my friends in the dugout as we waited for her to make her way through the door that led from the team's clubhouse. The noise in the stadium was far louder than I had ever heard at a baseball game. My father and I were regulars at Jacobs Field in Cleveland when I was young. The team was in the middle of 455 consecutive sellout crowds and the product on the field was really good.

The loudest crowd at Jacobs was nothing compared to the din at Petco Park as the time came for Liz to make her appearance.

"This is amazing!" Eric said.

"This must be what it's like to watch a Super Bowl in a domed stadium," Chris offered. I smiled as the obligatory chant began.

"Liz! Liz! Liz!" started somewhere in the left field stands and continued until every voice in attendance seemed to be yelling the words in unison. I saw the door open and Liz come out. She would slip under the stage and then ride a lift upward after the first line of her opening number arrived.

She wore a broad smile and she unconsciously bobbed her head in time with the chant. She gave each member of the group a brief hug as she made her way past where we stood.

"Give 'em hell, Kid," I said when she got to me. It was the same words I had told her as she took the stage as a nervous high school freshman almost two decades earlier. As freshman class president, I had been tasked with the job of getting all the props off the stage after every performance. I had been standing at the edge of the stage that night ... just as I stood at the dugout steps now.

Liz stopped for a moment and her smile grew. It might have been the first time that memory had popped into her head in 15 years.

"I'm gonna," she said with a wink. Except for the motion with her eye, it was how she had replied as a ninth grader.

"I know," I said as I patted her softly between the shoulder blades to complete the re-enactment. She smiled, her head still bobbing in rhythm. She wagged her finger at me and disappeared beneath the stage just as the up-tempo music to her opener hit.

The first song had a long intro which was a really good idea because the crowd roared.

"Whoa," Chris said. "This is louder than a jet taking off a carrier!"

He was yelling right next to me and I could barely hear him. Everyone moved to where they could see and soon a million strobe lights erupted at once just as Liz appeared on stage.

The sound system must have been awesome because I heard the words above the crowd. I didn't know the song but everyone else in the building seemed to. By the second line everyone was singing along ... including my friends.

I felt an arm around my waist and looked down to see Jill Clay standing next to me. I saw her mouth moving but I couldn't hear a word. I cupped a hand to my ear and leaned down closer.

"I didn't want you to think you'd missed out on the hug," she yelled. I laughed but she pulled my head down again. "What was that about before she went on stage?"

"It was nothing," I told her.

"It was something," she countered.

I motioned toward the clubhouse door and we walked back inside. The noise level was only marginally lowered but it we could finally converse without screaming.

I told her about Liz's first time on stage.

"Oh, man!" Jill said, grinning. "I would love to have seen that."

"Mom is looking for the video," I admitted.

"You ... you have a video of Liz's first performance?" she asked, her eyes wide.

"Somewhere, I think," I said. "Liz played the piano and sang. She did a version of this really cool number called 'L.A. Song.' I actually went out and bought the album. I still have it. It's from a woman named Beth Hart. I swear, I liked Liz's version better. I mean, I still think Beth Hart is awesome. But ... Mom will find it and you'll see."

"That's ... why?" Jill asked. "I mean, she told me today that you were like the king and she was ... nobody. Why did you have your dad record it?"

"I didn't," I answered. "Uh, my dad..."

I shook my head sadly.

"My dad never missed a single thing I did in my life," I admitted. Once again, the chagrin I had felt during my teenage years gave way to a wish that I could see him with the video camera pressed to his eye one more time. I shook my head to move back to the present. "Anyway, he got this brand new camera that was supposed to have great low-light features. I was only 14 so I needed a ride to the school. I lived in Bay View and the school is in Castalia. He decided since he was trotting my dumb ass around anyway, he might as well check out the new camera. He set up in the aisle and recorded the whole show. We have all those old videos on CD. I mean, when he died, we ... we just couldn't throw them away."

"I'm sorry," Jill said. "I ... I didn't know that he'd passed. I guess I should have when you spoke of him in the past tense. So you were backstage for her first live show."

"Yep," I said. "She ... it was fucked up. The assholes scheduled her right after the most popular girl in school did a baton routine. I think they hoped to add one more layer to the shit Liz got. Well, she showed them. I mean, she absolutely fucking killed. A couple of jerks started to be dicks but, man, once she started nobody made a sound until she was finished. I ... I was stunned. She walked off the stage with this look on her face like 'I told you I was going to give them hell.'"

I shook my head again.

"I wish I could say that everyone figured out that she was this ... once-in-a-lifetime talent," I concluded. "If anything, the bullshit got worse. The next year was just brutal for her. When ... uh, did she tell you I worked at the park where she was discovered?"

"Yeah," Jill said, watching me carefully.

"I used to hear her sing there, too," I admitted. "I guess until she hit Nashville, I'd seen probably 95 percent of her live performances. Then, one day, she was gone. They had someone else doing her shows and Liz was ... nowhere to be found. I sort of freaked. I mean, I thought ... I worried that..."

I shook my head and looked away.

"Damn," Jill said softly.

"I called my dad at work and he drove out to their house," I said. "They had packed up and moved. It took a couple of days before anyone knew where she'd gone. But ... I was pretty pissed. Some of the townies showed up at her last show and they heckled her until security gave them the boot. I had a baseball game against one of them and I ... I hit him in the head with a fastball. That was the only time my dad really got pissed at me. I ... I aimed for his face and ... I threw pretty hard. He was in the hospital for a couple of days. Dad gave me shit right there in the middle of the game. He told me I was giving away my future. I told him I didn't give a shit and maybe I'd knocked some sense into his stupid skull. All of the boys played in the league and I told him I was going to throw at them for the rest of the season."

I frowned at the memory.

"I played in a local league but I also played on a travel team with kids from all over Northern Ohio," I said. "Thankfully, this was just a local game. Only 15 or 20 people saw me make an ass out of myself. We sometimes had college and pro scouts at the travel games. We argued with each other for half an inning. He threatened to pull me out of the game. I told him to go ahead. That would just free up my evenings to find the idiots and really hurt them. At least on the baseball field they had a batting helmet."

"You must have really cared about her," Jill said. "That's different than I thought."

"I didn't really care about Liz," I admitted. "It was ... the principle involved. I looked at it like it was my responsibility to protect people like Liz. Dad told me that being a leader meant taking care of those that can't take care of themselves. I felt like I'd failed. I'd never experienced failure before. I know that sounds conceited but it's the truth. Mom and Dad protected me from failure and I didn't know how to deal with it. About a week later we found out that she had signed a record deal and moved to Nashville. I still hit the kids that were giving her hell though. I'd promised I would and I lived up to it."

Jill laughed.

"Look, I saw Stephanie giving you crap this morning," she said. "Don't pay any attention to her. I've been around Liz for awhile. I've never seen her happier, more relaxed than she was today."

She pulled the door open to give me the full force of what was happening a few yards away.

"I've never seen her with more energy than tonight," Jill continued. "She's always been awesome but tonight is a whole new level even for her. You're the only thing different between today and yesterday. Whatever is going on ... keep it going on."

"Nothing is going on," I said.

"Uh-huh," Jill said. "Well, believe what you want. I just wanted you to know that two-thirds of Liz's full-time, long-term friends are OK with where nothing goes."

Liz was still riding high when the first set ended. We had moved to the dirt warning track just outside of the dugout – being careful not to stand in front of the people in the first row.

The dancers and backup singers had already left the stage, many of them topless before they made it through the clubhouse door.

Liz had forced Ryan to scramble when she was alone because she came off the stage before the pre-planned time.

She spent half the first set walking through the rows just into the outfield, slapping hands with the fans lucky enough to be seated on the aisle.

I understood Ryan's concern but we both were just overly cautious. The fans on the aisle had already spent part of the day with Liz backstage. They were just happy to adore the singer from closer proximity than the stage. None made any attempt to touch her inappropriately or even to grab her hand. They just left their hands out over the barrier and let Liz make contact with hers as she passed.

When the song ended, she knelt beside a little boy in a wheelchair and took a "selfie" of the two of them with his mother's phone.

Liz stuck her tongue out at Ryan as she passed. She continued to keep her hand at her shoulder so she could "high-five" my friends as she (literally) skipped past them. I was at the back of the line because Jill and I had spent most of the set chatting in the clubhouse. I offered my left hand just like the others had.

Liz instead hooked me with her arm.

"C'mon," she said, gesturing down the dugout steps. I shot Jill a quick a glance but she just shrugged and nodded.

I turned and followed Liz down the steps and through the dugout. The locker room was already a buzz of activity. The wardrobe artist got first dibs, of course. Liz pushed the blue sequined jumper off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. She stood in front of me wearing only the underwear I had laundered the night before – a pair of bikini cut cotton panties and a white bra. Oh, and she still had on knee-high blue boots with a four-inch heel. I turned to give her some privacy but no one seemed to find my presence strange – except me.

Even Stephanie was all smiles when she came in and saw me facing away from where a half-naked superstar was seated while someone pulled off those boots. I wondered how Liz had managed to skip on dirt in them without breaking her neck.

"Wow!" Stephanie said when she was close enough to Liz to avoid shouting.

"I know!" Liz said. "The crowd is ... man. You can just feel the electricity."

"It's a feedback loop," I offered. "They feed off you; you feed off them and it goes on and on. It's just going to grow as the show moves forward."

San Diego wasn't known for its stellar sports teams. The Chargers were perennial division champs but always faltered in the playoffs. The Padres were usually mired in third or fourth place by early June and rarely rose any higher.

But the city had an enthusiastic fan base. The Chargers faithful flocked to the stadium for every home game and the Padres always drew a solid crowd even when they were bad. San Diego was a laid back city but if the citizens got behind something (or someone) they were behind them all the way.

"Turn around and talk to me," Liz said with humor in her voice. "I didn't drag you down here to stand with your nose in the corner."

I complied and found Liz still in her bra and panties as the makeup artist and the stylist did their thing.

"San Diego is always a good crowd," I said. "I didn't realize this was the first time you'd been here. They've been waiting for you to play here for ... a dozen years. That's why you have such a cross-section of fans out there. You have people that have enjoyed your music since they were teenagers. Now they're our age. They've brought their children with them because you're something they have in common. You have provided the parents with a bridge to reach their children and they love you for it. That's Sarah and Matt. You offer a positive message that they can teach their boys in a hip way. You also have the younger set that you've always appealed to.

"Your songs, new and old, are always going to appeal to the younger set. You ... you understand them. You give a voice to all their fears and their hopes. You let them know that life gets better. A lot of the people our age out there had you to shepherd them through the toughest parts of their lives and they love you for it. That's Susan and Chris. Your new songs are just as appealing to a group half our age because of how far you go to reach them.