Chapter 34

2^nd City
Grand Rapids, MI
Radisson Hotel

Here, we performed at the DeVos Place Convention Center in the DeVos Performance Hall, which seats 2,400 people. Mr. Bublé told me we got in here because Harry Connick Jr cancelled, and we got the date. The irony of that is that the two of them have reasonably similar singing styles as well as they sing a lot of the same old crooners’ tunes.

From there, we schlepped to,

3^rd City
Detroit, MI
Holiday Inn Woodhaven

4^th City
Akron, OH
Sheraton Suites Akron

5^th City
Buffalo, NY
Curtis Hotel
(One of the most expensive places we stayed at!)

6^th City
Rochester, NY
Fairfield Inn & Marriott Suites

7^th City
Syracuse, NY
Quality inn & Suites Downtown

8^th City
Albany, NY
Crowne Plaza Hotel

Performing at the same hotel we were staying in was a bonus. The hall only held 1,300, so I suspect there is a higher than usual price to get in.

At our next rehearsal, Michael asked us if there was any of his songs that we hadn’t done yet and wanted to add to the show, and I told him how much Claire and I enjoyed his cover of “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine.”

Michael’s reply was, “I love that song too, but the lady who sings that with me is off on her own tour right now, and we don’t have time to audition anyone to sing with me.”

“Michael,” a voice from behind me said, “I use to sing in my church choir, could I help you out?”

Sarah?

This was quite a blockbuster to us all, even Claire and Kalista. We all were amazed Sarah would even think to say such a thing out loud. I have heard her humming songs before, even singing a little. It never occurred to me that she might be able to sing, much less a duet with Multiple Grammy winner Michael Bublé.

“Sarah, thank you very much, and you are quite lovely, but I need an alto to sing low harmony to my voice,” Michael said, sounding a bit too condescending for my taste.

“Try her out?” said Claire.

“Yeah, Michael,” I joined in, “Stranger things have happened on this tour.”

“Do you know this song, my dear?” Michael asked.

“Yeah, I used to love to sing along with Lou Rawls back when he was singing it all the time. I just want to help if I can, Michael,” Sarah said sounding something like a new girl in the choir class.

“Michael,” I said, “If she can sing, and I have no doubt she can, and she’s on stage with you in her newest dress, I guarantee it’ll be the most sensational event on this Tour since it began.

“Sarah, get me the laptop please?”

She did and I went to Lyrics Time and found the song lyrics for Sarah. I put the lyrics in front of her. “Sarah, everything I know tells me you are going to be fabulous. Sing low harmony when it strikes you. Love you.”

I said, “Michael get ready; Alan, (Michael’s pianist) please start the song?”

It is a beautiful melody as Alan started on the piano... (Sarah’s part)

MICHAEL
“You’ll never find,
as long as you live,
Someone who loves
you tender like I do
SARAH
You’ll never find,
no matter where you search
Someone who cares
about you the way I do

At this point Sarah is singing in direct harmony with Michael.
BOTH
“Whoa, I am not
braggin’ on myself, baby
Cause I am the one
who loves you
And there’s no one else.
No one else.”

I put up my hand to stop Alan, and I went to Sarah, who had been keeping up with Michael Bublé; and gave her a hug and turned around to Michael.

“Well, Michael, an angel of a voice and a devil of a figure should work out for at least one song a night, don’t you think? How’d you like my little girl, here? As her agent I want her to get a thousand dollars’ cash, any night you want her to sing with you. That’s our ... only offer?”

Sarah put her arm around my waist and said to Michael, “My agent and I are waiting, tick ... tick ... tick.”

Michael could easily just say no, but he was thinking about it, I could tell. I moved my hand to Sarah’s hip; hoping Mom wouldn’t go too ballistic. I looked over at her, Claire and Kalista who all had their mouths open in astonishment as Michael was still chewing this over.

He suddenly slapped his hand down on the piano, startling everyone, even Alan, and said, “Why the hell not? We’ll try it once tomorrow night. If it works out, it could be a regular thing, if both Sarah and her high-priced agent don’t get too cocky!” Michael laughed and just shook his head.

Claire and Kalista ran up to Sarah, and they all screamed together about this. Annie walked up to me and said, “My little boy, Oh, the things that you think of, Charles. It looks like the McArthur girls are enjoying themselves.” We looked back over at them, and saw Michael walk up to Sarah, softly took her by her hand and pulled her over to the piano.

“Mom, did you know she could sing?” I asked.

“No, I have heard her hum and sometimes sing along with something you guys were dancing too, but I didn’t know she could belt like she was doing, in harmony no less? Did you know, Charles?”

“I heard the same thing you heard, mom. I hope we haven’t lost her; C-Cask needs her brain. It’s a good thing her body comes with it.”

Mom slapped me on the shoulder — I gave her a kiss in response. Even Steven!

Within five minutes, Michael and Sarah were singing up a storm; Miss Sarah Rollins makes her professional singing debut tomorrow night.

At the end of the rehearsal Sarah came up to me and gave me a big hug and kiss. “Charles,” she said, “I am singing with Michael Bublé - you are the best agent I have ever had.” She gave me a whopper kiss, and in front of my mother. “As my agent, you’ll get the industry standard of 15%.”

“No, Sarah – I’ll take a single dollar as payment. This is the opportunity of your life, all right. You did bring that awesome red dress with the rhinestones from the last photo-shoot with you, didn’t you?”

“Of course, I did, Charles ... you certainly have become something of a ruthless negotiator though.”

Annie added, “I think the word is fearless, not ruthless Sarah.”

We all laughed as we went off to dinner.

The next night, Claire, Kalista and I started things off with our ‘For Good’ number, and then Michael came out and applauded with the audience and started his set list. Sarah’s number with Michael had been put in the second half of the evening, so Sarah could first help with the girls change after ‘Six-Pack.’

Then Annie helped Sarah get into that ‘Magnificent little nothing she’s almost wearing,’ to quote one of Sean Connery’s early Bond movies, although I don’t remember which one or which Bond Girl wore it!

Michael stopped the underscoring that had been going on while he was introducing the next song.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Sarah Rollins,” was all he said, but did she get applause. All she did was walk out in that red dress, along with her red hair, along with that smile of hers that can light up any room and, she got a tremendous applause, just because she’s so ... stunning. She easily had 48% of her bosom showing!

The song started, and they both had cordless mikes, and as they sang together it was indeed magical. I know Michael had a girlfriend back in Canada, New Brunswick, I think.

He certainly looked like he fell in love with Sarah during that song. It went well, and Sarah left the stage, waving at the audience, as she quite literally bounced off stage.

She ran into the makeshift dressing room, I followed her, and she threw up in her trashcan. Nerves can be cruel. She saw me and started to cry tears of joy. We held each other for a moment, I told her how great she sounded, as she shooed me out to change.

She came out in a t-shirt and pants, looking just as sexy as she had only five minutes before, saying, “Thank you for that moment, Charles, but I won’t be performing any more. That was too nerve-wracking for me. I prefer being behind the proscenium, helping. I’ll go out at the end of the show in that dress again, but you just saw the debut and finale of Sarah Rollins career as a professional singer.”

The rest of the evening went as planned. Sarah had changed back, touched up her makeup and came out again for final bows. She performed a slight show bow, for fear she would ‘go nuclear’ in front of everyone. I had promised a G-rated show.

She did get a rousing applause of her own and stayed in the dress during autographs, which she was giggling with everyone she signed. Gosh, I love her. Her poster will now become our best-selling - I am sure of it.

Sarah came back from telling Michael she wouldn’t be performing anymore.

“He was a little bit pissy about it, but he understood. I told him that I just wasn’t cut out to be a performer like he was,” Sarah told us. “I am going to change; I’ll be right out.”

“Annie, Claire, and Kalista, I need to talk to Sarah, please? Could you guys go on ahead and we’ll meet you in the lobby to decide about dinner?” I asked. Mom gave me an interesting look, but she left with the girls.

Sarah came back out saying, “Charles, I can’t find my brassiere? Do you know anything about it? I can’t go out without a bra on.”

“My dear Sarah, you are so beautiful, but you don’t realize it, do you? You heard the audience applaud for you when you came out on stage tonight, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes?”

“And after you sang, they applauded you again, correct?”

“Yeah, so?”

I caught my eyes moistening, trying to explain this to her, “So, you are a beautiful woman and you amazingly don’t realize it. I’ll give you your bra back after dinner, but you need to walk ... with confidence. The dress you wore tonight represents your confidence, not wearing a bra, but walking proud amongst others would be another way to show your confidence.”

I pulled her bra from my pocket, and said, “Wear this and be comfortable, or don’t - and be confident! For a woman in her forties, you are prettier than most girls in their thirties. What’s it going to be, bra or no bra? I’ll walk with you everywhere you go proudly, not because you aren’t wearing a bra, but because Ms. Sarah Rollins has confidence in herself.”

She took the bra from me, looked at it ... and stuffed it in her oversized purse that her performance dress was in. She took my arm and we walked together. She was walking with confidence and was looking straight ahead. There were some people lingering from the audience. I heard a gentleman say, “That’s Sarah, the gal who sang with Michael. Isn’t she stunning?”

We walked past the people, including the gentlemen, with Sarah nodding her head as she walked by, and we caught up with the gang.

All of the girls gasped as they noticed Sarah’s attire, or lack thereof.

“Have you ladies picked out a place to eat?” Sarah asked unfazed by their demeanor.

“Yeah, where is the restaurant around here, anyway?” I followed up.

Annie broke first, and said, “There’s a place on-site called Kelsey’s Restaurant. Let’s check it out?”

“Sounds good, Charles if they have beer, would it be all right with you if I had just one?” Sarah said to me.

“I am not your mother, you can have whatever you want, my dear?” I replied.

Mom looked at me, getting a quizzical look on her face. I hope she noticed neither Sarah nor I seemed concerned about Sarah’s lack of ‘support.’ It wasn’t like the ‘girls’ were hanging low, like some old ladies.

“Yeah, that sounds good, I’ll have one with you Sarah, to keep us from going overboard,” mom added.

We walked to Kelsey’s and it was seat yourself after eleven pm, so we went in and ordered dinner. Mom and Sarah each had a single beer. I was sitting with Claire on one side of me and Sarah on the other. Claire leaned into me and asked, “What’s going on with my mom, Charles? She suddenly seems to exude confidence from every pore. Did you have something to do with this, loverboy?”

“Claire,” I said placing my hand on hers, “All I did was talk her into trying to be more confident; She did the rest all by herself. Isn’t your mother a beautiful woman that deserves to be confident?”

“Remember, she found out about John a little over four months ago, but right now, she seems quite empowered, more invested in herself. All I did was to help her see it.”

We ordered and ate dinner, and I helped Sarah up after dinner and she still was quite impressive, full of confidence and she had her chin up and was quite prideful, for the first time I remembered, since just before the email I read out loud.

As we walked together, she leaned over to me and said, “Thank you for the pep talk, Loverboy. I needed that a lot – I love you, if it’s OK to say that to you.”

“No problem Sarah,” I said, “I have got the four most beautiful ladies in this entire hotel surrounding me right now, and I have never been so proud to say that,” I said, breaking down and shedding a couple of tears, as we all headed to bed for the night.

Sarah turned around and took the thick cash filled envelope from her purse that she got from Michael and handed me a ten-dollar bill saying, “Nine dollars of that, is for your excellent motivational speech, the other dollar is your commission for my singing debut. Charles. I wish there was an additional way I could pay you back ... for all of your help tonight?” she said, winking at me and licking her lips.

“Sarah as awesome as that offer sounds, I couldn’t do justice to you, you are too formidable for me. Maybe when I am older and more capable, we can work out some kind of arrangement. I am not saying ‘No’, I am just saying, ‘Not yet.’”

After our second night in Albany, this time without Sarah singing, we got back to the hotel, packed up and headed off north. During the drive, Kalista asked, “Charles, are there any dances we haven’t learned yet?”

“Such as?”

“I’ve heard of something called the Flamenco, and Salsa dancing. Do any of Michaels songs match up to either of those dance styles?”

“You know, my dear sweet Kallie-Poo. That would take some research to find and match songs to steps, but there are a number of musical steps we just never got into,” I answered the lovely young lady sitting next to me.”

“Kalista,” her sister said, “I’ve heard of the flamenco too, but I don’t know if it’s for couples, only single dancers.”

I had been looking up music, so I went to YouTube and searched for ‘couple flamenco dancing,’ and was amazed by it, noticing how much stamina it appears to need.

The girls liked the outfits.

I made a note of it, then looked up ‘Salsa dancing’ knowing my two lovely redheads would get a kick out of that. It should be easier to find a song from Michaels repertoire to match it up to.

Once it started, they got animated talking to each other like I wasn’t even there. with this being nearly three hours to our next stop, we spent a good long while perusing the music before I realized that if he simply sped up ‘Sway’ we could easily do a hot salsa dance to it.

Special K, due to her height difference would likely have an issue if we tried the Lambada, but the Salsa might just work.

From the front seat, Sarah said, “Isn’t ‘Save The Last Dance’ something of a Salsa, Charles?”

Running it through my head, I reasoned that she was correct. Neither song was in the current set, but Michael would have no problem adding it back in.

Now, both of my girls couldn’t wait until we arrived at our,

9^th City
Burlington, VT
Doubletree by Hilton

Sarah and I walked in to the hotel foyer, and after verifying they had rooms reserved for us, I asked, “We have a need for a space to practice some new ideas for our dancing tour. Would you have something available that might work?”

The pretty brunette responded, “Certainly, we do Mr. Newman. It is carpeted, if that is all right?”

Taking a quick glance to see her name was Nancy, I said, “That makes no difference to us, Nan. We just came up with an idea for Salsa Dancing. Do you dance, my dear?”

“No,” she said with a slight pout, “But, I wish I did!”

Sarah joined in to say, “I am trying to talk them into becoming dance teachers when he and my daughter are married and through dancing.”

Clever lady!

We were upgraded to the nicest suite in the place, as Nancy handed me our room keys.

Pablo had our luggage on a large cart and we just fit into the elevator.

“I have tickets to see you dance,” he said. “I can’t wait. You guys are the biggest thing to be here in a few years. There are people scalping tickets for over $100 each.”

I took Kallie’s hand as we left the lift to the top floor.

He asked which luggage went where, and after unloading it, I handed him a Jackson, and thanked him.

I was sharing a double with my Mom, with Sarah only ten feet away. I called for a C-CASK meeting in our room after all were dressed for bed.

“First things first, ladies. Kalista honey, some people buy tickets to sell them to others and make a profit, but that is illegal just about everywhere. Why it is called scalping I have never understood. Are we good?”

“Thank you, Tiger!” she said to me. I gave my fiancée a look, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Next, Is a rundown of poster sales, with a complete breakdown to date, ALL 21 SHOTS:”

“Don’t forget to reload, Lover?” Annie said sitting to my left. Sarah led the giggles...

619,000 - Claire in her Shimmy Dress
600,000 - Kalista in her Red Dress
588,000 - Sarah Braless
568,000 - Kalista & Charles - NEW
525,000 - Sarah in Red lowcut dress - NEW
511,000 - Charles & Claire in Dance Pose
501,000 - Charles between the ‘Two Moms’
492,000 - Claire in LBD - NEW
489,000 - Anne and Sarah kissing Charles
474,000 - Kalista in Blue
458,000 - Kalista in Green - NEW
432,000 - Charles, Claire and Kalista.
417,000 - Claire & Charles - NEW
411,000 - Annie in Pink dress - NEW
410,000 - Annie & Charles - NEW
409,000 - Charles w/Open Collar - NEW
405,000 - Sarah & Charles - NEW
404,000 - Annie in Black
403,000 - Charles in Blue Suit
401,000 - Annie and Sarah in Yellow
400,000 - The Five heads shot.

After reading off the numbers, I looked at the time, and called Ken, getting, “Ken McArthur, Hey Boss! Not bad for three kids still in school!”

“Are you sure of these numbers, I mean positively positive?” I asked.

“Yep, the place has hired extra staff and is now running 24/7 to be sure to get pictures out in 72 hours or less!”

“So, we have really sold just under 10,000,000 posters?”

“Yessir, and they are happy as can be, since you capped the cost drop. Those who want a complete set are being priced at $19.95 for all 21 pictures. The original set is going at $9.95 and the new nine poses are priced to sell at $8.99. I was wondering...”

“KEN, MAKE AN OFFER TO BUY THE ENTIRE PROPERTY FOR $9,999,999!” I said.

“WHAT?”

“Do I need to repeat myself, Kenny?”

Sarah grabbed my phone, saying, “We will call you back ASAP, Kenny!” and she disconnected the call.

“Are you out of your effing mind, Charles?” she said.

“No, I am thinking with a very clear mind. I know some information that none of you know!”

“Such as?” Annie said.

“The printing building is only 100ft by 100ft, while a small portion of the property, only needs to be cleared off to allow a duplicate building to be built. With a little imagination, we could ALSO build a screen-printing center with any of our pictures on either a t-shirt or sweatshirt.”

“Do you mean that my picture could be on a shirt that anybody could buy?” the smallest McArthur asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “The property is worth maybe five or six million dollars, but if I ... we purchase it, we could have Ken do most of the preparatory work prior to building anything new.”

“If you had explained that first, I wouldn’t have likely gotten so loud, Charles. Sorry?”

“You do need one of us to sign off on anything we do. It is the reason we are C-Cask, isn’t it?” Annie remarked.

“You are absolutely correct. It was the realization that we have sold 20 million posters, meaning about $100,000,000 is the bank account. Money, we have to pay taxes on unless we spend it in the same calendar year!”

“You impress me again,” Sarah said. “Of course, you are correct.” She leaned into me and gave me a nice safe kiss.

“Call Ken back, please?”

About 15 minutes later, we were all hugging each other, and headed off to bed.

With the dawn of the first morning of our two days off, CC&K were shown the rehearsal room they had for us ... plenty of room.

Starting with my fiancée, we covered the 8-count Salsa Basic, followed by the UnderArm Turn to the Right, that both she and the closely watching Special K enjoyed, due to the circle turn the girl performs.

I did that with both of them, until it was setting into concrete. We had a quick break for water, then I brought up my Soul mate and we learned the simple named UnderArm Turn to the Left.

“You are forgetting to lead with your hip,” Sarah noticed, I excused myself from K and did all the same things with Sarah and then my mother.

From there I covered everything again with Claire, including both UnderArm Turns. I am so happy how quickly and completely all my girls are learning these steps.