'Is that why I had to wear dark glasses?' Quincy asked, frowning, and Carmen nodded. She had smuggled Quincy into the hall through a back entrance, but even so they had had to run the gauntlet of a squealing, pushing mob of teenagers and the driver who had brought them had used strong-arm tactics to force a passage for them, flinging back girls out of their path with ruthless disregard for courtesy.
Joe was already there, behind locked doors, in his dressing-room, resting in privacy until the moment when he would have to walk out on stage. Carmen took Quincy through a maze of dark, narrow passages to a cupboard-like room and left her there with a pile of paperbacks and magazines and a radio. 'Amuse yourself, we'll let you know if we need you,' she said as though talking to a child, and Quincy made a face at her departing back.
The hours seemed to drag after that. Quincy skimmed through a book, listening to music on the radio, but her mind refused to stay on what she was reading, it kept wandering and she was annoyed by the direction it always seemed to take. However oblique and indirect her path, her mind always managed to finish up with thoughts of Joe Aldonez. She despised herself.
Carmen came back with Billy Griffith, who was as abstracted as ever. He never seemed quite certain who she was, but he shook hands and told her he hoped she would enjoy the concert.
'Just stay out of everyone's way,' Carmen commanded. 'Stand where you're put and don't budge.'
'Yes,' said Quincy, mentally grimacing at the schoolmarm tone.
They took her along another set of winding, gloomy passages and she emerged on the huge stage to find herself being totally deafened by a sound like nothing she had ever heard—crashing tides of voices fell on her from all directions. She was just behind a heavy dark curtain, and a thin man in shirt-sleeves and wearing a hectic expression drew a chalk mark on the bare boards for her to stand on, reminding her to stay on it. 'Don't move an inch!' he implored, as Carmen had done, then rushed off without another word.
'This is the warm-up group,' Carmen told her. On stage, in the spotlights, a group was performing. Quincy could get a distorted view of the stage through the curtains, the young men in the group in profile, the loud thud of their beat making the floorboards tremble. She could see the vast audience in the hall, tier upon tier of faces glimmering in shadow, the brightness of their eyes like glowworms at night, and she could sense the electric excitement burning in them as they waited for their idol. It came over in waves to her, a tension distinctly sexual, as though they communicated it to each other and intensified their own emotions en masse until they took form almost visibly, so that Quincy felt the audience was one pulsating creature.
'Joe will be coming out soon,' said Carmen. 'I have things to do, I'll be back. Stay right there, remember.'
She vanished, and Quincy was not sorry to see her go. As she stood there, hidden, listening, she felt her own excitement mounting with that of the audience.
She was so tense her skin was ice-cold and her hands were stiffly curled at her sides, their palms wet with perspiration.
The microphone was taken by a compere, when the group had left the stage. A smiling man in a blue velvet jacket, he began giving Joe his big build-up, his words punctuated by screams from the audience. Quincy felt herself becoming just as excited and looked around behind stage, wondering where Joe was and how soon he would appear.
Suddenly the huge building was vibrating with hoarse yells, tidal waves of sound. Joe was walking out into the dazzle of light on stage. Hysteria broke loose and a forest of arms rose to greet him, waving as girls leapt up and down, beside themselves in their ecstatic delight.
The large orchestra began to play, a line of backing singers at the microphones quite close to Quincy began humming, then Joe's smoky, sexy voice took up the song and the hysteria died down a little as the audience sank into their seats to hear him.
For Quincy that concert was a revelation of the reality of Joe's life—he had such personal impact, such power and strength, yet as she stood there, watching him alone in that blue-white spotlight, facing the vast cavernous blackness of an audience so large that she couldn't guess how many were out there, he seemed suddenly small, very human, very lonely. The hypnotic sound of his voice only just held the audience hysteria in check and between songs their wild shrieks battered his isolated figure like primitive winds. Quincy felt the need in the audience reaching out to engulf Joe and almost shrank from it herself. No wonder he seemed drained after a concert, no wonder he had fled after the last one, exhausted and depleted, every ounce of his formidable energy taken from him.
At some stage during the evening, Carmen joined her again for a few minutes. She was flushed and elated, looking quite unlike her usual self, Joe's electric performance having got to her, too.
'Isn't he sensational?' she said, forgetting her usual cynical cool self. 'They're eating him!'
Quincy shuddered at the image—yes, she thought, how lethally accurate that is—the audience was eating Joe, devouring him like some pulsating leech draining his life-blood.
As the concert went on their excitement mounted to an incredible high, the waves of sound from them filling the great hall until Quincy was deafened, stunned by the noise. She could see the sweat dewing Joe's brown skin, the dampness of his silk shirt, the way the material clung to his perspiring body as he went on giving out with everything- he had, the high voltage of his performance making the air crackle around him.
It was a long time before that audience was prepared to let him go, he kept going off and coming back on again to do 'just one more' and from his performance you wouldn't suspect how tired he must be, he had been lifted by the audience, carried by their excitement to a succession of peaks.
When he went off for the last time Quincy stood listening to the shrieks and stamps until at last the audience began to leave, shepherded out by the uniformed security men who had kept guard on the stage during the show to stop fans from invading it.
She ran into Carmen and Billy Griffith with a group of other people a moment later, and was drawn along with them to Joe's dressing-room. He had had a shower and was wrapped in a black towelling robe, his long legs bare, the dark hair on them damp as was the thick black hair on his head. His eyes were deep exhausted wells, but he was still very high after the concert, laughing with friends, talking to people, a glass of whisky in his hand.
Quincy slid into a quiet corner, hemmed in by strangers, out of Joe's sight. She was tired, too, and kept yawning. She wanted to go home and get some sleep, but she had to wait until Carmen could get her out of the building safely. The fans were jammed around the hall, guarding every exit, the animal roar of their presence reaching the dressing-room.
She leaned her head against the wall, listening to the talk. The room was overcrowded and short of oxygen, far too warm. She got sleepier and sleepier, her lids drooped and her body slackened.
Inside her sleep-heavy mind Joe performed again: moving like a dark fantasy in a glittering spotlight, trapped in a dream.
'Quincy! Wake up!'
His voice seemed part of the dream, she did not break out of her sleep, only smiled faintly, until his fingers brushed along her warm cheek, awakening the pulses slumbering in her body.
Her nerves jerked, her lids rose, she drew a painful breath as she looked up into the watchful eyes.
The dressing-room was empty. They were alone and Joe was very pale under his tan, shadows beneath his eyes, a weary expression dominating his face.
'Where is everyone?' Quincy asked huskily, sitting upright and feeling the sting of pins and needles in her feet as she shifted them after the hour or so she had sat still there, deeply asleep.