Playing Dirty (Stargazer 2)

“Holy shit,” Nine Lives gasped. “Goonie, give Fred his fifty bucks back. Sarah’s crying.”

“That’s what we like to see,” said Goonie. “Don’t wreck, but you gotta look at this, Fred. There’s a girl in there.”

Fred glanced through the window between the seats. “There’s a bitch in there, more like it.”

“There, there,” Nine Lives purred, rubbing Sarah’s knee. “We don’t want to hurt you, Sarah. Not unless you make us mad. We just want to soften you up for our big night. Or do we? Goonie, maybe you like a fighter.”

Goonie said, “I want her softer than that.”

“Okay,” she said, sniffling and dabbing carefully under her eyes with her fingertips. “Do you mind if I lie down?”

Nine Lives patted his thigh amiably. Sarah stretched out across the seat with her head in his lap. Goonie rubbed her feet in the high heels soothingly. Out the sunroof, the clouds were violent pink with the sunset, and so clearly defined. The sunroof was open, she realized. The ultimate opulence in Alabama: windows open with the air-conditioning on.

“I made up this song a couple of days ago,” Quentin said on the TV, “watching Sarah work out in the gym of the hotel at the Galleria.”

He’d been watching her? Sarah had some hard questions for her creepy fiancé.

He had better be glad she would never see him again.

If she turned to look at him on the TV she would cry harder, so she stared out the sunroof and let his voice soothe her as Nine Lives felt around in his pockets for the little bottle of venom.

“Now I wish I hadn’t written this one,” Quentin said, “because I’m trying to get Sarah back, not make her run some more. It was supposed to be a surprise for her, and she’s not here. But Erin’s giving me that look. It’s next on the playlist, so I guess we have to do it. ‘Pink-Haired Sarah.’?”

The easy, funky little beat was unlike anything Sarah had heard the Cheatin’ Hearts play before. She thought analytically that Quentin might get his first Grammy from this one.

Pink-haired Sarah in the sun.

I wonder what makes Sarah run?

Or not, Sarah thought. Sun and run. Good one.

Nine Lives had found the bottle.

What does Sarah have to lose?

Pink-haired Sarah has the blues.

Sarah thought about Wendy. She thought about her mother.

Nine Lives unwrapped another syringe.

What does Sarah know is coming?

What keeps pink-haired Sarah running?

She thought about Quentin standing with his father in the gravel parking lot of the Highway 280 Steak House, which rarely served steak. Quentin and his father opened the hood of his truck and peered into the engine. They straightened and laughed together, and Quentin looked so proud. Then he saw Sarah watching from the doorway of the restaurant. He gave her the lopsided grin. Quentin would be fine without her.

Nine Lives stuck the needle into the bottle and pulled back the plunger.

Sarah laughing in the sun.

I wonder what makes pink-haired Sarah run?

Then came the chorus, with Erin, Martin, and Owen in a soaring three-part harmony: “Run, Sarah, run.”

“Run,” sang Quentin. “Pink-haired Sarah, run.”

She took a deep breath and held it as Nine Lives pulled back her sleeve to expose her shoulder.

“Run, Sarah, run,” sang the chorus.

Quentin sang, “Hon, what are you running from?”

Sarah leaped up from the seat, caught hold of the edge of the sunroof, and hauled herself through the small opening.

And braced herself as Fred made a sharp turn into the nearest parking lot.

“Help!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, realizing the futility of the exercise even as she did so. Of all the luck, they’d pulled over at a much-advertised strip club. It was probably an hourly occurrence here for a pink-haired woman in a low-cut shirt and an emerald necklace to scream for help out the open sunroof of a limo.

They had both her ankles, but she kicked violently and managed to grasp the side of the car. She was almost out.

Then, with one hard jerk from inside the limo, she bounced onto the seat beside Nine Lives again.

Goonie grabbed her, putting his full weight on her arms while Fred sat on one of her legs. She jammed the other high heel into an unknown part of Nine Lives and ground in. Not because this would help, but because she was pissed.

“Would you hold her?” Nine Lives yelped. One of his cat-eye contacts had fallen out. He turned his furious gaze on her: one cat eye, the other eye with the pupil blown out almost to the edge of his hazel iris. He sat on her, too, and felt around on the seat for the lost bottle.

“Don’t do it, man,” Goonie advised. “The concert is around the corner, and we need her conscious to get us past security.”

Everything is going to be okay, she recited Martin’s litany in her head. Everything is fine. I’m fine. Everything is okay. And then, Quentin’s words: It’s okay to ask for help.

“Pink-Haired Sarah” neared its end, and Quentin prepared to repeat the first verse. He signaled to Martin to signal to Erin to signal to Owen to change the lyrics, replacing run with come. He’d sung it this way for them in the album sessions, but Erin nixed this version because she thought Sarah would hate them for the dirty double entendre. It seemed appropriate now, and Quentin had nothing to lose. The crowd whooped its approval at the change as Quentin sang,

Sarah laughing in the sun.

I wonder what makes pink-haired Sarah come?

Come, pink-haired Sarah, come.

A limo with a smashed fender made its way slowly through security to park at one side of the stage. Quentin had thought all the professional wrestlers were in the audience already, but sometimes Mad “Red” Mud liked to be flamboyantly late.

They ended the song to the loudest applause of the night, which Quentin barely registered. Martin had predicted that “Pink-Haired Sarah” would win Quentin his first Grammy. But who cared, if the song’s eponym ran to another hemisphere to disentangle another codependent band? If she was really angry with him, she might do just that. She might instruct her office not to tell him where she’d gone.

In that case, he could fly to New York tomorrow and do some snooping. He already had an in with the lady in the Stargazer travel office. Or he could sweet-talk Wendy. Or have a man-to-man with Daniel.

Something thwacked him in the back of the head, and Owen’s drumstick rolled in front of Quentin’s toes. Owen kept a stash of extra drumsticks for this purpose. Quentin must have been daydreaming. “Martin wrote this next song,” Quentin said quickly, “?‘Barefoot and Pregnant.’ You may notice that Erin is taking her shoes off.”

The audience moaned, and Erin grinned defiantly. She tossed one of her low-class high-heeled shoes into the crowd.

“We had to talk Erin into making the announcement,” Quentin went on, “because she hasn’t told her grandma out in Irondale. Sorry, Lillie Mae. And because Erin and Owen haven’t gotten married yet.”

Martin played the first few notes of the wedding march that launched “Barefoot and Pregnant.” These were easy lyrics and it was an easy bass line, so Quentin could think ahead while he went through the motions. At the end of the song, which slowly devolved into a long fiddle solo, Mad “Red” Mud would jump up onstage, grab the mike from Quentin, and holler that Erin was pregnant with his baby. The other professional wrestlers would follow him onstage and start the fake fight extravaganza.

Erin, Owen, and Martin were concerned about the extravaganza. Really there wasn’t anything fake about it. They would have to punch each other hard because they hadn’t rehearsed it. But Quentin had insisted on this. It was bad enough that they had to warn security not to intervene. If they practiced with the wrestlers, too, the plan would definitely leak to the press. Besides, the fake fight couldn’t look fake. To avoid the fray, Erin would climb up on one of the enormous speakers and play her version of Jimi Hendrix’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” while the fireworks started.

And then, as soon as the cameras turned off and Quentin could extricate himself from the tussle, he would see about that flight to New York.

Or not. Just as he stepped back in feigned surprise to let Mad “Red” Mud take the mike, Sarah climbed the stairs to stand behind the speakers at the side of the stage. Thank God!

With Nine Lives. And two enormous goons.

Quentin lifted off his guitar strap and swung the guitar behind his head to use as a weapon. And then stopped short as Nine Lives motioned to the syringe stuck in Sarah’s shoulder, plunger out.

Oh God. What was that maniac doing to her?

Someone tackled Quentin from the back. Quentin landed heavily on his ribs. The guitar went flying. He struggled to stand and make it over to Sarah, but a wrestler jerked him into the fight center stage.

“Would you stop a minute?” he yelled to Red. “There’s a—”

Red socked Quentin in the jaw, and Quentin reeled back toward Sarah. The two goons were coming for him.

Then one of the goons skidded back into a speaker. Owen had fallen into him.

“Owen!” Quentin said, bending over him. “Help me! There’s a—”

The goon was up, and he had Quentin by the shirt. Then a wrestler punched Quentin in the gut, and punched the goon hard enough in the head that the goon went down, on top of Quentin.

Quentin winced at the pain in his hip as he hit the stage. That was his plastic asthma inhaler breaking in his pocket. He was flat on his back, looking up at Erin high on the speaker with her eyes closed, blissfully fiddling “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Several booms sounded. The fireworks were starting.

He pulled himself out from under the unconscious goon and scrambled up just in time to see Martin and the other goon fall off the back of the stage. Maybe Quentin could reach Sarah now that more people were comatose. He punched and got punched, punched and got punched, homing in on her as he went.

The syringe was out of her shoulder. She’d kneed Nine Lives in the groin and elbowed him in the eye. Nine Lives kept coming after her. He pinned her facedown on the stage. Then he put his arm around her throat, jerked her up, and backed her down the stairs, toward the open door of the limo.

Quentin rushed for her. He had to grab her before Nine Lives disappeared with her again. He’d almost reached her when Owen tackled him. No!

A shot rang out, high and sharp, separate from the fireworks.

“Dumbass!” Quentin yelled, tossing Owen off him. Sarah was gone.

He found her crumpled at the foot of the stairs.

Pulling her high-heeled shoe free of Nine Lives’ grip, Quentin picked her up off the ground and sat down on the stairs with her. “Where are you hit?” he coughed, looking desperately at her arms, pulling up her shirt.

“Everything is fine, I’m fine, everything is okay,” she recited. “It’s not me. It’s him.” She pointed to Nine Lives howling on the ground.

Martin, hunched over, walked toward them under the stage. He shoved his gun into his pocket and pulled at Nine Lives’ arm to flatten him on the asphalt. A hole in the thigh of Nine Lives’ black jeans oozed dark blood.

Martin pressed his hands over the wound. He said over his shoulder, “Q, you’re wheezing.”

“Where’s your inhaler?” Sarah breathed.

Quentin pulled it out of his pocket and showed her the broken plastic. He bulleted it at Nine Lives, who screamed, “Ow!”

Between fireworks blasts, running footsteps sounded behind Quentin on the stage. He started around, ready for another wrestler, but it was only Erin. “Q,” she cried desperately, “Owen’s stitches came out.”

“Put pressure on it,” Quentin called as best he could. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Erin bent down and handed a plastic-wrapped inhaler to Sarah. “Wedding present,” she said. “You owe me.” She ran away again.

While Quentin inhaled the meds, Sarah climbed off his lap and descended the stairs. She bent over Nine Lives, whispering in his ear. He spoke back to her, too low for Quentin to hear over the fireworks finale. Apparently Nine Lives said the wrong thing, because Sarah slapped his face hard and whispered to him again.

Pocketing the inhaler, Quentin stood behind Martin and snapped his fingers. Martin handed him the gun. Quentin shoved it in his waistband and headed behind the dressing room trailer. He motioned for Sarah to follow him.

He looked around to make sure they were alone. The huge crowd sounded distant, and the only witness to their conversation was Vulcan himself. “Do you think any TV cameras caught Martin shooting Nine Lives?” he asked Sarah hoarsely.

“There’s no way,” she said. “The cameras were all in front. Martin was on the ground behind. He shot Nine Lives through the skirt at the base of the stage.”

“How about people in the audience filming with phones?”

“No. Wrong angle.”

“Good. You didn’t see anything,” he instructed her. “I’ve got the gun. If you have to tell the cops something, tell them I shot Nine Lives.”

“I can’t do that to you,” she said, looking up at him with her big brown eyes. “Even for Martin.”

“You have to,” he insisted. “If they take Martin to jail and test him right now, they’ll find the junk. That will ruin a self-defense plea.”

“No, it—”

“It was my fight,” he insisted, taking in her mussed hair and a small scrape on her cheek.

“Maybe it won’t come to that,” she said. “I told Nine Lives to blame it on his bodyguard. They won’t be able to prosecute the bodyguard, because they won’t find the gun on him, but at least that will keep them off Martin’s trail. And I told Nine Lives that all of them have to go to rehab and make it stick. My job is safe after this hullaballoo, and I’ll have more clout with Manhattan Music to get him dropped from the label if he crosses me again.”