#miwimagines

Vinny Mauro x Reader

Warnings: Language

"I'm thankful  it's almost the end of the semester and I'm still passing all my classes," you sigh as you lean back in your chair, propping your feet up on your desk. You run your fingers sleepily down your face, but considering the late hour it's no surprise you're tired.

“Do you remember it? That first show I was at with you?”

Michael had emerged from the bathroom with one hotel towel around his waist, using another to towel off his hair. I rolled toward him and stretched out my legs again under the fluffy white comforter, reaching all the way through my pointed toes. Nothing felt more delicious than lying down in a comfortable bed after a long day, especially on tour. It was such delicious fatigue that I didn’t even dread Michael climbing in with me.

“Well. I know it was in 2007.”

“Obviously.” I rolled my eyes and let the gesture roll the rest of my body onto my back. I felt good tonight, and I’d let that warm feeling extend to Michael.

“I believe it was Springfield,” he said and grinned like he was proud of himself.

“Springfield?”

“Yeah, you know. There’s a Springfield everywhere? So my best chance of guessing correctly is Springfield? Get it?”

“Except that I don’t think we’ve ever been in a Springfield together, not once, not on tour.” I closed my eyes and sighed, suddenly tired with a new and less comfortable level of exhaustion.

“I know. It was a joke.”

“Got it.”

Michael turned away from me before removing his towel. He was relatively modest even in front of me and I couldn’t remember if that had been true before or after sex had become a special occasion for us. It was hard to believe we’d once been able to fuck like it was our job even after a show and Michael insisting on meeting fans afterward. We’d ripped off each other’s clothing the moment we entered the hotel room and had no use for it again until we left the next morning. I would lie in bed, blissfully sated, and watch Michael walk completely naked to the bathroom for a glass of water and study the amorphous inked shading of his arms and back in the dim light, trying to pick out specific images before he disappeared from sight, then again on his chest and arms as he returned to me before slipping back under the covers, before slipping back around me.

I realized for the first time that I didn’t just miss that time; I was lonely for Michael himself. Just not the Michael that presented himself to me day after day now, not the real one.

“Remember?” I asked the ceiling. “I was still in Seattle and I flew down to San Francisco to start the tour with you? It was the first time I got to watch you from the sidelines.”

“I suppose so.” I could hear him rifling through his suitcase and took heart that he wasn’t trying to come to bed entirely bare.

I could feel my body becoming heavier and sinking further into the bed. I’d forgotten the rush I felt at a live show and how it carried into the rest of the evening. It had made me begin to appreciate Michael again. It had made me kind.

But the more my kindness went over his head, the faster it faded.

“You don’t remember? Truly?”

He turned back to me in red boxer briefs and a white undershirt, palms open in defeat. “Truly? I’m tired. I’m truly exhausted and I truly want to sleep.”

Any tenderness I’d been clinging to this evening evaporated.

I sat up, pulling the comforter around my waist defensively, as if I would prevent him from using it. “Michael, I don’t understand you!” I was alarmed by the shrillness of my voice but persisted. “You claim that you want to be closer, spend more time together, be more intimate, but things like this - you don’t even remember the day I fell in love with you!”

He hung his head.

“I do.”

“You do remember? Then why did you lie?”

“Because I’m exhausted and I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“You don’t want to - I didn’t ask you to talk about it, I only asked if you remembered? So the answer is yes, it’s that simple.”

“I remember. I remember, okay? Yes, we were in San Francisco and it was December 6, 2007, and you were wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved thermal under your Appetite for Destruction T-shirt and I thought it was kind of cute that you were dressed more modestly than maybe any woman who had ever watched me perform. Your hair was blonde then but your makeup was heavy, like you were trying to wear your credentials on your face, like that would make me finally give in and let you do my makeup, because you were always bothering me about that. You would sit just behind me so that I would see your face over my shoulder, studying mine and waiting for me to make a mistake so you could correct it or tell me how to avoid it the next time. And I remember that I got on the stage and received a reception, a roar, like I’d never heard before. And I thought ‘This will show her. If she’s not impressed by this, then nothing will ever be good enough for her.’”

He paused. I was collecting my thoughts, trying to formulate a response, but then he continued.

“And by the end of that set, that show, the first show of our biggest tour to date, I knew I didn’t need you to love me because that feeling was all I needed and as long as I had fans who loved me, who loved my art, I would be okay. And I supposed it worked because as soon as I stopped needing you, you started needing me.”

The words he’d said to me after that set, the words that were forever burned into my memory, the grin that accompanied them, curdled in my memory.

Do you love me yet?

I felt my face contort in confusion. “So when you proposed you didn’t even love me?”

“Of course I loved you.” Michael sat on the very edge of the bed, as far from me as he could, turned away. “But back then I may have partially loved you for the wrong reasons. One of the things I loved so much about you was how much you admired me, how much you loved me. Don’t you understand? I’ve been trying to connect with you properly ever since then.”

“I think,” I began slowly, “that you and I have different ideas about what it means to connect properly.” I realized I was hugging my legs close to my chest and released them, sat up taller. “I don’t think connecting properly is expecting you to be the center of my universe, or hounding me for sex all the time.”

He was still turned away but I could feel him freeze, could feel his breathing stop.

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

“How would you describe it?”

The few seconds of silence that followed contained eternities.

“If I were a different person I might call you a frigid bitch.”

The words were a sucker punch to the gut.

“But you would never.” I sucked in my breath and stood. Crossed the room and pulled an oversized tee out of the suitcase. Pulled it on over my cami. One step at a time. Picked up my purse. Grabbed my hotel key and a hoodie. Slid on my sneakers without tying them.

Opened the door without looking back.

And suddenly I was in the hallway with no idea what to do next.

~~~

Echo Eclipse had made themselves comfortable in the cramped dressing room. I didn’t know them yet, not even well enough to match the person to the instrument, but I’d developed visual mnemonics to differentiate. The one whose head was shaved underneath a long sweep of brown hair and the one with the round face sat in folding chairs, hunched over a phone, sharing earbuds. The small one was sprawled out on a ripped leather couch, playing a game on his phone. The young one stood in front of the wall-sized mirror smearing his arms in black grease paint.

Chris was squatting on the floor when I entered the room, hunched over a pile of bags and rumpled clothing, drinking from a bottled water. I knocked on the open door to avoid having to announce myself.

I couldn’t find a place for my hands on his body that felt natural when Chris greeted me with a casual hug; he was so tall, so long in the torso. I couldn’t reach around his neck easily but I avoided hugging him around the waist. I lifted my arms underneath his and pressed my palms between his shoulder blades, into his sleeveless T-shirt.

He reintroduced me to the rest of the band, which I appreciated. I’d only recently been able to recognize the band to tell them apart from the crew, and I was shit with names.

Kyle with the round face shared earbuds with Adrian with the long sweep of hair.

Tyler, smearing black over his body, smiled at me in the mirror.

Smith gave a single wave without looking up from his phone.

None of them paid further attention to me.

I shoved my makeup case onto a folding table amid Subway sandwiches, loose cords, tape, and bottled water.

“You brought makeup?” Chris asked.

“It’s my job.”

“Right.”

I gestured at the sleeveless tee he wore. “This is what you’re wearing onstage?”

“Nah, I got another one I’ll put on afterward.”

“You should put it on now. I don’t want you smearing your makeup or getting it on your shirt.”

He shrugged, opening his palms to me. “It’s usually fine.”

“Look, am I doing this or not?” I half-smiled to hide slight exasperation.

“O-kay,” he drew out in concession. “I guess we’ll do it professionally then.”

Chris pulled the sleeveless tee over his head, tugging it over his face by the front collar and pulling the back collar all the way over his head. I caught inked plumage along his ribs before averting my eyes. I stared hard at a snag in the gray-green carpet though my attention remained on his skin; my eyes focused on the floor but saw only skin rippling over his ribs.

“Can I sit here?” he asked, now wearing a black sleeveless tee that wasn’t much different from the first, placing himself in a plastic avocado-colored chair in the middle of the room. “Since the smallest fucking person here is taking up the largest piece of furniture?” he called louder, reaching over and smacking the toe of one of Smith’s black boots with his massive palm.

Again without taking his eyes off of his phone, Smith saluted him with a middle finger.

“You’re fine if you sit up straight.”

Chris rolled his shoulders back and sat on the edge of the chair, at seated attention. I unrolled the fabric case I’d tucked my brushes into, unzipped my pouch and started pulling out the various tubes, jars, and palettes.

He gestured at my set-up. “Did you study this or something? Like, go to cosmetology school and turn someone’s hair purple?”

“Only if they wanted it. Put this around your neck.” I threw one of Michael’s old towels at Chris before dabbing my fingers into the blue-tinted primer. I started in the middle of his face, underneath one cheekbone.

“No, actually, it’s all kind of self-taught trial and error kind of stuff. Now there are all these tutorials on YouTube, it’s easy. I’m old enough that I just missed all that. I had to learn by making myself look like Pennywise a few hundred times first.” I finished adding primer to his forehead, then continued on to his chin.

“I hope you’re done learning then.”

“Never,” I snorted. “I promise not to learn too much on you, though.”

I screwed the top back onto the primer and Chris maneuvered in his chair trying to see his face in the mirror, past Tyler smoothing the black paint over his neck.

“There’s nothing to really see yet. It’s just primer.”

He sank back down into the chair. “I don’t know what that is. I definitely never used it before.”

I poured foundation onto the back of my hand. “It’s just like getting your face ready for everything else. It helps it stay on better. Sit up.”

“I don’t use brushes when I do this either,” he said, noticing the brush I’d swirled through the foundation before I began buffing it over his nose.

“Can you do some kind of makeup magic to make my nose look smaller?”

I smiled despite myself. “You don’t want that. Your nose is fine.”

He was quiet for a moment while I buffed the foundation around his lips. I buffed around his forehead and temples and he asked, “Does this mean if this goes well you’ll do my makeup again?”

“I’m certainly not going anywhere. Close your eyes.” I dusted some iridescent eyeshadow over one lid.

“How did you get suckered into doing this again if you’ve done it once already? I mean, how did you fall for this if you already know what touring is like?”

Now the other lid.

“The bus helps.” I feared it was an obvious lie.

“Enough?”

“It helps.”

I began coloring in one eyelid with a black eyeliner pencil and jumped when Kyle suddenly roared with laughter over the phone.

“What are they watching?”

“Martyrs.”

“Oh?”

Chris waved one hand dismissively and opened his eyes while I reached for a stiffer brush to rub in the eyeliner. “Yeah, there’s something wrong with him.”

“Let me believe it’s the American remake and I can forgive the laughter.”

He closed his eyes again while I worked. “No shit, though, I wish we had a bus with a shower and all. I’ve definitely had a set or two that were pretty ripe because we didn’t make it to the next stop in time for a shower.”

“That sounds miserable.”

I suddenly flashed to Erica Jong’s so-called “zipless fuck” and the Fear of Flying heroine’s desire for the artist even after seeing the skidmarks in his underwear.

Chris continued, “And there’s been times when I did shows in the same clothes without washing them, worn the same makeup the next night.”

“Good thing you’re in a band. The glamor overrides the smell, I assume.”

“I hope?”

“I mean, I’m sure it doesn’t bother the Echo Eclipse groupies.” I wasn’t exactly sure whether or not Echo Eclipse even had groupies, but surveyed the face in front of me and thought that they must.

Chris laughed good-naturedly, showing his teeth. “Groupies? I don’t think any band had groupies since the eighties. I know we don’t.”

“None at all?”

“No way. ‘Stans’ sure, a few. But nowadays it’s like you never heard of a band, you basically follow them on tour, or they’re getting a restraining order against you.”

“Any restraining orders, then?”

“Someday, maybe,” he said, comically wistful.

I began blending a darker brownish shadow into the crease of one eye.

“What about you?”

“What?” I stepped back, puzzled.

He opened his eyes again. “Any stalkers? Isn’t that a thing?”

“I’m a woman in the internet age and I’m married to Michael March.”

“Too many to count, then.”

He shut his eyes as I began blending again. “But a fraction as many as Michael, and mine are a little less scary.”

“Yeah? I can’t even think about the shit he must see over the years.”

“The young ones are some of the scariest, too, which is funny since he’s in his forties. He likes to say that in the beginning, before all this social media, the worst thing a fan did was cry or scream or try to forcibly kiss him at a signing, and that’s a relief now.”

“Yeah.”

“But we disagree about the worst thing a fan has done.”

“What is it?”

“I think the worst thing fans do is when they cut themselves and send Michael their razors. Before we met he actually received an envelope once, but it was tucked inside a small, like, courier envelope. The envelope inside was brown all over, just covered in blood. Michael didn’t handle it himself, obviously, but they told him the bloody razor was inside and a Polaroid of where this fan had carved ‘Michael’ into her arm. Big ropey scabs.”

Chris was silent for a moment, then said, “Not the point, but with all that blood how could they make out the Polaroid? Didn’t the blood mess up the picture?”

“I said the same thing! We actually had a big fight about it when we were dating. I laughed at the fact that it was obviously staged, not like some fan put this together in an act of desperation. And I swear to God it’s like he was insulted! He got all mad at me for like interpreting his life or something like that. But that was the most offensive part to me: the fact that it was all kind of staged like that. So manipulative. This person’s desire to create this scenario was more offensive to me than if it had been real.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty sick.”

“Right?”

“So what does Michael think is the worst thing a fan has done?”

I rolled my eyes and reached for the eyeliner again, this time to line his eyes. “This has happened more than once, but sending used panties in the mail.”

“That’s some Motley Crue shit.”

“It definitely happens. Like, still.”

“Do you think they ever just buy them and send them, or do you think it’s real? Like, do you think they really wear them around and send them?”

“Some of them, absolutely. Some actually arrive crusty.”

Chris widened his eyes.

“Stop, I don’t want to poke you. One fan sent these crusty panties - like crust dusting the envelope and everything - and I swear to God the smell will stay with me forever. But that wasn’t even the worst part! She included this letter that was just a detailed description of her maturbating to the ‘Solace in Silence’ video, but it went on for three pages.”

“Most of the time I couldn’t fill a postcard.” He shrugged and I couldn’t help laughing. “That’s pretty groty, though. I’m surprised you’re not as bothered by that as he is, or more bothered by that than the bloody razor.”

“Oh, God no. I don’t care about the panties. I totally get it.”

“You get it?”

“Fuck, yes.”

“Really.”

“Absolutely.” I lifted the lid on the loose translucent powder and grabbed the fluffiest brush. “I get the idea about being absolutely infatuated and having no outlet for it. I get being so tortured by these unrequited feelings, and you feel like you’re going to burst, and it’s so ridiculous and impossible that all you want is for them to know. And it builds to the point that you want to make it known in the biggest, bravest way possible, make as much of an impression as you can. And making an impression on a celebrity isn’t easy. If I were them, I would’ve done the same thing.”

“Too bad you’re not an Echo Eclipse fan, then,” he smirked.

“Who says I’m not?”

“What, you did your homework for the tour or something?”

“I did my homework for your makeup. I’m into it. The videos are intense.”

Chris released a breath that was half laugh and half embarrassed sigh.

“No, stop for a second so I can do your lips.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s still talking.”

He parted his lips obediently. I ran a liquid black over his lips, tipping the silver rings in his lower lip first one way, then the next. I painted under his two rings with a lipliner brush. His lower lip was full and I was careful to cover it all before making clean edges. I made points at his cupid’s bow and slid carefully along his upper lip, and without thinking I glanced up at his closed eyes. When they opened on me I looked away quickly.

“One more thing.” I pulled a tissue from my purse and draped it over his lips, then brushed more of the loose powder over the tissue. “It should stay better like that. But let me know if I need to touch it up.”

“So you’ll be around then? Are you going to watch our set?”

I hadn’t thought about it, but now I suppressed a smile. “I can do that if I’m won’t be in the way.”

“If there’s room for randos that won radio contests there’s room for you. I’ll be all high-maintenance, like ‘I need my makeup artist on standby.’”

I laughed.

“So I’m finished then?”

“You should be good.”

Chris jumped out of his chair and elbowed Tyler out of the way to study his face in the mirror. I cringed as I noticed Tyler smearing the black grease paint around his eyes. Chris widened and narrowed his blackened eyes, stretched the skin over his upper lip and examined either side of his nose in the mirror, then sneered.

“This is sick.” He turned back to me and laughed, delighted, and his teeth were shockingly white against his black lips. “This is fucking sick!”

~~~

Andie joined me in the wings for Second Chance’s set. I pulled up the same chair I’d sat in for Echo Eclipse and pulled another plastic folding chair alongside mine. It was too loud to talk much but I appreciated having her there. As if I subconsciously needed moral support, even if it was silent.

The crowd had begun cheering between sets and a fresh wave of whistling and screaming began every time anyone from the crew walked onstage. When the lights went out, the screams grew louder still. New applause and whistles for each band member’s entrance: first Pelly with a quick wave, then Abel, and Andie hooted and clapped harder. Next was Mason to even more applause. They began the opening of “Hated Heart,” their usual opener, and Michael stalked across the stage as he sang the opening lines.

The crowd blew up.

From where I sat I could see a small portion of the audience, mostly the fans pushed up against the barricade, but it was the same sight I always saw. In every venue, in every city, in every country the view from this seat would be the same: mostly women in their twenties and thirties in front, shrieking, the occasional fan in tears, all of them with arms extended to Michael whether he was inches away or clear across the stage.

It hurt my heart that they wanted him so badly. I knew that he deserved better than I was able to give him, but I just didn’t have it in me. I didn’t have the same passion for my own husband that millions of strangers had.

I remembered seeing Second Chance from the wings for the first time, or at least I thought I did. The memories ran together, to be honest, but there was one particular show I at least thought of as the first show I saw as more than a “fan.”

I’d prodded at him beforehand, making suggestions for his makeup that he refused to hear. Watching him bent over his makeshift makeup counter, carefully lining his eyes with black liquid liner, I’d reminded him, “You know I do this professionally, right? And I’m right here? With nothing to do?”

He simply repeated for the millionth time, “I have to do it myself” and removed the bobby pin that held the flat-ironed hair out of his face.

Then he turned to face me. He wore black pinstriped pants clasped by black suspenders over a thin black tee with black boots. “But I will borrow your lashes.”

Admiration still vastly outweighed exasperation then.

Second Chance was always an energetic band and my obvious newfound interest in the band meant I’d looked up videos of their older shows and seen a couple of their high-energy performances already, but this show was another level. Michael was on another level.

Second Chance took the stage and Michael remained frozen at the mic stand until the band went into “Hated Heart,” when he snatched the mic, spun twice, jumped onto the drum risers for two beats, high-kicked off the risers and landed in a crouch, and sang the opening on his knees before crawling toward the edge of the stage.

The crowd was just as hungry for him then.

He maintained that energy level for the duration of the set. I was in awe. The entire performance was just that: a performance. A menage of swirling, leaping, kicking, sliding, and crawling. A couple of times I thought maybe I’d caught his eye from where I stood - and I stood through the set, the idea of sitting never occurring to me once - but realized it must have been impossible to see me or anyone or anything that distinctly with the lights in his eyes as they were.

When they finally wished the crowd a good night and jogged offstage to towel off and grab more water, Michael grabbed my face between his hands and kissed me deeply if quickly. He was covered in sweat that came off on my lips and I licked at the salt he left behind as he grinned and said, “Do you love me yet?”

This show was burned in my memory because the question haunted me, and the question haunted me because I’d decided yes, before he’d even asked the question, yes. Now I was in love.

~~~

Chris.

The first time Chris put his hands on me I felt my body turn inside out. When he reached for my hips, one enormous palm cupping each one, my skin shrank from him the way prophets have shrunk from the presence of God. This act was a sacrament: his tongue on mine a communion wafer, the bruises he bit into my throat a well-deserved flogging. This was what mattered; this was the meaning of life.

Here is what I learned from Chris: betrayals, like death, happen in threes.

Some betrayals are immediate; some betrayals creep in and take hold in your sleep.

Some betrayals have already occurred long before the act takes place, the last rites said, the final breath taken.

This is what Chris taught me.

A single pair of hands can be both cruel and gentle. The same eyes can be endless wells of despair as easily as they can turn cold. The same face can inspire tenderness and terror.

The same tongue can punish and reward. Chris taught me this, too.

~~~

Don’t say his name: feel it. Locate the the first phoneme, the initial /k/. The sound starts not in your mouth but deep in the base of your throat. It is the sound of a catch in your breath, a hitch in your body.

Feel it: /k/.

Feel it rumble up, rumble through you, rumble along and roll your tongue into a final flail of submission. Roll your tongue along the postalveolar sound. Feel it graze your teeth, just barely. Be careful not to bite.

Release your breath on the /i/, and only then realize you’ve held it. You held your breath for this release in anticipation of the trailing /s/, a slide of the tongue, subtle and serpentine.

Feel his name in your mouth, your chest, your belly. Feel his name through your fingers and toes. Feel his name and you needn’t say it.

Second Chance preferred local dives to chain restaurants when possible, so I assumed Ray’s was “our” choice until we got inside. It was a barbecue place that seated us at picnic-style benches covered in red-and-white checked tablecloths, the kind of benches that make your ass ache after fifteen minutes. Framed art of pot-belly pigs running a restaurant - taking orders, making change, prepping food - decorated the walls. I hadn’t been a vegetarian since college, but this was in poor taste. I wished I’d gone with Andie and Abel and a few of the others looking for a vegan-friendly option.

There was a brief skittering around the picnic table as we were seated: we sat promptly and Echo Eclipse shuffled to decide where to sit on the opposite side of the table.

“Wait, wait… Hold up.” The tall one, the singer, held up his hand. “Here, I get Michael. Then guitar, guitar,” he said pointing first at Mason, already seated, then at the empty space opposite Mason. “Bass, bass,” he continued, pointing at Tyler, then the space next to Mason. “And drums, drums.” That was Sam across from their drummer.

Michael squeezed me onto the bench next to him so that he and I were both occupying the space across from the other singer.

The singer grinned as he sat. “That’s how you do that.”

“Et tu?” the Echo Eclipse drummer called from the other end of the table. “You put the drummers all the way down here?”

“Yeah,” he called back. “Didn’t you hear? Nobody gives a fuck about the drummer!”

They all laughed together as Second Chance smiled politely.

Echo Eclipse was still a young band. Together ten years - as we soon learned - or not, they were a young band. They all still liked each other. Their chemistry was immediately apparent; they relished each other’s company. Second Chance getting together for this tour had been more like distant cousins reuniting at a funeral. No ill will, no animosity. A pleasant greeting but not much else to say.

I’d always loved spending time around the other guys. I loved Michael more when I saw him through other people’s eyes, and that included the band. He was kind, charming, classy. He was a good man who anyone would want to know. He commanded respect and he wasn’t so fucking obsequious. That he saved for me. It was a hard truth that I enjoyed Michael as a member of the band more than I did as his own person.

But at least I admitted it. To myself.

The server was a girl, and young. Young enough that she had no idea who she was speaking to when she took Michael’s drink order of water with lemon. Over the last year or so I had only just begun to notice that the vast majority of servers and cashiers I dealt with were young enough to call me ma’am unironically. This girl had to have been in high school. Her joints were knobby and her hair was limp. Second Chance was on TRL while she was in diapers.

Jesus.

The Echo Eclipse singer, Chris, reached one hand toward the server’s hair. I thought he was going to grab a lock of it but he stopped at the gesture. “My hair was this color once.” He grinned a vertical labret piercing and two snakebite rings at her.

The server peeked from under stringy bangs at the black hair that hung to Chris’s shoulders like this was a trap, the setup to a cruel joke. Her hair was the shade between blonde and brown that doesn’t register as a color at all.

“It’s not that color now.”

“No, I know.” He fingered a lock of his own hair between his index and middle fingers and glanced down at it. “That was my natural color but I couldn’t pull it off so I did this.”

She smiled hesitantly.

“Looks pretty on you, though.”

I smiled at the server’s reaction as she blushed and scampered away with our order. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard a man other than Michael pay a woman other than myself a compliment devoid of entendre.

On the surface, Chris wasn’t unlike Michael when I first met him. He seemed already to have a bit of the same ease and grace about him that Michael had. The same likeability, whatever quality it was that made people want to please them, Chris had it. It was probably the same quality that made them good frontmen, though Michael hated that word.

“Man, I have to thank you for having us on the tour,” Chris was saying to Michael with a sweeping glance down our side of the table to include whoever was listening. I was certain that every one of us felt like he was thanking us individually.

Michael gave his tight-lipped smile, the one I’d thought was a sign of taking me seriously all those years ago, the one I knew now was a sign of discomfort. For the first time I wondered whether or not they’d even had any say in Echo Eclipse being on the tour.

“We’re glad for it,” he said, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “We need some energy on the tour now that we’re old men.”

“If this is old, man,” Chris said, gesturing at Michael in his black jeans and baggy black sweater, the sleeve of which he kept winding around one wrist, “then I can’t wait.”

“Well. You will.” The uncomfortable smile again, and I could feel my own grin overcompensating for Michael.

Chris turned his attention to me. “And you’re a fuckin trooper, man. I bet you didn’t know what you signed up for.”

I opened my mouth to answer but Michael beat me to it. “She did,” he said. “She’s toured with us before. When we were engaged. She did my makeup for every show when I still did that kind of thing.”

“He was actually pretty handy with a makeup brush as I’m sure you can imagine, so it was just kind of an excuse to be together.”

Mason, who I hadn’t realized was listening, lowered his head in mock-confidence and interjected, “It was the least amount of makeup he ever got done.”

The guys laughed - even Michael - and I squirmed. Michael placed his long fingers on my knee and I squirmed more.

“I’m running to the bathroom,” I said and extricated myself.

The restaurant had only a unisex single-seat bathroom but it was clean. I washed my hands and reapplied a nude lipstick. I brushed flakes of black mascara from under my eyes. I wondered how much longer I should stand there to make it seem as if I’d actually had to use the bathroom.

The great irony of my career, or my career-turned-pastime-turned-only-solace-from-Michael, was that it taught me a great universal truth: the power of makeup is finite. Makeup on a horrible person was like lacquer on barbed wire and I’d had that experience more than once.

Conversely, some of the most beautiful people I’d met in my life were shit with a brush. Physically beautiful people. Radiant people. People who emitted a positive energy like it was plutonium.

Returning to our table I realized that, despite the growing list of similarities between the two of them, this was the difference between Michael and Chris. Michael had that inimitable ease and grace but he didn’t radiate positivity like Chris did. Sam had it, too, which is why I’d adored him from the moment I met him.

I slowed my steps approaching the table to study them, the two of them, together. Michael’s eye crinkles - there were entire blogs dedicated to his eye crinkles. And you could see exactly where Chris’s would form as he ducked his head to laugh. That was a difference: Chris often tucked his head when he laughed, when he was amused, and Michael tended to raise his chin like he was balancing something on it, a pose of arrogance. It was as if, for each of them, the gesture was an inverse function of their height.

Chris turned and caught my eye as he continued speaking to Michael, and the connecting of our eyes was like puncturing a corkboard with a thumbtack. A fastening, a nestling. Secure and satisfying.

Only as I sat again next to Michael - in even less space than before I got up - did I realize that he had been watching me return to the table, as well. They had both been watching me, Chris smiling, Michael and his tight lips.

I sat slowly. “What’s… up?”

Chris’s ankle grazed my calf as he pulled his legs back under his own seat and he apologized. He asked, “Would you be down to do my makeup? For the show tomorrow?”

I glanced at Michael as a reflex. He was watching me intently despite being close enough that, turned toward me like this, his breath moved my hair.

“Sure.”

This was another reflex, a reflex I had when asked to do something for someone. It didn't make me a good person. It made me a bitter and unhappy person. It was a prison of compulsion. Someone said thank you, I said you’re welcome; someone said excuse me, I said I’m sorry; someone said can you?, I said yes.

I still felt the brushing of his ankle against my calf moments later.

***

I felt obligated to spend some time in Michael’s bunk again that night. I felt obligated to throw extra attention his way since I knew I would get a reprieve the next day with all the work for the show. Sound check would take time, warm-ups would take time, dressing would take time though not quite so much as it used to, but I could take extra time with Chris’s makeup.

I relaxed into Michael a tiny bit more, knowing temporary relief was imminent.

~~~

I sat with my legs up in the front lounge of the bus. In the yellowed pages before me, purchased on the road for $0.50 at a used bookstore, Ted Bundy had just abducted a girl by a lake and a hoard of witnesses had noticed nothing unusual. I looked up from my book to see Michael emerge from the bathroom, a honey-colored towel around his waist. The nautical stars tattooed into his abdomen disappeared into the front of the towel, and pagan symbols scattered across his legs below, no cohesive pattern or logic to unite them. The door to the bunks stood open and I watched him disappear through it, heard him sling his toiletries into his bunk.

I shouldn't have been on the bus. I’d be spending more than enough time there over the next couple of months and I should have been savoring any time I could get outside with my face in the sun and feet in the dirt. But I had lingered outside too long with Andie and forced myself back onto the bus for some relief. I didn't tan, I baked, and it would probably take a day to see the extent of the damage.

Sam was reading diagonal from me, his Converse propped up on the seat next to me. I loved Sam so I forgave him his taste in literature. It was elitist. He found no value in most of what I read, though he would never tell me so. He only read whatever had just won a snobby literary prize and got a real hard-on when a book he’d already read and approved of won something major.

Now he was poring over Hemingway, which meant he had just quit a book. He’d told me once, “When I'm disappointed with a book I quit reading it and go back to Hemingway. To remind me what a book is supposed to be.” My eyes rolled hard at that one.

“Babe,” I said, grabbing and shaking the toe of his shoe. “I’m going back to the graveyard for a bit. I’m doing Chris’s makeup so I’m going to check them out real quick before I head over. I’ve legit never even heard of them before now.”

Sam didn’t look up from his book. “Research, then?”

“Please. Music videos.”

“That’s valid research. Those guys are alright.” He nodded his head in approval. “Pastiche is a legitimate art form.”

“Whatever. Thanks in advance for the hotspot.” I smacked the sole of his shoe with my paperback before stepping through the open doorway.

I passed Mason napping in his bunk and Andie watching a movie on a tablet before stepping back into the graveyard. Michael was halfway dressed. His track pants were in place underneath the towel still wrapped around his waist. He pulled a Depeche Mode tee down over his head before uncinching and pulling off the towel. With this many years of touring under his belt and so many of them in vans and RVs, he had made an art of maintaining modesty. I’d never known anyone else in the band - or the crew, or the tagalongs like me - to be so conservative on tour. If I hadn’t known Michael I would’ve said it was an impossibility.

I squeezed by him to get into my bunk. He was in the zone already. He hardly even noticed I was there. I sunk down in the bunk and propped on my stomach the tablet I kept under my pillow.

I did a Google image search and was glad I did. Chris’s makeup preference was different from Michael’s. Michael had always gone for an androgynous look: he’d worn his wavy black hair halfway down his back for years, or bundled it into a messy bun secured with chopsticks. He wore heavy makeup, particularly heavy eye makeup, but it was feminine. Fake lashes, glitter eyeshadow. Inspecting these images I saw that Chris preferred more of a goth/Misfits look, bordering on corpse paint. He appeared with heavy black circles around his eyes, black lipstick at times, his face even paler than his natural pallor. His arms and neck were painted black when he performed, and I wondered why he would cover all that hard-earned ink.

A YouTube search yielded a number of music videos and at first glance they seemed fairly polished. The videos spanned all of their albums and the band members changed as I clicked through them. How had I never seen this band before? I returned to the top of the list and ensured that the tablet was muted, then clicked on the first video in the list.

This was an entirely different experience from the person I’d sat across from at dinner the night before. That person had a warmth about him; he’d smiled through the whole meal. People tended to smile around Michael, of course, and it was no secret that Chris was a fan of his, but it hadn’t been the gushing of a fan. I remembered Chris’s interaction with the server; he wasn’t a long-time fan of hers, certainly, but had treated her the same.

But this.

This version of Chris was sinister. Wicked. I’d seen many bands. Many, many bands. Typically, it was apparent the look, the vibe, the sound they were shooting for, and typically they were overshooting. Comically overshooting.

This was something else, something real. Something genuine. Not only Chris - every one of them. There was no cringe-worthy mugging for the camera. No superfluous hair tosses, no menacing snarls. Their presence was sufficient.

And Chris.

I turned onto my side in the bunk, my back to Michael, propping the tablet on a bunched up bit of blanket. Blocking Michael’s view of the screen.

I clicked over to the next video, then the next. The ease of Chris’s movements carried into the videos. How many singers had I seen in my lifetime that seemed not to know what to do with their bodies? That needed a guitar to hide behind, whether they knew how to play or not? Chris dominated every frame he was in. His stature lent itself to dominating: he stood taller than anyone else in the band, and his lean frame made him seem taller still. His body language was entirely un-self-conscious, entirely present. Every ounce of passion he had fueled every snarl, every grimace.

And his face. His eyes. Chris had a sneer that flipped my stomach, and a smolder that could melt steel. A smolder that took me entirely by surprise and pulled at my chest. I had to remind myself of the camera’s presence, that I wasn’t looking into eyes that could look back.

A sudden self-consciousness swept through me, followed by an intense resentment. It occurred to me, in the back of my mind, that watching Chris with my husband next to me was traitorous. I hadn’t meant it to be, but the fact of not being able to look away from Chris made it so. But the shame was fleeting and resentment prickled my back, where I could feel Michael’s eyes. I curled tighter around my tablet as the next video began automatically.

***

When I left for Echo Eclipse’s dressing room backstage, Michael was doing the vocal warm-ups that made my skin crawl. After years and years of this I could have done them myself. I called out that I was leaving and he waved me away without opening his eyes. He could have been waving at anything, really.

I left with my makeup case under one arm.

~~~