Page 20 of The Duet

“I’ll get over it soon enough. Give me a few more days. Although…” She flashes us a big grin. “Billie does look mighty cool on stage and when she plays the solo in “Like No One Else”, her head thrown back like that, I always go a little weak at the knees.”

“Oh, no,” I groan.

“I’m kidding,” Sam says.

Deb jabs Sam in the biceps. “You’d better be.”

“What? Everyone else is allowed their infatuation, but I’m not?” Sam tilts her head. “That’s hardly fair.”

“How about you, Lana?” Deb asks, abruptly changing the subject—and the focus away from Sam.

“What about me?”

“Well…” Deb and I have been friends forever. She looks me straight in the eye when she speaks. “If Billie has the hots for Cleo, it’s no wonder your duet rubs her the wrong way. You might as well be kissing on that stage instead of singing to each other that you should have done so.”

“That’s just stage chemistry. You know that. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Sure,” Deb says, her tone full of irony.

“What?” Why won’t they believe me?

“Sometimes—” Deb shakes her head, as though thinking better of what she was going to say.

“Please, don’t keep whatever it is you’re thinking from me.” Clearly, I need all the outside perspective on this that I can get.

“Sometimes… the way you and Cleo are together on stage, so natural, so together, it kind of reminds me of how you were with Joan. I think that’s what makes the audience react to it the way they do. That includes all of us, by the way.”

“What? No.” Of course I balk at the mention of Joan’s name. What she and I had, off and on the stage, was special, of an entirely different order than anything else I’ve felt in my life. “Now you’re just talking out of your ass, Deb.”

“You may think so, but I know what I feel and what I see.”

I look at Sam for support, but she doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me as though Deb has just voiced exactly what she’s thinking as well.

“You can fake a lot, but you can’t fake that, Lana. It’s so intense. It’s like when you sing together, everyone else disappears, and the audience is bearing witness to something that they shouldn’t be watching. Something so intimate, it should be private, making it utterly irresistible, of course. I’m telling you, by the end of this tour, that duet is going to be the most talked about bit of our show.”

I want to go on the defensive again, but maybe I should listen to Deb—really hear what she has to say. I trust her and Sam completely, including their judgment of what I do on stage.

“Obviously, I feel something when I sing that song with Cleo. I asked her to sing it with me for a reason and she has exceeded all my expectations, but… what you describe is not how it is for me, even though I may make it seem as though it is.”

“I’m not saying you have feelings for her that you don’t even know about,” Sam says. “I’m just saying that your chemistry is unique, and I think that might have set Billie off.”

“Okay.” I pause. “So, do we have to do something about Billie or just let it play out?”

“Let it play it out,” Sam is quick to say.

“Maybe she’s hitting on Cleo as we speak,” Deb says. “She can get it all out of her system.” She waggles her eyebrows.

I suddenly wish I was much more than a fly on the wall on the other bus. Although I don’t begrudge Billie anything, part of me is hoping that Cleo will rebuff her advances. And not just because it would complicate tour-related matters. Or compromise our on-stage chemistry. It’s beginning to dawn on me I might have other reasons for Cleo not to fall for our guitarist.

Chapter 14

Cleo

Jess is grilling Billie about Lana, firing question after question at the poor woman. It’s hard to focus on the lesbian romance I’m reading. While I wonder what Billie is doing on our bus—Jess might have invited her, although if she wanted to find out all there is to know about Lana, she surely would have been better off with one of the original members of The Lady Kings—I pop in my earphones. I put the book aside, smiling as I do. Even though an attempt has been made to smooth out the pages, it’s easy enough to spot which ones have been folded over.

On my phone, I scroll to a remastered live recording of a Kings concert from the mid-nineties. I close my eyes and let Lana’s voice wash over me. It only takes a few seconds of her voice in my ears to be reminded of how lucky we are.

When I told Lana what her band means to me, I was grossly understating the facts.

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