Page 57 of The Duet

“I’ll give you some privacy.” He shoots me a bit fat wink, then walks off with the bottle of champagne swinging from his hand.

“Hey,” Lana finds my gaze.

“Hey, yourself. I wasn’t expecting you to come out with everyone tonight.”

“I can’t always say no and stay behind. Although it’s going to hurt in the morning.” She flashes me one of her showbiz smiles.

“It’s easy to see why you’d prefer the privacy of your hotel room.” I nod at the group of mostly women behind the security guard. “They all want a piece of you.” Who can blame them?

“You know what Joan used to do when we were in a situation like this?” A different kind of smile appears on Lana’s face.

I shake my head.

“She’d kiss me profusely in front of everyone. She could be obnoxious like that.” Lana giggles in a way I’ve never heard her do before—she’s hardly the giggling type. “She made it all so easy. Fame, stardom, all that stuff was such a joke to her, although she did also enjoy it. But in the end, all she ever really wanted to do was make music and be with me. That’s what she always used to say. And that was her life.” Lana shakes off a shudder. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go there. There’s something about being here that seems to bring it all back. Even though this club didn’t even exist when Joan was last in New York.”

“That’s okay.” Everything about Lana softens when she talks about Joan.

“It’s the one thing that has always been able to comfort me.” She takes a sip of champagne. “She died so quickly, so suddenly, that she didn’t suffer. And she had the most amazing life.” Lana huffs out some air, then looks at me. “Damn, Cleo. You have this mysterious way of making me open up to you.”

“I didn’t even say anything.”

“I think that, sometimes, it’s not so much about what’s being said.” She empties her glass. “That was a great gig tonight. And the encore. You…” She puts her glass away. “Let’s just say that I’m certain that Joan would approve of you. Of every aspect of you.”

Before I get the chance to ask what that means, someone demands Lana’s attention, and she’s off.

I weigh up my options. Join Tim on the dance floor or Jess and Billie who are still talking and are sitting a whole lot closer together than the last time I looked.

I choose the dance floor, but I make sure I’m in a spot where I can keep an eye on Lana. The night is young and I’m dying to find out what she meant by what she just said about Joan approving of me in every aspect.

Chapter 33

Lana

I’ve had more than my fair share of champagne and I haul my tipsy ass onto the tiny dance floor we’ve got going on in the VIP area. It’s still funny to me, after all these years, how everyone makes way for me and a clearing opens up sucking me into the center of attention, even in this throng of people that I spend all my time with, and who know me better than most. All because out of the four of us in the band, I was blessed with a voice that can hold a tune.

“You’re naive to think it’s just that,” Joan used to say to me. “You’re not just the singer of our band, Lana. You’re our totem. You’re what we stand for. You’re the one people see when they listen to our music, when it touches them somewhere deep inside. You’re the one who brings the emotion and, in turn, brings it out of them. That’s what they want from you when they see you.”

Surrounded by the people who work on this unlikely tour, I dance some more of the night away. The more inebriated I get, the more my brain seems to descend into a spiral of all things Joan. Earlier, for a minute there, it felt like she was right here with me. Although why I had to bother Cleo with sentimental tales of Joan, I do not know. Quite possibly because she moves something in me that only Joan could touch before.

“Lana!” someone shouts over the music from the other side of the rope. “I love you.”

I look over to check it isn’t Cleo loudly professing her love to me, even though she’s not the type to do something like that—and it’s more wishful and very tipsy thinking than anything on my part.

Last I saw her, she was dancing on the main floor, tearing it up with Tim, and looking effortlessly hot while doing so. Of course, it’s not Cleo. Thank goodness it’s not Jess, either. She and Billie must have found some common ground because this evening, they have suddenly become inseparable. Maybe they’re commiserating over Cleo and me.

Cleo is shuffling her way back to the VIP area, Tim hot on her heels. Logan rushes over to them and hands them each a glass of champagne. They knock it back as though they’ve just played a two-hour show and it’s the best water they’ve ever tasted. Then Logan drags them to our tiny dance floor between the couches and, mere seconds later, I find myself bopping to the beat with Cleo.

All my defenses are down, any inhibitions are out of the window. I’m on tour. Everything’s going great. Everyone is happy enough. In fact, I’m happy. For the first time in ten long years, I can unequivocally say that I’m happy, here on this dance floor in this club in New York, having ended a phenomenal run of shows with a breathtaking duet with Cleo Palmer, who is so fucking sexy when she dances, I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

Cleo’s eyes are heavy-lidded, which makes her look even more sultry, but her moves are on point. She moves to the beat as though it runs through her body, as though her muscles are controlled by it and she’s at one with the music. Cleo embodies all the amazing, wonderful things about music. She’s the kind of front woman any band dreams of. Insanely attractive but with her girl next door vibe intact. Warm with the audience in between songs, but oh-so cool and in the moment the second she opens her mouth to sing. And when she sings with me, when I sing to her and she responds, I feel all the things she once told me she felt and accused me of being too reckless with. I feel it all. I feel like, on stage, I’ve come to need her, if only for those five minutes per night. But what a five minutes they are. That’s why it was so hard to do it without her. It didn’t feel right, no matter how great Izzy is.

When I look at Cleo now, dancing so uninhibitedly, so freely, she’s the epitome of how I used to live my life but, also, of how this life can still be. So, I can’t help myself. I dance my way to her—I’ve got a couple of moves myself. I shuffle right up to her until we’re dancing together.

I try to keep up with the music that’s being made nowadays, but there’s not enough time to listen to everything, and I haven’t recognized a single song so far. I’m a rock chick at heart, always have been. Electronic music is all the rage these days, with superstar DJs being paid outrageous amounts of money to push a few buttons instead of putting on actual records, but my heart has always beat the hardest for the very simple but effective combination of guitar, bass, and drums. And vocals, of course.

Cleo and I move to the beat together, our legs following the same rhythm, our arms close but not touching. Sometimes, the magic of what happened on stage can be carried over to the rest of the night, and tonight’s one of those nights. We’re all drunk but also intoxicated by having played a show as perfect as it will ever be, with Izzy and Leila watching from the wings, and the crowd eating out of our hands. No matter how much we chase them, nights like these are elusive. Nights like these need to be made the most of. So it’s with a combination of too much champagne, being high on our performance, and a bunch of out-of-control hormones riding up and down my blood stream, that I smile at Cleo before finding her ear.

“When we sing together,” I say to her, inhaling her scent. “I feel it too. I feel it all.” I drop my arms and reach for her hand, like I did on stage earlier, when I wanted to hold on to it forever.

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