We load into the SUV and go. No one talks until the doors close on the hotel conference room. Quincy starts. “Congratulations on the TRO. Now keep your heads down. Ignore the press on Troy. We have a record to launch. If this becomes the only thing anyone sees, we hand the moment to him.”
“We are done covering for Troy.”
Quincy exhales through his nose. “I didn’t say lie.”
“The court just ordered him to stay away and not release any so-called intimate videos. The public story exists whether we speak or not. We can either sound human or sound evasive.”
“Fine, fine.” Quincy rubs his temple. “You’ll make my job harder.”
“We make it possible.”
He sits with it. He knows I’m right. He just doesn’t like the feeling. “Draft me the line. I’ll get legal eyes on it. We’ll route requests to me. You don’t answer DMs or texts that look like ‘comment?’ We control what we can control.”
Back upstairs, the suite is quiet. The sun is still up. The balcony is empty. Lou is at the table with her laptop, but she watches me walk by the sliding door like she knew I’d go out there. I step outside and close the door behind me. The Strip hums below. The glass warms my back.
She joins me a minute later with two waters. She hands me one and sets the other on the rail. She doesn’t talk right away. I appreciate that.
“I know this is probably hardest on you,” she says finally. “I wanted to check on you. How are you?”
“It’s hard. It’s easier than it used to be. It’s easier because I’m not the only one holding the line. I can say the truth and not pretend it’s nothing. I have someone to share it with.”
She looks at me. The balcony light makes her face warm. “I’m honored to be that someone.”
“Thank you.”
I set my hand on her waist. She sets her hand on my chest, as if she’s feeling for a steady beat. We kiss, and it calms the last of my nerves. We break and don’t move far. She leans into my shoulder. I put my arm around her and let the rest of the day pass the way days pass when you’ve done the necessary thing and there’s no need to talk it to death.
Silence is comfortable with Lou. Never knew that could be a thing.
23
HOUSTON
“Locket”drops at midnight. We don’t throw a party. We watch the dashboard from the suite with the lights low and the balcony door cracked. Salem paces the rug. Knox watches the numbers without comment. I stand by the window with Lou and listen to the city breathe.
The play count spikes fast. The comments come in waves. People hear the whisper in the chorus and ask whose voice it is. They call it tender. Sultry.
A producer account posts a quick breakdown of the ribbon tone and the way the room holds the piano. A singer I respect does a reaction and stops at the last chorus to say, “That harmony is the kind of thing you only get when people trust each other.”
Someone else calls it “home-recorded honesty,” and I don’t argue with the phrase. Lou watches a few on mute and then sets the phone down. She doesn’t need to read every opinion. I don’t either.
Quincy texts me a list of stations that added it before sunrise. He says we should get off the internet and get some sleep beforemorning. No one moves. Lou smiles at me and then points her chin at the bedroom. She’s right. We need to be people, not screens.
By two a.m. the first fan covers land. A kid in a dorm room doubles the chorus and smiles when the whisper hits. A drummer posts a playthrough saying the groove feels like a walk, not a sprint. A reaction channel pauses on the projection in the teaser we posted last week and reads the comments out loud. People hear the room. They hear the ribbon. They argue about whether the piano is the studio upright.
I don’t answer. I like that they’re arguing about sound instead of gossip.
At midday we meet with Quincy and the platform producer on a group call. We agree on a thirty-minute set with no break. We settle camera positions and title cards. Lou shows a sample of the projection with the phrases masked to half opacity. I ask Lou if she’s sure about using Rosa’s words. She says she kept them partial and non-identifying. She says the point is to honor the room, not to tell a stranger’s story. That sits right with me. Quincy signs off and tells us to rest.
We load into the SUV and head for the studio. Lou takes me by the hand and walks me into the live room, then into the control room, then back into the live room. Projectors sit on stands at three corners. Gaffer tape marks the throw lines. A laptop on a cart hums with a mapping grid. The walls are bare and ready.
Mom is there in a denim dress and cowboy boots, hair down. She has a box of papers on the console. “Don’t touch,” she says, smiling. “I found some things.”
Quincy arrives with the camera crew and a sound cart. He keeps his voice level. “We’re treating this like radio,” he tells us. “No chat. No host. No Q&A. Start on time. End clean. Publish the replay after an edit pass. Comments off.”
Knox walks the set list with him. “We start with ‘Locket,’” he explains. “Two other new ones after. No titles yet. Then a reprise and a note about the album and the residency.”
“Good,” Quincy says. “You’ll have one roaming camera, one fixed low, one wide. No crane. Audio goes to the board. Redundancy on the recorder.”
