Zion spoke for me. “We’re on the guest list?”
She scanned the page. “One minute. You stay here.” She left us and dropped farther into the club. We probably could have simply walked in, but it seemed bad form. And I would have rather been admitted properly. After all, we were invited.
The woman returned, trailing a man wearing a Pussycat Dolls T-shirt and sporting well-groomed facial hair. He put his hand out to me. “Hi, I’m Tobin. You must be Jo?”
I nodded. “And this is my friend, Zion. Eden said I could bring a guest.”
Zion put his hand out in the way he did like he was at a debutante ball and he’d been asked to dance. Or like he was the Pope, and he expected someone to kiss his ring. It always made me blush, but I’d long since stopped trying to cajole him into normalcy. He told me it was like a white cane for a blind man. It was one way to test out the world.
Tobin took Zion’s proffered hand, and to my surprise, he leaned forward and planted a kiss right on the tops of Zion’s fingers. Zion flashed me a satisfied side-eye.You see?Tobin looked up into Zion’s eyes for the first time, and the two appraised one another. I felt distinctly invisible. And with the darkness of the club, I practically was. Tobin led us toward the stage.
An alcove held several tables with merchandise for sale—T-shirts, CDs. I saw Eden’s album and stopped for a minute to pick it up and flip it over. A woman behind the table asked if she could help me, but I didn’t want to buy anything.
I caught up with Zion, who’d found a seat close to the stage. The club provided tables or stools along the bar, but the stage area held nothing but rows of chairs. I threw my camera over the back of one. “Do you think I should look for Eden?”
He shrugged. “I wish you’d let me bring my camera. I bet there will be some interesting people here tonight.”
I shot him a warning glance. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. And I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t asked to do this privately.”
He craned his neck around. “Hey, isn’t that Adrianna LaRue?”
Sure enough, on the other side of the room, the pop singer preened on a chair no different than the one I sat in. But somehow she made it look like a throne. Her enormous hair eclipsed the entire row to her right. She was the definition of larger than life. Something struck her funny, and when she giggled, she covered her face with both hands and leaned back. And then I saw him sitting beside her. Micah Sinclair twenty feet away from me, breathing the same air.
Zion saw Micah at the same time as me and pulled at my sleeve. “Come on. You have to introduce me.”
I swatted his hand away. “You’ve interviewed him before, Zion. You’ve talked to him countless times I’m sure.”
“Yeah, but I’ve always been a nameless face, a reporter. I’ve never just sat and talked to any of these people. And Adrianna. Oh, shit. You should be shooting pictures.” He sat back into his chair and pushed my camera bag at me.
Despite my earlier protestations to the contrary, I gratefully wrapped my hand around the strap and unlatched the clasp. “I totally shouldn’t be doing this.”
Once I had my camera poised, I cut a glance over to where Micah sat, but his chair was now empty. Before I had a chance to spin my head around, surreptitiously of course, to relocate him, I felt a hand kneading the muscle between my neck and shoulder like the start of a massage. I dropped my head back and looked straight up at the bottom of Micah’s chin. His face was upside down. His smile was a frown.
“I saw you over here. Why don’t you come sit with me and Ade?” He gestured toward the other side, and Zion was already up and moving.
“Micah, this is my friend Zion. Zion, Micah.”
Micah put his hand out to Zion, and Zion forgot to offer his dainty handshake. He clasped Micah’s hand and said, “It’s great to meet you.”
Adrianna stood as we came over. I couldn’t make my brain process that she was a real person, hanging out in this dingy club, wearing a massive boa with a blond afro teased out about a foot in every direction. She was like a living Barbie doll, a freaky living Barbie doll. Zion was about to bow down before her.
Micah intervened to make introductions. “Ade, this is my friend Jo-Jo from Georgia. Or should I call you Anika?”
I knew he teased, but he couldn’t know the depths of my anger toward that name. “Please don’t. That’s what my dad calls me. I go by my middle name.”
“You have many names, Jo Jo.” He turned to Adrianna. “And this is her friend Zion.... Where are you from, Zion?”
Adrianna lifted her hand up in the exact same way Zion had earlier. He took her fingers in his hand and lifted them to his lips for a benediction, but his eyes were absorbing every detail of her hair, and I knew he was trying to figure out how he could re-create that. I’d tell him later it was probably a wig. He couldn’t make his real hair do what her fake hair could do. But right then, it was all possibilities. Right then, he was working out how many times he’d have to bleach it to go from midnight black to virgin white, and his eyes were saucers.
Adrianna cooed, “Aren’t you adorable?”
I answered Micah’s question for him. “Zion lives in Williamsburg. You dropped me off at our apartment last night.”
“Right.” He tsked. “But I only saw the sidewalk. You left in a bit of a hurry.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I wasn’t feeling well.”
Micah sat down and indicated a chair to his right. I moved around Adrianna and sat beside him, on the end. That left Zion alone with Adrianna. From the looks of things, I didn’t think he’d mind. I couldn’t tell if it was the celebrity or her mesmerizing beauty, but Zion was a goner. I hoped I wasn’t gawking at Micah so openly. I was thankful for Zion’s complete loss of composure since it took the focus off my own.
