“Where have you been?” Clem shouted.
Her mouth full, she waved a limp hand. Clem was practically thrashing with impatience. She was relieved to see Kim Perkins and David Goya coming their way.
“There you are,” Kim shouted. “You had us worried.”
“I’m fine.”
Kim reached for a fragment of Bundt cake, and Becky raised the paper plate above her head. Kim made a jumping pass at it.
“Down, girl,” David shouted.
From the stage came a thunderous coda, every instrument at full volume. The hall erupted in applause.
“Thank you,” Biff Allard shouted. “We’ve still got one act coming, our own Tanner Evans and Laura Dobrinsky, with the one and only Bleu Notes, so stick around! Good night!”
The hall lights came up. Becky ate the last bite of cake feeling more famished, not less.
“I should have warned you,” David said to her. “That shit is pretty killer. They grow it indoors in Montreal.” He patted her arm, as if to make sure she really was intact, and nodded to Clem. “Thanks for finding her.”
Clem was watching them with a demented kind of fixity, his face haggard.
“I need more food,” she said.
“Somebody has the munchies,” Kim said.
A woman on a mission, Becky marched over to the other food table. In the middle of it, as in a holy vision, sat two-thirds of a loaf of cheese-and-chive bread.
“Can I have, like, all of that?” she asked the sophomore boy taking money.
“Sure. Buck-fifty?”
This was too little, but she didn’t offer more. When she turned away from the table, clutching the bread like a squirrel, Kim was there to grab at it.
“Fine, fine,” Becky said, tearing off a hunk.
David, in his harmless way, had engaged Clem in some topic of interest to himself, and she took the opportunity to slip through the crowd and back out to the corridor, where there was a drinking fountain. The bread was delicious but her throat was parched. While she was bent over the fountain, someone came up behind her. Afraid that it was Clem, she kept drinking.
“Becky.”
The voice was Tanner’s. Turning around, she experienced the rush of joy that seeing Clem hadn’t given her. Somehow her intention to renounce Tanner had made him even more gorgeous. He was like a young Jesus in a fringed suede jacket. Without saying a word, he took her head in his hands and kissed her hard on the mouth.
She was too surprised to kiss him back. Her arms hung at her sides, the ridiculous bread in one hand. By the time she got over her surprise, he was pulling her away from the fountain and leading her up the hallway.
“We’re so fucked,” he said. “Laura’s gone. She went home.”
“She went home?”
“An hour ago. She quit the band.”
Becky was horrified. It was like learning that the accident she’d fled the scene of had been fatal. So much for Gig hearing the voice he’d come to hear.
“Just play,” she bravely said. “You’ll be great. I saw the agent upstairs—he’s been waiting to hear you.”
Tanner stopped in the front hall and looked around it, very agitated. When his eyes alighted on Becky, it was as if she was the very thing he’d been looking for. He took her head in his hands again. “I did what you asked me to.”
“Oh.”
“But now—I had to redo the whole playlist. I’m not sure Biff and Darryl know half of it.”
“It’ll be fine. Gig told me he wants to sign you.”
“You talked to him? What’s he like?”
“I don’t know. Just—a guy.”
“Shit. Shit shit shit.” Tanner let go of her and gazed down the corri dor, toward the function hall, where failure awaited him. “Tonight of all nights. I really didn’t—and now—shit. It’s going to be a mess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You were right. It had to be done.”
“Okay, but…” She took a breath. “Something amazing just happened to me. Upstairs, in the sanctuary. Tanner, it was so amazing. I think I saw God.”
This got his attention.
“I want to be a Christian,” she said. “I want you to help me be a real Christian. Even if it means—I don’t know what it means. For us, I mean. Will you help me?”
“You saw God?”
“I think so. I was praying for the longest time. I could feel God in me—I could feel Jesus. He was there.”