Apparently there was a volume control for the suite’s sound system, and Mr Lascaux kept it quiet enough for us to talk while Los Toros played. They didn’t seem like a really loud band, anyway- more of a sort of Indie Pop/Surf group. They were fun and lighthearted, and even though the arena was still filling up the fans that were there seemed to enjoy their music.
From their banter, I gathered that they had never played anyplace like that before, and were overjoyed to open for “Le Downfall.”
Emmy’s dad was never one for idle chatter, but we did make some small talk at first. After a while, though, he turned serious.
Gesturing out over the arena, he said, “The show tonight sold out the day tickets went on sale months ago. From what I understand, every show on this tour has sold out quickly. This is a bit more than forty thousand people who have come to see the princess and her band.” After gazing out over the crowd, he continued. “They have come to see her. I don’t wish to demean Lee Park or Jackson Coolidge, but they are not the face of The Downfall. Émeraude is. She is the one whose face adorns the souvenir shirts, she is the one on the billboards.”
Taking a sip of his champagne, he turned to me. “She told us, her mother and I, that you were the one who suggested she start a band. It was your idea for her to turn her love and talent for music into all this,” he gestured again at the stage, the arena, all of it. “She explained to us that it was your plan, your way to introduce the world to the Children Of The Night. Give day walkers an icon, an image of us, and thereby introduce us to the world at large.”
He paused for a bit, still looking out over the nearly full arena. “I will admit I was skeptical when she told us of your suggestion. But here we are, and my doubts have long since been banished. She has done it. The world knows her music, but more than that, they know her face. She is on magazine covers in Uganda, on television in Indonesia, and on countless web sites online. I have seen pictures of teenaged girls in Japan who use makeup to look like Night Children- specifically, to imitate Émeraude. I could never have imagined this.”
“When she performed at the Winter Carnival at school back in Fallbrook,” I replied, “I saw a rock star on stage. She was born and raised, intentionally or not, for this. All it took on my part was to give her a nudge. The rest has been all her,” I protested.
“I beg to differ,” Mr Lascaux replied. “She has been able to devote her energies to doing this because you have made it possible. You have shouldered her duties to our people, Leah. You are the queen of the Night Children in North America, and we, the leaders of the old nations, we have become aware of this. What you have been doing has not gone unnoticed. I have been in talks with my counterparts, and you have been the topic of many discussions.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said.
“No, you should not be. We are few, and isolated to a great degree, but not so much that we are unaware of what is happening among our people.”
“That’s actually good to know,” I said. “You say I’m the topic of conversation. What are your peers saying about me?”
“Our peers,” Mr Lascaux corrected, making a point. “Our peers have varying degrees of information, and of course, varying points of view, but for the most part, they are adopting a ‘wait and see’ attitude, with some exceptions.”
“Marfan?”
“He is very much opposed to what you are doing, and of course, to what the princess is doing. But he is in the minority,” Mr Lascaux replied.
“What do they say about me in particular?” I asked, curious.
“While a few of our peers have expressed dismay that it is a non-blessed leading the new nation that is arising, that is not unprecedented.”
“Because they think I’m a day walking daughter of a Night Child father?” I asked for confirmation.
Mr Lascaux nodded, then continued. “Stories of your personal… exploits are debated. The rumors are too numerous to be dismissed out of hand, but seem too exaggerated to be true.”
“Says the man who killed a tiger with a knife,” I countered.
Smiling, Mr Lascaux admitted, “I killed that tiger with a well-placed trap I fashioned in the forest, but led the villagers to believe that I had attacked it with no more than my knife. An aura of indomitability can be the most useful tool in negotiations.”
Laughing, I said, “Well, I’ve certainly found that to be true.”
Just about that time Los Toros finished up their set and the house lights came back on. I got up to grab a snack from the table, asking Angela if she wanted anything to eat.
“You really should eat something, my child,” Mrs Lascaux said to Angela. “You have a little one to feed.”
Angela’s eyes grew wide with surprise. “Did Em tell you?”
“She didn’t have to,” Emmy’s mom said, her musical laugh gentle. “You have mimed drinking your champagne, but haven’t so much as taken a sip. You did that at dinner last night, too, and unlike every time I had seen you in Los Angeles, you’re wearing a loose-fitting top. It was a guess, but now I know for certain it’s true.”
“We didn’t want to tell anybody until-” Angela apologized, but Mrs Lascaux waved it off.
“It is never wise to announce too soon,” she said, patting Angela’s arm. “There are so many things that can go wrong in the early stages.”
“Well, since you’ve guessed about Angela’s condition, I expect you’ve noticed Emmy isn’t drinking these days, either,” I said, sitting back down.
“The princess as well?” Mrs Lascaux asked, her perfectly groomed eyebrows raised.
“We have an appointment at the premiere fertility clinic in London in… three days? To evaluate both pregnancies. Angela will be far enough along for genetic testing, but Emmy is two months behind.”
“I wanted us to get pregnant at the same time,” Angela said with a little pout, “So our little girls could be like twins.”
“Girls? I thought you said you had not tested yet?” Mr Lascaux asked.
Seeing the cat had truly escaped the bag and was well on his way out the door, I said, “We paid an experimental lab a lot of money to extract my DNA and use it to fertilize Angela’s and Emmy’s eggs. So, yeah, I’m the ‘father’,” I said, making air quotes with my fingers. “Since there will only be female sex chromosomes, the babies will be girls.”
“I see,” he said, leaning back. “And this is the reason for the genetic testing.”
“To make sure the experimental procedure worked as planned?” asked Mrs Lascaux.
“Right,” Angela said. “And to make sure they actually did use Lee’s genes.”
“This is astounding,” Mr Lascaux said. “Truly astounding.”
“It’s too soon, then, to congratulate you,” Mrs Lascaux said, taking Angela’s hand in her own. “But this is the most amazing news. I couldn’t have possibly imagined this. And to get this incredible news on this night!”
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Even with the box suite’s sound system turned down, the roar of the crowd nearly drowned out Mrs Lascaux’s words.
We all turned to look at the stage as the house lights went out and a few lasers and spotlights roamed the stage.
Mr Lascaux turned the volume up, but it was still nowhere near as deafening as it must have been in the main part of the arena.
Maybe a dozen tight spotlights focused in on one spot on the stage, and there was Emmy. She was wearing a classy but casual outfit-jeans, a white boat neck T with a navy blazer, sleeves pushed up to her elbows. And of course, a pair of Chuck Taylors.
She had on a pair of big Audrey Hepburn-style sunglasses to finish the look off just right.
Instead of her Firebird she had the clear blue acrylic guitar on her hip as she walked to the front of the stage, smiling at the absolutely thunderous crowd. Forty-some thousand people were cheering, whistling, and generally making as much noise as they could, and believe me, forty thousand French people can make a whole lot of noise when they want to.
Emmy slowly looked out over the crowd from left to right, then back again, surveying the packed arena, which was usually home to rugby games and the like- nice, quiet events like that.
Satisfied, she pulled a guitar pick from her pocket and played a long, slow blues riff. When she stopped, the crowd went completely nuts again, getting another smile from Emmy. She waited for it to die down again, then repeated the riff, but faster the second time.
The crowd roared in approval, and Emmy smiled again. She took off her sunglasses and looked the arena over again, then flipped the glasses into the audience, somewhere about ten rows back. Ignoring the crowd noise, she played the riff again, this time faster still, but stopping abruptly part way through, looking as if something wasn’t right. She reached into the pocket of her blazer and pull out another pair of identical sunglasses, which she put on her face.
The crowd knew a good gag when they saw it, and they laughed and cheered like crazy. Emmy then ripped into the riff a fourth time, continuing on with a shredding guitar solo. She managed to marry blues and hard rock, at turns sliding and slinky and then fierce and aggressive. She was in fine form and showing off her virtuosity for the world to see.
Jackson took the stage after a couple of minutes to loud cheering, quickly joining Emmy’s guitar with his bass, providing a solid rhythmic foundation for her wild flights across the frets.
After another minute or two Lee appeared and took his stool behind the monster drum kit, augmenting Jackson’s bass with a deep and heavy kick drum beat.
The intro went on for almost ten minutes until it finally coalesced into the melody for their first song of the night, their version of Cheap Trick’s ‘I want You To Want Me’.
When the song ended, the applause was literally earth-shaking, even up there in the skybox suite.
“She is quite a performer,” Mrs Lascaux said with pride in her voice.
“The best,” Angela agreed, her face showing just how much she loved to watch Emmy play.
Emmy waved for quiet, and then spoke into the microphone. She thanked everyone for coming, and expressed her joy at performing in the city of her birth, which, predictably, got another huge wave of cheering going.
“The people really do love her,” Mrs Lascaux said, amazed by the crowd’s behavior.
“Everybody does,” Angela said. “Everybody loves Emmy. Everybody.”
The Downfall started their second song with a heavy drum intro, stopping any further conversation, but Mr Lascaux leaned over and spoke into my ear.
“It seems we will need to continue our conversation later,” he said.
I nodded that I agreed, and we settled into our seats to watch a truly amazing rock spectacle. The band was on fire that night, buoyed by Emmy’s pleasure at playing for a home-town crowd as well as the audience’s absolute rapture at seeing what might well have been the greatest concert of their lives. The forty thousand plus fans in attendance were treated to one hell of a show, and Emmy’s rapport with the audience was complete. She joked, she flirted, and she spoke fondly of growing up in the City Of Light. Emmy had her fans eating out of her hands. She even name-checked Laurent and Clémence, I noticed.
Of course, it wasn’t just a one-woman show. Although Lee made no attempts to speak in French, Jackson did, and did a reasonably decent job of it. Even I could pick up his Texan accent, which seemed to charm rather than offend the native speakers.
The Downfall had released a couple of albums in French, but they didn’t necessarily play those versions that night, to my surprise. Sure, Emmy sang in French some, but not as much as I would have expected. It didn’t seem to matter much in any case. I could see lots of fans singing along in English just as well as in French.
Emmy’s famous primal shriek to start ‘Killer In The Dark’ visibly startled Mrs Lascaux, but after her initial jump a fond smile appeared on her face. She leaned over and said something to her husband, getting a nod in return, and I wondered what that was all about but forgot to ask later.
When Lee started in with what turned out to be the show’s final song, that painfully familiar heartbeat double kick drum, I reached over and took Angela’s hand. She clutched my hand in both of hers, already feeling the emotions that song would bring.
Emmy’s guitar started off with a sort of distorted strummed chord before morphing into the long, clear note of the recorded version, gradually dropping down the scale until it dissolved into what sounded disturbingly like a baby crying.
“How does she do that?” Mrs Lascaux asked in amazement to nobody in particular in the quiet moment that followed before Emmy began to sing.
“I was born to make you cry,” Emmy sang, her voice powerful and clear, confident and assured. Angela was already weeping, so I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in as tight as the roomy seats would allow.
I gave Angela a kiss on her forehead as Emmy sang, “I was born to make you smile. I was born to sing this song, but most of all, baby, I was born to die.”
I kept kissing Angela, holding her to me as Emmy continued singing that damned song that broke Angela’s heart (and mine, I have to admit) every time she heard it. By the end of the song Angela was crying uncontrollably, burying her face against me.
Stroking Angela’s hair and kissing her, murmuring that we had Emmy for a lot of years yet, I hardly noticed when the house lights came on and The Downfall took their bows.
When Angela’s tears finally dried up, Emmy’s mother gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “She knows that Emmy is moon kissed?” Mrs Lascaux asked, but it wasn’t really necessary to reply.
“She does,” Angela said from the comfort of my embrace. “But she hates it.”
Mrs Lascaux sighed in understanding, but didn’t say anything else.
When Angela finally pulled away from me and wiped her eyes, I asked her if she wanted to go down to find Emmy.
“She said that she had to go to the afterparty tonight. She usually doesn’t, but felt that this time, it being Paris, that she needed to. She asked if we wanted to go, and I said I’d ask you,” Angela said, still sniffling.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Angela said, still disconsolate. “I want to support Em and be there for her, but I’m not in any kind of party mood. These afterparties- they aren’t, well, they aren’t all that fun, you know? All these people trying to get close to Emmy and Lee and Jackson, to have their picture taken so they can say they know her… They just…”
“I’ll let her know we’re gonna skip it,” I said, giving Angela a tender kiss on her forehead again. “We’ll just go back to the hotel and get some rest.”
“If you want to go…” Angela said.
“No, I’m not much for parties, and there really isn’t likely to be anyone there I’d want to talk to or hang out with besides you and Em anyhow,” I said. “Let’s just go back to the hotel.”
Angela gave me a grateful smile, squeezing my hand in thanks as I shot Emmy a quick text.
“Looks like we’re calling it a night,” I said to Emmy’s parents. To Emmy’s dad I said, “Call me tomorrow and we can figure out a time to get together to talk.”
He nodded, and then said goodnight as I led Angela out of the suite.
“The car will be waiting for you at entrée quatre,” Edouard said. “The driver is named Said. He will take you back to the hotel.”
“We’ll be fine on the Metro,” I protested, but he wasn’t having it. I finally gave up and accepted the offer of a ride, and thanked Edouard and Emmy’s parents again and wished them a good night.
It wasn’t hard to find the Seven-Series sedan with the solemn Night Child driver standing beside it.
“Mesdames Farmer et Castro?” he asked as we approached.
“Said?” I asked, and he smiled.
“Bien sûr,” he said, opening the door for Angela.
Back in our room, Angela flopped down on the bed, her arms out wide. “I hate it, Lee. I hate that they even call it ‘moon kissed’. That makes it sound like it’s something good, you know? But it isn’t. It’s terrible. How can Em even live like that, knowing…” she said, her voice trailing off as she started to cry again.
I climbed onto the bed and scooted over, lifting Angela’s head into my lap so I could stroke her hair.
“I know, babe, I know,” I said, agreeing with her completely. “I hate it too, more than anything. I don’t know how Emmy can do it, either.”
“I just don’t understand,” Angela said, turning on her side to face away, but keeping her head in my lap.
I ran my fingers through Angela’s thick, dark hair, not saying anything. Sometimes emotions can be conveyed better without words, and I was trying to let Angela know that I understood how she was feeling.
Eventually she fell asleep, and then so did my legs. I really didn’t want to disturb her, but I had to get up and get some circulation back so I could help Angela out of her clothes and under the covers. It only took me a few more moments before I was in bed also, spooning her tightly as she fell asleep again.
I wasn’t worried about Emmy’s safety at the party, wherever it was, since she would have Tiny, and more importantly Grant, with her. She could schmooze until dawn if she needed to.
I glanced at my watch when I felt Emmy climb into bed, surprised it was not even four in the morning. The party must not have gone on very long, I thought as Emmy kissed me and whispered good morning.