Nancy Bartholomew - Stand By Your Man

I had to step over to the door, open it, and look out into the hallway. Weathers was right there, his arms folded across his chest, an easy smile on his face.

"You were thinking maybe I'd join you?" he asked.

That took the panic away. I took a deep breath and tried to smile. "No, actually, it's just a little bit close in here, I was just going to let some cool air in."

I didn't fool him. His eyes softened, but the smirk remained. He wasn't going to baby me.

"Well," he drawled, "maybe while you're in there, you might compare your shower to mine. You didn't seem to mind the steam over at my place."

"I didn't mind it at all," I said, before I could stop myself. He'd done it again, charmed me into forgetting that he was only in it for the game.

"Hey," I said, unknotting my bathrobe slowly and letting him watch. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" The robe started to slip open, just a little bit.

"No," he murmured. "I've got all the time in the world."

I smiled. "Oh, that's funny. I thought you had to ran car-pool for the junior police auxiliary."

His face reddened and I closed the bathroom door.

On the other side of the door I heard him chuckle. "Funny, Reid, real funny."

I jumped into the shower and pulled the curtain. It was my shower again, my bathroom, and my home.

I stood under the hot water until I felt it begin to cool off, reluctantly turning it off only when I knew I had to. I stood behind the curtain and reached out for my towel, feeling around on the rack and realizing that it was gone.

"Real funny," I yelled. "Bring my towel back."

I waited a second and was rewarded with the sound of the door opening. My towel flipped up over the shower curtain and I grabbed it, pulling it down and wrapping it around my body.

"So you had to resort to stealing my towel?"

I whipped open the curtain and came face to face with Tony Carlucci. He was standing there with a broad smile on his face and his finger to his lips.

"Shhh," he whispered. "Wouldn't want Sheila to hear you, would you? She and your friend are out on the front porch. I believe she's uninviting him to dinner."

"Oh no!"

Tony grinned. He was enjoying the situation. He stood there, staring at me, his eyes covering every inch of my body, slowly examining.

"Get out!"

"Looks like you missed a spot on your back," he whispered.

"Get out!"

Tony shrugged and held up his hands. "Whatever you say. I was just trying to help out." He slipped out of the room just as I heard the front door slam and Sheila come storming back through the dining room, her footsteps stopping just outside the bathroom door.

"Mama!" she cried. "How could you let that jerk inside our house?"

"Sheila, were you rude to him?"

"Well, I should hope so," she huffed. "And then I told him all about that girl and Nosmo King. You know, I think he actually was forced to listen to me. See, I told you I'd be a big help!"

I sighed into my towel and looked at myself in the mirror. "Whatever," I muttered.

"What did you say?" Sheila demanded.

"Nothing, honey, just go set the table."

"Whatever!" She clomped off into the kitchen and could be heard pulling open drawers and fumbling with silverware.

It was one of those days, one right after another, right after another.

Tony and Sheila were thick as thieves by the time they dropped me off at the Golden Stallion club. Tony gunned the engine and the two took off for who knew where, not to return until closing time.

I walked inside knowing I had fences to mend. I'd hurt my friend and there was no way I could think of to make up for that. When I entered the club, Jack had his back to me, fiddling with the monitor in such an obvious way that I knew he'd seen me arrive and didn't want to face me.

He waited until I was right behind him to turn around, pretending to be surprised and happy to see me.

"I want to talk to you," I said.

"Sure, Maggie, sure, but not right now, okay? Sparks asked me to check this monitor and we're due to start any minute. How about later?" He smiled but he wouldn't hold my gaze. At the first opportunity he turned back to the sound system and wandered away. The others were all tuning up, oblivious to me. When Chris finally looked up and saw me, he reached for my guitar.

"I'll get it tuned up for you," he said. "You want to do that new one we were working on last week?"

I nodded, but my heart wasn't in it. I stepped up to my vocal mike and did a sound check, watching Homer back on the soundboard nod and give me the thumbs up. The lights were flickering, traveling across the stage in broad beams of red and gold as the techies adjusted them to focus on the band members. On any other night I would've been eating this up. It was my dream to sing and now here I was, on stage five nights a week, the lead singer in a house band, and I couldn't enjoy it.

I walked to the dead center of the stage and looked out at the house. It was almost nine o'clock. The regulars were beginning to file in. Brenda Lee was just finishing up with her line dance lessons, putting a bevy of overweight middle-aged women through their paces. I waited there, in the spot where I always stood, and closed my eyes, wishing like anything for the feeling to come. I wanted the adrenaline rush I always got before I sang, but it wasn't coming.

"Maggie! Maggie, my God, move!" Sparks screamed and my eyes flew open, but not in time. I turned around and saw nothing but Jack. Jack running and hurtling toward me, a fierce look of determination on his face, his arms outstretched as he flew into me, knocking me off my feet and sending me flying backward.

A speaker tower crashed to the ground, falling from its position high above the stage, landing on the spot where I had just been standing. It shattered, splitting open, spilling wires and shards of black plastic everywhere.

Jack had tackled me, the force of his body throwing me off balance, across the stage, the two of us landing in a heap on the hard wooden floor.

"Are you all right?" he gasped. He pushed up off of me, turning to look at the spot where the heavy piece of equipment had landed.

"I could be dead," I whispered.

"But you're not," he said, and then he smiled. "You're not."

Cletus and the other bouncer were running up onto the stage. Pandemonium had erupted among the techies and the roadies, with everyone looking for the cause of the accident. But I knew it wasn't an accident. Accidents like that didn't just happen.

I started to shake and suddenly it was freezing, even with the ultrahot lights and the heat from the equipment.

Jack looked back at me and smiled. "Son of a bitch!" he said. Then he was standing, reaching down to pull me up.

"Cletus," he called, "we need to look and see if anybody's been fooling with the equipment. See who's been hanging around this afternoon. This couldn't have happened without someone noticing something." Jack was stronger and taller than he had been minutes before, and more certain of himself. The easygoing, peace-loving boy was gone, replaced by a self-assured man.

Sparks was impatient with the entire process. "Come on, get the other tower in here," he called to the stagehands. "Get this mess cleaned up." When the others ignored him, he became even more controlling. "Let's get moving, people. We're on in five."

Cletus stooped down by the broken amplifier, stretched out a hand, and pulled the broken chain away from the bits of equipment and examined them.

"Yep," he said, his eyes meeting Jack's. "Somebody cut on it."

"No kidding!" Jack couldn't seem to decide whether to be amazed at this or pleased that he'd figured it all out. He turned to me. "Let's go ahead and call your detective friend. He's gonna want to see this."