Rock Star: Coda, by Karin Bishop

A sequel to “Rock Star”, by Jennifer White

Part 3

I was at the bar in a Sunset Strip hotel, the new posh British place, waiting for Luke and Ted. Several people in the music business were there; a few nodded to me–as a multiple Grammy winner, I was in a rarefied atmosphere. And I felt wonderful. I had dressed extra-special that night, to tease Luke during dinner and then to drive him wild later, in bed. I wore a shimmery ice blue minidress that showed that I had a genuine tan, courtesy of time spent at my pool, listening to mixes, demos, and composing. My skin was bronzed and oiled, and my hair was loosely up and held with silver pins to match my silver dangle earrings and bracelets. I had the most gorgeous French Tips on all my nails, and silver strappy sandals with high, high heels.

Somebody called out ‘Mike?’ and I had this strange mix of reactions. Instinctively I turned to see who’d called, due to my two-plus decades of reacting to that name. Also, the instinctive clenching that somebody was deliberately calling me that old name, as an unwelcome reminder of my past. It turned out that the call had been for somebody else; some guy stood and waved; he was Mike.

I’d thought, ‘Of course he is. I’m not Mike anymore; I’m Lisa’ and I chuckled as I mentally slapped the back of my hand for reacting to the name. I wasn’t Mike. I felt strong and feminine and glad that I was Lisa. I had certainly come to terms with my new sex and my sexuality and was happy being female. It was almost a cliché, the classic Broadway song–I really and truly did enjoy being a girl!

And I was a girl who was impatiently waiting for her guy. Probably because of my silly reaction to that guy calling ‘Mike’, but I tried to remember the last time I’d even thought of Mike.

Well, aside from my talk with Kayla.

***

She had finally walked from All The Rage and had been picked up very quickly by an up-and-coming alt rock group out of Tulsa and I saw her at the Grammys. That night was the exception to my blocking of all things connected with All The Rage. It had been pure chance that we’d gone to the restroom at the same time.

There was that immensely awkward moment where I was at the mirror, touching up my lipstick, and a stall door opened and there was Kayla. She looked startled, her face showing the ‘fight-or-flight’ response and there was this intensely painful moment made even more so because there were women all around us. Neither of us could gracefully fight or flee. Nor did I wish to. Seeing her made it plain to me, in an instant, that I bore her no ill will and it was behind me.

“Hey, Kayla!” I said brightly, and then leaned slightly away so she could come to use my mirror space. “Congratulations!”

I really meant it, too; her band had just won a Grammy for Best New Artist. Even though the band had been around for years, it was losing two members and adding Kayla that had created them anew, with her solid-yet-dancing bass and her vocals.

I’d also worked so hard to put everything connected to Mike and All The Rage behind me, and wanted to be genuinely glad that she was moving forward, too, despite what she’d done to me–because the betrayal hurt, but the end result, being Lisa? I couldn’t be happier.

She made her decision and smiled and came up, opening her purse for her brush, blush, and lipstick. There was that nervous Kayla giggle that I remembered. “All of my life, dreaming of getting a Grammy. I get up there and all I could think of was how badly I had to pee!”

We laughed together and then did that mutual-sigh thing. Knowing her category had already been awarded meant that she didn’t necessarily have to get right back to her seat.

“Wanna chat?” I asked casually.

I nodded to the lounge area, with tables and chairs and benches–the Ladies Lounge was huge. There were a few women clustered closely and talking; they could be working out an album collaboration or discussing childcare, whatever. Since everybody in the room–in the building–was in the industry, there was a sort of truce regarding Ladies Lounge gossip. As long as we kept our voices low and heads together, Kayla and I could talk relatively freely.

We moved to a newly-empty bench as two women rose and exited. Kayla and I sat slightly facing each other sat; she rather stiffly so I tried to be more relaxed. I was in a tight black-and-white halter dress, with Louboutin pumps. She was in a bright red tube dress, at odds with the scruffy image of the band. By unspoken but mutual consent, she texted her band that she was okay–she said they were probably already celebrating–and I texted Luke that I was talking with an old friend.

Then Kayla laid her phone on the bench next to her and folded her hands primly on her lap. She was so uncomfortable as she cleared her throat.

“Wow! Uh …congratulations! I can’t, uh …you’ve done so much, and, uh …”

It sounded forced, no matter how genuine her comment might be. I took a chance and reached over and placed my hand on the back of hers.

“Kayla? It’s okay. This is supremely weird, the two of us here talking, and we both know it, but I’m telling you, at every level, it’s okay. Okay?”

“Um, okay …” She swallowed and nodded once, finally looking me in the eye.

She still had the widened eyes of ‘fight-or-flight’.

I smiled as warmly as I could. “Kayla, however it came about, you have to know this–I am absolutely delighted with my life. I love my life, and where it’s going. Okay? So, yeah, it was …odd how I got here–”

“Odd?” she snorted. “God, you could work for the State Department with that understatement!”

“We both know there are more words we could use, but–”

Kayla interrupted me by putting her hand over my hand, which was still over her closer hand. “Lisa? Please. Let me talk. This has been …there’s been this total crap inside of me and I thought I was stuck with it until I die but I finally get a chance to …” She chuckled bitterly. “Like all roads lead to this bench, huh? All those years we dreamed about winning Grammys and we never thought it would be the two of us here, looking like this, with Grammys and not at all what we dreamed …”

She shook herself, almost like a dog shaking water, a full-body shake. Then she nodded, as if to herself. “Lisa, let me say my piece and then we’ll see what we see, alright?”

“Alright,” I nodded, smiling encouragingly but absolutely clueless what was to come.

Kayla sighed. “Back in …I’m pretty sure it was London.” She nodded; that had been the first stop on our first European tour. “Yes, the hotel with the funny cheese stuff.” That had been her phrase at the time.

“Devonshire Cream–oops!” I said, pulling my hand to cover my mouth. “Sorry! No interruptions!”

She smiled. “I know what it’s called now, but, yeah, that hotel. First stop. I don’t know where you were–a bath, maybe–but Julia got me and we went to Robert’s room. She was doing this …” Kayla sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “You know, it’s hard to think back to what really happened, because there was then, in the sense of things unfolding day-to-day. And there’s now, with knowing everything that was behind everything.”

Kayla’s sentences were sometimes as sinuous as her bass lines; I’d long ago learned to follow them. Maybe that’s why we’d played so well together.

Her head came down from the ceiling into a nod to herself. “Yeah, got to tell it this way, knowing both then and now.” She looked at me. “Julia told Robert and I that you were transgender. That you always had been. That–don’t say anything, please?”

Instinctively, my mouth had opened to refute Julia’s long-ago statement, which had been a lie …But with all that I’d learned about myself over the last few years, was it a lie? And I’d promised to not interrupt, anyway.

Kayla made sure of that with a firm nod and continued. “Look, I know now that every other word out of her mouth was a lie, and I’m not even sure of the other words.” Her mouth twitched in a bitter grin. “I can only tell you how it went down. Julia said that you wanted to be a girl, that it was your deepest desire, your fondest wish, and that all you wanted to do was make enough money to get a sex change. She told us that you–I should interrupt myself and say that I didn’t know you as well as Robert, but neither of us was totally buying into it at first, but she can be persuasive.”

I nodded–not really an interruption.

Another sigh. “And I know now it was crap–we both do. If you ever get a chance, let Robert know that we’ve talked, alright?” I nodded and she went on. “Julia said that she loved the person you were too much to not let you achieve your dream. She said she loved you as a boyfriend, but said some stuff about how you were ‘a gentle lover’, but making it like you were submissive and she wasn’t crazy about it, but she’d endure because she loved you.”

She said this last in the breathy tones of a Brontá« heroine, then giggled at her own voice.

“Anyway, she was setting us up, of course. She told us that you were pretty much a girl in bed, that you were already wearing some of her things, that she knew about but hadn’t confronted you because she loved you so much.” She shook her head again. “After that night when she told us, every day she’d casually mention something in passing, to reinforce the whole thing. Like she’d say so Robert could hear, ‘I’m not a lesbian but it certainly feels that way, especially when Mike’s in his nightie.’ Or I’d be with Tina and Julia would sigh and say, ‘Mike’s so into this Lisa thing that we don’t even make love anymore. We’re in that big bed, just like sisters.’”

Again, my mouth opened automatically to respond but I closed it.

Kayla’s sad smile twitched at that and she went on. “Remember, this was all before Juan joined. But she was setting it up already. She’d play it all reluctant and say, ‘Sometimes …oh, you’ll think I’m terrible,’–and she’d look all bashful– ‘but I miss having sex with a man, you know?’ And all the time she was seeing Juan. I can’t believe I never saw that! I mean, I’m not blind, and they spent so much time getting together–before he was in the band, I mean. I didn’t know about it, though, I really didn’t. I’ve thought about it over the years, and I think it was because I didn’t ever really bond with Julia. You’d think we would, being the two girls in the band.”

Realizing what she’d said, her eyes widened. I grinned and chuckled. “I know what you mean, Kayla.”

“Sorry,” she said, almost like a little girl. Again a bitter smile. “And here’s the kicker–she said you needed help. Not like psychiatric, but that you needed our support. Robert and I looked at each other and we both really liked you and were totally buying Julia’s crap so we said we would, of course we would. I mean, it wasn’t even about the band; we just liked you.”

“Thank you for that, both of you,” I said, squeezing her hand. “And that doesn’t count as an interruption, just a comment. But thank you.”

Kayla smiled thinly. “You’re amazing, after what we did to you …” She sighed heavily and shook her head. “The key to this whole thing with Julia was our support, that we wouldn’t question what started happening. It was driving Robert crazy to not yell at you–‘Look what’s happening to you!’–but we’d all agreed it was the only way that you could–no, not the only way,” she corrected herself frowning. “I said that was the key, but the real key was that you were reluctant. I mean, that’s what Julia told us–that you still had this problem giving yourself permission to be a girl. That there was still this male life that you’d lived that made you feel guilty about wanting to be a girl. So what we had to do was persuade you. Persuade you …”

She trailed off, her mouth souring. “I’ve felt sick for years about how I bought into that. We were both played, Robert and I, but you were played a lot worse. I was so stupid believing …I mean, all I had to do was just come out and talk with you about it, just ask you, and her whole scheme would have collapsed.”

“I’m interrupting now,” I said. “Kayla? We both know how convincing she can be, how persuasive. It might be her greatest strength or skill; I don’t know. But, please, stop raking yourself over the coals about this.”

“You’re really sweet to say that, but …” She balled her hand into a fist and thumped her thigh. “I should have been a better friend. A real friend. There we were going along with her lies because we thought we were being true friends, and I wasn’t even friend enough to ask you even once.” She shook her head and took a deep sigh. “So I persuaded you. I went along with every step of her plan–Robert too, although his main contribution was keeping quiet. But I helped get you into the clothes, the makeup, the whole Lisa thing …” Her eyes glistened and she sniffed.

Gently, I said, “And I’m telling you that Lisa is very, very happy now, okay? So, for God’s sakes, don’t cry, because there’s no room at the mirrors.”

We both looked across the room and every inch of mirror space was filled with women. Kayla gave s sniffy giggle and nodded.

I said, “Kayla, I’ll get formal for a moment. I hereby absolve you of all guilt or worry about what happened. Any further unhappiness about that time is purely your own choice, okay? But we all got taken and you and I have moved on. So we’re better off, however we got here.”

She nodded. “Robert’s doing sessions, New York and Nashville. I think he hated touring but he stuck it out. Took him forever to quit, though.”

“He had some …” I sighed. “His family was never well-off, and his sister has some medical problems–”

“Had. She died last March. I never even knew he had a sister.” Kayla shook her head.

I nodded. “God, poor Robert.” I was silent for a moment, sending a prayer for his sister and him. “He was very private about his sister. Her care cost a lot of money his family didn’t have, and he knew that he stood the best chance of making good money playing music, and he was right. I could never blame him for that; even with all the stuff we went through, he stuck with the band for the money. Not out of greed, but for his family. And he’s a great guy, and if you see him before I do, please tell him everything’s fine and I wish him the best?”

She nodded and a thought occurred to me, belatedly. “What about Tina?”

“What about her? Oh, you mean, in Julia’s scheme?” I nodded and she went on. “Not sure what Julia told her; I think it was the same thing she’d told Robert and me. Knowing Julia–and knowing Tina–I’m sure it was pitched more about the longevity of the band, the publicity for the band. Like your …operations and everything …”

She was once again nervous.

I couldn’t resist. I gave her a huge grin and said proudly, “Made me the man I am today!”

Kayla was shocked, open-mouthed, and then we both dissolved in giggles, tears, and hugs.

Then she shrugged. “You know, part of what made Julia’s plan work was that I didn’t really know her, how she really thought. Like I said, we never bonded. Julia was always with you, and then she was always with Juan. Even more, once you were gone. There wasn’t that much time when the two of us …” She straightened. “You remember that night in New York? We took the limo and went shopping?”

“A great night,” I smiled. Since I’d come to accept things, that memory now was of a great night.

“Yeah, it was,” she smiled with me. “You know, that was the first night that I ever spent, really spent, with Julia? Without a guy around, I mean?” She realized again what she’d said and stared.

I laughed. “God, Kayla! Chill, okay? I’m fine with it; and it was a great night. Yes, I’ll admit that I was still mostly feeling like Mike-inside-of-Lisa, but that was the first night–really important, this–the first night that I relaxed and enjoyed myself as a girl. So, back to what you were saying, you and Julia weren’t hanging out all along?”

“No. Thought you knew that,” she shrugged. “But you were always focused on the music, and Julia, and the music you wrote because of Julia …” She frowned. “And then you were kind of …unfocused.”

I nodded grimly. “Kayla, you know that Julia had been feeding me female hormones since, well, since we first moved in together.”

“I thought …Huh,” she said to herself. “I thought it was once we were on the road. But, yeah, it would have to have been longer. That far back? Huh!” she said again, nodding to herself.

“And here’s what you don’t know.” I told her about Ted’s revelation about the ‘extra ingredient’ in the pills, making me passive, submissive.

It took me awhile to calm Kayla down. She was outraged, and I loved her for it, because she was outraged on my behalf, not out of a guilty conscience. Outraged at the cruelty of it, the calculated evil of it, and said several things about Julia that weren’t proper in a Ladies Lounge.

On the other hand, it might not have been the first time such words had been spoken in there!

Afterwards, both of us healed and cleansed, we hugged and truly wished each other the best in our lives and then returned to our men.

***

After my fantastic talk with Kayla, I did some further research. When I’d left the band, I’d been in such agony that I avoided the merest mention of All The Rage. I’d avoided all media on the off-chance there’d be something about them. So until recently, I’d never learned what had happened to All The Rage when Juan totally took over …

The day that I dropped the tambourine and walked out of the studio was the beginning of the end for Robert and Kayla. A few months later, Robert left in disgust as Juan’s steamroller continued. He’d made as much money as he could for his family, but I think the method of making the money–as a puppet for Juan–soured him enough to quit. Plus, by moving into session work, he could be closer to his family and especially his sister, to be with her in the time she had left. I’d like to think that somewhere in his list of complaints there was something about me. But as I’d told Kayla, I truly wished him well but doubted we’d ever see each other.

It had taken Kayla longer to quit for two reasons. I got some of the information from her, and some from industry articles. First, she wasn’t a threat to anybody–she didn’t snipe at Juan the way Robert had taken to doing openly after I’d left–and because she’d made the decision to find another group, but to ride All The Rage as long as it was working and keeping her visible in the industry. She had put her heart and soul into the band right from the start, but already it had become just a vehicle for making money by the time I was kicked out. And as I knew from our ‘girls night out’ in NYC, Kayla enjoyed the high life but rarely lived it. So she lived frugally on the road, kept her head down, stayed out of Juan’s way, and listened to demos until she found the band to jump to–which led her to her Grammy.

I wondered what music reporters would make of the All The Rage story, or one of those behind-the-scenes VH1 specials. Stage 1: Obscurity to Big Break. Stage 2: International touring. Stage 3: The Mike-becomes-Lisa episode. Stage 4: The Juan Band, still called All The Rage, now with Jeanne. Stage 5: The Juan Band with only Julia from All The Rage. Stage 6: The Juan band with session players. And finally, Stage 7, whatever happened to All The Rage?

With my departure from All The Rage, Juan was totally in the drivers’ seat. He managed two things. The first was that he managed to alienate the people he needed. Robert quit and was replaced. The band remained media darlings. While they didn’t headline every arena, they were at every major festival. Everybody loved them. Then Kayla managed to find her Tulsa boys to join, and was replaced.

All The Rage continued, with only Julia remaining of the original group. And then, out of the blue, Julia found out that–according to Juan–she couldn’t play as well as the band needed; she didn’t sing as well as the band needed; she wasn’t as sexy as the band needed …

Juan brought in a keyboard-player, a very accomplished session player, who signed a short-term contract. And Julia was relegated to the Linda McCartney position of playing a note here, a note there.

And tambourine in-between.

Then the news hit about the band’s ‘stylist’ being pregnant with Juan’s baby.

While all this was happening, Juan had managed to get everybody to fire Tina, claiming he could self-manage better. In a supposed ‘financial’ move, Julia was let go; the session whiz could play her notes and the tambourine wasn’t really in the mix anyway.

Gigs started drying up. The oldies, retro circuit seemed to be the only venues booking All The Rage. The replacements for Robert and Kayla quit and were replaced. Jeanne was fired and replaced. Even Julia’s replacement was fired and was replaced.

Finally, finally, the band expired and there were some major breach-of-contract lawsuits; thank goodness Kayla got out before all of that. In a lovely bit of karmic payback, Juan had made himself the leader, legally, of the musical group All The Rage–that is, the business affairs of the corporate entity–but the name was still legally mine. So when the lawsuits stripped him of everything, all sales of anything bearing the name All The Rage came to me. All The Rage ‘the band’ was sued by concert promoters and Juan had to pay; but All The Rage t-shirt sales still put money in my pocket because I owned the name and logo. Once I’d begun regrouping, coming out of my recluse period and starting my new life as Lisa, I’d paid a lawyer to do all the legal name-changing and was fully documented as a female named Lisa, even with my drivers’ license and passport. And our record label and songwriters’ union were aware of the change so any income due Mike came to my bank as Lisa.

Even though Juan had wiped me out of the mixes, I’d written the early hits and still got songwriting royalties every time they were played, anywhere in the world, and they were played–even more so as the platinum-machine version of the band crashed and burned. And of course, I still got royalties for all the music books, posters–and of course the t-shirts–of anything that said All The Rage.

Then Juan tried to recoup his losses with a stupid–stupid–stupid idea of smuggling dope for the Russian mob inside of tour equipment. He’s in a Russian jail, if he’s still alive.

And Julia …

The word on the street followed her; over time she became viewed as some sort of Dragon Lady who double-crossed her boyfriend and killed his band–killed the music. Nobody would touch her. And while the money had been coming in–especially with the extra income once they cut Tina loose as manager–Juan and Julia partied very heavily. They already had established drug connections–to get the stuff they used on me–but their personal drug use escalated. By the time Juan tossed her aside, her looks were fading, but due to heroin.

***

I’d stared at the photos on my screen, stunned. She was unrecognizable, as far as I was concerned. I had the hope that if I couldn’t recognize Julia in the scrawny, hollow-cheeked, dark empty eyes of the image–screaming and using both hands to flip off the photographer–then it couldn’t be Julia, right? It was some other Julia Knowles, or just some wasted junkie that came out of the door of the hotel where Julia was staying. Mistaken identity.

Right?

But there were other photos, backdated, showing the decline, and I felt sick to my stomach.

I’d never gotten involved with drugs–outside of the obvious, the pharmaceuticals that Julia fed me as ‘vitamins’–although they were always around. I never dealt with the ravages, the dependency, the …demons that drove somebody to destroy themselves with drugs.

And with all I’d learned, I had to admit that Julia had demons, demons that drove her to feminize me, to betray her band, her music, and her own body. What they were, I would never know. Her family had always been stiffly polite to me, at first when Julia and I moved in together because I wasn’t much of ‘a catch’ at the time; just a wannabe rock star. The other time I’d seen them, she was Juan’s girl, I was Lisa …Juan’s bitch, I supposed bitterly. How Juan and Julia must have laughed, but even Juan had no idea of the depths of Julia’s twisted soul.

In a way I could understand that she was never truly my love. My lover, yes, in the sense that we made love in a bed together but she was never in love with me. Never. That had been a hard truth to grasp but once I did, pain dissipated and healing began. I’d thought that Julia had, at least, been my friend. But she never had been, of course, but there was another factor.

Truth be told, I’d never had a real friend–I had a guitar. I had music. I had dreams. I was friendly with musicians I played with, and the closest to a friend would have to have been Robert. We’d gotten along great, playing together, before forming All The Rage. He’d warned me repeatedly about the path I walked with Julia, and I ignored him. Understandably, he pulled away, retreated, and then when he and Kayla learned about ‘my lifelong desire to be a girl’–never dreaming that it was Julia’s scheme–Robert’s last act of friendship was to allow me to have ‘my lifelong desire’. He kept his mouth shut, shook his head, and observed.

It wasn’t until I was close friends with Melanie that I realized I’d made a friend. I owed her so much; in a way, she’d saved me as much as Ted had. At first we’d talked about music, but that eventually became Girl Talk, and over time she became my guide, my mentor, and my shover-out-the-door when I was scared. Over the years we became tighter and tighter.

It was unusual to have any amount of time to make friends because I was so busy at the studio. I did strike up a potential new friendship with Suzie, the leader of The Weston Group, a phenomenal jazz group from New York that was drawn to our studio because of our sound. Suzie is also the most amazing, profoundly talented guitarist I have ever heard, bar none. She made me question ever going near mine again, and any pretensions I may have had that I was ‘God’s Gift to the Guitar’ were dispelled just listening to her warm-up.

And, to make me crazy, she’s an absolute sweetheart! We had three days recording together, with dinners afterwards, and just seemed to bond. After listening to the final mix, Suzie and I lost all track of time talking; Luke came to the studio with food and joined us. I think we’d still be talking music, but her group was headed to Sydney the next morning.

I hope we can get together again but we’ll keep in touch, I’m sure. I’ve been on the road so I know how intense and insane it can be. And I’m missing Mel, whose band got picked to open for the new Bon Jovi tour; I’m missing her fiercely. I have some non-musical friends, girls that I’ve met outside of the studio–like the yoga class that Mel had talked me into and then promptly dropped. But at least I developed a friendship with Kim, a realtor.

The more I thought about it, the more it came down to liking myself. In a way, Mike didn’t. That is, Mike never thought about it; all that drove him was the guitar, the song, the band, the dream …Perhaps that’s how he never noticed that Julia wasn’t really a friend, let alone a girlfriend. But I’m not Mike; I’m Lisa, and I like being Lisa–actually, I love being Lisa!–and I guess that maybe it radiates or something. Other people pick up on it. And yes, I know that a pretty girl gets more smiles than, well, just about anybody else, but it’s more than that. I’m happy, and I get happiness back. And so I have friends.

***

Thinking about differences between Mike and Lisa led me to, let’s call them ‘alternative tracks’. Like recording different instruments soloing on parallel tracks; which track you select changes the feeling of the song. When I was a recluse, with Mrs. Hernandez my only contact with the world, I ran through all sorts of bitter ‘What If?’ and ‘If Only’ scenarios. Of course, I had no knowledge of what had truly been done to me; it wasn’t until I ventured out into the world and bumped into Ted that I found out. There was a time of trying to view things with the new information, but that casual comment from the guy at the gas pump got me looking forward, not backward. And thank you again, Volvo-driving cute guy!

I decided to look at my past in a different way–Jenga. Yes, that silly-but-fun game of building towers with little wooden blocks until they collapse. Our studio green room has a bunch of ‘musician diversion kits’, as Ted calls them; games and puzzles and of course a video game console. I was playing Jenga with Brian; he was telling me about a session he’d just engineered and it was my turn but I was staring at the tower. He knew me enough that after ‘Lisa? It’s your turn?’ had no effect, he went off to have a sandwich.

The Jenga tower …if you take out this block, the tower stands. Take out that block, the tower falls. Take out this block and put it here and the tower is taller.

Mike was going to be a rock star. No ifs, ands, or maybes. He–it was easier to think of this in the third person–he had the talent and the drive, and the luck. So at some point, no matter what, Mike would be on the road, on tour, with a rock band, much as Melanie was right now.

The other absolute, I truly believed, was that Julia was equally driven, but by whatever dark and twisted thing is within her. As much as Mike would be on tour right now, no matter the path that led him there, Julia would be a junkie right now. It had to be so; it had to be. It was in the cards, in the stars, written in stone.

Mike had a girlfriend–or so he thought–so there were blocks that could be moved around. Remove the block where Julia joins the band–maybe Robert talked Mike out of it–but Julia would still be feminizing Mike. It’s possible that without the band, she would have joined another band and left Mike. In which case he continued on his way to be a rock star.

Remove the Juan block–the band doesn’t cancel; he never targets Mike–and some form of All The Rage continues on the road, Mike’s a rock star, blah-blah-blah …

Because at that point, I gave up on the exercise. Maybe it was because I’d been a rock star, but what I was doing now, musically, was so much more fulfilling. Not just because of winning Grammys; all alone in the studio listening to playback, it was better. I thought of the old saying, ‘I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich. Rich is better.’

Everything is better! I am happy with the person I am, the human being I’ve become. I love being a woman; I love being Lisa and I’m in love with a wonderful guy who loves me and why on earth would I spend even a minute more doing mental Jenga towers of ‘What If?’ when there was so much life to be lived?

***

That night at the hotel restaurant, I was a pretty and happy and contented girl. Successful, too. As I’d told Kayla and long ago accepted to myself, however I’d gotten here, I was grateful. Agony along the way, yeah, but now such happiness. And just thinking about how I felt made me think of Luke and smile. I was so lucky!

A few minutes later, I smiled even wider at seeing Luke coming through the crowd, Ted at his side. But I noticed that they were a little subdued. Luke and I kissed briefly and then there was an unusual, awkward moment between the three of us, broken by the hostess arriving.

“Your table is ready,” she beamed. “Please follow–”

Ted held a hand up. “Could you just give us a moment? We may have …we might have to change our plans.”

“Certainly, sir,” she smiled graciously, untroubled. “I’ll watch for when you’re ready.”

We watched her go and then they turned back to me. Looking between their uncomfortable faces, it was obvious that there was something that neither wanted to tell me about, and neither wanted to be the one to do it.

Finally Ted cleared his throat.

“Lisa, there’s something you need to know …” He ground to a halt, looking miserable.

“Geez, Ted,” I forced a chuckle. “Whatever you want to say, you can say in front of Luke!” I looked at my love, but he looked so sad.

Oh, God! I began to worry. What could be troubling Luke so much?

Ted squirmed and began, “And, uh …I have to be the one to tell you this. Uh …It’s about Julia …”

Reluctantly, but with a grim sense of purpose, Ted began telling me what he’d learned. Apparently he’d confided to Luke, who now quietly held my hand as Ted told the story.

Just an hour before, the news had just reported that Julia’s body had been found in an alley in Detroit. She’d been trying to buy some heroin and something had gone wrong. It wasn’t known what triggered it, but her throat had been slashed and she was lying in filth.

I was unable to process the information. I stared and my mouth tried to work but words wouldn’t come. Having dinner was out of the question, of course. Luke gently put his hand on my shoulder, the back of my neck.

“Lisa, honey?” he asked softly, worried.

“I’m …” I shook my head. “Obviously, I’m stunned. I’m …” My mind sputtered. “I’m things that begin with the letter S. Shocked, staggered, sickened, saddened, and so, so sorry …” I shook my head again. “I can’t process this all right now.”

“I’ll take you home,” Luke said.

“I love you, Luke,” I blurted, startling myself. “I love you so much …” I smiled and sniffed; tears were stinging. “I know this is hard for you; just …thank you for being there for me.”

“I always will be,” he smiled, so sweetly.

I stood and we hugged. Luke hugged tighter when the first shake hit me; two more and I controlled myself, nodded, kissed his cheek, and we separated. I looked at Ted, feeling somehow embarrassed by my shakes, but then I impulsively hugged him.

Close to his ear, I said, “Thank you for telling me the news. You’re right; it had to be you. Because you saved me five years ago. Bless you, Ted.” I kissed the back of his head. “See you in the morning.”

We went to get Luke’s car–and were swarmed with paparazzi. Over the years I’d gotten used to them being around but I was pretty small potatoes so they’d never really bothered with me. That night, unknown to me, a movie starlet who was in the newest Bourne blockbuster was supposed to be dining with another starlet and the paparazzi had gathered, drooling, ready for some salacious lesbian gossip. The ‘other starlet’ turned out to be the starlet’s sister from Omaha, dying of leukemia. If there was one thing the paparazzi was not interested in, it was a real human interest story.

They were disgusted, about to either hit the bar or troll the Strip for stories, when somebody had spotted me in the restaurant. They always had minute-by-minute newsfeeds so they had just heard about Julia. They saw me …and it was Feeding Time.

The lights, microphones, and cameras were all turned on Luke and I and the valet, who smiled and gave his name only to be rudely shoved aside by a burly TMZ reporter. The questions–all of them yelled–were all over the place.

“Lisa, can you tell us what you know about Julia’s death?”

“Lisa, what about the stories she and Juan drugged you?”

“Lisa, are you still a boy?”

And so on. I turned to Luke. “God, I’m so sorry, Luke.”

He smiled sadly. “They should leave you alone. But they won’t; we both know that. But please know, I’m here for you. Always. I love you, Lisa.”

And then, in front of the cameras, Luke kissed me. I was stunned, and I was blessed, and I was grateful.

I opened my eyes to see his smile.

Luke’s smile was warm and supportive. “You can do this. Go ahead.”

I was stunned by his so-public declaration of love and support under the circumstances. Over the past few years any media reference to me had been about my recent accomplishments, with only the occasional footnote about how I came to be Lisa. It was only in direct connection with All The Rage that anybody bothered with the details. Now, with the death of Julia and the paparazzi thirsting for scandal, it was all front page stuff again. Anyone associated with me would be dragged into the sex change story.

And yet Luke stood by me. He squeezed my hand as he turned me to face the paparazzi.

They were still shouting but I held up a hand, looking them in their cameras until they quieted.

“I will make my statement, and then we are going home and no further questions. Understood?”

Since I wasn’t in the talent stream that needed the paparazzi, I didn’t have to court them. I was in the driver’s seat for a moment. They murmured agreements, keeping the cameras on me.

What could I say about Julia? That she betrayed me and everything I loved?

That she ultimately betrayed herself?

I cleared my throat.

“Like all of you, I’ve only just learned of the tragic death of Julia Knowles. And it is tragic; I’m not using the term lightly. She was a beautiful and talented musician, and the loss of her music is the world’s loss. Who knows what she might have been capable of, had she gone on as a mature artist.”

I cleared my throat again.

“There was a time when Julia was one of the great loves of my life. Things change, people change. But she always remained in my thoughts and was instrumental in …”

I cleared my throat once more, to cover my hesitation. Suddenly I realized what I was going to say, what I was going to declare. What had to be said. It wasn’t the truth, but it was right.

“Julia and I were so close for so long that she recognized the female within me. It was only through her encouragement that I could become, fully, the person I am. The tragedy is that Julia herself did not get the opportunity to fully become the person she could be.”

I frowned. How far to go into it?

“There are all sorts of rumors and …facts …” I used air quotes. “…about what happened to me in my band All The Rage.” There; I’d said ‘my’ band. “I can assure you–as anybody reasonable can–that they can’t all be true–despite what you believe about the world of rock ‘n roll!”

That got chuckles, a good sign. I gave a weak smile.

“Music is strong and powerful. Sometimes people are attracted to that power and forget about the music. I think, without truly knowing, that Julia got distracted along the way. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for her, but our lives went in different directions.”

I paused and swallowed.

“I’d just like people to think of Julia in the first year or two of All The Rage. Listen to her singing; listen to her playing. Listen to the life in her, and remember that instead of the circumstances of her death.”

A final pause.

“I’m going to go home now and cry for my lost friend. Thank you.”

I stood, resolute and silent, until the camera lights turned off, microphones were holstered, and the mob moved away. Then I gratefully folded myself under Luke’s waiting arm and put my arms around him. I was starting to shake again. Instead of walking, he stood there and held me, keeping me centered.

Finally, I smiled sadly, leaned up and kissed the lips of this wonderful man I love, and we went home.

The End