Emmy And Me

I stayed with Emmy backstage during the opening set, but left to go find my seat when the band started to get ready to go on. I had no idea how Emmy was going to address the elephant in the stadium, and I wanted to see it from a fan’s perspective in the audience.

Finding my seat, I felt a stab of pain in my heart at the pair of empty seats waiting for me. Angela always loved The Downfall’s concerts more than I did, and there was her seat waiting for her. I closed my eyes for a moment, took a deep calming breath, and sat down, leaving the empty seat closer to the centerline of the stadium- the side she would have gotten if she’d been there with me. Silly, I know, but I was making a conscious decision to honor Angela’s memory in whatever small ways I could.

When the house lights dimmed for The Downfall, all chatter around me stopped. Apparently everybody else there in Marlins Park was just as curious as to what was going to happen as I was.

Emmy appeared, walking slowly with the help of one of the roadies to the stool set up just a bit off center stage. She sat down, adjusted the microphone, looked out over the thirty-seven thousand fans in attendance, and finally spoke, breaking the complete silence. I’d never been anywhere with that many people holding their breath before, and the utter lack of noise from the immense crowd was remarkable.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” Emmy began, looking out into the now dark stadium. “I am certain you have all heard what happened after our last concert in Atlanta. I do not wish to revisit those memories, so all I will say is that killers targeted my unborn baby, as well as that of my wife, Angela. She lost her life, and we lost both babies- mine and hers.”

Taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sort of sigh, she continued. “I cannot express to you what a deep, personal tragedy it has been for me, and I am the lucky one- I survived the attack. My wife and our two babies did not.” Emmy paused to look out into the darkened stands before continuing. “But, I am still alive. It is me, my voice and my legacy that they wished to murder. They, whoever they were, did murder my future. But they did not murder my present. I am here, in front of you tonight, to continue to speak my truths, to continue to do whatever it was that made these people hate me so.”

After another long look out into the audience, Emmy said, “I do not know exactly why they attacked my family, but I can only guess that it is to silence my voice. To silence me. And that is why I am here in Miami tonight. My doctors said that I should be home, resting, recovering from what was done to me. But I will not do that. Going home, hiding- that would silence me just as surely as if I had been murdered, too.”

Rising up off the stool, Emmy took the microphone from its stand and moved to the front of the stage, albeit a bit slowly.

“I will not be silenced. I will continue to sing. I will continue to speak. No matter what it costs me, I. Will. Not. Be. Silenced.”

Applause started slowly, people unsure whether to clap or not, but soon it filled the stadium. Emmy waited patiently for the noise to die down before speaking again.

“I am here to sing my songs and play my music in defiance of those who hate it, those who want me to stop. I am here tonight to give them the loudest message that I possibly can- I can never be bullied. I am too strong of heart, too strong of spirit to ever give in. I am here tonight to give them a giant ‘fuck you’. So this is my middle finger raised in salute to those who would wish to see me and my family dead!” Emmy said, raising her hand in the classic one-finger gesture known around the world.

This time the audience wasn’t hesitant about cheering, and the noise was deafening. While the crowd whistled, clapped and hollered for Emmy, she took her stool again and her guitar tech brought out her clear blue acrylic guitar, but Emmy just sat there on her stool, sort of leaning against the guitar in her lap. After a while Emmy waved for everybody to calm down. Once it was quiet, she said, “You all know our rules- we always work up a new playlist for each show- we have never done the same show twice. Today I found myself choosing sad songs to play, but when I realized what I was doing I made myself stop. My Angela would not want me to wallow in misery- she was not that kind of person. So tonight, the songs I picked are in honor of her memory. Not for what I have lost, but for what I had with her. So tonight will not be an elegy. It will be a celebration. I would like you all to take a moment to think of those you love most in this world. Hold them in your heart, treasure every moment you have together, and let them know you care.”

With that, she started picking a pretty mid-tempo melody with a lot of slide and bending of the notes- very bluesy, but not slow and sad. Once the guitar line was established Emmy leaned into the microphone and began to sing. Singing had never been part of any of the show intros in the past, so this was a departure from the band’s self-imposed norms in a way. In another way, though, it wasn’t. Emmy didn’t sing any recognizable words- she used her voice as an instrument, a melodic counterpoint to her guitar.

Her voice, throaty and rich, carried a level of emotion that added to the guitar melody rather than competing with it, and the two separate but complimentary melodies played back and forth, weaving a tapestry of feelings.

“Holy shit,” breathed the guy sitting to my right. When I looked over at him, he turned to me and said, “I play guitar in a local band. I’ve been playing for longer than Emmy’s been alive, you know? But to improvise a guitar line that good? And a non-verbal vocal line at the same time? That’s just inhuman. She isn’t just feeling the music flowing out of her- she is the music!”

“She is very talented,” I agreed.

He was going to make some sort of comeback on my comment, but his eye grew wide when he recognized me. “Holy shit! You’re her! You’re Emmy’s first wife, right? The one in the video? That was you?”

I just nodded, knowing that video was going to haunt me wherever I went for a very long time.

“You were awesome! Fuck those assholes! I’m so sorry for you guys’ loss- everything I’ve read says that Angela was a really wonderful person,” he said in a sort of verbal diarrhea. “Emmy being up there tonight- that takes some kind of courage, you know? I can’t even imagine what it must be like for you two.”

“Hard,” I said. “Very, very hard.”

He just nodded at that, patting my shoulder in sympathy, before turning back to watch as Lee came out and joined Emmy onstage.

The first real song of the night was ‘Shards’ from their third album (or fourth, depending on if you count their Jay Cool Blues thing). It struck me as an odd choice, but heck, I didn’t pick them.

True to Emmy’s word, the concert didn’t wander into sad territory really at all. Jackson did do most of the patter between songs, and he kept it light with no mention of recent events. He did mention Emmy’s confinement to her stool, saying that she wasn’t fully recovered yet, but that was it.

The real shocker to me was the final song of the night.

“I see trees of green, and red roses, too,” Emmy sang, her voice clear and warm.

Emmy had performed Louis Armstrong’s ‘What A Wonderful World’ before, on the boat in Alaska, but the band had never played it in concert before and that night in Miami seemed like the least likely place ever, but there it was. Lee kept the drums very soft and subtle, while Jackson played a mellow, supple bass line. The rest of the touring band kept silent, letting the three main members of the band shine in a painfully tender moment.

The entire stadium was absolutely hushed, letting Emmy’s voice soar as she sang, “They’re really saying, ‘I love you’.” With the final clear, strong, “I think to myself, what a wonderful world,” all thirty-seven thousand of us in the audience let out the breath that we hadn’t realized we were holding.

There was a long moment of silence, since nobody really had any idea how to feel, but then somebody started clapping, and somebody else cheered, and the floodgates burst open, filling that ball park with thunderous applause.

Wiping his eyes, the guy next to me leaned over to say, “That was incredible!” He glanced past me and noticed the empty seat next to me. “Oh, shit,” he said. “That was her seat, wasn’t it? Angela’s?”

“It would have been,” I said. “She loved The Downfall.”

He had no response to that, so he looked away awkwardly as I got up to go backstage. Just as I stood up, though, Emmy stepped up to the microphone after everybody had taken their normal bows.

“Thank you, Miami, for helping me celebrate life. These few hours with you have helped my soul. Thank you very much,” she said, wiping a tear from her own eye. “You do not know how much this has meant to me. I can never thank you enough.” With that, she took her final bow, before a roadie helped her walk offstage.

Making my way back to the dressing room, Stephanie spotted me and waved her iPad in my direction to get my attention.

Without any preamble, she said, “That was perfect. I was really worried it was gonna be a train wreck, but that was just the opposite. And you know what?” she asked, holding up the iPad again. “Over twenty-two million people watched the live stream. Twenty-two million, Leah. We usually get a million, million and a half viewers, nothing close to this.”

“And? What does that mean?” I asked. “The stream is free- we don’t make any money off it.”

“No- actually, the hosting and whatever comes out of the budget, so this is gonna cost us quite a bit more than usual,” Stephanie agreed. “But what it means is that a whole lot of viewers watched it that don’t usually, and the falloff rate was minimal. That means they pretty much all watched to the very end. That’s freaking unheard-of.”

“O.K., now you’re going to tell me what that means for the band,” I suggested.

“It means that people are… well, they were drawn in because of the news, right? But they stuck around because of the performance. As much as I hate to say it because it makes me sound like a completely callous bitch, this is public interest you just can’t buy,” Stephanie said.

I was about to agree that she did sound like a callous bitch, but she held her hand up to stop me.

“No, I’m not talking about profit for the band,” she said, halting my train of thought. “Emmy has been wanting to tell the world about the plight of her people for freaking ever. That’s the reason you even suggested starting a band to her, right? Well, the world’s eyes are on her now. With that performance she just put on in front of twenty-two million people, everyone is going to be talking about how she’s rising above personal tragedy, you know? I’m not saying that she should hold her Night Children press conference right now, but sooner rather than later would be a really good idea,” Stephanie finished.

“Yeah, not right now,” I said, thinking about what needed to happen in the near future. “But soon, for sure.”

“Don’t wait too long. The public has a very short attention span,” Stephanie warned.

When I found Emmy resting in the dressing room she looked exhausted and in pain.

“Oh, babe,” I said, stroking her still-sweaty forehead. “Don’t hurt yourself just to prove a point.”

“That is not it,” she said with a weak smile. “I simply forgot myself while on the stage. I truly did lose myself in the music and in the performance.”

“It was an amazing performance,” I told her. “And I did notice that you skipped ‘Killer In The Dark’ and ‘Born To Die’.”

“I could not play those songs tonight,” she admitted. “I think it will be a while before I am able to sing them again.”

I didn’t have a good response for that, so I just wrapped her up in my arms and held her tightly. It took me a while, but eventually I realized that she was crying onto my shoulder in that silent sobbing of hers that I hadn’t seen in so very long.

“Oh, baby,” I murmured. “We’ll get through this somehow. We’ll get through this.”

“I loved her so much, Leah,” Emmy said, wiping her tears on my shirt. “She did not deserve it.”

“No, she didn’t deserve it,” I agreed. “She only ever deserved to be loved and cherished. And that’s what we did, Em. We loved and cherished her, more than anybody else could have. She was our beautiful, loving wife, and we loved her.” My own tears were flowing freely by this point, but I was focused on Emmy’s misery, trying to be there for her. “The time we had with her was perfect- that’s what we need to remember. Only think of the good.”

“I know,” Emmy admitted, her voice muffled. “But it is so very hard.”

“It is,” I agreed. “It really is.”

Back in our suite at the hotel I bathed Emmy, dried her off, and gently tucked her into bed. She was almost more like a rag doll than a real person, so very limp and unable to care for herself. Once in bed with the lights off, I held her as she cried herself to sleep.

I woke up early and put in a couple of hours’ time in the hotel’s halfway decent gym first thing in the morning. I needed that physical release. Losing myself in the endorphins the way Emmy had in her show the night before, I forgot all about the world as a sweated my way through a short but intense workout. It helped for a while, but the world came back to me after I was done.

Back upstairs I let Emmy continue to sleep as I readied myself for the day. Annoyed by the lack of any sort of surface I could use as a desk, I plowed through my emails and messages with my laptop on top of my lap, which was uncomfortable and irritating, but the best I could do.

I had quite a few emails to respond to that I’d simply been ignoring for the last couple of days, since answering them had been anything but urgent. Most of those I continued to ignore. At some point I’d have to deal with them, but not just then.

I responded to the new emails in order of importance, keeping them short and to the point. I wasn’t in any sort of mood to chat with anybody, after all. Once that was done, I looked through my many, many texts.

I popped in to the Saturday Drive group chat and said that Emmy and I were heartbroken and in a lot of pain, but we were doing what we could. I’d see them all in maybe a month, I said, when we get back to Los Angeles.

Scrolling through the list of unopened texts, a couple caught my eye. Mr Han from Singapore had sent one that simply said, “We need to talk. Let me know where I can meet you.”

“I’m traveling with the band. It will be a month before I will be back in LA”. I shot back, getting an almost instant response.

“I will come to you. Your next tour stop is Houston in a week. I will be there. What hotel will you be using?” he sent back.

Surprised, I said, “I don’t know. I’ll find out and let you know later today”.

“See you in a week.” he sent, leaving it at that.

Bemused and wondering what had lit his hair on fire that he had to drop everything and come to talk in person, I mentally shrugged and figured he was probably going to dress me down for my failure to anticipate the attack or something. I mean, I knew what I did wrong and having a guy like him yell at me for it wasn’t going to be fun, but if he had anything constructive to say, I was open to it.

There was a WhatsApp message from Colonel Bridger, and I paused a moment before clicking on it. I certainly didn’t want to receive a ration of shit from him, too, but it’s not as if I could really ignore him, either. I wanted to keep on his good side, after all.

“I’m terribly sorry to hear about your lovely wife’s murder. From our brief meetings she seemed to be a truly special lady.”, he began. "When you have some time to talk privately, please give me a ring.”

Mysterious, sure, but he probably was still going to berate me for letting my guard down, so I just responded with a quick thumbs-up emoji.

The third unusual text was from a number I didn’t recognize, so I almost deleted it. I only stopped when I read the little text preview and saw “This is my American phone number…” It turned out to be from Katrina Suárez, the girl I’d gone snorkeling with in Cartagena. “I went to the downfall show last nite”, she texted. “I dint know what to expect, but it was amazing and heartbreaking. Are you in Miami? Want to meet up?”

I mentally debated for a minute or two, then finally sent, “Yeah, we’re staying at the Bayfront Marriott. Want to have lunch?” I figured that Emmy might be amused and distracted for a little while with meeting the girl I’d told her about.

Almost immediately she sent back, “Sounds great! What time?”

We set up a time, and said we see each other then. ‘It’ll probably be a lot more pleasant meeting than with Mr Han or Colonel Bridger,’ I thought to myself.