Crazy in Love (17 page)

An aging man with a pot belly waved energetically from
the crowd, crying, “Hi ya, kids! It’s great to be here!”

“I’d no idea he was so
old
!” I whispered to Saul.

“I know,” he agreed. “He sounds so young and
enthusiastic on the radio. I thought he was, like, twenty
!”

“Anyway,” Al, who apparently had no last name, went
on, “we’ll be getting started in just a few minutes. I’d like
to ask two things of each of you. One, please don’t leave the band room. We don’t want any of you getting lost just when
it’s time for you to go on. And two, please keep it down
while someone is performing onstage. Sound has a way of
traveling really well whenever you don’t want it to. We
don’t want the audience to be distracted.

“Now, I’m going to call your names in the order you’ll be going on. Please listen carefully, because we want to make sure things keep moving along out there. The last thing we
need tonight is a restless audience. We’re going to try to
make this as professional as possible, and we know you’ll
all do your very best to help us out.

“Okay. The first ones to go will be Charlie MacDougal
and Ellen Rubin...
.”

Saul and I were on fourth. “That’s good,” he assured me.
“That way the audience will be warmed up, but they won’t
be tired or bored yet.”

“I just hope we can hear the other people,” I said,
suddenly worried about our competitors. Even though I was
confident that our song was terrific, I had no idea what we
would be competing against.

“Let’s go stand over by the door. That way we should be able to hear what’s going on onstage. They’re using
microphones, aren’t they?”

“Microphones?” I repeated. “I—I’ve never used a microphone before.”

“Nothing to it. You’ll see.”

I wanted to respond, but my throat was so dry that no
words would come out. I wondered how
all those celebrities feel while they’re
backstage, waiting to go on TV. If this was so difficult, how could anybody ever survive in Hollywood?

At a couple of minutes after eight o’clock, Rusty O’Shea
burst out onto the stage, suddenly bubbling over with
energy and personality. It was as if he was transformed by
being the center of attention.

“Good evening, folks, and welcome to WROX’s First
Annual Songwriting Contest, here in the wonderful city of
New York! As you probably know, this whole thing was put
together by WROX, New York’s leading rock station.
Remember, WROX is the radio station that really rocks!
I’m Rusty O’Shea, and I’ll be your host for tonight. Now
before we get started, I’d like to say ...”

“I hope he doesn’t go on for much longer,” Saul said softly. “It looks as if we may be losing Charlie and Ellen
here.”

I glanced over at the first two contestants, who were standing at the front of the informal little line we had all made near the door. It was true; Charlie looked as if he were
about to pass out, and Ellen had twisted a pink tissue into
shreds.

“You’re right,” I said. “I hope Ellen isn’t planning to
play the piano. Her fingers would probably slip right off the
keys.”

Seeing how nervous those two were managed to make me
feel a little better. After all, we were all in this together, and somehow we would all get through it. And Saul was right:
whether we won or not, we should try to have fun.

“And so here are our first contestants,” called Rusty’s
familiar voice, “Charlie MacDougal and Ellen Rubin. Let’s
give Charlie and Ellen a warm welcome!”

Charlie and Ellen shuffled onto the stage as if they were
being sent into battle. Never before had I seen two more
unhappy-looking people. I leaned forward expectantly,
anxious to hear their song.

After a smattering of applause and the sound of a piano
bench screeching across a wooden floor, there came a lovely
introduction. Their song had the same kind of beat as ours,
and I glanced at Saul nervously.

“It sounds like our song.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he assured me. “Ours is better.”

Actually, he was right. Once they got going, I’d to
agree that our song
was
better. Theirs had a good beat, but
the words and even the melody just didn’t deliver. It was a
disappointment, and audience reception was cool.

“No competition,” Saul whispered, even though he
applauded politely along with the invisible audience lurking
beyond the dark maroon velvet curtains that kept us all
tucked away out of sight.

“Thank you, Charlie and Ellen,” Rusty O’Shea said
when the two of them slunk back to where we were all waiting. Ellen was red-faced and Charlie still looked as if he
were about to pass out. “And now, three sophomores are
going to do their song, ‘Red, Yellow, Pink.’ Let’s hear it for
Todd Williams, Tony Corona, and Jeff Nash.”

A strange thing about Todd, Tony, and Jeff. On the surface, they looked like three ordinary, perfectly nice guys. They strutted out onto stage with more confidence than the first two, but then, again, that could hardly be considered difficult. They calmly plugged in their electric guitars,
and Tony sat down behind the drum set that had been placed
on the stage. The surprise came when they started in on their song.

It was some sort of avant garde creation, I suppose. To
the rest of us, it sounded like noise. The whole thing
consisted of loud, discordant chords and Todd and Jeff
calling out the names of colors at the tops of their lungs:
“Red! Yellow! Pink! Puce!”

“Puce?”
Saul and I repeated simultaneously. Al shushed
us, but only someone who was bionic could have heard us
over the noise of the electric guitars.

The song seemed to go on forever. Even Rusty O’Shea
began to look distressed. When it was finally over, there
was a burst of cheering from the back of the auditorium. All
female voices. The three of them had apparently managed
to build up quite a following.

“Thank you, boys,” Rusty said diplomatically once he
was back onstage again. “Our third contestant is Lisa
Evans. Lisa is a junior....”

“Hey, where
is
she?” I asked, looking around. “I
know
her, and she’s not here. Where did she go?”

Al was preoccupied with the same question. He raced
around the band room, throwing open the doors of the tiny practice rooms, searching the storerooms that housed the
tubas and the music stands. He even took a quick run
through the halls surrounding the auditorium. No Lisa.

“I guess she just couldn’t take the pressure of show biz,”
someone in line behind me commented. “Too bad. I heard
her doing her song, and it was really nice.”

After Al had communicated the state of things to Rusty
O’Shea via hand signals from the wings, he came running
over to us.

“Okay, guys. That means you two are on next.”

“Us?” I croaked.

He glanced at his clipboard and frowned. “You’re Sallie
and Saul, right?”

“Yeah, that’s us,” Saul answered for me. “Go ahead and
announce us. We’re ready.”

Al gave Rusty the high sign, and I became totally numb.
All I remember is Saul pushing me onstage. He had a big smile on his face, and I tried to copy his every move. At first all I could see was lights. But then my eyes adjusted to the glare, and I began to see faces. None that I could
recognize, just blurry little collections of eyes and noses. I
stood frozen in front of the microphone. My mind went
blank.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” When I heard the unexpected sound of Saul’s voice, I suddenly snapped back into the reality of what was happening. I glanced over at him, and saw that he was standing calmly in front of his microphone, beaming at the crowd, looking as relaxed as if
he were standing in my living room.

“My name is Saul, and this is my partner, Sallie.
Actually, I’m taking too much credit. Sallie here is really
the brains of this outfit. I’m really
her
partner.”

The crowd was warming up to him; I could feel it. I was
amazed. No one else had said a word to the audience,
except for Rusty O’Shea, of course. And here Saul was
acting as if he had the world on a string.

“Tonight we’d like to do a song we wrote together. It was
inspired by a very special lady, who is a friend of mine and a
friend of Sallie’s. I’m pretty sure she’s out in the audience tonight, and if she is, I’d like to dedicate this song to her.”

He strummed the opening chords of “If That Someone
Else Is You,” and I automatically joined in. We had run
through that song so many times that it was second nature
by then. I think my voice sounded a little shaky at first, but it wasn’t long before I got caught up in singing. Before we
had finished the first stanza, I realized that I was having the
time of my life.

“Or if when she looks into my eyes, she doesn’t quite see
me,” I sang, my voice sounding clearer and surer than ever before. It was a pretty song, and I could feel the audience
responding to it. It was magic, what was happening out
there. Never before had I
experienced anything quite like it.

When we finished, there was a split second of total
silence. I held my breath, not knowing what to expect. But
what followed was thunderous applause and cheering.
Cheering! And the voices that were raised in admiration
were not even those of Rachel or Jenny or anybody else that
I recognized. It was all sincere!

I could have stood on that stage bowing and smiling from ear to ear all night. But Saul had to drag me off, just as he
had had to drag me
OB
.

“See?” he teased once we were offstage. “I told you I’d
have to pull you off that stage!”

“I want to sing more!” I cried. “Don’t make me go
backstage!”

“Just listen to that applause!” Saul insisted. “I think
we’ve already managed to please that crowd. Even Rusty
can’t get a word in.”

It was true. We brought down the house. The next
contestant, a sophomore named Ralph, looked at us
mournfully as he waited for the applause to stop so he
could go on.

“You guys sure are a hard act to follow!” he exclaimed.
Saul just smiled, but I laughed gleefully.

“They loved it! They loved it!” I kept saying over and
over again. “Oh, Saul, do you think we’ll win?”

“Let’s go outside, Sallie. I think we could both use some
air.”

Once we were safely outside, behind the school, Saul
leaned against the wall and grinned at me. “Well, they
loved us in New York!” he cried, and we hugged each other
and jumped up and down and squealed, all at once.

“Hey, you guys want to keep it down?” an annoyed
voice called to us. “We don’t want the audience to hear all
this commotion.”

I looked around and saw a boy about our age standing in
the doorway. “Sorry,” I said. “We didn’t think anybody
would be able to hear us from out here.”

“That’s okay. Just cool it, all right?” He walked over and peered at us in the dim light from a distant streetlight. “Hey,
you two are the ones who just went on, aren’t you? Your
song was terrific! I really liked it. Especially that part at the end of each stanza, where you’d pause, and then go on,
‘Then it’s okay.’”

“I thought of putting that pause in,” I said proudly.
“
I’m
glad you liked it. Are you entering the contest? Because if
you are, you’d better go inside before Al discovers that
you’re missing.”

He just laughed. “No. I work for the radio station. I do
all the dirty work. Moving the equipment, things like that.
My name is Nick.”

“Hi, Nick. I’m Sallie, and this is Saul.”

“I know. I saw your entire performance, and it was great.
Where’d you guys learn to play guitar like that?”

“Oh, just from fooling around with it.” I blushed. “It’s
really quite simple.”

“Really? I’d love to learn.”

“Maybe Sallie will give you a few lessons,” Saul
suggested lightly,

“Saul!” I scolded him, hoping Nick couldn’t hear me.

“So you work for the station,” Saul went on. “That
sounds interesting.”

“Actually, I just work part-time. A couple of evenings a
week. My father works there, and whenever they need
someone to do odd jobs, they call me. It’s kind of fun.”

“And what do you do the rest of the time?” I asked.

“I’m a senior at the Bronx High School of Science.”

“Excuse me,” Saul interrupted, “if you don’t mind,
Sallie, I think I’m going to duck into the auditorium and see
if I can find Rachel. I want to find out how she liked our
performance.”