FAME and GLORY (2 page)

She was just 20 years old when Jake met her, but she appeared much closer to his age than the ten years between them would make it seem.  She had a worldliness about her that belied her youth, while retaining the sense of fun she was apparently born possessing.  She could talk knowledgeably about the news, the entertainment world, sports, cars, and the latest thing to hit the world of Xbox.  She was a healer in World of Warcraft, a dealer of blackjack, and a feel good story that simply toppled Jake Evans' world.  Ten minutes after they met, he knew that he wouldn't want to say good night.  A half hour after they met, he felt like he could take on the world in her defense if the need arose.  An hour after they met, he knew that someday, he would ask her to be his wife.  Forget about the doe-eyed Sandra Marseille - Brandee Alton had supplanted her place in Jake's heart.

As Friday night became Saturday morning at The Bay Saloon, Jake fulfilled his duties as the designated driver.  Rather than doing it alone though, he had Brandee perched on the console of his white Dodge Charger as he took the weekend revelers home.  The car had been legally full when the guys had gone out that night, but he wasn't about to let Brandee out of his sight as he made his rounds home.

Finally, alone at long last, Jake and Brandee drove through the night across town toward her home in the Lawndale section of Fortuna.  Jake had been raised in the northwest corner of Fortuna, in a poorer neighborhood than the area Brandee called home.  She had been raised in Las Vegas but now lived in the same home her grandparents had lived in years ago.  Jake was to learn later that her grandmother was in a local nursing home with Alzheimer’s and her grandfather had passed away in a logging accident some years earlier.  He put aside any misgivings he may have had about the different socio-economic strata in which they traveled.  He relaxed in the driver's seat as he listened to Brandee sing quietly with the radio, her pure soprano voice as sweet as the nectar from a honeycomb.

Ever the gentleman, Jake walked Brandee to her door that night but didn't go inside.  They shared their first soft kiss under the moonlight on her front porch at 771 Maxwell Street.  They shared their second, third, and fourth kisses there too before Jake tore himself away and drove off, but only after watching the lights go off in her living room.  Stone cold sober from an alcoholic standpoint, but drunk beyond belief from feeling her warm, pliant body against his, Jake took his time going home.  The snick, snick, snick of the windshield wipers were going way too slow to match the racing of his heart.  This was a night that he felt should never end.

***

It was the night they met that Jake was remembering as he guided the Sprinter through Forest Glen on its journey east.  He was glad that they were getting most of the treacherous portion of Highway 36 out of the way before Brandee awakened.  She was a delightful traveling companion, but she occasionally suffered from bouts of motion sickness in the car.  Her tiny whimpers of discomfort broke his heart, one of the reasons that he had suggested that they leave just as dawn was breaking over the mountains to the east.  Jake would rather drive into the sun (that is, when the rain let up) than have Brandee that uncomfortable.  The trip today was only 184 miles.  They would make it in less than 4 hours.  Brandee would have plenty of time to relax before she would need to be at her best at 7:30 that evening.

Just as the road straightened a bit, Brandee woke with a start.  She looked at her husband and took his right hand.  The previous 3 years had taught her that, though he was right-handed, Jake was perfectly willing to drive with his left hand if she wanted to hold his right hand.  She squeezed his hand a little and said,

"Good morning, honey."

Jake gave her hand a return squeeze and said, quietly, "Good morning, songbird.  How's my girl?'

“I'm good I guess.  My neck is a little stiff though.  This road isn't the most conducive thing to a nap in the car, is it?"

He replied, "No it isn't, baby.  We'll be in Red Bluff pretty soon though. We'll stop there. That will give you a chance to get out and stretch your legs and move around a little."

She laughed.  It was the sparkling laugh that had so intrigued Jake on the night that they had first met.  It reminded him of crystal wind chimes.  He marveled that even her laugh had a melodic quality.  When she was really amused, like now, it rang out clear and true.

"We aren't also stopping so you can get a venti quad shot caramel macchiato with extra foam and double whip, are we?" she said.  She knew his weakness for that tasty concoction from Starbucks all too well.

He feigned ignorance, widening his eyes that she would even think that he might have his own desires in mind on such a day as this.

"M' lady, please.  You know that I live only to serve you.  Your every impulse is my life’s command."

This was Brandee's cue to put her finger in her mouth, feigning illness at the corny phrase that he used from time to time.  Though he was a doting husband, he was certainly not without a will of his own.  The couple clashed at times and their arguments could get quite loud.  Brandee had grown up in a somewhat tumultuous household and wasn't hesitant to speak her mind at a relatively high volume.  Jake hated conflict, but he had learned that backing down from Brandee would create a tsunami that would overwhelm his own wants and needs.  So fight they did, but making up they did even better. Jake pressed down a little harder on the accelerator.  They had miles to go, and a big night ahead.

***

Brandee was born Brandee Alexander on December 10, 1986 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  She was born just a couple of weeks before the New Year, inspiring her father, Alan, to nickname her "tax break".  Brandee's mom Debra used to work on stage as a dancer.  For the most part, Debra's career was in the casinos and nightclubs that bordered Vegas' famed Strip, but occasionally she would land a spot on one of the big stages on the glittery path that Las Vegas is so known for.  Most of the people that she worked behind on stage were second and third line singers that no one ever heard about.  Debra remembered fondly, though, her rare opportunities under the bright lights dancing behind the likes of Cher, Dolly Parton, Tony Orlando, and Dawn.

Debra Alexander's maiden name was D'Angelo and, while she was a talented dancer (with legs, she was told, that went on for miles), her career was never very stable.  When the economy took a downturn, the shows failed to sell out.  A showroom needs a 92% full house to make a profit.  When the folks didn't show up, the big acts sometimes came down with "strep throat" or (and this was a common one) "exhaustion" and the show’s run would be over.  The dancers on the big stages would trickle down a few blocks to the 2nd line houses.  The dancers that they would replace in the 2nd line houses would be left to the poorly lit dives like O'Sherry's and Slots of Luck.  More than once, Debra D'Angelo had needed to make ends meet without a job on the horizon.  It was then that she had spent some time as a stripper, using the pseudonym Crimson Delight.  She had never told Brandee about those times and hoped she would never know.

Times got better for Debra D'Angelo when she met Alan Alexander.  She met him in the least romantic place possible.  They found themselves in the same place at the same time in the produce aisle of the local Safeway.  They struck up a conversation about the comparative value of the Golden Delicious vs. the Granny Smith.  Before they knew it, the great apple debate had turned into a dinner date.  She discovered that he was a real estate broker with a taste for good wine and long conversations.  They were married a year to the day from their first date.

Brandee came along on December 10, the same year Debra and Alan were married.  She was 8 pounds, 8 1/2 ounces, and came into the world with lungs full of mad.  She gave the receiving nurse a blast with her first full breath.  She let the nurse in the hospital nursery have it when she gave Brandee her Vitamin K shot.  She let the newborn ward know her opinion when the blanket slid off of her, leaving her cold.  Brandee Reneé Alexander was here, and dammit, the world was going to know her opinion.

Young Brandee was a sharp little thing.  She picked up the basics of crawling then walking then running months earlier than her peers.  She loved to run around outside her family's two-story home, but she loved falling down almost as much.  Jake wouldn't have recognized the goddess on the bar stool if he had seen that same goddess when she was seven years old.  Most of the time, she had a skinned leg or a scraped chin.  Only later, when she realized that attracting the opposite sex could be just as much of a game as the ones that she had mastered earlier, did she let the butterfly out of the caterpillar's cocoon.

Brandee began attending Del Sol High School in Las Vegas.  She got along well with her teachers that first year, though she was "coded" a couple of times for wearing tops that showed a little bit of her tanned and toned tummy.  The punishment for that was dressing in P.E. gear for the rest of the day.  When the males of Del Sol saw her in P.E. attire, they knew that they had missed out on a pretty good look before she had been apprehended by the fashion police.

Brandee was a very good student when she chose to apply herself.  She had a natural aptitude for math and science, and probably could have gone on to college in one of those fields had she chosen to do so.  She discovered what was to become a lifelong passion though, while enrolled at Del Sol.  That passion was singing.

Every high school in Las Vegas had a choral group.  Each choral group had one or two talented soloists.  No other high school had Del Sol's Brandee Alexander.  She gained local notoriety when she was only 13 years old, belting out "God Bless America" from the back of a float as it traveled down Fremont Avenue on the 4th of July.  Her local fame spread as her vocal wings spread.  She sang "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" at the Clark County Fair.  That performance was captured on local access television and was requested as a download from the station's website so often that the station’s antiquated server imploded.  Brandee was hot, and it had nothing to do with a cropped shirt or low cut blouse.

While she was most prominently known as a singer, her musical gifts ranged beyond her vocal talents.  She quickly became a talented keyboardist too.  She could make a piano bend to her will.  She played jazz organ, and, later, the synthesizer as well.  She was able to play some guitar but not to performance quality as quickly as she had mastered the keyboard instruments.  Brandee had little doubt, though, that if she needed to become a guitar player to do what was necessary, she wouldn't lag too far behind Jimi Hendrix. Brandee was simply a supremely confident young lady, and it really stretched to all areas of her life. When she set her sights on a goal, that goal was half accomplished.  Happy with the response that she had received for her "God Bless America” and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" during the summer, Brandee set her sights on performing for a crowd in a place with better acoustics than afforded her by Fremont Street or the Clark County Fairgrounds.  Later that fall, she set the arena on fire performing "The Star Spangled Banner" before a University of Nevada-Las Vegas Runnin' Rebel basketball game.

Lots of young ladies can sing, but Brandee was a breed apart.  Years later, Jake marveled at her clear soprano voice as she sang quietly with the radio, but she could do so much more than sing high notes and sing them well.  She had almost as much range as there are octaves detected by the ear.  She could soar to the top of the mountain like Mariah Carey.  She could dive into the valley with Patsy Cline, growling and wailing in equal parts haunting and inspiring.  It was said she could bring a tear to a dead man's eye with "I Have Never Been So Much in Love Before".  She could absolutely bring a crowd to its feet with power ballads like Heart's "What About Love", or Brandee's own composition, "Heat Beyond Fire".

Brandee Alexander had always suspected what was behind the drive that pushed her in her music.  The reasons were twofold.  Much as her mother didn't want her to know, Brandee did know the lengths to which her mother had to go to keep a roof over her head before her daughter was born.  When she was 12 years old, she had found a yellowed picture of Crimson Delight in the bottom of a drawer and recognized her mother's much younger face.

In addition, there was the tragic event of January 16, 2001. Brandee's father Alan had been killed by a drunk driver in a fiery car accident when he was returning home on the I-15 one rainy night. Brandee had just turned 14 years old a month before.

That was a pivotal time for Debra and Brandee.  Debra grieved for her husband terribly.  She had never been as happy before him and suspected she would never be as happy after. She cried herself to sleep night after night after night.

Brandee grieved too, but in a different way.  She was an only child and took on a greater sense of responsibility for her mother's care than a young teen should have to bear.  She became angry that such a thing would happen to her Dad, and listened as her mother sobbed each night after she thought Brandee was asleep.

What all of this taught her was that she needed to be better than she was.  In all ways.  She needed to grow up faster, in her mind, so she could be a help to her ravaged Mom.  Not knowing that her father had carried a substantial life insurance policy, Brandee imagined that Debra might have to go back to being that awful Crimson person, and she couldn't bear the thought.