Backstage Romance with the Popstar novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Control Room

Behind dark glass, Echo types the note that ruins Lexi's bridge. Devon plays an old voicemail of Laurel.

Studio B at Halo Row had a long glass wall between the live room and the booth.

On Monday morning I sat in the booth behind it, in the dark, with the glass tinted black on my side.

Devon could see his own reflection in it and nothing else.

Three years of sessions, and he had never once asked what was behind it.

The engineer sat at the main board in the front booth, and a thin screen hung over Devon's microphone.

Whatever I typed in the back booth appeared on that screen in white letters.

That was how Echo spoke.

At ten o'clock Devon walked in, wearing the same gray hoodie he had worn the night we met.

He looked like he had slept in a car.

Hank came in behind him with Lexi.

"Echo, if you're listening," Hank said to the screen, in his soft voice, "I'm Hank Dorsey."

"This is Lexi Rotherhithe. She's going to open the new record with Devon."

I typed a reply.

"Noted."

Devon's head came up.

He looked at the white letters.

"Echo," he said. "Thank you for coming."

"Play the first track," I typed.

The engineer pressed a key, and "Midnight Ledger" rolled through the room.

It was a song I had built around his low register, because that was where his voice was honest.

Devon sang the first verse well.

Then Hank cut in.

"Let's give Lexi the second verse and the bridge," he said. "It's a duet now."

"It isn't a duet," I typed.

"Sorry?" Hank said.

"The bridge sits in Devon's key. She can't hit it."

Lexi laughed, a short brittle laugh.

"I can hit anything," she said.

"Then do it," I typed. "One take."

The engineer started the track again.

Devon stepped back from the microphone and stood against the wall with his arms crossed.

Lexi took the mic and closed her eyes.

She was good for sixteen bars.

Then the bridge came up, and her voice cracked on the high note and went flat for four full beats.

She stopped.

The room was silent except for the hiss of the monitors.

"The bridge," Hank said, quickly, "can be fixed in the mix."

"No, it can't," I typed. "She sounds like she's apologizing."

I watched Lexi's face change.

It went white, and then red, and then back to a smile that could have cut paper.

"Who is this person?" she said. "Why won't they come out?"

"Because the work speaks," Devon said.

It was a line I had used on him once, in a car, at two in the morning.

I had not known he remembered.

Hank crossed to the glass and put his palm flat on it.

"Echo," he said. "I'd like to meet you. Dinner. Tomorrow. My treat."

He was looking straight at the spot where my face was.

I held my breath, though he could not see me.

"Echo does not take dinners," I typed.

"Everyone takes dinners."

"Not this one. The deal is the music, or no music."

Hank smiled and said he understood.

He did not understand, and he did not take his hand off the glass for a long time.

When he finally led Lexi out, she was whispering something fast and furious in his ear.

I caught the word "assistant."

I caught the word "ruin."

The engineer packed up and went to get coffee, and the room emptied.

I stayed in the dark.

Devon did not leave.

He sat down on the floor of the live room with his back to the glass, a foot from my knee, on the other side.

He took out his phone.

I thought he was going to call Hank, or the label, or his mother.

Instead he pressed a button, and a voice came out of the phone's small speaker.

It was mine.

"Devon Ransom, you are twenty minutes late and you owe me a coffee."

Then I laughed on the recording, a big, ugly laugh, and a car horn went off in the background.

I remembered that day.

It was in August, outside a diner in Burbank.

He had kissed me against the car door for the first time in daylight, and then looked around to see who was watching.

The recording ended.

He played it again.

I put my hand flat on the black glass, where his shoulders were.

He could not feel it.

He played it a third time, and on the third time he put his forehead on his knees.

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