2. The Witness

Dove

It was, perhaps, the most handsome man I have ever seen.

He was up on the balcony, in the VIP shadow where the amber light didn't reach, and he was watching me the way no one had ever watched me in my life.

He was — electrifying. 

The word handsome wasn't even big enough. There was an aura about him. Something dark and mysterious. Something that couldn’t help but pull you in.

The man was tall, even sitting; you could tell from the long line of him folded into the leather chair. Dark hair pushed back from a hard, beautiful face. A sleek black suit, expensive in the silent way truly expensive things are, worn open over a crisp white shirt — and at his throat, where the collar fell loose, and along the wrist where he'd pushed back one cuff, the dark edges of tattoos crept out across his skin, ink disappearing under white cotton like something he'd decided most people didn't get to see.

And his eyes. Even across all that distance, even in all that shadow, I could see they were green. A pale, cold, unhurried green, fixed on me and only me, and they did not so much as flicker when I caught them looking.

Most people, you catch them staring, they glance away. Embarrassed. Caught.

He didn't. He just held it, like he had every right in the world to look at me for as long as he wanted, and the only question was how long that would be.

It made my skin go hot and my stomach go strange and my voice nearly stumble on a note I'd sung a thousand times. I dropped my gaze to the back wall, to the EXIT sign, to anywhere that wasn't him, and I sang the rest of the song to the safe dark above the door, because something about being seen that completely by a man like that felt like standing too close to the edge of a roof.

When the last note faded, I made myself look up one more time.

The chair on the balcony was empty.

He was simply gone. Just there and then not there. The way a shadow goes when you finally turn the light on it. For a moment I almost wondered if I'd invented him out of nerves and stage lights.

"Not bad, little girl.” The woman in the suit’s voice pulled my attention. “You can sing the late set tonight. It’s a thousand dollars per hour and you’ll do two. You start at eleven o'clock. Go home and get changed. And don't be late," 

A thousand dollars per hour? Most places pay their singers a hundred per hour. Two hundred if they’re lucky. Am I hearing this right?

“Y-you said tonight?” I stammered.

“It’s our grand opening today.” The woman stated matter-of-factly. “Why, you had somewhere else to be?”

I was thinking maybe I could catch the tail-end of that Freshman Mixer. But I guess not anymore.

“No, ma’am.” I replied quickly, and I made my way to the door before the woman changed her mind about hiring me. 

A thousand dollars per hour and I’ll be singing for two — This gig is too good to be true!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I went home quickly to get a bite to eat and prepare myself for tonight’s show. I’m still gonna wear Jess’s black dress, but I figured I should do something to my hair and put on some more make-up.

Thank god for Youtube tutorials, I managed to curl my hair neatly with Priya’s curling iron and did some smokey-eye make-up with whatever I can find in our bathroom. In all the eighteen years that I’ve been alive, I don’t think I’ve put this much effort into how I look before and I must say, it does feel nice. It’s one of those rare moments where I really felt like I’m an actual girl.

I checked my reflection in the mirror one last time and caught a glimpse of my mom’s necklace. I touched it and said a little prayer, and then I put on my black boots and went for the door.

My mom was my entire world. She raised me on her own as my biological dad split on us when I was a baby. She worked hard to give me the best life possible. She waitressed at a Chinese restaurant in the day and sang in weddings on weekends. Unfortunately, she passed away when I was thirteen. But her passion and work ethic continued to live through me. 

After her death, I went to live with my grandmother in a small town in Pennsylvania, but I never stopped working hard because I knew I wanted to be back here in New York City and continue the dream that my mom couldn’t. She wanted to be a singer. She wanted to be in Broadway.

Now here I was, crossing the streets of Manhattan, en-route to my first paid gig as a singer.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I made it to the club thirty minutes before eleven. 

The club was already in full-swing and they even had the sign out already. The Gilded Cage. 

Another singer was singing a set before me, and I got ushered into the green room to get ready. Once the first singer was done and eleven o’clock struck, I made my way to the stage where the band was ready for me.

I sang maybe twelve songs that night to a full room of strangers, and it was the closest I had ever come to flying. The band and I were improvising and riffing at some point, and it was honestly so much fun and so exciting. I couldn’t wait to be able to do this again.

By the time I stepped down, my whole body was buzzing and my cheeks ached from a smile I couldn't put away. The woman in the suit met me backstage and gave me an envelope full of cash, which she assured was two thousand dollars plus tips.

She then told me I was relieved for the night and she’ll be in touch about future bookings.

Gran, you will not believe it, I was already writing in my head. I sang, and they paid me, and a woman in a suit told me she’ll be in touch like I'm someone who matters.

I walked down the hallway of the club towards the door, and I was glowing all the way up until some trouble found me.

Three of them, near the bar — the kind of men who get louder as the night gets later. They'd been drinking through my whole set; I'd felt their attention curdle from polite into something else around the third song. Now, as I passed, one of them caught my wrist.

"There she is. The little canary." His grin was wet. "Why don’t you sing me something private?"

"I'm just heading out," I said, and pulled. His grip tightened.

"Don't be rude, sweetheart."

I'm small. I’m only 5’ 1” and that makes grown men think I’m a child, or a toy, and I have spent my whole life learning the exact shape of the smile that gets me out of rooms like this. I gave it to him now — soft, sorry, harmless — and the second his hand loosened at it, I slipped free and went the only direction that wasn't toward them. Past the end of the bar. 

“Hey! Come back here!”

“You little bitch!”

He and his friends were yelling, but I was quick. I slipped past a row of servers and went through a swinging door with a sign that says Employees Only. It was a long hallway with dim red lights and there were several doors along the sides. I was hearing noises and sounds coming from these doors and I was too scared to even look. So, I kept walking as fast as I could until the end of the hall, toward the green glow of an EXIT sign.

My chest was pounding as I could faintly hear the yells of those men. I hoped to God they weren’t following me. I just wanted out. The street, the subway, my narrow bed, the radiator knocking out its secrets. Finally, I pushed the door open and stepped into the alley behind the club, into the dark night, breathing hard, and grateful for the quiet.

But that was my mistake.

The alley was a long black throat between two buildings, lit by a single buzzing bulb halfway down. And under that bulb stood a man.

Tall. Still. Dressed in black darker than the dark around him. And in his gloved hand, held low and easy like an extension of his own arm, was a gun.

In front of him, on his knees on the wet ground, another man was talking fast and low and pleading, the words running together — please, I didn't, please, I swear to you — while the standing man listened with his head tilted, almost patient, the way you'd listen to a song you'd already heard a hundred times and were only waiting to end.

He let the kneeling man finish.

Then he raised the gun and fired.

The sound went through me like a hand closing around my heart. The kneeling man dropped. The alley swallowed the echo whole. And in the awful ringing silence, in the breath where I should have already been running and instead just stood frozen with my own pulse roaring in my ears, the standing man turned his head toward the sound of my caught breath.

The light caught his face.

Dark hair pushed back. A hard, beautiful jaw. A white shirt open at the collar, ink creeping out across his throat. And his eyes — pale, cold, unhurried — finding mine across the dark.

They were green eyes. It was the man with the green eyes!

It was him. The man from the balcony. The one who'd watched me sing earlier.

And now I was the only living thing in this alley who had seen his face as he just killed a man.

— End of Episode Two: To Be Continued. —