Page 26 of Never Flinch

Chapter 4

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Although it’s nominally a tour for Kate McKay’s new book,A Woman’s Testament, the publisher has had nothing to do with planning the dates; Kate is an old hand when it comes to scheduling, and thus getting the biggest bang for her buck. The dates are far apart at the start of the tour, but they’ll speed up, including a few one-nighters. She’s told Corrie it’s like a prizefight: you feel out your opponent, then move in and start pummeling.

On May 10th, the gig is at Denver’s Ogden Theatre, which seats sixteen hundred or so. Corrie has nine AM coffee with the venue’s event coordinator, who assures her Kate will fill almost every seat. This is no doubt helped by the fact that there is no actual admission charge (although the book, random copies autographed, will be on sale).

The women have connecting accommodations high up in the Brown Palace Hotel. “Quite luxy,” Corrie says. “I’ve actually got a bidet.”

Kate laughs. “Enjoy it while you can. It’s apt to be all downhill from here.”

Corrie finishes with the coordinator at nine-thirty. She’s got a meeting back at the hotel with a bookseller from the Tattered Cover at ten-thirty. The woman will arrive with two hundred copies ofA Woman’s Testamentto sign. While Kate signs, Corrie will meet with the security person who’ll be with them until they leave town, bound for Omaha. His name is Brian “Bull” Durham. He’ll be joined by twomore off-duty cops who will be with them from the time they leave for the gig until they’re back at the hotel.

Corrie arranged for Durham ahead of their arrival. The extras come courtesy of the Ogden’s event coordinator. News of Corrie’s adventure in Reno has spread. No one wants the famous Kate McKay attacked (or God forbid, assassinated) on their patch. At three PM, Corrie will be back at the hotel, readying a meeting room for the press conference, where Corrie herself will be asked many questions about what happened in Reno. She would prefer—muchprefer—to stay in the background, but Kate insists, and Kate is the boss. Corrie tells herself she doesn’t resent being Kate’s show pony.

It’s going to be a busy day.

She’d like to have a few minutes to herself before meeting the bookstore lady—she needs to pee, for one thing—but when she sticks her head into Kate’s suite to see if the boss needs anything, she realizes me-time will have to wait a little longer, because the boss is having a full-bore Katie McKay tantrum. They aren’t common, and Corrie has discovered they’re basically harmless. It’s how Kate blows off steam. Corrie tries to not find this annoying or self-indulgent. She reminds herself that Kate is right, men are allowed to holler all the time—when in doubt, they scream and shout—but Corrie still doesn’t like it. It wasn’t the way she was raised.

“MotherFUCKER! CuntLICKER! BitchKITTY! You have to be fuckingSHITTINGme!”

Kate looks up and sees Corrie standing in the doorway, mouth open. Kate tosses her phone on the couch and brushes her tousled hair away from her face with the backs of her hands. Gives Corrie a razor-thin smile. “So how’syourday going?”

“Better than yours, I guess,” Corrie says.

Kate goes to the window and looks out. “Have you ever noticed that the best curses, the mosteffectivecurses, always center on women and their parts?Motherfucker—to commit incest with one’s own progenitor—used to be the queen of curses, and even overuse hasn’t entirely robbed it of its power. Andcunt. Is there an uglier word? It’s a goddam blunt instrument. Evencow, at least the way the British use it…”

“How aboutcocksucker?”

Kate waves a dismissive hand. “An equal-opportunity vulgarity.”

“Scumbag?”

But Kate has lost interest. She’s looking out at the Rockies with her hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her Lafayette slacks.

“What’s wrong?”

“We lost our venue in fucking Buckeye City. Why are we finding this out so late? Because they were scared. Cowards! Buckeye City cowards! From now on I don’t even want to say its name. From this point forward it’s just the one that’s Not-Cleveland.”

Corrie doesn’t even need to consult her notes. “The Mingo?” She’s astounded.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Some soul-singing diva comes out of retirement, andweget bumped.” Then, grudgingly, “Okay, so it’s not justsomediva. It’s Sista Bessie, and she’s great. Listened to her all the time when I was a teenager—”

“The Sista? Really? ‘Love You All Night,’thatSista?”

Kate gives her a sour look. “She’s terrific, no doubt, but we still got bumped. Which pisses me off. I can’t call Sista Bessie a cunt, but the people who knocked us off the schedule? Them I call cunts! Them I call motherfuckers!”

Corrie keeps all the tour info on her laptop and her tablet, but she doesn’t need to go into her connecting room to get either of them. She’s got the tour—at least the midwestern part of it—by heart. “They can’tdothat, Kate. I’ve got a contract. She’s a great singer, no doubt, but that date isours! May thirty-first!”

Kate points to her phone, which is half-buried between two couch cushions. “Read the event coordinator’s email if you want. Cowardly fucking cock-knocker didn’t even have the guts to call me. He quotes the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ clause in the contract.”

Corrie rescues Kate’s phone from its semi-internment, taps in the code, and looks at the email from Donald Gibson, the Mingo’s Program Director. The phraseextraordinary circumstancesis there, all right. Now Kate’s tantrum seems justified. Corrie’s pretty mad herself. The nerve!

“This is bullshit.Extraordinary circumstancesmeans a flood or a blizzard or a citywide blackout! Extraordinary circumstances wouldbe if the damn building burned down. It doesn’t mean Sista Bessie! It wouldn’t even mean the Beatles if they decided to get back together!”

“They can’t,” Kate says, beginning to smile. “Two out of four ain’t rockin no more.”

“Well even if theydid, and decided to play the Mingo! And they’re scrapping us for a date we made months in advance? Ridiculous. I’m calling this Gibson person and setting him straight.”

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