95

The outdoor concert smelled like beer, sweat, perfume, and cigarettes. Occasionally someone steeped in weed wandered by, but the security cracked down on that hard, so it wasn't much of a problem for Julia who was surrounded by bodies. Slowly but surely she was moving closer to the stage.

It was a small city, but they had managed to get some formerly big names to do their Friday night concerts. Everyone came out, though for different reasons. Most came out no matter who was performing. Julia knew anyone under the age of thirty attending this concert was here to find their friends and to be seen. A great many came just to drink and ogle the teen girls. Around the outskirts were the very old and the infirm, bobbing their heads and being grateful they weren't indoors on such a nice night.

Julia, and most of the people down in front, were actually here to see the band. A fifty-something lady dressed head to toe in jeans was screaming the words and swaying, hands in the air, her eyes locked on the lead singer. Whenever he appeared to look her way, the lady would wave two thumbs up, hoping she had been seen. Julia stepped around the woman into the red light bathing the first fifteen feet of the crowd.

Even after more than twenty years since this band had filled any auditorium, it was still a dream of most of the older women, and a great many of the men, in this audience to be noticed. To be tapped on the shoulders and have a backstage pass pressed into their hands. To be asked to stay after the concert because the lead singer wanted to see you, personally.

Julia swung around a grey-haired man with a goatee who was boogieing down despite his ample beer belly. The band was just crashing through the final chords of one of their best remembered classics. The singer conducted the drummer's crashes, pumping his fist again, again and again before spinning to face audience, triumphant and beaming. The crowd screamed and hooted and waved. Julia pictured the fifty-something woman, her red-rimmed mouth open and thumbs thrusting to the sky.

The singer grabbed his microphone with his left hand and looked out, then down. His wide smile faltered as his eyes caught those of Julia, surrounded yet somehow alone, bathed in light from the stage.