You're up there under the spotlight

[eilonwyhasemu]

"Wait, no, don't pin that there!" I said, five seconds too late.

"Ouch!"

Josh Adair's beautiful face scrunched with pain. Really, it's not rocket science that fans are supposed to pin hearts to the life-sized cardboard cut-outs of this year's American Idol competitors, not to the real Idolettes signing autographs nearby. Any reasonably bright person should be able to figure this out, especially if she's aiming for a dude's crotch.

"Here, let me adjust that." The fan's hands were busy. Very busy.

"You shouldn't touch him," I said.

"But he hugged me. He loves being touched."

"Ouch!" Josh hopped on one foot.

"Maybe not right there."

Brianna the little pop princess chose that moment to faint. She would. The sun at Century City wasn't all that hot. I mean, Pink Taco had a donkey out here a couple years back, and the donkey could cope. Try being painted pink, Brianna, then we'll talk about hardship.

Look, you're supposed to pour something wet on people who faint. Snapple Diet Papaya Mango Tea is what I had.

"You made my hair sticky!" Brianna wailed.

"Owwwww!" That was Josh again. Different fan. Same spot.

"Kiss my ass!" That was Charlie Conner. Judging from the fan kneeling behind him with her lips pressed to his jeans, he'd meant it literally.

The way I'd explained it back at the house this morning, this had been the world's simplest piece of public relations. Really. That was how Ken Warwick had explained it to me.

Me.

Right. If you've found me to follow, you know my name is Máire Soo. Yes, Irish mother, Chinese father. No, red hair does not look good with sallow skin. Neither do freckles. I want to work in artist management, so when my adviser at Mt. SAC told me to apply for an internship as an assistant for Idol, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I'd get to watch these amazing talents develop and be part of an incredible journey. We'd laugh. We'd cry.

We'd stand around while fans wrote their heart-felt messages on paper hearts and pinned them to life-sized cardboard cut-outs of the Idolettes. Because they're all singing Heart songs this week. Get it?

"I don't get it," Charlie said, spitting a toothpick onto the breakfast table in case we were in any danger of forgetting that he's pure country, through and through.

"Heart songs." I repeated. "Like the band Heart. Exactly like the band Heart. You know the song Alone?"

Robyn, the designated edgy rocker, looked up from her iPhone. "Performed five times already on Idol."

"Fans still fight about whether Carrie Underwood or Allison Iraheta had the better performance." That was Reg, tapping out a syncopated beat with his grapefruit spoon. He's not the next Bruno Mars.

"Iraheta. Totally. Wouldn't this theme have been a better fit for Valentine's Day?" Robyn writes songs, which entitles her to brood and ask awkward questions.

"It'd have been great if you all hadn't still been in the Hollywood rounds then." Calendars, people. Not a difficult concept. "Anyway, to go with Heart songs--"

"We know we're singing Heart songs," Shamere interrupted, putting on her mom face, assuming Mom is Diana Ross and really likes sequined tube tops. "We recorded them two days ago."

"So this should all be straightforward!" I concluded in soothing tones of perkiness.

"What I don't get," Charlie drawled, "is why we have to stand around letting people stick things on us. Can't Seacrest just read our fan letters on the teevee or sumthin'?"

Shamere snorted. "Yeah, is it wise to trust Charlie's fans with sharp objects?"

"My fans can handle a tractor, a huntin' rifle, an' a pick-up truck. How 'bout yours?"

"Not one of those things is a sharp object."

"Awright. A Bowie knife. Yours?"

"You think I grew up in Atlanta without knowing how to handle a switchblade?"

"Switchblade?" Reg mocked. "Real women can take out a thug with their stiletto heels."

"And you know this from experience?"

Reg looked over at Robyn. "You?"

"Swiss Army knife. Graduation present. Useful on tour for splicing wire and fixing shit."

Josh smiled his sweet, crooked smile at Miss Moody-Broody. When he smiles like that during a ballad, it brings tears to a girl's heart. "I always like the corkscrew best. I feel like James Bond when I use it."

"I can't remember the last time I drank wine that didn't come with a screw cap." Robyn mimed drinking straight from the bottle.

"That's not so bad, you know--"

"It provides a piquant contrast to the Taco Bell fresco menu."

"I just like the romance of hearing the cork pop."

"Like hearing a girl lose her virginity," Reg said.

Brianna stopped chewing her oatmeal like cud. "That is so not what it's like."

"How would you know? Aren't you the one with the chastity ring?"

"It's not down there. It's up here." She waved her left hand in Reg's direction.

This seemed like the moment to interrupt. "It's going to be a great visual," I said. "Your cardboard figures, totally covered with hearts, all of them brimming with fan love. It'll be touching."

It was actually kind of a pain. There's a kind of person who's willing to write touching sentiments on a paper heart and pin it to a cardboard cut-out, and then there are about ten different kinds of people who aren't. Maybe fifteen.

Robyn looked skeptically at her cut-out, which had maybe forty hearts on it, and I'd had to beg passers-by for twelve of those. "If we were in Silverlake and that was magnetic and we had a big assortment of those fridge poetry words, a lot more of me would be covered."

Mostly, I don't even understand what Robyn's saying.

"My hair's sticky!" Brianna wailed.

"How about we stick to handshakes?" Josh was asking somebody in the distance. "Ow!"

"Her hair's sticky," Shamere said.

"I can't sign autographs if my hair's sticky!"

"Come on, honey. There's a fountain right over here--"

Okay. That got Brianna off my hands.

Josh was surrounded by a flock of ladies who were pinning hearts to his thighs, ass, and chest. His real ones, not his cardboard ones. I could feel sympathetic little pain pricks just watching.

"Excuse me," I said to the ladies. "Excuse me. The hearts go on the cut-outs. There are rules here."

One giggled. "We couldn't help ourselves."

So did a second one. "Our hearts just leaped out at him."

They had a point. The way Josh looks at you when he sings, you feel his soul connecting with yours. He deserves so much better than to be in the middle of the pack behind Charlie, Shamere, and maybe Reg. That's why he and I have a secret plan.

"Ow," Josh repeated. "Their hands did some leaping, too."

"We couldn't help ourselves."

"It's against the rules--"

The second one looked stern. "It's not any worse than what he's doing over there."

I was turning to follow her pointing finger when Brianna's wail cut through the crowd chatter and muzak.

"My shirt gets see-through when it's wet!"

Her bra was a surprisingly torrid little number for a plump seventeen-year-old virgin. It had more naughty bits than the one worn by the girl who was bending over to watch Reg sign her legs.

"That's against the rules!" I snapped in his direction.

"You wanted us to have touching moments with our fans."

"Not that kind of touching."

"This kind of touching," Josh said. He removed a pair of hands from his ass (shaking off a couple hearts), bowed over them, and swept a kiss across them.

That's the kind of sweet Josh is. He deserves so much better than to be the geeky kid who looks across the piano and makes pop songs wrap themselves around your heart.

That's why tomorrow, I'm taking him for a haircut. It'll be like the frog prince, only he never had warts and was green. And he doesn't croak, either.

"How about this kind of touching?" one of the ladies said, demonstrating.

"Not! That! Kind!" If the show had issued me a clipboard, I would have smacked her with it. An iPhone is no substitute.

"Kiss my ass!" Charlie repeated. Judging from the number of lipstick prints on his jeans, there were more types of people who'd do that than ones who'd write on paper hearts. Someone should do a study.

"That is not what you're supposed to do!"

"It's great! I'm gonna wear these jeans for results night and get Seacrest to ask me about them."

"Hell," Robyn muttered, "wear them on tour and then donate them to the Hard Rock Café."

"I can't sign autographs in this shirt!" Brianna wailed.

"I want to take her shopping for a new shirt," Shamere said.

"Right or left?" Reg asked in the distance.

"Not the Hard Rock," Charlie corrected. "Texas Roadhouse."

"Ow!" said Josh.

"Ms. Soo?" a terribly grown-up voice asked. The woman had one of those expensively angled haircuts, the kind of jeans that cost $700, and a clipboard. It was totally unfair that she had a clipboard.

She was escorting a sturdy dark-haired woman whose skin had as many crinkles as her hippy-dippy skirt. "What the hell is going on here?" that woman asked.

"I'm Máire Soo, and we're here with American Idol to meet fans and have a photo shoot with Ann Wilson of Heart."

"So this is the right place," crinkly lady said. "Damn."

I leaned into the lady with the clipboard and whispered. "I think there's been some kind of mistake. We're supposed to have Ann Wilson, not Carnie Wilson."

How was I to know that Ann Wilson was sensitive about her weight? I've only seen these people in Youtubies. The seventies and the nineties were both a long time ago.

"It was one thing to take crap from people who could drive my career," crinkly lady fumed, "but I won't tolerate it from the likes of you, Missy."

"Máire." My public speaking instructor at Mt. SAC taught me always to stay calm. "If we can just get you over here for a group photo with the Idolettes..." I'd probably have to dig our photographer out of a bar, but I could cope with that.

Ann-not-Carnie Wilson looked at the Top Six. They looked at her. Reg scrambled up from where he'd been kneeling.

"No. Way. In. Hell will I have my work associated with this carnival."

"It's American Idol."

"It's idiotic. It's shameful. Call your bosses and tell them I said to go to hell."

I pulled up the number on my iPhone and started the call, but there was no way I was going to say "go to hell" to anybody. I'm not a receptionist. I handed Ann-not-Carnie Wilson the phone. Her side of the convo went roughly like this.

"Nigel, I'm not doing the show."

"What I mean is that I'm not doing the show."

"Well, I'm unclearing those songs."

"I damn well can, too."

"I may not be able to do it legally, but I can make your life hell if you go ahead with them."

"You'll discover there is such a thing as bad publicity. Trust me."

"I don't care if you have to put on three shows two days from now. You aren't using my songs for your farce of a singing contest."

"Bitch."

Ann Wilson dropped my iPhone on the sidewalk and stomped on it.

Fortunately, it was the phone issued by the show, so they'd have to give me a new one. Not so fortunately, it had on it my entire Grand Magnolias collection that I'd been counting on listening to in the van to soothe my shattered nerves.

Also not so fortunately, the van wasn't scheduled to pick us up for another hour.

Back at the house--trust me, it's best not to discuss that hour--Ken Warwick had us in a meeting while Josh was still scrubbing at pin-prick-sized blood stains on his jeans.

"We have a last-minute change of theme, and it's going to be fantastic," he said.

Nobody said anything.

"It's going to be amazing."

Charlie rubbed at a bit of sunburn. Robyn picked at a hangnail. Shamere went on french-braiding Brianna's hair. Reg looked at the floor and tapped his toes.

"You're going to do songs from the post-Idol albums of Idol winners."

I waited for the flood of demands for the three hitmakers: Kelly, Carrie, and Cook. This was about to get ugly.

Robyn looked up. "Dibs on Lee DeWyze."

TO BE CONTINUED