They called the contestants to the wings in groups of five. Harmony walked with her case past the LED glow, and the air got colder and the smell changed — dust and hot metal and something electric, the smell of a big room waiting. A PA checked her name and pointed her to a mark on the floor, fifth in line.
Ahead, through the gap in the black curtains, the stage lights burned blue and gold, and the audience was a low ocean roar — the biggest room she'd ever stood near.
Then the stage manager's voice, crisp in the quiet: "Harmony Cole. You're on deck."
Her name, in that place. It didn't sound like hers at all.
Chapter 4: Three Chairs
The wings were a different country. Darker, colder, loud with a machinery Harmony hadn't known television needed — the whine of cables being dragged, the hiss of headsets, a stage manager counting numbers into a mic like a prayer. She stood on her mark with the guitar strap over her shoulder, and through the curtain gap she watched the kingdom assemble itself.
Chase Delacroix took the stage first, and the audience detonated. He was gloss given a human shape — teeth like a piano keyboard, a suit that caught the light and threw it back. He spread his arms wide and the roar got louder, and Harmony understood, the way you understand a bright billboard, that this man was paid to be delighted by everything and meant none of it.
Then the cameras panned, and the three thrones lit up at the judges' desk.
Harmony knew their faces from the billboards, but the billboards hadn't prepared her for the scale of them — three people built large by lighting, sitting behind a long desk of black glass. On the left, Marcus Vane, thirty-four, pop star, wearing sunglasses indoors, leaning back in his chair like the whole building was his green room. His smile had a hook in it. In the middle, Denise Holloway, sixty-eight, soul legend, her silver-streaked hair piled high, her face open and warm as a church door on Sunday. And on the right, Rafael Ortiz, forty-five, record executive, still as a held breath, giving away nothing.
Between the judges' desk and the stage sat the Golden Note — a big brass button on its own pedestal, catching the light. Harmony had seen the commercials. Any judge could slam it and send an act straight to the semifinals. It gleamed like a dare.
A producer with a clipboard gathered the waiting contestants in the wings — five of them, Harmony last — and ran through the rules in a bored monotone: sing, wait for the judges, three yeses to move on, majority rules. "And the Golden Note," the producer added, pointing at the brass button, "sends you straight through. Don't ask for it. You'll look desperate."
Harmony looked at the button. She looked at Marcus Vane's sunglasses. She thought about Odette's voice in her head — eyes open, ti zwazo — and she pressed her palm flat against the guitar's chipped wood, feeling the familiar grooves under her thumb.
The first contestant went out — a boy about twenty with a fade and a blazer, singing something current and radio-smooth. His voice was technically perfect, the kind of perfect that had been ironed. The judges nodded along. Three yeses, quick and clean, and the audience clapped like they'd been told to, and the boy walked off glowing.
The second was a girl with a guitar, older than Harmony, and she chose a ballad and missed the bridge note by a fraction. Marcus leaned into his mic.
"Sweetheart," he said, and the hook in his smile caught the light, "that note filed for divorce halfway through the chorus."
The audience laughed — a big, ugly, delighted laugh — and the girl's face crumpled in real time, on camera, under the hot lights. Denise Holloway reached over and touched Marcus's arm, gentle but firm, and said something into her own mic that the wings couldn't hear. Rafael Ortiz just watched, unreadable. The girl got two yeses and a no from Marcus, delivered with a wink, like the cruelty had been a gift.
Harmony watched the girl walk off with her guitar case banging her knee, and something cold settled in her stomach. This was the contrast Evelyn had been talking about. This was the machine, and it was hungry, and it ate little girls for breakfast, and Odette had been right about everything.
She was still thinking about the girl's face when Pete Kaminski appeared at her elbow with a headset mic. He fitted it gently, his fingers careful around her cornrows, and tested it — check, check — and then he looked at her, really looked at her, and his kind eyes were serious.
"Just sing like the room is empty," he said quietly. Then he squeezed her shoulder, once, and was gone into the dark.
The stage manager's voice came through the wings: "Harmony Cole. You're last."
Last. Harmony felt the word land. A PA had said earlier, bright as a commercial — we save the special ones for the end. She understood now what special meant. Last meant the audience was tired. Last meant the judges had heard everything. Last meant expendable, the slot where you put the act you could afford to lose — or the one you wanted to make an example of, one way or the other.
She thought about the $11.40, long since spent on the subway fare up here. She thought about Tee's red pick in her hoodie pocket. She thought about the cassette in the sandwich bag, For My Girl, sitting in the case she'd left with the PA. She thought about Grace at nineteen in Ohio with her shoes worn through, and she thought about Odette's fingers in her hair that morning — on your terms, ti zwazo — and the tight thing in her chest went still and quiet, the way the station went quiet before she started to sing.
On stage, Chase Delacroix was winding up the last act, all teeth and gleam. "And now," he said, and his voice dropped into the register television used for miracles, "our final audition of the night. She was discovered singing in the Fulton Street subway station. Please welcome — Harmony Cole."