Alisaura
Blue Crack Supplier
Okay, this is definitely the end. Thanks again to everyone, and my editor 
Disclaimer sez: Lies! All lies!!
(Look out, it's a big one...)
end of final chapter:
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I turned, craning, looking for my beanied friend again. He was trying to keep a group of other guests between himself and the photographers.
Paparazzi!
Our eyes met again, my eyebrows climbing into my hair.
Ed – or The Edge – just shrugged, winked, and shot me a cheeky-school-boy look of sheepish apology.
I spoke into Glen's ear. "We're taking the bloody holiday!"
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Epilogue:
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It all made perfect sense in hindsight, of course. I would have dearly loved to have cornered him right then and there, but there were too many people around (as well as uninvited photographers – I'd wondered if I would find myself in some magazine gossip column), and we were being bundled into the limo for the drive to the reception.
'Ed', 'Edge'; who could blame me for hearing him wrong on a windy day? I could, and did blame him for not correcting me, especially after running into him the second time. Or the third, or the fourth...
Those funny noises when I called him at "work". His half-truths about relaxed working environments and flexible hours. The travelling. I suppose he thought it was very funny... and the rest of them must have, too. All that suppressed amusement in their voices.
I'm not a fan, obviously. I think someone had given me Achtung Baby when it came out, but it had drifted to the bottom of my CD collection and I hadn't listened to it since then. I'd never heard any of their later albums, never felt tempted to catch them live.
I felt an idiot for not recognising Bono, at least, although I nearly had. That sense of familiarity I'd dismissed, attributed to mushrooms or spirits or my imagination. And the last time I'd seen him on television, he'd been seventeen years younger, with long black hair, and dressed head to foot in black leather. I hardly watched television at all, these days.
'Paul', indeed! I had to look up his real name, later. I supposed he'd been truthful, as that was technically his name. And Adam had addressed him as 'B', that night; a detail that hadn't even registered at the time.
But you just don't expect to see rock stars in the middle of the Welsh 'desert'. Not part of their natural habitat at all.
The reception had passed in something of a lesser blur than the ceremony, but it was still a trifle disjointed in my memory afterwards. An endless stream of friends and family congratulating us; barely having time to eat because I was going around making sure I got to speak to everyone; cutting the cake; the first dance. Everyone taking pictures, and the guy with the video camera.
At some point, the music was taken over by a DJ. Anne had recognised The Edge after the ceremony, and had been wearing a slightly stunned expression since. She'd given an unsteady giggle as "Beautiful Day" came from the DJ's booth, and someone had to tell me that it was a U2 song.
"How could you not recognise him?!" she'd hissed at me later in the evening. "Or Bono! All of them out there on that hill..."
We were on the dance floor, bopping perfunctorily to some '80s number. I'd been wondering idly if there was any Metallica in that DJ's collection.
"It was dark," I'd muttered back. "And you don't have to tell the world. They'd probably prefer not to have that story splashed across the tabloids."
I imagined the headlines. 'U2 in grisly druid sacrifice', or worse; 'Rocks stars bleed fan dry'. Maybe when the next tour's ticket prices were announced, haha.
Two weeks after that, Glen and I had been on a beach on Hawaii's Big Island. The day before, we'd flown in a helicopter over Kilauea's latest eruption. It had been spectacular... I only wished we'd been able to approach it on foot, but it was inaccessible.
"So, we're taking the holiday, are we?" Glen asked.
It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about. "Ed's present? I mean 'The Edge's'... I can't get used to that."
"At least we know he can afford it now," Glen said drily.
"Indeed."
If anything, knowing who Ed... The Edge was made everything that happened that much more surreal, in hindsight. Bad enough if it had been some random guy called Ed... how did a famous musician get mixed up in something like that? It was too weird, suddenly thinking of 'Ed' in a totally different way.
And I still didn't know quite how I'd got mixed up in it.
Time passed... I had a few more jobs over the summer, Glen negotiated some long service leave at his work. And I called the travel agent Ed had provided... Edge had provided. The Edge. Was that how people spoke to him? 'Hi, The Edge, how's it going?'
I hadn't contacted him since the wedding. U2 was touring, and I had no idea what I'd say to him, in any case.
Glen caught me listening to Achtung Baby as he came home one day. I'd dusted it off with a vague sense of guilt... If I'd suddenly found myself acquainted with a rock star, shouldn't I give his band's music another chance?
Alas, not much had changed in my musical tastes. It wasn't a bad album, by any stretch, but it just didn't grab me. It did, however, prompt a great deal of fond early-nineties nostalgia.
"Are you re-living your youth, or can't you remember back that far?" Glen winked as he sat down next to me on the couch.
I just stuck my tongue out at him.
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The Edge, aka Dr. Ed Evans, smiled as he retrieved a voicemail message from his mobile phone. He'd been starting to wonder if Lisa was angry about the way he'd hidden his identity... not that he'd really done that on purpose. It just hadn't seemed important at first, and then it had felt too late to just say, "Oh by the way, I'm in this band..."
She might still be angry, of course. Just because she'd booked that holiday, it didn't mean anything. Or she might never have been angry. Or maybe he was just thinking about this far too much. He had more than enough to think about as it was.
He called back on his phone.
"Sharon? Edge here... thanks for letting me know. Do you think you could tell me when they'll be at the Grand Canyon? November... what dates? Where are we then... ah, that's right. Great, thank you again!"
Edge looked at the schedule in his BlackBerry, and had to chuckle. A coincidence, indeed...
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Our itinerary had us staying at the Grand Canyon for ten days. Four of those were occupied with a hiking/camping trip along part of the bottom of the canyon... the whole place was breathtaking. Two thousand million years of Arizona's history, all laid open to be read like a book. And the Colorado river was still carving its way down, through the ancient Pre-Cambrian rocks at the lowest part of the canyon. I wanted to spend months crawling all over the rock walls, reading that story. I made a note to find out if anyone had made a complete stratigraphic column of those strata... that would be a mammoth task.
On this day, Glen and I had taken another trip to the floor of the canyon, this time on mules. I was still aching from our climb up after the hike, so I was glad enough to let the mule do most of the work.
I was still in awe of everything I was seeing, and I could see my gobsmacked stare reflected on the faces of many of the other tourists around. November wasn't exactly peak season, but there were still plenty of people there. I imagined that was always the case, and it must be insane in summer.
Glen and I were dismounting from our mules, and rubbing surreptitiously at our lower backs.
"I thought it wouldn't hurt so much, sitting on a mule instead of using my own legs," I muttered.
"Well, we'll be on our backsides in a helicopter tomorrow. Nothing to do but sit there and take pictures..." Glen smiled.
"Bliss!"
There was a chuckle behind me. "It looks like everything's come full circle, now," said a familiar, quietly accented voice.
I whirled around, and there was Ed... ge.
"Yeah, you're still stalking me," I shot back. I was too surprised to know whether I was joking or not.
The Edge's expression was guarded, uncertain. Glen's frown wasn't helping.
People were looking at us... or at The Edge, at least. The signature beanie was in place, and it seemed most people in the western world were more familiar with U2 than I was.
Then I remembered where we were, and why we were there at all. I smiled, and The Edge seemed relieved.
"This is by far the best wedding present we got," I said. "Saying 'Thank you' hardly seems adequate."
Glen recalled his manners too. "Yes, thank you... it's been amazing."
The Edge was waving our thanks aside. "Don't mention it, please... It's my way of saying 'Thank you' to both of you."
People nearby were taking pictures, or whispering to their friends, and several were rummaging in their bags for pens and bits of paper. This was completely bizarre.
"Do you mind if we go for a walk?" The Edge was pointedly ignoring all the whispers and cameras; it seemed he didn't want to be in celebrity mode today. I can't say I blamed him.
Glen seemed to come to a decision. "I need the bathroom," he said to me, and I looked a question at him, surprised.
"It's all right, I won't fall in," he smiled. "I'll catch up with you in a bit."
"All right," I said, and watched my husband as he walked away. I stopped smirking at his awkward gait as soon as I started walking, and found twinges in places I'd never known about.
"Is that how I looked after getting off that horse?"
I just grunted.
The Edge and I walked away from the thickest crowd of tourists, along a path that led from one viewing point to another. By some unspoken agreement, we followed a branch that became a walking trail through the forest, away from the canyon. There weren't nearly as many people that way.
I found myself unexpectedly uncomfortable. This was Ed, the same person he'd been since I first met him. But at the same time, he wasn't Ed, had never been Ed. It was hard to reconcile the two versions of him I had in my head... I didn't know what to say to him, what I should say. Not because I was star-struck, but because I thought I'd known him, at least a bit. I didn't even know how to address him.
"What do I call you, anyway? Dr. The Edge? Or do you go by David?" Bono's wasn't the only name I'd looked up.
"I'm only David Evans to customs officials," he replied. "Most people just call me Edge."
"Except mad Englishwomen who call you Ed, I suppose."
A smile.
I stopped. "Why didn't you correct me?"
A pause. "At the time, it didn't seem important. It was just a chance meeting, you know? I wasn't being a rock star that day. And after that... well, it never seemed quite the right moment..."
"How about all those emails you signed as 'Ed'?"
It may not have been fair, but somewhere in the back of my head, I'd been stewing for months about this whole issue, and some of that was coming out now. Was I justified in feeling any amount of hurt or betrayal? A lie of omission is still a lie... and signing emails as 'Ed' was far more direct than than simply not correcting me. Did his being a big famous rock star excuse him at all?
The Edge sighed. "You do have a point there. But aside from the issue of your not knowing who it was from if I'd signed off as 'Edge', I think I developed a bit of a split personality about it all, you know? It was so bizarre, so surreal, it really did feel as if it was happening to someone else, after a while. To you, I was Ed. All these strange things were happening to Ed. Ed was spamming your inbox with his dreams, not me. And I know I could have said something in any of those emails, but I don't think you were reading most of them anyway."
There was another pause. I wasn't quite ready to let him off the hook and say it was okay. And why should he care what I thought, anyway?
"I was actually going to say something, that day I scared the living daylights out of you," he went on. The goatee twitched at the memory, and I frowned. "But it went out of my head, for some reason."
"I suppose I concussed you, did I? That's what you get for keeping your brain in your arse."
Internally, my words shocked me. I guess I was angry about it after all... and a corner of my own brain was maybe a bit star-struck, too. Here's me, talking to The Famous Edge like that...!
But The Edge took it on the chin. "Look, I know I should have said something. But for one reason or another, I didn't, and they each seemed like good reasons at the time. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
Another pause, and this time I inclined my head, acknowledging his apology.
"And I have wondered... would you have gone through with it, the ritual, if you'd recognised us that night?"
I thought about that. Part of me said, Of course, what difference would it have made? But another part balked at the idea of me doing all that, saying those things, asking them to cut themselves, if I'd known it was U2. Even if I wasn't a fan. I might have thought it was a set-up for some hidden camera show, or at least been unwilling to risk being responsible for damaging famous persons.
"I might not have, at that," I admitted.
The Edge gave a small smile. "Then I think it was just as well. In any case, does it really matter? When would you have confessed, if you were in my position?"
I was silent a moment. Did it matter, after all?
"I don't know. Maybe when I rang you at 'work' that time... was that your studio, or something?"
"Yes. And you never asked. You didn't seem curious about what I did for a living, so why would I bring it up out of the blue?"
He had a point. And he was sounding so Ed-like, with the analytical logic. I looked at him for a long moment, and finally shook myself and told myself I was being an idiot. He was the same person. I started walking again.
"All right, you're right, I suppose," I said, finally smiling. "I was more interested in denying what was going on... I still think you could have said something before the bloody paparazzi showed up at the wedding, though!"
Edge made a face. "I'm sorry about that, too," he said. "I don't know how they found out I was going to be there."
"They got some pretty good pictures," I said. "Cheaper than the wedding photographer, too." I paused. "You must get sick of them following you around," I added.
"It's part of public life," he shrugged. He looked around at the trees, glimpses of the glorious canyon vista occasionally visible between them.
"Expecting them to pop up here?"
"You never know," he said with mock grimness. "Still, it was rather refreshing to just be treated as 'Ed' for a while, you know?"
"Right up until I clobbered you, you mean," I said.
"That was rather... confronting," Edge said with a chuckle. "You're nothing if not direct."
"Well, you know these Earth people. Straight to the point..."
We drifted to a halt in a clearing, and both sat down on a bench there. I could hear other people in the distance, but for the moment there was no one else in sight.
"Do you think about it often? What happened?" Edge asked me. My comment had brought it to the top of both our minds, it seemed.
"On and off," I admitted. "Things were a bit... interesting afterwards. It took a while to sort myself out, I suppose. I ended up seeing the counsellor again." I grimaced, not entirely sure why I was telling Edge that. "I'm going to have a hell of a time stopping myself from thinking of you as 'Ed' now, you know," I added. Trying to deflect attention away from my confession.
"That's understandable," he replied, and I wasn't sure which of my statements he was replying to. Perhaps both. "We had to finish work on the album and start preparing for the tour and everything pretty much as soon as we got back to Dublin, I barely had time to process things. And that's always a tense time..." He shook his head, possibly recalling some spectacular arguments.
I recalled a few of my own, and nodded in understanding.
"It wasn't easy. Every time I thought all of that was over, it wasn't. And after that... you know... the hospital and everything, I was sure that was the end of it. But it never is. I was so worried about Glen and I... But I guess if something doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. I think that's how relationships work. If something doesn't destroy it, it brings you closer together."
Now Edge was nodding. "It can't have been easy for him, either."
"No. He barely understood half of what was happening before that, and the fact that I nearly... Well. I could have died," I finally said. "He was all shaken up by that before it had really sunk in for me. And then I couldn't get a job for a while, and it all seemed to be falling apart."
I stopped myself. I'd been over this with both Glen and Andrew, more than once, and the guitarist sitting beside me didn't need to know all the gory details. He probably knew enough of them, as it was. "Still, it turned out okay, in the end," I smiled.
"I can see that," Edge replied. "It was a lovely ceremony, what I saw of it."
"Thank you for coming, " I said, rather belatedly. "I know why people video tape those things now. I can barely remember any of it!"
There was a pause after Edge gave a polite chuckle.
"I guess things worked out for you in the end too," I added at length. "I mean, I haven't heard anything in the news about U2 breaking up." I winked, not being serious. It felt very strange to bring that up myself, the whole topic of U2, but I had to try to merge these disparate Ed/Edges in my head.
He just smiled. "No, all is well. We've been through worse, and come out the other side in once piece."
"One big flat piece," I said, spontaneously quoting a favourite TV show I'd watched, years before. Edge laughed at that.
"Glen doesn't like talking about what happened," I said after another silence, recalling the original question. "He finally realised that we had to talk about it, but he won't bring it up voluntarily, even now. It's been, what... over 18 months since that night. My friends were great, but they weren't there. And it was just expensive talking to Andrew about it, as good as he is." I grimaced.
"I suppose I'm lucky, in that my friends were there, although they don't really know what it all meant. Not the same way that we do, I mean."
"What did they make of it?" I had been wondering, even before I knew who they were.
Edge rubbed the back of his neck. ---What did we make of it, indeed.---
"Bono wanted to talk about it more than I did, I think. Larry just clammed up and carried on like nothing had happened. And Adam is just... Adam."
Well, that was cryptic. But even based on the brief meeting I'd had with them, I thought I knew something of what he meant.
We fell silent again, thinking our own thoughts. I looked up, and closed my eyes for a moment, just feeling the dappled sunlight on my face, filtering through the trees.
"Have you thought much about why it was us?" Edge asked.
"I thought about that a lot," I said, eyes still closed. "After everything else was answered, that was still the big question, wasn't it." I looked back down and met Edge's eyes briefly. "Why me, why us? Out of all the people that must have gone near the place in the last four or five thousand years..."
"And?"
He must have thought about it too, I thought, but he wanted to hear my theory first. "It'd be impossible to be certain," I began.
"Of course."
"I suppose it might have been a combination of things, but at some level I think our blood must have had something to do with it. You said Alun took Mag's children off to the east... It would be thoroughly diluted by now, but possibly one of those children was an extremely distant ancestor of mine. And I don't know if Ewain had any other children, before his son, but he would have had other relatives..."
"That's about what I thought," Edge said. "Although Ewain didn't have any other children. Not that he was aware of, mind you... it is possible, I suppose." He looked thoughtful.
"Do you think that's really all it was?"
Edge shook his head. "There must be thousands of people with the same ancestors. I guess this is where science fails us again," he said with a smile.
I 'tsk'ed. "Honestly, I don't know why I made a career of it," I said, smiling back.
"Things are harder to define in my line of work," Edge said. "Everything except the bottom line, I suppose," he added. "But the question of how all of that happened, and why it happened to us, is as hard to answer as the question of where music comes from, and why it affects people the way it does."
"Some people might simplify that by saying 'God did it'," I said, tentatively. I had read enough about U2's early days to wonder if Edge was one of those people. He looked at me for a moment.
"Some people might, yes," he allowed. "Everything may well begin and end with God, if you believe that, but I tend to think that the things in between are more complex. Bringing God into things doesn't necessarily make them simpler."
I didn't feel like getting into a theological debate, despite having brought the topic up. I wasn't very comfortable with the whole idea of religion, and now I shrugged and let it drop.
"Do you think we had all those memories somewhere in our brains, before we even went out there?"
"Maybe in our blood, more than our brains," Edge mused. He didn't seem to mind changing the subject. "If they were our ancestors, directly or not, that was always part of us. Perhaps that blood attracted... something, that was in the area. Spirits, if you like, or perhaps the memory of the ground itself."
"There must have been something else to it," I said, and Edge nodded. "Any Welsh person would be more likely to carry some of Ewain or Mag's blood, someone who'd be more likely to have gone there before us. It must be something about us as well..." I took a breath, and frowned in thought. "I felt like Mag and I had a lot in common, just in our personalities. I mean, I kept wondering how she could have been so blind about Ewain, but she was young, and who's to say I wouldn't have been the same way? Maybe there was some sort of affinity, not just for her blood, but in my personality." I shrugged. "A combination of things... Except I don't think Ewain was like you at all, so that theory doesn't really work." I glanced at Edge.
"You might have something there, actually," he replied.
"Come off it," I said, looking at him in disbelief. "Aside from the whole Fire and Air thing, you're nothing like him." True, I could hardly say I knew Edge very well, but it still seemed unlikely he could have much in common with that psychotic man.
Edge just smiled a small smile. "Ewain was a very angry man. He rarely let it show, but that was behind everything. He was consumed with rage and grief... He was angry at the world, at the spirits, for taking his family. Angry at himself for not being there, at his own Ritemaster for taking him away from their village that night. Angry at death, and his own life. And when his family weren't returned when the circle was completed, it pushed him over the edge. That rage had burned away almost everything else inside him... everything his family had loved about him, everything that had made him a good mate and father." Edge sighed deeply.
"But you're not like that," I said again.
"No. But I didn't lose the two people I loved most, the way he did. You say you can't be sure that you wouldn't have acted the same way Mag did, under those circumstances, as she was young at the time..." He let the sentence hang, the concluding statement unspoken. A small shrug.
I searched that calm, gentle face, unable to believe he could have that sort of rage inside him. Then I thought about the night of the ritual, when he'd become lost in Ewain's memories, and tried to attack my prone form with that knife. Had any of that fury been his own, mirroring Ewain's? Was there some resonance in him that brought it to the surface then?
A musician would know about resonance, I thought. If whatever remained of Ewain's spirit had been looking for something familiar in Edge, maybe that was it.
"Ewain's spirit seemed a much more... coherent presence than Mag's," I said after a moment. "I could feel it. Mag only seemed to be really alive inside my head."
"I suppose scattering her remains achieved the desired result," Edge reflected sadly.
"Unless I was imagining it all after all," I muttered.
My companion pinned me with a green stare. "Don't tell me you still don't believe it," he said. "Especially after everything you just said!"
I was shaking my head. "No, no, I do. It was that, or be crazy, right?"
Edge gave me an exasperated look.
"Okay! I know. It happened long enough ago that it's easier to dismiss now... but you're right. It was real, it did happen, no matter how hard it still is for me to admit it." I grimaced at myself. "I mean..."
"I know." Edge was looking at me with more sympathy now. I couldn't explain why it was still difficult to accept everything, but I supposed that was just how I was.
"And it is a bit strange, talking about all that here. It's a long way away, in space and time."
"Everything is relative."
I shot Edge a look with narrowed eyes. "What are you doing here, anyway? Besides stalking, me, I mean." I tried to keep the look of suspicion on my face, but I'm sure he knew I wasn't serious.
"Oh, I was just passing through the area, you know," he said nonchalantly. "Thought I'd take a stroll around the ol' Canyon and see what I could see. Heck of a coincidence, running into you both..." His face finally betrayed a small smile.
"Not that bloody word again!" I said, laughing. "I don't believe THAT." I kept eyeballing him.
"There may have been a phone call to a friend of mine in the travel industry," Edge admitted, smile widening. "And it really is something of a coincidence, that we're playing in Las Vegas this week. So I was in the area..."
"...relatively speaking," I finished. "Stalker!"
"This time, you might be right," he winked.
"So Glen was right all along," I said, shaking my head melodramatically. "Speaking of which, I'd better find him. He might have really fallen in if he's been in there this long."
We got up and started walking back towards the canyon (and the other tourists), but Glen met us on the path before we'd gone very far. A knot of people passing us gave themselves cricks in the neck staring at Edge, but at least they kept walking.
"So this is where you went." Glen greeted me with a peck on the cheek, and I put an arm around his waist.
"We were just about to come and fish you out," I replied.
"Speak for yourself," Edge said, making a disgusted face.
Glen and I shared a look. Again, a lot more information seemed pass between us than it should have. One of those things was Glen asking me, So what is he doing here?
"Edge was just telling me, they're playing in Vegas this week," I said.
"What a coincidence," Glen said, and then rolled his eyes as I stifled a snort of laughter.
Another pair of tourists walked past, trying to be subtle but still staring. The sun hadn't set yet, but the shade was deepening under the trees, and a camera flash went off after the tourists disappeared behind me.
"I wanted to ask you both if you'd like to see the show on Friday," Edge said, apparently unaware of anything unusual happening.
There was a beat of silence.
"Seriously?" Glen asked, while I was thinking about it. I looked at him.
"Seriously," Edge replied, smiling.
"We'd love to, thank you," Glen said, smiling back. Then he looked at me. "Well, I'd love to, at least."
"I would, too," I agreed, amused.
Edge was pulling a card from his jacket, and handed it to me. "Give Dennis a call, he'll sort it out," he said. I glanced at the card before tucking it into my wallet. "I'll see you both there?"
Glen was nodding, while I snorted. "Good luck spotting us in the middle of what, twenty thousand people?"
"More like sixteen thousand," Edge smiled.
"Well, I suppose we'll see you, at least," I replied.
After Edge took his leave, Glen and I wandered back to the Canyon, where bus-loads of tourists were waiting to photograph the sunset over the breathtaking terrain. Glen and I had done that already, but still wanted to see the show. The sun setting behind us painted the already-beautiful scenery in vivid shades of scarlet, orange and gold, as purple and indigo shadows filled the canyon below.
As the cameras clicked and beeped around us, sending futile flashes into the gloriously illuminated chasm, I reflected again on how lucky I was to be seeing this. I wondered if the locals, or anyone, could get tired of seeing such a dramatic scene, the skin of the earth laid open, the Canyon zagging back and forth, jagged promontories protruding from the depths, their tops still glowing red as darkness filled the scene. The horizontal bands crossing every cliff each representing a slice of time, going all the way back, and down, to the beginnings of life on Earth.
"That's a hell of a strat column," I said eventually. Glen just nodded, still taking in the view.
"Generous fellow, that Edge," he said after another minute. "This holiday, and now tickets..."
"Yeah." I squeezed Glen's hand. "I didn't realise you were a fan..." I was smiling.
"I do feel stupid for not recognising them," Glen admitted. "But they've changed a lot since I saw them last."
"You've seen them before? Besides on TV?"
"I caught a ZooTV concert, years ago," he said. "Your listening to that CD made me remember it all again. It was a great show," he added, with a nostalgic smile that I heard more than saw.
We started walking back to where a bus would take us to our hotel.
"You want to see if they've still got it?" I teased.
"Come on, it's not every day someone offers you free U2 tickets," Glen protested. "Let alone someone in U2!" That pronouncement earned a few startled looks from people nearby.
I decided, possibly unwisely, to put on my devil's advocate hat. "Doesn't it all strike you as a bit too weird? A couple of years ago, you thought he was stalking me, or I was cheating on you with him. Now it turns out he's a rock star and he offers you tickets and it's all cool?"
Glen was silent as we stopped and sat in a bus shelter. He took my hand almost absently. "We've both obviously thought about this a lot," he said. "Like you said, it was two years ago. A lot has happened between then and now," he smiled. His thumb brushed the wedding band on my finger. "And yes, it is quite weird. But there's no point sitting here, stuck on how weird it is, and letting opportunities slip away. Don't be telling me you're upset because I'm not jealous, now?" Glen grinned.
I pulled my hand away and jabbed him in the shoulder. "No," I said, sticking my tongue out. "I was just testing you," I winked.
The next day was Thursday, and we went back to the Canyon for our helicopter flight, and wandered around after that, still unable to get enough of the spectacular grandeur of the place. You just don't see things like the Grand Canyon in Britain. Aside from the completely different geology of the place, there just doesn't seem to be room there.
And I'd called that Dennis guy too, in the morning; a lovely-sounding Irish man, who'd informed me that Glen and I had been booked on a flight from Flagstaff to Las Vegas the next day. We were to meet him at the venue, he said, to be given our passes.
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Edge met the others at their hotel, on his return from Arizona. He'd taken the chance to look around the Canyon a bit, wondering what geologists like Lisa, or Glen for that matter, saw when they looked at it.
"So?" Bono asked. "How's she enjoying your present?"
Not 'Did you find them?', Edge noted wryly. "I think they're both enjoying it, yes," he replied. He stuck his head in the fridge, then glanced at the coffee pot. Empty. He pulled a can of soft drink from the fridge.
"Are they coming tomorrow?"
"They said they would."
There was a silence. Edge waited.
"I think we should play it," Bono said.
"I don't," Edge replied firmly. "It's not even half formed, it doesn't have a name, and we've never tried to play it all together."
"Apart from that first time," Adam put in. He was sprawled on a couch, apparently staring at the ceiling.
"And you don't have proper lyrics, anyway. It's not even finished as an instrumental piece."
"Don't you think Lisa should hear it?" Bono insisted. "It's not somethin' I think we'll release, so this might be the only chance. She's as much responsible for it existing as any of us."
"If it's not good enough to release, why would it be good enough to play live? There are sixteen thousand other people there, Bono, who won't have any idea what it's about. Lisa might not even realise what it's about, and you are not going to tell the universe what happened."
"That drum rhythm..."
"Furthermore," Edge continued, "if she DOES recognise that and figure it out, she might not react the way you want. It'd probably be something of a shock, hearing that; being put back there again, and in the middle of all those people too... I get the feeling she hasn't really told many people about what happened. I don't think we should play that in public without her consent, aside from the fact that, you know, it's not actually finished."
"Come on, Reg..."
"You can both stop arguin', 'cos I'm not playin' it," Larry said, from behind a newspaper.
"Lar..."
Larry folded down the newspaper, and gave Bono the Look. Bono sighed. "Why not?"
"'Cos I'm not, that's all. You were bloody lucky you talked me into playin' it in the studio." Up went the paper again. Bono made a silent mimicry of the recalcitrant drummer that made Adam snort with laughter. The paper rustled.
Edge sat down with his can of drink, took a printed page from the coffee table, and considered the following night's setlist.
-------------------------
Glen and I managed to pry ourselves away from the Canyon, on the Thursday, in time to find a CD shop and pick up a copy of U2's latest album. It wasn't exactly new, as this was their second trip around the USA on this tour. We felt obliged to give it a listen, since we were going to see the show the next day. Wouldn't do to be the only people in the arena to be wondering what all these songs were.
Glen seemed to enjoy it... I was too distracted trying to imagine 'Ed' playing these guitar parts to really absorb the music. I'd met the band, as oblivious as I'd been, on that hilltop on an appropriately dark and stormy night. My imagination was having some trouble taking the people I'd met there - Ed, Paul, Lawrence and Adam - and plonking them on a stage, with various instruments hanging off them; turning them into Edge, Bono, Larry, and... Adam. I supposed I would see it for myself, soon enough.
I woke up very early on Friday morning, the remnants of a jumbled but intense dream echoing through my head. It wasn't one of Mag's memories – those were long gone. But it had taken me back to the stone circle on the hill, bleeding into the ground, amid the storm. A storm of thunder and rain above, and a storm of struggling spirits below. I had dreams like this every so often, and so I just sighed, scrubbing at my face with my hands. Seeing Ed... Edge again must have brought it all up in my subconscious, too.
I tried to go back to sleep, but only dozed until Glen woke up. He prodded me out of bed and through breakfast – we had a plane to catch, after all.
We took the opportunity to take a bit of a look around Vegas after we landed around midday, and were appropriately stunned by all the casinos, even in broad daylight. I imagined it would be a whole different place again after dark. Eventually we made our way to the arena, and met Dennis at one of the small doors in between the larger gates. There were masses of people queued up at some of those gates, already waiting to get in. I wondered how long they'd been camped out there; however long it had been, it hadn't dampened the infectious buzz of excitement in the air around them.
Dennis presented us with a plastic card each, hanging from a lanyard. I peered at mine; there was some design on it that reminded me of the album artwork, and the words "Guest Pass" above a number. Glen and I exchanged a startled look. Not just tickets, it seemed.
Behind us, the buzz of the waiting fans surged, and I saw that they were being let in already. It wasn't even 5pm yet – they had a long wait ahead of them.
Dennis seemed to be orchestrating a hundred things at once, but I had to ask. "Um, what exactly do we do with these?"
Dennis blinked. "Show 'em to one o' the security people... one of our security people," he said, pointing to his own pass. "They'll let you into the front section. And backstage, after. See if you can hang around near the mixing desk in the encore," he added. "And for feck's sake, don't lose 'em!" His Irish accent was jovial, but he wasn't kidding. We promised to take the utmost care, and he went back to the highly organised chaos behind the door.
Edge just kept on delivering one surprise after another, usually while he wasn't even around.
Glen and I managed to while away a couple more hours over an early dinner, before we went back to the arena. Might as well take full advantage and check out the opening act.
Dusk had fallen outside; the arena was buzzing, the stands maybe half full, but filling quickly now. We were shown into the front section on the floor of the venue, and given stamps on our necks, of all places. There was a thick mass of people closer to the stage, most of whom were standing and giving the youthful opening band at least part of their attention. Things were a bit more relaxed further back, near the mixing desk. For myself, I didn't particularly want to be right at the front; and besides, it wouldn't have been right, elbowing my way in front of people who'd been queuing up all day. So Glen and I stood back, and took it all in.
The anticipatory roar of the audience as the lights finally went down was incredible. It had been a long time since I'd been to a live concert of this size, and my pulse quickened. The crowd's roar redoubled as the band appeared, and it vied with the loud music that was now pouring from the speaker stacks. I watched, and listened; the drums and bass resonating in my chest, my eyes divided between the big screens, and the small but recognisable figures on the stage. If I hadn't seen evidence to the contrary with my own eyes, I might have thought Edge's beanie was glued on.
He seemed as calm and collected on stage as he was anywhere else, playing his guitar with understated skill. I squinted, after the first couple of songs, watching the screens... he was wearing the same t-shirt he had on the hill, that night, I was sure of it. I wondered if that had been a deliberate choice, and concluded that it probably had. Cheeky beggar, indeed.
The arena filled with music and energy, and regardless of whether it was my favourite sort of music or not, it was infectious nonetheless. The band's energy expressed itself in various ways, Bono's performance being only the most obvious. I admit I was impressed that Edge still managed to play while jumping up and down, as if gravity was something that happened to other people. Adam seemed to enjoy teasing the front row with his bass, and even Larry ventured out from behind his kit for one of the acoustic numbers.
What was abundantly clear was that they were all in their element, up there, playing this music. There was a tremendous sense of collective joy in that energy, that seemed to come equally from the band, and the audience. And translated into the music, it came together and fed upon itself in a continuous cycle. I wondered that this arena could contain it all.
I recognised maybe half of the songs, and a lot of those were from the CD we'd only bought the day before. Glen seemed to know more of them, singing along beside me. I felt a little more detached, able to observe everything going on, without being caught up in it completely.
Bono finally bade the crowd goodnight, and the band retreated below the stage; the crowd wasn't fooled for a moment, and immediately set up clapping for an encore. A lot of them started singing, and after a moment I made it out... I thought it seemed a bit rude to be singing "How long?" after the band had barely been offstage for thirty seconds, but there it was.
I looked at Glen; he was grinning happily, and I had to grin back. We hadn't strayed very far from the mixing desk throughout the show, but now we made our way back, wondering if there was any particular reason we should be there.
"Maybe we just get a better view from here?" I said into Glen's ear, raising my voice over the chorus of "Hoooow long?" that was swelling around the arena. He shrugged.
Just as the big screens flickered to life again, and another roar went up from the crowd, a bearded security guard tapped me on the shoulder. "Lisa and Glen?" he shouted. I nodded, and we showed him our passes, puzzled. He beckoned us, and we followed him further back, through the cheering crowd, whose eyes were all on the screens and the stage. Through a barrier at the side, and around, behind, past some other security guards, through another barrier. Meanwhile, sounds from the stage and the audience told me the band had appeared again; and no sooner had I noticed that, than I realised that Glen and I had ended up right at the side of the stage, inside the barrier. There was a sparse collection of other people there, too. Several of them were trying to carry on a conversation between themselves, obviously no strangers to being backstage at rock concerts.
Glen nudged me, and I looked up from my observations, followed his gaze further up. Edge was standing at the edge of the stage (haha), playing and winking down at us. I grinned back, and he swung away, to produce some soaring solo at the front of the stage. Bono strolled over, as if to see what was so interesting, and gave us a smile too.
There were a few more songs; again, only some of which I was in any way familiar with. I looked at all the electronic gear and blinking lights, and watched as a guitar tech popped in and out of the room below the stage, handing Edge different guitars. How many did you need for one concert, I wondered. Standing further back, we hadn't noticed any of this complexity, and frenetic activity. There was an awful lot of hard work going on here, I thought. The band's job is to make it all look effortless.
Another unfamiliar song was playing, some synthesiser part underlying the chiming guitar, the lighting all blue. It wasn't my usual style at all, but there was something insistent and compelling about the rhythm of it. And then I heard something that made me pay closer attention...
"...Into the half-light, and through the flame..."
So he hadn't made that up on the spot... Unless this had been written afterwards? Surely not... It hadn't been on the CD we'd bought the day before. I didn't have the chance to think about it, however. Suddenly, this song was speaking to me in a very personal way.
"If I could, through myself, set your spirit free..."
Glen touched my arm, and I spared him a glance. I had gone very still, but I tried to give him an 'I'm fine' look.
"...Let it go, and so not fade away... I'm wide awake..." The song rolled on, and on. "I'm wiiiiide awake, I'm not sleeping..."
The audience was singing along, I noticed. Did that mean it wasn't a new song? Perhaps it was a coincidence, those words. Perhaps just some old lyric that had risen to the top of Bono's mind, on the hilltop, after his blood had finally restored health to the Fire spirits in that stone.
The rest of the band played on, the music growing quieter. Bono rocked back and forth in the middle of the stage, apparently as lost in the song as everyone else there.
"Earth and sky, fire and rain," he sang, and despite everything, I still felt a chill. He seemed to mumble a few more words, but my eyes flicked to Edge, who was also watching Bono.
The mumbles resolved into words again.
"... no shadow, only scars... carved into stone, on the face of earth..."
My heart was suddenly pounding, and I felt my pulse beating in the scars on my arms. Glen shot me another look, but my attention was riveted on the stage. What was he doing? Another cheer had gone up from the crowd; I barely noticed. Edge crossed the stage, still playing, and stopped a few feet from the singer, angling his body towards him. His eyes were on the guitar, but I sensed some sort of message in that posture. Something like, Careful.
"... the heart of darkness, a fire zone..."
And the music rolled on, beneath it, pulling me along. Something changed subtly in the rhythm of the drums and bass, and I saw Adam standing at Larry's elbow. It wasn't the same, but it reminded me, nonetheless. The music was a river, I remembered the rain pouring, washing over the stones.
"... The drums, are beating slower... her blood still cries from the ground..."
The figure Edge had been playing on his guitar had been changing, too; falling into another pattern with the others. But at those words, Edge resumed the original pattern, just as Larry and Adam did the same. I couldn't say who was guiding the shape of this song, but the band seemed to know where they were going.
"I'm wiiide awaaake," Bono sang, and I found myself relaxing. Edge moved back. The song tumbled onwards, the river carrying everyone along until it ended on several resounding chords.
Bono said good night again, thanked the audience. The band all waved, the crowd roared and cheered and clapped and whistled its gratitude. The four of them left the stage. After a minute, the house lights came up, and some recorded song played over the loudspeakers. I stood, unmoving, yet unexpectedly moved.
"Love?" Glen said into my ear. I blinked, and looked at him, the spell finally broken. "Are you all right?"
I nodded. "That was a bit of a surprise," I called back, regaining my equilibrium. The crowd was milling around, beginning to shuffle out, an excited hubbub rising. The other people who'd shared our privileged position had vanished, and the bearded security guard had appeared again. He looked at us expectantly.
"Do you want to go?" Glen asked me, over the noise of sixteen thousand people comparing notes. I wasn't sure whether he meant 'go backstage' or 'go home'. It occurred to me that we had nowhere in Vegas to stay that night. Unless the omnipotent Edge had organised that, too.
"Let's go," I said, and clarified my ambiguous reply by following the security guard. If nothing else, I wanted to know what that song had been.
We were led to a room filled with food and drink and chairs and couches and people, including one or two faces that even I recognised. The band wasn't in evidence yet, so I grabbed a sandwich and a beer and retreated to a corner. Glen joined me a minute later, looking bemused. He sipped from his own beer, watching everyone, and I did much the same. Mostly, they seemed to speaking to one another in glowing terms about the concert. I thought about that last song, and the way it had brought that night back again so vividly. I gulped my beer.
Glen put an arm around my waist. "You okay? You looked a bit wobbly before."
"I'm fine, you worry-wart," I said, making myself smile. I knew I shouldn't let one little song upset me, and I didn't want Glen to go back to the sort of over-protectiveness that he'd displayed after the incident in the circle.
Glen looked as if he was about to say something, then changed his mind. I chose not to pursue it.
One by one, the band came in, looking freshly-showered; although Edge had taken the time to put a beanie back on. They were smiling, greeting people they obviously knew, being introduced to ones they didn't, accepting compliments, collecting food and beverages. All these no doubt famous and powerful people, all chatting easily with one another. Someone popped the cork on a bottle of champagne, and the atmosphere became even more festive.
Glen and I stayed in our corner. I, at least, felt desperately out of place... Glen seemed happy enough just watching everyone. I finished my beer, and wondered if I was brave enough to venture away from the wall for another. Or escape entirely, except that the door was on the opposite side of the room.
A dark-haired woman appeared in front of us, and I jumped, irrationally afraid that she intended to foil my escape plans. She smiled, and I smiled back, nervously. There was something else in her face besides random friendly politeness, I thought.
"Lisa?" she asked me.
I nodded. "And this is Glen," I said. "My husband." I still wasn't quite used to that. And how did she know who I was? Maybe the same way that security guard had...
She smiled at Glen too, that odd expression still hovering around her face.
"I'm Morleigh," she told me, in an American accent.
"Pleased to meet you," I said.
There was a beat of silence. "I'm Edge's wife," she added.
"Oh," I said, slightly stupidly.
.... Oh.
"He never did mention your name," I added, my face reddening. Only now did I recognise her, from the first day I'd seen 'Ed', and his family, out in the middle of nowhere in Wales. She'd stayed at a distance, but she still had that long, dark hair.
"He didn't mention a lot of names to you, from what I've heard," Morleigh said, her smile widening. "Including his own."
I gave a weak laugh, unable to be sure if she was having a go at me. "Well, he did mention it, but I misheard him. And I figured it all out in the end," I said, groping for something to say. "The truth will out..."
"Yes," she agreed.
There was an awkward silence.
"I'm sorry," I blurted. "I... I want to apologise to you. For what happened... you know." I forced myself to meet her eyes, but my face was burning. "He must have told you, we had no control over it..." It sounded so hollow and false, now.
Glen had put his arm around my waist again, but stayed silent. Morleigh's smile had faded a little, but it was still there.
"It's all right," she said. "Yes, he told me that. He told me a lot of things, and I didn't believe most of it, at first. Maybe I over-reacted... but if I did, it was later. I was willing to let that first thing go – we're both professionals, we're away from home a lot. We trust each other. But when those dreams of his kept going, and he started behaving strangely..." Morleigh gave a shrug.
"It is that seed of doubt," Glen put in. He and Morleigh exchanged a long look, but then she smiled.
"You do sound just like Edge's parents," she said, in a creditable Welsh accent of her own.
I smiled as well. "You can do that better than I can, and I've been living with him for ten years!"
The conversation was more relaxed, after that. I was in the middle of explaining my career choice to Morleigh, when Edge sidled up to her and planted a kiss on her cheek.
"So this is where you got to," he said.
"I just wanted to meet Lisa and Glen," Morleigh replied, and chuckled at the mock-nervousness that appeared on Edge's face.
"Oh don't worry," I said. "She's told us all about you."
"Now, why would that worry me..." Edge's feigned fear increased, and I had to laugh too.
A minute later, Bono managed to extract himself from a knot of friends and admirers, and brought a handful of beers over to us.
"House rules!" he announced jovially, handing them out. "No one's allowed to have an empty hand for more than five minutes."
Adam strolled past behind Bono at that moment, raised the bottle of water in his hand, and winked at me.
"Well, if those are the rules," I said, taking a drink.
Another minute later, we were all somehow crammed onto a couch, talking easily together as if we'd all known each other forever. I wasn't quite sure how Bono had managed it.
"What did you think of the show, then?" Bono asked, and I blinked at him.
"Amazing," Glen said.
"Everyone in here must have said that by now," I said. "Do you not believe them yet?"
"Oh, him," Edge said, waving his beer. "He's not happy until every last person in the stadium's had their mind blown. He'd probably ask all of them what they thought, if he could."
"I'm sure they'd love that," I said, without a trace of sarcasm.
"Like you can talk, Mr. Perfectionist!" Bono chuckled. He turned to me. "Dozens of guitars, and they all need new strings every day. All those amp and echo and pedal and effects settings, they gotta be perfect, or look out! He's the only one that can hear the difference, but you should see him if somethin' goes wrong..."
I looked at the mischievous expression on Bono's face, and the tolerant one on Edge's, and decided that this was a conversation they had regularly.
"You didn't answer me question yet," Bono winked at me.
I paused. "What was that last song?"
"That was Bad," he replied. Edge had gone still, and Morleigh looked at him.
"I don't know," I said, misunderstanding. "The audience seemed to love it."
There was the sort of silence you hear when everyone is waiting for someone else to laugh, but they're not sure if the person was really joking.
"The name of the song is 'Bad'," Edge finally explained. I nearly told him I wouldn't recognise the name of the song, bad or not, when I finally got it. Once again, I felt like an idiot.
"How long have you been playing that one, then?" I asked.
Bono considered. "Twenty years or so?"
"More like twenty-five," Edge said.
Not a new song, then. Perhaps that had all been a coincidence, and I'd just been overly sensitive. Glen and Edge and Bono were all watching me. The weight of their eyes demanded some sort of response.
"It was a great show," I said at last. I had the feeling 'good' wasn't good enough. "That last song, 'Bad', that was remarkable," I said slowly. "Very... evocative." Unconsciously, I rubbed the scar on one arm with my hand. Edge and Glen caught the gesture. And to my surprise, Edge gave Bono a kick on the shin.
"I told you to leave it," he said.
"I didn't do anythin'," Bono protested, rubbing at his leg. "You three nearly started playing it. I just threw a bit of One Tree Hill in there."
"Slightly modified," Edge said pointedly. "'The drums'? 'Her blood'?"
Bono looked stubborn. "I'll tell you why I sang it that way, if you can tell me why you changed the chords around, or why Lars and Adam were playing around, too."
Edge sighed, and looked at me. "I'm sorry," he said.
"What for?" I said, thoroughly confused. "Unless you were all trying to give me flashbacks deliberately." My tone was flat. Glen's hand curled around mine, between us on the couch.
"It wasn't deliberate," Edge said, in the same moment that Bono said "We weren't trying to give you flashbacks."
Bono, who was sitting on my other side, took my free hand, turned it over, and ran a thumb along the thin scar on my forearm. I tensed, and he turned my hand back palm-down again, and just held it. I met a pair of very blue eyes.
"I'm sorry if we went too far with that, tonight," he said, and I believed him. "We didn't mean any harm, or to upset you. Are you all right, now?"
That smooth Irish bastard was charming me. And it was working, too.
"Yes, I'm fine, thank you," I said, bemused. He gave my hand a pat, and sat back again.
"'Fine, thank you'," Bono said, mimicking my accent. "Are we sure she's not related to Adam?" He was all smiles again.
Edge, perched on the arm of the couch, was still serious. He ignored Bono's rhetorical question.
"We should tell you, we did start to write something, after that all happened," he told me. "That's what we nearly went into, in the middle of Bad."
"Something, like a song?" I asked.
"It's not really a song," Bono said.
"And it's not finished," Edge added. "We might never finish it, and I don't think we'd release it, even if we did."
"Yer bloody right about that," Larry interjected, walking past. He gave me a nod and kept going. I blinked.
"Well, there you have it," Bono said, with a wry twist of his mouth. "The Drummer hath Spoken."
"At that moment in the song," Edge said, apparently still determined to explain things to me, "it seemed right, it seemed to fit. The moment seemed to call for it, and we're all running half on instinct up there. The chords just seemed to mesh, you know? But that lyric about the blood crying..."
"It was a bit of a shock," I admitted.
"That pulled me up short," Edge finished.
"It's okay, don't worry about it," I smiled at him. "No harm done." He nodded.
Morleigh had drifted off to talk with a couple of other women, and Bono was carrying on another conversation with someone standing next to the couch.
"I need the ladies'," I said after a minute.
"Out the door, all the way along to the left. Follow the yellow arrows on the floor," Edge supplied.
Sure enough, there was yellow duct tape stuck to the floor, leading through the maze of corridors. There were lines and arrows in at least two other colours there as well, which only made me curious about where they led. I resisted temptation, though, having more pressing matters on my mind.
In the bathroom, those pressing matters having been dealt with, I leaned on the sink and looked at my reflection in the mirror. In another week, Glen and I would be back in Cardiff, back in the real world. We'd been on this trip for more than six weeks, and while I'd never expected to get quite this far away from reality, it was still time to come back down. And as surreal as this latest departure was, it was still much more pleasant than what had taken me from normality 18 months earlier.
I nearly collided with Larry as I made my way back towards the reception room, or whatever it was. The corridors were not well-lit, and I suppose we were both wearing dark clothing.
"Sorry," we both muttered, stepping back. He made to move on, but I said, "Law.. Larry." He stopped, looking at me.
"I never got the chance to say thank you," I said, nervous in the face of his silence. "So, thank you. I told the others, I would have been lost without that drum, and I meant it."
He just stood there for a moment. "You're welcome," he said.
I wondered if I should say more, but decided that if he just wanted to leave it at that, then so did I. I smiled, he nodded, and we continued on our separate ways.
I was in his world tonight, I reflected as I followed the yellow duct tape, without really being part of it. I was still an outsider in this world. Which was fair enough.
I cornered Edge when I got back into the room, where the party was still going strong. He and Adam were watching a knot of younger people exclaiming loudly about something or other.
"I don't suppose you know how we're getting back to our hotel tonight, do you?" I asked him. "I don't even know if there are any flights this late."
"I wasn't sure what you would want to do," Edge replied. "We can organise somewhere in town for the night, if you don't want to fly back tonight."
"He thinks of everything," Adam drawled.
"What do you want to do?" I asked Glen, who had appeared beside me. "I don't really want to fly back at this hour, even if there is a plane we can get on."
"Me neither," Glen said. "Are we going now?"
"Not if you want to stay," I smiled. "Either way, I guess we'll be staying in Vegas tonight...?" I looked at Edge. Glen nodded.
Edge went off to talk to someone, who then left the room. It must be nice to be able to wave your hand, and have people scurry off to do your bidding, I mused.
Bono swooped on us then, and apparently dismayed that I was thinking of leaving, decided to break the ice for us by conducting a whirlwind of introductions with seemingly everyone else in the room. We met a host of family members and friends, and assorted other guests, and I didn't remember any of their names ten seconds after I was told them. Still, a couple of geologists were an uncommon sight in these circles, I gathered, because Glen and I were peppered with questions. And to my relief, most people seemed happy with the vaguest of answers when it came to how I knew the band.
Finishing up the spree of introductions, Bono said, "And finally, this advanced carbon life-form is known as The Edge."
"We've met," I said, grinning at his manner.
"What a coincidence!" Bono exclaimed, then disappeared to talk to another group of people. I didn't know where he got the energy from, after the show and everything.
Edge rolled his eyes, and handed me a piece of paper. A hotel's name and number was written on it. "You're both booked in for tonight," he said.
"Thank you," I said. "And thank you to whoever that was who made the booking, too," I winked.
"I'll pass that along," Edge smiled.
Finally, the time came to call it a night, or possibly a very early morning. We said our farewells, and Edge walked to a taxi rank outside with us, since I'd refused to let him ask one of their drivers to take us to the hotel.
"A taxi's good enough for us, Mr. The Edge," I'd said, affecting a snooty accent and drawing myself up. Then I giggled. "Sorry, Dr. The Edge. Hey, you never did tell me what that degree's in. Or was Morleigh just joking about that?"
"She wasn't joking," Edge replied, good-naturedly ignoring my somewhat inebriated amusement. "I was granted an honorary doctorate in music."
I managed to stop myself making a disgruntled noise about honorary degrees, having earned mine the traditional way. "Well, belated congratulations," I said. Edge inclined his head, and a taxi pulled up.
"Safe trip," the guitarist said.
"Thank you again, for everything," I said, and gave him a spontaneous tipsy hug, while Glen was talking to the taxi driver.
Edge chuckled, and patted my back before letting go. He shook Glen's hand, and Glen repeated his thanks. "Least I could do. You both take care, okay?"
We were climbing into the taxi. "You too," I said without thinking, then giggled again. "You must get so sick of that."
He just waved as we pulled away from the curb.
Back in Cardiff, reality reasserted itself with depressing rapidity. I didn't have a job until the new year, but Glen was straight back to work. Nothing brings you back to earth faster than unpacking everything and putting it away. Finding space on our fridge for all the souvenir magnets, space in the drawers for all the t-shirts, space on the shelves for all the books... space in our lives for our normal lives. And finding out that half our postcards were taking longer to reach their destinations than we had. It was fun to re-live everything by debriefing all our friends and family, and seeing Anne's reaction to our adventures in Las Vegas was priceless. She demanded photographic evidence, of course, but we had none.
After Christmas, I got an email from drevans39, again. There was an mp3 attached, titled "blood and stone", and a brief message.
"Lisa,
"It's still not finished, but I thought you deserved to hear it. We would appreciate it if you didn't send it to anyone else, please.
- Edge"
I supposed that if this track did leak, they'd know where it had come from.
I hesitated over downloading it for a very long time. Remembering my reaction at the concert, I wondered if I wanted to hear their musical translation of the night I'd nearly died.
I decided that for now, I didn't. Maybe one day, but not today. That file could stay in my email until I was ready for it.
THE ACTUAL END. (Yes, I mean it this time.)
Disclaimer sez: Lies! All lies!!
(Look out, it's a big one...)
end of final chapter:
-------------
I turned, craning, looking for my beanied friend again. He was trying to keep a group of other guests between himself and the photographers.
Paparazzi!
Our eyes met again, my eyebrows climbing into my hair.
Ed – or The Edge – just shrugged, winked, and shot me a cheeky-school-boy look of sheepish apology.
I spoke into Glen's ear. "We're taking the bloody holiday!"
---------
Epilogue:
---------
It all made perfect sense in hindsight, of course. I would have dearly loved to have cornered him right then and there, but there were too many people around (as well as uninvited photographers – I'd wondered if I would find myself in some magazine gossip column), and we were being bundled into the limo for the drive to the reception.
'Ed', 'Edge'; who could blame me for hearing him wrong on a windy day? I could, and did blame him for not correcting me, especially after running into him the second time. Or the third, or the fourth...
Those funny noises when I called him at "work". His half-truths about relaxed working environments and flexible hours. The travelling. I suppose he thought it was very funny... and the rest of them must have, too. All that suppressed amusement in their voices.
I'm not a fan, obviously. I think someone had given me Achtung Baby when it came out, but it had drifted to the bottom of my CD collection and I hadn't listened to it since then. I'd never heard any of their later albums, never felt tempted to catch them live.
I felt an idiot for not recognising Bono, at least, although I nearly had. That sense of familiarity I'd dismissed, attributed to mushrooms or spirits or my imagination. And the last time I'd seen him on television, he'd been seventeen years younger, with long black hair, and dressed head to foot in black leather. I hardly watched television at all, these days.
'Paul', indeed! I had to look up his real name, later. I supposed he'd been truthful, as that was technically his name. And Adam had addressed him as 'B', that night; a detail that hadn't even registered at the time.
But you just don't expect to see rock stars in the middle of the Welsh 'desert'. Not part of their natural habitat at all.
The reception had passed in something of a lesser blur than the ceremony, but it was still a trifle disjointed in my memory afterwards. An endless stream of friends and family congratulating us; barely having time to eat because I was going around making sure I got to speak to everyone; cutting the cake; the first dance. Everyone taking pictures, and the guy with the video camera.
At some point, the music was taken over by a DJ. Anne had recognised The Edge after the ceremony, and had been wearing a slightly stunned expression since. She'd given an unsteady giggle as "Beautiful Day" came from the DJ's booth, and someone had to tell me that it was a U2 song.
"How could you not recognise him?!" she'd hissed at me later in the evening. "Or Bono! All of them out there on that hill..."
We were on the dance floor, bopping perfunctorily to some '80s number. I'd been wondering idly if there was any Metallica in that DJ's collection.
"It was dark," I'd muttered back. "And you don't have to tell the world. They'd probably prefer not to have that story splashed across the tabloids."
I imagined the headlines. 'U2 in grisly druid sacrifice', or worse; 'Rocks stars bleed fan dry'. Maybe when the next tour's ticket prices were announced, haha.
Two weeks after that, Glen and I had been on a beach on Hawaii's Big Island. The day before, we'd flown in a helicopter over Kilauea's latest eruption. It had been spectacular... I only wished we'd been able to approach it on foot, but it was inaccessible.
"So, we're taking the holiday, are we?" Glen asked.
It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about. "Ed's present? I mean 'The Edge's'... I can't get used to that."
"At least we know he can afford it now," Glen said drily.
"Indeed."
If anything, knowing who Ed... The Edge was made everything that happened that much more surreal, in hindsight. Bad enough if it had been some random guy called Ed... how did a famous musician get mixed up in something like that? It was too weird, suddenly thinking of 'Ed' in a totally different way.
And I still didn't know quite how I'd got mixed up in it.
Time passed... I had a few more jobs over the summer, Glen negotiated some long service leave at his work. And I called the travel agent Ed had provided... Edge had provided. The Edge. Was that how people spoke to him? 'Hi, The Edge, how's it going?'
I hadn't contacted him since the wedding. U2 was touring, and I had no idea what I'd say to him, in any case.
Glen caught me listening to Achtung Baby as he came home one day. I'd dusted it off with a vague sense of guilt... If I'd suddenly found myself acquainted with a rock star, shouldn't I give his band's music another chance?
Alas, not much had changed in my musical tastes. It wasn't a bad album, by any stretch, but it just didn't grab me. It did, however, prompt a great deal of fond early-nineties nostalgia.
"Are you re-living your youth, or can't you remember back that far?" Glen winked as he sat down next to me on the couch.
I just stuck my tongue out at him.
--------------------------
The Edge, aka Dr. Ed Evans, smiled as he retrieved a voicemail message from his mobile phone. He'd been starting to wonder if Lisa was angry about the way he'd hidden his identity... not that he'd really done that on purpose. It just hadn't seemed important at first, and then it had felt too late to just say, "Oh by the way, I'm in this band..."
She might still be angry, of course. Just because she'd booked that holiday, it didn't mean anything. Or she might never have been angry. Or maybe he was just thinking about this far too much. He had more than enough to think about as it was.
He called back on his phone.
"Sharon? Edge here... thanks for letting me know. Do you think you could tell me when they'll be at the Grand Canyon? November... what dates? Where are we then... ah, that's right. Great, thank you again!"
Edge looked at the schedule in his BlackBerry, and had to chuckle. A coincidence, indeed...
--------------------------
Our itinerary had us staying at the Grand Canyon for ten days. Four of those were occupied with a hiking/camping trip along part of the bottom of the canyon... the whole place was breathtaking. Two thousand million years of Arizona's history, all laid open to be read like a book. And the Colorado river was still carving its way down, through the ancient Pre-Cambrian rocks at the lowest part of the canyon. I wanted to spend months crawling all over the rock walls, reading that story. I made a note to find out if anyone had made a complete stratigraphic column of those strata... that would be a mammoth task.
On this day, Glen and I had taken another trip to the floor of the canyon, this time on mules. I was still aching from our climb up after the hike, so I was glad enough to let the mule do most of the work.
I was still in awe of everything I was seeing, and I could see my gobsmacked stare reflected on the faces of many of the other tourists around. November wasn't exactly peak season, but there were still plenty of people there. I imagined that was always the case, and it must be insane in summer.
Glen and I were dismounting from our mules, and rubbing surreptitiously at our lower backs.
"I thought it wouldn't hurt so much, sitting on a mule instead of using my own legs," I muttered.
"Well, we'll be on our backsides in a helicopter tomorrow. Nothing to do but sit there and take pictures..." Glen smiled.
"Bliss!"
There was a chuckle behind me. "It looks like everything's come full circle, now," said a familiar, quietly accented voice.
I whirled around, and there was Ed... ge.
"Yeah, you're still stalking me," I shot back. I was too surprised to know whether I was joking or not.
The Edge's expression was guarded, uncertain. Glen's frown wasn't helping.
People were looking at us... or at The Edge, at least. The signature beanie was in place, and it seemed most people in the western world were more familiar with U2 than I was.
Then I remembered where we were, and why we were there at all. I smiled, and The Edge seemed relieved.
"This is by far the best wedding present we got," I said. "Saying 'Thank you' hardly seems adequate."
Glen recalled his manners too. "Yes, thank you... it's been amazing."
The Edge was waving our thanks aside. "Don't mention it, please... It's my way of saying 'Thank you' to both of you."
People nearby were taking pictures, or whispering to their friends, and several were rummaging in their bags for pens and bits of paper. This was completely bizarre.
"Do you mind if we go for a walk?" The Edge was pointedly ignoring all the whispers and cameras; it seemed he didn't want to be in celebrity mode today. I can't say I blamed him.
Glen seemed to come to a decision. "I need the bathroom," he said to me, and I looked a question at him, surprised.
"It's all right, I won't fall in," he smiled. "I'll catch up with you in a bit."
"All right," I said, and watched my husband as he walked away. I stopped smirking at his awkward gait as soon as I started walking, and found twinges in places I'd never known about.
"Is that how I looked after getting off that horse?"
I just grunted.
The Edge and I walked away from the thickest crowd of tourists, along a path that led from one viewing point to another. By some unspoken agreement, we followed a branch that became a walking trail through the forest, away from the canyon. There weren't nearly as many people that way.
I found myself unexpectedly uncomfortable. This was Ed, the same person he'd been since I first met him. But at the same time, he wasn't Ed, had never been Ed. It was hard to reconcile the two versions of him I had in my head... I didn't know what to say to him, what I should say. Not because I was star-struck, but because I thought I'd known him, at least a bit. I didn't even know how to address him.
"What do I call you, anyway? Dr. The Edge? Or do you go by David?" Bono's wasn't the only name I'd looked up.
"I'm only David Evans to customs officials," he replied. "Most people just call me Edge."
"Except mad Englishwomen who call you Ed, I suppose."
A smile.
I stopped. "Why didn't you correct me?"
A pause. "At the time, it didn't seem important. It was just a chance meeting, you know? I wasn't being a rock star that day. And after that... well, it never seemed quite the right moment..."
"How about all those emails you signed as 'Ed'?"
It may not have been fair, but somewhere in the back of my head, I'd been stewing for months about this whole issue, and some of that was coming out now. Was I justified in feeling any amount of hurt or betrayal? A lie of omission is still a lie... and signing emails as 'Ed' was far more direct than than simply not correcting me. Did his being a big famous rock star excuse him at all?
The Edge sighed. "You do have a point there. But aside from the issue of your not knowing who it was from if I'd signed off as 'Edge', I think I developed a bit of a split personality about it all, you know? It was so bizarre, so surreal, it really did feel as if it was happening to someone else, after a while. To you, I was Ed. All these strange things were happening to Ed. Ed was spamming your inbox with his dreams, not me. And I know I could have said something in any of those emails, but I don't think you were reading most of them anyway."
There was another pause. I wasn't quite ready to let him off the hook and say it was okay. And why should he care what I thought, anyway?
"I was actually going to say something, that day I scared the living daylights out of you," he went on. The goatee twitched at the memory, and I frowned. "But it went out of my head, for some reason."
"I suppose I concussed you, did I? That's what you get for keeping your brain in your arse."
Internally, my words shocked me. I guess I was angry about it after all... and a corner of my own brain was maybe a bit star-struck, too. Here's me, talking to The Famous Edge like that...!
But The Edge took it on the chin. "Look, I know I should have said something. But for one reason or another, I didn't, and they each seemed like good reasons at the time. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
Another pause, and this time I inclined my head, acknowledging his apology.
"And I have wondered... would you have gone through with it, the ritual, if you'd recognised us that night?"
I thought about that. Part of me said, Of course, what difference would it have made? But another part balked at the idea of me doing all that, saying those things, asking them to cut themselves, if I'd known it was U2. Even if I wasn't a fan. I might have thought it was a set-up for some hidden camera show, or at least been unwilling to risk being responsible for damaging famous persons.
"I might not have, at that," I admitted.
The Edge gave a small smile. "Then I think it was just as well. In any case, does it really matter? When would you have confessed, if you were in my position?"
I was silent a moment. Did it matter, after all?
"I don't know. Maybe when I rang you at 'work' that time... was that your studio, or something?"
"Yes. And you never asked. You didn't seem curious about what I did for a living, so why would I bring it up out of the blue?"
He had a point. And he was sounding so Ed-like, with the analytical logic. I looked at him for a long moment, and finally shook myself and told myself I was being an idiot. He was the same person. I started walking again.
"All right, you're right, I suppose," I said, finally smiling. "I was more interested in denying what was going on... I still think you could have said something before the bloody paparazzi showed up at the wedding, though!"
Edge made a face. "I'm sorry about that, too," he said. "I don't know how they found out I was going to be there."
"They got some pretty good pictures," I said. "Cheaper than the wedding photographer, too." I paused. "You must get sick of them following you around," I added.
"It's part of public life," he shrugged. He looked around at the trees, glimpses of the glorious canyon vista occasionally visible between them.
"Expecting them to pop up here?"
"You never know," he said with mock grimness. "Still, it was rather refreshing to just be treated as 'Ed' for a while, you know?"
"Right up until I clobbered you, you mean," I said.
"That was rather... confronting," Edge said with a chuckle. "You're nothing if not direct."
"Well, you know these Earth people. Straight to the point..."
We drifted to a halt in a clearing, and both sat down on a bench there. I could hear other people in the distance, but for the moment there was no one else in sight.
"Do you think about it often? What happened?" Edge asked me. My comment had brought it to the top of both our minds, it seemed.
"On and off," I admitted. "Things were a bit... interesting afterwards. It took a while to sort myself out, I suppose. I ended up seeing the counsellor again." I grimaced, not entirely sure why I was telling Edge that. "I'm going to have a hell of a time stopping myself from thinking of you as 'Ed' now, you know," I added. Trying to deflect attention away from my confession.
"That's understandable," he replied, and I wasn't sure which of my statements he was replying to. Perhaps both. "We had to finish work on the album and start preparing for the tour and everything pretty much as soon as we got back to Dublin, I barely had time to process things. And that's always a tense time..." He shook his head, possibly recalling some spectacular arguments.
I recalled a few of my own, and nodded in understanding.
"It wasn't easy. Every time I thought all of that was over, it wasn't. And after that... you know... the hospital and everything, I was sure that was the end of it. But it never is. I was so worried about Glen and I... But I guess if something doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. I think that's how relationships work. If something doesn't destroy it, it brings you closer together."
Now Edge was nodding. "It can't have been easy for him, either."
"No. He barely understood half of what was happening before that, and the fact that I nearly... Well. I could have died," I finally said. "He was all shaken up by that before it had really sunk in for me. And then I couldn't get a job for a while, and it all seemed to be falling apart."
I stopped myself. I'd been over this with both Glen and Andrew, more than once, and the guitarist sitting beside me didn't need to know all the gory details. He probably knew enough of them, as it was. "Still, it turned out okay, in the end," I smiled.
"I can see that," Edge replied. "It was a lovely ceremony, what I saw of it."
"Thank you for coming, " I said, rather belatedly. "I know why people video tape those things now. I can barely remember any of it!"
There was a pause after Edge gave a polite chuckle.
"I guess things worked out for you in the end too," I added at length. "I mean, I haven't heard anything in the news about U2 breaking up." I winked, not being serious. It felt very strange to bring that up myself, the whole topic of U2, but I had to try to merge these disparate Ed/Edges in my head.
He just smiled. "No, all is well. We've been through worse, and come out the other side in once piece."
"One big flat piece," I said, spontaneously quoting a favourite TV show I'd watched, years before. Edge laughed at that.
"Glen doesn't like talking about what happened," I said after another silence, recalling the original question. "He finally realised that we had to talk about it, but he won't bring it up voluntarily, even now. It's been, what... over 18 months since that night. My friends were great, but they weren't there. And it was just expensive talking to Andrew about it, as good as he is." I grimaced.
"I suppose I'm lucky, in that my friends were there, although they don't really know what it all meant. Not the same way that we do, I mean."
"What did they make of it?" I had been wondering, even before I knew who they were.
Edge rubbed the back of his neck. ---What did we make of it, indeed.---
"Bono wanted to talk about it more than I did, I think. Larry just clammed up and carried on like nothing had happened. And Adam is just... Adam."
Well, that was cryptic. But even based on the brief meeting I'd had with them, I thought I knew something of what he meant.
We fell silent again, thinking our own thoughts. I looked up, and closed my eyes for a moment, just feeling the dappled sunlight on my face, filtering through the trees.
"Have you thought much about why it was us?" Edge asked.
"I thought about that a lot," I said, eyes still closed. "After everything else was answered, that was still the big question, wasn't it." I looked back down and met Edge's eyes briefly. "Why me, why us? Out of all the people that must have gone near the place in the last four or five thousand years..."
"And?"
He must have thought about it too, I thought, but he wanted to hear my theory first. "It'd be impossible to be certain," I began.
"Of course."
"I suppose it might have been a combination of things, but at some level I think our blood must have had something to do with it. You said Alun took Mag's children off to the east... It would be thoroughly diluted by now, but possibly one of those children was an extremely distant ancestor of mine. And I don't know if Ewain had any other children, before his son, but he would have had other relatives..."
"That's about what I thought," Edge said. "Although Ewain didn't have any other children. Not that he was aware of, mind you... it is possible, I suppose." He looked thoughtful.
"Do you think that's really all it was?"
Edge shook his head. "There must be thousands of people with the same ancestors. I guess this is where science fails us again," he said with a smile.
I 'tsk'ed. "Honestly, I don't know why I made a career of it," I said, smiling back.
"Things are harder to define in my line of work," Edge said. "Everything except the bottom line, I suppose," he added. "But the question of how all of that happened, and why it happened to us, is as hard to answer as the question of where music comes from, and why it affects people the way it does."
"Some people might simplify that by saying 'God did it'," I said, tentatively. I had read enough about U2's early days to wonder if Edge was one of those people. He looked at me for a moment.
"Some people might, yes," he allowed. "Everything may well begin and end with God, if you believe that, but I tend to think that the things in between are more complex. Bringing God into things doesn't necessarily make them simpler."
I didn't feel like getting into a theological debate, despite having brought the topic up. I wasn't very comfortable with the whole idea of religion, and now I shrugged and let it drop.
"Do you think we had all those memories somewhere in our brains, before we even went out there?"
"Maybe in our blood, more than our brains," Edge mused. He didn't seem to mind changing the subject. "If they were our ancestors, directly or not, that was always part of us. Perhaps that blood attracted... something, that was in the area. Spirits, if you like, or perhaps the memory of the ground itself."
"There must have been something else to it," I said, and Edge nodded. "Any Welsh person would be more likely to carry some of Ewain or Mag's blood, someone who'd be more likely to have gone there before us. It must be something about us as well..." I took a breath, and frowned in thought. "I felt like Mag and I had a lot in common, just in our personalities. I mean, I kept wondering how she could have been so blind about Ewain, but she was young, and who's to say I wouldn't have been the same way? Maybe there was some sort of affinity, not just for her blood, but in my personality." I shrugged. "A combination of things... Except I don't think Ewain was like you at all, so that theory doesn't really work." I glanced at Edge.
"You might have something there, actually," he replied.
"Come off it," I said, looking at him in disbelief. "Aside from the whole Fire and Air thing, you're nothing like him." True, I could hardly say I knew Edge very well, but it still seemed unlikely he could have much in common with that psychotic man.
Edge just smiled a small smile. "Ewain was a very angry man. He rarely let it show, but that was behind everything. He was consumed with rage and grief... He was angry at the world, at the spirits, for taking his family. Angry at himself for not being there, at his own Ritemaster for taking him away from their village that night. Angry at death, and his own life. And when his family weren't returned when the circle was completed, it pushed him over the edge. That rage had burned away almost everything else inside him... everything his family had loved about him, everything that had made him a good mate and father." Edge sighed deeply.
"But you're not like that," I said again.
"No. But I didn't lose the two people I loved most, the way he did. You say you can't be sure that you wouldn't have acted the same way Mag did, under those circumstances, as she was young at the time..." He let the sentence hang, the concluding statement unspoken. A small shrug.
I searched that calm, gentle face, unable to believe he could have that sort of rage inside him. Then I thought about the night of the ritual, when he'd become lost in Ewain's memories, and tried to attack my prone form with that knife. Had any of that fury been his own, mirroring Ewain's? Was there some resonance in him that brought it to the surface then?
A musician would know about resonance, I thought. If whatever remained of Ewain's spirit had been looking for something familiar in Edge, maybe that was it.
"Ewain's spirit seemed a much more... coherent presence than Mag's," I said after a moment. "I could feel it. Mag only seemed to be really alive inside my head."
"I suppose scattering her remains achieved the desired result," Edge reflected sadly.
"Unless I was imagining it all after all," I muttered.
My companion pinned me with a green stare. "Don't tell me you still don't believe it," he said. "Especially after everything you just said!"
I was shaking my head. "No, no, I do. It was that, or be crazy, right?"
Edge gave me an exasperated look.
"Okay! I know. It happened long enough ago that it's easier to dismiss now... but you're right. It was real, it did happen, no matter how hard it still is for me to admit it." I grimaced at myself. "I mean..."
"I know." Edge was looking at me with more sympathy now. I couldn't explain why it was still difficult to accept everything, but I supposed that was just how I was.
"And it is a bit strange, talking about all that here. It's a long way away, in space and time."
"Everything is relative."
I shot Edge a look with narrowed eyes. "What are you doing here, anyway? Besides stalking, me, I mean." I tried to keep the look of suspicion on my face, but I'm sure he knew I wasn't serious.
"Oh, I was just passing through the area, you know," he said nonchalantly. "Thought I'd take a stroll around the ol' Canyon and see what I could see. Heck of a coincidence, running into you both..." His face finally betrayed a small smile.
"Not that bloody word again!" I said, laughing. "I don't believe THAT." I kept eyeballing him.
"There may have been a phone call to a friend of mine in the travel industry," Edge admitted, smile widening. "And it really is something of a coincidence, that we're playing in Las Vegas this week. So I was in the area..."
"...relatively speaking," I finished. "Stalker!"
"This time, you might be right," he winked.
"So Glen was right all along," I said, shaking my head melodramatically. "Speaking of which, I'd better find him. He might have really fallen in if he's been in there this long."
We got up and started walking back towards the canyon (and the other tourists), but Glen met us on the path before we'd gone very far. A knot of people passing us gave themselves cricks in the neck staring at Edge, but at least they kept walking.
"So this is where you went." Glen greeted me with a peck on the cheek, and I put an arm around his waist.
"We were just about to come and fish you out," I replied.
"Speak for yourself," Edge said, making a disgusted face.
Glen and I shared a look. Again, a lot more information seemed pass between us than it should have. One of those things was Glen asking me, So what is he doing here?
"Edge was just telling me, they're playing in Vegas this week," I said.
"What a coincidence," Glen said, and then rolled his eyes as I stifled a snort of laughter.
Another pair of tourists walked past, trying to be subtle but still staring. The sun hadn't set yet, but the shade was deepening under the trees, and a camera flash went off after the tourists disappeared behind me.
"I wanted to ask you both if you'd like to see the show on Friday," Edge said, apparently unaware of anything unusual happening.
There was a beat of silence.
"Seriously?" Glen asked, while I was thinking about it. I looked at him.
"Seriously," Edge replied, smiling.
"We'd love to, thank you," Glen said, smiling back. Then he looked at me. "Well, I'd love to, at least."
"I would, too," I agreed, amused.
Edge was pulling a card from his jacket, and handed it to me. "Give Dennis a call, he'll sort it out," he said. I glanced at the card before tucking it into my wallet. "I'll see you both there?"
Glen was nodding, while I snorted. "Good luck spotting us in the middle of what, twenty thousand people?"
"More like sixteen thousand," Edge smiled.
"Well, I suppose we'll see you, at least," I replied.
After Edge took his leave, Glen and I wandered back to the Canyon, where bus-loads of tourists were waiting to photograph the sunset over the breathtaking terrain. Glen and I had done that already, but still wanted to see the show. The sun setting behind us painted the already-beautiful scenery in vivid shades of scarlet, orange and gold, as purple and indigo shadows filled the canyon below.
As the cameras clicked and beeped around us, sending futile flashes into the gloriously illuminated chasm, I reflected again on how lucky I was to be seeing this. I wondered if the locals, or anyone, could get tired of seeing such a dramatic scene, the skin of the earth laid open, the Canyon zagging back and forth, jagged promontories protruding from the depths, their tops still glowing red as darkness filled the scene. The horizontal bands crossing every cliff each representing a slice of time, going all the way back, and down, to the beginnings of life on Earth.
"That's a hell of a strat column," I said eventually. Glen just nodded, still taking in the view.
"Generous fellow, that Edge," he said after another minute. "This holiday, and now tickets..."
"Yeah." I squeezed Glen's hand. "I didn't realise you were a fan..." I was smiling.
"I do feel stupid for not recognising them," Glen admitted. "But they've changed a lot since I saw them last."
"You've seen them before? Besides on TV?"
"I caught a ZooTV concert, years ago," he said. "Your listening to that CD made me remember it all again. It was a great show," he added, with a nostalgic smile that I heard more than saw.
We started walking back to where a bus would take us to our hotel.
"You want to see if they've still got it?" I teased.
"Come on, it's not every day someone offers you free U2 tickets," Glen protested. "Let alone someone in U2!" That pronouncement earned a few startled looks from people nearby.
I decided, possibly unwisely, to put on my devil's advocate hat. "Doesn't it all strike you as a bit too weird? A couple of years ago, you thought he was stalking me, or I was cheating on you with him. Now it turns out he's a rock star and he offers you tickets and it's all cool?"
Glen was silent as we stopped and sat in a bus shelter. He took my hand almost absently. "We've both obviously thought about this a lot," he said. "Like you said, it was two years ago. A lot has happened between then and now," he smiled. His thumb brushed the wedding band on my finger. "And yes, it is quite weird. But there's no point sitting here, stuck on how weird it is, and letting opportunities slip away. Don't be telling me you're upset because I'm not jealous, now?" Glen grinned.
I pulled my hand away and jabbed him in the shoulder. "No," I said, sticking my tongue out. "I was just testing you," I winked.
The next day was Thursday, and we went back to the Canyon for our helicopter flight, and wandered around after that, still unable to get enough of the spectacular grandeur of the place. You just don't see things like the Grand Canyon in Britain. Aside from the completely different geology of the place, there just doesn't seem to be room there.
And I'd called that Dennis guy too, in the morning; a lovely-sounding Irish man, who'd informed me that Glen and I had been booked on a flight from Flagstaff to Las Vegas the next day. We were to meet him at the venue, he said, to be given our passes.
-------------------------
Edge met the others at their hotel, on his return from Arizona. He'd taken the chance to look around the Canyon a bit, wondering what geologists like Lisa, or Glen for that matter, saw when they looked at it.
"So?" Bono asked. "How's she enjoying your present?"
Not 'Did you find them?', Edge noted wryly. "I think they're both enjoying it, yes," he replied. He stuck his head in the fridge, then glanced at the coffee pot. Empty. He pulled a can of soft drink from the fridge.
"Are they coming tomorrow?"
"They said they would."
There was a silence. Edge waited.
"I think we should play it," Bono said.
"I don't," Edge replied firmly. "It's not even half formed, it doesn't have a name, and we've never tried to play it all together."
"Apart from that first time," Adam put in. He was sprawled on a couch, apparently staring at the ceiling.
"And you don't have proper lyrics, anyway. It's not even finished as an instrumental piece."
"Don't you think Lisa should hear it?" Bono insisted. "It's not somethin' I think we'll release, so this might be the only chance. She's as much responsible for it existing as any of us."
"If it's not good enough to release, why would it be good enough to play live? There are sixteen thousand other people there, Bono, who won't have any idea what it's about. Lisa might not even realise what it's about, and you are not going to tell the universe what happened."
"That drum rhythm..."
"Furthermore," Edge continued, "if she DOES recognise that and figure it out, she might not react the way you want. It'd probably be something of a shock, hearing that; being put back there again, and in the middle of all those people too... I get the feeling she hasn't really told many people about what happened. I don't think we should play that in public without her consent, aside from the fact that, you know, it's not actually finished."
"Come on, Reg..."
"You can both stop arguin', 'cos I'm not playin' it," Larry said, from behind a newspaper.
"Lar..."
Larry folded down the newspaper, and gave Bono the Look. Bono sighed. "Why not?"
"'Cos I'm not, that's all. You were bloody lucky you talked me into playin' it in the studio." Up went the paper again. Bono made a silent mimicry of the recalcitrant drummer that made Adam snort with laughter. The paper rustled.
Edge sat down with his can of drink, took a printed page from the coffee table, and considered the following night's setlist.
-------------------------
Glen and I managed to pry ourselves away from the Canyon, on the Thursday, in time to find a CD shop and pick up a copy of U2's latest album. It wasn't exactly new, as this was their second trip around the USA on this tour. We felt obliged to give it a listen, since we were going to see the show the next day. Wouldn't do to be the only people in the arena to be wondering what all these songs were.
Glen seemed to enjoy it... I was too distracted trying to imagine 'Ed' playing these guitar parts to really absorb the music. I'd met the band, as oblivious as I'd been, on that hilltop on an appropriately dark and stormy night. My imagination was having some trouble taking the people I'd met there - Ed, Paul, Lawrence and Adam - and plonking them on a stage, with various instruments hanging off them; turning them into Edge, Bono, Larry, and... Adam. I supposed I would see it for myself, soon enough.
I woke up very early on Friday morning, the remnants of a jumbled but intense dream echoing through my head. It wasn't one of Mag's memories – those were long gone. But it had taken me back to the stone circle on the hill, bleeding into the ground, amid the storm. A storm of thunder and rain above, and a storm of struggling spirits below. I had dreams like this every so often, and so I just sighed, scrubbing at my face with my hands. Seeing Ed... Edge again must have brought it all up in my subconscious, too.
I tried to go back to sleep, but only dozed until Glen woke up. He prodded me out of bed and through breakfast – we had a plane to catch, after all.
We took the opportunity to take a bit of a look around Vegas after we landed around midday, and were appropriately stunned by all the casinos, even in broad daylight. I imagined it would be a whole different place again after dark. Eventually we made our way to the arena, and met Dennis at one of the small doors in between the larger gates. There were masses of people queued up at some of those gates, already waiting to get in. I wondered how long they'd been camped out there; however long it had been, it hadn't dampened the infectious buzz of excitement in the air around them.
Dennis presented us with a plastic card each, hanging from a lanyard. I peered at mine; there was some design on it that reminded me of the album artwork, and the words "Guest Pass" above a number. Glen and I exchanged a startled look. Not just tickets, it seemed.
Behind us, the buzz of the waiting fans surged, and I saw that they were being let in already. It wasn't even 5pm yet – they had a long wait ahead of them.
Dennis seemed to be orchestrating a hundred things at once, but I had to ask. "Um, what exactly do we do with these?"
Dennis blinked. "Show 'em to one o' the security people... one of our security people," he said, pointing to his own pass. "They'll let you into the front section. And backstage, after. See if you can hang around near the mixing desk in the encore," he added. "And for feck's sake, don't lose 'em!" His Irish accent was jovial, but he wasn't kidding. We promised to take the utmost care, and he went back to the highly organised chaos behind the door.
Edge just kept on delivering one surprise after another, usually while he wasn't even around.
Glen and I managed to while away a couple more hours over an early dinner, before we went back to the arena. Might as well take full advantage and check out the opening act.
Dusk had fallen outside; the arena was buzzing, the stands maybe half full, but filling quickly now. We were shown into the front section on the floor of the venue, and given stamps on our necks, of all places. There was a thick mass of people closer to the stage, most of whom were standing and giving the youthful opening band at least part of their attention. Things were a bit more relaxed further back, near the mixing desk. For myself, I didn't particularly want to be right at the front; and besides, it wouldn't have been right, elbowing my way in front of people who'd been queuing up all day. So Glen and I stood back, and took it all in.
The anticipatory roar of the audience as the lights finally went down was incredible. It had been a long time since I'd been to a live concert of this size, and my pulse quickened. The crowd's roar redoubled as the band appeared, and it vied with the loud music that was now pouring from the speaker stacks. I watched, and listened; the drums and bass resonating in my chest, my eyes divided between the big screens, and the small but recognisable figures on the stage. If I hadn't seen evidence to the contrary with my own eyes, I might have thought Edge's beanie was glued on.
He seemed as calm and collected on stage as he was anywhere else, playing his guitar with understated skill. I squinted, after the first couple of songs, watching the screens... he was wearing the same t-shirt he had on the hill, that night, I was sure of it. I wondered if that had been a deliberate choice, and concluded that it probably had. Cheeky beggar, indeed.
The arena filled with music and energy, and regardless of whether it was my favourite sort of music or not, it was infectious nonetheless. The band's energy expressed itself in various ways, Bono's performance being only the most obvious. I admit I was impressed that Edge still managed to play while jumping up and down, as if gravity was something that happened to other people. Adam seemed to enjoy teasing the front row with his bass, and even Larry ventured out from behind his kit for one of the acoustic numbers.
What was abundantly clear was that they were all in their element, up there, playing this music. There was a tremendous sense of collective joy in that energy, that seemed to come equally from the band, and the audience. And translated into the music, it came together and fed upon itself in a continuous cycle. I wondered that this arena could contain it all.
I recognised maybe half of the songs, and a lot of those were from the CD we'd only bought the day before. Glen seemed to know more of them, singing along beside me. I felt a little more detached, able to observe everything going on, without being caught up in it completely.
Bono finally bade the crowd goodnight, and the band retreated below the stage; the crowd wasn't fooled for a moment, and immediately set up clapping for an encore. A lot of them started singing, and after a moment I made it out... I thought it seemed a bit rude to be singing "How long?" after the band had barely been offstage for thirty seconds, but there it was.
I looked at Glen; he was grinning happily, and I had to grin back. We hadn't strayed very far from the mixing desk throughout the show, but now we made our way back, wondering if there was any particular reason we should be there.
"Maybe we just get a better view from here?" I said into Glen's ear, raising my voice over the chorus of "Hoooow long?" that was swelling around the arena. He shrugged.
Just as the big screens flickered to life again, and another roar went up from the crowd, a bearded security guard tapped me on the shoulder. "Lisa and Glen?" he shouted. I nodded, and we showed him our passes, puzzled. He beckoned us, and we followed him further back, through the cheering crowd, whose eyes were all on the screens and the stage. Through a barrier at the side, and around, behind, past some other security guards, through another barrier. Meanwhile, sounds from the stage and the audience told me the band had appeared again; and no sooner had I noticed that, than I realised that Glen and I had ended up right at the side of the stage, inside the barrier. There was a sparse collection of other people there, too. Several of them were trying to carry on a conversation between themselves, obviously no strangers to being backstage at rock concerts.
Glen nudged me, and I looked up from my observations, followed his gaze further up. Edge was standing at the edge of the stage (haha), playing and winking down at us. I grinned back, and he swung away, to produce some soaring solo at the front of the stage. Bono strolled over, as if to see what was so interesting, and gave us a smile too.
There were a few more songs; again, only some of which I was in any way familiar with. I looked at all the electronic gear and blinking lights, and watched as a guitar tech popped in and out of the room below the stage, handing Edge different guitars. How many did you need for one concert, I wondered. Standing further back, we hadn't noticed any of this complexity, and frenetic activity. There was an awful lot of hard work going on here, I thought. The band's job is to make it all look effortless.
Another unfamiliar song was playing, some synthesiser part underlying the chiming guitar, the lighting all blue. It wasn't my usual style at all, but there was something insistent and compelling about the rhythm of it. And then I heard something that made me pay closer attention...
"...Into the half-light, and through the flame..."
So he hadn't made that up on the spot... Unless this had been written afterwards? Surely not... It hadn't been on the CD we'd bought the day before. I didn't have the chance to think about it, however. Suddenly, this song was speaking to me in a very personal way.
"If I could, through myself, set your spirit free..."
Glen touched my arm, and I spared him a glance. I had gone very still, but I tried to give him an 'I'm fine' look.
"...Let it go, and so not fade away... I'm wide awake..." The song rolled on, and on. "I'm wiiiiide awake, I'm not sleeping..."
The audience was singing along, I noticed. Did that mean it wasn't a new song? Perhaps it was a coincidence, those words. Perhaps just some old lyric that had risen to the top of Bono's mind, on the hilltop, after his blood had finally restored health to the Fire spirits in that stone.
The rest of the band played on, the music growing quieter. Bono rocked back and forth in the middle of the stage, apparently as lost in the song as everyone else there.
"Earth and sky, fire and rain," he sang, and despite everything, I still felt a chill. He seemed to mumble a few more words, but my eyes flicked to Edge, who was also watching Bono.
The mumbles resolved into words again.
"... no shadow, only scars... carved into stone, on the face of earth..."
My heart was suddenly pounding, and I felt my pulse beating in the scars on my arms. Glen shot me another look, but my attention was riveted on the stage. What was he doing? Another cheer had gone up from the crowd; I barely noticed. Edge crossed the stage, still playing, and stopped a few feet from the singer, angling his body towards him. His eyes were on the guitar, but I sensed some sort of message in that posture. Something like, Careful.
"... the heart of darkness, a fire zone..."
And the music rolled on, beneath it, pulling me along. Something changed subtly in the rhythm of the drums and bass, and I saw Adam standing at Larry's elbow. It wasn't the same, but it reminded me, nonetheless. The music was a river, I remembered the rain pouring, washing over the stones.
"... The drums, are beating slower... her blood still cries from the ground..."
The figure Edge had been playing on his guitar had been changing, too; falling into another pattern with the others. But at those words, Edge resumed the original pattern, just as Larry and Adam did the same. I couldn't say who was guiding the shape of this song, but the band seemed to know where they were going.
"I'm wiiide awaaake," Bono sang, and I found myself relaxing. Edge moved back. The song tumbled onwards, the river carrying everyone along until it ended on several resounding chords.
Bono said good night again, thanked the audience. The band all waved, the crowd roared and cheered and clapped and whistled its gratitude. The four of them left the stage. After a minute, the house lights came up, and some recorded song played over the loudspeakers. I stood, unmoving, yet unexpectedly moved.
"Love?" Glen said into my ear. I blinked, and looked at him, the spell finally broken. "Are you all right?"
I nodded. "That was a bit of a surprise," I called back, regaining my equilibrium. The crowd was milling around, beginning to shuffle out, an excited hubbub rising. The other people who'd shared our privileged position had vanished, and the bearded security guard had appeared again. He looked at us expectantly.
"Do you want to go?" Glen asked me, over the noise of sixteen thousand people comparing notes. I wasn't sure whether he meant 'go backstage' or 'go home'. It occurred to me that we had nowhere in Vegas to stay that night. Unless the omnipotent Edge had organised that, too.
"Let's go," I said, and clarified my ambiguous reply by following the security guard. If nothing else, I wanted to know what that song had been.
We were led to a room filled with food and drink and chairs and couches and people, including one or two faces that even I recognised. The band wasn't in evidence yet, so I grabbed a sandwich and a beer and retreated to a corner. Glen joined me a minute later, looking bemused. He sipped from his own beer, watching everyone, and I did much the same. Mostly, they seemed to speaking to one another in glowing terms about the concert. I thought about that last song, and the way it had brought that night back again so vividly. I gulped my beer.
Glen put an arm around my waist. "You okay? You looked a bit wobbly before."
"I'm fine, you worry-wart," I said, making myself smile. I knew I shouldn't let one little song upset me, and I didn't want Glen to go back to the sort of over-protectiveness that he'd displayed after the incident in the circle.
Glen looked as if he was about to say something, then changed his mind. I chose not to pursue it.
One by one, the band came in, looking freshly-showered; although Edge had taken the time to put a beanie back on. They were smiling, greeting people they obviously knew, being introduced to ones they didn't, accepting compliments, collecting food and beverages. All these no doubt famous and powerful people, all chatting easily with one another. Someone popped the cork on a bottle of champagne, and the atmosphere became even more festive.
Glen and I stayed in our corner. I, at least, felt desperately out of place... Glen seemed happy enough just watching everyone. I finished my beer, and wondered if I was brave enough to venture away from the wall for another. Or escape entirely, except that the door was on the opposite side of the room.
A dark-haired woman appeared in front of us, and I jumped, irrationally afraid that she intended to foil my escape plans. She smiled, and I smiled back, nervously. There was something else in her face besides random friendly politeness, I thought.
"Lisa?" she asked me.
I nodded. "And this is Glen," I said. "My husband." I still wasn't quite used to that. And how did she know who I was? Maybe the same way that security guard had...
She smiled at Glen too, that odd expression still hovering around her face.
"I'm Morleigh," she told me, in an American accent.
"Pleased to meet you," I said.
There was a beat of silence. "I'm Edge's wife," she added.
"Oh," I said, slightly stupidly.
.... Oh.
"He never did mention your name," I added, my face reddening. Only now did I recognise her, from the first day I'd seen 'Ed', and his family, out in the middle of nowhere in Wales. She'd stayed at a distance, but she still had that long, dark hair.
"He didn't mention a lot of names to you, from what I've heard," Morleigh said, her smile widening. "Including his own."
I gave a weak laugh, unable to be sure if she was having a go at me. "Well, he did mention it, but I misheard him. And I figured it all out in the end," I said, groping for something to say. "The truth will out..."
"Yes," she agreed.
There was an awkward silence.
"I'm sorry," I blurted. "I... I want to apologise to you. For what happened... you know." I forced myself to meet her eyes, but my face was burning. "He must have told you, we had no control over it..." It sounded so hollow and false, now.
Glen had put his arm around my waist again, but stayed silent. Morleigh's smile had faded a little, but it was still there.
"It's all right," she said. "Yes, he told me that. He told me a lot of things, and I didn't believe most of it, at first. Maybe I over-reacted... but if I did, it was later. I was willing to let that first thing go – we're both professionals, we're away from home a lot. We trust each other. But when those dreams of his kept going, and he started behaving strangely..." Morleigh gave a shrug.
"It is that seed of doubt," Glen put in. He and Morleigh exchanged a long look, but then she smiled.
"You do sound just like Edge's parents," she said, in a creditable Welsh accent of her own.
I smiled as well. "You can do that better than I can, and I've been living with him for ten years!"
The conversation was more relaxed, after that. I was in the middle of explaining my career choice to Morleigh, when Edge sidled up to her and planted a kiss on her cheek.
"So this is where you got to," he said.
"I just wanted to meet Lisa and Glen," Morleigh replied, and chuckled at the mock-nervousness that appeared on Edge's face.
"Oh don't worry," I said. "She's told us all about you."
"Now, why would that worry me..." Edge's feigned fear increased, and I had to laugh too.
A minute later, Bono managed to extract himself from a knot of friends and admirers, and brought a handful of beers over to us.
"House rules!" he announced jovially, handing them out. "No one's allowed to have an empty hand for more than five minutes."
Adam strolled past behind Bono at that moment, raised the bottle of water in his hand, and winked at me.
"Well, if those are the rules," I said, taking a drink.
Another minute later, we were all somehow crammed onto a couch, talking easily together as if we'd all known each other forever. I wasn't quite sure how Bono had managed it.
"What did you think of the show, then?" Bono asked, and I blinked at him.
"Amazing," Glen said.
"Everyone in here must have said that by now," I said. "Do you not believe them yet?"
"Oh, him," Edge said, waving his beer. "He's not happy until every last person in the stadium's had their mind blown. He'd probably ask all of them what they thought, if he could."
"I'm sure they'd love that," I said, without a trace of sarcasm.
"Like you can talk, Mr. Perfectionist!" Bono chuckled. He turned to me. "Dozens of guitars, and they all need new strings every day. All those amp and echo and pedal and effects settings, they gotta be perfect, or look out! He's the only one that can hear the difference, but you should see him if somethin' goes wrong..."
I looked at the mischievous expression on Bono's face, and the tolerant one on Edge's, and decided that this was a conversation they had regularly.
"You didn't answer me question yet," Bono winked at me.
I paused. "What was that last song?"
"That was Bad," he replied. Edge had gone still, and Morleigh looked at him.
"I don't know," I said, misunderstanding. "The audience seemed to love it."
There was the sort of silence you hear when everyone is waiting for someone else to laugh, but they're not sure if the person was really joking.
"The name of the song is 'Bad'," Edge finally explained. I nearly told him I wouldn't recognise the name of the song, bad or not, when I finally got it. Once again, I felt like an idiot.
"How long have you been playing that one, then?" I asked.
Bono considered. "Twenty years or so?"
"More like twenty-five," Edge said.
Not a new song, then. Perhaps that had all been a coincidence, and I'd just been overly sensitive. Glen and Edge and Bono were all watching me. The weight of their eyes demanded some sort of response.
"It was a great show," I said at last. I had the feeling 'good' wasn't good enough. "That last song, 'Bad', that was remarkable," I said slowly. "Very... evocative." Unconsciously, I rubbed the scar on one arm with my hand. Edge and Glen caught the gesture. And to my surprise, Edge gave Bono a kick on the shin.
"I told you to leave it," he said.
"I didn't do anythin'," Bono protested, rubbing at his leg. "You three nearly started playing it. I just threw a bit of One Tree Hill in there."
"Slightly modified," Edge said pointedly. "'The drums'? 'Her blood'?"
Bono looked stubborn. "I'll tell you why I sang it that way, if you can tell me why you changed the chords around, or why Lars and Adam were playing around, too."
Edge sighed, and looked at me. "I'm sorry," he said.
"What for?" I said, thoroughly confused. "Unless you were all trying to give me flashbacks deliberately." My tone was flat. Glen's hand curled around mine, between us on the couch.
"It wasn't deliberate," Edge said, in the same moment that Bono said "We weren't trying to give you flashbacks."
Bono, who was sitting on my other side, took my free hand, turned it over, and ran a thumb along the thin scar on my forearm. I tensed, and he turned my hand back palm-down again, and just held it. I met a pair of very blue eyes.
"I'm sorry if we went too far with that, tonight," he said, and I believed him. "We didn't mean any harm, or to upset you. Are you all right, now?"
That smooth Irish bastard was charming me. And it was working, too.
"Yes, I'm fine, thank you," I said, bemused. He gave my hand a pat, and sat back again.
"'Fine, thank you'," Bono said, mimicking my accent. "Are we sure she's not related to Adam?" He was all smiles again.
Edge, perched on the arm of the couch, was still serious. He ignored Bono's rhetorical question.
"We should tell you, we did start to write something, after that all happened," he told me. "That's what we nearly went into, in the middle of Bad."
"Something, like a song?" I asked.
"It's not really a song," Bono said.
"And it's not finished," Edge added. "We might never finish it, and I don't think we'd release it, even if we did."
"Yer bloody right about that," Larry interjected, walking past. He gave me a nod and kept going. I blinked.
"Well, there you have it," Bono said, with a wry twist of his mouth. "The Drummer hath Spoken."
"At that moment in the song," Edge said, apparently still determined to explain things to me, "it seemed right, it seemed to fit. The moment seemed to call for it, and we're all running half on instinct up there. The chords just seemed to mesh, you know? But that lyric about the blood crying..."
"It was a bit of a shock," I admitted.
"That pulled me up short," Edge finished.
"It's okay, don't worry about it," I smiled at him. "No harm done." He nodded.
Morleigh had drifted off to talk with a couple of other women, and Bono was carrying on another conversation with someone standing next to the couch.
"I need the ladies'," I said after a minute.
"Out the door, all the way along to the left. Follow the yellow arrows on the floor," Edge supplied.
Sure enough, there was yellow duct tape stuck to the floor, leading through the maze of corridors. There were lines and arrows in at least two other colours there as well, which only made me curious about where they led. I resisted temptation, though, having more pressing matters on my mind.
In the bathroom, those pressing matters having been dealt with, I leaned on the sink and looked at my reflection in the mirror. In another week, Glen and I would be back in Cardiff, back in the real world. We'd been on this trip for more than six weeks, and while I'd never expected to get quite this far away from reality, it was still time to come back down. And as surreal as this latest departure was, it was still much more pleasant than what had taken me from normality 18 months earlier.
I nearly collided with Larry as I made my way back towards the reception room, or whatever it was. The corridors were not well-lit, and I suppose we were both wearing dark clothing.
"Sorry," we both muttered, stepping back. He made to move on, but I said, "Law.. Larry." He stopped, looking at me.
"I never got the chance to say thank you," I said, nervous in the face of his silence. "So, thank you. I told the others, I would have been lost without that drum, and I meant it."
He just stood there for a moment. "You're welcome," he said.
I wondered if I should say more, but decided that if he just wanted to leave it at that, then so did I. I smiled, he nodded, and we continued on our separate ways.
I was in his world tonight, I reflected as I followed the yellow duct tape, without really being part of it. I was still an outsider in this world. Which was fair enough.
I cornered Edge when I got back into the room, where the party was still going strong. He and Adam were watching a knot of younger people exclaiming loudly about something or other.
"I don't suppose you know how we're getting back to our hotel tonight, do you?" I asked him. "I don't even know if there are any flights this late."
"I wasn't sure what you would want to do," Edge replied. "We can organise somewhere in town for the night, if you don't want to fly back tonight."
"He thinks of everything," Adam drawled.
"What do you want to do?" I asked Glen, who had appeared beside me. "I don't really want to fly back at this hour, even if there is a plane we can get on."
"Me neither," Glen said. "Are we going now?"
"Not if you want to stay," I smiled. "Either way, I guess we'll be staying in Vegas tonight...?" I looked at Edge. Glen nodded.
Edge went off to talk to someone, who then left the room. It must be nice to be able to wave your hand, and have people scurry off to do your bidding, I mused.
Bono swooped on us then, and apparently dismayed that I was thinking of leaving, decided to break the ice for us by conducting a whirlwind of introductions with seemingly everyone else in the room. We met a host of family members and friends, and assorted other guests, and I didn't remember any of their names ten seconds after I was told them. Still, a couple of geologists were an uncommon sight in these circles, I gathered, because Glen and I were peppered with questions. And to my relief, most people seemed happy with the vaguest of answers when it came to how I knew the band.
Finishing up the spree of introductions, Bono said, "And finally, this advanced carbon life-form is known as The Edge."
"We've met," I said, grinning at his manner.
"What a coincidence!" Bono exclaimed, then disappeared to talk to another group of people. I didn't know where he got the energy from, after the show and everything.
Edge rolled his eyes, and handed me a piece of paper. A hotel's name and number was written on it. "You're both booked in for tonight," he said.
"Thank you," I said. "And thank you to whoever that was who made the booking, too," I winked.
"I'll pass that along," Edge smiled.
Finally, the time came to call it a night, or possibly a very early morning. We said our farewells, and Edge walked to a taxi rank outside with us, since I'd refused to let him ask one of their drivers to take us to the hotel.
"A taxi's good enough for us, Mr. The Edge," I'd said, affecting a snooty accent and drawing myself up. Then I giggled. "Sorry, Dr. The Edge. Hey, you never did tell me what that degree's in. Or was Morleigh just joking about that?"
"She wasn't joking," Edge replied, good-naturedly ignoring my somewhat inebriated amusement. "I was granted an honorary doctorate in music."
I managed to stop myself making a disgruntled noise about honorary degrees, having earned mine the traditional way. "Well, belated congratulations," I said. Edge inclined his head, and a taxi pulled up.
"Safe trip," the guitarist said.
"Thank you again, for everything," I said, and gave him a spontaneous tipsy hug, while Glen was talking to the taxi driver.
Edge chuckled, and patted my back before letting go. He shook Glen's hand, and Glen repeated his thanks. "Least I could do. You both take care, okay?"
We were climbing into the taxi. "You too," I said without thinking, then giggled again. "You must get so sick of that."
He just waved as we pulled away from the curb.
Back in Cardiff, reality reasserted itself with depressing rapidity. I didn't have a job until the new year, but Glen was straight back to work. Nothing brings you back to earth faster than unpacking everything and putting it away. Finding space on our fridge for all the souvenir magnets, space in the drawers for all the t-shirts, space on the shelves for all the books... space in our lives for our normal lives. And finding out that half our postcards were taking longer to reach their destinations than we had. It was fun to re-live everything by debriefing all our friends and family, and seeing Anne's reaction to our adventures in Las Vegas was priceless. She demanded photographic evidence, of course, but we had none.
After Christmas, I got an email from drevans39, again. There was an mp3 attached, titled "blood and stone", and a brief message.
"Lisa,
"It's still not finished, but I thought you deserved to hear it. We would appreciate it if you didn't send it to anyone else, please.
- Edge"
I supposed that if this track did leak, they'd know where it had come from.
I hesitated over downloading it for a very long time. Remembering my reaction at the concert, I wondered if I wanted to hear their musical translation of the night I'd nearly died.
I decided that for now, I didn't. Maybe one day, but not today. That file could stay in my email until I was ready for it.
THE ACTUAL END. (Yes, I mean it this time.)
nerdy grand canyondescription!
and I bet Edge lets Dallas restring every night yea!
