Rainbowland IV -- A Step Beyond The Rain
or “I’m In Love With The Girl In The Yellow Dress”

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A fantasy that takes place somewhere over the rainbow,
in one of many possible realities involving Katharine McPhee,
her McPhamily, McPhriends and McPhans

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I was in a bar in San Jose, feeling like hell and looking for trouble. I’d left all my good will and most of my brain back home in Sherman Oaks, and with the aid of my buddy Tommy Lowengard, who, as luck would have it, owned a Piper Cherokee, flew north to see if I could get rid of the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach by, oh, maybe killing something.

Not really. I was just in an absolutely rotten mood and it was not made any better by having Tommy kick in his new satellite radio, which immediately picked up Jackie O’Hanlon singing Waiting There For Me. “I guess it didn’t have to be a ‘boy’s year’ this year,” I said. “It was okay for a girl to win Idol. They even wrote her a better song than they did Katharine.”

“Well, it could be worse,” Tommy said. “Remember those rumors that she was going to sing Over The Rainbow because Eva Avila had done so well singing a lot of the same songs that Katharine did?”

“You’re right,” I admitted. “That would be the last straw.”

American Idol 6 had been a crap shoot toward the end and eerily reminiscent of the previous year, with strong representatives of jazz, R&B, country, pop, rock, and just about every genre you could think of. Paula had been equally dotty over Hussein Al Khoury, a New Yorker of Lebanese descent who despite his heritage had the sympathy vote because he’d just recovered from cancer; rockin’ Rocky Sales, called Leather Man by Katharine, who looked like Chris Daughtry with hair; and Travis Bettford, this year’s funky white boy. Randy had taken a strange liking to Addy Lincoln, an eerie blend of every blonde country chick who had ever made it into the top ten for the past five years.

Simon had been unable to hide his fondness for Jackie-O, as the eventual winner had been dubbed early on. She had won my suspicion early on by auditioning with Since I Fell For You and singing it note-for-note just like Katharine, after which Paula had actually done an instant replay of the previous year and kissed her right on the lips. Simon, however, totally refused, and the world was spared hundreds of fan videos, not to mention the inevitable comparisons. To make it even worse, her father, who had spent 40 years working in a car dealership in Muncie, Indiana, sat in the audience honking into a large red checked kerchief every time she sang. He had been instantly dubbed Daddy-O, but the O’Hanlons’ working-class background seemed to work in their favor, as did the fact that Jackie’s mother had died when she was ten, leaving her to help raise her two younger brothers. Having been semi-orphaned close to that age myself, I felt extremely guilty at the realization of how much sympathy her story could garner, even from me.

Jackie was a gorgeous 20-year-old redhead whose voice reminded a lot of people of Streisand’s, but her stage manner was instantly compared to Katharine’s. She loved to wear clinging low-cut gowns and knew how to make the camera a slave to her enormous blue eyes, and she sang her way into the Top Three with a jazzy rendition of Cry Me A River that nearly made me cry. I loved that song and had always wished Katharine would perform it, so my reaction made me feel almost like a traitor. Simon practically handed her the crown by assigning her Unchained Melody, which she sang in such a hauntingly beautiful fashion that America eventually squeaked her past Travis Bettford’s best effort of the year, a very well done cover of What A Fool Believes.

“If Katharine had been born in a little teeny town up on the Oregon border and worked her way through BoCo as a pizza waitress, she’d probably have won last year,” I crabbed to no one in particular. Tommy made vaguely supportive noises but generally didn’t say much for most of the trip.

As the flashing multicolor sign welcomed us into Toons, I could hear Ashton Shepard singing and my guts started tying themselves into knots. He was becoming a big enough name that he didn’t really need to play places like this, but it was his hometown and he’d gotten his start here, so he liked to come back and help them out, or just drop in and jam with whoever happened to be providing music at the moment. Nobody minded. Nobody but me. I wanted to march up to the front and smash his face in, but that was just because Katharine was sitting somewhere up front and I was pretty sure she’d be paying close attention to whatever he was doing, probably smiling at him and nursing a drink and—that was about as far as I could take it before smoke started rolling out of my ears.

“Hey, Buddy, how about we just stay out here,” Tommy said. “Get a Coke. You might want to think a little, know what I’m sayin’?”

Tommy thought I was totally nuts to have come chasing all the way up here to torment myself, but he had a wild, edgy streak in him that couldn’t resist a bit of danger now and then, so instead of trying to talk me out of it, he’d simply watched as I talked myself into it, then offered me transportation. Tommy could have been a clone of Al Lowengard, my boss, but aside from the obvious, I’d never seen a shred of similarity between the two of them. His dad would never have let me get this far, but Tommy wasn’t his dad.

“God, this place is such a hick joint,” said a voice at my elbow. A man looking very out of place in a suit pushed an orange-colored drink away from himself and made a disgusted face. “I guess they serve so much beer they haven’t a clue how to make a mixed drink. You want it?”

“No,” I said, then reached for the glass and took a huge swig. It tasted pretty good. “What’s this, a stinger?”

“You can call it that if you want to,” the guy said. “I’m gonna call it a night.”

Then he was gone, and I was left with his drink, which didn’t taste insufficient to me at all. It tasted damn good.

“You sure you want to do that?” Tommy asked.

I was wearing a cap and sunglasses, which I suppose I thought of as some kind of disguise, but I stuck the glasses in my shirt pocket. “I’m not sure of anything except that—oh hell, I suppose I’m going in there and torture myself a little bit more.”

“You know what vodka does to you,” Tommy said.

“You know what the thought of Katharine flirting with that whey-faced little pansy does to me?”

“Half a drink and you’re belligerent as a damn hornet,” Tommy said, curling up his lip. “You better think.”

“All roads lead to American Damn Idol,” I muttered, finishing the stinger. I took a deep breath and wished I hadn’t, because the cigarette smoke was bad even in the relative safety of the nearly empty bar area. “I’m goin’ in.”

“You sound like a fighter pilot getting ready to dive,” Tommy said.

“Just watch me,” I said. I pushed through the crowd and got there just as Shepard was finishing a song. I hated his music. I hated him. Months ago he’d gotten a lot of mileage out of publicly stating that he’d like to date Katharine, but it had all come to a halt when she didn’t reciprocate. He’d looked a little silly but recovered. Then somewhere along the way things had changed.

“I’d just like to say something I should have said before,” he said, smiling stupidly toward the front row of tables. “That song was for the beautiful young lady sitting right over there.” He nodded toward Katharine’s table but stopped short of naming her. She was turned sideways to me. Enough that I could see her returning his smile.

Maybe if he’d just gone backstage, or anywhere except to Katharine’s table, nothing would have happened. But he came down and sat by her. Leaned toward her and engaged her in conversation. And she was still smiling. Maybe if she just hadn’t been smiling…

I pushed past people until I was standing across the table from him. The idiot was still right in her face, trying to ingratiate himself with her. I’d fix that soon enough. “Hi,” I said. “You probably don’t know me, or maybe you do, who knows, the damn paparazzi go after everybody these days, but anyway, my name’s Chris McDonald, and if you don’t move your sorry ass away from this table, I’ll move it for you.”

“Oh my GOD,” Katharine said, standing up and deliberately placing herself between us. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I’ll bet you detoured through the bar, didn’t you?”

Shepard insinuated himself between us. “Let’s not have any trouble now,” he said.

The mere sound of his voice irritated me beyond belief. “Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” I said, and before I was aware of what I was doing, my fist started straight for his jaw.

*****************

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A day late and a dollar short--that was me and current pop culture, most of the time. Sometimes I thought if it wasn’t for my son constantly telling me how behind the times I was, I wouldn’t have an inkling of what people my age, or slightly younger, were “supposed” to like. My penchant for becoming emotionally involved with older women, which I attributed to my post-collegiate need to associate with ladies whose parents couldn’t dictate their most important life choices, didn’t help much in that regard either. The few nights I’d watched American Idol 4 with Katharine were like a revelation, and even then I couldn’t get it right. I’d been convinced Bo Bice was going to take it all. Not that I wanted him to, I didn’t really care, I just thought that’s what the voters would go for. Katharine got it right, though. She called it for Carrie Underwood. Not sure why, she just had a feeling.

“She’s gonna take it and run with it,” she’d said. “Something tells me she’s got the stuff to go really big.” Eyeing a third pizza slice, she’d thought better of it and instead simply sipped her Diet Pepsi. “Sometimes I think I could do that. Do you think I could do that?”

“Well, I know you can sing,” I said. “But I’ll bet the pressure is awful. Could you take it?”

It wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted to hear, but she knew it was the truth. She set the Pepsi down, her shoulders drooped, and she suddenly looked very young and very vulnerable. “That’s what I’m not so sure about,” she said. “I’ve got some stuff to work through before I’m ready to tackle something that big.”

I knew what she meant, she knew I knew what she meant, and there was no use browbeating her about it. The last thing she needed from me was any more pressure. “Well, Sweetie, I don’t know what to tell you except that you’ve got some decisions to make, and I’ll back you up whatever you do. And I’m always here for you. You’ve got all my phone numbers.”

The rest, as they say, is history. A year later she’d nearly gone to the top of American Idol. Then came the Idol Tour, followed by a frantic attempt to put out a debut album as quickly as possible.

Our situation changed over the months as well. If I were creating a movie montage, I would cycle through endless permutations on the theme of Katharine bouncing, slamming, or sneaking through my door, frequently followed by some variation on “Do you know what they pulled on me today?” Things did not always go smoothly during the creation of that initial album, nor were they helped along by the fact that now and then, someone would, sometimes literally, jump out of the bushes with a camera, unnerving her totally. As I never kept liquor on the premises, she would have to calm herself down with a glass of chocolate milk, a big favorite with both of us. She would park on my couch and splutter it out, chewing a thumbnail or twisting the big silver Claddagh ring I’d given her or agitatedly pushing the hair back from her face, until she’d worn off the initial distress and could articulate her feelings better.

The bad thing about a studio apartment is that there are no individual rooms, so the bed is always just there, quietly making a statement in the background of any conversation, discussion, or argument. That may also be a good thing about a studio apartment. We usually wound up there, and eventually I would get a slightly more rational version of whatever she’d been spluttering about earlier.

The major problem was song choice. “Just like on Idol!” she’d exclaim. “I like this, they like that. This sounds right for me, that doesn’t. I want some input. I’ve even got ideas for songs, I just, like, need some help with getting the lyrics to sound right. And, well, if you want me to, like, sing it just like the demo girl, well, hire her!”

Sometimes I would put on a big mock frown and say something like “Yeah! I’m Katharine McPhee, by God, and it’s my album!” Then I’d beat on my chest like a gorilla, or something equally stupid, and she’d tell me to shut up and dive at me and we’d wrestle around like a couple of preschoolers. Well, almost.

Nobody ever figured out exactly what The Katharine McPhee Sound was because she could sing so many different styles and sing them all well, and everything required something different. She didn’t want to have preconceived notions of what anything “should” sound like. She wanted to hear the material, sit with it, think about it, then sing it however it came out, however it felt right to her. “I’m learning to trust my own intuition,” she’d say. “Now I just need to learn how to convince other people to trust it too. How do I do that?”

“By singing it the way you feel it,” I would always say. “You can’t talk anybody into anything. You’ve just got to show them.”

Nobody really seemed to have any problems with the way she delivered in the studio. Idol had given her an invaluable crash course in how to get it right quick, and nothing was being spared to give her all the technical and advisory help she required.

Basically all she had to do was walk in and sing. Except for that one pesky little problem:  she kept having ideas of her own. About everything.

Some producers were easy to work with. David Foster wrote her a duet and persuaded Andrea Bocelli to sing with her. Then they called it an “extra cut” so it wouldn’t seem to be contrary to the main intention of the album—an interesting phrase as I had never been able to pinpoint its exact thrust anyway.  “That wasn’t exactly like Moses parting the Red Sea,” I said. “They both love you.”

“Just administrative details to work out,” she said. “The rest was sheer heaven. The fighting was mostly over the other tracks.”

The heavy hitter turned out to be a Big Ballad called Without You, and Katharine found it amusing that the hook was the exact opposite of My Destiny. The song she and Diane Warren had collaborated on, Can’t Ever Get Enough of You--the one she called “my” song—had turned out well, and she loved the arrangement. “You know on Since I Fell For You, how it starts kind of slow and dreamy, and then just about the time you’re all like ‘Bo-ring! Pick up the pace, honey!’ all of a sudden it does, and it turns into this real swingy, jazzy kind of thing? Well, that’s how we do it. And it really works!” She’d been really enthusiastic about that one, since she’d helped write it, and had been bouncing around throwing pillows at me and being simply ecstatic when things were going well in the studio.

Then there were the other days, the “all they can think about is money!” days, and I’d say “Well, sure, Sweets, that’s what they’re about. This is your first album. You don’t think anybody cares about something as, what’s the word, obscure, maybe, as artistry? Do you? Of course this is about money!”

“It’s about my career too! This may be the first a lot of the world will ever hear from me.”

“Okay, what about other Idols’ debuts? They usually do anywhere from lousy to okay, and later they find their voice and their audience. And their Grammys. And their millions.”

“Grammys,” she said. “I want respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”

“But you wouldn’t mind if they paid you too.” Before she could answer, I said, “Oh shut UP! I KNOW already! I just beat you to it.”

Then she’d say, for the hundredth time, “Stop making fun of how I talk,” and I’d put my arms around her from behind, rest my cheek against hers, and say “I’m definitely not, like, making fun of you,” and I could almost feel her face getting hot. I really shouldn’t tease her when she’s already wound up over something.

“You just want me for my money-making potential!” she’d accuse, thumping me on the forehead, and I’d promise to sign a pre-nup and that would really make her furious. “You think I’d marry somebody I didn’t trust any more than that to begin with? Christopher, you make me crazy!”

“But I’d do it if you wanted me to,” I said. “Really. I mean, if somebody ever said anything to you, I wouldn’t want you to entertain that kind of a thought for even a split second. ”

“You’re missing the point,” she said. “I would never think that about you, no matter what. I don’t need proof. If I did, I wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t even be having this silly discussion. You dork.”

“By analogy to K-Fed, I guess they could call me C-Mac…”

“Oh, shut UP!” she’d said, laughing at me in spite of herself, and then that discussion got badly sidetracked.

And so it went, up and down, with the album production. Everybody wanted one real gasser of a love song, but for some reason that was proving the most elusive track to nail. So one night I told her to simply forget it. We were going to spend an entire evening talking about something else. Anything else. So we watched an old Harry Potter movie on TV and talked about people finding their paths in life, and the sermon we’d listened to that weekend and Reverend Cook leaning over the pulpit saying earnestly “If not now, when? If not me, then who?”

“You could be the one!” I quoted.

In the background, Selena’s voice was sliding smoothly along on I Could Fall In Love With You, and at first I thought the rather vacant look in Katharine’s eyes had to do with being immersed in the song. Then she started to smile, her eyes refocused, and she leaned over and kissed me, kind of sweet and friendly, and I knew it wasn’t going to lead to anything past itself. “I just got the greatest idea,” she said. “Or rather you did, and I’m going to steal it from you and make a song out of it. Well, I’ll probably need, like, well, I don’t know, but it’s going to be a song. And the title is going to be You Could Be The One. And I’m calling Diane right now. Thank you, Selena, and thank you, Christopher, and I have to get to work!” That shot the romantic mood, but I’d evidently helped her out of a jam, and I knew she’d make it up to me sooner or later.

Probably the most controversial cut on the album was titled Pretty Thing, and Katharine had actually written quite a bit of it herself. At least the idea originated with her. The lyrics were simple, but everyone knew what they meant.

Everyone says she’s such a pretty thing,
Got a sparkle that makes you want to sing,
Nobody knows all the things she hides,
Nobody knows how she feels inside.
When she looks in the mirror, what does she see?
Not quite the same thing as you and me.
Don’t talk about it, just let it be, just let it be.

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They already had the tune but it wasn’t working with the original lyrics. Somehow Katharine had changed the words just enough, and picked up the tempo, and it had turned into something totally different. “Anything that can make me cry that hard is worth fighting for,” she’d told me. “I just broke down. Then I realized I was going to record it one way or another, no matter who I had to fight. So I made them a deal. They’d picked out this really stupid title for the album—they wanted to call it Katharine With An A, because somebody thought it would sound like Liza With A Z, and since so many people can’t spell my name anyway, it just—oh, I don’t know, but I hated it. I said I’d rather have them just call it Katharine McPhee if they couldn’t come up with anything better than that. So I crabbed and crabbed about it, and finally I just said oh, I’ll make you a deal—give me my song and I’ll shut up about the album title. Somebody took me serious and I got it! ”

It might not have been suitable to be released as a single but the Eating Disorders Clinic of California liked it and it became a sort of unofficial theme song.

From Here To Forever was carefully crafted with no whiney steel guitars or sawing fiddles but still came out very country. I’m On Your Side sounded like a cross between Aretha Franklin and Bob Seger, It’s Not What You Think rocked hard enough to surprise everybody, and a wild, sexy, synth-heavy cut called Persuade Me, which walked a razor’s edge between tease and sleaze, became the single and her first music video. It certainly made people sit up and take notice, and frequently say something like “Is that Katharine McPhee?” It was as though the girl at the Big Sexy Hair press conference, with her sweet girl-next-door smile and virginal white blouse, was morphing before your eyes into the retro-sleek Black Dahlia-like poster that had dominated the wall behind her, shedding her innocence in favor of dark eye liner, a chain-like necklace, and altogether too much leather for my taste. The first time I saw it, it reminded me of an old movie called Cat People, in which the heroine transformed into a black panther every time she had a sexual experience, after which she would invariably kill her unfortunate partner.

I had been absolutely in shock at my first viewing, watching Katharine slink around, singing “Be careful what you wish for, ‘cause it might be what you get—talk me into it, talk me into it, into it, into it… persuade me….” As the last notes faded away, I couldn’t be sure whether she was preparing to bestow upon some poor guy the best moments of his life or possibly kill and eat him. I found it profoundly disturbing. It was also arousing as hell. She knew exactly what I was thinking every moment, and when the last image had died away, she leaned toward me and said “Purr-r-r-r-r-suade me…”

“Was that really you?” I said.

“One side of me, I suppose.”

“The one that comes out when the moon’s full?”

“Don’t you like her?” she said wistfully, and I had the feeling I’d by God better say the right thing and not take too long thinking about it.

“I like everything about you,” I said. “I also like to think I’m not going to wake up dead after a wild night with Catwoman.”

That must have been close enough to the right thing, because she gave one of her funny little chuckles and pushed me back onto the couch. “I was gonna kiss you to death, but I guess I’ll have to restrain myself.”

“Oh, go ahead,” I said.

She did.

The album didn’t quite make the original release date, but they came close. Then nobody quite knew what to do with it because it was totally eclectic in style. At first there was no one huge hit, but altogether airplay time was phenomenal because she was charting everywhere. Nobody quite knew what to do with it. Then sales took off and it hit gold and kept going. And kept going. There was an official party, after which we’d had our own, dancing around my little apartment singing “Something for everyone! A comedy tonight!”

It was a year full of new experiences for Katharine. Guest starring on Lost. Talk show guesting and guest-hosting. Becoming a kind of unofficial spokeswoman for both the JCPenney Afterschool Fund and the EDCCA. A chain of boutiques wanted to present a line of trendy clothes called McTogs. Allura Cosmetics, which had been looking to renovate and update its old-school image, had discovered some Idol Tour videos of Katharine doing some very sexy moves in a long black floor-length gown and the lightbulb went on over the Marketing Director’s head. Suddenly they thought it would be great to create a new scent in her honor—and, of course, using her image--and she would get all giggly considering what their ads might sound like.

“Don’t you want to smell like Katharine McPhee?” she would gasp, clasping her arms around herself, laughing uncontrollably. “Why does that sound so darn funny?” and I would spoon myself behind her on the bed, bury my nose in her neck, and declare that I thought Allura Windswept smelled pretty good already, why did they need to make her smell like something else? And what would they name it? “Maybe they’d just call it Katharine,” she said. “I wonder if my ego can survive all this.”

American Idol 6 came and went, then came the M&M Tour, shorthand for the fact that Katharine was to do a joint tour with David Foster’s latest protégé, Raelynn Morrison, a 17-year-old blonde-haired kid who looked like she was twelve and sang like she was thirty, with a voice that could do an eerie seesaw between Leann Rimes and Charlotte Church, depending on the material. Stylistically they were light years apart, so they would appeal to somewhat different audiences, but Raelynn was amiable, curious, and willing, so they were able to work up various duets that were a stretch for both of them, but also fun. She was also limber as a monkey and a closet Bob Fosse freak. Between the two of them, they came up with some amazing dance routines, including a finale to It’s Not What You Think from Katharine’s album that closed the show with a whirlwind of flashdance-like stomping and whirling and hair tossing.

The girls were outfitted with a touring bus luxurious enough to have a private suite with double bed in the rear and a good-sized shower, an unheard of privilege in such conveyances. Their other accoutrements, as well as the band members and their instruments, made their way in a second bus and a huge truck that had been outfitted to sleep people if necessary.

So Katharine and Raelynn were off for two months, but it wasn’t push-push-push like the Idol tour had been. The tour was only planned to take in two or three dozen cities and there would actually be days off between performances.

Raelynn openly confessed to having had a mammoth case of McPheever and to voting for hours at a stretch for weeks trying to get Katharine to the Kodak Theatre. She was delighted to be touring with one of her idols, and Katharine found her personable and interesting. Her mother, however, was less than enchanted at the thought of her daughter traveling unchaperoned, which was her right at her age. Evidently the tour sponsors were not happy at the thought of having to deal with Mrs. Morrison and accepted Katharine’s assurances that she would keep an eye on Raelynn. If anything got past her, there were a couple of very large bodyguards assigned to them.

In the midst of all this prosperity and good fortune, it seemed there was only one dissonant note. Me. “Everyone” seemed to think it would be better if Katharine didn’t appear to have close ties to any one man, especially at this stage of her career. Just in case. I was becoming a little too well known in some circles. She protested at first but then started giving ground. “What am I supposed to do?” I’d protested. “Just disappear?”

“No, of course not,” Katharine reassured me. “It’s just a game. Just for show. It doesn’t mean a thing. Do you think I’d let anybody tell me something like that?”

“Like what?” I’d said irritably.

“Like that I had to give you up. I mean for real.”

“Would you?”

“Oh, for pete’s sake, Christopher. Don’t be crazy.”

Then Ashton Shepard had reappeared and I began to wonder just who was crazy and who wasn’t.

He was something else that had first taken ahold during American Idol. He had made some public pronouncements about having taken a liking to the beautiful contestant who was making the old standards fashionable again, then very publicly made it known that he’d met her, she was even more attractive in person, and he’d really like to make some inroads into her world. He might even write a song for her. Katharine refused to take the bait, reluctantly answering questions about him when asked but otherwise ignoring him. Fans buzzed, gossip columnists inserted sly references, and Ashton Shepard largely fell by the wayside.

Until the tour. Then, it seemed, he would be appearing in some of the same cities, and wouldn’t it be, well, interesting if she actually caught his show on one of her off nights? Then, when I’d planned to join her in Chicago, “someone” had objected. Too public. How about, oh, Texas maybe? Better yet, why didn’t we just wait and have a nice reunion when the tour was over? Her management wisely allowed Katharine to relay all these pronouncements to me herself because most of my reactions were unprintable. “You’re in favor of this? Waiting until you get home?” I’d said incredulously.

“No, of course not. But I told them I’d tell you.”

“And did you tell them what I’d say about that? I mean, you knew what I’d say. Didn’t you?”

“I knew.”

“And what do you think? Are you okay with a two-month separation?”

“No! And settle down. Why are you acting like this?”

I realized I was yelling, my heart was pounding, and I wasn’t even sure why. “Because I need to know you don’t agree with them!”

“I don’t. Now stop reading the gossip magazines and calm down.”

“What magazines? Now what have I missed?”

Turned out it had actually been US Weekly, which had been following Katharine’s career for months, and the article I’d missed had been about Shepard’s many lady loves, but the worst of it was the quote from another more risque’ publication in which he made some barely disguised references to his colorful sex life and occasionally quirky preferences. I didn’t care what he liked or didn’t; what I did object to was the part where he talked about how women in show business frequently had really kinky tastes. The more he talked the more he seemed to be inviting the reader to guess who he was actually talking about. Finally I just ripped the page out of the book, crumpled it into a wad, and tossed it into a wastebasket. Then I spat on it. Then I felt so weird that I drove back to the clinic to visit the overnight surgical patients and spent the next hour inspecting bandages and stitches, patting furry heads, having my hand licked and being purred for by a variety of surprised but happy animals, most of whom weren’t feeling very good about their situation either.

But the worst was yet to come. That was just Ashton Shepard mouthing off to add to his own legend. I could still talk to Katharine and be reassured.

Then one night when I was comforting myself by watching an old video of her singing Someone To Watch Over Me, I glanced at the list of “also by this author” videos and saw something really odd: the description of one entry read, in part, “Kat McPhee and Ashton Shepard go wild at Wild Cherries concert.” The accompanying picture drew my eye instantly. Someone with long dark hair appeared to be kneeling in front of a wavy-haired man that could only be Shepard. His hands were on her shoulders, his head was thrown back, and the total impression was altogether too suggestive for words. Despite what felt like a hand gripping my guts, producing an almost overwhelming nausea that stopped just short of actually heaving, I had to watch.

It was fairly long, as such videos go, and started out with the Wild Cherries doing some of their no-doubt usual profane between-songs patter. Then Shepard discovered Katharine and Raelynn in the audience and started yelling for them to come up onstage. It was quite evident that, at first, Katharine wanted no part of it, but when Shepard actually jumped into the audience and confronted her, she gave in. Then, to her obvious surprise, Raelynn followed them up to the stage.

Someone was passing a bottle around and they appeared to actually be drinking from it. Well, the Cherries were becoming famous for wild and boozy improvisations; maybe nobody was worried about how they might actually sound if the entire band got so smashed they couldn’t see straight. Then Shepard announced that they were going to do Play That Funky Music, which I assumed from the name of the band was probably one of their staples. Katharine was successfully fending off attempts to entice her to have a drink from the community bottle, but she did agree to join in the song. She wasn’t sure she knew all the words, she said, but Mr. Torn Jeans and Bleached Hair assured her it would be no problem due to the structure of the song. There was instrumental time between the lines that were sung, and she could simply fill in by repeating each line in turn. She gave a nervous glance at Raelynn and they launched into the song.

Before long the simple magic of being onstage making music seemed to start taking her over, and she appeared to be losing her initial nervousness and almost enjoying being there. At one point she looked over at Raelynn and shrugged, and they both started gyrating around to the point where she nearly bumped into Shepard’s guitar. It was during this dance that Shepard scooted his guitar onto his back as she dipped in front of him. His hands found her shoulders and for a brief second or two they played out the scene I had seen in freeze-frame. It was just part of a dance. What had I been thinking? But before the relief could set in, he’d grabbed her and pulled her close to him and her expression changed again. She would sing and dance but she definitely did not appear to relish being grabbed. Then Raelynn rescued her by simply pulling her away and dancing her across the stage. To avoid looking like an idiot, Shepard repositioned his guitar and started playing again.

At the end, Katharine grabbed the microphone and swung it around while belting out the end notes like she’d been practicing to be a rock singer all her life. The camera zoomed in as she held the microphone up close to her face, then suddenly looked up, pursed her lips, and kissed the air. She winked at the audience. They screamed and stamped in approval.

Despite the fact that Katharine holds the patent on The Pucker Of The Century, I couldn’t tear my eyes off of the hand holding the microphone. I’d often wondered why, being a lefty, she frequently held them in her right hand, but she seemed to do that quite naturally. So it was easy to see that the hand holding the microphone was unadorned. The almost-engagement ring I’d given her was missing.

A day later I was on a plane heading north.

                                    ************************

Rick Lords was always surprising people by how fast he could move. Considering his size, I suppose they expected him to get from one place to another at the pace of the mountain he resembled, but they’d probably never seen him play football. No one had for years, since the third time he’d had someone mangle his knee and the doctors hadn’t been able to unmangle it that time. So luck and fate had placed him in Toons in San Jose, California, right when I needed him to be there to keep me from making a total fool of myself. I guess that’s what good bodyguards are for.

An enormous black fist intercepted mine on its way to the middle of Ashton Shepard’s face and I knew it was no good trying to resist. Rick easily made two of me if not three, and he was not about to let me ruin Katharine’s night by starting a brawl

and getting thrown in jail. “Hey there, Doc,” he said amiably, somehow getting me in an armlock that didn’t quite resemble an armlock but performed the same function, and maneuvering me off to one side. “Let’s go somewhere and talk, what say?”

Somehow the two of us, plus Katharine and Tommy, found our way out of Toons and into a cab with barely enough room in both seats to get us all back to Katharine’s hotel. We left Shepard to fend for himself and make up his own explanations, if any were necessary. It was late and the hotel bar was empty. A small knot of young people were hovering around outside but they couldn’t seem to decide if they wanted to come in or not. Rick and Tommy parked at one end of the bar, Katharine and I at the other.

She got the bartender’s attention and ordered Diet Pepsi with a cup of the strongest coffee he could manage for me. I stared at the bar and said nothing.

“Sooner or later you’re going to have to talk to me,” she said. “You don’t behave like this for no reason. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

“I think that’s my line,” I said.

“Okay, you can play games with me and we’ll be here all night, or maybe you could try talking to me.”

“Where’s Raelynn?”

“Upstairs where she belongs, with Madeye riding herd on her,” she said. “Why?”

“Oh, I dunno. I just thought maybe you usually took her pub crawling with you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like you did at the Wild Cherries concert where you became part of the act.”

“How did you find out about that?”

“Same way I know every move you made on the Idol Tour. Fans follow performers around with vid cameras and cell phones and 24 hours later it’s on the Internet. God, it’s getting to where you can almost see stuff before it happens.”

“Christopher, you’re loaded,” she said, but she didn’t really sound angry. It was as though she was trying to keep me talking so she could feel her way into my mood, and she was starting to get somewhere. She started inching closer to me, touching me tentatively on the arm as though she halfway expected me to recoil. But I didn’t.

“No, just half loaded. You took it off.”

“No, that was Ashton who took off his shirt and threw it into the crowd.”

“Oh great. I didn’t see that part.”

“Oops.”

“The ring!” I shouted. “Dammit, you took your ring off! And on top of that, Ajay came home from school with bruised knuckles and I got out of him that some damn kid had been teasing him about how you were two-timing his dad. Good lord in the mornin’, does the whole damn world know about you and that creep? It’s bad enough they know about us.”

She didn’t say anything for awhile. Then she turned toward me and slowly ran both hands up my arms until they were resting on my shoulders. “Oh, Critter, I am so sorry,” she said softly, leaning forward to rest her forehead against mine.

That did it. I could feel the pent-up anger that could have released itself into Ashton Shepard draining out of me as though someone had pulled a plug out of the back of my head. Very, very few people knew what I’d called myself when I was two years old and couldn’t pronounce my own name. Most likely no one else in the entire world would find it natural to call me that today. It disarmed me right down to the toes.

“Look,” she said, moving back slightly and holding her right hand up in front of my face. “It’s back now. I didn’t feel right without it.”

I grabbed her and nearly knocked her Pepsi over in the process. Somehow we ended up all wound around each other and nearly sitting on the same bar stool. I had so many questions, but they had to wait because right then it was more important to just kiss for a long time.

“Aren’t you afraid somebody with a camera might walk in and blow a hole in your latest publicity persona?” I said.

“Don’t spoil it,” she chided gently. “There’s nobody in here.”

I looked over her shoulder and noticed that there were indeed two or three people farther down the bar, but they were carefully staying there, on the other side of Rick and Tommy.

“That’s just Sparky,” Katharine said. “He’s one of the road crew. Looks like he found himself some companionship. Okay, now you have to listen to me. Are we friends again?”

“That’s a funny way to put it.”

“No it isn’t. Part of what made us so special is that we didn’t just collide one day and fall into bed. It’s always been more than that. A lot more. I always trusted you. I always felt like you’d be there for me no matter what. And I thought you felt the same way. But something’s eating holes in that. You don’t trust me anymore.”

“I guess I just don’t understand what’s going on,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully. I had the feeling we were doing something very important here and I’d better get it right.

“I don’t either,” she said, moving back slightly and retreating behind her Pepsi for breathing space. “I mean I don’t understand what’s going on with me. I feel like I’ve been making some really bad decisions and I can see them starting to backfire on me. I’ve been trusting my own musical decisions for quite awhile now, but I’ve been a lot more willing to let other people sway me about other things. I mean, I’ve been studying music or performing some way or another for twenty years, even if it was just singing for my family. But I’m barely old enough to drink legally, do you realize that? This is a huge business I’m in with so many angles and so much stuff I don’t understand… So I’ve been telling myself I ought to listen to people who’ve been around longer and know more. I might have fought them about what songs I wanted to sing and how to sing them, but when it came to business and money and publicity and stuff, I started giving in. And then I gave in some more. And pretty soon I was doing things I knew were wrong.

“That’s the thing right there, Crittofer,” she said, moving my nickname up another year. That was what I’d been at age three. I couldn’t believe some of the things I’d told her about myself that no one else outside my immediate family knew. “When I listen to my heart, I get it right. And lately I’ve been listening to everybody else under the sun but myself. And I’ve been getting it all wrong. And hurting people. I let Raelynn talk me into coming with me that night because she said she’d sneak out anyway if I didn’t, and I guess it scared me because I felt responsible for her. I should have told her to stuff it, she was staying home with Madeye and that was it. I knew it was going to be bad news if she came with me. I was scared to death all night, especially when they uncorked that bottle.”

“What the hell kind of name is Madeye anyway?” I said.

“He used to have lazy eye syndrome,” she said. “Sometimes he’d have to wear an eye patch so the football team nicknamed him after that character in Harry Potter.”

“How could he play football with one eye?” I asked, glad of the temporary diversion.   I was starting to feel really tired and brain dead.

“He didn’t. He was a weight lifter. He used to help them in the weight room. Anyway. Are you listening to me?” I nodded and she signalled the bartender for another coffee. “I’ve got some thinking to do. Remember when I wanted to do that Battlestar Galactica episode about the new pilot who falls for Starbuck and they talked me out of it because it was bad for my image or something?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, trying to keep my head clear. “Because Katee Sackhoff’s a babe.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “A babe who smokes cigars and can drink all the guys under the table.”

“And has shot down more Cylons than the rest of the fleet combined.”

“You got it. I don’t know much about science fiction but I could tell just from reading that script it was smokin’ and I could make people sit up and say ‘Good grief, is that Katharine McPhee?’ “

“Just like they do whenever they see that damn Curse of the Catpeople video.”

She ruffled my hair. “You’re so weird. I suppose I should get used to it now, though. I’ll need it someday.”

“Need what?”

“I’ll probably be raising a bunch of weird kids so I’d better learn how to deal with them.” I just sat there with a stupid grin on my face. “You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?” I shook my head “no,” hoping I meant it. “Stay right here. I’m going to talk Rick into joining Madeye and Raelynn for a couple of hours so we can borrow their room.”

That woke me up real quick.

*************

The M&M Tour ended and so did Katharine’s stint with her management company. Citing irreconcilable differences, she dumped them in favor of a well regarded group that had a lot more sense about how to handle emerging talent with good instincts and strong sentiments about how to implement them. There had been a short period when some threats had passed back and forth, but as it turned out, some of the publicity I’d been cursing actually worked to my advantage.

“You’ll never believe this!” Katharine had said gleefully. “Somebody actually knew your stepmom. He said she was—well, don’t take this wrong because it turned out to be just what I needed—he said she was a pit bull and they should avoid getting into a—“ she stopped and did a little shoulder-shrugging giggle—“a pissing contest with her! Well, they said it, I didn’t.”

“You’re kidding. Ildie doesn’t have that many show business clients that I’m aware of.”

“All I know is what I was told.”

It was Saturday night, very late, and we’d been spending a wonderful, mostly quiet weekend doing a whole lot of nothing. The paparazzi had found us renting a video of something Katharine decided she wanted to see right now without waiting for it to come to cable, and she had mock-defiantly held up the box for them to photograph. Then she’d waved at them as we drove away. “We’ll be all over the magazines soon,” she said.

“Magazines my eye. The Internet gets everything first,” I said, struggling around trying to uncramp myself from the position in which I’d been watching television. “I need a bigger couch.”

“Or I need a smaller butt.”

“Don’t start that again,” I said, pulling my arm out from under her shoulders and fishing for the remote. “You’re perfect. Now just be quiet. I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a long time but I keep forgetting. Speaking of the Internet, you’ll never guess what I found for sale on eBay the other day.”

“Are you gonna make me actually guess?”

“This is just too good. Somebody swears he was in the audience the night you popped the button on the yellow dress and he found it. I swear to God.”

Her jaw dropped. “You have to be kidding me. Don’t you?”

“No. Wanta hear something even funnier?”

She ducked her head and peered up at me. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes. I bought it.” She started chuckling, then laughing harder. “I told him I had access to the actual dress and if it didn’t match I’d come and find him and emasculate him. He sold it to me anyway.”

“Chris-to-pher! What are you going to do with it?” Katharine gasped.

I shrugged. “Buy one of those little medal cases and preserve it for posterity. Give it to one of our kids someday, maybe.”

She squirmed around so we were facing each other, plastered together so we wouldn’t fall off the couch. “You absolute dork,” she said, then kissed me like it might be the last time ever.

It hadn’t taken long for stories about the almost-brawl at Toons as well as our hiding out in the hotel bar to crop up online and I supposed before too long the whole world would know about it. But I didn’t care. I was in love with the girl in the yellow dress, and better yet, I was pretty sure she loved me too. Compared to that, nothing else mattered. Nothing at all.

*********************************************************************************

I want #5!  Where's #5.  Come on you slacker!  Seriously, it is strange that I think Chris McDonald is a real person now?  Oh should I say "Christopher" McDonald since Katharine likes to call him that.  Anyway, obviously another wonderful story from Groucho.  He has a good editor, btw.    Or so I've heard.

#5 is still in my head, you slave driver. Go write your own stories. (I know, you are.)

Wow! That's my favorite one yet! I have to ask you something though, why did you include this:

"In the background, Selena’s voice was sliding smoothly along on I Could Fall In Love With You, and at first I thought the rather vacant look in Katharine’s eyes had to do with being immersed in the song. Then she started to smile, her eyes refocused, and she leaned over and kissed me, kind of sweet and friendly, and I knew it wasn’t going to lead to anything past itself. “I just got the greatest idea,” she said. “Or rather you did, and I’m going to steal it from you and make a song out of it. Well, I’ll probably need, like, well, I don’t know, but it’s going to be a song. And the title is going to be You Could Be The One. And I’m calling Diane right now. Thank you, Selena, and thank you, Christopher, and I have to get to work!” That shot the romantic mood, but I’d evidently helped her out of a jam, and I knew she’d make it up to me sooner or later."

I'm just wondering because Selena was my favorite singer since I was like 3 (I'm 13 now) until this year and Kat came along. To hear Kat sing one of Selena's songs would be like heaven!

Again, great story!

Why did I include that? It just popped into my head. I think I Could Fall In Love is one of the spine-tingliest love songs ever and I would love to hear Katharine sing it, but since she hasn't yet, I just had her write her own version of it. There was a week or so where I was just convinced Katharine HAD to sing that song somewhere during the last 2-3 Idol performances, it would be perfect, it would put her over the top, etc. Didn't happen, and we got Rainbow instead, and the rest is history, and it all worked. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear her sing that one too. As some people like to tease me, I'd probably get so worked up it would take two or three glasses of chocolate milk to calm me down again.

Well, I did write one.  Just nobody gets to see it because of KMF rules (Bill, I understand!  I'm not mocking you or KMF.  I love and respect this place).  So...it'll be a little while longer for my second contribution to this place.  It's coming though.  I'm working on it.  I'm probably about halfway done.  Well, it depends how long I want to make it.  The tour is kinda ongoing so...I could cut it anywhere I want really.

As for this story.  The one thing I'd like to know is where did all those song titles come from?  Just curious, since I'm stealing them for my next story.  All of them out of the blue?  Or are some just variations of songs you know?

Where did the song titles come from? I don't know. I was watching Maneater and thought that was a little blatant, maybe instead of coming on like a total tigress she'd pretend she wanted a little finesse, so it turned into Persuade Me. After I named one song Without You, I realized there was a passionate golden oldie out there with that title. Oh well, this isn't it. I don't know what it sounds like. I was playing on the My Destiny hook of "with you." I dunno, maybe I'd had too much chili before I went to bed and dreamed up some really weird songs. Do NOT ask me what they sound like. I'm not a real musician. That's totally beyond me.

I'm just bumping this to the top of the fan fiction because I think people need to see it at the top.  It doesn't make any sense to me that it isn't being read as much as Greg or mine...Read people.  It's really good.

Bumping to see if I can get the stories in order.