The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [37]
Melony stifled any exhibition of nervousness and lifted her purse from her side. Still approaching the entrance, she unsnapped the purse and withdrew a glossy I.D. badge almost instantly, confidently prepared for the impending confrontation she was stepping into. Behind her, the sonorous blasts and pulses of a familiar car alarm rang suddenly and disturbingly from the street. If that’s my car, she flashed a thought, and then....
“Excuse me, lady,” Costello stopped her.
“Press,” Melony declared, her badge as her shield to the duo’s dual flashlight glare.
“Diverse Arcanum Newsletter, huh?” Costello minutely examined the pass. “Polito Press.”
“You from a newspaper, lady?” Abbott spoke up.
“I’m from the news, all right....”
“Okay okay lady, I got a lot goin’ on here. Press is to the right of the stage. We have a special place for ‘em. Otherwise, by now, you’ll find yourself in standing room only.”
With that hassle-free entrance, Melony found herself the next second immersed within The Crow Job’s night world. Inside, it was difficult not to exhibit nervousness for one usually as carefully self-guarded as her. It had been quite a season since she’d found herself within an environment so loose and so...so free. It was almost like being single again, particularly so without Max’s presence beside her as in countless stuffy business parties. Here, it was less difficult to stifle nervousness once one took the chance to unwind. And God, did Melony need unwinding.
She had to show her press pass once more, a legitimate one as she and Max indeed published their own Diverse Arcanum Newsletter to worldwide UFO enthusiasts, and the cashier at a wooden cubbyhole counter motioned her on past a clinkety turnstile.
Melony clasped her purse shut and refit its strap over her shoulder. At first, she could move no further than the dawdling Cooper fans before her, the heads of each turning about and eyes roaming, scanning for unoccupied seats and tables without realizing they’d do better conducting their search while moving themselves onward. Some were more enthusiastic than others, Cooper books both hardcover and soft clasped within hands sweaty for celebrity signature. Some bopped their heads and bobbed their bodies to the rhythmic pulsations of rock ballads and top forty riffs of present and yesteryear jukebox jamming. Others crowded about the stage front, beckoning and conversing with the hired hands busying to double-check amps and instruments for the impending spectacle. A few bouncers dispersed periodically to clear the stage front until one of them thought it best to position himself there until the show began. An event clearly unorganized, Melony noted.
She now was allowed room enough to approach a handful of carpeted downward steps until an embracing, necking couple barred her from completing her descent, pitting her momentarily against a polished brass handrail. Turning into it, she found herself face to face with her own full-length image in a wall mirror stretched across the expanse of the sloping side wall.
She had admittedly dressed for the club scene as though she were single, purposely undertaking the outing alone for a low profile’s sake despite the risk of danger. And alone as she was, her chances of intimate chats with those questionably human were undoubtedly at their greatest.
Her Central American heritage graced her with skin naturally dark, yet unobvious enough to be mistaken by some for a tan. Grapevine swirls of black held at bay the lighter and brighter splash of sunset yellow/orange and peach of a summer pullover dress, which clung limply from shoulder strap strings and folded scantily outward above medium breasts which appeared braless. The outfit displayed her figure nearly to the point of flaunting it, yet it was a figure to be flaunted,