The elevator arrived and I stepped in laughing. I was bitching about wines to myself. Where the hell had the Natty Lite guzzler gone?
I knocked on the door of her apartment and it swung open. She was angry because I was just a few minutes late, something I couldn’t help because of the trains. She knew that, but didn’t seem to care, either.
“Maddox, you know I have to get to the stores. We have less than a month to the mini tour and I cannot be seen in last season’s jacket.”
Oh. Ew. I had to break this news now, before she spent down my bank account. “Uh, Essie, baby, you’re not going with us on the tour.”
She stopped dead in the hall, and it took me about three steps to realize she wasn’t next to me anymore. I halted and turned. She stood in the middle of the hallway, charged like a thunder cloud. “Excuse you?”
“You’re not going,” I repeated. “Hailey made the call. No significant others. It’s too short of a tour and small of a tour to justify it. We’re flying first, not private jet.”
“Are you completely serious right now, Maddox?” She stormed up the carpet, straight into my face. “Are you really completely serious? Do you realize how hard it was to get the time off to go with you? And you’re not even flying private jet?”
Tossing her hands up, she marched away from me.
“Essie, it was not my call.”
Her about face would have made a marine proud. “Are you going to stand there and tell methat womannow makes all of your decisions about the band?”
“Hailey is an amazing producer, and she works really well with Angela and Dietrich,” I answered. “We want to keep her on board and that means listening to her. She’s leaving Bryce behind, so she doesn’t break her own rules.”
“Whatever,” Essie mumbled. “Just buy me another first-class ticket and we’ll go buy me some clothes.”
“Essentia! You’re not going with us. Youcan’t,” I barked. I ran ahead of her. “You can’t go with us. We cut back the list because we’re having a lot of trouble with the visa for Russia.”
She waved her hand. “Just pay them off.”
“You think Hailey and Dietrich didn’t try that already? The first words out of Deet’s mouth were,how much. It’s not working. We canned the private jet because it’s going to be better to let an airline handle customs this time.”
Cocking her head, she studied me. “You’re seriously having trouble with the visas?”
“Yes!”
“Why wouldn’t they take the money?”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “Can we talk about this in your apartment. I don’t like discussing bribery in public.”
She shook her head, but moved back to her door and let us both in. I closed it quietly and her arms were folded and waiting.
“The amount of money the agents are asking for permission to get us a private permit were sick. We’ve been working with a commercial airline to get a cargo pod for the equipment and some first-class seats.”
“But you’ve always bribed the Russians.” She was as confused as I was. “It’s been a fee, but they gave you the visa and landing permits. We never did anything illegal there, or what passes for illegal.”
“Exactly. We faxed over all the previous permits for proof.” I scratched my arm, thinking. “We’ve been in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tbilisi, Volgograd, Yekaterina…”
“Tbilisi is Georgia.” Essie stated, reminding me that she was not stupid.
“Whatever. We needed Russian permits to land.”
She sat on the edge of her couch. “And they won’t?”
“Grig always handled them…”
“Griggory Efemovich Petrovsky?”
I cringed. “It was him, wasn’t it? He was getting us in there by virtue of his family. That’s why the bribes were never high…shit.”
Essie folded her arms. “And he’s a homophobe who probably brought up that you all hang out with the Gaggle. One of whom is a very high profile gay man.”
