Celeste started screwing up at the E Center in Salt Lake City.  I doubted anybody in the audience noticed it, but I heard numerous times when she was either off the beat or just dogging it in places where she usually turned it on.  She cut her drum solo – her favorite part of the show – to two and a half minutes.  Backstage she held up the other girls for the last two encores, complaining she couldn’t catch her breath.

Three days later, in Reno, on the morning of the show there, she got sick during breakfast and barely made it to the bathroom.  That night she played distractedly and forgot to move into her solo when the guitar stopped in the middle of “Zip Trip.”  Krystal had to go over and tell her to start playing.

     As we boarded the bus to Las Vegas, I asked her if she wanted to go to a doctor.  She said no.  I asked her if there was a problem with her parents.  No, they were fine, just anxious for her to be home.  What about Eric?  A lover’s spat?  No, Eric’s too good to fight with.  Surely she hadn’t taken any drugs, had she?  No, no drugs.  Just the road.

     I hadn’t seen Krystal or Heather using since that time in Denver, but I knew they were – and a lot more than they wanted me to know about, I was sure.  They got into yacky spells where they talked constantly, the point of the conversation being far less relevant than the fact they were having one.  Both were bitchy by turns.  Heather wouldn’t eat; she was running on speed and nothing else.  Krystal slept about six hours a night, or so she said.  It was all she needed, she said.  I doubted she slept that much.  And I doubted that she or Heather could talk Celeste into taking any kind of drug, but I was running out of explanations: Celeste was the only one of the four who never acted weird without a good reason.

     When we arrived in Las Vegas at eight-thirty in the morning, Lilly and I were the only ones up.  All the girls had slept most of the way, Lilly on a couch in the main area across from me.  As soon as the bus stopped in the motel parking lot, Celeste woke up, rolled out of her bunk, told Lilly and me to go away, ran to the bathroom, and threw up dramatically.

     “Sounds like she’s dying in there,” Lilly said.

     I didn’t say anything until Celeste appeared in the narrow hall in her sloppy Led Zeppelin T-shirt and gym shorts.  She looked at us and shrugged.  She wasn’t even comfortable peeing within earshot of other people, so this was borderline traumatic.

     “What’s wrong?” I said.

     “I’m sick, what do you think?”  She wiped at her mouth, even though there was nothing on it.

     “I know.  What’s wrong?”

     She shook her head, grabbed her stomach, and lunged back into the bathroom.  This time she woke up Heather and Krystal.

     “What’s going on?” Heather said, sleepy-eyed and confused.  “Is that Celeste?”

     Krystal knocked softly on the bathroom door.  “No, Heather, it’s a fifth band member we never told you about.”

     “Well, I don’t do a fucking head-count within ninety seconds of being woke up!”

     “Go away!” Celeste yelled.

     Krystal got Celeste’s things together to take to her room, and I sent Heather (now in a crappy mood) and Lilly along with her so I could wait for Celeste to finish.  When she emerged, she looked better.  She could smile, anyway.

     “I got the flu,” she said.  “Rent a car so I can get some medicine, okay?”

     “There’s an Eckerd’s across the street.  Tell me what you want, I’ll go get it.”

     “No, if it’s just over there I can walk.  Where’d Krystal go?”

     “She took your suitcase and stuff to your room.  If you walk, bring Moe, or preferably two of them.  People are nuts in this city.”

     Celeste followed me to the front desk so I could get my key, then she took off to find Krystal.  I was pulling dirty clothes out of my suitcase, anticipating a long shower, when Krystal knocked on my door.

     “Me and Celeste are going to the drug store.  Heather’s with Lilly, trying to cope.

     “Who’s going with you?”

     “Moe’s down there waiting for us.”

     “Take somebody else, too, and make sure they’re carrying.”

     “Why?”

     “Because this is Las Vegas.”

     I bathed then went to see Lilly and Heather.  Lilly was in the tub.  Heather was watching VH-1.

     “When’s our thing supposed to be on?” she said.  Beside her on the bed was a package of peppermints.  She caught me looking at it.  “I’m eating, see?”

     “We need to go eat a real meal, I’m starving.”  So was she, and it showed all over her.  At least her mood had swung back to average.

     “When did they say our thing’s going to be on?”

     “I don’t know.  Not this soon, probably.”

     “What’s the matter with Celeste?”

     “She has the flu.”

     “You know I can’t afford to get sick right now.”

     “If you eat a good breakfast, you can ward it off.”

     “Is there a Starbucks around here?  What city are we in?”

     “Las Vegas, and no Starbucks for breakfast.  Scrambled eggs sound pretty good.  You like those.”

     “Oh, yeah, I dream about them every night, right after the hatchet murderer breaks into my room.”  She made a chopping motion with the remote control to emphasize the point, whatever it was.

     “Are we going to Starbucks?” Lilly yelled from the bathroom.

     “No, we’re going to a restaurant as soon as Celeste and Krystal get back.”

     “Where’d they go?”

     “Eckerd’s.”

     “Who went with them?”

     “Moe and somebody else.”

     “What for?”

     “To keep Celeste from getting raped by a predator,” Heather said.

     “Are you about done?” I said to Lilly through the door.

     “I mean why’d they go to whatever that place is you said.”

     “To get Celeste some medicine.”

Lilly had no problem carrying on an entire conversation this way.  When it was just the two of us at home, yelling back and forth through a closed door didn’t seem as dysfunctional as it did here in front of Heather, who I was trying to steer toward as functional as possible.

     “Where are we going to eat?” Lilly said.

     “Are you about done in there?” I asked again.

     “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

     “Just hurry up.  We’ll eat at wherever’s close.”

     “You know what I feel like?”

     I sighed.

     “Young and soft,” Heather yelled and laughed at herself.

     “And wet!” Lilly yelled back.

     “Oh, my God, did you hear that?” Heather said.  “Do you let her talk like that around your house?”

     “You think there’s an In-N-Out somewhere?” Lilly said.  “I want a four-by-four.”  Lilly couldn’t eat a hamburger with four pieces of meat and four slices of cheese on her best day, so she’d said that just to rile Heather, who wouldn’t eat any kind of hamburger on any kind of day.

     “Lilly, shut up, you’re making me sick!” Heather yelled and pushed the peppermint bag away from her.  “That proves there’s something wrong with her.  It’s not even ten o’clock, and she wants to eat all that shit.”

     “I don’t know if they have In-N-Outs in Nevada,” I said to Lilly, then more quietly to Heather, not that Lilly would care:  “You ought to see what she eats at our house for breakfast.  Spaghetti, tuna, Brussels sprouts – you name it.”

     “She eats Brussels sprouts?  God, she needs to see a shrink.”

     Lilly came out of the bathroom, hair in a towel, another towel wrapped under her arms, a third draped flat over her shoulders.  She looked like a miniature pope.

     “I’m so hungry, I don’t care what we eat,” she said.

     “Have a peppermint,” Heather said and tossed one at her.

     There was a knock at the door.  I opened it for Krystal and Celeste.  Celeste looked worse than she had earlier.

     “We’re talking about going to eat,” I said.

     “Spill,” Krystal said to Celeste.

     Heather said, “Move, Lilly, if she needs the bathroom.”

     “That’s not funny,” Krystal said.

     “You think that’s bad, you should have been here a minute ago when Lilly was talking about eating a four-by-four.”

     Celeste, still in her gym shorts and Zeppelin shirt, took off her sunglasses, put her hands on her hips, and looked down at her feet.  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

“Ah-oh,” Heather said.

“I just did one of those tests.”

“Double ah-oh.”

     “How long?” I said.

     “Like ten minutes ago, just before I came over here.”

     “No, how long have you been pregnant?”

     “Five weeks.”  Celeste wrung her hands together.  “October eleventh.  Cedar Rapids.”

     “You know the date and the place?” Lilly said.  “Do you know who the father is?”

     Krystal jerked her head around.  “Lilly, are you stupid?”

     “No.”

     “Who do you think the father is?”

     “Eric?”

     “What a smart girl!”

     “What are you going to do?” Heather said.  “Are you . . . does Eric know?”

     Celeste waited a moment – and we all waited a moment with her.

     “I’m not going to tell him,” she said.

     Which pretty much explained what she was going to do.