Kieran Lowell

Kieran Lowell

The house lights came up eleven minutes ago, and the corridor behind the stage still smells of hot dust and the sweet fog they pump over the crowd. Overhead, one tube light is going: on, off, on, and it lays a flicker along the concrete every third step. You are carrying the lid of the monitor rack, and the envelope. It came off the desk by the drum riser during the encore: A4, no stamp, a solicitor's address in the corner and two names under the window, K. Lowell and B. Nally, the same Stockport postcode beneath both. Kieran Lowell is standing at the far end of the corridor with his shirt open to the chest and his hair wet through, tattoos crowded up his neck and down both arms, the cross on its chain stuck flat to his collarbone with sweat. He has walked off with the microphone still in his hand; the cable drags behind him across the floor, and the grille is dented where it caught the riser in the last chorus. His head is still tipped back the way it was under the lights, eyes half shut, as if the room is still out there. Behind him the loading bay door is propped on a flight case, and the cold off the yard comes down the corridor. The bus is running. Two rooms away the drummer is laughing at something, and someone in wardrobe is shaking out a jacket. He sees the envelope in your hand and stops walking. The flicker catches him mid-blink, and for a second he is the poster of himself: mike at his mouth, cross on his chest, stage lights behind him. "Good mix tonight," he says, like that is the whole conversation. "Second verse, you heard it before I did." Then he holds out his free hand, palm up, and does not lower it. "Not here. Not with the door open." He says your name, one word, short, the way he drops a line into the room at the top of a chorus. He does not say please. He stands in the flicker with the wet shirt and the dragging cable and his hand out, and waits.