Make Quilts Not War by Arlene Sachitano Read Free Book Online Page B

around to see if the other two were still in the auditorium, to no avail. “I’ll let them know.”
    The music got louder as they continued hanging quilts.
    “Can I borrow you ladies for a minute?” asked a skinny man with three lip-rings and a graying goatee that sported two small braids with a turquoise and silver bead at the end of each one, giving him a devilish look. He wore a black T-shirt with Colm Byrne written in large orange letters diagonally across the front and a schedule of tour dates on the back. His bare forearms were covered with blue butterflies, Indian gods and, on his left arm, the word peace with a stylized peace symbol inside the C. Harriet guessed he was a manager of some sort.
    “We need a row of people so we can fine-tune the lighting angles. We’re used to playing much bigger venues, so we have to experiment a little and see if we’ve toned it down enough.”
    “I think our star couldn’t stand it that we didn’t immediately drop our quilts and run to the stage as soon as he strummed his first chord,” Lauren whispered.
    “We’ll finish hanging our last two quilts, and then we’d be happy to help you out,” Connie answered for the group, using her best first-grade-teacher voice.
    The man turned and went back to the stage, proving that even a road-hardened tour manager wasn’t immune to its effect.
    “I’m going to go find the restroom,” Jenny said when the last quilt was up and the group had started toward the stage.
    “I’ve never been in the first row at a rock concert,” Harriet said and sat down in the middle of the row.
    “I’ve never been to a rock concert at all,” Carla answered in a hushed voice.
    “Not even at the county fair?” Lauren asked.
    Carla’s face burned scarlet.
    “We never had the money when I was little, and then I had Wendy.”
    “We’re going to fix that,” Lauren said, not bothering to whisper. “And I don’t mean this aging has-been.” She gestured toward the stage, and Harriet reached out and pushed her hand down.
    “Would you be quiet! He can hear you.”
    “And I care why?” Lauren shot back. She turned back to Carla. “When someone really good comes to the Tacoma Dome I’m getting you tickets. If Terry isn’t in town, I’ll take you myself.”
    Carla’s boyfriend Terry was in some sort of military intelligence group that meant he came and went at unpredictable times, doing things he couldn’t talk about.
    Lauren settled back into her seat.
    “Since when did you take over Carla’s social education?” Harriet asked her.
    “Since you’re too busy with all your boyfriend drama to help her out. And I can’t see your aunt or Mavis taking her to a concert.”
    “That’s the truth,” Mavis affirmed.
    Further conversation was made impossible as Colm Byrne strode onto center stage and strummed the opening chords to one of his hit songs, dramatically raising his arm after each stroke. A black-and-orange dragon covered most of his arm; a stylized peace symbol was worked into the dragon’s shoulder. He pranced and danced and belted out song after song, one running into another, while the sound man adjusted speakers, and the lights bounced behind him and in front of him and twice hit the quilters straight in the face, blinding them momentarily.
    Harriet wondered, and not for the first time, why Irish and British singers didn’t seem to have an accent when they sang, and yet were sometimes almost unintelligible, their accents were so thick, when they spoke. She decided that if she got the chance to talk to the manager again, she was going to ask.
    The show went on for a full twenty minutes before the skinny man raised his arm, made a circle in the air and then drew his hand across his neck. The music stopped as quickly as it had begun.
    “Everybody good?” he asked, looking first at the men gathered around the soundboard, located in an enclosure halfway up the center seating section, and then into the wings and to the back of