Disclaimer: Victorious and its characters are the property of Schneider's Bakery and Nickelodeon. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. No profit is intended or wanted for this story.

Chapter 2

Escape to New York

The next day, Jade decided she had to see Tori's show. She couldn't tell herself why but she just knew, from the moment she woke up, she had to see Tori Vega perform.

Getting to work later in the afternoon, she got one of the girls to switch shifts with her in two weeks. April would work her Friday shift but Jade had to cover her Saturday afternoon and Sunday night shifts the next weekend and the weekend of the show.

Sundays were usually quiet so that wasn't a problem but Saturday afternoons, they had a full house when the men working first shift overtime on the docks got off, usually around noon.


I'm not sure why but I feel I have to see Vega when she performs here in a couple of weeks. Enough that I'm willing to trade shifts at work with April. She's a sweet kid. Reminds me of Cat a little but not quite as dizzy. Still, she deserves better than this life.

Hell, we all do. Even that mega-bitch Hildy. This place is less a job than… What? A forced labor camp. White slavery? Not quite but so goddamned close…

April did have an additional demand. She wanted Vega's autograph. Damn! Now I have to actually talk to Vega. I planned to sit far in the back so she wouldn't see me.

Damn!


That special Friday rolled around – finally. Jade, who had already tried to wash off the taint of the club before she went to bed, took another shower when she woke up at 11. And another before she left for the long commute to the club in Soho.

Jade still felt dirty. The taint was so engrained; she wasn't sure she'd ever feel clean.

God, I hate that place! she groused to herself as she rode the bus to the North Jersey Coast train station in Newark. The train ran under the Hudson River through the Lincoln Tunnel to Pennsylvania Station. Walking over to Herald Square, she went down to the N Train subway, taking that south to Greenwich Village.

"Gotta keep track of time or I'll miss the last train from Penn Station," she muttered to herself. Said train left around 1 AM. As it was, she'd have problems getting back to the motel in time to get any real sleep before having to work that afternoon.

Maybe I should rethink this. Is it really worth going to this trouble to see Vega? Jade stifled her doubts, It damn well better be…

Leaving the subway at the Canal Street station, she looked around Broadway and Prince to see which exit to use. By the time she got back to street level, it was after 5 o'clock and she still had to find Earful.

I hate New Yorkers, Jade decided when she was ignored the third time by some passerby as she tried to get the directions she needed. Finally, a hipster doofus!

As the trendy punk neared her, Jade tried to get his attention but all he cared about was the amount of cleavage she was showing. After Jade told him to fuck off, he sniffed and muttered, "Dyke..."

She glared at his back, wishing she could shoot real daggers from her eyes. At that moment, a girl about her own age came up and asked, "Can I help you? You seem kinda lost."

Whirling around, about to tell another stranger to fuck off, Jade stopped when she saw the young woman. Pale skin, raven-black hair, pierced eyebrow, nose, lip and multiple ear piercings met Jade's eyes. The girl even had red and blue streaks in her hair.

The girl took a step back, the look in Jade's eyes was intense. She said, "I'm sorry. I... I'll leave you alone."

"NO!" Jade almost shouted, shaken out of her reverie. She held out her hands, "I'm sorry. It's just you look like... You look like…someone I…lost…a long time ago..."

"Oh," the girl replied sadly. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was my stupid choice. Um... What's your name?"

"I'm Gigi. It's really Liz but that's not cool enough for the crowd I hang with," the Goth said with a laugh.

"Hi, I'm Jade."

"Cool name. Your real one? Awesome," Gigi replied. "You're new here?"

"Um, yeah. Came over from Jersey, took the N train down here...to see a show at Earful. You know the place?"

"Oh! Earful's over that way a couple of blocks south then a block west. Anyway, I'm going that way so I can show you," Gigi offered. They started walking south as they talked.

"Thanks. You going to the show?"

"Not that one. Too quiet for my tastes. There's a club a couple blocks beyond called the Crypt. It's a retro-goth club. If you're interested, I can get you in without the cover," Gigi offered with a smile.

Jade smiled back. Normally, old Jade would be on her way to the goth hangout and she actually considered the offer. But she told April she'd get stupid Vega's stupid autograph and stupidly...

Screw it, Jade. You know you wanna see Vega, she acknowledged silently. Then she said, "Maybe some other time. I knew one of the people performing at Earful back in high school."

"Really? Cool. Too bad it's not my scene. My kid sister though... Gotta tell her I met someone who went to school with Drake Parker. She'll be so jealous!"

Jade laughed with her new friend, not bothering to correct her. And she realized she was not offended to be thought she was four years older than she was – given the years Parker and Jade graduated. That'll probably change in a few years… Jade thought with an inner smile.

"Here it is! If the show is as lame as I think, come up to the Crypt. I'll leave word with Bela at the door."

"Bela?"

Gigi laughed, "Yeah, the staff all took names of old horror movie stars like Bela or Boris or Lon. The bartender is an old girlfriend of mine who's real name is Cushing. She kinda looks like a female Peter Cushing too. But it works on her…"

Jade laughed, realizing it had been too long since she even felt the desire to laugh. "Have fun, Gigi. Maybe we'll see each other, if I ever come under the river again."

"Hope you have fun too, Jade."

As she prepared to enter the music club, Jade wondered at the physical similarity but the almost polar opposite personality of the young Goth. If Tori and Jade had a girl… Fingering her once again natural brown hair, she shook her head. What the hell?!

Entering Earful, she saw the club was sizable and sloped down slightly towards the stage at the back with a fair-sized dance floor in front. That was surrounded by tables in the middle of the room. Booths lined the right wall. The left wall was a long, vintage bar that wound to the left and ended in a grand piano on a platform. Past the bar, the room opened out with more tables and booths past the bar. There were only a few people there yet and no one collecting the expected cover charge.

Jade perched on a bar stool near the middle. She didn't want to be near the door which would be full of people coming in soon or too near the performance area yet. The short section, where the bar curved to the left, facing the stage, would be packed too.

"Hello there! You're new," the bartender said in a welcoming tone.

Jade looked to see a dark-haired woman wfifty with short, graying hair and a pleasant face with just enough lines and wrinkles to give her character.

"Hi. I didn't see anyone collecting a cover so..."

"I don't do cover charges. I pay the band from whatever I take in. If I don't sell enough hooch, I dig into my own wallet.

"Hi! I'm Bea, the owner of this little hotspot."

"I'm Jade," the former Goth shook the other woman's hand. "Cool place."

"Yeah, my old man's grandfather owned the place when it was a speakeasy. You see the small door in the door? 'Mitch sent me'," she said, then laughed. "Later, when the Volstead Act was rescinded, the old man turned it into a legit nightclub. He left it to his son when Joe came back from the war. My husband took over when his father got sick of the city in the '80s and moved to the Island. Walter ran it as a neighborhood bar until we decided to turn it back into a club. Never got as big as CBGB but we did get the big names – on occasion. Walter left it to me, along with a crap load of money, when he had a fatal stroke back in '98."

"Wow, that's quite a bit of history. But it's cool too." Jade internally nudged herself and added, "I'm sorry for your loss."

"Yeah, somedays I still expect to see that goof behind the bar. Even though it's been almost twenty years. Anyway, the history? Well, we got written up in the Village Voice about ten years ago with a follow-up three years ago. But I've been coming here since I got my first fake ID in 1982. Damn thing said I was thirty-five but, even though I didn't look a day over twenty…or so…people accepted it."

Jade laughed again. She was starting to be glad she had come out this night. Pulling her ID, she handed it to Bea who examined it carefully. "Looks pretty good." She leaned in, "Not that you don't look twenty-five, but between you and me and God, how old are you? Don't worry, I'm no narc."

"I'll be twenty in a few months."

"With this, close enough. Want a beer? Or something stronger?"

"Um, not yet. Can I just get a Coke or a Wahoo?"

"You're from California! The only people who ask for Wahoo come from the West Coast."

Jade laughed again, it felt like it was getting to be a habit, but a good habit. "Yeah, L.A. Hollywood, actually."

Before the place started to fill up, Jade and Bea talked more. Jade learned a lot about the music scene in New York since the heyday of the Punk Scene – "Like I said, we were no CBGB but we did alright". Jade was fascinated and wanted to know more. But Bea wanted to quid pro quo.

Before long, Jade told her about what had happened in L.A. with her family, but didn't go into detail regarding the shitty life she was mired in. She wasn't ready to talk about that. Not yet.

She stuck to the generic story about not getting any gigs and hoped Bea wouldn't ask more.

Bea nodded, "I know how hard it is to break in around here. I tried and tried for Broadway, Off Broadway, even Off-Off Broadway but nothing. I was ready to strip bare naked for a revival of Hair but even that, clothed, audition came to nothing. But I kept trying and finally did get an audition to try out for the Rockettes. I could high-kick like you wouldn't believe."

"Wow, Bea. You were a Rockette?"

"Almost. Well, officially, yes. Kinda like in baseball, a minor leaguer called up but never getting a real at-bat. See, I never performed with the girls. We were in the final week of rehearsals for the big Christmas show set to premier during the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. On my way to Radio City, some out-of-town hick was too busy sight-seeing and blew a red light. He t-boned the cab I was in. Fractured my hip and dislocated my knee.

"They still pain me when the weather turns."

"God, that sucks!"

"Well, it did but, when I was hobbling along on my crutches, I dropped my purse. This goof I recognized, from some club I hung out at, came up to help me. From that moment, Walter and I were inseparable..." Bea smiled wistfully. "Still. I was this close to national TV…"

Bea stepped away to fill a newly arrived couple's drink order. Jade spun her stool to lean back on the bar and look around the club. From the mix of old and new, especially the old, she could see it had more than a little history, which she already knew. Bet Bea has some really great stories. Wish I had the time to hear them.

Setting her soda on the bar, Jade signaled to Bea that she was stepping away for a moment. The proprietor/hostess/bartender nodded - the stool would still be there when she got back.

The women's room was cleaner than most - especially the cesspool at Skin Deep which was practically a fucking germ warfare factory. Much as she derided Vega for hovering at the Gorilla Club, she didn't dare do much more than squat at work.

This room was actually immaculate. And, while it wasn't large, there were three booths and two sinks – all fairly new. But the room décor was incredible. The walls had old concert flyers and a few larger posters fixed in place under clear lacquer.

"Holy chiz! The Talking Heads, the Smashing Pumpkins, Brian Ferry... They played here?! Bea said they sometimes got the big names…" Jade muttered. "The Ramones… Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Brian Eno with John Cale. The Cure. Jesus and Mary Chain. Liz Phair. Deborah Harry."

While taking care of business, Jade noted other bands on the walls of the booth she was in. Then she glanced up at the ceiling. There were more. "The Runaways… And Oingo Boingo... The B-52s. Joan Jett! Whoa...the Heathens! One of the all-time classic crash-and-burns…"

She stood in the room for several minutes reading the various old ads. On her way out to the bar, Jade noted that the wall just outside the women's and men's room was a large bulletin board and featured contemporary notices about upcoming shows both at the club and others in Soho and the Village, including the Crypt. Jade nodded in appreciation, Very cool…

Two women passed her on their way to the women's and broke her out of her reverie. Suddenly feeling like some rube from the sticks, Jade made her way back to the bar. It was much more crowded now but, as tacitly agreed, Bea kept her stool for her. A young man was also behind the bar and Jade saw Bea whisper to him and nod at her. Hope that's good.

Before long, the band members came out to check the instruments and the sound system. The crowd noise grew in anticipation at this. Drake Bell set his guitar in its stand and took the time to sign several items for people near the stage, including one busty young woman's upper breast.

Before Tori came out, Jade managed to disappear into the crowd by the bar. It was going to be awkward enough to come up to her after the set.

The lights went down to about half the original levels as subdued blue light lit the wall behind the stage. Initially, this left the band in silhouette.

Soon enough, Bea left the bar to her employee and went up to introduce the band. As she reached the stage, a spot shone on her as she stood in front of the shadows moving behind her.

"Okay, folks! Let's get this party started!" The crowd cheered. "Now, the reason you're all here… The Drake Parker Band with Tori Vega!"

More cheers as Drake, accompanied by his drummer slamming his sticks together, counted off, "One! Two! Three!"

The original spot moved to Drake, another found Tori and others illuminated the band.

Jade finished her Coke and got a glass of water while Drake Parker and his band played. After a three songs, Tori, who had been singing rhythm, came forward to sing lead.

Jade found herself entranced. The nightmare of the past year… It was like it never happened. Just from the power of Tori's voice.

Even as she lost herself in the show, Jade thought, Maybe there's something to this magic power…