At the gym the next morning Kitty didn’t meet my eyes when I signed in, but I caught her watching me more than once while I worked out. Then again, plenty of other gym users were staring, too.

The bald coach came over to talk to me after I finished a set of jump squats and set my dumbbells down to wipe my face and sip some water.

“Uh, Leah, right?” When I nodded yes, he continued. “You’re right it was none of my business yesterday. I had no call to poke my nose in, did I? I was just curious, because, uh, well, you’re way too big. What I mean is, you’re way over the weight classes for women, right?” Realizing he might have stuck his foot in his mouth, he tried to pull it back out. “You’re nearly a hundred ninety tall, and you’ve got to be eighty, eighty-five kilos, right? That would put you solidly in the middleweight class, and women only compete up to featherweight.”

I didn’t say anything, but apparently my silence encouraged him to keep talking.

“But you’re obviously a real fighter. You’re not like most of our clientele, who just come in for fitness and to be able to say they kickbox, know what I mean? So I was just wondering where you compete, that’s all.”

Sighing, I said, “Look, Walter. I can understand your curiosity. Really, I can. And you aren’t the only one- half the gym is watching everything I do.”

“Bloody right they are,” he agreed, chuckling.

“But here’s the thing. I can’t tell you who I really am, or what I actually do for a living. I know it’s an old joke, but seriously, I would have to kill you. You seem like a decent guy, so I’d feel a bit bad about it, but hey, it is what I do, after all.” At the look on his face, I said, “I’m just in town for a few more days until I finish my job here, then I’ll be gone and you won’t have to worry about me any more.”

Walter’s face had a look of dawning understanding and horror, which I let go for just a moment longer, then I gave his shoulder a shove.

“Nah, I’m just kidding. I’m not actually a U.S government assassin, here to finish off a Chinese businessman who has been causing us problems.” After a long pause, I added, “At least as far as you’re concerned.”

I kept my face straight as long as I could, before I finally had to break out laughing at Walter’s expense.

“I don’t know what to believe,” he admitted.

“Believe this,” I said. “I’m actually just a tourist, but I like to keep in shape.”

“Whatever the real story is, you’re in better shape than anybody I’ve seen in a long time. Incredible form, too.”

“Kitty seems to appreciate my form,” I said with a laugh, tilting my head towards the front desk to indicate the watching girl.

“That she does,” Walter agreed. “That girl hasn’t talked about anything but you since your first day here.”

“Feel free to let her know I’m happily married,” I said. “Now if you don’t mind, I need to get back to my workout before I cool off too much.”

Taking the hint, Walter nodded and left to go teach a class or something while I returned to my plyometrics.

Later in the tour van out to the Yarra Valley I told Emmy and Angela about Kitty, Walter and the gym. Angela focused on Kitty’s attraction to me, but Emmy was more amused by me hinting to Walter that I was a hitwoman.

“Is she hot?” Angela asked, eyes wide.

“Does he actually think you are a hired killer?” Emmy wanted to know.

“I guess she’s pretty enough, but nothing to compare to either of you,” I assured Angela. “And I threw enough stuff out there without actually answering Walter’s questions that I’m sure he has no idea what I am, but he has to know I’m messing with him,” I said to Emmy.

“Leah, the international woman of mystery!” Emmy laughed in that pretty way of hers.

“Yeah, baby!” I replied.

We spent the afternoon tasting wine from a number of wineries, along with locally produced cider, cheese and, oddly enough, chocolate. Emmy and Angela kept their wine and cider sampling to tiny sips, expressing their impatience at being able to enjoy a real drink now and then.

“Honestly, you guys are fine. When they say not to drink during pregnancy they actually mean to not drink a lot. A glass of wine every now and then isn’t going to harm the babies,” I said, but they weren’t having it.

Still, they enjoyed their little sips and by the end of the day we had several cases of Pinot and Cabernet shipped to our LA and New York houses.

“Pretty soon we’re going to have to start stocking our London house, too,” Angela commented, leading to a discussion about the progress there. Angela was coy about the details, but said that the penthouse might be ready for occupancy in July, if all things went right.

“The designers have been sending me pictures,” she said, “And it’s looking great.”

“Let me see!” Emmy demanded, reaching for Angela’s phone, but Angela laughed and held it out of reach.

“Na na na!” Angela said, wagging her finger. “I want it to be a surprise.”

Emmy made an exaggerated pout, getting a laugh and a kiss from Angela. “You will love it, baby,” she promised. “I’m very happy with the designs the guys came up with. It’ll be classy, but comfortable. And it has a little recording studio. Just a little one, not nearly as big as the one in New York, but enough for you to work from home if you want.”

Emmy smiled. “Thank you, Angie.”

“But no gym for you, Lee. There just isn’t space, and the building has a fitness center anyway.”

I mimicked the pout that Emmy had done just moments before, getting a laugh from both of my beautiful brides.

“Besides,” Angela said, “If you only work out at home you can’t tease the gym’s trainers and let them believe you’re a government assassin.”

“That’s true,” I said with a shrug. “And I’d hate to miss out on that part of my workouts.”

Emmy was gone to the stadium by the time I got back from the gym the next morning. Evidently the tour’s sound guy hadn’t been really happy with the way things had worked out in Sydney so he wanted to make sure the Cricket Ground’s sound was better.

For lack of anything better to do, Angela and I spent our afternoon walking in the park across the street again. The hotel’s concierge had commented on the unseasonably warm weather they were having in Melbourne, but when we told him it was a nice change from Sydney’s cool, rainy weather he said that Sydney might be a nice enough place, but it could never equal Melbourne, as much as they tried.

Angela and I stopped in the park’s coffee shop again, and, again, Angela ate more than she’d thought she’d wanted.

Besides her gradually expanding belly she wasn’t putting on weight, so it must have been little Angela Jr who was eating all those extra pastries.

Walking hand in hand back to the hotel, I told Angela that I was content with life.

“Ange, baby, we don’t really talk about it, but I know that both of us have given some thought to, well, Emmy not being with us forever,” I said, not turning to look at her.

“I hate to think about that,” Angela replied, her voice expressing her dismay.

“I do, too, but I just want to say that her being gone won’t change how I feel about you. I’m happy knowing that you’ll be with me, even after Em is gone.”

Angela took in a deep breath and let it out. “I hate thinking about Emmy being gone,” Angela said. “But at least we’ll have her memory, and we’ll have each other.”

“And our little girls,” I said.

“And our little girls,” Angela agreed, resting her other hand on her still barely visible baby bump. After a moment, she said, “I worry I won’t be fair to our little girls. Emmy’s baby is going to look like her, and it will be so hard to not shower her with too much love. I…”

“Our girls will be special- both of them. They are both going to get the best education we can provide, both going to be loved, both going to know that their moms- all three of them- love them completely,” I said, squeezing Angela’s hand. “We’ll be wonderful parents. And we have three families to help out. Yours, mine, and Emmy’s.”

Angela snuggled up next to me, so I wrapped my arm around her as we walked. “Ange, I love you. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, if you’ll have me. As much as I hate to think about it, too, we do need to consider how our lives will look after Emmy’s gone.”

“If I’ll have you?” Angela asked, surprised. “Of course I’ll have you! I’ll have as much of you as I can get!”

“You had a lot of me last night,” I teased, kissing the top of her head.

“I liked that a lot,” Angela said, her voice soft.

“Even though you didn’t get to come?”

“I got to handle your body, Lee. That was special enough for me. I might not have, um, sat on your face or anything, but just running my hands over your oily body… that turned me on so much!” Angela said, completely ignoring the looks the old couple we were passing gave us.

“Babe, I am one hundred per cent O.K. with you handling my body like that any time you want,” I told her, giving her another kiss on the top of her head.

The show that night was held at the stadium they call the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which turned out to be just immediately south of the park Angela and I had enjoyed that afternoon.

Evidently Angela had discussed it with Emmy, and they’d agreed that we wouldn’t go backstage before the show.

“I know you don’t really like that whole backstage scene,” Angela had told me. “So I asked if Emmy minded if we skipped it today and just went to see the show like everybody else. She was cool with that.”

“We’ll still go back after the show, right?” I asked.

“Sure, but only if you want to. If you don’t, we can just head back to the hotel and Emmy will come get us for the afterparty, which is going to be at a bar that Emmy said is the best in Australia.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to miss the best bar in Australia, now would I?” I asked.

“Maybe if you really like it, you can buy it,” Angela agreed.

“To go with he London nightclub I’m going to open?” I asked.

“You didn’t tell me you’re opening a nightclub in London!” Angela exclaimed, excited by the idea. “Is it going to be another speakeasy?”

“I was just kidding about opening a place in London,” I told her, making her visibly deflate.

“Well, I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “You should do it.”

The conditions that night for the concert were amazing. The weather cooperated and was perfect for the show. The official air temperature was something like seventy degrees, but inside the oval-shaped stadium, heated by the capacity crowd, it must have been more than eighty degrees down on the floor where we sat.

Even though it was now solidly autumn in the southern hemisphere everybody was dressed in summer wear because of the record temperatures of the last few days.

The opening act was an all-girl power trio who seemed to be well-known by a lot of the audience, even though the singer admitted that all of their previous audiences they’d ever played for added up to less people than in that stadium that night.

“This is fucking amazing, playing here tonight! We never could have dreamed of playing here at the MCG, in front of eighty thousand people! We love The Downfall, and when they asked us to open, we were like, ‘Oh, fuck yeah!’” the singer said during their set.

Interestingly, the three band members claimed seats near ours in the VIP seating area just in front of the sound board while their equipment was cleared from the stage. Usually the opening bands hung out backstage after their sets, but not these three.

Angela leaned over to tell the singer she enjoyed the show, and the college-aged girl replied, “Best of all, it gets us free tickets to see The Downfall!” This earned her a celebratory clunk of plastic beer cups from her two bandmates.

Lee started the intro jam that night, setting the tone with a heavy, driving beat with a light counterpoint played on his snares. Next, Emmy strolled out onto the stage carrying her hollow-body Gretsch, the iridescent aqua lacquer finish gleaming in the spotlights. As per the well-established custom she said nothing, just started playing, strumming to match Lee’s ever-evolving rhythms, ignoring the noise the massive crowd was making.

After Jackson joined the other two onstage they gradually slid into ‘Tear It Off’ from their second album for the first song of the night.

When Jackson sang, “Whatever else happens, you gotta tear it off!” the crowd sang out the chorus, “Tear it off! Tear it off! Tear it all off!” drowning out the two backup singers as they sang.

Reflecting on how Emmy was the face of the band but Jackson was one hell of a rock star on his own, I watched him play his bass and sing with undeniable swagger. Thinking about it, he might not sing as many of their songs as Emmy did, but he wasn’t that far behind in that category as you might think. Of their concerts that I’d seen (not counting Paris, which of course was Emmy’s home town and where she spoke, well, like a local), Jackson was the one who bantered with the audience more often than not. He clearly loved to engage with The Downfall’s fans, and they responded well to him.

Emmy stepped up to the mic after the first song was over, contradicting my earlier musing. “Thank you, Melbourne! It is a pleasure to play for you here on this beautiful Saturday night! I hope none of you have to work tomorrow, because we fully intend to keep you up late!” This earned her a giant roar of approval from the capacity crowd- it seemed they were in favor.

Of course nobody was still sitting, so we wound up spending the next two and a half hours standing, enjoying the music with what felt like half of Melbourne there in the stadium with us.

Finishing off the concert, the last song of the night was ‘Killer In The Dark’. Emmy drew out the screaming wail at the start for longer than seemed possible, her head tilted back to let the sound erupt like a volcano from her vocal cords. The crowd’s volume increased moment by moment until Emmy finally snapped her mouth shut and tore into the shredding guitar that started the song off properly. That specific moment was one everybody in that audience would remember forever. The giant screens on either side of the stage showed a closeup of Emmy’s sweaty face, wild-eyed and intense as she looked right at the camera. Her incredibly vivid green eyes flashed, reflecting the lights like a cat’s eyes do in the right conditions.

When Emmy wailed, “I’m going to cut your heart out and let you bleed!” for the last time, finishing the song with a final flourish on her ice-blue Stratocaster, every single person in that stadium felt well and truly spent.

Our emotions had been put through the ringer for hours, and we’d gladly gone along. The Downfall had poured themselves out completely, and when they took their bows at the front of the stage it was clear they, too, had given all they had to give.

“And that is why they are fucking rock gods,” the singer for the opening act said, leaning close so she could shout it in my ear to be heard. “Fucking gods.”

Angela and I skipped heading backstage, opting to go with the flow towards the exit. Checking my phone I saw it was an easy twenty minute walk to the hotel, so we decided on a stroll through the pleasant night rather than try to call for a ride.

“They just keep getting better and better. I wasn’t sure how they would do in these big stadiums, but they really have risen to the occasion. I was talking to Stephanie a few days ago and she said they might have to add second nights for a lot of the shows in North America,” Angela said as we walked, hand in hand.

“Yeah?”

“She said they sold out a lot faster than expected and tickets are going for a whole lot of money on what she calls the secondary market- enough that they could probably add second nights on at least half the shows,” Angela explained.

“By ‘secondary markets’, she means ticket scalpers, right?” I asked.

“She explained it to me. A lot of tickets get bought up immediately by resellers who then charge much more than the ticket price.”

“Yeah, scalpers,” I said. “So Stephanie is going to see about the possibility of two-night gigs in the stadiums on the tour?”

“That’s what she said,” Angela said with a shrug. “She said that it doubles the tour’s revenue, but only adds about fifty per cent more in costs, so everybody will make out like bandits.”

I thought about it for a while as we walked. “Do you think Emmy will push herself too hard? I mean, she isn’t showing yet, but soon she’ll start. The tour is supposed to wrap up right around the start of her third trimester, right? So…”

“I don’t know. She was so sick at the start, but she managed to do all the shows without any problems. I think when she gets up on stage nothing else matters, you know?” Angela said. “It will be funny to watch her play the guitar way out here like this,” Angela said, leaning back but extending her tummy as much as she could and miming playing a guitar way out at the limit of her arms.

Chuckling, I said, “That’s mean. Funny, but mean.”

“I’m sure she would have laughed, too,” Angela said with a smile, and I had to agree.

The afterparty wasn’t held in a dance club this time, just a regular cocktail bar that had been entirely reserved for the occasion. The place wasn’t big, but the smaller upstairs area was nice and cozy for those of us that wanted it low-key.

The bartender at the smaller bar upstairs told me that he only had the standard ingredients and the things necessary for the house specialty drinks, but if I wanted, the much larger bar downstairs could accommodate anything exotic.

I was waiting for my Better & Better with Fidencio Blanco when a girl shoved in beside me at the downstairs bar.

She looked up at me and said, “Hell! You’re a tall one!” Then, “Hey- you were sitting with that hot Spanish chick at the show!”

“I’m not all that tall,” I replied. “You’re just really short. And you were opening with those two other chicks at the show.”

She laughed, sweeping her long brown hair to the side to get it out of her face. “Yeah, me and Kell and Sezza, that’s right. That was fucking mental, playing in front of so many people like that. Kell was all chill, y’know, but I was fucking petrified before we went on stage.”

“I thought you did a fine job up there. Your nerves didn’t show,” I told her.

Shaking her head, she said, “Kell had to shove me to get out on stage, but once I was out there it was alright, y’know? I seriously doubt we’ll ever get to play the Cricket Grounds again- I think that was a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

“Hey, my name’s Leah,” I said, offering my hand.

“Georgie,” she replied, shaking my hand. “So, how’d you get an invite?” she asked, waving her hand vaguely to indicate the bar.

“I’m Emmy’s wife,” I said.

“Oi, fuck!” she said, her eyes wide. “Really? Like, I knew she was a lezzie, but I never really thought about it, y’know? But fuck, you’re, like, some kind of Amazon dream!”

“Thanks, I guess,” I said with a laugh as I collected my drink.

“Hey, um, d’you know if Jackson… Does he like brunettes?” Georgie asked.

“He seems pretty wide-ranging in his tastes,” I said. “He’s upstairs. Go give it a shot.”

“I think I’ll need a couple more of these,” she said, lifting her pint.

I looked down at her Foster’s or whatever it was. “An open bar at supposedly the best bar in Australia, and you’re drinking beer?”

She laughed. “I like the taste,” she said with a shrug.

“Sure, I guess,” I said. “But don’t wait too long to cruise Jackson. I thought I saw some others giving him the eye,” I cautioned her.