Backstage Pass

The first rule of touring with Echoes of Mercury was that nobody talked to Julian Cross before two in the afternoon. The second rule was that nobody asked where Julian went between midnight and dawn. These rules were enforced not by Julian himself, who was, by all accounts, unfailingly polite, but by the band's manager, a former military intelligence officer named Vivian Cho who ran the tour with the operational security of a classified deployment.

Rosa Marquez had been given access — real access, not the sanitized press-junket version — because she worked for Rolling Stone and because Echoes of Mercury were on their farewell tour and Julian had decided, after twenty years of strategic silence, that he wanted someone to tell the real story. "The real story," he had said during their first phone call, his voice carrying the particular weight of a man who has been carrying something heavy for a very long time, "not the one we have been selling."

She joined the tour in Chicago, night three of forty. The show was transcendent — Julian sang like a man trying to communicate something that words alone could not carry, and the crowd of twenty thousand responded with the kind of devotion that goes beyond fandom into something almost religious. Afterward, backstage, Rosa watched Julian sign autographs, pose for photos, and charm everyone who approached him with genuine warmth. Then, atmidnight, he excused himself, walked out of the venue through a service entrance, and got into an unmarked car that had been waiting with its engine running. Rosa followed at a distance and lost him at the third intersection. When she asked Vivian about it the next morning, Vivian looked at her for a long time and said, "That is the story. When you find out where he goes, you will understand why we have kept it quiet."