Fast Lane

by Kristen Ashley

  “Well?” Preacher prompted, gaining the men’s attention.

  “Band’s goin’ clean for the rest of the tour,” DuShawn announced.

  Uh-oh.

  I looked from DuShawn to Preacher to Tommy to Preacher.

  DuShawn and Tom had assumed determined, even pugilistic expressions.

  Preacher’s was the same but add incredulous.

  “Have you lost your minds?” he asked. Yes. Incredulous. “We’re smack in the middle of the tour.”

  “Don’t know why where we’re at has shit to do with it,” Shawn said. “It’s getting out of hand.”

  “It’s not out of hand,” Preacher retorted.

  “It’s outta hand, Preacher. I had trouble waking Dave up this morning,” Tommy told him, and my middle moved like I’d been punched.

  He’d had trouble waking Dave?

  “What?” I asked.

  Everyone looked to me.

  But Tommy spoke.

  “Scared me shitless. Shook him. Smacked him. Had to toss a glass of cold water in his face to get anything from him. He’s in his room with a huge pot of coffee and we’ll just say he didn’t like it when I told him he couldn’t sock back his Adderall.”

  “He’s a grown man, Tom,” Preacher stated.

  “He’s got a problem, Preacher,” Shawn decreed.

  “When’d you earn your medical degree?” Preacher jibed.

  Oh no.

  You did not take a jab, verbal or otherwise, at Shawn.

  “You’re handin’ me that shit, brother, ’cause you know we’re startin’ with Dave and then we’ll be talkin’ ’bout you,” DuShawn returned.

  Oh no!

  If this needed to be done, and I was worried it needed to be done, I needed to do it.

  Not Shawn.

  We were a team, but I handled Preacher in life.

  Shawn handled him in the band.

  And neither of us stepped over that line.

  Ever.

  “You’ve gotta be shittin’ me,” Preacher snarled.

  Shawn crossed his arms on his chest. “And while we’re on touchy subjects, I’ll throw out there that something’s gotta be done about that bitch who’s doggin’ Tim’s every step. Haven’t seen him out from under that pussy except onstage in two weeks.”

  This, I could see.

  Okay, the other I could see too.

  But truly, the woman Tim had brought along on the tour…

  She wasn’t right.

  I did not like her.

  Preacher hated her.

  And I knew all the guys felt the same even if not a one of them had said a word.

  She hadn’t been with us from the beginning, though Tim had started things with her in LA before we left.

  He had not been at one with her coming along.

  She’d talked him into letting her join us.

  Something I was noticing she had a scary-good ability in doing.

  “So, you’re not only down with tellin’ a man how he goes about his day, you’re also good with tellin’ him who he can fuck?” Preacher asked Shawn.

  I stared at him because not two days ago it was the fourth, maybe fifth time he had eyes on Leeanne and he’d said, “That woman’s not right.”

  And now he was okay with her?

  “You cannot stand there and tell me you don’t see she’s bad news,” Shawn returned.

  “I can stand here and tell you it’s none of my damned business,” Preacher shot back. “Or yours.”

  “Preach—” Tommy started.

  “No, Tom,” Preacher bit. “This is not how we do shit in this band. You got a problem, you bring it to breakfast or we call a sit down. We do not sneak.”

  “We came here because when we go to the band, we want you behind this,” Tommy replied, then he looked at me. “And you.”

  Oh shit.

  I shook my head, but before I could get words out, Preacher spoke.

  “Do not look at Lyla. She’s got nothin’ to do with the band.”

  At his ugly, dismissive tone, I felt my head jerk as I blinked.

  He was right.

  I didn’t.

  I was careful with that.

  Even between me and Preacher, when the guys weren’t around, I was careful with it.

  The band was his. His and the boys’.

  There were many reasons I did this, not least of which was that I didn’t want to be forced into the position of the go-between. The middleman. Cast in the role of the speaker for one side or the other. The peacemaker. The deciding vote.

  None of that.

  Because I was Preacher’s and it wouldn’t be fair because I loved all the guys, but my mind would always be on what Preacher would want.

  But more, as noted, the band was Preacher’s.

  I’d watched my grandparents, and Gram had her thing, Gramps had his. They both golfed and they both liked to travel. They both worked, different places, different work friends and colleagues. To relax, he liked to stretch out in front of the TV or read. She liked to go shopping or lunch with one of her cronies or lay out in the sun.

  They didn’t get along every second.

  But they had their life together and their times where they did their own thing.

  And they had the strongest marriage (by far) I’d ever seen.

  I wanted to build that with Preacher.

  This was one of the reasons why I was struggling to find my thing.

  I could not also be all about the band no matter how many factors out there were trying to drag me in.

  Last, and oh so not least, there was one little way I took care of the guys.

  I didn’t let them get jacked over by women.

  So actually, he was wrong.

  I did have something to do with the band.

  It wasn’t a big thing.

  But it was a thing.

  So him saying that like he just said that.

  It hurt.

  “You best be careful, brother,” DuShawn said low, jerking his head my way.

  “Great, now you’re gonna tell me how to handle my woman?” Preacher asked.

  Handle me?

  “I think perhaps I should finish packing,” I put in.

  “Yeah,” Preacher said to me. “You do that.”

  I sent him a look that I figured would peel paint off walls and began to turn to the doors to close them and leave them to it when Tommy called out.

  “Lyla.”

  I looked right into his eyes and said quietly, “No, Tommy. I’m sorry, but you know that cannot come from me.”

  He looked pissed and maybe he had a right to be pissed.

  But so be it.

  I was pissed too.

  I didn’t look to DuShawn.

  He had the power to drag me in. He was older than all the guys, save Tommy, but he had a wisdom even Tom didn’t have, and a manner about him, with the issues they were discussing, he could manage to do what none of the others had done.

  And especially with the way Preacher was acting, I couldn’t have that.

  The band was my family.

  My home.

  But it was coming clear I had my own problems even closer.

  Right in the heart.

  And I needed all my focus for those.

  I closed the doors behind me, and I resolutely did not listen to their voices coming through.

  But they talked for so long, not only did I pack up myself, I packed up Preacher who usually did his own packing because, “Baby, when you pack my shit, it’s all orderly and tidy and when I open my bag when we get to our room, I feel like goin’ onstage and singing Rick Astley songs.”

  I’d laughed at that.

  Was he so funny and sweet just weeks ago?

  Why did the shit times drag on forever and the good times go by in a flash?

  The voices stopped, the doors to the bedroom opened and Preacher took two steps in and stopped.

  “Goin’ down to breakfast, cher, ready?”

  Now I
wasn’t “babe” or “Lyla” but “cher.”

  “Not being a bitch or anything,” this meaning I was totally being a bitch, “but I’m really not hungry.” Though that last was the truth.

  I was avoiding his eyes and reorganizing my jewelry in my jewelry bag.

  It took him a second to speak again and he did this to say, “Okay then, come down and have coffee.”

  I zipped in some earrings and looked up at him.

  “I’m good.”

  “Lyla—”

  “I’m not a puppy who follows you around, Preacher.”

  His head twitched and he started to look a mixture of angry and uneasy.

  “’Course you’re not,” he mumbled.

  “And I’m also not a dog you can kick when you’re in a bad mood,” I went on.

  That erased the angry and all there was left was uneasy.

  “Baby,” he whispered.

  “I’m not saying this to piss you off. I did that once, not purposefully, and I should have talked to you about it then, but I didn’t. That was the wrong decision, so I’ll tell you now. It scared the shit out of me. I’m just saying, I know there’s something wrong and I can’t see to you unless I know what it is.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said.

  Fast.

  He was lying.

  To me.

  “Right,” I replied softly.

  He changed the subject.

  “What’s your take on Leeanne?”

  I shook my head. “Oh no, Preacher. Tommy’s not gonna drag me in and you’re not gonna drag me in either.”

  Though I should probably see about taking care of the situation that seemed to be Leeanne.

  I just didn’t know how to do that at the same time dealing with Preacher.

  “You don’t like her,” he murmured.

  “Is this my man, Preacher, standing in the room with me?”

  He looked puzzled. “Always.”

  “Then between me and my man, talking about a friend we have concerns about, I will tell you what you already know. Leeanne is trouble. If I’m having a conversation with Preacher McCade of the eponymous Roadmasters, I didn’t say that.”

  His lips ticked and he muttered, “Eponymous.”

  I read. I’d studied to be an English teacher. My mother and grandparents taught us how to use our words. I had an expansive vocabulary.

  Preacher’s parents didn’t bother sending him to school most the time, and other times, they purposefully kept him out of it.

  He always got a kick out of it when I used what he called “big words.”

  Though he always knew what they meant.

  And I always got a kick out of him getting that same thing because I knew this came from a feeling of pride.

  I was glad his mood had lifted.

  But I was scared as hell.

  “I can’t tell a man who he should share his bed with,” he said.

  “Then don’t,” I returned and looked back to my jewelry.

  “Lyla. Baby.”

  I drew breath into my nose and turned my eyes back to him.

  “We good?” he asked.

  We were not.

  “I don’t need you in order to live my life, Preacher,” I told him.

  He looked like I’d walked right up to him and slapped him across the face.

  I powered through that and how hard it was to see and carried on.

  “I need you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “Yes.”

  That came fast too.

  I let out a huge breath saying, “Go have breakfast with the band.”

  His face got soft.

  “Kiss me before I go.”

  Lyla:

  I kissed him before he went.

  I’d fallen in love with their music by then.

  Obviously, after Audie and Lynie Live On.

  [Smiles sadly]

  But I think it was more.

  I was getting older, maturing.

  Preacher matured when he was nine years old.

  It takes maturity to write the songs he wrote.

  And it takes maturity to understand the stories these people tell.

  You have a pen and paper. [Nods head to interviewer] I know you’re taping this but to make it easy, write these titles down and go to your hotel and listen to them tonight. You’re into music, so you’ve undoubtedly heard them before. But this time, make a note of what they make you feel, if anything at all. What you think they mean.

  Don’t look it up. Don’t read what someone else thinks they mean. What they make someone else feel.

  Only you.

  Then keep those notes, and when you run across those notes again, listen to those songs before you read what you wrote and see what you feel then versus what you felt when you wrote those notes.

  Ready?

  [Waits until she gets a nod]

  “American Girl,” by Petty. “Heroes,” by Bowie. “Me and Bobby McGee,” Joplin, but Kristofferson wrote it, and listen to all the versions, including Gordon Lightfoot’s. “Because the Night,” Springsteen and Smith. “Fire and Rain,” by Taylor. “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole” by Wainwright. “Gold Dust Woman. “Into the Mystic.” “Living in the City.” “Walk on the Wild Side” “What’s Goin’ On.”

  I promise you, what you get out of those songs will not be what you got out of them after you have more life under your belt.

  You will fall in love, and fall out of it, and back in, and get a broken heart.

  You will lose people you love in slow ways that will feel like someone opened a tap in your heart to let the blood drip out and in fast ways that will set you spinning so you’re so dizzy, you don’t think the earth will ever rotate the same again.

  And you’ll be right.

  About both.

  You will hear of, and witness injustices.

  You will be betrayed.

  You will do things that will make people feel ways you never wanted them to feel, but you were so stuck in your life or your head, you didn’t pay attention to what you were doing.

  You will say things you wish you could take back.

  You will hear things you wish you never heard.

  See things you wish you could unsee.

  [Draws in breath]

  Do things you wish you could undo.

  They did covers. They always did covers. They were musicians [grins] and musicians like music.

  When I’d go to their shows before that tour, I always looked forward the most to when they’d do a cover.

  I told you I fell in love with their music, so it wasn’t about them playing something more familiar that I’d like.

  It was that they loved music and they didn’t choose to do covers of songs they hated.

  [Closes eyes, opens them]

  And when they played those songs they loved, those songs that led them to the life they chose…

  They were not a multi-platinum, sold-out tour earning band because they sucked onstage.

  Far from it.

  But when they did covers.

  [Whispers] Fuck.

  They were something.

  Every show of that tour I watched.

  That night, that first night when I realized something was very wrong with Preacher, and he knew I knew it, they did a cover.

  By this time, their show was a production.

  It wasn’t just the band.

  They had percussionists and backup singers and their show was a show.

  And he sang “Maybe I’m Amazed.”

  DuShawn banging on the piano.

  Preacher doing the guitar solos.

  [Swallows and whispers]

  God, the way his voice got raspy.

  [Interviewer’s note]

  At this point in the telling of her story, the gray cat, who had found a spot on a pillow at the far corner of the daybed, picked its way across the cushions to lie on its stomach next to Lyla but with its paws on her thigh.

  And after Lyla
distractedly began to rub its neck, it started kneading.

  I’m not sure my memory is correct.

  Maybe it was just what I was feeling.

  But if I’m right, no one sang with them when they played that song.

  They were mesmerized.

  An entire arena.

  And this was not surprising.

  I was mesmerized.

  And I thought I could not be more tuned into Preacher at that point.

  But I wasn’t old enough.

  I was still just a girl.

  I didn’t get it.

  I didn’t get what he was telling me.

  I didn’t get what DuShawn had warned me about.

  [Looks out the window]

  I didn’t get it.

  [Interviewer’s Note]

  Lyla ended the session at this juncture and asked that I return the next day.

  I agreed and left her sitting on the daybed, stroking her cat and staring out the window.

  I closed the door behind myself.

  Jesse:

  It was a killer idea at the time, and in the end, I don’t know what to say.

  I have that book and I look at that book and it makes me smile.

  It also makes me proud.

  And it makes me want to carry it onto a boat, sail deep into the ocean and throw it overboard.

  Last, it makes me want to hang my head and cry.

  I’m sure, you doing this, you’ve seen it.

  [Off tape]

  Cat Trelane’s book?

  Yup.

  I own it.

  ’Course you do.

  Well, I’ll give you the full story.

  Trelane goes to the label who goes to Tommy, and as I hope I’ve impressed on you, Tom was not a stupid guy.

  Trelane was the biggest fashion photographer out there.

  And the most controversial.

  He was like Robert Mapplethorpe and Herb Ritts had a naughty kid they couldn’t control, even though, he reads I said that, he’ll find me and kick my ass.

  [Grins]

  And he’d be right because he was his own thing.

  And his own thing was the shit.

  When he wasn’t shooting fashion magazine spreads, he was putting together shows that sent the Christian right to thumping their Bibles so hard, they put their fists through them.

  And he wanted to shoot the band.