“Perverted tit fucker. You’re a perverted tit fucker, and you’ll never be mine, because I never came, even when you banged me all the mother-fucking time.”
Dane’s face is purple.
He has his fist wrapped so hard around the neck of his beer bottle, it’s a wonder it hasn’t shattered yet. If she was a man, I reckoned he’d have had us booted out by now for glassing her. It could still happen. Dane swings first and asks questions later, and not because he’s thick. There’s a good brain in his head, it’s just going in with a killer hook generally brings about a quicker solution, and Dane does love expedience.
“Cool your shit, brother.” I wrap a hand around his wrist. “If you want to get back at her, the way to do it isn’t by leaping on stage and throwing your weight around like a gorilla, or blowing their fucking instruments up.”
“It’d be satisfying.”
“Momentarily, maybe. Think about the long term. Do you want to scupper our chance of making it big because some bitch is calling you names? Is she even calling you names? I mean, perverted tit fucker describes pretty much eighty per cent of the male population given half a chance.”
“Totally does it for me,” Knox interjects, giving his hips a lewd roll and thrust to add additional emphasis. “Does Jessie have pretty tits? How many times did you fuck ‘em?”
“One hundred and forty-three,” some smart Alec behind Dane shouts.
I make that lock around his wrist doubly tight. “What difference does it make if it was three or three hundred and three? We have a show to put on, and a record exec to impress, so keep your goddamned cool.”
“I don’t fucking care,” he swears through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, well I do. We all do.” And by we, I mean Joel and I. Who the hell knows what Knox wants. The man lives in the moment because his memory is fucked, and I don’t just mean through smoking too much weed. Kid got shot in the head with an air rifle when he was fourteen. It’s been hit and miss what goes in and makes it as far as long-term memory ever since. Ask him if he knows half our songs, and I swear most of the time he hasn’t a fucking clue, but stick a bass in his hands and muscle memory comes up with the magic. “That means staying in line, Dane. For one night, just take a fucking deep breath and hold it all in.”
“I don’t want to hold it in.” He’s staring murderous rage at Jessie, who currently has her guitar slung across her thighs, her legs spread wide and is making her instrument scream like a frickin’ master. I swear, if I’d had any idea she could play like that, she’d have been part of the band, and not the girl always hanging around or shrieking down the phone at Dane to stop playing around with his mates and get his butt over to her place. But I guess none of us ever thought to ask if she could play a guitar. I’m not even sure if Dane knew, unless he was giving her private lessons, because I swear that whammy bar technique is textbook Dane Darke.
“Dane! You can go blow up a supermarket or whatever later, but right now, you will fucking well hold it together, all right. Have you got it?” I drag him around so that his eyes are on a level with mine, and not getting glassy looking at Jessie flaunt her stuff.
“Yeah,” he groans. “Yeah, I’ve got it.” His shoulders sag a little, making him look slightly less twitchy. Still, I’m relieved when the six-stringed scream ends, and the stage is briefly bathed in darkness.
During that brief lull, I can still hear Dane snorting like a bull beside me, but unless Jessie has another song prepared to top that one, the worst is now over. I just need him to hold it together for another thirty minutes or so while Bitch Slap finish their set and Bulldozer does theirs, then we’re going to rock this place into oblivion, exactly as planned. The audience might not know it, but they’re about to watch history being made.
The spotlights turn on again, this time illuminating not Jessie, but a girl poised with a bass-guitar that almost dwarfs her. She’s only yay tall, but the thrum she plays goes right through me and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. She plays like she owns the world, like the crowd before her doesn’t matter. It’s like the audience doesn’t exist. It’s just her and the bass, and with it she’s weaving existence around her.
I snatch a look at Knox. If he could coax something half that good out of his Fender then we’d already be a household name, and the anthem I’ve been working on for the last six weeks wouldn’t still be missing its bass track. Sadly, the only brilliance Knox has ever shown has been while he’s been tapped into the collective unconscious. Unfortunately, he’s been stoned so much lately that those flashes of magnificence are being obliterated by his memory loss problems. “It’s almost there. I almost have it,” he’s said to me every blinking morning for the last week. Tonight, we somehow need to keep him away from the dreaded weed, and wired into our sound.
My thoughts don’t stay with Knox for long, they’re compelled by the woman on stage.
Her voice is a whisper at first. It slides over my senses and blends with the underlying burr of the bass.
Frickin’ hell, she’s good. I watch, afraid to move my gaze for fear of seeing one particular face in this audience; Graham Callahan came to see us tonight. I picked this time and location because the competition would be seriously lacking. And yet…Oh my God! Never mind Dane losing it, if Bitch Slap cheat us out of our prize tonight, I’m going to need sitting on, or the club will be the site of a goddamned massacre.
I can’t let this opportunity slide. We have to be so stellar compared to everyone else that there’s not a shred of doubt in his mind that we’re the perfect choice to head out on tour with Black Halo when they resume their requiem tour in the winter. God help us, but I actually contemplate heading back stage and sabotaging Bitch Slap’s set by tampering with the fuse box.
“Who the hell is that?” Joel kicks Dane in the ankles. Seems I’m not the only one who’s aware we have competition on our hands.
“Lowdy—Loveday Trevaskis,” Dane replies, though the hand he has clamped across his mouth muffles his words. “She’s Jessie’s mate from school. They used to be neighbours, or something.”
“Did you fuck her?” I ask, because these things are important to know, and not wholly because I want to know if it’s Jessie who has it in for us, or the whole of her band.
“No way.” Dane twists his mush up into a tequila-face, like the very notion is noxious to his being.
“What’s up, she turn you down?” Joel asks.
“Fuck you. No she didn’t. She’s way too easy.”
“You mean she didn’t offer.”
Dane casts me the evil eye, but whatever. He’s such a goddamned hypocrite.
“Who are we talking about?” Knox butts his way into the middle of our group.
“Loveday Trevaskis, the lady on stage.” I let Joel bring Knox up to speed, while I continue to be mesmerised by both what I’m seeing and hearing. I kid you not, the first flush of love is blooming right here and now between me and the girl who is bruising me with her perfect bass-playing. It’s melodic simplicity at its best, and it’s right there at the heart of the song. Clearly, my attention must have been riveted on Jessie and Dane earlier for me not to have noticed this woman, because not only is her talent obvious and astonishing, she’s stunning too. She’s the most perfect woman I’ve seen since Reception class at school, when I was blessed with a whole year of Miss Hewitt, of the never-ending legs and azure eyes.
This pixie is also blonde, but it’s more a yellowy, buttercup blonde, than Miss Hewitt’s ashen tresses. Nor has it been ironed into perfect straightness, but instead forms a halo of light around her face. My palms tingle with the urge to reach out and touch those dazzling strands, to cup the curve of her cheek, drag her closer and spread my palm over her perky behind. I want to jam with her, duel with her, and then gradually blend our sounds. I’ve no doubt the outcome would be an explosive eargasm.
All right, so the image of us riffing off one another fades to one of us battling in a different way, but cut me some
slack here. It’s not often that music turns me on in this way unless it’s something I’ve just written. What’s more, I know I’m not alone in what I’m feeling. There’s an energy in the room that’s unmistakeable. It’s like this is ’74 and I’m watching Led Zepplin play, or hell, even ’84 and Cliff Burton is blinding everyone by sticking two fingers up at the notion of the bass being the backing rhythm and playing like he’s leading the show.
This girl is one monumental turn-on.
“Yeah, I remember her.” Knox giggles over whatever Joel said, and has a brief showdown with gravity. He prevails by throwing his arms around Dane and Joel’s shoulders, before leering at me. “She’s Jessie’s mate. The one with the pulling pen.”
Please God, don’t let Knox have been inside her pants. That’d be almost as bad as finding out she’s slept with my brother.
“Pulling pen?” Joel asks. I wish he hadn’t.
“Yeah, she has this Sharpie that she carries around with her, and if she wants a guy, she walks right up to him, tugs up his shirt and scrawls her number right across his abs. This one time, I heard she wrote an invitation right onto a guy’s dick.”
“Yeah, right.” Like that’s at all likely.
“Straight up. She wrote, ‘Stick it in my pussy.’”
“She did not.”
“It’s a true story, man.” Knox lets go of his leaning support team in order to throw his arms out wide. It takes a moment for him to find a gravitationally neutral pose, then he’s waggling his finger in my face and struggling to recall what he’s disagreeing with me for.
“Told you, she’s easy,” Dane says, smirking at me, as if the fact that her being upfront about what she wants makes his description of her, or his own antics, somehow justified. One day, he’ll realise that there’s no justifiable reason for any of his shit. Until then, I work on keeping my mouth buttoned and saving my breath. The trouble then, is that there’s only one other thing I could possibly turn my attention to in this room, and that’s the magic happening up on stage.
“What are you asking about her for anyway?” Dane enquires a moment later.
Duh, moron. Do you want to think about that for a moment? Can’t you hear it? It’s the sound of serious competition. I bite back an actual reply, bearing in mind that it was only a few minutes ago that Dane was ready to jump on stage and start pulling heads off. If he thinks for a minute that Jessie’s band is going to do us out of a major contract, then a whole roomful of people will be witnesses to his murderous rage.
I want to go places, and one of them isn’t jail.
Having escaped from Knox’s overfriendliness, Joel throws an arm around my shoulders, and brings our heads together so we can hear one another over the noise without shouting. “She hardly looks big enough to play bass.”
“Yeah—although I’m told it’s not the size that counts.”
I snort, as does Joel.
“Fuck you, man.” Knox hollers, having obviously caught the quip.
“You know I love you.” I blow him a kiss and that seems to soothe his wounded pride, but doesn’t alter the fact that this girl could out play him in her sleep.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Joel asks with both eyebrows raised and his lips pursed into a Jim Morrison-esque pout. He looks over his shoulder to make sure Knox is out of earshot.
“It’s not an option.” I say, making the rebuttal sharp and swift. At least, that was my intention, but Joel, just like the rest of them, never thinks twice about challenging my authority when he thinks he’s in the right. There’s a lot of head butting that goes on inside this band, enough of it for me to occasionally contemplate investing in some sort of steel head guard. I reckon the fact I’d look like a dick in it would be offset by the reduction in tension headaches.
“You can’t look after him forever, Nate. There’s a point where your…our ambition and the direction you’re leading this band ceases to be realistic while you cling so persistently to him being part of it.”
Screw this. This is not what I need to hear tonight. Not now. Not when we really need to show some solidarity. “We’re in this together.” I say, sounding like a party political broadcast. “We’re going to make it together. Don’t even suggest otherwise. I’m serious, Joel.”
Joel gets a hard look in his eyes, which tells me he’s going to press the point regardless. This bastard’s the most stubborn of the lot, Dane’s a hot-head, but he can be reasoned with if you can get him to cool off, Knox is amiable and amenable as long as you approach from the right angle, but Joel only backs down when he’s been irrefutably proved wrong.
“Don’t pretend that you weren’t imagining the same thing. We’re super close, Nate, but we’re not there yet, and she could make the difference. Knox is our main liability. Think what Paradise Kiss could be, if it was you, me, Dane and her. We wouldn’t need to be playing support for fucking Black Halo we’d be headline our own international tour.”
I allow myself a momentary fantasy of what that would be like. Us bigger than Black Halo, fuck yeah, it’s totally what I want. And deep in my guts, I know Joel is right. Knox is the weak point in our whole operation, while Ms. Trevaskis could catapult us into the stratosphere. Too bad my heart’s in charge of this operation.
“It wasn’t what I was thinking,” I lie. The possibility of us getting rid of Knox has never once entered my head as a serious option. I’m not about to abandon my roots. Joel on the other hand is ready to make whatever sacrifice is necessary. I can see it in him. The last twelve months have changed him. He’s grown in confidence, recognised that we’ve a chance to make it big. He’s started believing in the dream I’ve spun.
“What, you expect me to believe you were checking out her finger-picking and flapping techniques with a view to something other than recruiting her?”
I expect him to believe whatever the hell I tell him to believe.
“I was checking out her curves.”
“The hell you were.”
I give him the look, because actually, she’s curvy in all the right places, and nicely top heavy.
“Nate.” His hot breath stings my cheek, and I step away from him, rubbing at my skin to remove the sensation of his nearness. I wade forward, moving closer to the stage, shoving a path through the audience, as the song reaches its crescendo. Joel tags along behind me. Obviously he missed the fact that I was moving because the conversation was done.
“Nate, this is serious. We need to talk about Knox. It’s no good, you constantly side-stepping the issue. He’s a problem, and you making like we’re blood brothers and that we don’t leave anyone behind—”
“We don’t leave anyone behind.”
“—is bollocks.”
Several of Bitch Slap’s more obvious fans give us evil glares. For a second or two, it looks as if things could get ugly, but Joel comes and butts his head up against mine, and it becomes apparent that we’re having a disagreement that no one needs to get involved in.
“Look, I’m not saying we should make the cut this minute, but it’s going to come to that, and you know it. Christ!” He tugs a hand through his abundance of brown curly hair and sighs theatrically. “When it happens, it might be that you’ll look back and realise it would have been more humane to have done it sooner. It’s going to sting like fuck if we hit it big and then you give him marching orders.”
“Joel, it’s not fucking happening. Ever.”
He sneers, showing me his pearly whites. “Yeah, well we can all reflect on that when Graham Callahan decides to sign Bitch Slap instead of us.”
“For fuck’s sake keep your voice down.” The crowd here don’t need to know that Black Halo’s manager is in the audience. If Jessie gets wind of it, we are seriously fucking screwed, because that woman will do anything to see us fail, and/or steal our prize from under us.
“Are you so sure she doesn’t know already? They didn’t just pull this set out of their fannies.”
“We’ve got this,” I say, tr
ying to sound confident, but the conviction that I had before the show began has all but evaporated. One glance across the room over the heads of the crowd is enough to elevate all the fears Joel is doing his damnedest to sway me with. Graham Callahan is watching Bitch Slap perform with a smile on his face, and pound signs in his eyes, and as much as I want to tell myself it’s because they have tits and nicer butts—I notice the lass playing keyboard has hers hanging out—I know Graham Callahan has more integrity than that. Black Halo make him pots of cash, and he’s not going to saddle them with a crappy support act—not that Bitch Slap are—just because he gets off on the fact they have thighs and curves and sweet baby Jesus, au naturel hairy muffs.
And the keyboard player has taken her knickers off.
My thoughts are derailed, and the night might just have been saved after all, because if there’s one thing I’m absolutely sure that Graham Callahan wants, it’s a low maintenance supporting act. With all the unwanted press attention and fuck ups Black Halo have suffered over the last few months, I reckon he’s looking for a bit of stability. No manager wants to be attending bail hearings at the crack of dawn following every show because the band members are being done for public indecency.
-4-
Loveday Trevaskis
The set ends and we pile off stage, wet with perspiration and probably in good need of a shower. Cooling off and getting squeaky clean will have to wait for a while though, because we have people out there baying for more, and while we’re not in a position to give it—the line-up tonight doesn’t factor in encore performances for virtual unknowns—it’d be idiotic not to take advantage and go flog our wares and sign T-shirts.
I have my lucky Sharpie all at the ready.
“I thought we agreed you were going to keep your knickers on,” Jessie berates Ivy as we stow our instruments and head out front with our box of goodies. Most of the bands have dedicated merchandise sellers, but they also have larger followings, and apparently plenty of volunteers to stand in a foyer all night looking vaguely bored, instead of living it wild while watching their favourite acts.
Crazy Love (The Bad Boys of Brit Pop Book 1) Page 2
