Rock Chick Reckoning

by Kristen Ashley

  “Even so –” I continued to try to convince Monk of the seriousness of the situation which kind of pissed me off, considering there should be no convincing to do.

  “Stella, you’re playin’,” Monk broke in.

  “Monk, you can’t think –”

  “I can and I do. You don’t play tonight you never play the Palladium again,” Monk threatened.

  My body got tight.

  “Monk!”

  “Not only that, Stella, you don’t play tonight, I start talkin’ to the other club owners. Talkin’ about shit like wandin’, searches and that fuckin’ Mace guy gettin’ in my face and puttin’ his hands on me.”

  Effing hell.

  “Monk, listen to me, we can’t play tonight. It’s too dangerous.”

  “No, Stella, you listen to me. You play tonight or you don’t play in Denver. Anywhere in Denver. Ever again.”

  “Are you threatening me?” I snapped.

  “It’s not a threat. Trust me.”

  My luck sucked!

  Before I could retort, the phone was ripped from my hand and I watched Hugo put it to his ear.

  “Monk, you got Hugo,” he said into the phone, his deep, velvet voice an angry purr. “Yeah,” he went on. “No, you listen to me you circus freak cracker. We play tonight, you double the cover and we get the take.” I stared in shock at Hugo’s words as Hugo paused for a few beats then kept talking. “Quiet, you’re listenin’ to me now, motherfucker.” The angry purr got angrier and I held my breath. “You open the doors an hour early to get folks in. You follow the security protocol to the letter. The… fuckin’… letter. You understand?” Hugo paused again, nodded his head once then went on, “We play thirty minute sets, not forty-five. You put signs up that say no bags, purses or backpacks allowed.” I heard yelling come from the phone but Hugo forged ahead. “No one wearin’ bulky clothes either, no jackets, no sweatshirts, nothin’. The minute you hit code maximum, you close the doors. No one gets in unless someone goes out. We clear, motherfucker?”

  There was more yelling coming from the phone and I glanced around at the band. Leo was in the kitchen, three empty coffee cups dangling forgotten from his fingers. Floyd had angry eyes narrowed on the phone. Pong was grinning. Buzz was biting his lip.

  I looked back at Hugo when he started speaking again.

  “You try to fuck The Gypsies, we got problems. You don’t want problems with me, motherfucker. I know you like toot, I know who you get your toot from and I know you’re tappin’ his piece. He’s a serious guy and he don’t like sharin’, ‘specially with a circus freak cracker. You want him to stay in the dark and you to stay supplied with blow, not to mention your piece of ass, you keep your fuckin’ mouth shut. Now, are we clear?”

  Silence from Hugo and the phone.

  Then Hugo said, “Damn straight, motherfucker,” he beeped off the phone and tossed it to me. “We’re good,” he told me calmly.

  I blinked.

  “We’re… good?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Monk’s on board,” Hugo replied.

  I threw out my arms. “Hugo, are you nuts? We can’t play tonight! We can’t play until this shit is over.”

  “Be cool, mama, we’ll be all right,” Hugo responded.

  I stared at him, mouth open.

  Everyone was nuts. Everyone, that was, but me.

  “You’re nuts,” I told Hugo.

  “Anyone want eggs? I’m cooking,” Leo called from the kitchen.

  “I’d kill for some eggs. You got bacon?” Pong asked me, entirely unaffected by all the scariness happening around him.

  “You’re nuts too,” I said to Pong who just grinned at me and pushed off the bed.

  “Toast. I need toast. With grape jelly. And loads of butter,” Buzz said, exiting the bed as well.

  “There’s bread. There’s bacon too,” Leo announced, head in the fridge.

  I looked at Floyd.

  Floyd didn’t look happy.

  Finally, one sane person!

  He stared at me and shook his head.

  I waited for him to intervene, to bring sanity into our crazy world.

  Then he shrugged.

  “Is the coffee done?” Floyd asked as he got up and walked to the kitchen too.

  Shitsofuckit!

  I flopped back on the bed.

  Beautiful.

  This was just beautiful.

  “You better call Mace, get him to set up the security detail,” Hugo said from his place leaning against the kitchen ledge.

  Even more beautiful.

  Mace was going to have a shit fit.

  And here I was, pulling him in to help me and my band.

  Again!

  “Stella Bella, you want eggs?” Leo asked.

  I looked at Juno.

  She blinked at me then panted a bit. I watched as she gave up the fight against consciousness, rolled to her side and groaned as she stretched out, preparing for her doggie nap.

  Eyes still on Juno, I answered, “Yeah, I want eggs.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Set List

  Stella

  “Denver, let me hear you make some noise!” I shouted into the mic, still playing my guitar, the music roaring from the amplifiers.

  At my demand, the crowd went nuts.

  I looked to Buzz and smiled. He smiled back while jacking his head up and down. My gaze moved beyond Buzz to see Floyd’s head swinging back and forth, his shoulders bunched up, his fingers crashing on the piano keys. I stepped back and looked behind me to see Pong’s hair was flying out wild as he shook his head and banged the drums. My gaze moved to Leo who had his head bent, staring at the stage but his feet were hopping up and down to the beat.

  Hugo was playing the keyboards, something he rarely did. He said this was because it gave him bad flashbacks of the organ lessons he’d taken at church, lessons forced on him by his ball-buster of a grandmother.

  I felt badly about giving Hugo flashbacks of his ball-buster grandmother because I’d met her and she was a ball-buster.

  But we needed the keyboards.

  We were ending our third set on our fourth encore of Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band’s “Get Out of Denver”. Keyboards were paramount. You didn’t do “Get Out of Denver” without keyboards.

  Hugo had had to suck it up.

  He hated it but he did it for the band.

  I executed the finishing riff with the drums, keyboards and piano crashing all around me. Then, as the keyboards and drums kept the excitement going, I put my arm up in the air, finger pointed to the ceiling, bounced my head and shoulders with my finger slashing the air, one, two, three, four and then we all jumped high one last time as I brought my arm down in a wide swipe and the music stopped.

  I turned to the mic, wrapped my hand around it and smiled to the crowd.

  “That’s rock ‘n’ roll!” I yelled and a wall of sound hit us as they screamed back.

  “We need a beer. Give us fifteen minutes and we’ll be back,” I told them and they screamed again.

  I grabbed the neck of my guitar and swung it in an arc, moving my hair out of the way with a shake of my head and disengaging the black leather strap (that had killer, tiny, daisy flower silver rivets running up each edge, a double threat, girlie but still rock ‘n’ roll) from around my shoulder. I placed my guitar in its stand and walked between Buzz and Leo to the stairs that would lead offstage.

  The crowd had moved from fanatic screams to clapping and stomping rhythmically, chanting the word “Gypsies” over and over again. They were hoping for encore number five and I had to admit, I was high enough to give it to them.

  But seriously, as high as I was, as much as the music and the crowd were feeding me, I needed a fucking beer.

  * * * * *

  My day had started out shit and didn’t get better.

  Let’s just say Mace hadn’t been happy that our evening plans had changed from a quiet dinner and a talk about our future to his having to pull togeth
er a security detail for a death defying rock gig.

  After the band left, I called Mace and managed to talk him around (okay, so it could more appropriately be described as yelling him around). But once he gave in, to my shock, Lee phoned and started yelling at me too. Then Luke phoned. Then Hector. Then Eddie. I hung up on Hank and then had Roxie phoning me, yelling at me for hanging up on Hank.

  The Hot Bunch weren’t all that excited about me getting shot at again but more, if I was putting myself out there, the Rock Chicks were coming for moral support. And that they really didn’t like.

  As for Roxie, she just didn’t like me hanging up on Hank.

  I was in a pickle. I couldn’t make the Rock Chicks stay home. I couldn’t let down the band.

  Either way, I was screwed.

  So, I stuck with the program.

  These calls were intermingled with calls from reporters and friends; both wanting to know what was going on. Since I wasn’t allowed to talk to reporters and since I didn’t really know what was going on, these calls were short and annoying.

  So I decided to quit answering the phone and Juno and I cleaned my house, top to bottom. Well, Juno didn’t clean. Juno watched me clean part of the time and snoozed the other part.

  Then I worked on the set list. This took awhile considering it might be the last gig I’d ever play. I told myself I wasn’t being morbid, just prepared, but I knew whatever it was, it had to be special.

  What I didn’t do was nap, play my guitar to soothe my troubled soul or come to any conclusions about my effed up life.

  I should have done all of those or at least some of them or at the very least the last one. But I didn’t have it in me.

  * * * * *

  I harbored hope that people would stay away from the show considering the cover was doubled, the security was fierce and bullets were flying.

  This hope was dashed.

  By the time Vance took me to The Palladium, the doors were closed because the club was already at maximum capacity. I could see there was still a line straggling all the way down the sidewalk (half a block!) and curling around the corner. All of this and the show didn’t start for thirty minutes (or, as it turned out, fifty, as the band gave me trouble because they always gave me trouble).

  Crazy Rock ‘n’ Roll Denverites.

  The good news was there were also a couple of squad cars and uniforms out front, providing what Vance called “presence” which did double duty of helping to control the crowd and making bad guys think twice.

  My being “adopted” by the Denver Police Department definitely had its perks.

  * * * * *

  The other good news was that, once we starting playing, the band was hot. We were on fire the night before but we were an inferno tonight.

  We’d never played this good.

  Never.

  * * * * *

  I got to the side of the stage and Mace shoved a Fat Tire in my hand.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll talk about your set list,” he growled.

  I looked at him, noticed right off he was ticked and had an instant buzz kill.

  I’d been creative with the set list. We were playing songs we’d rehearsed for the hell of it but rarely, if ever, played. These included Son House’s “Death Letter”, Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young”, Benatar’s “Hit Me with Your Best Shot”, AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”, and Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money”.

  Furthermore, we played two songs that we’d never played at a show and no one had ever heard outside of rehearsal.

  The songs were written by Buzz and Leo. I wasn’t a songwriter but they were and they were pretty good at it. We’d never played them, not because I didn’t let us but because Buzz and Leo weren’t comfortable with it.

  I decided that, seeing as all of our asses were on the line, it was now or never.

  Buzz and Leo disagreed.

  Floyd, Hugo and Pong thought it was a great idea.

  The band fought.

  My side won but this meant we were twenty minutes late taking the stage.

  And so it goes with rock ‘n’ roll.

  The crowd loved the new songs. They loved all of it. They were fucking eating it up.

  Mace, however, clearly did not appreciate the irony.

  “It’s my band,” I told Mace. “I write the set lists and I don’t take any lip.”

  This was a lie. I took lip all the time.

  Mace glared at me and he was so good at it I felt it prudent to snap my mouth shut. So I did.

  As with each break, Mace put a hand in my back and steered me backstage.

  They were taking no chances tonight; all the Hot Bunch, Tex and Duke were there again. The same drill as the night before. The difference was, while the boys of the band worked the groupies or the bar, I spent my breaks sequestered in the dressing room with the Rock Chicks.

  “Holy crap! That was great!” Indy shouted when I entered the room.

  I saw that this time around, Vance was playing bodyguard. Last break, it was Luke.

  Vance gave Mace a nod, Mace accepted it with a return chin lift, glared at me one last time and shut the door behind him as he left.

  “I loved your version of ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’. That was fantastic!” Roxie yelled, not holding any grudges from our earlier throw down.

  I smiled, took a pull from my beer and threw myself on the ratty couch Monk should have replaced twelve years ago.

  “They ain’t wrong. You are hot to-night,” Shirleen hooted. “Shirleen likes her some hip-hop and every once in awhile, the blues, but the way you play it, girl, I’m thinkin’ of claimin’ back rock ‘n’ roll.”

  “You can’t have it, Shirleen.” I smiled at her. “Tonight, I think it’s mine.”

  “Damn tootin’,” Daisy put in on a tinkly-bell, girlie-giggle and she knocked her beer bottle against mine.

  “So, how are things with you and Mace?” Ally asked, bored with the Stella Accolades and wanting to get to a juicier subject.

  “Ally,” Ava said and then rolled her eyes at Jet.

  “I’m just asking,” Ally retorted.

  “Non-starter,” I answered Ally after taking another swig of my beer not about to share about Mace’s demons, not yet. I hadn’t even dealt with them yet, I didn’t even know if I could deal with them. “I don’t have time to deal with Mace and the band and my dog and the front page of The Post and my gigs and the idiot Monk and getting shot at and Eric –”

  “Eric?” Jet asked.

  “My boyfriend,” I answered.

  There were some gasps. Unfortunately Ally was taking a sip from her Fat Tire when I answered and thus spewed it across the room forcing Ava and Roxie to jump wide of the beer spray.

  “Your what?” Ally semi-yelled, still spluttering.

  “Well, he wasn’t my boyfriend but he was, kind of. We were seeing each other,” I explained.

  “Were?” Indy asked.

  “After Mace and I, erm,” I bit my lip and my eyes slid to Vance who was studying his boots then I looked back to Indy. “Did it,” I whispered to the girls and then went on talking in my normal voice. “We all had a showdown, Mace, Eric and me. During the showdown, Mace told Eric he fucked me. Bluntly. Eric didn’t appreciate that.”

  “I bet he didn’t,” Shirleen muttered, making eyes at Daisy.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about Eric?” Ally demanded to know.

  I shrugged. “Well, Eric and I were together but we weren’t. It’s hard to explain. Then I found out he was a Fed –”

  “What?” It was Daisy’s turn to splutter through a defunct swallow of beer.

  “Yeah, a Fed. He’s investigating Sid too and got close to me to do it. But he said he fell for me. Told me straight out, right in front of Mace, right after Mace told him he fucked me.” I paused, not wishing to share further because sharing meant reliving. I was still nursing a mini-buzz and I needed to keep it going for the last set and re
living that particular memory would kill the buzz dead. “It’s complicated,” I finished.

  “It ain’t complicated, it’s fucked up. That’s what it is,” Shirleen commented and she was not wrong.

  “I can’t believe Mace told him he fucked you. Did he use those words?” Ava asked and at my nod, she went on. “That’s just rude.”

  “That’s just the Hot Bunch. They’re all straight-talkers,” Indy reminded her.

  “Still, this Eric guy has a thing for Stella. He could at least try to be sensitive,” Ava continued.

  This made Shirleen, Ally and Indy burst into gales of laughter and Daisy, Roxie and Jet started giggling.

  Shirleen wiped an eye. “Mace? Sensitive? Ava, girl, you are too much.”

  Ava gave Shirleen a look.

  I gave Vance a look wondering what he thought of all this.

  Jules, again, had passed on the night out with the Rock Chicks, preferring to stay home and keep herself and her unborn baby safe.

  This, I thought, was a good decision.

  Vance had given up on his study of his boots and was now wearing a shit-eating grin and watching me.

  Apparently what Vance thought about all of this was that it was highly amusing.

  I rolled my eyes.

  His grin got wide.

  Whatever!

  There came a knock at the door and Vance went tense.

  “Scout,” Hector’s voice said from the other side of the door and it was my turn to go tense.

  “Scout?” Roxie breathed, her huge eyes swinging to me and all the Rock Chicks swayed with the excitement filling the room.

  “I’m unavailable,” I said to Vance quickly but he ignored me and opened the door.

  Damn it!

  Monk walked in with Hector and a balding, middle-aged man who still managed, even thin on the top, to look cool wearing jeans, a light blue collared shirt and black boots.

  “Stella, beautiful, you’re on fire tonight,” Monk raved, clenching his hands together like a greedy, maniacal banker in a bad movie.