by Johnny Shaw
“He’s played weddings. He sang a pretty song at the funeral. He’s a musician. How hard can it be?”
“Whatever you say,” Gretchen said. “What do you need me to do in Mississippi?”
“Get the Young Lions fired.”
“Intriguing.”
“It shouldn’t be that hard. They’re a Christian band. Drinking caffeinated beverages would probably be a scandal.”
“I’ve already got a few ideas,” Gretchen said. “Send me the band’s schedule.”
When Gretchen hung up, she turned to the picture of the crazy three-eyed fish. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Eighteen hours later, Gretchen waited outside the secure area of the Raleigh-Durham airport. A big smile on her face when she spotted Stephanie wheeling her bag. They hugged, crushing each other.
“Be careful,” Gretchen said. “This might be illegal in North Carolina.”
“Fuck ’em,” Stephanie said, giving Gretchen a kiss on the mouth.
A mother covered her daughter’s eyes as they walked past.
“We have other ways to convert her!” Stephanie yelled at the fleeing woman.
Gretchen took hold of her bag.
“Thanks for coming so quickly,” Gretchen said.
“It’s going to sound sappy, and I’m not a sappy person,” Stephanie said, “but it was the longest we’d been apart, and it had been getting to me. I wanted to see you.”
“You sap,” Gretchen said.
“You’re the one that had to come up with a ridiculous reason to invite me out. I’m still not one hundred percent sure I heard you right on the phone.”
“If it sounded crazy, then you heard right.”
“Crazy is my wheelhouse,” Stephanie said. “This is the most romantic date anyone has ever asked me on. If I had found out later that you had done this without me, I would have been apoplectic.”
“I got no control over the money. Your share is going to have to come out of my end when the score is over.”
“Who cares?” Stephanie said. “I should pay you. Gets me out of the self-help rut. It’s become too much like a job. I’m going to finish the few things I’m preregistered for and then take a break. No fun in easy pickin’s.”
“You don’t know how sad it makes me to hear that a life of crime can be drudgery.”
“Glamour only exists from a distance,” Stephanie said. “Up close, everything is work. I know that’s true, because I read it on a brochure for a weekend seminar about finding your self-shaman.”
Gretchen thought about stealing comics and how it had become routine. No danger. Profitable, but stale. “It’s good to shake things up.”
“So let’s get shaking.”
Gretchen threw her bag in the trunk of the rental car. “Have you ever been to Spain?”
“Once. I was there for El Colacho, the baby-jumping festival.”
“That’s not a real thing.”
“Men dress up like devils and jump over babies.”
“They get weird in España.”
“It’s our kind of country.”
Gretchen drove down the highway, air-conditioning at maximum. She and Stephanie sang along to the ZZ Top that blasted on the stereo. Gretchen actually felt both bad and nationwide.
“The Young Lions have a gig this weekend,” Gretchen said. “Separate from the larger tour. It will be more casual, easier for us to finagle our way backstage, find the band, pop out a tit, and snap some photos.”
“Pop out a tit and snap some photos?” Stephanie said, turning off the music. “We’re not doing that.”
“You don’t have to flash them. I’ll do it. You can take the picture.”
“That’s not it,” Stephanie said. “I’ll get buck naked. But I didn’t fly all the way out here to half-ass this thing. If we’re going to do something we’ll probably only do once—maybe twice—in our lives, let’s go bananas.”
“I can’t see a context where this would happen again.”
“You never know,” Stephanie said. “We need to put some creativity into this thing. Show some panache. Simple plans are effective but never fun.”
“You sound like my—” Gretchen caught herself. “I’m not looking to ruin their careers. We just need to get them to cancel their tour.”
“We’re not going to release the photos or video or whatever,” Stephanie said. “That gives us carte blanche.”
“I love when you use French words.”
“Oui,” Stephanie said. “If you see a skeevy truck stop on the way, pull over. We’re going to need a drool ball and a zipper mask.”
“And with that statement right there, I’m sure I’m falling in love with you.”
Stephanie’s smile left her face as she turned to Gretchen. “Joking aside. I’m pretty crazy about you.”
Gretchen smiled. “Emphasis on crazy.”
“I mean it.”
“I already knew that,” Gretchen said. “Me, too.”
“How did you know?” Stephanie asked.
“You never asked me why I needed to blackmail a Christian pop group. It’s the first thing most people would ask.”
“I figured you had your reasons,” Stephanie said. “And we’re definitely going to need a riding crop.”
The Young Lions were playing a charity event at the Tylertown American Legion Hall. Not a disease charity or a disaster charity, but one of those vague organizations that sounded good, but did they actually do anything except raise money? Two minutes online told Gretchen that the Christian Advocates for Faith and Family were a Washington, DC–based lobbying group. Nonprofit, but also nonbeneficial, unless you backed their cause. Gretchen did not.
Gretchen and Stephanie chose their best librarian getups. Every boy’s perennial fantasy, the pretty-but-she-doesn’t-know-it mousy woman with one too many buttons undone on her white blouse, a hint of bra and cleavage. Her horn-rimmed glasses and pinned-up hair did little to hide her desperate horniness. When the last book was checked out, the orgy started. The basis for an entire subgenre of pornographic scenarios.
There was no doorman or velvet rope, just a kid with a cashbox taking ten dollars from each person. Eighty people, give or take, politely waited for the concert to start. Plenty of room to move around. Christian bands usually played for free in churches, so only hardcore fans bought tickets. It shouldn’t be hard to get close to the band. The girls who, with that dreamy look in their eyes, clutched pictures of the band to have signed were more likely to want to pray with them.
“I should have brought a flask,” Gretchen said.
“When I snuck backstage at the Whitesnake Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Tour,” Stephanie said, “I had to get through three levels of security and give a hand job to a roadie. Even then, I only got a glance at the drummer. The drummer.”
“If we finish early, we can still check out the strip joint across the street from the hotel.”
“It’s called the Booby Trap.”
“Au contraire. The Booby Trap Colon A Gentleman’s Club. So you know it’s classy. It’s for gentlemen.”
The band took the stage. The three members were very young, very white, very fit, and very haircutted. The drum set, guitar, and keyboard on the stage were quickly revealed to be props. Canned music rose from a loudspeaker. The Young Lions’ dance choreography was wholesome-ish, a lot of swaying.
We’re the Young Lions, Robby, Todd, and Kevin.
Spitting the truth to you about the kingdom of heaven.
It ain’t about wanting, but doing, believing.
It might look tough, but them looks be deceiving.
We came to rock for God.
We came to roll for Jesus.
Loud enough, he hears us.
Bold enough, he sees us.
“They set up all that equipment,” Gretchen said, “and nobody’s going to play it?”
“I can’t tell if they’re lip-syncing or not,” Stephanie said.
“They plugged in the equipment
and everything.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Stephanie said.
Gretchen turned to Stephanie. “If you’re having second thoughts, I can meet you back at the hotel.”
Stephanie laughed and leaned in to whisper to Gretchen. “I meant the music. The blackmail, no problem, but I can’t listen to another second of this shit.”
While the band played, Gretchen and Stephanie walked three blocks to the nearest Piggly Wiggly to buy some beer, only to be informed that they were in a dry county. The cashier had to explain the concept of a dry county to Gretchen three times. She couldn’t get her head around grown-up adults not being allowed to buy alcohol. It made no sense to her. They were still in the United States of America.
They walked back to the American Legion parking lot, beerless and disappointed, just as the concert was getting out. A thirty-minute set was apparently all the Young Lions had in them. Stephanie and Gretchen approached the tour bus just as the three sweaty “musicians” jogged inside, high-fiving each other.
“It might take some work to tempt them into sin,” Stephanie said, undoing one more button on her blouse. “There’s a fifty-fifty chance they’re gay.”
The glasses they wore didn’t just accentuate the librarian look. They would record everything that happened. They turned on the cameras.
Gretchen knocked on the bus door. It opened. Gretchen and Stephanie walked up the steps. It was a nice travel coach, but it was hard to concentrate on its details with the three men standing completely nude inside.
Gretchen tried to figure out how they got their clothes off so fast. Tear-away clothes, maybe?
“Is that all of you?” Robby said.
“Just us,” Gretchen said.
“Great job, Todd. You messed it up again.”
“It’s not my fault,” Todd protested. “I said three like ten times. Three. I wasn’t going to let what happened in Tallahassee happen again. I only got to watch but still had to pay. Which wasn’t fair.”
“It’s only the two of you?” Robby said. “There ain’t another one of you parking the car or something?”
“Nope,” Gretchen said. “We’re it.”
“I’m going to assume Todd screwed up,” Robby said. “That doesn’t change the fact that we ordered three hookers and we got two. You’re old, and neither of you look Asian to me either. This is a problem.”
“We can roshambo for sloppies,” Todd said.
“Shut up, Todd,” Robby said. “Don’t make things worse.”
“Did you at least bring the molly?” Kevin asked. “If I’m going to have to watch the two of you bone until I can get jiggy, I at least want to be rolling.”
Gretchen turned to Stephanie. “I’m sorry. I really thought this would be a challenge.”
“Not your fault,” Stephanie said. “On paper, it looked like it would be.”
“What are you two whores talking about?” Robby said.
“Oh,” Stephanie said. “‘Whore’ is going to cost you.”
CHAPTER 23
Kurt hadn’t been back to Warm Springs since the move. He hadn’t had any plans to come back, but Louder was throwing a party for Pepe’s early release from the hoosegow. It would be just the three of them, but that was their kind of party. Skinripper hadn’t jammed in a while.
Kurt had expected to get choked up seeing his house again, but he didn’t shed a single tear. He also didn’t see his house again. The house was gone. It wasn’t there. The spot where it used to be had become a giant hole in the ground surrounded by a chain-link fence. He walked to the end of the block and read the street sign. Sure enough, he was on Custer Road in Warm Springs.
Brother Tobin Floom hadn’t just taken his family home but had for some inexplicable reason destroyed it, too.
Walking back, he saw Mr. Panowich, their mailman for the last ten years.
“That you, Kurt Ucker?” Mr. Panowich said. “No mail. No mailbox. No house.”
“When did this happen?”
“Not soon after your change of address,” he said. “Strangest thing. It didn’t happen in a day or a week. It got took apart slow. Maybe they were salvaging.”
“It was a good house.”
“It seemed it. Every day I came by, another piece was gone. You ever read The Langoliers by Stephen King?”
“Yeah,” Kurt said. “Good reference.”
“How’s life in Encinitas?”
“How did you—you’re the mailman.”
“Officially, a postal worker, but I’ve always preferred ‘mailman.’ Friendlier.”
“You ever feel lost, Mr. Panowich?”
“Naw. The route don’t change, and I got GPS.”
“Not for real, but in your head? In your life?”
“All the time, son. All the time. Anyone that tells you different is an idiot or a liar.”
Kurt’s phone rang. Mr. Panowich gave him a hard slap on the back and walked down the road. “Maybe that’s someone calling to get you unlost. Good luck and God bless.”
Kurt answered his phone. “Hey, Ax, what’s up?”
“Finally figured out your part in the plan. It’s got to be you.”
Kurt stared at the hole that held his childhood and his past. “Ain’t nothing here. I’m ready to help.”
“I need you and those friends of yours that you play music with. I got you a gig. The three of you need to drive your van to Louisiana. I figure three days if you stop to sleep and drive in shifts. By the time you get here, you need to be a credible Christian rock band ready to perform three or four songs.”
“I have reservations, but I don’t even know where to start,” Kurt said. “From the over-under on the van making it farther than the Arizona border, let alone across the country, to the assumption that my friends can just drop everything and hit the road for the flippant idea that Skinripper can easily transform itself into a Christian band.”
“Details,” Axel said. “Say you’ll do it, and we’ll figure it out.”
“The bar is low musically. I’ve heard enough Christian music to know what it sounds like. If I shoot for parody, I might come close.”
“See. Piece of cake. What about your pals?”
“Their names are Louder and Pepe. All I can do is ask.”
“If I do my part, you’ll be paid to play to a thousand people every night on tour with Brother Floom.”
“It’s like The Blues Brothers,” Kurt said. “We’re getting the band back together. We’re on a mission from God.”
Six hours later, the van was packed and the band formerly known as Skinripper (new name TBD) were heading west to Louisiana with Kurt behind the wheel. Louder had been immediately on board, like a wish had been granted. Pepe was a tougher nut to crack. No pushover, he took an entire three minutes to decide to violate the terms of his probation and leave the state.
“You should have seen Margo’s face when I quit,” Louder said. “I climbed on the counter and announced that I was the real Dairy Queen and they were all my Dairy Bitches. Then I threw my uniform in the fryer.”
“Epic,” Kurt said.
“Sometimes I wish I had a job, just so that I could quit,” Pepe said.
“Dream big, Pep,” Louder said.
“The band is your job now,” Kurt said. “We’re going to get paid to play music.”
“Does Christian rock really count as music?” Louder asked.
“The way we’re going to play it,” Kurt said.
“Wait,” Pepe said. “What about Christian music? I’m a Buddhist.”
Louder smacked her forehead. “How many times do we have to explain it? It’s one thing to smoke some pot, but you’re living in a cloud.”
“Clouds are cool. Clouds are fluffy and shaped like things. Don’t hate on clouds.”
“Do you even know what Buddhism is?” Louder asked.
“It’s the one with karma and tie-dye.”
“I stand corrected.”
Kurt hadn’t kept a secret from Lou
der since they were eight years old. She knew everything that Kurt knew about the plan and the heist and Brother Floom. They both agreed that the less Pepe knew, the better. He wouldn’t have moral reservations, didn’t need incentive, and would go along with them on damn near anything, but he would forget. Or he would end up putting what he did remember on his Myspace page, but that wouldn’t have been a complete disaster because that was the equivalent of shouting into an empty well.
“It’s what they call in the business ‘an artistic pivot,’” Kurt said. “If we keep doing the same thing, our fans are going to get bored.”
“We have fans?” Pepe asked.
“This represents an exciting change in our creative vision,” Louder said. “It was your idea, Pepe, remember?”
Kurt gave Louder a disappointed look. They had agreed to stop Obi-Wanning Pepe. It was too easy. Like blowing pot smoke in a dog’s face.
Pepe looked worried for a second, then tentatively said, “Yeah. Totally. Christian rock.”
“Great idea,” Kurt said.
“What’s the weed policy?” Pepe said. “Have we discussed the weed policy? I’m concerned about the weed policy.”
“There is no weed policy,” Kurt said. “It’s a Christian tour supporting an evangelical preacher and his sermons.”
“So everyone brings their own. Every-man-for-himself style. Got it.”
Kurt opened his mouth to say something, but Louder shook her head. “He’ll just ask again in ten minutes.”
“Ask what?” Pepe said. “Oh yeah. What’s the weed policy?”
Somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico, Kurt lost himself in the vanishing point at the end of the endless highway. He couldn’t understand why anyone would need peyote or any other psychotropic drug. All anyone needed to do was drive a few hours until they hypnotized themselves.
