by Julia Kent
“Bad example. Bella eventually became a vampire.”
“Yeah, but it took thousands of pages to get there. I’m on book two of my series and just want to get it right.”
Her face split with a huge grin. “Oh, you’re getting it right. Don’t worry.”
Bzzzz.
I looked at my phone. “Oh!” I gasped. “This could be about the Las Vegas gig.” I ran out into the hallway and took the call while Amy shouted after me, asking questions.
And by the time I was done talking with the booking agent, it was a done deal.
We were going to Vegas. Suddenly my werewolf emergency wasn’t so important after all.
JOE
“Coconut oil with a little almond lotion is perfect for your problem,” Mom nattered on as I sat at the breakfast counter at home, waiting for my laundry to finish. I examined my finger pads. Cracked, callused, and bleeding.
Pride filled me. Aside from the blood, this was an achievement. You don’t play bass for thousands of hours a year and not end up with pain. Pain is a sign you’re doing it right. It’s a mark of mastery. Of accomplishment.
Pain makes us better.
“Thanks,” I muttered, realizing Mom was staring at me, expecting an answer.
“It’s also a fabulous organic lubricant.”
I didn’t hear that.
“But only for postmenopausal women, Joey. Don’t use it with Darla and condoms. It breaks the latex. You do use condoms, yes?” She said this in a completely serious voice, as if we were back in sex ed and she was teaching us how to put condoms on bananas, or explaining the clinical use of a dental dam by demonstrating on a teddy bear.
“Uh...”
“And Trevor does as well, I assume? The last thing you need right now is a baby.”
Bzzzz.
Saved by my phone. Darla. Were her ears burning?
“Hey,” I said into the phone.
A dying Godzilla answered me, high-pitched screeching in the background drowning out whatever words she was trying to say.
Her tone meant this was good. Either we got the gig in Las Vegas or her mother won a sweepstakes contest where the prize was tickets to the new Fifty Shades movie premiere.
Knowing Darla, this could go either way.
“VEGAS! WE GOT IT!” I finally picked out. Mom’s neck did a one-eighty as she swiveled at the words, eyes narrowing, ear turning toward me with interest. Pretty sure Darla was so loud, the neighbors heard it.
“You got the gig?” Mom asked with a smile that came so close to reaching her eyes. So close.
But not quite.
I pulled the phone away from my ear to preserve what was left of my eardrum. “Pretty sure.”
“We got it, Joe! Highest-paying gig ever! Free room at a swanky resort on the Strip!” Darla’s rushed words felt like a firehose, but they made me smile. The smile made me warm. The sense of accomplishment made me flex my fingers, then ball them into a fist, punching the air with triumph.
“Glad to see you’re at least getting concerts to justify this year’s leave of absence from law school,” Mom cracked.
Pain makes us better.
Pains in the ass, however, make life suck.
“Who’s that?” Darla asked, huffing like she’d just sprinted up Mount Monadnock.
“My mom. She says congratulations,” I said in an arch tone, looking right at Mom.
“When we do well enough to get Joanne Ross to pay us a compliment, either she’s drunk or we’re dead and hallucinating,” Darla shouted into the phone.
Loud enough for Mom to hear.
“I’m not drunk!” Mom shouted.
“And I ain’t dead!” Darla screamed back.
“I wish I were hallucinating,” I said, walking away from Mom. I’d need peyote to get through the next hour here, until my laundry was done.
“Fuck your mom.”
“No, I won’t, and thanks for that image. I hope you have brain bleach at home. Or, at least, you’ll give me a hummer to drive away my pain now.”
“Ha ha.”
“I never joke about hummers.”
“You know what I mean, Joe. I’m so happy I could burst. Vegas! We’re going to Vegas! We get to see Donny and Marie, and Wayne Newton, and – ”
“Wait. What?” I didn’t hear that.
“You know! Debbie Reynolds, and – ”
“She’s dead.”
“And all them Elvis impersonators.”
Pain makes us better. Pain makes us better. Pain makes us –
“But most of all, I want to see if it’s true that women walk down the Strip without shirts on.”
“Are you planning to... try that?” I’m simultaneously aroused and outraged. My semi-boner wasn’t sure which way to go.
“What? No. I just heard so much cool stuff about Vegas, and now we’re getting paid to be there. The band is being paid to open at a concert at a resort on the Vegas Strip. I cannot wait to call Mama and tell her I finally made it!”
“You... made what?”
“Made it! Once your band plays Vegas, you did it! It’s like getting a gig at Branson, only better.”
“Branson. You mean Branson, Missouri? Where the country music people play?” Darla’s cultural measure of success was radically different from mine, and on a different planet from my mother’s.
“Right. Only Random Acts of Crazy is a rock band, so that don’t work.”
I blinked. It almost hurt trying to disentangle this. “You’re saying that your mom and people back home will consider the band – and you, by extension – successful because we’re performing in Vegas?”
“Of course!”
“But we played LA. Hollywood. Didn’t that count?”
“Sure. But not in a way that makes people back home get it, Joe. Vegas is a big old flashing neon light of success. It’s a shortcut. Like saying, ‘I got into Harvard.’ People know exactly how to measure success in their minds when they hear it.”
“People in Ohio, you mean. In your tiny little town in Ohio.” A memory of a three-legged kitten and a guinea hen roaming aimlessly on the grounds of Darla’s trailer park flashed through my mind, driving out the less savory image of my mother.
“What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying. I’m directly saying. Vegas isn’t impressive for everyone.”
“Shut your mouth! Of course it is!” she protested.
“Vegas is okay. Decent poker. Good food. Lots of fun parties if you can get in.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Plenty of times. Cheap college fun.”
Stunned silence answered me. I closed my eyes and ground my teeth. Shit. I had done it again.
“I just harshed your mellow, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. You’ve never been to Vegas.”
“I told you that.”
“I remember. And… you’re excited to go.”
“You’re not?”
Eh.
“Of course I am!” I lied, forcing myself to smile so my voice sounded cheery.
“Jesus, Joe, you sound like someone faking an orgasm.”
“What does someone faking an orgasm sound like?”
“I don’t know, Joe. Think back to the first woman you ever slept with. Remember what she sounded like? There's your answer.”
“Hey! That’s not a funny joke.”
“Who said it was a joke?”
“Darla!”
She snorted. “Puh-leese. Ask any woman you know whether they orgasmed the first time they had sex.”
“I’ll bet all the women in the romance novels you read and write do.”
“Because it’s fantasy, Joe. Women’s fantasy.”
“How did we get from Vegas to orgasms?”
“We aren’t talking about orgasms. We’re talking about a lack of orgasms.”
“Speaking of lack of orgasms, it’s been three days since we’ve had sex.”
“And?”
Stunned silence.
From me.
“Do I really need to explain?”
“Since you overexplain everything else, sure.”
“I do not.”
“Joe, you didn’t just invent mansplaining. You wrote the operating manual and designed the book cover.”
“It’s not mansplaining to say I want to get laid. With you and Trevor.”
“No. That’s called begging.”
“You’re pushing every button, aren’t you?”
“I landed the band its biggest gig and all I get from you is some lame-ass attitude about Vegas. And a nasty crack from your mother.”
She had a point.
“Mom says it’s a good thing we got a big gig to justify my year off law school.”
“WHAT?”
“I know. I chewed her out. I don’t need to justify anything to her.”
“That’s not why I’m choking in surprise. I can’t believe she said anything good about the band.”
“I wouldn’t classify that as ‘good.’”
“I take what I can get, Joe.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
Silence was her response. Darla’s not the silent type. This was not good.
She let out a long, aggravated sigh. “You’ve got a point.”
“I have lots of points. All of them are good and valid.”
“One of them is soft and spurts pearl necklaces on command.”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed, damn it. Darla could take me from near my boiling point to bubbling with a chuckle, crossing all my circuits, making what I’d worked so hard to keep neat and orderly on the inside a jumbled mess.
“What’s so funny, Joey?” Mom asked, perplexed and smiling half way as she walked into the laundry room where I’d wandered, grabbing a small stack of folded washcloths I knew she didn’t need. Nosy.
“We’re talking about how Joe likes to give me pearl necklaces!” Darla screamed through the phone.
“I hope you’re buying them from reputable jewelers...” Mom’s voice slowed to a halt as she watched me try not to laugh. “Oh, Joey. Don’t be so vulgar!”
“Says the woman who tells her son all about her hymen surgery. You’ve had more work done on your labia than Joan Rivers had done on her face!” Darla shouted.
Mom fumed at me. I shrugged.
“Control your girlfriend!”
“As if,” Darla called back.
I pointed to the phone. “Yeah. That.”
But I ended the call as Mom started shouting at my iPhone, because really – why not?
We were going to Vegas.
TREVOR
“I can’t go.” Seconds ticked by as I waited for Darla to resume breathing, pressing the phone to my ear, my neck starting to ache. Using my phone for an actual call felt really weird.
“WHAT?” she screeched, the sound stronger than it should have been from my phone speaker.
I looked at my brother Rick, who was playing some piece of music from the video game Mario Cart, except in a minor key, so it sounded like the soundtrack to a serial killer movie. I was visiting my parents and Rick, working on spending more time with them. Yeah, it’s corny, but a home-cooked meal on a night when Darla said she had to work was too good to pass up.
Plus, I’d just gone to the dentist. When your mouth is half numb and you’ve spent an hour being rotorooted for a filling, the comfort of home makes a difference.
“Mom and Dad are on a cruise that week. I promised I’d fill in for them with Rick.” My older brother lived in a group home for men with autism. Mom and Dad needed a break from spending most weekends with him, plus Dad mentioned an anniversary cruise, so I stepped up.
Proudly.
“Fill in? Rick lives in a group home. He’s well cared for, Trevor. You don’t need to – ”
“Someone needs to be local in case there’s a problem.” Rick stopped playing piano and abruptly stood, looking at the clock.
Three p.m. on the dot. Time for his two string cheese packets and ten baby carrots. Rick lived a life of precision these days, on a rigid schedule he’d designed with his aides. Let him run on his routine and he was easy to be with.
I liked easy.
And music made being with him easier.
“Can’t a friend do that? Or a doctor?”
“You know how hard it is, Darla.” It was killing me to have this conversation. Vegas – opening for a huge act. An act that played Times Square last year on New Year’s Eve. If we did this Vegas gig, we could be chosen for a television ball-dropping gig.
And speaking of dropped balls, mine felt like they were so low, the heat of the earth’s center was roasting them like chestnuts.
“Same exact week?” she asked, her voice begging me to tell her it wasn’t.
I double checked my calendar. “Yep.”
“AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!” Darla shouted. Letting her vent for a while would be best. This conversation sucked, but what sucked more was the fact that she was our business manager. And that’s all she did. Not that she sucked at being our manager – oh, no.
Six months ago, she left her job at Good Things Come in Threes, the threesome dating agency her aunt’s friend, Laura, had started. Darla wanted more freedom to manage us.
Now I was the barrier to a big gig. Being an adult has turned out to be harder than I expected. You’re ambitious. You do all the hard work to reach a goal. You come so close you can feel it brush against the whorls of your fingertips.
Then one little conflict, one clash of values, and poof! – all the hard work means nothing.
And all your friends hate you.
Adulthood.
“Trevor, you have to go. It’s a package deal. The whole band or no booking. I – we – need you.”
“Can’t Frown fill in for me?” Frown was our substitute bass player. He’d been Joe’s replacement for our L.A. gig when Joe had hurt both wrists in an unfortunate sex act that had gone wrong.
Joe was fully recovered now, and thank God, because I had to help masturbate that man for nearly six weeks and let me tell you, it opened my eyes to how much men jerk off. Life seems to be what they do in between choking their chickens, you know? Good grief. How do they produce that much protein and not waste away?
“Frown can’t sing,” I said in response to Trevor’s suggestion, my poor forearm starting to ache with the memory of Joe’s protracted double-wrist recovery.
“He sang with Maggie in L.A.”
“Soft ballad? Sure. Frown’s great. But ninety percent of Random Acts of Crazy’s repertoire doesn’t fit his voice. Plus, he hasn’t had the practice. No way. It’s you the audience wants. You know that. How much pussy gets thrown at you every time the band performs?”
“I –”
“That was rhetorical. I don’t wanna know. Actually, I do know. I peel ‘em off you. They all hate me, but they’re scared of me, too.”
“Wonder why.” So am I, sometimes, I don’t add. If we were talking about any topic other than my failing the band, I’d say it.
She sighed. “It was just one set of extensions I ripped out of that groupie’s head. Just one. Quit making it out like I’m some crazy jealous girlfriend.”
“You are crazy.”
“Hmph.”
“Look, what if you call the venue and ask if we can change the week?”
“Say what?”
“Call the booking manager. See if the following week is free, or the week before. Any week but the one we’ve got.”
“Let me get this straight. You expect me to call one of the biggest resorts on the Las Vegas Strip and ask them to move our performance dates because you have a personal conflict?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Excuse me, Trevor, but when did you grow a fucking crown? Jesus. You think I can call a place like that and make a request to switch? This ain’t like when I worked at the gas station in Peters and needed to swap a Thursday night for a Sunday morning with Jane so
she could go to a Jaycees’ haunted house with her niece’s Girl Scout troop.”
“What’s a Jaycee?”
“Oh, God,” she groaned. “That is so not the point.”
I guessed I’d have to google Jaycees. “Then what is the point?”
“You have this whole stupidass view of the world, Trevor. Like it’s all positive. Like everything will just work out.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It’s unrealistic as fuck.”
“Reality isn’t always so great.”
“But it’s what we actually have to live with.”
“You always look at worst-case scenarios.”
“I do not! That’s Amy, not me.”
She had me there. Before I could speak, she added:
“I, on the other hand, take what I can get. At least that’s what Joe says. He says I settle for less than I deserve.”
I wasn’t opening my mouth. Silence was better than walking into a verbal trap.
“You think that’s true?” she asked. Damn. She expected an actual answer.
“I think you have a scarcity mentality,” I said.
“A what?”
“Scarcity mentality. You always assume life won’t work out the way you hope.”
“Because it damn well hasn’t!”
“And yet,” I said slowly, the truth of it dawning on me, “you took the risk and moved out here to Massachusetts to be with us.”
“I can explain that. Had nothing to do with scarcity mentality.”
“Then what?”
“I was stupid.”
“Huh?”
“Stupid, Trevor. I was stupid, throwing away my life in Ohio and picking up to move out here on a whim. It happens to the best of us. I had a… moment.”
“A moment?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you stayed.”
“I like the coffee here.”
I grinned. “The coffee is the only reason you stayed?”
“Mostly. And Josie. She needed me.”
“She has Alex now.”
“But only ’cause of me,” Darla crowed.
“You’re the reason she’s with her husband?”
“Yes.”
I cleared my throat in a sound meant to encourage her.
“What’s wrong? You got a dick in your mouth?”
“Why would I have a dick in my mouth, Darla?”
