What, RU a stalker now?
I’m not a stalker.
I’m not even Carly.
But you’re right, she is a really nice piece of ass.
WTF? This is Carlys phone, who RU?
I’m the one who DID nail her, you sackmeat.
She screams really pretty.
And she looks so much better with her
eyes open wide and still like they are now.
I’m going to report you to the fucking police.
Your sykotic.
I am psychotic. You know what else?
I can spell, too, you moron. Now I’ve
got your phone number and your address.
But you know about me and
that’s one too many people who do.
I’m diling the police.
Right now.
You’re next, asshole.
I’m coming.
_______________
Los Angeles, a few minutes later…
“Isn’t that one of the burner phones we bought last month?” Veris asked as Brody put the phone on the low table next to another smartphone.
“It is.”
“You got a text message on it? I though everyone would use your normal phone number. Who was it from?” Alex asked.
Brody smiled. “Indirectly, a really smart girl called Carly. She was getting rid of a creep and gave him this number. I just put some polish on the matter. Which reminds me.” He pulled the phone out again, broke open the back cover and pulled out the SIM card and cracked it in two. “We’ll have to get another one.”
“Clearly,” Veris said, sounding puzzled.
The front door chimed, making everyone look up.
“Alex is already here,” Taylor pointed out, rubbing the side of her stomach.
Alex gave a small smile. “I am not your only friend.”
“The only one with open visiting privileges,” Veris said. “The gate guys would stop anyone else.”
Brody got to his feet. “It’s band business,” he said and hoisted his cellphone – the real one. “I’ll get the door.”
“A new album?” Alex asked politely as Brody headed for the door.
“Not that I know about,” Veris said. “Although they’re overdue on their contract.”
“Still think your money is safe?” Taylor asked.
“More than ever,” Veris said. He nodded toward her stomach. “Munchkin there will make him even less inclined to tour.”
“Money?” Alex repeated curiously. “You have a bet going on…what?”
“How long Brody will last with the band. Veris said he’d not last ten years. He’s on year eight now. But I don’t think even Veris anticipated the band breaking as big as they did.”
Veris shrugged. “I thought they’d tour Europe for a few years, then drift apart through lack of success. It doesn’t matter, my bet still stands. Brody has a short attention span.”
“I heard that,” Brody said from the doorway. He moved back into the library, a young man behind him. “Alex, I don’t think you’ve met Andy before.”
Alex got to his feet and held out his hand. “Andy.”
Andy leaned forward and shook his hand. “Nice to meetcha,” he said.
“You know everyone else,” Brody added.
Andy pushed his long hair aside and gave everyone a smile.
“It’s so good to see you, Andy,” Taylor said, her voice warm.
His smile for Taylor was much warmer and he seemed to relax as he nodded at her. “Life still grand?” he asked.
She placed her hand on her rotund belly. “More than ever.”
He grinned.
“Andy works for the band,” Brody explained to Alex. “He helped us out a few months ago.”
“And a few years ago, too,” Taylor added.
“All at the same time,” Brody finished.
“Is that so?” Alex said, looking at Andy more closely. “I sense a story.”
Time and a Roadie
I’m not so good at writing things down, but I guess I gotta do it this time round. I heard Taylor say once that putting things down on paper helps you figure shit out. I wouldn’t know about that. I never did finish high school – well, not when I was a kid, but that’s a different thing and it comes after all this that I want to say, anyway. So books and paper and brainsweat and me, we weren’t tight.
My name is Andy. I suppose I should start with that. Last name doesn’t matter. Anyway, it’s not what it used to be so that’s all I’ll say. I was born in L.A. and sorta grew up there. Didn’t finish high school, like I said. Learnin’ wasn’t fun for me. But music now…music and I got along just fine.
I thought I might join a band and make lots of money and that would make up for high school, but it didn’t work out that way because I couldn’t play anything good enough. So, not smart, not musical and not much hope for anything else except minimum wage. Then my mom kicked me out on account that her boyfriend didn’t like me drinkin’ his milk. I found a place in Brentwood that some friends from high school shared and for a while things just went along. They might have done that for a good while longer, too.
But then I met Taylor. Taylor Yates she was then and I always figured she was a professor because she was at the university, but I found out later that isn’t the way it worked with professors. What I did know then and it hasn’t changed since is that she is super smart. A real brainiac. She was my neighbor and she got into some sort of trouble that I never really did figure out properly. But the trouble got me involved. There’s a few reasons I won’t say what happened exactly, but it was a very uncool time. Then, when it was over, Taylor was….
Look, this whole story is weird. There’s a lot of stuff you’re just going to have to trust that I’m not trying to yank your chain over, okay? And this is the first weird bit. Taylor ended up marrying two guys at once. One was Brody Gallagher. Yeah, that Brody Gallagher. Everyone’s heard of him, even if they don’t know much about his band. He’s the lead singer and rhythm guitar for Nocturnal Rain. They’re a death metal band. Not everyone is into death metal, but dudes that like metal really like Nocturnal Rain. I was into the band in a big way. Still am, but in a totally different way now.
Anyway, Taylor married Brody…and she also married a man called Veris Gerhardsson. I had to get her to write the name down so I got it right. Veris is another super brainy professor doctor—a real medical doctor and a professor. I didn’t get to know him at first, because he wasn’t in the band. I thought he would be snotty, but it ended up he wasn’t.
But he is a big fucking guy, I mean, physically. He moves in that way that boxers and fighters do—light on their feet and cat-quick. So I was kinda careful around him. Still am, because he watches when you’re in the room. Not just me. He watches everyone. Brody does, too, but he does it in a way that makes you think he’s writing you into a song or something—just that curious look that says he’s taking notes. Veris makes you think he’s picking out the best weapon from his collection to beat you up with if you make a wrong move.
Turns out, I wasn’t wrong about either of them. Not on that score. But I’m trying to explain all that, so hang in there.
So Taylor married Brody and Veris, which I thought was fucking funny, because I was supposed to be the drop-out rebellious screw-you kind. Turns out Ms. Almost Professor cared less about what other people think of her than I did. It takes a real set of balls to marry two guys right out in the open like that.
But maybe that’s why the papers and the TV and the Internet barely took any notice. She stuck her nose in the air and minded her own business.
If it sounds like I like Taylor, you’re not wrong. I do like her. A lot. She’s seriously cool and she never makes me feel stupid, which some people do just by dropping their chin and looking me up and down. You know, that “what are you?” look.
Things turned out okay for me, too, because when Taylor and Brody and Veris got together, I scored a job with the band.
I started off as the lowest of the low grunts. I hauled equipment and speakers (and fuck, they are heavy!) and an amazing mountain of shit that has to move around with the band in order for them to put on a gig to Brody’s satisfaction.
That’s something I found out real fast. The band has four members—Brody, Chris Gatreau, the French guy, on drums, Divine Al on bass and Midas (and that’s all his name, which is a pretty odd name for a purebred Thai guy) on lead guitar. It’s a band which means everyone gets an equal vote, but Brody pretty much controls everything that happens, because he’s the pickiest about how they look, how they sound, how fans see them and all that stuff. The others have opinions, but Brody will still be brushing up some song long after any of the others call it done. It seems to work okay that way. I think the other three know in their gut that if Brody wasn’t pushing ‘em, they’d still be touring Europe and playing in bars, so he gets away with it.
When I first started, no one would let me touch the instruments. They were too fucking expensive, is what I thought, and they are. But after a few weeks, Loren London, the head roadie, told me to get my fucking ass over to help with the guitars, so I figured I’d been promoted. Then I found out why not just anybody gets to touch them. They’re delicate. Expensive instruments are more sensitive than anything. You look at a guitar wrong, it goes out of tune. Shake it up, too much heat, too much cold, too much moisture, wrong lining in the carry case. It’s like taking care of a baby. Not that I would know about babies, but the band members fuss over their shit like I see mothers do, so I figure it’s the same.
About six months after I got to take care of the delicate stuff, the band geared up to tour Europe for the release of a new album (the Way Past Midnight album, if you’re taking notes) and Loren told me to pack a bag and bring my passport. That’s when I knew I’d been promoted, because most of the roadies they used in the States got left behind and they hired casual grunts when they got to Europe. They only took with ‘em the ones they thought was useful. So that told me I was doin’ okay. I never told anyone until now, right here, how fucking terrified I was about the tour. I’d never been outside California until I stepped on that plane. Shit, I’d never even been on a plane before and there I was on a jumbo. Too fucking unreal.
But it wasn’t anything close to a vacation, that tour, even though Taylor and Veris came along, too, and so did the other guys’ girlfriends and Midas’ boyfriend, too. It was sheer fucking hard work, from mid-afternoon ‘til way in the small hours of the next morning, when we had to break down the set after the concert. Even the band members started to look exhausted after a few weeks of it.
The only time we got any sort of a break to catch up on sleep or maybe take a photo or two of the towns we were in was when we stopped over for two or more dates at one location. Rome was one of them. And Rome is fucking amazing, too. Buildings and fountains and roads that are thousands and thousands of years old. Everyone there sits on it, leans against it, rides on it, like it’s no big deal. I got to see the forum. The actual, real forum, man. People wearing togas and sandals used to walk around there just like I did. I got a photo of it and all.
Rome was where it sort of began. We did three dates in Rome and Loren told everyone to get lots of rest because after Italy we were swinging into Austria and Germany and Switzerland, and those countries just love Nocturnal Rain. That’s where they first started to get really big, even before the States knew who the fuck they were. So as a way of saying thank you, the band were going to do a massive number of gigs, in a lot of places, so that everyone would get to see them. Lots of little pubs, some of them places they used to work before they got famous. Which I think was really cool of them, but a gig is a gig to me. We still have to set up and break down, even if there were only a hundred people there to see them.
Although that didn’t happen, as it turned out. The smallest little tavern on the tour we was expecting just that. One hundred people. Brody was talking about bringing it down for a number or two, just sit around and jam for the crowd, but I think everyone forgot just how big Nocturnal Rain is in Germany. The local townsfolk ended up rigging up a stage at the end of the soccer field next to the pub. I think everyone for three hundred miles was there that night. That was one of the best nights because Elahah Samara got a solo…but shit, I’m getting ahead of myself.
I have to tell you about Rome first. I’ve thought about it a lot, you see. While most of this story went down in Berlin, I’m pretty sure it happened the way it did because of what happened in Rome.
I told you that Veris is a doctor and all, a real doctor, as well as all the fancy degrees. While we were on the tour, he did any medical stuff for the crew and the band that they needed. He had a section of the second coach just for his gear and a table and all.
But he didn’t wear stuffy suits or look down on the long-hairs. He wore leather pants most of the time and shirts that had no sleeves, which made his big arms show up, which was how I figured out he was muscle-big, not fat-big. That’s why he’s so light on his feet. He has scars on his arms, too. I think that sometime, somewhere, he lived a completely different life than the one he’s got now. But that describes just about everyone in the crew and the band, including me. So no one gets curious about shit that says a dude wasn’t always who they are now. It’s sort of understood by everyone that lots of questions cause trouble.
Except Donald Herber didn’t seem to get that at all. It never occurred to me that anyone could be dumber than me, even with more schooling than I got, but after Rome I finally tumbled to the fact that Donald Herber really was that stupid.
He didn’t let anyone call him Don. It had to be Donald, which always makes me think of Donald Duck. I guess it made everyone else think that, too, because his nickname was Quack and you’d better believe that was only used behind his back.
Anyway, on the first night in Rome, Donald ripped his arm open on a speaker corner, bad enough to need stitches. It happens and that’s another reason we had our own in-house doctor. But the band and their WAGs (wives and girlfriends) had already cut out, back to their hotel for the night. It was past one in the morning and there wasn’t even any groupies left out the front.
Loren swore a blue streak, because we were already behind on the setup for the next night and everyone wanted to be in bed and asleep an hour ago. But he got a taxi whistled up and someone to go with Donald and hold the towel over his arm so he didn’t bleed all over the taxi. They took him directly to the hotel where the band was staying, to wake up Veris and get him to stitch Donald up. That all went smooth and fine. Donald got to sleep the whole next day like all of us and Loren told him he could have the next night off, too.
So Donald showed up for work around four on the third night, with his tee shirt sleeves rolled up like they used to do in the eighties and the bandage around his upper arm showing up very white every time he moved his arm.
We all knew he was milking the wound for all it was worth and we all knew that was Donald’s way. I think they brought him along because he could tune a guitar by ear, in thirty seconds. He could tell if a note was even a little bit off just by one strum of the strings. It’s fucking unfair how some assholes have a gift like that and don’t do a fucking thing with it. Donald was more concerned about squeezing whatever he could out of life and he was going to use the gash in his arm for maximum gain. But it had been a nasty wound and his face had been whiter than beach sand, so I let him be and worked around his slow speed and lack of effort.
Loren had a surprise bonus for the crew that night. He ordered in a real Italian meal from a restaurant nearby. Not just pizza and beer, even though that is Italian—the pizza is, I mean. But real eye-tie stuff. And man, that pasta was so friggin’ good, I’d still be eating it if it was in front of me. Even the meat and the vegies. Olives—never thought I’d like olives, but that salty taste was just great with the sticks of cheese. And bread like you’ve never tasted before. The local grunts in the crew all dipped their bread in pots of oi
l and ate it, so I tried that, too. It was funny-tasting, but I got to like it a lot.
We stopped to eat around five-thirty, which was when the back-up players arrived for the sound-check before heading back-stage to get dressed and made-up. Elahah climbed up the temporary steps onto the stage and picked up Brody’s guitar from the stand next to the center mic and I kinda forgot all about the pasta.
Elahah was…well, she’s like everyone else in the crew and the band. Really different from run-of-the-mill people everywhere else in the world. Up to that point I don’t think I’d said more than a dozen words to her the whole tour, but I’d managed to find out a lot about her just by keeping my ears pinned back, because I think every guy in the crew had visions of scoring with her, one way or another. I’d heard them all boasting about how they were going to chat her up and even cruder stuff than that…you know what guys are like when it’s just guys and chicks are the conversation. There’s always a shitload of boasting, but no one really believes more than half of what is said.
I kept my mouth shut all those times, not because I can’t boast just like the next guy, but because what I would have said would have been the truth. So I didn’t say it.
But I got to watch her walk across the stage and settle the guitar over her shoulder and let my breath out. Elahah was Persian. That’s what she called herself, although I guess her passport would say she was Iranian, if it wasn’t fake. But like I said, everyone in the crew had a story they’re not telling. That was part of hers. Because she was Persian, she had thick, incredibly long hair that was pitch black. Not just black, but so black it shone blue in the lights. She didn’t color it. That was just the color it was. She had skin that was brown like chocolate milk and just as smooth, and the biggest black eyes. Even without all the heavy black stage makeup she used, her eyes were the biggest thing about her face. It was hard to look away.
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