by Ashley Grace
Joey saw Bernstein coming and dipped his head to her flesh, pressing one nostril closed with his finger, snorting up the line. He followed the snort with a long lick across the powder residue that had stuck to her skin, and the reporter let out a breathless sort of giggle that I heard above the blaring music.
For a moment that giggle seemed to ring in my ears, high and feminine and seductive. I thought of the groupies Joey and I had shared—the lovely sounds he'd coaxed out of them with that long, eager tongue—and I felt just the faintest twinge of desire. If anything, that twinge made me realize how futile my earlier promise to Joey had been. The drugs I was on were pretty effective at dulling the pain, but they seemed to dull every other feeling too, including lust. In the year since Lucy died, I hadn't even had a memorable hard-on.
In the end, Bernstein had to physically grab Joey and Micah and drag them away from the half-naked reporter. A glance and a tilted head was enough to get Sergio moving, and I followed along. The plan was to be at the venue by nine thirty, and up on the stage an hour after that. I assumed that Sara would meet us there.
Bernstein brought us out through the front of the hotel, where a crowd of reporters and fans had gathered to gawk and snap pictures. He must have been feeling a bit more confident about the band's stability—we'd been whisked through hotel backdoors for the last few shows, as if Bernstein had feared that the flash-and-scream barrage would spook us. As it was, the crowd didn't do much to me—just a blur of faces and voices and panicked, desperate gestures. I hardly paid it any attention. I was busy looking for Sara.
Despite the way the last few shows had gone, part of me—a small, delicate part, buried beneath a mountain of indifference—hoped she'd be there, waiting for us, getting in the limo with us to ride to the show. But when I saw the town car pulled up behind the limo—its lights on bright, its window blacked out—I knew my hopes were futile. I wouldn't be seeing her until we were all on stage together.
Chapter 5
Anne
"What the hell was that about?" I said as we pushed through the crowd, heading for the alley. "Are you trying to hook up with everybody who works at this club, or something?"
"Not everybody," Becca said. "But I wouldn't mind giving Leroy a try. Tell me he isn't hot, in a sexual chocolate slash teddy bear kind of way."
"Are you serious? He's got to be twenty years older than you! Maybe even thirty!"
"Exactly. Older dudes are hot." She looked back at me. Her blush had faded, but a little bit of pink still warmed her cheeks. Somehow, that made her look younger. "And tell me you never fantasized about having sex with a black guy."
"Well, even if I had, do you really think it's a good idea to flirt with Ronnie's co-worker just moments before Ronnie gets us into the club? Are you trying to create drama, or something?"
We turned the corner into the relatively empty alley, and Becca glanced back at me again. By this time, her blush had mostly disappeared.
"Ronnie's just I guy I'm fucking," she said. "We're not boyfriend girlfriend, or anything. It's a no strings situation."
"Are you sure that's how Ronnie sees it? Personally, after what Leroy just said, I'm guessing it's not."
"Whatever, mom," Becca said, putting an edge into her words. "Listen, if I feel like I need guy-advice from my dorm-mate—who's never even had sex—I'll be sure to let you know."
I clenched my jaw and frowned. Being a virgin made me sort of an oddball in the dorms, and I'd been made to feel weird about it more than once, but I figured there wasn't much point in getting into it now. The door at the end of the alley was only a dozen yards away, and we walked the last few paces in loaded silence.
But just before we reached the door, I heard Becca speaking softly, as if she were talking to herself.
"Geez," she said, "let a guy lick your butt one time, and he starts thinking he's the one and only."
-
We made it to the alley door, and Becca rapped her knuckles against it once. Before she'd could knock a second time, the door opened, and a boyish-looking guy in a hoodie stuck his head out. His hair was short and blonde, his eyes blue and bright, and he wore a scrubby little goatee that barely covered the bottom of his chin. Somehow, the goatee just made him look younger, like a kid trying to dress up as an adult.
"Becca!" he said.
He caught hold of her hips and planted an eager kiss on her lips. Becca threw her arms around his neck, kissing him back. And then, like a second later, they were making out.
I cleared my throat. They didn't notice. I cleared my throat again, and they still didn't notice. The guy's hands slipped down to grab hold of Becca's ass, pulling her tight against him, and her fingers slipped into his short hair.
This was getting ridiculous.
"Becca!" I said.
She broke the kiss, looked back at me. "Yeah?"
"Um… are you going to introduce me?"
"Oh, yeah. Totally. Anne, this is Ronnie. Ronnie, this is Anne."
He glanced over at me, eyes bleary like he'd just been pulled out of a dream. Becca might have called him Ronnie the Dog, but he looked more like a puppy to me.
"Hi Anne," he said.
"Hi Ronnie," I said. "Nice to meet you." I gave him a little wave.
"I'm super stoked you guys are here," he said. "Come on in."
Reluctantly, he let go of Becca's ass and stepped to the side, holding the door open for us. I followed Becca in.
We were in a dimly lit hallway. The floor looked heavily scuffed, long black marks marring the linoleum tiles.
"This is where the bands bring their equipment through, all their amps and instruments," Ronnie said as we walked down the hall. "And this is the green room," he pointed to a closed door off to the left, "where the bands can hang out before they play."
I felt my heartbeat spike in my chest, my palms starting to sweat.
"Are they in there now?" Becca said, freezing in her tracks. She sounded as breathless as I felt. "The Belletrists?"
"Not yet," Ronnie said. "Last I heard they were still at the hotel."
"Oh."
Ronnie seemed to notice her disappointment.
"But their roadies came by earlier today, to do the sound check," he said quickly. "And I got to hear some of the band's new stuff."
"What was it like?" Becca asked, her voice bright again.
"Very emo." His voice took on a conspiratorial tone. "I heard the singer had some kind of breakdown a year ago, and that's why they've been on hiatus. After hearing some of the new songs today, I believe it."
I thought of Trace, seeing him as he looked on the poster I had above my bed at the dorms: the only band member not looking at the camera, his heavily-lashed eyes turned down and away. His hair black, his skin pale except for where it was marked by those vivid tattoos. Dark and brooding, for sure—and that had been a poster from their second album, which was probably the most pop-oriented album they'd released.
"Yeah, I heard about it, too," Becca said, dropping her voice to a whisper. "None of the band or their managers would talk to the press about it, but Rolling Stone hinted at it a few times in the Industry News column. Something happened with an ex-girlfriend, something bad, and then Trace got locked up in a psych ward for weeks."
I'd heard a bit myself. Or, to put it more accurately, I'd read a bit. Every time I logged out of my email, the Yahoo page popped up with its click-bait 'news' stories. Whenever something about Trace LeBeau or the Belletrists came up, I couldn't help myself. I always clicked the link.
A lot of what I'd read had been pretty sensational, lots of rumors and innuendo. I remember one particularly breathless article about Trace supposedly taking up correspondence with Milton Joyce, a songwriter from the seventies who'd been dubbed the 'King of Gloom.’ Supposedly they were writing sonnets and sending them back and forth through the mail while Trace was in rehab. But when I’d scoured through the internet trying to find some of Trace’s poetry, I hadn’t found anything that seemed authentic.
Before I could follow my thoughts any further down that rabbit hole, Becca distracted me.
"Ronnie," she whispered. "Do you think we could take a look at the green room?"
Ronnie's brows came together in a frown.
"I dunno if that's a good idea," he said. "The Belletrists' manager has been all over us about every little detail. He's a pretty uptight dude. I don't think he'd appreciate having random fans pawing through the dressing room before the band even gets there."
Becca's face morphed into an exaggerated frown, her bottom lip sticking out like a little kid pouting.
"But Ronnie," she said, "we just want to take a quick look. We won't touch anything." And then her frown transformed into a mischievous smile, and she pressed up tight against his chest. "Just a peek, Ronnie. I promise I'll make it worth your while."
"Well, maybe. Just a little peek. Like, super quick." He looked down the length of the hall in both directions, and took a step toward the door. "Don't know why you guys want to see it, though. It's not like they've even been in there yet."
"But they're going to be," Becca said. "And I think it'd be exciting."
She paused, leaning in.
"Really, really exciting."
"All right," Ronnie said, his voice going a little higher in pitch. "Just a quick peek."
He put his hand on the doorknob and pulled the door open. Before he could stop her, Becca had slipped past him into the room. He followed after her, and I followed him.
Chapter 6
Trace
In the limo Micah twirled his switchblade, Sergio and Angel told each other jokes, and Joey sucked face with a little blonde girl that he'd grabbed out of the crowd in front of the hotel. I doubted she was old enough to legally drink, but that didn't keep her from stroking and clutching at the obvious bulge at the front of his jeans.
I had to give her points for enthusiasm, even if I knew her efforts were futile. Joey liked lots of titillation before the show, but he never went all the way until after we'd played. He said he thought a pre-show orgasm would take all the fire out of his drumming, and in the ten years we'd been playing together, I'd never seen him swayed from that belief.
Still, the little blonde was giving it her all.
The limo pulled around a corner, and suddenly we were surrounded by a screaming mob. They threw themselves at the doors and windows, trying to get in, trying to see inside. A girl with mascara running down her face like black tears pressed her hands flat against my window, the words "I love you Trace" written on her palms. Another pulled her shirt up, showing a tattoo of a bleeding heart wrapped in barbed wire—the image from the cover of our first album—nestled directly between her breasts.
The limo rocked and jolted from the force of the bodies pressing against it. I saw Angel's eyes go wide, and Sergio put a hand on his cousin's shoulder to steady him. Micah's switchblade started flipping faster, the handle slapping into his palm with each toss. Even Joey took notice, breaking loose from the blonde girl, pumping a clenched fist up into the air.
"Fucking rad, man!" he said. "Did you see that girl's tits?"
I nodded my head to let him know I had, but I couldn't find it in me to smile. Even the grim, jaw-clenched grin on Micah's face, and the nervous smile Sergio gave his cousin to reassure him, were beyond me.
A mob of people driven to a frenzy by the idea that the Belletrists were here. We hadn't played a real show in more than a year, hadn't released an album in nearly twice as long, and the people on the other side of the limo windows were still moved to hysterics just knowing we were there.
And all it made me feel was tired.
"I knew Frisco wouldn't let us down!" Joey said, his fist still raised, his other hand squeezing the blonde girl's ass. "This is a Belletriste town! They love us here!"
I looked at the swirling mob again, caught another glimpse of the black-teared wailer. Was this love? And if so, was love really as noble as I'd always thought it to be? As divine? As important?
All my life I'd taken love—or, better said, the longing for love—as my artistic muse. Suddenly I wasn't even sure it had more value than the chemically-induced, emotional deadness I'd been living in for nearly a year.
A group of cops waded into the crowd, roughly yanking people back from the limo, clearing the way. The girl with the tattoo between her boobs got tossed to the ground, and I felt a glimmer of emotional response to that, a subtle glow of disapproval which might have shown as rage if you looked at it under a microscope.
Not surprisingly, Joey's response wasn't nearly as tranquilized.
"Hey!" he screamed, twisting in his seat and smacking his hand against the inside of the window. "Don't fucking hurt her, you assholes! You dirty fucking pigs!"
A big, shave-headed black guy in a leather jacket appeared, placing a massive hand on the shoulder of the cop who'd tossed the tattooed girl. The cop jerked his shoulder away, but when he turned and looked up at the big guy his face blanched, and he scampered away. The big guy bent down, helping the girl to her feet.
With the way cleared, the limo pulled into an alleyway and drove toward the back. Through the rear window, I could see Sara's town car following us, and the cops forming a line to keep the crowd from entering the alley.
We got to the end of the alley, and someone pulled the limo door open from outside. It was Bernstein.
"This way, boys," he said, the six-pointed star swinging from the chain around his neck as he leaned into the limo. He reached in with a hairy-knuckled hand, a gold ring shining from each finger, to help us out. "It's not much of a club, but it does have a green room, and I've had them set it up for you."
"Thanks, Bernstein," Sergio said. "You're the man."
He slipped out of the limo, followed by his cousin Angel. I heard the sound of the crowd swell as they caught sight of him.
Micah went next, and then Joey with his girl. I crawled out last, glancing around, trying to get my bearings. It was a dirty, dark alley, and the roaring crowd at the far end served to heighten the desolate calm on this side, like being in a cellar while a tornado rips the house apart above you. I saw Joey standing there, his arm around the girl, his other hand in the air, egging the crowd on. And then Joey saw me and pointed me out, and the crowd got me in their sights, and they surged against the line of cops, yelling and screaming, filling the air with a monstrous roar.
Chapter 7
Anne
It wasn't a very big room—probably not much larger than the dorm room Becca and I shared, though it was a lot less cluttered. A couch and a pair of easy chairs were arranged around a low coffee table on the right, a mirror and makeup table were set up over on the left, and a tall cocktail table stood up against the far wall. Some snacks and drinks were on the cocktail table, including a bucket of ice with a champagne bottle in it, and a bowl of green olives.
The room was dead quiet, but from somewhere in the distance I thought I heard the sound of a crowd starting to cheer.
Becca strode across the room to the cocktail table, plucking an olive out of the bowl. She popped it into her mouth before Ronnie could stop her, and then turned to me with an excited look on her face.
"I'm eating one of the olives that the Belletrists are going to eat!" she said. A moment later her mouth twisted, and she wrinkled her nose. "Gah, it's bitter."
Ronnie caught up to her. "Those are special for the band," he said. "Spanish olives and dry champagne—the real kind, from France. Normally Club Hemlock doesn't supply anything for the bands but pretzels and cheap beer, but the Belletrists manager leaned on my boss pretty hard. It had to be this specific brand of olives and champagne, no cheap Napa Valley versions."
"You met the manager?" I asked. "What was he like?"
"He's a little round guy with more hair sticking out of his shirt collar than on his head. Wears a big gold chain around his neck. He seemed pretty nervous, but I guess there's a lot riding on this tour. I think his name was Bernstein. I didn't really meet him. He
came by earlier to scope things out, and he talked with my boss Geoff, made his requests, but I was restocking the bar."
"Bernstein," Becca said, popping another olive in her mouth. "Is that even a real name?"
The sound I’d heard before, of a crowd cheering, seemed to get a little louder.
Ronnie caught hold of her wrist. "Come on, Becca. Those are for the band, and you didn't even like the first one, anyway."
"These are Belletrist olives," Becca said. "I'll learn to like 'em."
She cast another glance around the room, taking it in.
"God, I can't believe that they're actually going to be here, in this very same room, any minute!" She turned toward Ronnie again, putting her arms around his neck and looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes. "Kind of makes me wet, to tell the truth."
His eyes popped wide open. "Are you serious?"
"Don't believe me?" She took hold of his wrist, guiding his hand toward the bottom of the front of her dress. She leaned in and kissed him, slipping his hand up between her legs.
This time I was sure I heard it: the roaring of a crowd. It sounded faint and distant, but I knew I wasn’t imagining it anymore. A whole bunch of people were going crazy and screaming at the top of their lungs about something.
I looked over at the door to the green room. It was coming from there, from the hallway, from the alley beyond it.
It was coming from the crowd outside.
"Do you guys hear that?" I said.
I turned back toward Becca and Ronnie. They were making out again, hot and heavy.
"Jesus, Becca!" I said, my face blazing with embarrassment. "Can't you keep it in your pants for even a minute?"
Becca broke the kiss. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her mouth open, little panting breaths slipping out between her lips. She had both of her hands gripping Ronnie's forearm, his hand stuffed down the front of her panties, his fingers moving. He dropped his mouth to kiss and suck the side of her neck, his other hand snaking around her lower back to pull her tighter against him. He looked totally wrapped up in the moment, as if he'd forgotten about me entirely.
