by Len Vlahos
“Ten!” came the muffled shout, from not only inside the club but from half the apartments in earshot.
“Nine!” I closed my eyes and tried to picture where I would be in twelve months.
“Eight!” Would I be standing outside some bar, waiting for another gig?
“Seven!” Would I be home from college for the Christmas break and watching the ball drop on TV with my parents?
“Six!” The door to the club slammed open, and a drunk girl came stumbling out, landing both hands on a car parked right in front of me.
“Five!” She hurled. Right on the car.
“Four!” I tried to go back to actualizing my future, but the damage was done and I was pulled out of the moment.
“Three!”
“Oh, shit!” the girl said. She looked around in a panic, like something was wrong. “You!”
“Two!” She took a step forward and grabbed me by the collar.
“Prepare to be kissed,” she slurred in my face.
“One!” And the girl planted a big, sloppy, vomit-ridden kiss on me. What is it about girls and me and throw-up? She took a step back and looked at me for the first time. “Whoa,” she said. “I must be more drunk than I thought.”
There were two obvious choices: One, I could just push the girl away and go back inside, thoroughly disgusted. Or, two, I could make out with her.
I did the only thing I was wired to do. Option three, try to be the nice guy.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Can I help you?”
She mumbled the words New Year’s and staggered back to the party raging inside the club.
RICHIE MCGILL
When the clock struck midnight, I was hanging with this crowd of fans and we all clanked glasses, high-fived, and hugged. It was pretty cool. Then, out of nowhere, this drunk chick stumbled in from outside and planted a big nasty kiss on me. I say nasty because she tasted like puke. It was pretty gross.
“Happy New Year’s,” she muttered, and stumbled away. I found out only later that it was probably the same girl who’d kissed Harry outside. I like to freak him out by telling him that when she kissed me right after kissing him, it was like me and him kissing. The dude is such a prude. Cracks me up every time.
HARBINGER JONES
When I went back inside a few minutes after midnight—my impromptu date thankfully nowhere to be seen—I found Johnny sitting alone at a table near the front, nursing a beer. Richie was at the bar with a bunch of people, and Chey wasn’t anywhere in my line of sight.
“Happy New Year,” I said. Johnny just nodded in response.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Johnny answered, looking at his shoes. “I’m just so tired, Harry.”
I figured he meant tired of the ups and downs with Cheyenne, or maybe that the long night was too much strain on his leg. Whatever it was, he just seemed so sad.
After a minute, Johnny let out a big sigh and pushed himself up from the table. “Let’s go tune your guitar to the keyboard.”
And we did.
CHEYENNE BELLE
I don’t want to talk about the actual gig.
I don’t remember a lot. And what I do remember, I don’t want to talk about. The other guys can give you what you need on that one.
HARBINGER JONES
It was the worst gig we ever played, or ever would play, mostly because Chey was falling-down drunk. And by falling-down drunk, I mean that she couldn’t stand up.
When the band before us started breaking down equipment, we gathered by the side of the stage, ready to move our gear up quickly. Johnny was motionless, lost in his own thoughts. Richie was a ball of nervous energy, rat-a-tat-tatting his sticks against his thigh. I had my guitar slung over my back and my hat pulled low, trying, but failing, to look cool.
I figured Chey was in the bathroom and didn’t pay it much mind until we had all our equipment—including her bass and her amp—on the stage.
“Where is she?” I asked. Johnny was just about to answer, a look of resignation on his face, when Chey stumbled up the stairs on the side of the stage. I reached out and caught her before she nose-dived into Richie’s mounted toms.
When she looked up at me, her eyes were sparkling, but not the kind of sparkling that made me fall for her. Maybe glassy would be a better word. Her eyes were glassy. Or maybe swimming would be the best word. Her eyes were swimming.
“Are you high?” I asked.
“No,” Johnny offered from his seat on the cramped stage behind me. “She’s drunk.”
“Oh, shit,” I mumbled. “Can you play?” I talked to her like she was an imbecile, and that made Chey laugh.
“A courz Icahn play,” she slurred. She gained her footing, found her bass, and put it on. The weight of the instrument against her small frame was too much, and Chey fell backward onto her amp. She caught herself so she landed on her butt, and it looked more like she sat down roughly than anything else. She giggled.
“Johnny,” I asked, turning to him, “what do we do?”
He looked at me, looked at Cheyenne, and shook his head. “We play.”
Richie shrugged and played the opening drum fill to the first song on our set list: tonight, a cover of the Beatles’ “Birthday” with New Year substituted for birthday each time the word came up in the song. It was a short drum fill and ended with all of the instruments crashing in together. And that’s just what Cheyenne did. She crashed in.
She was late with the riff and was playing the wrong key. I tried to shout to her, but her eyes were closed and she was lost in the music, hearing, I guess, what her beer-soaked brain wanted her to hear.
Each song after that was worse than the one that came before.
At the end of the fifth song, Johnny said, “Thanks, and Happy New Year, everyone,” and walked off the stage.
“Pussy!” Cheyenne yelled after him, and she launched into “Girl in the Band.”
I had no idea what to do, and I don’t think Richie did, either. There were really only two choices. Follow Johnny off the stage, or stay and play.
We stayed and played with me singing lead. We got through two more songs, sort of, before it became clear that Cheyenne was done.
There was a smattering of polite applause, with a couple of “You guys suck” chants thrown in for good measure. Luckily, people didn’t need the Scar Boys to feel good that night. Or at least they did a pretty good job of pretending to feel good. I have a theory that everyone secretly hates New Year’s Eve as much as I do, but that no one will admit it. Mandated pleasure is an oxymoron.
We left the stage, and that was that. I was pretty sure it was the end of the Scar Boys.
RICHIE MCGILL
New Year’s Eve was brutal. I mean, fucking brutal.
Cheyenne was, like, ten sheets to the wind, Johnny was being a whiny bitch, and Harry was just Harry. Definitely the worst gig we ever had. I mean, Johnny walked offstage halfway through.
But you know what? I still would’ve rather been playing that God-awful gig than doing just about anything else. That’s how much I love this band.
HARBINGER JONES
It was two weeks before we all saw each other again.
I spent most of that time lying low and trying to put the finishing touches on my essay. The focus of the piece was the Scar Boys and what a life-changing experience that had been, but I didn’t want to end it on the down note of the New Year’s Eve gig. I was up to the part where Johnny lost his leg and didn’t know where to go next.
When the phone rang, I was lying on my bed reading and rereading what I’d written, figuring this must be what people call writer’s block. It was Jeff; he was summoning the entire band to a diner on the west side of New York City the following day. He was brief, he was matter-of-fact, and he hung up.
All thoughts of the essay went temporarily out of my head.
RICHIE MCGILL
I figured the band was toast, so I was surprised when Jeff called me. “Come to such
-and-such diner tomorrow,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why not?” he answered. “What have you got to lose?”
Dude had a point, so I went.
HARBINGER JONES
Richie, Johnny, and I drove downtown in silence, only the sound of the Replacements’ Let It Be keeping us company. I’d chosen that record on purpose. The title of the album came from the Beatles record of the same name, the latter an unintended chronicle of the demise of the greatest rock band of all time. Since I was pretty sure I was going to a funeral—not a wake; there’s too much laughing at wakes, and this was not a day for laughing—it seemed fitting. The choice of music was a pretty subtle inside joke that I think was lost on the other guys.
Honestly, I didn’t think Cheyenne would show up, but there she was, sitting in the booth with Jeff when we arrived. She looked awful. She was bundled in a winter coat, her hair was a rat’s nest, and the sunglasses on her face couldn’t hide the bags under her eyes or the sallow look of her cheeks. Johnny and I both slid in the booth next to Jeff, wanting, each for our own reasons, to put distance between us and Cheyenne, as if that hadn’t happened already.
Jeff stayed mostly quiet until after we ordered and our food had arrived. He was polite, making small talk, chitchat. Then, just as I was sinking my teeth into a French fry smothered in brown gravy, a Maryland delicacy that had followed me home from the road, he let loose.
“What the fuck were you little knuckleheads thinking?” Jeff had never talked to us like this before. He was always in sales mode, in teaching mode, in wise-mature-adult mode. Not today.
“Don’t look at us,” Johnny said. “Look at her.” He nodded his chin in Cheyenne’s direction. She didn’t respond in any way. She simply had a sip of her coffee and kept her head down.
“Oh, I know,” he continued. “Chey got drunk. Which was really stupid,” he added, turning to her. “She and I have discussed this at length, and I’m confident it won’t happen again. Right, Cheyenne?”
“Right,” she answered. Her voice was thin, weak.
“But maybe Cheyenne wouldn’t be getting drunk at gigs if you boys didn’t shit where you eat.”
“Huh?” Richie was sincerely confused.
“It means don’t diddle your fellow bandmates.”
“Hey, man, I’m not really sure what you mean by diddle, but I ain’t never—”
“Put a sock in it, drummer boy. You all know what I’m talking about. I have no idea who has relationships with who in this band, and I don’t want to know. What I do know is that all this behind-the-scenes shit is fucking everything up. So, from today forward, you’re no longer friends; you’re business partners. Understand?”
It took me a minute to process that.
“I’m sorry, Jeff, did you say you don’t want us to be friends?” I asked.
“That’s right.”
No one else jumped in, so I continued, “But aren’t our friendships what make the chemistry of the band work?”
He smiled. Like a shark. “No. They’re not. What makes the band work is the chemistry of the music.”
“I don’t know—” I started, but he cut me off.
“Cheyenne,” Jeff said, turning to her, “how close are you and Mr. Drummer Boy, over here?”
“Dude,” Richie said, “stop calling me that.”
Cheyenne thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know. Not that close, I guess.”
Jeff turned to Richie.
“What?” Richie asked, his hackles now up.
“Well, is she right?”
“I don’t know. We see each other all the time. She’s, like, one of my best friends.”
“Do the two of you ever hang out outside the band? Do you go to movies together or anything?”
“No,” Richie answered.
“Do you call each other on the phone to talk?”
“No.”
“Do you even have Cheyenne’s phone number?”
“No.” Richie hung his head.
“Buck up, Drummer Boy. This is a good thing. Let me ask one last question. How close are you and Cheyenne musically?”
Richie scrunched his face as he thought about this. “I’d say we’re married.” He flashed a grin at Cheyenne, and she grinned back. Johnny was sitting next to me, and I could feel the air around us shrivel.
“That’s right. You and she are musical soul mates. It’s a beautiful thing. But once the amps are off, you hardly know each other. That, kiddies, is what you will now strive for. It’s what you need to become. You are fellow musicians, and you are business partners. Once you learn how to do that, maybe, just maybe, you can go back to being friends. Everyone understand?”
And we did.
CHEYENNE BELLE
A couple of days before Jeff had dragged the whole band to New York City for lunch, he’d taken me out to a kind of fancy restaurant where Central Avenue crosses the border into Scarsdale. Well, fancier then I was used to anyway. It was a Red Lobster. Have you heard of these places? I actually got to eat lobster! That was a first for me. I thought it was gross but didn’t want to say anything. I wanted to be sophisticated.
“Look,” Jeff said after we’d ordered. “I don’t care if you drink. In fact, here.” He slid a glass of white wine from in front of his place setting to in front of mine. I looked at the glass and at Jeff like they weren’t real. “I only care that whatever you do offstage doesn’t hurt what’s happening onstage. Do you understand?”
I nodded. Jeff was twenty-eight-years old, and I took him very seriously.
“Good,” he said. “Moderation and control are important lessons to learn, Cheyenne.”
“Can I ask you something?” I was afraid to sip the wine—afraid that it might not be real, that it might be a trap—and wanted to distract myself.
“Sure, kid, shoot.”
“Why does any of this matter? Isn’t the band kind of, I don’t know, over?”
“What? No, no. Great bands go through this shit all the time.” I liked the way Jeff cursed, like swear words were just words. “Roger Waters and David Gilmour can’t be in the same room with each other.”
“But didn’t Pink Floyd break up?”
“Yeah, but they were together for years hating each other, and they made zillions.”
“Okay, but what about Johnny and Harry? I’m pretty sure they think this is over. I haven’t even talked to them since New Year’s Eve.”
“Leave them to me, okay?”
I trusted Jeff. I don’t know why, but I did. “Okay,” I answered.
It was a little weird he was sitting on the same side of the booth as me, but I just figured that was how older people went to dinner in fancier restaurants. Anyway, that’s when he suggested I get a tattoo.
“You want me to get a what?” I said.
“A tattoo.”
“Why?”
“This is the Scar Boys, Cheyenne. A tattoo is a scar.”
I liked that. I know this sounds completely crazy, but I was kind of envious of Johnny’s and Harry’s scars. If you’d’ve asked Johnny if he could’ve had his leg back, of course he would’ve said yes. Harry would have wanted to be rid of his scars, too. But what had happened to them made them closer, tied them to the music, tied them to each other. It gave them an identity. There was something cool about it.
But I still had my doubts.
“The only kids who have tattoos are super hardcore punks or Rocky Horror fans,” I told Jeff. “That’s not us at all.”
“I know. That’s what makes it so cool. You guys have this totally badass, dysfunctional image, and then the most amazing and accessible rock and roll comes out of your instruments. We need to play up the former to emphasize the latter.”
I thought about it for a minute. “Does it hurt?”
He rolled up his sleeve and showed me his own tattoo. It was a green-and-black line drawing of a pyramid with an eye on top. “Hell, yes, it hurts,” he said. “But it’s like a badge of
honor. You become a member of a secret club.”
I liked the sound of that, too. “Does that mean anything?” I asked, pointing at his pyramid. He opened his wallet, took out a dollar bill, and showed me the back.
“It’s where mysticism and money come together,” he said. Jeff was always talking about money.
Anyway, a week later, when the band finally rehearsed again, I was sporting a new tattoo at the base of my spine. I wore a shirt that was a bit small on me, knowing that every time I turned around, the guys would get a glimpse of the new art. I hardly said two words through the whole rehearsal, but I must’ve turned around, like, fifteen times. Every time I did, I tried to sneak a peek at my bandmates.
Harry was in his own world with the guitar, and Johnny just sat staring into space, looking down every so often to write in this little black book he’d started carrying around. Richie saw the tattoo, though. He shook his head and smiled at me when the other guys weren’t looking.
I know Harry and Johnny saw it, too, but neither one ever said anything. I guess this was the new world Jeff wanted—business partners, not friends. But . . .
Well, Jeff’s whole “no-friends” rule. He was kind of full of shit.
That night at Red Lobster, he kept pouring me glasses of wine, and I kept drinking them.
And he and I made out in his car.
And then we went back to his apartment in New York City.
HARBINGER JONES
We were all business at that rehearsal. No one looked anyone else in the eye, except for Richie. We were all looking not just at him, we were looking to him. It was like the gravitational center of the band, which had once revolved around the planetary system of me and Johnny, with Johnny Jupiter and me one of his moons, had shifted to a spot that hovered just below and to the left of Richie’s crash cymbal.
I think Richie was kind of freaked out by it, but he didn’t say anything. We were taking Jeff’s words to heart and were there to play music, nothing more. It was awkward, it was stilted, it was even painful at points. But here’s the thing. I kind of loved it.
