Friday, June 28, 2019

Favorite Scene Friday #3


Favorite Scene Friday Week #3

This scene was labeled as funny (especially one particular line) by the Writers' Digest Self-Published Book Awards reviewer. It's a "down-time" moment (a rare event for touring musicians), but has some funny moments. 

I've cleaned up some of the language on this one. But remember, if you've ever been around road musicians, of any genre, well...it's how they talk. 

RICHMOND, VA-Feel Like Makin’ Love

Sunday, June 24


We finally had a day off and could relax, after the most hectic week we’d had yet. The press had died down about Randy’s accident, and there were more interesting things going on in the world besides us. I didn’t want to think about the band or music or business or romance or anything, I just wanted to sleep, which I did, until about twelve-thirty.
Terry was already up and gone when I awoke. I took a long bath in the Jacuzzi and spent most of the early afternoon watching TV, catching up on world events. Space shuttle Discovery had landed safely that morning, and Air India Flight 182 had exploded yesterday over the Atlantic Ocean, killing over three hundred passengers.
There was a knock on the door about two. It was Bryon and Randy.
“What’s going on, man?” Bryon waltzed in and sat down. “You doing all right?”
“Why? What’s the rumor today?” I asked, tossing the remote control onto Terry’s bed.
“Rumor?” Randy picked up an ashtray and tapped in his ashes. “There’s no rumor about you.”
“That’s a relief.” I lied back down.
“Has there been a rumor?” Bryon asked. “I haven’t heard it.”
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” I said.
“I heard you and Steve got into it the other night,” Randy said. “You shoulda just kicked his squirrelly ass. He never knows what he’s talking about.”
I just shook my head. “I thought you guys were friends again.”
The slim, dark guitarist frowned. “Yeah, that lasted about a day.” He lit a new cigarette with the old one, his hands still shaking terribly. Amazing that his withdrawal symptoms hadn’t affected his playing. Asshole.”
There was obviously still some contention between Steve and Randy. Who knew what it was now.
“Was it true about him and that woman in Springfield?” Bryon asked.
“What?” I barely remembered “Grandma.”
“She told him she could get him a solo deal,” Randy muttered. “And he was stupid enough to believe it.”
“Solo deal?” Strange news. I had visions of us going through the whole David Lee Roth vs. Van Halen thing. “Is he serious?”
Randy shook his head. “He won’t get a solo deal. He can’t cut it on his own and he knows it.”
“Season doesn’t particularly care for him, does she?” Bryon announced.
Randy laughed. “That’s no lie. He was all over her after dinner last night. Or this morning, rather. Why didn’t you kick his ass, Jon?”
I sighed, remembering his continued advances toward her as we came out of Denney’s after the show. During dinner, after I watched her wolf down a bacon cheeseburger like it was her last meal, we’d discussed porn films, which led to a comment from Clint about how she was being bitchy lately because she wasn’t getting any.
That sounded familiar.
Anyway, Terry went into this long speech about how I was the one who always knew the right places to take women on dates, then when Season said romance was for suckers, Clint reached over and touched the back of her neck, saying the spot just under her right ear was her “on” switch. She shoved him off with a joke about not doing “that touchy-feely inbred cousin thing.” Naturally, Steve saw this as a golden opportunity to move in for the kill. He wouldn’t leave her alone, and kept leering at me, like I was some kind of sexual retard. I pretended not to notice, trying to keep Terry’s hair out of my food. Eventually Season climbed on her bus and slammed the door in Steve’s face.
“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” I said. “According to Steve, I’m not even that.”
“Aw, fuck him,” Randy said. “It’s a wonder he can even function with what he’s been doing.”
Bryon and I exchanged looks, but Randy didn’t continue.
There was a sudden commotion at the door. It rattled ferociously, then someone banged it on it, swearing at the top his lungs like a truck driver.
“This key doesn’t work! The one time I don’t lose the damn key and the stupid-ass thing is broke!”
More banging.
“Damn,” said Randy, lighting yet another cigarette.
“Should we open it for him?” Bryon stood up.
“Nah, he’ll figure it out,” I said.
The doorknob sounded as if it was being ripped out.
“Dammit!”
Barry’s voice: “Terry, quit swearing!”
“My key doesn’t work! Barry! Don’t...aw, shit!”
Terry continued to battle with his key. He kicked the door, his profanities ringing through the corridor. I finally got up and let him in.
He stumbled into the room, his hand still clutching the knob. “Oh, hi, guys. I didn’t think anyone was in here.” He was instantly calm, strutting in and collapsing on his bed. “Let’s go find Jon a prostitute, and get him out of this funk he’s been in.”
“In Richmond, Virginia?” Bryon asked.
“The Virgin State?” Randy added, grinning.
“Nothing like poppin’ a virgin!” I threw a pillow at Terry.
“Ain’t that the truth!” The lanky New Mexican started thrusting his hips in the air.
Steve happened in. “What the hell’s going on in here?”
“Terry’s fucking an invisible woman,” Randy said, blowing circles of smoke out of his nose. “I’ll bet you can’t even top that.”
Steve didn’t respond. He seemed out of it, and I wondered about Randy’s previous comment about “what he’s been doing.” There was a weird awkward silence, then the singer said, “Barry wants us downstairs.”
Terry sat up, disappointed. “For what? It’s our day off.”
“Shopping.” Steve walked back out, like a zombie.
Worried looks went around the room. Finally Terry said, “He’s fucked up.”
Randy just nodded. “I quit drinking and he does this.”
“What’s he on?” I asked, standing and looking for my boots.
“I don’t know, he’s hiding it pretty well.” Randy crushed out his cigarette and scratched his head. “I’ve looked through all his stuff and can’t find anything but aspirin. I’ve caught people handing stuff off to him though, but he must take it all ‘coz there’s nothing left.”
We spent the better part of the afternoon wandering around Cloverleaf Mall, sort of incognito, to do some miscellaneous shopping. Randy and I looked for clothes. Terry picked up some jewelry, including a watch that I knew he would never look at. Bryon bought some things for Nita, and I never knew he had such great taste in lingerie. Terry picked up a black teddy and waved it in my face. “Maybe you should get this for your new girlfriend!”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I amended.
“Yet,” said Bryon.
“And besides, you don’t buy women you hardly know lingerie.” I started looking for a way out of Victoria’s Secret. Considering my current state, I didn’t need to be looking at lingerie.
Terry held the teddy up to his scrawny chest and looked in a mirror. “Is it me?”
Bryon narrowed his eyes. “Terry, I’m seriously worried about you.”
The drummer whistled to the rather attractive girl behind the counter. “Hey, baby, would you model this for me?”
“We’re leaving now.” I dragged Terry from the store.
Steve skulked around with us every once in a while, would disappear for a few minutes, then turn back up mysteriously, like some kind of vampire. It was really strange.
We were glad the mall wasn’t very busy, another reason we preferred Sundays off. If we needed to do errands, we could easily go unnoticed. We sort of blended in with the other long-haired guys who hung out in malls, two of which recognized Terry and me at Disc Jockey and asked for autographs.

Friday, June 21, 2019

Favorite Scene Friday #2

It's time for another Favorite Scene Friday!

This scene got a nod as a favorite from the reviewer from the Writers' Digest Self-Published Book Awards last fall.

Jon and Terry are having lunch in Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria when they're spotted by some fans, followed by reporters. They decide to make an escape through the kitchen, then quite obviously, through the laundry room.

Again, language ahead...Enjoy!

NEW YORK, NEW YORK
June 15, 1985


Terry and I sat in the restaurant, Peacock Alley, next to tinted windows. There were people lining the sidewalk, and judging by their clothes, manner, and youth, they had to be fans. Girls were crying, guys were glum.
The word’s out all over the country by now, I thought. It would make Entertainment Tonight’s opening sequence, and MTV Music News had probably been broadcasting it every hour since seven a.m. Kids would be freaking out all over the place, worrying about the tour, and getting the information completely screwed up.
“They say Randy’s dead.”
“This girl was killed!”
“He’ll be sent to prison for life!”
“They’ll cancel their tour. Their career’s over.”
Terry quieted the voices in my head. “What the hell is this, Jon?” he was saying as I stirred my tea, watching three packs of sugar form a pile at the bottom of the glass. “This whole ordeal is bringing out things in us I’ve never seen.”
I nodded slowly. In just seven hours, every member of Tarax had undergone some sort of transformation. Randy was no longer the bitter alcoholic guitarist; he was a lost and frightened soul, weary of all the rock-n-roll hoopla. Steve’s frontman ego had become a chastised child, countered by a shocking outburst of fury from the always serene and reserved Bryon. Even the hyperactive, completely ignorant Terry was speaking intelligently. “Cloud of gloom” and a word like “ordeal” were not part of his normal vocabulary.
I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me, speaking out of turn to police investigators, and unlike my usual diplomatic and tactful self, I was speechless and numb. Our career, all that we bled for, was hanging by a thread, and it just hadn’t hit me yet.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Huh? What?” I came back to life.
“You look stoned, man,” he said. “I know you like dope, but even when you’re high you don’t look this bad. And you’re stirring your tea with your fork.”
I stopped immediately, tossing the fork back onto the table with a clang, thinking of how the guys used to dog me out for actually knowing there was such a thing as a salad fork, a dinner fork, and a desert spoon. Randy used to blame it solely on the fact that my mother’s a Canadian.
“That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen since early this morning,” the drummer said, also remembering my knowledge of table settings.
“I’m sorry. My mind is elsewhere.”
“Obviously.”
“What were you saying anyway?” I flagged down the waiter to bring our check.
“Are we gonna be okay? I mean, we’ve all been acting so strange. How are things gonna get back to normal?”
Ah, Terry. The most sheltered only child in the history of mankind. Every blow softened, every harshness quickly covered and extinguished. The only bad thing that had ever happened to Terry was the death of a beloved pet hamster in the fifth grade. Terry’s twenty-one years were basically without tragedy or heartache. Life was always good with Terry.
“It’ll be odd at first,” I said, trying to sound like the aged advisor, the one who knew the right thing to say at the right time, which was quite the joke since I hadn’t experienced much tragedy myself. “But we’ll make out all right. I guess if Vince can get through this anyone can.”
I recalled Vince Neil’s accident last December that killed Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley of Hanoi Rocks.
“You think we should go to the funeral?” he asked, frowning.
“Randy should, maybe,” I said, then reconsidered. “But then again, that’d be a disaster if relatives got out of hand. And if the press showed up.”
“No shit.”
We were silent for a while. I stared at my plate, nothing left but a few uneaten French fries and one last bite of a chicken sandwich.
“Are you gonna eat that?” Terry asked suddenly.
I shook my head, and he had it down in one gulp. “At least I haven’t lost my appetite,” he grinned. “I still don’t see how you eat yard bird all the damn time. Cannibal little fuckers.”
He was obviously recalling his days working in chicken houses with his grandfather in Oklahoma. Would you call that a tragedy? “I like chicken. You’ve got mayonnaise on your chin.”
He wiped it away then licked it off his fingers. Along with his appetite, he hadn’t lost his lack of table manners either. “You sound really strange, Jon. Tell me you’re not losing your mind, too.”
Riiiight…. “I didn’t think I’d ever have to go through this again. But it’s different this time, because we’re so much more nationwide now. I mean, look at all those people out there now.” I pointed out the window. “People I don’t know are worried about us. We’ve disappointed a lot of folks, man.” I stopped for a minute, getting my thoughts in order. “I don’t understand it, Terry. Show business can be scary.”
There was another silence before he sighed with relief. “Oh good, you’re back to normal.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re talking like you usually do,” he said. “All philosophical and shit. Nobody else is talking like they should.”
“Barry is.”
“That’s debatable.”
Debatable? He can’t even spell “debatable.” I didn’t point out his new expanded vocabulary; I was too shocked by it. I was about to say something else when I saw two guys and a dark-haired girl standing at the host’s station. They pointed at us excitedly and started heading our way.
“Don’t look now, but I think we have been identified.”
Terry glanced over his shoulder. “Shit. What do we do?”
“Leave.” Where were Billy and Ray?
“How?”
I grabbed a passing waiter as he came by. “Uh, sir, could you show us a different way out of here? We’d like to keep away from the public for today.”
“You can go out through the kitchen,” he said. “Right this way.”
And not a moment too soon. Following the three kids were about six reporters. We ran through the kitchen as the host stopped them and tried to shove them out of the restaurant.
“The kids must’ve been bait,” Terry said as we stood amidst stoves and sinks and pots and pans. A head chef looked down his long nose at us, rattling on in French. I recognized a few select phrases, like the ones Madame Parker didn’t teach us in high school, but those I learned from my uncle Gilbert, and a foreign exchange student named Gabrielle, who also introduced me to the finer points of...well, I’ll talk about that later.
Terry nudged my arm. “What’d he say?”
“Something like, ‘My car’s in the factory’.”
“What?”
“That’s what it sounded like.” I couldn’t tell him I’d heard “assholes” about five times.
The chef turned his back to us, so Terry tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, mon-sur, how do we rock-aires get out of la keetch-un?”
I rolled my eyes.
The chef was not so amused. He cursed again in his native language.
“Never mind,” I said, recognizing the f-word. “We’ll find it ourselves.”
We pushed through the noisy kitchen and found the service entrance. We opened it, finding ourselves in an alley.
“Aw, shit,” groaned Terry. “Not another one of these!”
We didn’t much like alleys after Chicago.
“Now what do we do?” I mumbled to myself.
“Go back inside.” Terry opened the door.
“I’ve got it!” I snapped my fingers.
“Oh, no. You’re thinking of something really dumb, Jon. I can already tell.”
“C’mon.” I grabbed his arm and we went back inside.
I peeked out the kitchen doors into the dining room. The press guys were gone.
“Hey, baby, how’s it goin?” Terry gawked at a waitress carrying a tray of desserts. He reached out to pinch her ass and she whacked him in the face with a napkin. “Ow! Bitch.”
I waved to the host.
“Yes, Mr. Warren?” He came to us immediately.
“I need a favor.”


“I knew this was a really dumb idea, Jon.”
“Shh. Put your head back down.”
“They only do this shit in movies, Warren,” he grumbled. “I don’t fucking believe this.”
I adjusted my tie. I was dressed as a laundry boy, my hair slicked back into a ponytail with cooking oil; a look I must say doesn’t really suit me. My white starched shirt was cutting into my jugular, and the black pants were too small and pulled at the crotch. They didn’t have shoes, so I had on Terry’s black Chuck Taylors, which were two sizes too big. Terry was in the laundry cart, holding my clothes, buried under towels and linens. We stepped out of the elevator on the tenth floor, and to my surprise, the hallway was deserted.
“Wow, there’s nobody here,” I said.
“Good, then get me outta here.” Terry began to emerge out of the basket.
I shoved him back down. “No, you never know if they’re going to jump out and get you.”
“They’re just the press, not the Boogey Men,” he said, his voice muffled.
Suddenly a man came around a far corner, carrying a camera, a press badge attached to his shirt pocket. I ducked my head. I thought he was gone when I heard him say, “Hey, do you know where Tarax is staying?”
I ducked my head down, hoping my dark looks and Southern Arizona background could help me. “SeƱor?”
“What?” Terry’s nose appeared under a pillowcase. He whispered loudly. “Are you high? You’re not a fucking Mexican!”
“No, I’m Puerto Rican!” I whispered back.
“The rock group Tarax,” the photographer spoke again. “They’re playing at the Gardens this weekend. Their lead guitarist had a car wreck. Supposedly killed some girl.”
¿Cómo? No hablo inglĆ©s.
“Aw, shit.” Terry recovered his head.
“Tarax, the rock band?” The man spoke louder. It’s funny how if you don’t speak English, you’re automatically deaf, too. “You know, rock and…Oh never mind.” He got into the elevator and was gone.
“Told you they jump out at you,” I said, pushing the cart again.
“Okay, whatever,” complained the drummer. “Just get us back to the room before I suffocate.”
“I guess you didn’t get any fresh air after all,” I joked.
“Fuck you!”
I knocked on our door, curious as to where our security had gone. Steve answered, his blue eyes peeking over the chain. He looked somewhat confused.
“Can I help you?”
Before I could speak, the laundry cart said, “Steve, it’s us. Let us in.”
“Huh?”
“It’s me…Jon.”
“How can I be sure?”
What? Was he high? I didn’t look that much unlike myself. Maybe he was just being an ass.
Terry’s head came up from out of the towels. “Open the damn door!”
Steve, stunned, unchained the door. Terry leaped out of the laundry cart, flinging linens onto the floor. “It smells like shit down in there!”
I took the rubber band out of my hair, feeling oil on my fingers.
“What the hell is this?” Barry came out of the rather large bathroom.
“We got spotted by the press in the restaurant,” Terry said. “SeƱor Genius here got us this wonderful disguise.” He threw my clothes and boots at me as I began to take off the stiff shirt. I hadn’t worn a shirt this starched since I quit the Boy Scouts.
“It worked, didn’t it?” I headed for the nearest shower.
Terry’s lip curled. “I guess.”
“How are things in here?” I asked, stepping into the bathroom. I groaned, watching rivulets of vegetable oil dribble down my neck. I looked like a reject from some Fonzie auditions.
“Still pretty quiet,” said Steve. “We got a call from Chuck.”
Chuck Greeley, our booking agent in LA. I turned on the shower, shoving my head under the running water. “What’d he say?”
Steve handed me this tankard of conditioning shampoo, a bottle we took with us everywhere, because with us, it’s always about “the Hair.” “He said to keep cool. He’d get word to the promoters.”
“That’s it?” I began to scrub my head vigorously, hearing Terry relate our escapade to Barry, complete with an imitation of my Latino accent.
“Well…” Steve was much calmer now, almost too calm. “Since the hearing isn’t until, oh, what’d he say? October?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll pull through.” He sat down on the toilet while I showered, feeling grease pour over me. “How’re things downstairs?”
“It’s a fucking madhouse,” Terry said. “That’s why we came up in the laundry bag.” He pulled back the shower curtain and snapped a towel onto my bare ass. “No thanks to Jonny here.”
I rinsed, shut off the water, and shook my head like a wet dog, spraying water all over the bathroom. “Did you have a better idea?”
He frowned. “No. Well, you coulda been in the cart smelling all that stinky shit!”
Steve grabbed the towel in Terry’s hand and flicked him with it.
“Ow!” Terry had no tolerance for pain, and whimpers like a little girl from the slightest nudge. He caught Steve in a headlock.
“Let me go! Watch the hair! Watch the haaaaaaaaairrrrrrrr!” His screams trailed off as Terry dragged him into the living room. Steve reached out to grab me, but I leaped back and fell back into the bathtub, with was filled with water, soap, and cooking oil. The more I tried to get up, the more I slipped. “Shit! Hey, could somebody help me?”



Friday, June 14, 2019

Favorite Scene Friday #1

Favorite Scene Friday

This particular scene, near the beginning, was one of Christine Cooper's favorites. (RIP My dear, dear friend!!!)

Jon, the bassist, Terry, the drummer, and Bryon, rhythm guitarist, have escaped their hotel in the middle of the night to go foraging for snacks at the nearest convenience store. Comedy ensues.

Author's Note: I have NO idea why I came up with this scene. I was only 16 at the time and I guess I figured that's what hungry musicians on the road do. And when I grew up and became a road musician, I discovered that yes, it is indeed what they do. Perhaps I will incorporate a sad but true tale concerning "Little Chocolate Donuts" in the sequel (Theodore C. Stone...!!). 

Enjoy!

CHICAGO, IL
Friday, May 31, 1985


The slightly overweight lady at the checkout counter looked down her nose as we entered. She seemed to be thinking, What is this crap? Three guys with long hair, wearing leather jackets in the middle of summer and sunglasses at three a.m.?
Not a good sign.
I wondered suddenly, do all gas stations have silent alarms?
We prowled through the refrigerated items, pulling out bottles of soda. Terry nabbed a six-pack of Coors, but Bryon stopped him. “No booze during the day right before a show, you know that.”
“It’s not day, it’s night,” Terry replied, motioning outside.
Bryon frowned. Downtrodden, Terry began to replace the beer, then grinned. “We’re out on the bus!”
Bryon glanced at me for confirmation, knowing Terry’s penchant for lying.
“Uh, yeah, he’s right,” I said, maybe telling the truth. All I wanted was my Coke and didn’t feel the need to verify this rather unimportant issue.
Bryon shrugged. “Well, don’t let Randy see it, or we’ll still be out.”
Terry shook his head. “Aw, hell no. I’ll keep it in the bag and hide it under one of the beds.”
“Then you’ll forget about it and leave it there,” I said, remembering Terry’s other penchant for not remembering shit. He’d forget his dick if it weren’t attached.
“Terry forget beer?” Bryon quipped. “Get real, Warren.”
“Yeah.” A familiar orange package in the candy section caught my eye. “Just what I need!”
“Oh, shit. You and your sugar jones.” Terry tucked his six-pack under his arm. “This is gonna be a long-ass night.”
“I’m having withdrawals.”
“So you can puke ‘em up on the bus again?” Not much of a sweets eater, Terry grimaced, referring to a night not too long ago when I ate too much candy and my stomach was not impressed.
Bryon had long since abandoned our discussion of my unfavorable snacking habits and had moved to the magazine rack. “This month’s Circus. We even made the cover.”
Terry immediately snatched up the heavy rock periodical. “Damn. Why is it that stuck-up lead singers always get to be on the cover?” He waved the issue in my face, his voice loud enough to invoke another disapproving look from the checkout lady.
I ignored the glossy image of Steve and flipped to the article. “I think it’s that interview with me and you. Let’s see if they quoted us right.”
“Hopefully not like when they asked Steve about Randy back in March?” Bryon asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, frowning. “That was ‘positive’.”
“Well, you know us,” Terry began, matter-of-factly. “Brutally and totally honest.” Suddenly he seemed to freak out, causing Bryon to wince uncomfortably. I dropped the magazine.
Penthouse!” he wailed, grabbing the porn mag off the top rack like a life preserver. “Yes!”
Another sneer from the cashier, who was more than ready for us to get the hell out of her store. “This ain’t a library,” she called out.
“Bitch,” Terry muttered.
“What time is it?” I asked before things got ugly.
Bryon glanced at his watch. “Three-twenty-five.”
“Shit! We need to get out of here!” Terry exclaimed.
“Would you quit screaming?” Bryon begged.
“Are we gonna buy this?” Terry asked, tearing the plastic off the Penthouse.
“We pretty much have to now, dumbass,” I said.
“I just gotta look at one thing first…”
“Come on!” I took him by one arm while Bryon pushed him from behind.
We threw our stuff onto the counter. The cashier, her nametag reading “Zelda,” continued to frown at us, but she did manage to ring up our sale even as Terry kept finding junk near the cash register to toss into the pile.
“What use do you have for that?” Bryon asked as Terry pulled down some bottle opener key chain that was shaped like…I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be shaped like.
“Well, y’know. I think it’s cool.”
“That’ll be forty-two fifty,” the cashier stated flatly.
“Shit!” Terry almost yelled. “And we didn’t even buy gas!”
“What did you buy?” I asked, poking through the pile of junk.
“Y’know, stuff.”
“Did you guys bring any money?” Bryon asked.
Panic hit me. Rare in such an event, but I never go anywhere without at least…
“I got a five!” I announced proudly, pulling it out of my back pocket.
Bryon presented a humble black canvas Velcro wallet and examined its contents. “I’ve got four.”
I searched through my other pockets and presented a quarter. “That’s all I got.”
Rhythm guitarist and bassist looked expectantly at drummer. Things were looking pretty grim if we were relying on the brokest man alive to provide a solution to the current cash deficiency.
Terry began shoving his long scrawny hands into the pockets of his beat-up Levi’s. At last he held out one palm, and in it was a nickel, three dimes, a penny, some pocket lint, and something that looked like the pit of a cherry.
“Thirty-six cents!” He grinned, as if he’d just presented a freaking one hundred dollar bill.
Three members of a rock band known nationwide, with two songs in the Top 30, a soon-to-be platinum album, on our first headlining tour of the United States, standing in a dirty Exxon station across the street from a very high class hotel in Chicago, buying a bunch of junk food at three-thirty a.m., and the only money we had on us was nine dollars, sixty-one cents, and a dried-up cherry pit. Or something that resembled a cherry pit. I certainly hoped it was something as harmless as a cherry pit.
Bryon, out of character, was the first one to speak after the long uneasy silence. “Take back the candy, Jon.”
It was a crushing blow. “No way!” I cried. “Make Terry put the beer back. Or put back all that stupid shit, like this White Sox beer thing and…whatever the hell this is.”
“It’s a hand-held, battery-operated fan shaped like a kangaroo.” Terry sounded like Ron Popeill. “Take back that damn box of Ding Dongs!”
“Hey, I love those things,” Bryon shot back.
“Are you guys gonna argue all night?” The cashier sounded strangely like some Chicago cop I’d seen on a TV show once. Or maybe that was a gangster. She was one tough looking broad.
“Listen,” I began, taking up my usual role as heavy metal diplomatic advisor. “We’re in a band…”
She interrupted me. “Look, you long-haired punk, I got a gun under this counter, and I’ve had all kinds of you weirdos in here all night.”
Now, despite rumors about most bands in our genre, and the ongoing verbal squabbles between Steven and Randy, Tarax is not known for stirring up too much trouble, especially the kind that involved police intervention. Barry wanted it to remain as such, to keep insurance costs down and the record company happy, since our label was still very wary of “metal” acts and their future as moneymakers. Sneaking out of the hotel was a small thing. To have him come bail us out of jail was something else. Not only would there be no money to pay for our little “picnic”, there might not be any more money for anything and we’d all be back in Arizona pumping gas and flipping burgers.
“Oh, please, ma’am,” Terry chimed in, “we don’t want to cause any trouble.”
I looked at him strangely, as did Bryon. Where did this “please, ma’am” shit come from? He sounded like Wally Cleaver on acid.
“We pulled up in that bus over at the Sheraton about an hour ago.” I picked up the Circus and showed her our pictures, which probably didn’t help because they were stage shots: sweat, smeared make-up, stringy hair, torn spandex. The one of me was atrocious.
“That’s me,” I said, disappointed. “This is Bryon, next to me.” I indicated the flesh and blood Bryon on my left. “And this is Terry.”
“God, what a shitty picture of me!” Terry leaned over, practically shoving Bryon backwards, so he could gape at his likeness. He was so, physical, at times, like a boisterous dog. Maybe we should start calling him Marmaduke. “I look like hell!” He tore off the sunglasses, grinning. “But it’s still me, see?”
Zelda just stared at us.
My mind, tired and failing to work its magic, cried, What to do? What to do? I tore the subscription card out of the magazine, grabbed a greasy-looking pen off the counter, and scribbled Barry’s office address in LA. I knew his secretary would call him on his mobile as soon as it came across her desk.
“This is our manager’s address. He’ll take care of it with no problem.” I smiled, attempting to turn on that “charm” people tell me I possess. I personally don’t see it, but they tell me it works. I noticed Terry and Bryon watching me intently, waiting for the result. I shrugged, uncertain.
Still no response.
“Uh, why don’t you call him at the hotel in the morning?”
Groans from the boys.
She pondered it a minute. “Okay. That I can do.”
I must have looked surprised because she smiled.
“My son listens to you guys. Could you sign this magazine?”
Wow.
Terry and Bryon sauntered out with the bags and the cashier called me by name. “Yes?”
“I knew who you guys were. I just thought I’d give you hard time.”
I smiled wanly. Gee, thanks a lot.
She smiled again, and I noticed a front tooth missing. “My son wants to play bass.”
“Cool. Is he any good?”
“He stinks. But he has a good time.”
“He’ll fit in just fine,” I said.
Terry poked his head back in. “Don’t tell anyone we came in here!”
The cashier made a motion as if she were zipping her lips.
“Cool!” Terry ducked back out.