“But...”
“Go, Greg!” Matt barked.
“I think I would go if I were you,” Steve suggested mildly.
Greg went, shutting the door behind him.
“Assholes,” Matt said, taking a long drink of his beer.
“You all right, Matt?” John asked carefully.
“Yeah,” Matt spat, setting the cocaine mirror back down and then crunching up another two lines. “What can you do?”
“Not much, I guess,” the bassist allowed.
They ate some of the food that had been laid out for them. Matt chomped down on some ribs and potato salad, washing it down with two beers. John and Steve each made a sandwich out of the fixings. More than half of the food was still there when they were done.
“All right,” Matt said with a sigh as he tossed his latest beer bottle in the general direction of the garbage can. “I guess I’m gonna hit the shower.”
“Sounds good, Matt,” said Steve, who was loading himself up a nice bonghit from the tray.
“I’ll be in right after you,” said John, who was putting together a gin and tonic.
Before heading to the shower, Matt opened up the dressing room door. Standing outside was Brian Browning, one of the security guys. “Hey, Bri,” Matt greeted.
“What’s up, Matt?” Brian returned.
“I’m hitting the shower now. Have Jack bring the bitches back in about ten minutes.”
“Will do,” Brian said, picking up his portable radio and putting it to his mouth.
Matt hit the shower, taking off his stage clothes of jeans and a sleeveless shirt and putting them in the laundry bin. He rinsed and cleaned the sweat from his body, washed out his long hair, and then stepped out to dry off. Once dry, he put on his after-show clothes, which consisted of a pair of jeans and a sleeveless shirt.
He was still quite upset about the change of venues. When he emerged back into the dressing room and saw what Jack had brought for him and the boys, his mood did not improve.
There were four girls out there. Two were well into their thirties. The other two, while in their twenties, were not the most impressive examples of young female adulthood. The one with the fake blonde hair was at least thirty pounds overweight, her body squeezed into a denim miniskirt that was perhaps two sizes too small. It rode quite high on her chunky legs, which were covered with a pair of fishnet stockings. A roll of fat bulged out from beneath her top. The other young one was painfully skinny, her face somewhat pockmarked with acne, and she had no tits at all. Her legs were knobby little sticks that looked like they had been drawn on. Of the older two, one, though marginally cute, was clearly inebriated to the point that she was about to pass out. The other was even fatter and more inappropriately dressed than the young fatty.
“Oh my God, it’s you!” the young fatty yelled when she saw him emerge from the shower room.
“It is!” screamed the young skinny one. Is she that skinny because of fucking meth? Matt had to wonder. He strongly suspected that was the case, particularly when he saw she was missing a few teeth.
The four of them ran over to him and began telling him how much they loved him, how they were so into his music, how they would do anything he wanted them to do.
“It’s nice to meet you all,” Matt told them. “No need to tell me your names. Y’all know the rules.”
“No names!” the inebriated one squealed, delighted. “Everyone knows that Matt doesn’t wanna know your fuckin’ name!”
“Just call me nameless,” said the old fatty, as she reached down and ran the back of her hand across his crotch.
“All right then,” Matt said, twisting away from her probing hand. “Why don’t you bitches grab something to drink, or...” He looked at the fatties. “ ... or some grub if you want. Give me just a second.”
They practically ran to the bar and food spread and began helping themselves. Matt watched them for a second and then walked over to the door, where Jack Ferguson, head of tour security and procurer of the groupies, was standing.
“What the fuck is up with this bunch, Jack?” Matt asked him. “I don’t recall asking you to find the skankiest bitches in the arena.”
“Sorry, Matt,” he apologized, “but the pickings are a little slim. These are the best I can do.”
“Seriously?” Matt asked. While it was true that the quality of groupie on this tour was considerably less than what he had enjoyed during the Intemperance tours, Jack was usually able to come up with four to six acceptable bitches each show. What he was seeing now was bottom of the barrel shit.
“We’ve been over this before,” Jack told him. “Unlike in the Intemp days, your solo fans are mostly male. Greg tells me that eight out of every ten patrons coming through the door has a fuckin’ dick swinging between their legs. And of that twenty percent that have a twat, probably five out of every six are only here because a boyfriend or a husband dragged them here. I’m telling you, it’s hard to find any groupies out in the crowd who even want to come back and entertain you and the boys, let alone pay the price they have to pay to get back here.”
“I know,” Matt sighed. “I understand all that and I appreciate what you do, Jack. You know I think of you as a brother, right?”
“I know, Matt,” Jack said.
“But these four?” Matt whispered to him, jerking his head in the direction of the women. “Is that seriously the pick of the litter?”
“For Washington, District of Columbia, it is,” Jack confirmed. “The male to female ratio in this town is higher than the average because it’s a government capital region. That eighty-twenty mix of male to female we see in the other venues was about ninety-two to eight here. We had a hell of a time even finding these four.”
Matt looked them over again, shaking his head sadly. “That’s a damn shame,” he said.
“You want me to get rid of them?” Jack asked. “Maybe you can score something a little better when we get back to the hotel.”
Matt thought it over for a few seconds. “Naw,” he said. “Let ‘em stay. I guess I can bag the two heifers. Hell, maybe I’ll be inspired to write a song about it like Brian May.”
“Anything can happen,” Jack said. “And if it makes you feel better, the older one sucks a mean dick.”
“Yeah?” Matt said, his interest growing a bit now.
“Yeah,” Jack assured him.
“Well, maybe there’s something to be salvaged from this night after all.”
Meanwhile, about four hundred air miles to the northwest, in Detroit, Michigan, another show was just wrapping up as well. The contrast between Matt’s show and the concert by Veteran could not have been greater.
Veteran was playing in famed Cobo Arena, on the north bank of the Detroit River, just a hundred feet from the Canadian border. Twelve thousand screaming fans filled the bleacher seats. Another two thousand were on the floor before the stage. A large screen showed live views of the show while a complex scaffolding hung above, flashing hundreds of computer controlled lights of different colors onto the five-man group. Intermittently, lasers would fire through clouds of carbon dioxide gas generated by machines fueled with dry ice. Explosions would echo from time to time as well, to the delight of the crowd.
Coop sat behind his drum set, his shirt off, his blonde hair flapping wildly about, sweat dripping from his body as he pounded his sticks down during the final number of the main set. He was playing his best, giving all his energy, all his heart, all his soul to the performance.
Unfortunately, his bandmates were not doing the same.
Coop was stone cold sober as he played. He was the only one of the five that could make that claim. He had learned the hard way back when he and Darren had started playing around with smoking weed, then drinking prior to performances when out on the road. Matt was a supreme asshole to the tenth degree, but his rule against imbibing for at least four hours prior to a show was a good rule that made a lot of sense. It was a rule that, when disregarded, had led to Darren getting his stupid ass blown through the air like a fucking soda can over a firecracker one night in Austin, Texas. It was the injuries from that incident that had led first Darren and then Coop himself to get started down the nasty road of heroin addiction. Coop had managed to walk away from that road. Darren had not, and, because he had not, he was now dead, buried in a cemetery in Heritage, California with only thirty years between the two dates on the tombstone.