“Right!” squeaked a voice from the speaker, not bothering to ask for clarification of any kind. Such was life on a rock tour.
While they were waiting, Larry went back to Wilkes, who was still giggling about his Cleveland snafu.
“Listen up, you idiot,” Larry told him. “You need to go out there and make this shit right. Tell them that you’re tired from the road and from doing show after show and you apologize for calling them Cleveland. Tell them Cleveland is a fucking shithole and you’re appalled that you made an error like that. Hell, you can tell them you’re fucking wasted if you want, but you’ve got to apologize to them before they storm the fucking stage and lynch your ass!”
Wilkes, who had nodded through all this as if he was agreeing, remained silent. He just kept nodding.
“Do you fucking understand that?” Larry demanded.
“Understand what?” Wilkes asked.
“Fuck me!” Larry barked in frustration.
Tim Bollinger, one of the security guys, came bursting into the stage left area, a mirror and a plastic baggie in hand. “Got the shit!” he told Larry.
“Give it to me!” Larry said, holding out his hand.
Tim gave it to him. Larry quickly dumped a sizeable amount of the white powder onto the surface of the mirror and then pulled a razor blade from his shirt pocket. He quickly chopped up the cocaine and formed it into two fat lines. He then walked over to Hamm and grabbed him by his long hair, forcing his head up. He set the mirror down before him and then whipped out a plastic drink straw that had been cut in half.
“Mike!” he yelled, jerking his head back and forth. “Got some blow for you! Snort this shit up!”
Hamm did not wake up, so Larry began slapping the side of his face, first one cheek and then the other, until the bass player finally opened his eyes.
“What ... what ... what the fuck!” Hamm yelled.
“Snort this shit!” Larry told him. “We need to get you back out there!”
“I don’t...” Hamm started.
“You do!” Larry barked, cramming the straw into his nose and forcing his head down toward the mirror. “Fucking hit this shit!”
Hamm finally got the idea. He snorted up the first line and then Larry forcibly moved his head a little, so he was lined up with the second. Hamm sucked up that one as well.
“All right!” Larry said. “Now on your feet. Help me get him up, Coop!”
Coop, still shaking his head at all of this, walked over and grabbed underneath Hamm’s right arm. Larry grabbed under the left. They bodily jerked him to his feet. At first, his feet didn’t want to hold him up, but after a few seconds, as the stimulant made its way into his brain cells, he got the idea.
“All right, all right, all fucking right!” Hamm barked. “I’m up. Get your fucking hands off me!”
“You cool now?” Larry asked him.
“I’m fine!” he said, then promptly stumbled forward. Only the fact that Coop and Larry were holding him kept him from face planting.
“You better get fine, quick!” Larry said. He turned to Coop. “Walk him around a little, let that shit circulate some. I need to get moron number two in order.”
“Good luck with that,” Coop said as Larry let go of the bass player and walked back over to the singer.
While Wilkes was having his apology barked at him again and as the crowd continued to chant—their words were now, “We’re NOT fucking Cleveland! We’re NOT fucking Cleveland!”—Coop pulled on Hamm’s arm. “Let’s walk,” he told him.
But Hamm did not want to walk. As was often the case when he snorted cocaine atop alcohol, he became mean and belligerent. “Get your fuckin’ hand off of me!” he barked, trying to pull away.
“You need to walk, Hamm!” Coop told him. “We have to go out and do the encore!”
“Fuck the encore!” Hamm spat, jerking himself free of Coop’s grip. This caused him to stagger backwards again, flirting with the edge of balance. Steve Carl, the keyboardist, who had been watching everything with the detachment of the ruinously stoned, reached over and grabbed Hamm’s arm to steady him. Hamm did not appreciate the gesture. He jerked himself free from this grip and then pushed the keyboardist forcibly in the chest, causing him to fall backwards to his butt.
“Motherfucker!” Carl barked, jumping back to his feet. “You don’t put your fuckin’ hands on me!”
“Fuck you, motherfucker!” Hamm barked back. “You don’t put your fuckin’ hands on me!”
“Hamm, chill!” Coop said, stepping up behind him and putting his hand on Hamm’s shoulder.
“I said not to fucking touch me!” Hamm yelled, spinning and throwing a right cross at Coop’s head. His fist connected with the side of Coop’s face, stunning him momentarily, and causing an intense flare of red anger to go rushing through him.
“That’s your ass, dickwad!” Coop told him, throwing a straight right jab. And since Coop was both sober and the veteran of more than a few barroom brawls thanks to his former friendship with Matt Tisdale, his fist did a lot more damage. The first blow shattered Hamm’s nose. He followed it up with a left cross that connected with the bassist’s right temple, dropping him to the stage floor in an untidy heap.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Larry yelled, rushing over. “What did you do that for?”
“He fucking punched me first!” Coop said. “No motherfucker punches me without getting my fist in return! That’s the way the fuckin’ world works, dude!”
“He had that shit coming,” Carl said. “If Coop wouldn’t have done it, I would’ve.”
“Fuck me,” Larry said, kneeling down next to the now unconscious bass player. He shook him a few times but Hamm would not wake up. Blood continued to pour from his nose onto the wooden floor.
“Did I fuckin’ kill him?” Coop asked, half hoping that he had.
“He’ll live,” Larry sighed, “but he’s gonna need to take a trip to the hospital.” He shook his head. “I think we better start making a strategic withdrawal from ‘Cleveland’, huh?”
“I’m thinking so,” Coop agreed.
And that was why Detroit missed out on the three song encore, and how Indianapolis and Cincinnati both had their shows cancelled completely on account of the bass player suffering from a significant concussion that put him out of action for almost a week. It was also how Veteran got their first scathing concert review.
It would not be their last.
Pauline got the call about the Detroit incident at nine o’clock, Pacific Time, the night it happened. She was spending the month in the rented house in Coos Bay now that she had been recruited by Celia as a backup singer. Her nightly lessons with Celia and Jake had just wrapped up and she was enjoying a glass of wine on the couch in the sitting room, trying to purge her brain of all the keys and timbres and exercises she had been doing—all things that had turned an enjoyable pastime she had once enjoyed into a freaking chore.
“Sing from your fucking diaphragm,” she muttered to herself, repeating a phrase she had been told at least a hundred times. “Let me hear that middle C.” She gunned down a healthy slug of the chardonnay. “I’ve got your fucking middle C right here.”
At least the house was not as crowded these days. Since the basic rhythm tracks had all been put down—at last! It had taken a few heart to heart talks with the Nerdlys about easing up on their anal retentive obsessions with perfection to finally get them done—Ted and Ben had both gone home to Los Angeles for now. They would need to come back when the overdubs began in another month or so, but for now, they actually had spare bedrooms in the house and a lot less drama going on.
Not that Pauline was completely happy about the situation. They were still paying Ben and Ted even though they were not here and were not producing anything. Jake and Celia had insisted upon it. Both had taken leaves of absence from their normal jobs in order to participate in the recording process, thus cutting off that income source. Since it was unreasonable for them to ask their respective employers if they could come back from their LOAs and then go back out again when the overdubs and mixing process began, it was decided—not by her, to be sure—that the best solution was for them to just stay on the LOAs and KVA Records would pay them what they would have been making had they gone back to work. That meant the LLC was shelling out the equivalent of both a community college professor’s salary and a paramedic’s salary every two weeks. It was not as much as they had been paying them as musicians, but they weren’t getting anything in return out of the deal.