“Uh ... okay,” Jim said, wondering if he should be writing this down. “You’re sure she’s okay with this?”
“I’m sure,” he said. “She gets to fuck me all the time. It’s a novelty when she gets to take down some strange schlong.”
“I see,” Jim said, envisioning having sex with the porn star he had seen in many a movie.
“So ... you in, or what?”
“I’m in,” Jim said.
“Righteous,” Matt said. “Now pick up the lighter. This bong ain’t gonna hit itself.”
He picked it up and took a huge hit, feeling the potent bud go almost immediately to his head. He was still employed, had even gotten a raise, and soon there was a good chance he would be fucking Mary Ann Cummings.
Life was good.
Chapter 22: Under Pressure
Birmingham, Alabama
January 25, 1996
The Celia Valdez show tonight—the seventeenth of the first leg of the Two Too Much tour—was at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex, a multi-use center in downtown Birmingham. The coliseum of the complex seated 18,500 for concerts. The venue had been sold out long before and the scalpers were offering nosebleed seat tickets for sale for an average price of two hundred dollars. And people were paying for them.
The limousine carrying Celia and her band pulled up to the loading door of the coliseum at 4:30 PM, local time, two hours before the doors would open for the crowd, three hours before showtime. The caravan of tractor-trailer rigs and crew buses were already parked there. Celia and the band had just finished the show-day ritual of music store visits to sign autographs (two of them) and radio station interviews (two of those as well). Now it was time to disappear into the venue until the show was over and the crowd had gone home.
They got out of the vehicle one by one and headed for the man door, which was guarded by Josh Cantele, one of the tour’s security guys, and a private security guard that worked for the convention complex. Josh greeted them but did not bother introducing anyone to his companion. He then handed them their all-access backstage passes which they all hung around their necks.
“All right,” Josh told the center guard once they were all inside. “I’m going to take them back to the stage so they can start working on the sound check. From this point onward, no one else comes through this door unless they have an all-access hanging around their neck.”
“I understand,” the private guard said, his eyes still looking at Celia in a manner that was half worship, half lust.
Josh led them through the maze of boxes, packing containers, spools of wire, and other flotsam and jetsam related to assembling the show. They went up a brief staircase and through a door and they were in the backstage area. Larry Candid, the tour manager, was talking something over with Dan Baldovino, head of security. Other roadies were moving from place to place, still setting things up. From out on the stage came the sound of distorted guitar chords being cranked out and then chopped followed by voices shouting back and forth about levels. This was the sound of the primary sound check in progress, performed by the crew to initially set the levels of the amps and speakers to match the arena acoustics. The final sound check would be the fine tuning of the individual instruments and microphones done by the band itself.
Larry saw them enter and his eyes lit up. “Hey, troops!” he greeted enthusiastically, as if he had not seen them in months instead of just a few hours before when they had checked into the Sheraton Hotel across the street. “How were the meet and greets?”
“The usual, Larry,” Celia told him, her voice monotone. Though he was an excellent tour manager, Celia really did not like the man personally. He was a sleazebag extraordinaire.
“Good, good,” Larry said. “Glad to hear it. We’re running a little behind schedule here as you can probably see.”
“How far behind schedule?” Celia wanted to know.
“Twenty or thirty minutes,” he told her.
“What happened?” she asked.
“A little engineering issue,” Larry said. “Nothing big. The ceiling supports did not quite match up with what was on the floor plan the venue provided us, so the monkeys had to figure out a different way to hang the lighting scaffolding and run the power lines. They worked it out, but it put us back a bit. And, as you know, we can’t have people working on the stage area while they’re hanging the scaffolding and the lights. It’s a safety issue.”
“I understand,” Celia said, shrugging. At pretty much every venue there was some kind of technical or engineering or electrical issue that needed to be solved.
“Do you want Josh to show you to the dressing rooms while they get the primary done?” asked Dan.
“No,” Celia said. “We’ll just hang out here if we’re not in the way.”
“You’re not in the way,” Larry assured her.
Everyone found a place to sit down amid the clutter and chaos. Laura chose one of the cable spools that had been placed near the stage door. There was another empty spool next to it. Eric, after carefully watching to see where everyone else sat, made his way over to her when nobody else sat on the spool.
“Is it okay if I sit here, Laura?” he asked shyly. He always called her by her Christian name, never Teach.
“Of course it’s okay,” she told him. “You don’t have to ask.”
This was a bizarre concept for him. Eric would no more sit next to someone without asking than he would wear a white polo shirt and khaki shorts. But, now that he was given permission, he grabbed a seat.
They sat in companionable silence for a bit, watching the roadies dash about, watching Dan speak into his portable radio to other members of the team, hearing the guitar and bass chords come drifting in from out on the stage. Finally, Eric told Laura he had something he wanted to ask her, his eyes even more downcast than normal, his voice even more hesitant than normal.
“What is it?” Laura asked kindly.
“Uh ... well ... it’s just that...” A long pause. “Oh ... never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“Eric,” she said. “I’m not going to forget you said something. You said you had something to ask. So, ask.”
He shook his head again. “It’s stupid,” he said. “And embarrassing. Forget it.”
“Come on now,” Laura told him gently. “I’m your friend, right?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “You really are.”
“And friends can ask each other anything. Don’t be embarrassed. Just ask me what you need to ask me.”
“Well ... it ... it ... has to do with ... you know ... those people.”
“What people?” she asked.
“The people that ... uh ... Coop and Charlie have meet them backstage ... and then take back to the hotel with them.”
“You mean the groupies?” Laura asked. So far, Coop and Charlie were the only ones in the band who had had any dealings with groupies, but they had those dealings pretty much every night. No one begrudged them of that. This was a music tour, after all.
“Right,” Eric said. “The groupies.”
“What about them?” Laura asked. He’s not going to ask me what Coop and Charlie do with those groupies, is he?
He was not. “Well ... the thing is,” he said, “it’s my understanding that Coop and Charlie ... uh ... ask Dan to bring them back for them.”
“Yes,” Laura said. “It’s called a request and one of the unwritten duties of the head of security of a music tour is to ... uh ... see to it that the requests are filled.”
“I see,” Eric said, finally looking up a little now.
“Does it bother you that they do that?” she asked him. “I mean ... I suppose if you’re not used to how things work on the road that it could be a little shocking.”
“No no,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me at all. What I actually was wondering was ... uh ... if maybe ... you know ... if it wasn’t too much trouble, if Dan would be able to ... uh ... uh...”