"I'm not sure, exactly," Matt admitted. "I'm pretty sure it has something to do with her though."
Jake simply shrugged. When it came right down to it, he didn't really care what it was that put Nerdly in a better mood, he was just glad that something had. Being shunned and held in contempt by one's oldest friend was never a fun thing. And when the friend in question was in the running for King of the Nerds, it was even worse.
They dialed in the effects pedals on Matt's guitar one by one — the process taking the better part of thirty minutes. Nerdly and Sharon then started working on Charlie's bass — which he'd just finished cleaning and sterilizing with disinfectant-soaked wipes. Charlie's bass had been wiped down so many times with these wipes that the finish on it was now faded, bleached, and completely ruined in several places.
"Hey, guys," he told Matt and Jake, "did I tell you about the new sponsor I'm signing with for the tour?"
"Pauline said you were getting an endorsement from some animal rights group," Jake said.
"That's right," Charlie said. "They're called HAITA — Humans Against the Immoral Treatment of Animals. They've invited me to be a member of their organization and a spokesperson because of my opposition to eating meat and my promotion of the vegetarian lifestyle."
"What the fuck's up with that shit, freak boy?" Matt asked. "I thought you were a vegetarian because you were afraid of tapeworms and trichinosis."
"I am," Charlie said. "But HAITA doesn't care about that — or at least they don't know about it. They're giving me eighty thousand dollars a tour to put a HAITA sticker on my bass and to do a few magazine spots for them. I get their monthly newsletter for free too."
"Aren't they the freaks that sneak people inside slaughterhouses so they can film the fuckin' cows getting killed?" Matt asked.
Charlie shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "They didn't say nothin' about that."
"That's them," Jake said. "They think we should all stop eating meat of all kind because the animals don't like it."
"Fuck the animals," Matt said. "If they didn't want us to eat them, then they should've evolved better."
"They don't think people should fish either," Jake said. "They say the fish feels too much pain when you catch it."
"No fishing?" Matt nearly screamed. "Because the fish feel pain? That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard of."
"They do have a good point there, Matt," Charlie advised. "Fish do have a fully intact and functioning nervous system. It stands to reason that they feel pain when you hook them."
"Do they feel pain when a fucking grizzly bear hooks them out of the water and eats them alive?" Matt asked. "At least I kill the motherfuckers before I eat them. Do they want to have guards standing by at the rivers to keep the bears away from the fish? And then what happens to the bears? Now they're fucking starving."
"Uh... well, I think they look at that as more of nature thing," Charlie said. "They think that humans no longer need to eat animals to survive."
"Are you preaching to me, freak boy?" Matt said menacingly. "Don't you dare start telling me what kind of fucking food I should be eating."
"No," Charlie said, terrified, "I wasn't..."
"You start preaching animal rights to me," Matt said, "and I'm gonna go down to Cabo, catch a two hundred pound marlin, bring it back here alive, and then shove the whole fucking thing up your ass."
"No, really," Charlie said. "I'm just doing it for the money. I swear."
"You fuckin' better be," Matt said.
"Charlie!" Sharon yelled over. "Give us a rhythm on the bass so we can dial you in!"
"Right," Charlie said, standing up and moving as far away from Matt as he could get. He began to thump out the rhythm to It's In The Book.
"Fucking HAITA," Matt mumbled, shaking his head. "Just when you think that asshole can't get any freakier."
"Yeah," Jake agreed. "He's a few grams short of an ounce all right, but listen to him play that bass. He's fuckin' magic with it."
"Yeah," Matt said sourly. "He's all right. I still can't wait until Darren gets strong enough to come back."
Jake said nothing to this. Whether or not Darren would ever be able to return to the band was still quite in question. Though he had recovered his ability to walk and move and even lift things, he remained dreadfully weakened by the aftereffects of the botulism toxin on his muscles and nervous system. He had very little endurance for any kind of exertion, generally tiring out after less then ten minutes of repetitious activity. He was going to physical therapy to try to regain his strength, but over the past two months it was reported that he was skipping out on many of his sessions and leaving early from the ones he did go to. He seemed to be locked into the grip of a major depression and there was some circumstantial evidence that he was abusing alcohol and prescription pain pills again.
"Jake!" Sharon yelled. "Give us some guitar with effects pedal two so we can see how it mixes with the bass."
"Yes, ma'am," Jake said, stomping down on pedal two beneath his microphone stand, the pedal that put his guitar into acoustic mode. "Play something mellow, Charlie," he said. "There ain't any acoustic in Book."
"Oh... right," Charlie said. He switched to the rhythm for Point Of Futility and Jake played the backing guitar until Sharon told him to stop.
In all, it took more than two hours until Nerdly and Sharon reached the point where Matt and Jake had to tell them that enough was enough.
"The sound is good, Nerdly," Jake said. "Why don't we try playing a couple of songs now?"
"Are you sure?" Nerdly asked from the soundboard. "I think if I tweaked a little more on the main strings section and played with the low end on the rhythm, I might be able to..."
"Just get your ass over here and sit down behind the piano!" Matt yelled. "Enough is fucking enough."
"Well... all right," Nerdly said. He was unoffended by Matt's outburst. After so many years, it was pretty much the norm.
The planned opening song for the tour was Can't Chain Me, from the It's In The Book album. They did a run through of the song as they normally performed it. Since they were out of practice, they had to stop and restart twice because of mistakes. The first was when Coop played the wrong drum intro to the second verse. The second was when Jake started mixed up the words and put the first half of the second verse in the place usually reserved for the second half of the first verse.
"You ever notice," Matt asked the band at large, "that Jake never fucks up his songs? He only fucks up my songs."
"I could fuck up a couple of mine if it would make you feel better," Jake replied.
The third time was a charm and they went through the tune flawlessly. They then had a discussion about whether they should play it just like that or if they should alter the opening or the closing in some way in order to fit the situation.
"We gotta have some kind of different opening," Jake said. "It's the first song of our first international tour. This is the first time that most of these people will have ever seen us live. We can't just walk out on stage and start playing."
"Why the fuck not?" asked Matt, the die-hard traditionalist.
"I think we should start with a pre-recorded intro track," Nerdly suggested. "Maybe something like the 2001 Space Odyssey theme. Play it all the way through while the stage is dark and then, when the last note fades out, the lights come on and we launch immediately into the main riff."
"Start the tune with the main riff?" Coop asked. "You want to skip the intro completely?"
"Why not?" Nerdly asked. "It'll be revolutionary."