There was a few seconds’ pause, and then the person who’d come up behind them spoke: “Okay. Whatever.”
George did jump a little bit, but Nomad kept his cool. They looked around—taking it easy, neither man showing surprise nor any hint of what they’d been discussing—and there was Berke, who offered them her own expression of absolute detachment. She wore faded jeans and a wine-red tanktop. She was twenty-six years old, born in San Diego, stood about five-nine, had short-cut curly black hair so thick it was a struggle to pull a brush through it, and eyes almost as dark under unplucked black brows. On the right side of her neck was a small vertical Sanskrit tattoo that, she’d told them, meant ‘Open To The Moment’, though her persona suggested more of a deadbolted door. She had sturdy hands with the strong fingers of the French farmers who swam in her blood. The veins carrying it were prominent in her forearms and wrists, blue channels beneath the white flesh. She was the drummer. Her arms were tight and sculpted, leaving no doubt her profession demanded physical exertion. She was a ‘brickhouse’, as Mike liked to say, due to good genes and the fact that she laced up her New Balances and ran a few miles every chance she got.
“Hey,” Berke said, “Ariel wants to give our waitress a T-shirt.”
George stood up, fished the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to her. “Tell her no free CDs. Got it?”
Berke retreated without comment. A couple of boxes of T-shirts and CDs were in the U-Haul trailer, along with the gear. In sizes of Small, Medium, Large and ExtraLarge, the T-shirt was red with a black handprint splayed across the front, fingers outstretched, and the legend The Five printed on the palm in a font that looked like embossed Dymo plastic label tape.
When Nomad put his sunglasses back on and got to his feet, George asked, “How much do you think she heard?”
“I don’t know, but you should tell everybody before she does. Were you going to wait until the tour was done?”
“No.” George frowned. “Jesus, no. I was just…you know…trying to figure things out.”
“I hope they are figured out.”
“Yeah,” George agreed, and then he walked back to the van with Nomad following. Everybody else had already climbed in through the passenger door on the right side of the van except Ariel, who was coming across the parking lot from the restaurant.
“Those aren’t freebies,” Nomad told her, as George went around to get behind the wheel.
Ariel gave him a look that reminded Nomad of how the teachers in high school had regarded him just before banishing him to the office. “One giveaway won’t break us. It’s for her daughter. And you didn’t have to be rude.”
He climbed up into the shotgun seat beside George, who had retrieved the keys from Berke by way of Terry. Berke was sitting way in the back, with Mike; Terry was sitting behind George, and Ariel slid into the seat next to Terry. It was the usual arrangement, and only varied according to whose turn it was to drive. Jammed into every other available space were the suitcases, duffle bags and carry-alls of six individuals. George started the engine, switched on the air conditioning that stuttered and racketed and smelled of wet socks before it settled more or less into a hum, and then he pulled out of the parking lot and took the ramp back to I-35 North.
They were due at Common Grounds in Waco at three o’clock for load-in and sound check. It was Friday, the 18th of July. On a Friday night, the show would start about ten, give or take. First, though, they had the thing with Felix Gogo, up north of Waco. The instructions had been given by email to George: turn off I-35 onto East Lake Shore Drive and keep going west until he reached North 19th Street, turn right at the intersection and go past Bosqueville on China Spring Road about six miles, couldn’t miss the place.
As they continued away from Round Rock, Nomad was waiting for George to come out with it. The Scumbucket rattled and wheezed across the flat landscape, passing apartment complexes, banks and stripmalls. Passing huge low-roofed warehouses with immense parking lots. Passing farmland now, cows grazing out in the distant pastures that seemed to go on forever.
Nomad was thinking that George might have changed his mind. Just in the last few minutes. That George had decided he wasn’t going to give it up, no way. Give up the dream? After all the work they’d put into this? No fucking way. Nomad felt relief; George had decided to stick to the plan, no matter what lay ahead on what was—as always—a journey into the unknown.
And then, from the back of the van, Berke said casually, “Guys, George has something to tell us. Don’t you, George?”
TWO.
To his credit, George didn’t let the question hang. He had no choice, because only a few seconds after Berke asked it, Mike hesitated in plugging in the earbuds of his iPod and followed it up: “What’s the word, chief?”
A good drummer and bass player were always in sync, George thought. They put down the floor the house was built on. So it ought to be even now, one playing off the other.
But before he said what had to be spoken, before he opened his mouth and let the future tumble out of it, for better or for worse, he had an instant of feeling lost. Of wondering if he was advancing toward a goal or retreating from one, because in this business—in any of the arts, really—success was always a lightning strike away. Yeah, he would do fine as the rep selling audio units on the road. He would get to know the products so well he would know what the client needed before he eyeballed the venue. But was that going to be enough? Was he going to wake up one night when he was forty years old, listening to a clock tick and thinking If I had only stuck it out…
Because that was the sharpest thorn in this tangled bush where the roses always seemed so close and yet so hard to reach, and everybody in the Scumbucket knew it. How long did you give your life to the dream, before it took your life?
“I have nothing,” he said, which he had not meant to say and wished he could reel back in, but it was gone. He could feel John Charles watching him from behind the sunglasses with those eyes that could bore holes through a concrete block. Everyone else was silent, waiting. George shifted in his seat. “I mean…” He didn’t know what he meant, and he was letting the Scumbucket wander over into the left lane so he corrected its path. “I’ve been doing this too long,” he said, and again confused himself. But he had the wheels in control now, and his direction was set. “This is my last time out,” he went on. “I told John, back at the Denny’s. I’m giving it up.” And there it was, the confession of…what? Shame, or resolve? “I’ve got a job,” he said. “I mean, a new job. If I want it, which I do. In Chicago.” He glanced quickly into the rearview mirror and saw that everyone was watching him but Berke, who gazed solemnly out the window. He was aware that he was looking at not just one band but a couple of dozen. Mike alone had played bass in six bands, most of them workmanlike, just solid craftsmen plying their trade, but one—Beelzefudd—that had shown flashes of brilliance and had opened for Alice Cooper on tour in the fall of 2002. It passed through George’s mind that if anybody had paid their dues, these guys had, in bands like Simple Truth, Jake Money, The Black Roses, Garden Of Joe, Wrek, Dillon, The Venomaires, The Wang Danglers, Satellite Eight, Strobe, The Blessed Hours, and on and on. And because of that long list of experiences, they would know only too well—as he did—that people came and went all the time, due to burnout, exhaustion, frustration, drug addiction, death, or whatever. It was just life, cranked up to eleven.