“Well?” she didn’t exactly whisper.
“Well what?”
“You were saying there’s a few things I could do?”
“Oh, yeah. I suppose there are.”
“And what might those be, exactly?”
“Well…” he offered her another smoke (which she yanked out of his hand forcefully), “You could always shoot your manager.”
She stared at him for a second. At first, she thought he was kidding. Yet, he had a look on his face that was… blank. It was sort of a dark, unfeeling stare that communicated all sorts of silent promises. She still didn’t believe that he meant it, but the thought of it made her heart skip in a bad way.
“Are… wait…” she raised an eyebrow, “…you’re not serious, are you?”
“Of course I’m not serious, dumbass! The hell is the matter with you?! Killing your band manager? Jesus.”
Just then, Lena began to laugh. It started out as an awkward laugh, before moving on to relief. But as soon as his grin widened to unearth the most infectious laugh she had ever heard, she found herself genuinely laughing along with him. Suddenly, she felt as if she had known him for months, or perhaps even years.
“But seriously,” she began, after the laughter died down, “what should I do?”
“I suppose you should find a new guitarist for the show, honestly,” he said in a more-or-less serious tone. “I mean, you can’t give this show up. It’s too important.”
“How do you know it’s so important?”
“You’re the ‘Mad Bunny’, aren’t you?” he said casually, in an almost mocking tone.
“Ah, yes… that nonsense.”
“Don’t worry about it. That’s how labels work. They write this whole interesting backstory that’s just barely possible, so that people get sucked into it instead of the music. No, I get it.”
“So, you don’t believe my story, then?” she laughed, feigning insult.
“Oh, I believe you’re a strange one—that’s obvious. But to think you escaped from a Stasi prison all by yourself, and then strangled a few guards before running across the Wall? No, ma’am… that you did not do.”
“Oh?” she feigned even more insult, “How do you know? I might just be a secret street assassin.”
“Then why in God’s name would you front-line a band?” He had a point.
“Ok, so the stories aren’t true. But still, it is an important night and unfortunately, I don’t know anyone that knows our music.” In a testing sort of tone, and hoping beyond hope, she added, “Unless you know a guitarist that might want to plug in?”
“Get me the music and I’ll jam with ya,” he said matter-of-factly.
Lena stared at him blankly for a few idle seconds. Was he being serious? After a few more seconds of making sure she had heard him correctly, she awkwardly responded as graciously as the surprise would allow. As if by the Gods, sweet serendipity had finally arrived when it was actually needed!
“Uh… sure?”
“Sweet.” he said with a boyish look, before standing up and wiping off his dirty behind, “Now, I gotta go get sound check done, smoke with the boys, and then I’ll hook up with you so we can hash out a few notes. Sound cool?”
“Uh, sure… yeah, sure. That’d be great!” she stuttered, “Uh, thank you!”
He began walking back towards the loading port, going through his pockets for whatever odds and ends band folk from the rest of the world stuffed in their pants for no particular reason. Before he was more than two meters away, however, he turned around to offer Lena a handshake while nonchalantly stating, “Pleased to meet you by the way… I’m the lead singer from The Dead Weights, Matt York.”
Der Gesuchte Anführer
It was ten minutes into the second band’s set and twenty minutes until Lena’s, yet Victor was still nowhere to be seen. Under normal circumstances—well, more normal, perhaps—she would have been a basket-case in response. Yet, despite this complication (and the many others it brought along with it), Lena’s band was doing quite well. Once Matt York had met up with his band, he had immediately informed them that all of his free time would be dedicated to learning Nicht Zustimmen’s music. Either he was an exceptionally quick learner, or their music was deplorably easy to play. In either case, he had mastered the majority of it within a few cigarettes, to be immediately followed by a brief ‘safety meeting’ in the green room.
“The humble safety meeting,” Matt rubbed his hands together, “is perhaps the most important meeting a band can have.”
“Oh?” Lena asked him.
The green room was everything you would expect from a rock venue: far too small, barely-painted and horribly furnished. The mirrors were stained with what looked to be the imprints of various body parts, and what was left of the soiled carpet was covered in cigarette burns and vomit stains, or worse. Several penises were painted on the walls and ceiling in what looked like finger-paint, and one wall was absolutely covered in stuck-on beer labels. A pile of de-labeled bottles sat in one corner, next to a white bucket filled with hand-towels for no apparent reason. Lena could swear she heard the wet, slurping noises of a particularly giggly make-out session coming from the tiny closet in the back.
“Oh yes!” he responded with a gleam in his eye, before reaching into a backpack and pulling out some rather wicked looking paraphernalia, “Here are the items of discussion…” he said as he pulled a pipe and a small bag of weed out of his pocket. “And now we wait for the Boss.”
She didn’t have to wonder about who the ‘Boss’ was for very long. Perhaps thirty seconds after Matt had stuffed the pipe full and lit it, the door to the green room swung wide open to reveal the sound engineer who probably should have been doing sound-related things.
“I see you started without me, asshole,” the engineer grumped in passable English.
“Well, if you had gotten here quicker, I wouldn’t have had to, jackass.”
“You Brits are all the same,” the engineer said, stealing the lit pipe from Matt.
“What the hell do you mean by that?!”
“What I mean is…” the engineer took a long drag on the pipe, and then began coughing furiously, “you Brits… cough… always… cough… show up late, and… cough… suck at your sound checks… cough… and then bring the weakest weed I’ve… cough… ever had.”
“Well maybe if you Germans learned to use your inside-voices once in a while and enunciate, we’d get our sound checks done quicker.”
“Stupid… cough… wunkers…”
“It’s wankers, idiot.”
Lena stood aghast as the two continued to spar through a thick cloud of smoke. She was beginning to wonder if the safety meeting would ever begin (or if it had anything to do with safety at all).
“Well, offer… cough… the lady some!” the engineer bawled.
“Are you even allowed to smoke?” Matt quipped. “Won’t they execute you for smoking this or something?”
“I can do whatever the hell I want.” Lena replied acidly.
“Whoa…” the engineer warned sarcastically, “don’t… cough… mess with this one.”
“Bah, what’s she gonna do?” Matt joked, “Call the Stasi on me?”
“Screw the Stasi,” Lena retorted, “and screw you.”
“You hear that, Matt?” Not just ‘fuck you’ but ‘screw you’ too. Little Lady is pulling out the big guns.”
“Oh screw…” Lena started, before figuring out the game, “Fuck you.”
“Be my guest,” Matt replied, “but first, stick this in your face.”