Strings (5 page)

“
First of all, it’s not a
headlining gig.” Her voice takes on some reticence like a boat
taking on water.

“
Okay.” Well, shit, no
skin off my nose, I guess. We can hardly book gigs in our own
hometown thanks to the influx of “creative”
types—
wank, wank
—bombarding the university with amateur,
here-today-gone-tomorrow bands. They proliferate like fucking
viruses, lowering expectations among the beer-guzzling frat and
sorority house masses. If your daddy’s rich enough and knows
people, he can get your band on at the bigger clubs. Meanwhile,
actual
talent
gets tossed by the wayside.

“
And, Kate might need
convincing.” Now Jillian sounds downright reluctant.

My stomach stops, drops, and rolls. Dizzy, I
mount the curb, tighten my coat around me, and grab the nearest
lamppost choked by unlit Christmas lights. “Why’s that,
Jillian?”

A long pause. “You’ll be touring with Killer
Dixon.”

Mother fuck. Skunk fuck. God-doodle-damn it,
fuck.

I close my eyes and concentrate on the cold
air rushing in and out of my lungs. “Way to fatten me up only to
shoot me in the ass. I’ll bet you like your meat rare too. Is it
too late to get back on at Vertigo Palace?”

“
Now hold on a minute.
It’s not as bad as you think.”

“
So, Kate
isn’t
gonna flip her
fucking wig and shoot bullets from her tits when she hears this?
Ain’t no way I’ll be in the room when you drop that bomb. Not
without a bulletproof vest and tear gas to cover my
escape.”

Jillian sighs.

“
Yeah, just what I
thought.” God
damn
it.

“
If we frame it the right
way—”

“
We
? Uh-uh. There’s no
we
. There’s
you
.
You
are the manager.
You
defuse this shit
bomb. That’s what we pay you for.”

“
You haven’t paid me in
two months—”

“
Well…” Okay, point
taken.

“—
which is why you’re
touring with Killer Dixon. They
do
pay me. Rather well.”

“
You’re full of shit.
They
can’t
be
making more money than we are. They fucking suck.” Okay,
maybe
suck
is a
harsh word, but Cherry Buzz Float is a hundred times better. And
we’re chicks who play gritty, raw music that actually means
something. We don’t need all those fancy guitar pedals, vocal
digitizers, or synths. Our tunes are organic. Unfiltered. Straight
from the fucking gut. We’re “impure” by today’s digital standards
of perfection and damn proud of it. Killer Dixon? Those fuckers
sound like everybody else. Nothing unique about them or their
music.

“
Danny OD’d one time too
many, so Rax and Toombs kicked him out. The new guy has a rich
daddy, marginal talent, and a huge rebellious streak. His father
gave him a tour bus, a wad of cash, and his blessing. That’s where
we are.”

I smack the back of my head against the
pole. “This bites. Why’d they have to kick Danny out? Rax is the
one who stole Kate’s song. If he hadn’t fucked us over, we’d have
been headlining a year ago.” I say the words, but my realism
circuitry overrides the false optimism.

The truth is, the song in question wasn’t
all that great to begin with. But it’s the principle of the thing.
You don’t steal someone else’s shit. Period.

“
As manager of
both
bands, I have a
vested interest in staying neutral on this one. The song rights
issue is between Kate and Rax. They’ve beaten this horse to death.
Unless Cherry Buzz Float wants to sue, I think you should put aside
your differences for the sake of the band.”

“
Yeah, but which band?
Sounds like we’re doing
them
a favor by going on tour with them.”

Jillian says nothing.

I get the feeling she
knows something I don’t. Probably something obvious that I
should
know, but I’m too
stubborn and pissed off to notice.

“
Look, I know you’re fond
of your little…boys”—I wrinkle my nose—“but Kate’s not gonna budge.
And neither will I.” Kate might be a total psychopathic bitch, but
she’s my bandmate, and I have to side with her.

“
Okay. If you’re willing
to sacrifice your dreams because of some stupid argument that
happened two years ago, give ’em all up.” I picture Jillian
throwing her hands in the air as she always does when she gets fed
up with my shit. “But I’m going with Killer Dixon, whether you do
or not.”

I freeze.

“
That sounds a wee bit
like an ultimatum.” I don’t do well with ultimatums. They give me
really bad gas.

“
It is.”

My stomach gurgles.

I can’t believe this.
“You’d cut us loose for Killer Dixon because their new guy
has
money
? This
is an all-time low, even for you, Jillian. You’ve been our manager
for four years. You’re just gonna let us go?”

Shit, Jillian’s the only manager we’ve ever
had. And despite the fact that I hate her, I really like her. She
kicks us in the ass when we need it and pushes us harder than we
think we can go. She may be a slave driver, but if it weren’t for
Jillian, we would never have made it out of Kate’s parents’
garage.

“
Like it or not, we all
need Killer Dixon. They could be your ticket out of Athens. And
mine too.” Her voice shucks some of its edge.

My heart loses the hardness it worked up a
while ago to walk out on Shades. Now it’s soggy and conflicted,
which just pisses me off more. I don’t want to admit it, but
Jillian may be right. Not about Killer Dixon being worth a shit,
but about the opportunity to break out and expand our audience. We
may never get another shot like this.

In order to seize the day, I may have to let
go of some pride, which is a pain in the ass. It plays havoc with
my mojo and shit.

I sigh. “When do you want to talk to Kate
and Jinx?”

“
Let’s do it at rehearsal
tonight.”

I feel like I’m plotting a murder. Maybe I
am. “Okay. I’ll see you after work.”

“
Letty?”

“
Yeah?”

“
Thanks.” Her voice
changes with that one word. Nothing obvious like a crack, but
something soft—like respect, or maybe hope—curls the edges
upward.

The line clicks dead, and I stare at my
ancient phone’s cracked home screen. One day soon, my band’s album
cover will fill the blank space there. I reserved the spot when I
got the cheap piece o’ shite, and despite all the speed bumps, I
haven’t given up hoping that it’s gonna happen.

It’s
gotta
happen.

Shit, Meet Fan

After an invigorating night of schlepping
dry pig meat and soggy french fries for cheap-ass,
dollar-tip-leaving motherfuckers, I head for the East Side to
Jillian’s. She has a big barn behind her house where we rehearse.
Nestled on three acres of farm property, Jillian’s place is quiet
and peaceful with no neighbors to complain about the noise. Only
downside is at this time of year, you need a couple of inches of
blubber to weather the cold, and my threadbare coat ain’t cutting
it.

Kate and Jinx started practice without me.
They always do when I work late, which is fine. Saves me the
trouble of listening to Kate’s bitching. Wonder what it’ll be
tonight. I’ll bet someone gave her sneaky looks in the coffee shop
where she goes to write songs. Or maybe she’ll go off about
so-and-so dick-sucking their way onto the Vertigo Palace stage
again. She’s so fucking paranoid. If she weren’t the best damn
guitarist around, I’d have kicked her to the curb ages ago. As it
is, she fucking rocks, so I tolerate her fits and mood swings.

Jillian lifts a brow at me the second I walk
through the barn door. Guess it’s her signal I should don my
CDC-issued hazmat suit while she cranks up the industrial-sized
fan.

Vroom, vroom.

Jillian lights a cigarette. She wears her
usual business suit—gray slacks with sensible heels—which looks
ridiculous surrounded by bales of hay and farm equipment. She’s a
paralegal by day but wants to get out of that biz to focus on
managing her two bands. What the fuck is a paralegal, anyway?
Jillian’s a hard-ass broad, so I’m guessing she bitch-slaps
criminals for a living. Criminals or lawyers. Same thing,
really.

“
Kate, I want to fill you
in about the tour,” Jillian says.

“
Yeah, what about it?”
Kate slaps her hands on her scrawny hips and knocks a wisp of black
hair out of her eyes with an impatient puff. To look at her, you’d
think she was a starving, coke-addict model rather than a
guitarist. Well, again, same thing.

“
Let’s not beat around the
bush. Just tell her.” I back up, cross my arms, and tuck my fists
loosely into my pits. If I have to start swinging, I wanna be
ready.

Poor Jinx can tell shit’s about to go down.
Head lowered, she grabs her drumsticks and bounds off her
stool.

For as hard as she beats the drums, Jinx is
more timid than an abused puppy scrounging for food beside a
7-Eleven dumpster. Except when she’s on stage. When she’s behind
her kit with the lights shining across her shoulders and sweat
glistening on her skin, she’s a beautiful blond blur of rage-fueled
enchantment. A ninja pixie. A butcher goddess.

Not trying to be funny, but I wonder if Jinx
has some kind of social anxiety problem.

Jillian pulls a heavy drag off her cigarette
and exhales through her nose. The ensuing smoke cloud shrouds her
face for a few seconds. She flicks the ash into an empty Diet Coke
can. “You’re going on with Killer Dixon, and they’re headlining.
Now, I know how you feel about Rax, but—”

“
Oh,
helll
no.” Kate backs up, cleans an
invisible window with her palm, and draws a spell circle with her
chin. I’m pretty sure she sucks her teeth too. “Hell.
Fuckin’
. No.”

I shift weight between my feet. Jinx
flat-out cowers. It’s fixin’ to get ugly up in here. I scan the
barn for potential weapons. At least if we need to bury any bodies,
there’s plenty of land around.

Jillian stands from the square hay bale
she’s been sitting on and points with her cigarette finger. “Hear
me out before you have your little hissy fit.”

Suddenly, it’s not so cold in the barn.
Flaring tempers can do that to a place.

“
I don’t know what
that’s
supposed to
mean—” Here goes Kate’s chicken-neck thing again.

“
Of course, you do, Kate.”
Jillian’s faded blue eyes pick up some extra color with the rising
volume of her voice. “You’re a child. When you don’t get your way,
you throw tantrums. You need to learn to control your anger. It
would get you a hell of a lot farther in life.”

Whoa. But kinda hard to argue with that
point.

“
And since we’re on the
subject”— Jillian’s just warming up now —“if you had let that shit
with Rax go when it started two years ago, you might have obsessed
a little less about everyone else flying past you up the popularity
ranks and focused on how to climb to the top yourself. Face it. In
this business, shit happens. I don’t give a fuck about your beef
with Rax. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. Move the fuck on with
your life, and write some goddamn music.”

Kate stares slack-jawed at Jillian as if
she’s been slapped. Silence fills the barn as accusing gazes bounce
back and forth between them.

I release the breath I’ve been holding and
take a tentative step forward. “I’m not wild about touring with
Killer Dixon, either, but it’s not like we have to interact with
them. We can have our side of the bus, and they’ll have theirs. We
go on stage. They go on stage. Pack everything up, then back to our
side of the bus. No talking required.”

“
Rax
stole
my song, Letty.” Kate’s voice
is cold and low and spiked with venom. “
Our
song. Possibly our
livelihood.”

“
Yeah, but what did he do
with it? Did he make millions? Is he bathing in vats of champagne
every night? No. That dickhead works at a fucking gas
station.”

The remaining words on the tip of my tongue
have never been uttered. Maybe it’s time they should be. I don’t
want to piss her off, but I can’t hold it in any longer. “Did you
ever stop to think maybe the song wasn’t as good as we
thought?”

Kate snaps her gaze to mine like a whip. The
lash stings.

“
Let’s be honest.” I
glance at Jillian, whose slowing breaths back me up. “Killer Dixon
is a
decent
band.
Not better than us, but pretty good. They have a larger following,
more songs in their catalogue, and bigger name
recognition.”

God, it hurts to admit this shit. My pride’s
been punched in the nads by the truth over and over again, but I’ve
denied it as much as Kate. Nobody wants to hear they’re not as good
as they think they are. Time for us to face the facts.

“
Now they’ve got a tour
bus with space for us. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. A new
chapter in our band’s history. Would it really be so bad to ride
their coattails to fame and then fart in their faces when we blow
past them? Hell, we could even light the farts.”