The audition went flawlessly, much to everyone’s surprise and relief. They went through “Burn,” “Changing Gears,” and “Rust,” and Allen played them all note-for-note as they had been recorded. Just to make him work for it, the band walked him through “Ashes and Bone,” the new, unrecorded tune. He picked it up immediately. Case felt an odd sorrow at that, but she tried not to let it show.
Thirty minutes after the start of the first audition, Ragman got itself a new bass player.
***
“I’ve been thinking about what Erin said,” Danny announced to Case later that night. They were in bed, as usual, but still in their clothes for once. Sex was the farthest thing from either of their minds right then.
“Me, too,” Case admitted. She’d done her best to stay angry at Erin, but the anger had eroded away day by day, and now she simply missed her. There was more in that fifth-Beatle joke than just a joke, she was starting to realize. With Quentin and Erin both gone, the band felt like a technically good but soulless facsimile of Ragman. Once she’d admitted that she missed Erin, she had been forced to revisit that day in the practice room, and it had opened up questions she had thought she’d never ask.
“I’m not saying we should have canceled the tour,” Danny said. “But maybe we should have waited or something. I just saw the whole thing slipping away from us, and I felt like we had to do
something
right away.”
Case rolled onto her side and put her hand on Danny’s chest. “I know.” She wanted to leave it at that, but she forced herself to continue. “I think music is the only thing I’m really good at. Without it, I’ll be asking ‘Would you like a to-go box?’ and collecting shitty tips the rest of my life.” She sighed. “So when Erin said we ought to cancel the tour, I blew up. There were probably a million better ways to handle that.”
Danny put his hand on top of hers. “I don’t know. Yeah, I suppose.” He turned his head and looked her in the eye. “Do you think she’ll accept an apology?”
“Maybe.” Erin’s self-righteousness bugged Case a lot, but probably only because she was right, or at least she was painfully close to being right. It would suck, but Case could talk to her.
“I think we’ve gotta do the tour, though,” Danny said. “I really feel that. Don’t you?”
Case nodded.
***
Ten days before the tour.
Erin hadn’t been at work in over a week, so it wasn’t as easy as running into her at the restaurant and making up. She wasn’t answering her phone, either. Case would have to show up at her apartment, and she dreaded that idea. In Case’s world, confrontations had largely been short, violent, and final—either outright physical brawls or shouting matches that Case walked away from, making sure to burn the bridge behind her. The scorched-earth model of human interaction, so to speak. Only now was she willing to concede that maybe that model hadn’t served her all that well in the past. Trouble was, she wasn’t quite sure how to replace it.
She parked in the lot at Erin’s apartment complex. Her stomach, she was darkly amused to note, was full of butterflies—and moths, grasshoppers, and a whole insect army besides, from the feel of it. How was she even supposed to start this conversation? And how would she avoid getting pissed off and doing something unreasonable? She had no idea.
Oh, well. “Do something, even if it’s wrong” had been one of the few pieces of advice her father had ever given her, and it seemed applicable now.
She got out of the car and walked up the two flights of stairs to Erin’s apartment. She raised her fist to knock on the door, and then stopped. No epiphany had occurred to her on the way up the stairs, but the butterflies seemed to be hosting a keg party now.
You could leave,
she thought.
“Fuck that. Do something, even if it’s wrong.”
She knocked. No sound came from inside the apartment, and she wondered if she’d worked herself up for nothing. Maybe Erin was out somewhere—but, no. Case had seen her car in the lot. She knocked again.
“Just a minute!” Case heard movement, and the bolt slid back.
And there was Erin. She was in her pajamas—ghastly purple and green flannel things—with the phone in one hand. Her brow furrowed as she looked at Case.
“Hi,” she said.
That one word was enough. Case had been mortally afraid, she realized, that Erin would stare blankly at her for a short eternity and, when Case couldn’t think of anything to say, slam the door in her face. But now it was going to be okay.
“Hi,” Case said. She still wasn’t sure how to approach this problem, but she knew she wasn’t any good with subtlety. “They’re gonna revoke my Tough Chick card for saying this, but I miss you.”
There was a pause. Case could hear a car horn honking down the street. One floor down, a door opened and then closed. She felt her face getting warm. She’d given Erin an opening big enough to drive a truck through, and a list of potential biting retorts scrolled through her head. Top of the list was
You miss me? Just like you miss Quentin?
Erin wasn’t saying anything, though, and her expression hadn’t changed. It was still—what? Expectant? Accusing? Maybe just puzzled? Case didn’t know, but she was starting to think this had been a horrible mistake.
“I’m sorry,” Case said. “I mean—we’re all sorry. But I shouldn’t have blown up like that.”
Still no answer.
“Look, I didn’t mean—didn’t mean to bother you. I guess I should get going.”
“You wanna come in for a minute?” A ghost of Erin’s old grin hovered at the corners of her mouth.
“God, yes.”
Erin held the door open for her.
***
“It’s good to see you,” Erin said. “I didn’t think it would be, but . . .” She shrugged.
“Yeah.” Case sat on the arm of a living-room chair. “I wasn’t kidding. I do miss you. I understand if you want to stay away from the band, but I’d hate for one stupid argument to . . . you know.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it stupid,” Erin said.
“I didn’t mean you were stupid,” Case said hastily. “I mean, I didn’t handle it that well.”
Erin put the phone down and sat. “No, you didn’t. Neither did I, though.” She held her hands open. “It’s hard to keep everything in perspective. How do you weigh the opportunity of a lifetime in a situation like this? I don’t know.”
Case shook her head. “Neither do I.”
“Did you find another bass player?”
Case looked down at her hands. “Yeah.” She felt the urge to explain, but Erin nodded.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Erin shrugged. “I do know that mourning can only go on so long before it becomes unhealthy. I have to admit, yesterday I started thinking about who was going to handle the email list and the merch booth during the tour.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, not really. Work isn’t a bad way of coping, they tell me. Also, I think it might be cool to book a homecoming show here in Dallas. Make it your last stop.”
Case laughed. “You
have
been thinking about this.”
“Nothing definite, but yeah.”
“Cool.”
Case thought that maybe everything was going to be okay after all.
The tour started in Atlanta on the fourteenth of June. They’d managed to buy a conversion van by selling Danny’s car and making a loan on hideously unfavorable terms, and the five of them crammed into it with all their gear.
“This is cozy,” Danny remarked.
“See how you like it in another three weeks,” was Case’s reply. Johnny laughed an eerie laugh that ran up the scale and back down again and gave Case the creeps.
Nonetheless, spirits were high. They arrived at the venue with ample time, and Case was thrilled at the luxury of getting a real, professional sound check.
“Gonna be scary,” she said. “I’ll actually be able to hear Johnny for once.”
Johnny grinned. “That
is
scary.”
The guys from Crashyard walked in as the road crew was setting up (“Roadies!” Danny had said, laughing and pointing at the crew. “We get roadies!”), and they offered words of encouragement.
“You’ll do fine,” Kerry Buchanan said. He smiled wickedly. “Just try to forget that there will be two thousand people watching your every move.”
Case looked at Johnny, expecting him to start coming down with a bad case of nerves starting right then, but he looked jazzed. “No problem,” he said, showing his teeth, and she thought he meant it.
Sound check went smoothly (one of the mic cables turned out to be dead, but the sound crew identified that and swapped it out in record time), and the five of them laughed and joked backstage.
“A real road crew, a real sound check,
and
a real green room,” Danny said wonderingly. “What’s the world coming to?” They had a few hours before the show, but nobody suggested going anywhere. Erin asked if anybody was hungry. Nobody was.
“I’m too nervous to eat,” Case admitted. “It’s a big show.” Danny nodded his agreement. Even Johnny’s cocksure swagger didn’t look so hot on a face that had taken on the color and texture of pale cheese. Allen looked frankly terrified, and he got out his bass a full two hours before the show and started warming up.
“Little early for that, huh?” Case asked him.
He gave her a sheepish grin. “It gives me something to focus on besides sheer terror.”
That actually didn’t sound half bad. Case got out her own guitar and started practicing scales. Twenty minutes later, Danny produced a practice pad from somewhere and started whacking on it. “You know we’re all going to be too tired to actually play by the time we go on, right?” he joked.
An hour passed, then another. Case had expected her anxiety to wane as the show got closer—she hadn’t been nervous before a show in years—but it worsened.
“It’s a big show,” she said to nobody in particular.
Fifteen minutes before the show was supposed to start, Johnny raised his hand. “Quiet,” he said. “You hear that?”
Case stopped her restless hands and listened. There was a dull grumbling noise that sounded muted but vast. She felt her face pale.
“Holy shit. That’s the crowd.”
Danny’s eyes opened wider than she would have imagined possible. “Shut the door, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “I don’t need to hear that.”
The crowd couldn’t have been
that
big, Case thought; she would be surprised if the room was even half full for the opening act. Then she remembered the size of the room. Half full might be more than a thousand people.
Over the next fifteen minutes, the anxiety in the room ratcheted up to levels that nearly shrieked. At five to nine, Case stood up. “Are we going, or what?”
“Gotta wait for the road manager,” Danny said. “He’ll tell us.”
“Is he gonna make us wait until the Second Coming?” she snapped, even though they had five minutes before the show was even scheduled to start—and she knew they’d go on late. It was like the eleventh commandment: Thou shalt go on late.
At ten after, the road manager popped his head into the room.
“Showtime,” he said.
The four players looked at each other.
“Give ’em hell!” Erin said cheerfully.
***
They await us,
“Johnny” said. It never shut up anymore, offering a seething running commentary on everything, and today gave no exception or reprieve.
These are your people, John. These are
our
people. They hunger for us, though they do not yet know it. We can raise them above their miserable little lives. Make them better. Make them something more.
Yeah, I know,
Johnny told it. He didn’t, not really, but he didn’t know what “Johnny” was talking about most of the time, only that it wasn’t a good idea to piss it off. “Johnny” was the only thing keeping him steady right now, keeping him from running down the back alley in a complete panic.
They took the stage in the dark, but there was no disguising the sound of hundreds of people, and the sharper eyes in the crowd saw the members of Ragman even in the low light and raised a cheer.
They’ve been standing around bored for hours,
Johnny thought.
Of course they’re cheering.
Nonetheless, the sound bolstered his courage.
He took his place in front of the microphone, and the lights came up.
Do you see them, John? They will be ours one day soon. Every one of them.
He couldn’t
not
see them. Christ, there were so many!
Behind him, the band started. “Burn,” of course—always a crowd-pleaser, and with the short set typical of an opening act, they had to make every song count. They started too fast,
way
too fast, but maybe that wouldn’t be too bad. The song cooked—maybe it would cook that much hotter faster.
Then it was time to come in, and “Johnny”—the voice, the thing in his head—surged forward. It didn’t bother asking anymore, just channeled itself through his vocal cords.