Alan looked down at his watch to confirm how much time they had lost. "Is it twelve-thirty already?"
"Jesus Christ," Dave moaned as Joe and Kurt hopped onto the small stage for their musical performance. "Despite appearances, these guys are actually pretty punctual."
Alan glanced around the coffee shop. While traffic to the counter had been minimal, a handful of customers had been through the door. Aside from himself and Dave, a guy on a laptop sat on the sofa in front of the stage and two people had camped out at a table on the other side of the room.
"They know there's, like, nobody here, right?" Alan asked quietly. "Right?"
Dave flipped his chair around to face the stage and leaned back, settling in for the show. "I don't think they care. I'd get comfortable—this could get interesting."
On the stage, Joe and Kurt finished adjusting their microphones. Kurt tweaked a tuning peg on his guitar and Joe counted off slowly before starting to strum his own guitar. On the other side of the coffee shop, the bell on the door rang as a short girl with dark hair slipped inside. She stood by the front with her arms crossed, watching Joe and Kurt silently.
When Joe started singing, Alan had to do a double-take. His voice had a gentle, empathetic lilt that seemed to have no business coming from the facehole of such an annoying, scraggly street performer.
"When I woke up just the other day
I was dreaming of you, I gotta say.
Just the thought of you made me lose my mind;
you had everything that I left behind.
I loved you dearly, sweet Nicole.
That's why I'm digging this really deep hole.
I promise I'll find you, one of these days,
and bury you . . . so that you'll pa—a—ay.
Sweet Nicole, it's really true,
when I say, that I hate you!
I wish you would just . . . drop down dead.
Please let me drop this anvil on your head.
Whoa-ho-ho-whoa!
I hate you, dear Nicole!
I wanna bury you in this hole!
I wanna watch you wriggle and writhe,
and suffocate until you die!"
Kurt joined in and the crooning devolved into an acoustic head-banging chorus.
"DIE DIE! Die-die; Die Nicole!
DIE DIE! Die-die; Die Nicole!
DIE DIE! Die-die; Die Nicole!
DIE DIE! Die-die; Die Nicole!"
The melody came back, courtesy of Kurt's expert fingering, and the tempo slowed. Joe continued with the next verse.
"Now please don't think I'm being mean,
when I say that you make me turn green.
It's just that I hate you and wish you would die.
Oh, please Nicole, can't I gouge out your eye?
It really hurt that day you dumped me
and all I want is to help help you see
that I hate you, sweet Nicole
and I'd like to burn you up and use you for coal.
Sweet Nicole, it's really true
when I say, that I hate you.
I wish you would just drop down dead.
Please let me drop this anvil on your head.
Whoa-ho-ho-whoa!
I hate you, dear Nicole.
I wanna bury you in this hole.
I wanna watch you wriggle and writhe,
And suffocate until you die!"
The tempo again matched something akin to heavy metal and the dynamic duo bounced energetically on the small stage as they belted out the primarily mono-syllabic chorus.
"DIE DIE! Die-die; Die Nicole!
DIE DIE! Die-die; Die Nicole!
DIE DIE! Die-die; Die Nicole!
DIE DIE! Die-die; Die Nicole!"
Joe let go of his guitar and grabbed the microphone with both hands, practically whispering the last verse.
"The last thing to say, goes something like this:
I hate you Nicole, cause it hurts to piss
I've killed you dead, so many times
even though, it was just in my mind
I'm really not kidding, when I say
that when you're dead, it'll be a glorious day.
Sweet Nicole it's really true
When I say that I . . . hate . . . you . . .
. . . I hate you, Nicole."
Kurt muted his guitar strings with his palm and let his head drop forward. A curtain of hair obscured his face, but Alan was pretty sure he had seen red eyes and maybe even a rogue tear. The talented half of the musical duo had clearly been moved deeply by the song. Which was more than the rest of the anemic audience could say about the mostly tortuous racket.
A painfully awkward silence permeated the small shop.
"Well . . ." Alan trailed off, not sure what else to say.
Dave sat wide-eyed. ". . . that was a little violent."
On the stage, Joe turned to Kurt and favored him with a wide grin. "Dude—shock and awe! We stunned them into silence with the power of our musical genius!"
Unconvinced, Kurt scratched his head.
The guy sitting in front of the stage on his laptop (who had sadly suffered the brunt of the performance) was making his way around the shop and was now returning to the stage. "Hey, fellas?" he said to Joe and Kurt.
"Yes, adoring fan of ours?" Joe said.
The laptop guy held out an unused coffee cup with a handful of dollar bills stuffed in it. "Um, yeah, so I took up a collection—"
Joe flashed another grin at Kurt. "Dude, I told you! If we rock hard enough, they'll eventually pay us!"
Joe snatched the cup out the guy's hand and started counting the money.
"Actually, I was hoping it'd be enough so that you'd stop playing," the guy said apologetically. "Like, permanently. You guys really suck."
Joe looked up from the cup, disappointed. "Bro. There's like seven dollars in here."
"Yeah, that was all I could put together. Sorry," the laptop guy said with a shrug before sitting back down on the sofa.
Joe and Kurt exchanged a deflated, wounded look. From his table, Alan silently empathized: they showed up, gave it their all, and their collective creative dreams had slipped away from them right before their very eyes.
Joe's eyes went wide and his face split into that trademark, indefatigable grin. "Dude, our first paying gig! High five!"
YOU ARE READING
Religiously Roasted Every Goddamn Day
HumorIt's a pop-culture, bromantic musical comedy. In a book. In an act of cosmic irony (or at least petty antagonization) the name of the coffee shop located next door to the Christian bookstore is Religiously Roasted Every Goddamn Day. Alan works part...
