June 3rd 1976
Rotterdam: the last stop on the map. This time tomorrow, they’d be back on English soil and, for Cris McIlroy, it couldn’t come quickly enough.
Front of house, eight thousand fans were on the rail. The Dutch roadies had dropped at least one amp, which the sound engineer had patched up with duct tape, chewing gum, and prayer. The lighting guy kept complaining about the depth of the grid, and the band’s rider had no M&Ms. Worse, Cris had left his spare pack of cigarettes back at the hotel, and someone had just told him how much of the band’s money the promoters had spent on inflatable armchairs.
They had, for some reason, decided to make it the theme of the night.
Every gig had a theme, as every promo moron tried to outdo the others along the tour route. In Eindhoven, it had been ‘precious jewels’, after Hope Diamond, that crappy B-side they’d released that had been so popular out here last month. You couldn’t move for chunks of coloured glass hanging off everything. It had been like being stuck inside a Lalique lamp, and Cris hated the damn song anyway.
You shine like a star
You’re burnin’ me too steep
But you’re cursed, you are
I know, ’cos I can’t sleep
What the hell was that all about anyway? Damon could do better. And in Nijmegen… well, Cris didn’t understand the logic behind it, but there had been tiki lights and a topless bartender. She’d been jiggly enough, sure, but unfortunately she couldn’t make a Cosmopolitan to save her life.
Tonight, the whole backstage area had been kitted out with shiny, round plastic furniture in candy colours. Inflatable bubbles, kinda like transparent beach balls, hung from the ceiling. The general buzz of pre-show activity was disrupted by the occasional bang and sorrowful, drawn-out squeak of somebody accidentally—or otherwise—puncturing something.
A group of roadies huddled in a corner, smoking dogends and chattering in Dutch. Cris waved his arms at them and swore in a vague, half-hearted kind of way, like a man trying ineffectually to frighten geese. One of them muttered something as he passed by, and the other three laughed. People milled aimlessly about up here… had there been so many people in Eindhoven? It seemed like the number of hangers-on increased with every town. Who knew where they came from, or what they were for. He almost collided with a girl in a silver dress and red lipstick, her eyes wide in her skull.
“Who the hell are you?”
She said something in English so heavily accented he couldn’t understand it, and darted off. Cris cracked on his gum and exhaled tightly. It would be so much easier if they brought their own crew. Just one set of bozos for the entire tour, instead of this ramshackle fragmentation. This time tomorrow, he promised himself, and pushed open the dressing room door.
“Boys? Five minutes, all right? I don’t want to hear— Hey. Is it me, or are we two short? Where are they?”
The facilities weren’t bad, considering they were basically playing a university campus. Sure, so the Erasmus Universiteit was shiny and new, all white concrete and practical spaces, but it still felt bare and flat. Back here, pale fluorescent light washed the low, square room. The assorted chairs and a couple of overstuffed couches had been pushed up to the walls. Tables, floor, and shelves were littered with things that crackled and clinked, a general detritus of wrappers, bottles and—Cris cracked on his gum again—yes, more transparent beach balls.
Charlie was sitting at one of the tables, pawing at his nose like a dog with toothache. A very empty space had been cleared in front of him, and Cris chose not to look too closely at it.
“Bad ice cube,” Charlie said, like it was the funniest thing he’d heard all evening.
From one of the couches, Joss, wrapped around a bottle of Remy Martin and some chick with red-gold hair down to her backside, pointed vaguely behind him. Cris grunted, popped his gum again, and picked his way across the floor. He missed his Tipalets. He could hear Leon throwing up even before he got into the bathroom. As he opened the door, he noticed that the telephone cord was tracking underneath it.
“Ohhh… oh, Jesus. Oh. Oh, Christ! Sweet Jesus God, I’m—oh, Christ—I’m gonna fuckin’ die,” Leon moaned between retches, plaintive voice echoing from one of the stalls.
Damon, phone receiver clamped to his ear and its cream plastic cradle dangling from his fingers, was pacing the tiles. Every time he got to a wall he stopped, twitching lightly and shifting from foot to foot.
“But, sweetheart…. No, I didn’t say that. I—”
“Oh, God, no…! Oh, Jesus… Jesus Christ!”
Damon sighed dramatically and glanced over his shoulder. “Look, I dunno what you think Jesus is gonna do, man. You’re Jewish. No, Inez, not…. Nah, babe, I was talking to—”
“Fuck off! Oh, God, no…!”
There was another explosive and vile noise. Cris closed his eyes. Just twenty-four little hours. All he had to get through. He took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. From the stall, Leon whimpered.
“Day? Day, are you there?”
Damon pressed the phone into the shoulder of his maroon velvet jacket. Silver dragons coiled the length of his sleeves.
“Yeah. What?”
“I think I just lost another filling….”
Damon glanced up at Cris, as if seeing him for the first time. Cris cracked on his gum and decided that it had most definitely lost its flavour.
“What the hell?” he asked needlessly.
“Don’t sweat it, man. He’ll be fine.” Putting the phone back to his ear, Damon crossed to the row of sinks and filled one with cold water, listening to the voice on the line. “Yeah, I know, baby… but you got the flowers, right?”
“You know you’ve got, like, five minutes?” Cris prompted, hanging back in the doorway. It smelled worse than a nightclub bathroom in here.
Damon shot him an exasperated, if unfocused, glare.
“You mind, man? It’s my fuckin’ anniversary!” He frowned, bringing the phone back up to his mouth. “What? Well, yeah, I know. No, I know, honey…. I— Look, I’ll make it up, all right?”
“Day?” Leon whined from the cubicle. “Day? Where’d you go?”
“And it’s not like it’s forever. I promised, didn’t I? Well, there you are, then, girl. I’m here,” he added, muting the phone on his shoulder again. “Christ, it’s like having a little sister. Are you finished?”
“I….” There was an uncertain pause and some spitting. “Yeah. I think so.”
“All right. C’mon, man, we gotta get you cleaned up. Cris, you wanna get us some clean towels in here or something?”
Still holding up the doorjamb, Cris realised he’d been watching the whole scene with a kind of horrified fascination. And now he was being told what to do, like any other fucking lackey. The cubicle door opened, and Leon tottered out, deathly pale except for red-rimmed eyes and running nose.
“I told you to leave that shit alone,” Damon chided, holding out a wad of toilet paper. “Here.”
“Fuck you,” Leon muttered, snatching the tissue and going to the sink to sponge himself down.
Damon sniggered.
“It’s not fucking funny, man! Christ… state of me,” Leon moaned, holding on to the sink to stop himself from swaying as he peered into the blotchy mirror.
Cris looked critically at Leon and his chalky, sweaty throw-up face.
“Is he really okay?”
“Yeah, sure… it’s, y’know, it’s fine. Five minutes. What? No,” said Damon, returning what remained of his attention to the phone. “I’ll be home for that. It’s gonna be sweet. I promise.”
“Well,” Cris began doubtfully, aware that Damon was actually having the nerve to usher him out. “Five minutes. Okay, baby? ’Cos, y’know, we need to get this thing moving.”
He watched the door close in his face and spat his gum on the floor before going to see about those towels. This had to be the last time.
Whatever it took, man, this was the last freaking time.
* * *
Damon shut the door firmly. Everything echoed in here… just like the voice in his ear. Inez, waiting for a response. He never knew what to say to a crying woman.
“Then I’ll see you when I get home, baby. Yeah. I gotta go. Love you.”
He hung up, sighed, and shook his head. After a moment of consideration, he threw the phone against the wall. The plastic splintered and it made a big crackling, impressive sort of noise, tinged with the ping of metal, but it didn’t make him feel very much better.
He looked over Leon’s shoulder at the white, wan face in the mirror.
“You sure you’re up to this?”
Leon nodded with the kind of care that suggested he thought his head might fall off. “Mm. Kinda tired, though. You got any of those r—”
“No! Come here.”
He turned Leon, floppy like a rag doll, around and propped him against the sink as he rinsed out the wad of tissue. Eyes fluttering closed, Leon smiled at the feel of cold water on his brow.
“S’nice.”
“Yeah, well, chuck on me and die, right? You dig that?”
“Mm. I’m all right.”
“Bollocks are you.”
Leon cracked open one eye and watched Damon sponge down the front of his blue satin tulip jacket. It wouldn’t survive any longer than tonight, that was for sure. But at least it wouldn’t show under the lights.
“You’re good to me,” he mumbled. “Y-You always been good to me.”
Damon dipped the tissues back in the sink.
“Yeah. Well, you make me look better, don’t you? Idiot.”
* * *
There had been two fainters in the front row by the time the band got out there. Cris, having sent a runner to scour the place unsuccessfully for Tipalets, settled reluctantly for a pack of Djarum kreteks the promoter had tucked into his hand with a knowing smile. Yeah, so they were expensive… but the clove flavour made his tongue itch.
Now, he hunched up in the wings, smoking too much and watching the boys get ready to go. The lights came up, washing over the polished stage in flares of green, blue… pink? Jeez. At least it made Leon look like he had a little colour.
Cris moved aside as one of the roadies finished fixing up the cables and shambled offstage, slowly, apparently totally oblivious to the ranks of massed, yelling fans. The guy brushed past, on his way to do whatever it was roadies did when they stopped doing anything else, and Cris realised that he’d bitten down on the end of his cigarette. It tasted foul. He saw Damon, centre right like always, glance off to the side, getting his last levels check, and then—chin tipped, sliding up to the mic—he hit the first two E7#9 chords of Love You (Like a Brother), letting the notes ring out until they were almost swallowed in the screams.
“You all right?!”
The crowd roared. Cris prayed he wouldn’t keep it up too long. It got wearing very quickly. He sucked on his kretek and counted to five. The third chord sounded, the drums crashed in, and Charlie was late on the bass line. Still, at least Leon hadn’t passed out. He was even facing the right way, looking determinedly tight-lipped and picking up a fat, heavy riff on his wine red Les Paul Deluxe. Head bent, hair falling over his eyes, he’d started to get into it by the time Damon stopped vamping it up and slipped in a tight, intricate little lick that Cris hadn’t heard before.
“Yeeeeeeaaaaahhhh!”
And then there was Damon’s tic… that whole fake climax thing, leering up against the mic. Cris took a long drag on the kretek, wincing slightly and, gradually, becoming aware of the girl standing beside him. Charlie brought up the bass line, coming forward in the spotlight, doing some long runs up and down the neck that—almost—disguised the fact Leon had screwed up.
Cris glanced at the chick, surreptitiously at first. Onstage, Damon broke into the verse:
Well life is like a mother baby
Ain’t nothing like it wants to be
Only thing I know is how to show
How to do what you do to me…
She looked pretty enough, though her mouth and her eyes seemed kind of big, like she’d never really grown into them. He thought at first she must be a fan who’d got past security, but she was acting way too calm. Cris took the kretek from his mouth as Joss pounded seven kinds of hell out of the bridge. He looked over the freckles, the ridiculously long sweep of red-gold hair… the dimpled chin. Leon had picked up like he’d never made a mistake, coming forward on his mark. Sure, he sounded a little shaky on the first bar of the chorus, but it resolved itself.
Well I love you (Yeah I do)
That much I know is true
Love you like a brother baby
And brother ain’t I good to you!
The Les Paul’s thick, dirty sustain drew out, the chord shift strident under Damon’s ad lib lick. If Charlie tried for a bass run any funkier, it would sound like God moving furniture. The kretek drooped between Cris’ lips, and he turned to the redhead, sudden realisation slipping coldly between his shoulder blades.
“Jessica?”
She glanced at him, but only briefly, her attention consumed by the show.
What the hell was she doing here? Now? Christ, he’d be in so much trouble if anyone found out. Ghosts from the past were one thing, but when they interfered with the future…. He made to grab her by the arm, pull her away, but she swayed out of his grasp. All the grace of a dancer.
Her toe tapped, and her whole body shivered lightly against the rhythm, just the ripe side of skinny in a short, figure-hugging dress patterned with rusty gold daisies. A silky, crocheted white shawl whispered against her shoulders.
“I’m not doing anything wrong, Cris. Am I?”
He snatched the cigarette out of his mouth, spitting the smoke.
“What did… when did you get here?”
As the second verse gave way to a blues-rock stomp, she just looked at him and shrugged.