Opening Act (26 page)

“You make it look easy,” Shay said.

“It is…after a lot of repetition. You've just gotta put in the hours. And then you get to the point where you can just drop your hand and play G major 7, D7, and C minor 7 flatted 5 one right after the other, boom, boom, boom.” And he did so, with a perfectly still wrist.

Shay grinned. “Very cool.”

Paul knocked his shoulder into his. “You've earned a break, Ludwig.”

“No, wait, let me give it one more try,” Shay said, eyeing the keyboard.

“No use. This late, and this drunk, it won't sink in. Go on, give it a rest till tomorrow. Or…whenever.”

Shay became aware that he might be pushing at the outer edges of Paul's patience, so he relented. He took up his drink again and said, “You're right. Thanks, though. Here's to you, keyboard wizard.” He tossed back a mouthful.

Paul did the same, then settled back into the radiantly purple hotel chair and said, “I gotta say, you're a pretty determined pupil. You really never studied before, huh?”

“No, never,” Shay admitted. “Flute lessons when I was in grade school. But that never took.”

Paul raised his eyebrows. “How very Jethro Tull.”

“Yeah. I never knew about them back then, or who knows, I might've stuck with it.”

“Well,” he said, holding up his drink to the light and casually studying its refractions through the amber liquid, “you're well on the road to being able to compose a tune. You've already got a knack for rhythm and phrasing, just from performing, so it should all fall into place. Hell, maybe by the end of the tour.”

“You really think so? That soon?”

“Mm,” Paul said, having another sip. “If you want. I'll give you a nudge here and there if I see you going wrong. If you don't mind the input.”

Shay wanted to jump up and down and say,
Are you fucking kidding me?
But he forced himself to play it cool and merely said, “Thanks, that'd be great.”

“Gotta say,” said Paul, slumping deeper into the chair, “I'd have thought someone like you would be more drawn to the guitar. Most guys are.”

“Well,” said Shay, running his fingers up the keyboard (which, now that he'd turned it off, made no sound), “I might have, if I were touring with a guitar god. But I'm touring with you, so…piano it is.”

Paul scowled. “Really? That's the deciding factor?”

Shay blushed, not wanting to be thought so callow an opportunist. “That, and the fact that my band's already heavy on guitarists.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “Oh. I thought…sorry, didn't you say you were interested in learning to play just so you could take a more active role in songwriting?”

“Yyyyeah,” Shay said.

“But…you're obviously thinking of performing, too.”

He felt busted. “I don't…I'm not…maybe.” He shrugged. “I mean, we've got Jimmy on keys already, so…I mean, there's no real need. But…”

“You thinking of getting rid of Jimmy?” Paul asked.

“No, no. Nothing like that.”

“ 'Cause I gotta say, he doesn't strike me as a guy who's real happy to be here.”

“He's always like that. It's just his way. He's good. Really. Totally committed.”

Paul nodded. “All right, then. I just…excuse me for getting all sloppy on you, sport. But you've got the goods for this job, and by that I mean the pipes
and
the moves. You know how to work the stage like a champ. Last thing you need is to anchor yourself behind a keyboard.”

“No, I wouldn't. Not as a regular thing, anyway. I think.”

“You sound uncertain.”

He shrugged. “Well…it's just, you think of a rock-and-roll front man, you think of an instrumentalist. Is all.”

“You think of a
guitarist
,” said Paul. “Be specific. And I don't need to be told that.” He threw back the last of his bourbon, then reached for the bottle. “I've had to put up with that my whole career.” He grinned as he poured out a new serving. “But then I never had your moves, so I was always grateful to be able to hunker down behind the keys.”

“Yeah, you never had my moves,” said Shay, reaching out his own glass for a topper. “You just had your three-octave range and your banshee wail. Poor fucking you.”

Paul finished pouring and screwed the cap back on the bottle. “So,” he said, leaning back into the chair. “Who is she?”

Shay choked in mid-swallow. “Who's who?”

“The girl,” he said, smiling wryly. “The one who made you think you weren't a proper front man 'cause you don't play an instrument.”

Shay could feel his face burning. “I never mentioned any girl.”

“Oh,” Paul said in a highly sarcastic tone, “my mistake. Apologies.”

Shay sighed. “It's that obvious?”

“Maybe not to the average dude. But for me…man, it's like looking down the narrow corridor of time.”

“You, too?”

“Mm,” he said, taking a sip. “Ended up marrying her.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “And I can honestly say, our nine years together were the happiest two years of my life.”

Shay laughed.

“But don't let that discourage you,” he added, raising his glass to Shay.

Shay shook his head. “No discouragement needed. She's already hooked up with some other guy. Moved out west with him. They're faculty at some university where they teach together.”

Paul made a sour face. “Sweet fucking Christmas.”

“I know,” he said. “Thing is…I mean, I barely know her. But I just…I got the impression she's not
like
that.”

Paul looked at his watch and stretched his arms behind his back—a clear signal he was calling it quits for the night. It wasn't even one o'clock, but Shay had to remember Paul had about twenty years on him, and they were twenty years of hard road.

“Your call, cowboy,” Paul said through a theatrical yawn. “But my advice? If you're actually trying to learn to play piano because of her, then this thing ain't finished.”

“You think?”

Paul got up and waved him to the door. “Go on, get the hell outta here. Let an old man have some peace.”

On his way to his room, Shay heard a tremendous crash spill out from behind another door followed by raucous laughter.

He went over to it and knocked.
“Hotel security,”
he called out.

Someone from inside shot back,
“Fuck you, flatfoot—investigate my ass.”

Shay laughed and shook his head. “Christ, Trina. You really are fucking crazy.”

The door opened, and marijuana smoke billowed out, obscuring Shay's vision before he saw that it was Baby who was admitting him. Lockwood and two members of Strafer Nation were hanging out, smoking. The floor was covered with shattered glass. In its midst, Trina, completely unperturbed, brushed off her sleeves, then flopped onto the bed.

“What the
hell
?” said Shay.

“What?” Trina sneered, “Did we disturb the big fucking Yalta summit of douchebag front men?”

“I think you disturbed the entire breadbasket of America. What happened?”

Marty, the Strafer Nation drummer who had to be fifty if he was a day, said, “We bet Trina she couldn't make it all the way to the bathroom with the room-service tray on her head.”

“Loaded with every glass in the place, from the look of it,” said Shay, nodding.

“Every glass,
plus
,” said Lockwood laconically. “We sent down for more.”

Shay looked at Trina, who shrugged and said, “Hey, they don't call me Kid Daredevil for nothing.”

“No one calls you Kid Daredevil,”
said all the others, including the Strafer Nation players, who had learned this refrain by now and had taken it up with tremendous enthusiasm.

Shay shook his head in disbelief and said, “Just to remind you, we have a long bus ride tomorrow with an actual paying gig at the end of it. For actual human people who have shelled out actual money to see us.”

“Yes,
Fah
-thuh,” said Trina in a truly execrable attempt at a British accent. “Shall we go to sleep now, and pray for Grandmama to be happy with the
aaaahn
-gels?”

“Pray that Halbert Hasque is happy with us, or you'll be able to find out how Grandmama's doing firsthand,” he said.

“Whoa, is that a threat?”

“Nah. I know a threat would only turn you on.”

Everyone in the room said,
“Oooohhh,”
and Trina threw a box of Cheez-Its at him. Unfortunately it was open, and tiny orange crackers spilled out all along its aerial arc, rendering it too lightweight to reach Shay's head. It fell to the ground several inches from his feet.

“Just try to wrap it up before the bus leaves,” Shay said as he headed back toward the hallway.

When he turned to shut the door behind him, he saw Trina hanging off the bed, picking Cheez-Its off the carpeted floor and eating them. Jimmy said, “Trina, are you out of your goddamn mind? That floor is full of busted glass.”

“Oooh, how
frightful
,” Trina said, again in her British accent. As the door shut behind him and he continued down the hall, he heard her go on, “I must be
evah
so careful or I might—
ow!
Fucking
fuck! Owww!
”

Moments later, Shay was back in the relative privacy of his own room. Relative only because he was technically sharing it with Lockwood, who could come barging in at any time. But given the settled look he'd just had in Trina's room, that was unlikely. He dropped onto his bed, lay back, and worked his shoes off one at a time. Then he put his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.

It had been nice, this leg of the tour. A little rocky, at first. He'd left New York more or less a broken man, with Pernita even more smotheringly proprietary of him than ever. The first few gigs had been
rough as Overlords got used to being on the road and the wild variances between sound systems at different venues. (They'd learned pretty quickly the first rule of touring was never mind what the sound engineer tells you, insist he does it your way.)

And then, how the hell it had happened Shay couldn't imagine—possibly he'd been praying in his sleep or something—but Pernita had gotten bored and left. As much as she wanted to control his every waking movement, barring the ones he conducted behind the bathroom door (and given enough time, she might insist on monitoring even those), she found that the endless hours on the drab freeways frayed her nerves. She had a constant need of novelty, and whenever they arrived at their destinations—small cities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois—the clubs awaiting them there were not remotely up to the caliber Pernita was accustomed to. So she left the group, though with plenty of assurances that this was just a temporary departure to attend to some pressing business and she'd be back very soon. She'd even left most of her luggage on the bus, as if it might check up on Shay in her absence. But the truth was, she'd essentially cut bait.