Opening Act (5 page)

She guessed the line for the mezzanine bar would be shorter, so she climbed the crumbling marble stairs, passing a variety of pint-size human dramas on the way—weeping girls, bellowing boys, people bumping into one another while glued to their smartphones and then barking in fury at one another. She found the line still pretty long, but there wasn't much to be done about it. She took a place in it and waited.

As she inched her way forward several people came to stand behind her, which made her feel much better about the whole thing—she might have to wait, but they had to wait
longer
. Then her phone vibrated, and it was Byron calling yet
again
.

She blurted out an expletive, then looked up to see if anyone had reacted to it. Of course they hadn't, which made her feel even sillier. What on earth was wrong with Byron tonight? Why was he not getting that she
could
—
not
—
hear
?

On impulse, she pressed Talk, then put the phone to her ear.

“Byron?…Hello?…Byron, are you
there
?” It was no good. Even without the band's clangor, the place was noisy as hell. She couldn't make out a thing. She gave a little grunt of exasperation, then gave in.
“Hold on,”
she yelled, and left the line. Muttering darkly under her breath, she clattered back down the stairs, pushing through the crowd to the front door. The cool night air gave her a little slap in the face, knocking some of the anger out of her, but not enough.

“Hello?”
she said. And now—even with the hiss of the outdoors and the hum of traffic, it was just barely possible to hear him.

“Hello,” he said. “Listen, we need to talk.”

“Clearly,”
she said. “Given the extraordinary lengths you've gone to get me on the phone.”

“I just want to know whether you've come to a decision yet.”

Her head felt as though it was going to rocket right off her shoulders. “Don't you think I would have called
you
if I had figured it out? We just talked yesterday! Just yesterday, you said I had till the weekend!”

“Which is now two days away.” There was a short pause. “Plus, I can't believe you actually need that much time.”

“What?”

“When I gave you three days, I thought you'd say you didn't need them. I didn't honestly think you'd grasp at them like some kind of life preserver. I never dreamed you'd insist on every last second of indecision you could get. I gotta tell you, it hurt my feelings. Like being my TA is such a fate to be dreaded or something.”

“You didn't say any of that at the time!” She started pacing up and down the sidewalk in front of the club.

“Well…no. I was kind of in shock. Plus, I felt I had to be cool about it. I mean, I did offer you that time.”

“Yes, you did!”

“Only now Tammi's putting some pressure on
me
. She needs to know whether I'm taking her or not. She's got another offer and they want to know her answer by Saturday.”

“Then I'll tell you
my
answer by Saturday.”

“Yes,” he said, and she could tell by the way he twisted the word into two syllables that he was gearing up for a little spray of sarcasm. “You're obviously devoting a lot of very intense consideration to it.”

“What's
that
supposed to mean?” She realized she was pretty much yelling. She'd suddenly become the kind of girl she hated: the one storming around in public, being all dramatic and bitchy to some poor schmuck on the other end of a phone call.

“You're at a
concert
,” he said. “A
rock
concert, from what I'm able to tell. Your future weighing in the balance, mine as well, and you go rushing out for a night on the town.” He laughed, and she could hear the derision in it. “I have to say, you have bouts of immaturity that sometimes make me wonder whether I've made the right choice in mentoring you.”

“Then un-mentor me. Call Tammi and tell her the job's hers.”

“You don't mean that.” He seemed suddenly chastened.

“Don't tell me what I mean.”

“Don't be so angry! For God's sake. Listen to yourself.”

“Fine, I will. And you listen to this.”

She mashed End on her phone's screen and longed for a bygone era when you could actually slam a phone down. She stood with the phone in her hand and just concentrated on not screaming. Her breath was coming hard and ragged, and she felt her face begin to swell. She didn't want to go back into the club like this, so she found a dark spot near an alley, melted into it, and had a furious, sixty-second cry, then pulled herself together and strode back into the club, displaying the stamp on her hand like it was a weapon she might fire off if anyone tried to stop her.

She went back up to the mezzanine, where she found the line for the bar even longer, which did nothing to improve her mood. She waited as the line moved forward agonizingly slowly. And this time no one even came to stand behind her. She was the last jerk and had to wait the longest.

By the time she was up front and able to order a drink, the lights were flashing, and a flurry of excitement stirred the air in the club.

“Do you have any bottled beer?” Loni asked the bartender, who looked like he was about eleven.

“No, just tap,” he said.

“Anything else besides that?”

“Soda. Also tap.”

“I mean, anything alcoholic.”

“Electric dream shots,” he said.

She blinked. “What?”

He nodded to a rack of what looked like plastic test tubes filled with neon blue experiments.

“How much?”

“Six dollars.”

She laughed. “You have got to be kidding me.”

The speakers came alive, and she heard someone from the ballroom saying, “Right—it's now, it's happening—the main event, the final hometown appearance of Haver City's hometown heroes…”

“Beer's fine,” Loni said, feeling defeated.

“…before they leave us to pursue fame, fortune, cultural immortality, and their rightful place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…”

“That'll be eight dollars.”

“…people, give it up for…
Overlords of Loneliness!
”

She forked over the cash from her purse. The roar of the crowd was crazy-making; the speakers magnified it to the point that it felt as though her brain was being scrubbed with a potato brush.

The bartender handed her the plastic cup, and when she took it from him, it puckered at her touch, slopping the beer over the side and onto her sleeve.

“I hate concerts,” she muttered, and she headed back down the stairs.

She reached the ballroom just as the band was gearing up for its first tune. The two guitarists were plucking away and the keyboard player was running some trills. Lockwood Mott, the drummer, Zee's friend, gave a friendly staccato hello on his hi-hat.

Shay Dayton stood alone behind the mic. Loni hadn't realized that the band's front man was
only
a vocalist. She'd presumed he played an instrument as well, probably guitar, as that seemed to be the rock-god cliché. But he had nothing…nothing, she now realized, to hide behind. No instrument to connect with, to form a kind of closed system—a protection from insecurity and rejection. The lead guitarist—a rangy-looking, bearded black guy—was striding across the stage now, running through a few riffs, as if to prove Loni's point. For him, the audience might not even have been there. And the rhythm guitarist, a diminutive woman sporting a buzz cut and a wife beater, was also wrapped up in contemplating her fretboard. But Shay Dayton stood with his hand on the mic stand, looking serenely out at the whooping crowd. No barrier between him and them. He was open to anything they hurled at him. Tonight, what they hurled was love, but even so Loni was impressed by the courage it took.

She took a sip of her beer. Bitter, flat, and warm, it was like drinking used bathwater. She headed back to her little hiding place by the video game to watch in peace.

Shay Dayton raised a hand to still the crowd. Loni thought he was kidding himself, but it worked like a charm. Then he said, “Thanks for coming out tonight.” An explosion of enthusiastic hoots followed. He gestured again for them to be silent—he seemed to have a kind of natural authority. “As you know, this is our last regular Haver City gig. In a couple of days we'll be off on our first national tour, opening for the legendary Strafer Nation.” The applause that followed was so thunderous that Loni felt it resonate in her teeth. “And after we've conquered America, who knows? Europe, Asia, Australia—
the universe
.” He blurted out a movie-mad-scientist laugh, and it was kind of lame, yet everyone
howled
at it. “But no matter how far we go, we'll always come back here—for
you
. You made us, and we won't ever forget that. Our hearts will always be here, in this city, in this community, in this room right now, in this time we're sharing at exactly this moment.”

Loni almost couldn't hear these last few phrases because the roar in the room had swelled, seeming to push the very walls back. And while it was still at its height, Shay Dayton turned and signaled the band, and they launched into their first tune.

It was a song Loni recognized from having heard Zee play it constantly over the past two weeks; it was the opening tune on
Grief Bacon
. She didn't know its title, but the words had been drilled into her head. Which actually turned out to be a good thing, because between the crowd's continued noise and the club's crappy sound system, she wouldn't have been able to make them out otherwise. But they came to her, playing in her head as Shay sang them on the stage, leaning into the mic stand, pivoting it like a rocket launcher.

       
Born on a Friday, torn away, borne away

       
Abandoned on a Saturday, battered, scattered, latter-day

       
Undone on a Sunday, and still I knew that one day

       
I'd waken on a weekday

       
And find you.

He sang with tremendous conviction, investing the words with a meaning Loni wasn't sure they entirely supported. But it was obviously working for the Underlings. As he stepped closer to the platform, several girls—possibly Zee among them, Loni couldn't tell—outstretched their arms, as if ready and willing to grab him by the waist if he got too close. It was obviously all theatre. Any one of them, if she wanted to, could easily have hopped up on the stage and been right there with him—but they held back out of a kind of tacit agreement, preferring the suggestion of erotic hysteria to actually giving in to it.

There was probably a book to be written there, Loni thought. A scholarly study of the ways in which rock concerts—once celebrations of anything-goes anarchy—had become ritualized over the years. But the thought of any academic pursuit immediately brought Byron back to mind. She'd hoped the noise of the band and the press of the crowd would help banish him from her thoughts, but the conversation they'd just had was still vivid in her mind—and heavy in her heart.

She was angry, of course. Very angry. She didn't like being jerked around the way Byron was obviously trying to do with her. At the same time, she had to admit, she was being a little provocative. He'd been her mentor, her champion, her confidante, and her advocate. What must it feel like for him now to be reduced to begging her to make up her mind about coming west with him? Her insistence on taking all the time to decide he allowed her was basically saying she needed to convince herself he was worth it. He would almost
have
to find it insulting.

And yet…why
didn't
she want to follow him? She'd as much as admitted she had no certain future here, and Byron was obviously on his way up in academia. It would benefit her enormously if he brought her with him. Yet she resisted.

Possibly this was simply a matter of sheer bloody-mindedness. She'd never liked being told what to do, never liked being pushed in any direction, even resented anyone having
expectations
of her. She knew this was childish and she had to outgrow it. And to a large extent, she thought she had.