Road Rash (16 page)

It was the girls that won us over. “C’mon,” Jamie said, holding up a pair of lime-green stretch pants and a black-and-white-striped top. “You’ll all look great in this stuff. It’ll be a blast.”

“Yeah,” Amber said. “It’ll be like a giant costume party.”

“Then you’ve gotta do it, too,” said Danny.

“Bring it on,” she shot back.

Personally, I think it all comes down to the fact that girls like to dress up, but at least Danny got something for us out of the potential humiliation.

“Okay,” he said to Jake. “Here’s the deal. We’ll wear this stuff and put on a rockin’ retro show for you …”

“But …?”

“Do you think you can scare up five bicycles for us this afternoon so we can see your beautiful community in style?” Amber cleared her throat and Danny caught her look. “Uh, make that three and a tandem,” he added.

Jake didn’t even blink. “Done.” He grinned. “And here I
thought you were going to ask for something hard. Tell you what: go up the street a block and turn left, you’ll see Mountain Sports around the corner. Talk to Andy—I’ll call and set it up.”

“That’s nice of you,” Glenn said, with a sideways glance at Danny. “But we don’t want to cost you a bunch of money.”

“Don’t sweat it. Us locals look out for each other. Andy won’t charge me, and I’ll buy the beer for him and his crew when they show up tonight. Win-win.”

Amber and Danny seemed to have a great time on the tandem bike. Apparently, Amber had some experience at this, because she just laid down a few rules for Danny and away they went. As Glenn, Jamie, and I got to the crest of a particularly long hill a few miles out of town, Amber and Danny were waiting at the top for us, looking at the little map Andy had given us. “Looks like there’s a park on the right maybe ten miles up the road,” Amber said. “How about we all meet there?”

We agreed and they took off, with the three of us following. I cruised along, enjoying the view, and Glenn and Jamie talked away behind me. It’s not like I was eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help overhearing bits and pieces. They were talking about the gig at first, then they played a little musical
Celebrity Deathmatch
, and then they went on about music in general.

What surprised me was Jamie. She almost seemed like a different person. I mean, she was super-nice, but I hadn’t thought of her as a deep thinker.

Well, I was clearly out to lunch on that one. She and Glenn were bouncing concepts back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball,
and she was definitely holding her own, kinda like an older version of Kimber in full-on professor mode.

They rode along side by side, totally oblivious to everything else, which made me feel like I was intruding on something private. So I slowly pulled ahead, and pretty soon I was by myself. With several miles to go. Which gave me time to think. Too much time, actually. Because something was bugging me, and I was going to have a hard time avoiding it, out here all by my lonesome.

God, it was so lame. What was bugging me was a stupid little email. That’s all. No, what was
really
bugging me was my
reaction
to a stupid little email. I mean, it’s a free country, right? What the hell do I care if my ex–bass player’s sister goes to a picnic with some jerk?

Don’t answer that.…

Spandex sucks.

And that’s not even considering fashion issues. Have you ever tried actually
working
in the stuff? I mean, who wants to put on tight-fitting drastic/​plastic/​spastic/​elastic clothing and go
exercise
in it? Under hot lights? In a crowded room? With limited air circulation? Yuck!

“Uh, anything else available?” I asked Amber, our self-designated wardrobe girl. “Like maybe something with a little, you know,
cotton
in it?”

“Aw, you look hot in that, Z-man.”

I didn’t really care—I needed to be able to move and breathe. Plus, she was almost certainly just working me. “Thanks. It might work for Jamie and Brad, but I’d melt like the Wicked Witch of the West before we finished the first set.”

She was already nodding and digging through the magic duffel, throwing stuff left and right. “Here you go—made for the aerobically active percussionist, and you’ll look even hotter in this. Give you a chance to show off those drummer-boy arms.”

God, was she
ever
serious? What she’d come up with was a pair of puffy black parachute pants and a tiger-striped muscle shirt. But hey—at least they were cotton.

But as she held the outfit up, she said, “Hmm, it’s kind of the wrong era.…”

“That’s okay—I’ll take it. Thanks for the help.” I grabbed it and bailed out of there quick before she found something more “era-appropriate.”

I went back to my room and started an email to Kimber. I wrote half a page, then decided it didn’t say what I wanted to say … or maybe I just didn’t know
what
I wanted to say. So I deleted the whole thing and went downstairs to join the others for dinner.

Things were pretty quiet around the ol’ D&P dining table. I mean, I wasn’t exactly in a talkative mood, and Brad seemed downright sullen. When I arrived, he was just sitting there, with a beer going and an empty on the table. And this time Glenn wasn’t saying anything about it. In fact, he wasn’t saying much of anything at all, and neither was Jamie. Which was quite a change from this afternoon. And in contrast to all of the above—and making it even more obvious—was the fact that Danny and Amber were completely unaware of the silence around them, just talking and laughing and having a good old time.

I had to get out of there. I’d barely touched my food, but I’d had enough weirdness in my day already, so I made some lame excuse and left. I suppose I could have gone back to the room and taken a last look at tonight’s set list or something, but I went for a walk instead.

It was almost eight and I was on my way back to get ready when I ran into Glenn on the street.

“Hey, man, how’s it going?” I asked.

“I’m good,” he said. “How about you?”

“Fine.”

He nodded, but as he watched me, his nod morphed from up and down into side to side. “I don’t think so,” he said. “What’s up?”

I almost said,
Well, ya see, there’s this girl …
as sort of a joke, but I didn’t really want to go there. “I don’t know … things are a little weird.”

“Do you mean here, or back home? Is it us? The music?”

“How about E: all of the above?”

He laughed. “I hear ya.”

“I mean, sometimes this seems a little like one of those behind-the-scenes TV shows or something. And even a newbie like me can tell I’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg.”

“And you’re sitting there wondering when the whole thing’s going to come apart at speed …?”

Man, he’d nailed it. “Yeah, and leave bodies strewn all over the road.”

“If I do my job right, it won’t.”

“Why is that your job?”

He shrugged. “Things work best if you let everyone play to their strengths.” He changed the subject. “And about the music thing, I don’t love doing some of that stuff any more than you do, but that’s part of being a pro—making the customer happy.”

I snorted. “Assuming you can even figure out what they want. I mean, this place is
way
different than clubs back home.”

“Yeah, and the venue next week might be different than this. That’s another part of the job—sussing out what the people want.”

“Maybe, but the way I see it,
another
part of our job is getting past the human-jukebox level to where we can do what
we
want.”

He cocked his head. “Touché, brother.”

I clicked my sticks in tempo. “One … two … one, two, three …”
Slam!

As we launched into “Can’t Get Enough,” I looked around and took in the whole scene. Whoa. It was too bad Kimber wasn’t here—she would have appreciated the surrealism of the moment. It was freakin’ wildish.

After the dinner crowd had left, Jake and his crew had opened the movable wall between the club and the dining area, effectively doubling the size of the gig. I thought that was pretty optimistic, as there was almost no one in the room at the time, but I kept my newbie yap shut. Good move.…

It turned out the place was empty because the club doors were kept closed by design, which was actually a pretty shrewd idea. I mean, having people lined up around the block is better advertising than a dozen billboards, and it’s free. Right before nine, one of the bouncers opened the doors and the place filled up in a hurry—there were like five hundred throwback rockers packed into a club made for half that many. I swear, I thought the fire marshal was going to show up and shut us down, except that apparently half the Bozeman fire crew was out there
sucking down dollar beers and free tacos along with the rest of the locals.

And there was an actual soundman doing the mix and a guy on lights—including a follow spot, if you can believe that—so we looked and sounded totally pro and we didn’t have to worry about anything but the music. Well, the music and the
wardrobe
 …

I was wearing those goofy balloon pants and the tiger tank top, and I was probably the most conservatively dressed one in the band. Brad was in full-on spandex, while Glenn had on a black-and-red jumpsuit and a kamikaze headband in this weird sort of Hendrix-meets-Def Leppard thing. Danny was Spinal Tapping it to the max with faux leather from head to toe, more eyeliner than all the members of My Chem put together, and a big, scruffy black wig that made him look like Slash on Rogaine.

Amber and Jamie were both done up like an unholy cross between a biker-chick-from-hell and a sixties go-go dancer … tall black boots, tiny-ass miniskirts, leather push-up bras, and hair and makeup all over the place. Totally over the top, but I had to admit they looked pretty freakin’ hot. And Amber wasn’t just sitting out in the crowd, either. Sometimes she was strutting it on the floor with no one in particular, but she spent most of her time up onstage with us, dancing, playing tambourine, or just swaying to the beat and having fun.

When I saw her pick up the tambourine the first time, I cringed and thought,
Thank God she’s hanging on Danny’s side of the stage
, because Danny doesn’t sing, so there’s no microphone near him. You get a tambourine anywhere near an open mic
and the whole world can hear it, which can be pretty bad if you only
think
you can play tambourine, like everyone does until they actually try it. But guess what? She was actually not bad. She wasn’t doing anything fancy, mostly just whacking it on the backbeat, but everything she played was in the pocket.

As we came offstage during the first break, I fell in next to her. “So, where’d you learn to play tambourine like that?”

She winked at me. “Church.”

“Wow.
My
church sure didn’t do music like this. No drums, no guitars …” I cleared my throat. “And certainly no badass percussionist–dancer-girl at stage left.”

Instead of laughing like I’d expected, she shot me a worried look. “That wasn’t planned, believe me. I wasn’t sure what to do, but Danny said, ‘Hey, it’s just a giant costume party. Come hang with us and add to the vibe.’ Was I stupid up there?”

I thought it was funny that Amber, of all people, would worry about what I might think of her dancing or playing tambourine onstage during a gig. “You were great,” I said. “You didn’t even drop a beat. Seriously, it’s totally cool with me.”

Just then one of the customers—who’d evidently gotten a head start on the festivities—came up to her. “Hey, brown sugar, that’s some hot dancin’,” he shouted, talking way too loud, like the band was still playing. Then he reached over and grabbed her ass. “Do you do private parties?”

I didn’t even stop to think. I just stepped between them, shouldering him out of the way. “She’s with the band. Keep your freakin’ hands off her, man.”

He looked me over like,
Who the hell are you?
Oh crap, it
was going to be that whole Kevin Flanders thing all over again. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw Danny approaching, fast. I had no doubt—there was gonna be a fight.