The Devil's Metal (19 page)

My head was deep in the fruity smelling
cloud of powder when I felt someone come on the bus and saw Mickey
heading for the back room.

I poked my head out of the washroom and
looked over at him. It was a cloudy, hot day in Philadelphia and he
should have been inside doing soundcheck with the rest of the
band.

“How’s it going?” I asked, trying to rub the
dry shampoo out of my head.

He paused when he heard me, his hand deep in
a leather satchel.

“It’s going,” he said. Then he resumed
searching for something. Seconds later he pulled out a small bag of
weed. He stared at me with a defensive expression, like I was going
to lecture him on drug use or something.

It occurred to me that now was the perfect
time to get my Mickey interview and I knew just the way to do
it.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with the
band?”

He frowned. “Not really. I’m too hungover to
do the soundcheck. A tech is checking it for me.”

“Do you mind if you smoke a bit of that with
me?” I asked, making my eyes big and pleading.

“Uh…okay,” he said, a bit taken aback. “I
was just going to go for a walk around the building. Nothing
special.”

I grinned. “That’s perfect! Give me a
second.”

I quickly ran a few drops of patchouli oil
on my hair to tame the frizz then grabbed my messenger bag that had
my notepad and tape recorder in it.

We left the bus, and as we strolled, I
pretended that Mickey didn’t make me feel extremely awkward. He was
the hardest one out of the bunch to read and the one guy I felt
like I never really knew. Well, unless you counted Graham. But I
tried not to.

We rounded the corner, away from the
backstage area, before Mickey lit up. We stopped near a loading
dock and took a seat on the cement steps. The dark clouds above us
looked ominous and the heat they were trapping below was
stifling.

After Mickey took a few puffs, he passed it
to me. I took only the smallest bit, needing to keep a sharp mind.
I wanted, needed, him to open up and he was always more jovial when
he was high as fuck.

A few minutes of increasingly comfortable
silence flew past before I asked, “Do you mind if I interview you
now?”

He snorted, smoke coming out of his nose.
“Aw, man, Rusty. This was your plan wasn’t it?”

“I’m just trying to make you comfortable,” I
said, raising my hands in peace.

“Well, you did that all right. Okay. Fine.
Ask your stupid questions.”

So I brought out the tape recorder and the
notepad where I had already made a list of “stupid” questions and
started the interview. It was hard to be as professional as I
should have been, considering I was high and laughing half the
time. But Mickey was laughing too.

At least he was, until I started asking the
serious questions.

“How’s your relationship with Noelle?” I
searched his face. The reason he was so hard to read sometimes was
because he hid beneath so much facial hair. It made his expressions
subtle and made him look much older than he was.

“Noe…” he started. He sighed and scratched
absently at his beard. “Noe is my everything.”

“How do you explain the groupies then?” I
knew it was a bit of a rude, not to mention personal question, but
my interviewing tactics had gotten bolder these days.

I wasn’t surprised by the dirty look he gave
me.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean…” I began, trying to say it
properly, “you’re in a relationship with the same woman for years.
You’re childhood sweethearts. Yet it’s kinda obvious that you hook
up on the road. I’m just curious as to how your relationship
survives that.”

He fell quiet, his sharp eyes searching the
empty lot in front of us. I swallowed hard, hoping I didn’t piss
him off too much and waited with bated breath for him to say
something, anything.

Finally he gave me a gentle smile. “I think
being part of the band is the hardest fucking thing in the world. I
wouldn’t have survived this long if it wasn’t for Noe. She’s been
my island since the beginning. Is she perfect? No. You see me
sleeping around with the groupies but she’s no angel either. Oh no.
But I still love her and that’s a love that doesn’t go away. I know
I’m not perfect either. We make our imperfectness work. If she
asked me to change, I’d change for her. And she’d change for me.
But we love each other too much to ask for anything more than just
staying alive. Rock music, you know, bands, all this shit. It kills
you. The industry kills you. Your bandmates might even kill you.
Sometimes I get the feeling like this whole thing, the band, the
tour, everything, I feel like it’s a big joke and one day we’re
going to get it, and we’re not going to be laughing. But Noe’s part
of the joke, too. So I go forward and so does she. That’s how we
survive. Because we have each other.”

I didn’t think I’d ever heard Mickey talk
that much and I quickly checked my tape recorder in a mild panic,
hoping it was working. It was, the wheels were turning, and I did a
dance of joy inside from having just snagged a wealth of pull
quotes from that one long, surprisingly heartfelt ramble.

“That’s kind of beautiful, Mickey,” I told
him.

He held my gaze steadily. “It’s the truth.
Beauty or not. I love Noelle. She loves me. Noe and I aren’t
typical but we love and we make it work. You need love in a
business like this. If you don’t have love, then none of this means
anything.”

He put the joint out on the ground and
stuffed the roach into a pack of cigarettes.

“You mind if we go back now?” He asked,
getting to his feet. “I feel like a rat missing soundcheck like
this.”

He pulled me up by my arms and I smiled
gratefully. “Thank you. It was nice to hear you speak.”

“Anytime you wanna smoke a little something
something, you know where to look.”

I took that as a very welcoming sign.

I pressed the stop button on the recorder
with a satisfying click and we walked back around the building
until we were near the bus and the back doors again.

“Hey, Rusty,” Chip hollered at me, sticking
his head out the backstage door. “Phone’s for you!”

I stopped in the middle of the parking lot
and looked back at Chip.

“Who is it?”

Though unlikely, Mel or my brother could
have found out what venue the band was playing at. I hoped it was
them saying hello, but part of my chest froze up with a burst of
worry. What if it was Dad? Maybe he got drunk and hurt himself or
choked on his own vomit. What if Eric was beaten up at school and
was in the hospital. What if—

“It’s Barry Kramer from Creem!” Chip yelled
back.

Okay. That wasn’t so bad. But I had a
feeling Barry didn’t call you if he had good news…unless the band
was going to be on the cover.

Fixating on that positive, I gave Mickey a
small smile and ran across the lot, my humidity-challenged hair
flowing behind me.

“Thanks,” I told Chip and ran over to the
payphone inside the backstage area.

“Dawn here,” I said into the receiver.

“Dawn, it’s Barry,” he said through the
line.

I swallowed hard. “Yeah. Hi, Barry, what can
I do you for?”

“Oh, not too much. How are you?”

I scratched nervously at my head. “I’m good,
good. Tired.”

“And the band?”

“They’re…you know. Good. Being themselves.
Noelle got pretty drunk after the Detroit show, and out of
sympathy, Mickey was plastered on stage the next night in New York.
But I just got a good interview out of him, so there’s that.”

“I know about the New York show, I read the
review in the Times,” he said absently. “But that’s not why I’m
calling.”

I scratched harder. “No?”

“Dawn…I’m playing a hunch here. Just a
feeling. Normally I’m not sticking my honker in our writers’
business, and hell you’re not really
our
writer anyway, but
I kind of like you and I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

He paused and I couldn’t think of anything
to say.

“We’ve been getting some letters here at the
office about you.”

“About me?” I asked with widening eyes. The
scratching stopped.

“Yes. I don’t know who they are from and
there’s no return address, but they’ve obviously been written by
some sort of fan with an agenda.”

“Well, what are they saying?”

“That you’re a fraud. That you’re crazy and
were a stalker and a groupie and all that usual shit that women
like to sling at each other.”

“Terri,” I whispered, thinking of when she
was talking to Jacob.

“As I said, I don’t know her name. But this
girl
thinks
she has it in with the band and the manager. She
acts like she’s with them, that’s she’s been the number one fan
from the beginning. That she gets special privileges. That normally
isn’t any reason to call you like this, but based on the fact that
I’ve got twenty fucking letters here from her, I’d say we’ve
probably got a nutter on our hands. And by that I mean
you
are dealing with a nutter on your hands. I just want you to stay
safe, Dawn.”

Once I found my voice, I told him about
Sonja, Terri, and Sparky.

“It’s probably one and the same then. All
bands get them and they all can’t be Miss Pamela, queen of the
groupie scene. But take it from me, I’ve been in the music
journalism business for the last five years, and before that I knew
more about the scene than anyone else. Sometimes fans aren’t well,
and the weirder and heavier the music is, the more likely they’ll
attract the unstable ones. Music gives birth to obsession and
obsession can lead to…just watch yourself, you dig?”

“I dig,” I said. “Thanks Barry.”

I hung up the phone and looked around me,
suddenly afraid again. I was alone under buzzing fluorescent
lights, and still tired as anything. The pot had made me want to
pass out but there was no way I felt like napping by myself on the
bus. I shivered, totally creeped out, and made my way over to the
stage to watch them finish the rest of soundcheck. I didn’t want to
take any chances.

***

For the Philly show, I pretty much became
Jacob’s shadow. Wherever he went, I went, like a redheaded
Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. Only when I had to go to the bathroom
did I leave his side, and that’s when I tagged along with
Noelle.

She was nicer to me since the night in
Detroit, and I’d thought she felt embarrassed or something. I never
brought up the stuff she said to me about the supposed “demon in
white,” but there was something different about her now, like she
was more aware of things around her. I was jumpy because of what
Barry had told me, but so was she, and she had been like that ever
since she came out of her hangover on the way to New York. She was
wary, afraid, and meek. Mickey certainly noticed her change and was
beating himself up over it, blaming himself for not being
supportive and all that jazz. It was true, of course, but I didn’t
think that’s what was wrong with Noelle. She was frail at heart,
but by the time the second show in NYC rolled around, she wasn’t
looking ashamed anymore—she was looking haunted. The fear that
never left her eyes worried me, and even when I thought she’d catch
on that I was tagging along with her to the washroom every time,
like a couple of gals at a nightclub, she didn’t mind. I think she
was just as scared as I was.

But were we scared of the same thing?

Eventually Jacob noticed something was going
on. Or he’d always noticed and had waited for the right time to
bring it up. With normal Jacob flavor, it happened to be a few
minutes before the show.

“Tell me what’s on your mind, Rusty,” he
said dryly as we stood at the side of the stage. He was running a
nail file underneath his fingernails and flicking out the dirt.

“I got a call from Barry today.”

“Oh?”

“He said he’d been receiving some letters
about me.”

“Oh?” he repeated, a bit more
interested.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Terri
or one of the other Get The Fuck Outs is behind it. It kind of gels
with what you said back…well whatever city that was in. That it was
groupie high school.”

His golden eyes remained on his nails. “Oh
yes, ain’t that the truth, love.”

“So, that’s going on. I’m mildly freaked
out.” I crossed my arms, feeling a chill.

“I can see that. I don’t blame you. Do you
think these girls are…dangerous?” he said the last word like it was
laden in silk.

I gave him a weird look. “You tell me! I’ve
just learned who they are. You’ve dealt with them longer.”

He exhaled sharply through his nose and
finally looked me in the eye. His red hair flamed under the stage
lights, giving him a hellish aura. “Everyone has the chance to
become dangerous. If the right weather patterns are created, if the
right feelings are invoked…feelings of injustice. Jealousy.
Feelings of being owed something they believe they have a right to
have. To…collect. We all have it in us to become a danger, either
to others or to ourselves. It’s only a matter if the right clouds
are brewing. Certain clouds will create a storm.”

“And?” I egged him on impatiently. “What
clouds are brewing? Are these groupies dangerous or not? Do I need
to start sleeping with a switchblade underneath my pillow?”

A slow smile spread across his rough lips.
Then he shrugged and turned his attention back to cleaning his
nails. “Couldn’t hurt, could it?”

I mulled on that cryptic comment for a while
and tried to pay attention to the show as Hybrid wowed the Philly
audience. But I couldn’t. I had this weird feeling like time was
running out—probably a by-product of hanging around a pessimist
like Sage who seemed to act at times like there was no
tomorrow.

When the show was over and everyone was
sweaty and exhausted to the core, I went to the bathroom with
Noelle. While she was in the stall doing her business, I examined
my face in the mirror. I had dark circles under my eyes and the
nice tan that had dusted my skin during the heat of summer was
dwindling. Thanks to late nights and never-ending bus rides, I was
on my way to having a skin tone as appealing as a cadaver.