“BECAUSE YOU WERE EIGHT!”
“Like what?” Alex asked, looking like he swallowed a rabid chipmunk.
“We saw some butts. Lots of people walking out of bathrooms in towels. Nothing more. It was the late 1990s version of soft porn,” Josie cracked.
“Most people closed the curtains before we saw anything really good,” I lamented.
“But not all,” Josie pointed out. “Except Sally and I stopped you from seeing it.”
“Nothing compared to the shit on YouPorn now. Back in our day, we had to work for it,” I joked, the memory sickening now.
“We were bored,” Josie sighed. “Tired. And back then, my mom was here.” She looked around Jerry's. “A lot. I didn't want to be at home when she came home with some guy, so I spent copious amounts of time at Darla's.”
Alex's face changed, pain filling in the edges around his eyes.
“We did have the meteor!” I reminded her.
“Meteor?” Alex perked up.
“Yeah! We saw a few big shooting stars one night. Then the big old THUMP that shook the ground and we thought one had landed!”
“An actual meteor hit the ground in Peters?”
I burst out laughing, Josie with me.
“Naw,” I finally said, coming to my senses. “Steve Keenan's dad, Bruce. He was a heavy duty equipment operator. Had a big garage near the trailer park. And on the same night we watched a meteor shower, he got super drunk and tipped a CAT on its side.”
“What kind of cat makes a thump large enough to shake the ground?”
“The kind Bruce Keenan drove.”
“He drove a cat?”
This conversation was starting to feel like Who's on First?
“A caterpillar.”
“That's even smaller than a cat, Darla.”
“Caterpillar is the name of a heavy duty equipment company, Joe. We call them CATs.”
His grimace showed me he didn't like not knowing something. Which was typical Joe.
“That makes more sense,” he groused, shutting up, leaving to order more beers.
The sound of an electric guitar being tested made us look at the stage. Trevor was right there, ass leaning on a stool, guitar splayed across his crotch, fingers doing lazy magic on the strings. His blond hair was dark, combed back off his face. Before we came to Ohio, he was growing a beard, and while daily life made it become part of him, an invisible characteristic, as I watched him onstage he looked so different.
So grown up.
When did my men become actual men?
The early chords of one of the new songs the band was working on sprang from Trevor's fingers, making Joe stand, gulp his beer, and head up to join Trevor. His bass was in his hand. Earlier, Alex must have moved the speakers to the stage.
Guess half of Random Acts of Crazy was the opening act on open mic night at Jerry's Bar.
I looked at the audience, up to about thirty people now, some of them clutching acoustic guitars, ready for their turn on stage. They had no idea what they were getting.
For free.
“This is about to get interesting,” Josie said, nodding toward the door. Jerry's didn't have a cover charge. The whole point of open mic night was to get people in the door to buy alcohol and food. A steady stream of new patrons floated in, all of them gathering with existing customers at tables.
A few looked up at Trevor and Joe on stage and grinned.
Bzzz.
Josie looked at her phone and groaned. “It's my mom.”
“Your mom's texting you?” Alex said. “Does she need money?”
As soon as the words were out, Alex literally bit his tongue, the end of it poking out. Rarely the kind of person to say anything bad about another, this was a lapse born of alcohol.
Or impatience finally boiled over.
“No. She says she's coming on down. Heard 'the band' is playing. Word's getting out around town.”
“Holy jumping Jesus on a trampoline,” I whispered, moving toward the stage. The guys needed to know. They were planning to do two brand new songs for fun, to work out the kinks, but RAOC was big enough now that if just one asshole in the crowd recorded the performance, it'd be a huge spoiler.
And the deal for their next gig was exclusivity. The two new songs could only be performed in public for the first time there.
Who knew work was going to interfere with life in Peters like this?
“It's Mac. Guarantee it,” Josie said, lit up and pissed, pushing her way through a growing crowd at the bar to chew him out.
Which was good. Because someone had to, and I couldn't.
I had to stop a train wreck from happening.
Using only my tongue.
Chapter 22
Trevor
It felt good.
No – it felt great.
Guitar. Mic. Stage light, Scent of stale beer and cigarettes and exhaustion. Being tired has its own odor, you know? Bars smell like desire, but not the kind you think.
Not sexual desire, though there's some of that.
Desire to just rest.
People want a place they can go where no one tells them what to do. No one tells them who to be. No one tells them what to think or say or feel. People come to bars so they can escape all that, and they release something that infuses the air with this collective smell.
Whenever we played in a bar, it latched on to me.
And Jerry's had it all, concentrated and overwhelming.
“Hey. Problem,” Darla said, interrupting our sound check.
“What?”
“Word got out. Loads of people coming in to watch half of Random Acts of Crazy play here.”
“WHAT?” Joe's sharp tongue cut through the space between us. “People are coming just to see us perform?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we should get paid!”
“No. Sorry,” Darla said. “You're doing this for open mic. No money.”
“We were just trying to practice!” he sputtered. “We're ready for those two songs.”
“About that,” she said with a sigh, face even grimmer. “You can't do them.”
I was on Joe's side now. “WHAT?” I snapped. “Why the hell not?”
“Because some jackhole in the crowd will post a video on InstaTwitFaceTikChat. You know how it works. And a big part of the band's next gig is all about being the 'first look' at them two songs.”
My gut dropped.
“This is all we have prepared. We altered them for only having guitar and bass. We're not ready to perform anything else,” Joe blustered.
“Come on. You could do I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer in your sleep.”
“That's not the point!”
“I'm sorry. I am.”
“You did nothing wrong, Darla,” I said. “But this sucks. We don't have a choice, do we?”
“Unless you want to lose the next gig, no.”
Joe ground out an expletive, looking ready to punch something.
I stared at the growing crowd, a few phones pointed our way already.
“They expect a performance from Random Acts of Crazy?”
“Mama and Calvin bragged all over you after the Times Square New Years Eve performance, so... I guess.” She looked sad.