His head popped up over the edge of the metal roof. “Hey, Fletch.” Dallas’s smiling face greeted me. “Why aren't you shooting pool with your buddies?”
“How'd you know about that?” I asked him.
“Mike asked me if I wanted to go with them, but I wasn’t in the mood for a noisy bar.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“Feel like getting stoned?” He held up some kind of oddly shaped pipe.
I thought about his offer for a moment. There was no reason I needed to rush home. Mike would be out drinking for several more hours, so I could hang with Dallas for a bit and still have time alone at the apartment to work on some music.
“Yeah, okay. I can do that,” I agreed. “How do I get up there?”
“Great!” he cheered and then hurried to the very back of the rig. “You can use the stairs on the back of the trailer beside the door hinge.”
I walked between the trailers and came around the back of the one Dallas was perched atop, then hefted myself up onto the bottom rung of the ladder. I carefully scaled up, and then Dallas helped me swing myself onto the roof. It was like climbing into a treehouse from my youth.
“Welcome aboard,” he said with a light tap of his hand to the back of my shoulder. “It's not much, but I like it up here.”
“Does your father know this is where you hang out?”
“Yeah, it's kind of my thing,” he admitted. “Whenever he can't find me, he knows I'll be on top of a rig nearby. I never go far, and for some strange reason, being able to look down on things clears my head. I always feel better after spending a few hours in my nest.”
“Nest?” I laughed.
Dallas waved a hand around in a manner to highlight the arrangement of pillows and blankets he’d laid out on his rooftop patio, and it did, indeed, resemble a nest of sorts. Scattered about was a giant pillow that looked more like a beanbag chair, an opened sleeping bag spread out flat, and several smaller pillows, as well as a few bags of chips and pretzels and an ice-filled bucket of water bottles.
“Pick a spot anywhere you’d like,” Dallas offered and plunked himself down on a corner of the sleeping bag with one elbow resting on the beanbag pillow. I watched him pack a six-inch brass saxophone-shaped pipe with dope and then hold a lighter to it.
“That's a cool looking pipe,” I commented, then took a seat near him and leaned on the pillow to partially face him with my legs tucked under me.
“It was a gift to my father from someone he works with,” Dallas explained.
“I can't imagine ever getting high with my old man,” I said and chuckled. “In fact, he kicked me out of the house because he kept catching me getting stoned in my room.”
“Really? That sucks,” Dallas said and sucked in a deep hit off the pipe before he passed it over to me. “It's just dope. No big deal.”
“I know, but my father made it sound like he'd found crack or heroin in my room.” I took a hit off it before I gave it back to him. “It wasn’t just about the pot though. He wasn’t a fan of me in general and thought I should be doing more with my life beyond music, which he considered to be a hobby.”
“How old were you when you left home?” Dallas asked.
“Eighteen,” I said. “Once he realized I wasn’t college material, he couldn’t be bothered with me, so as soon as I was legal to move out, I did.”
“Siblings?”
“Yeah, I have a much younger brother—like twelve years younger, who my mother dotes on like you wouldn’t believe,” I admitted. “He’s her favorite without a doubt, but I wish him luck. He’s going to need it in that household.”
“I grew up backstage at concerts and saw more shit go down before I hit puberty than most kids see in their lifetime,” Dallas said. “I was also smoking and drinking and getting into trouble before I really knew what I was doing.”
“That sounds so cool to be around everything going on backstage,” I said. “I bet you've met all kinds of famous people.”
“I shouldn't glamorize it because it wasn't like that at all. My father worked his ass off—filthy, endless hours with lots of time on the road. Sure, he knows everyone, all the big names in the business, which, I guess, means I sort of know them too.” Dallas slumped down a bit more to rest against the big pillow and passed the pipe over to me again.
The dope was potent and I was already feeling the effects of a nice buzz that had my bones feeling like limp noodles. I reclined next to him and pointed my head to the stars in the sky above us.
“You want another hit?” Dallas asked me.
“No, I'm good,” I said. “I'm already pretty baked.”
“Yeah, this shit is good stuff.” He set the pipe in between us and lay down to rest his head on the pillow beside mine.
We were quiet for a while, each lost in our own thoughts, until I asked, “Do you hang out up here every night?”
“Pretty much,” he answered. “I usually wait here until my dad finishes work for the day and then we can go home.”
“Not much of a view,” I commented.
“What are you talking about?” he protested. “You can see the stars, the planes coming and going from LAX, and the lights coming on inside the buildings around us. What's not to like about that? Sometimes, I'll lie up here, close my eyes, and try and decipher all the different sounds I can hear.”
I closed my eyes and shut out all the noise, then shifted my focus onto the various sounds I heard instead. When I did it that way, I could hear two cats fighting and even the crickets in the bushes behind the line of trailers, in addition to the passing cars and the rhythmic whooshing of the traffic on the main road two streets over.
“This would be a great place to write music,” I said after a while.
“I suppose it would,” Dallas said.
I rolled my head on the pillow and glanced at Dallas. His eyes were partially closed, and his head tipped back to extend his throat. I watched the gentle bob of his Adam's apple and then snapped my gaze away. Why in the hell was I paying attention to a dude like that? It had to be the pot.
“Are you sleeping over there, Fletch?”
“No, but I'm definitely feeling chill right now,” I answered.
“It's totally the weed,” Dallas said. “Hey, did Spumoni stop by with your stuff yet?”
“Dagger told me he should be here tomorrow unless he gets held up at the other warehouse,” I explained. “I hope he makes it tomorrow because I could use the help sleeping.”
“You should have said something. I could have rolled you a few joints while you waited for Spumoni.”
“It's okay. I'll survive.”
“Why are you having trouble sleeping?”
“Nerves, mainly,” I offered. “This is a big show for us, and I don't want to … fuck it up.”
“That won't happen,” he scoffed. “I heard you guys playing yesterday, and you sounded really good.”
“Thanks for that.”
“I mean it,” he said. “I'm not just saying that to stroke your ego.”
I looked over at him and realized he was staring at me. There wasn't much light around to add a lot of illumination on us, except for the security lights at the edge of the parking lot. Dallas's face was cast in beautiful shadows, but his eyes seemed to glimmer in a weird, mystical way, like he was deep in thought. I watched him blink and the action played out in my head like a slow-motion movie. Long dark lashes dropped to brush against his cheeks and then fluttered back open to reveal warm eyes that were studying me far too intently, and he didn't look away. He just kept gazing at me, and for some reason, I couldn't turn away either.