For the first time in months, Tryp sat in the pre-concert band meeting in Xan Valentine’s hotel suite, twirling a drumstick in his left hand, and studied the set list instead of concentrating all his effort on not vomiting all over Xan’s funny-looking black boots.
He squinted. What the hell kind of animal were those made out of, anyway? The ebony leather had some kind of scales, but you really couldn’t see what it was through the black gloss, and Xan’s black slacks hid the tops. They looked like ankle-height dress shoes anyway, not proper motorcycle boots or even cowboy boots.
Xan Valentine, the lead singer and driving force behind the band Killer Valentine, ran a hand through his long hair, pulling it back from his face. His hair was medium brown on top, but blond ends waved around his ears. The earring dangling from his lobe was a thick, black chain with a huge green crystal at the end.
“We’ve only got a few months left of this tour,” he said, and his British accent was thick today, “so we need to start thinking about recording the next album. I’ve got a few tracks, but we need more. Several more.”
When Xan was drunk, when he was relaxed, he made fun of his own English accent, calling it a Royal Shakespeare Company knock-off, full of round, dark brown vowels, which he exaggerated as rao-oond, dahk braun vow-ools.
Xan wasn’t ever laughing or drunk these days, and he kept his songwriting notebook shoved under his armpit all the time when he wasn’t on stage. Sometimes he weighed it in his palm and stared at the hotel balcony and the long, long way down to the sun-dappled swimming pool below.
Tryp had a song in his own notebook, music and lyrics, but he flinched like a toothache stabbed him, just thinking about it. Even if Xan might like the song, even if he needed it, that song wasn’t ready yet.
Or, really, Tryp wasn’t ready to play it for anyone yet.
And he might never be.
He spun a drumstick between his knuckles, let it rise to his fingertips, and passed it to his right hand without breaking the spin.
Tryp sipped his clear soda, trying to hydrate like Elfie had told him to. His radio interview today hadn’t been a jumble of half-mumbled curses and retching sounds, something to be proud of in this fucking mess.
Tryp cradled his still-aching head in his other hand, still rolling the drumstick in his right. He hadn’t completely recovered.
On the couch across from him, the newish back-up singer Rhiannon was taking notes as Xan dissected their last few performances of each song on the set list, her bright auburn hair bouncing as she scratched her ideas and corrections on the paper. Curled up on the couch with her soft legs tucked under her like that, she looked like a fluffy ginger cat, like some of his sisters had looked when he was a little kid, cuddly and kind.
Rhiannon scribbled on the paper some more. They still hadn’t fit her for an in-ear monitor yet, so she taped her notes on her monitor wedge every night. He was surprised that Jonas hadn’t gotten that done yet, considering Jonas was fucking her as they had all discovered last weekend on the blowout on the bus. Xan was still pissed at both of them.
Jonas Rees, the band manager, stood against the wall over by the door, letting the band pretend to be in charge. His dark blue suit looked like a deep trench in the inscrutable sea, and he was as quiet as a puppeteer back there, watching them dance with those pale green eyes of his, while he assessed and would later confer with Xan, then go manage.
With a few words from Jonas, once he had deemed that Killer Valentine was ready, they jumped from bottle-thrower clubs to big nightclubs, then with another phone call, to the arena circuit. Magazines had begun calling them for in-depth articles, and the internet stations played their singles. Jonas had come up with the strategy to skip old-media radios and go straight to internet stations and online MP3 sales, and now the recording companies were sniffing around, wanting a piece of the action.
The considerable action.
Tryp wasn’t sure whose side Jonas was really on. He had built the business of the band, but the record companies were going to buy him out with a huge payday plus residuals, if the band signed on the dotted line.
Plus, he had made it very clear that he was mentally moving on to the next big thing, which was their back-up singer, Rhiannon.
Xan was saying something about the set list, something about trying for a longer let-down at the end of the second set to keep the crowds off the stage.
The last time they’d had a swarm, Tryp’s drums had taken damage. His hi-hat still didn’t sound right no matter how he fiddled with the nut, and he should probably replace it, but going out to a music store to find another cymbal required waking up before he absolutely had to be someplace, and Tryp would rather sleep it off. He wondered if Zildjian could ship one to a hotel somewhere if he called them, if he could figure out where he was going to be next week.
South? Were they going down South for the next leg of the tour? He couldn’t remember. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was now.
The weak sun shining in the window looked like they were in the far northern latitudes, but he couldn’t be sure. The same tour bus had driven them to the hotel today as last week, so they must not have started the Asian or European legs of the tour yet.
Rade and Grayson, Tryp’s cohorts in awesome partying crime and players of keyboards and bass guitar, respectively, sprawled in armchairs and pretended to be awake by grunting occasionally. Rade’s weird-white hair webbed his face like he was dead and spiders had nested on him, though the purple tips on his shag threw off the analogy. Those guys must have been really wasted last night because the dark circles under their eyes looked worse than normal this afternoon, or else Rade had two black eyes from some stripper sitting on his face and smashing him, which was possible. Grayson coughed wetly and kept pressing his hands to his pasty face like he was feverish.
When they hit the stage, those zombies would freakishly return to being alive. Tryp had seen it happen every night for almost two years now. Tryp was an amateur stoner, but those guys had impressive powers of drug resilience.
Xan said to the band, “And it’s a relatively small venue tonight, only a few thousand seats because we’re in Berkeley,—”
Oh, yeah. Berkeley. Elfie had said something about Berkeley last night, and it explained the wan sunlight trickling in the window and the solar panels glittering everywhere.
“—so we’ll need to make up for that. This summer, however, we’ve had some managers approach us to play a few festivals.”
Tryp nodded, trying to look like he believed they would all survive until the summer.
Sheds, good God. Xan wanted them to play the sheds this summer. Or Jonas did, to increase their fan base and eventual contract with a recording company.
The outdoor festival concert venues were now constructed of better materials than back in the days before Tryp was born, back when they had corrugated metal roofs that sounded like aluminum sheds when rain drummed on them. Those festivals where many, many tens of thousands of people crowded and moshed were riots begging to happen, especially for a high-energy band like Killer Valentine. Xan was Genghis Khan out there, whipping the crowd into a frenzied horde. Tryp couldn’t imagine fifty or seventy thousand roiling people, all controlled by Xan’s insane charisma.
Maybe Tryp should wait to order that hi-hat until after the riot destroyed his whole kit. No use giving the mob new stuff to break. He rolled the drumstick over his knuckles and flipped it back between his fingers.
Xan stood, tall and European slim in his black slacks and shirt. Even still buffed out from the photo shoot, he looked carelessly sophisticated. Tryp kept watching him, trying to figure out how he did that, if it was Xan’s model’s posture or his expression of amused ennui, and Tryp felt like a hick again in his jeans and tee shirt with his tatts showing through the rips.
Tryp had been through hell with this band, and yet they might as well live on different planets. Sometimes, he felt so far away when people talked that he could hear an echo, like he stood on the edge of a canyon, buffeted by a sinister wind.
Xan said, “Even though it’s a smaller venue tonight, don’t leave anything in the box. Leave it all on the stage tonight. Play every show like it’s your last day on Earth.”