The next morning, Elfie stood over Tryp, who was lying on his stomach in the dim hotel room, still wearing his jeans and black shirt from Club Danz the night before. He had passed out at a weird diagonal, with his head at the bottom of the bed and his arm hanging in the air over the edge, his fingers fluttering above an empty vodka bottle on the floor.
His boots had left a gray streak on the wadded bedspread.
It had taken her an hour to work up the courage to walk back into his hotel room this morning, but asking one of the other guys to do it seemed worse.
Elfie sighed and sank to her knees, resting her folded arms on the bed. Rancid alcohol was leaking out Tryp’s pores with sour sweat, and he twitched, his fingers convulsing. His hair, crunchy with last night’s gel, stuck out in spikes. Stubble darkened his cheeks, and his skin had a gray tinge.
Oh, Tryfon.
She hadn’t done this to him. He had chosen to do this to himself, yet she felt sorry for him. This looked like a hell of a hangover in the making.
She touched his shoulder and wished she hadn’t fled the night before. “Tryp? Time to wake up.”
His eyelids rolled, but he turned his head away from her.
“Tryfon, honey. Come on, it’s showtime. Just a few minutes until your radio interview.”
He muttered, “Bullshit. I’m onto you. Leave me alone until they really call.”
She stretched her hand over his round shoulder. “You look awful.”
“Go away.” His low voice grated like he had been screaming, and he had done exactly that on the stage for three hours.
She rubbed his shoulder. “I need you to get up.”
He rolled onto his side away from her and curled, holding his head. “It hurts.”
“I’ll get you some aspirin.” She walked around the bed, then combed his hair away from his eyes.
“Did I get in a fight last night?”
“I don’t think so.” She was pretty sure that he hadn’t left the room, not with that empty vodka bottle right there.
“Just leave me alone.”
“I can leave if you get up.”
He stumbled to his feet and made it to the bathroom. Gagging sounds jumped through the air.
He was up. Breakfast would be delivered. Elfie could go.
She sat on the side of the bed and waited for him.
Tryp staggered back and sagged against the doorframe, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t want to talk now.”
“I’m just here to help you, you know, with orange juice and stuff.”
From the suite door out in the other room, they heard knocking and a woman’s faraway voice yell, “Room service!”
“I’ll go get that,” Elfie said, “and then you can start sipping orange juice, okay?”
“Post-puke afterglow,” he agreed and eased himself onto the end of the bed, still pressing on one temple with the heel of his hand.
She ran to let the cart in and wheeled it back to Tryp’s room. When she came back, he was crouched on the floor with his head between his knees. “Jesus, Tryp. You okay?”
“I’m an idiot,” he rasped out. “I tried to get up to hold the door for you. It swung closed when you were getting the cart.”
She stood beside him, holding the glass of orange juice and guiding the straw to his lips, and stroked his back. “Thanks anyway.”
He sipped the juice. “I want to talk about last night. Just not right now.”
“Okay.”
He sipped again. “I’m going to hold you to that, even if I have to come find you, but sometime later.”
“I’m sorry about running out.”
He leaned back on the bed and reached for the drumsticks on his nightstand, missing them with the first swipe. One rolled toward the back of the dresser, but he caught it and clutched them hard in his palm. “What am I supposed to eat next?”
“Oatmeal,” she said. “Or you can live dangerously with the toast.”
He reached for the oatmeal.
“I think this is the worst I’ve ever seen you.”
“Not the worst I’ve been. Not by far.”
“Yeah, Tryp. You’re a rock star.” She kept stroking his back while he choked down a few bites of oatmeal.
“Damn straight.” He placed another dab of oatmeal in his mouth and swallowed it like a pill.
She stayed, sitting beside him, trying to comfort him while he got some food in his stomach because he was obviously so sick, until the interview phone in her pocket rang. “Are you okay to take this?”
His skin was still a few shades paler than normal, and his olive skin hid some of the dark circles under his eyes. He panted for breath. “I’ve done interviews in worse shape.”
Yeah, but if she wanted a bigger paycheck so she could go to college next fall, he wasn’t supposed to do that anymore.
God, he looked miserable, just clutching his drumsticks, not twirling them.
She handed him the cheat sheet and the interview phone, and he thumbed the green stripe. He listened for a moment, then read off the paper with faint enthusiasm, “Hey, Jim. This is Tryp Areleous, the drummer for Killer Valentine. Thank you for inviting me today. It’s great to be back in San Jose.”
He managed a little more inflection than your average zombie.
Elfie closed the door to his bedroom behind herself.
To her right, two other techs came out of the other two bedroom doors. Mitch was swilling a can of Mountain Dew, but Joseph was buttoning his jeans. Shouting followed them both out of the rooms, and the doors slammed behind them.
Mitch said, “Oy, Elfie! What are you doing here?” His eyes followed her path backward to Tryp’s door, and his mouth fell open.
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Elfie said, gesturing toward her baggy cargo jeans and black crew tee shirt that definitely weren’t the attire of a walk of shame. “Same as you, rousting the muso’s drunk ass out of bed before doing an honest day’s work.”
“I poured ice water from the champagne bucket on Rade and the stripper skank in his bed,” Mitch said.
Joseph grinned. “I dangled my dongle in Grayson’s ear until he figured out what it was and jumped so hard that he slammed into the wall. What did you do, Elfie?”
She admitted, “I shook his shoulder gently until he woke up, and then I fed him OJ and oatmeal until he started making sense.”
“Pushover,” Mitch said.
Joseph added, “Sap.”
Elfie curled her lip at them. “Shut up or I will shove gerbs down both your pants and your dicks will shoot sparks.”
They all laughed and left the suite to go to work, even though Elfie was cringing inside.
The working classes did not fraternize with the artistes. She needed to remember that, and she patted her flash paper and gerb refills in her cargo pockets like they were talismans.