The night of the concert, I worried about leaving Monty and Mona home alone, but I’d promised Roach I’d go and I needed something to shake the funk that had settled over me since The Date That Never Was. But I was hopeful I had everything under control. I hadn’t left the house without taking a few extra safety precautions. Creamer was stocked - therefore no late-night trips to the corner store were required. In theory. I’d also locked up Mona’s food to eliminate Monty feeding her a thousand times.
They’d be fine.
Maybe I should call to be sure. A scattered phone conversation with Monty had to be better than this.
I plastered on a smile, the same one I’d been wearing for the last two days. No one seemed to notice it stopped short of Jack Nicholson in the Shining, you know, the scene where he pokes his face through a hole he just chopped in a door.
But freaky, surface normalcy was better than letting the world see how I really felt. Letting those feelings shine through on my face would make the possessed Nicholson look like he’d been reciting nursery rhymes. And then…the band stuff. Ugh.
We had an hour to go before show time, but it had only taken about three minutes for me to realize the retail industry would not be appearing on my list of potential careers. Roach, however, seemed to soak it up. She even developed a special way to give people back their change with a regal flourish.
I picked listlessly at my wool sweater.
Roach shot me a concerned glance. “Are you still stewing? I know my brother is the spawn of the devil and we should probably have skinned him alive, but at least he confessed. And, on the bright side, Ty didn’t go ahead and repeat himself and blitz the school with the list.”
“He didn’t have to, his mission to make me miserable was accomplished with one direct hit.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Eric still avoiding you?”
“Nothing to avoid. I stopped calling. It’s obvious we both have trust issues. I’ve already made a fool of myself once for him, if he can’t return the favor – he’s not worth pining over.”
“Then you admit you’re pining?”
I shot her a glare, grabbed my phone and decided there was no time like the present to check up on Monty.
“A photo shoot is the perfect distraction, great idea!” Roach snatched the phone from my hands and dragged me out from behind the merch table. “Stand right there…” She had us pose beside one of the band’s life-sized cut outs and held the phone at arms length.
“I can’t believe how many people showed up for this,” I said as we returned to the table. “And they’re rowdy. It’s bible thumpers gone wild.”
“What’s the matter?” Roach shot me a sideways glance. “Scared some of it might rub off?”
“As if.”
A cheerful looking girl handed Roach a ten-dollar bill. “I’ll take a CD, please.”
“That’s ten fifty,” Roach said, withholding the CD.
The girl looked devastated. “But I only have ten.”
Roach was hard-core. She was about to hand the bill back to the girl. I couldn’t stand it. I dug into my pocket and gave Roach two quarters. “It’s half a buck, I’ll spot her the change.”
The girl’s face lit up. “Oh! How wonderful. May the Lord bless you.”
I flushed, uncomfortable with the gushing and the blessing, and the general politeness when I had such rage boiling under my civil outsides. To Roach I hissed, “Gotta go wiz.”
I left the table for a much needed potty break and a quick call home.
“Monty? Everything okay there?”
“Who the hell is this?”
I sighed. “It’s Charlie, you know, the kid who lives in your basement.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get snippy. Do you need something?”
“No…”
“Are you hurt?”
“No…”
“Then stop bugging me, I’m catching up on my soaps.”
He hung up. I stared at my phone in disbelief. Despite his confusion, his forgetfulness, the old guy could still run a DVR. Life was odd.
Unwilling to go back to work so soon, I wandered, killing time, but after a while I began to feel judged by the portraits of the saints. Nature was calling anyway. I made my way to the washrooms, eyeing the line up with a groan.
I stalked to the front of the line. “Hi there, I don’t mean to butt in, but I’ve been manning the merch table for hours and I really, really have to pee. Can I scoot in?”
The girls at the front huddled tighter together, blocking me out.
“Hey!” I made eye contact with the girl who was short fifty cents, but I sold her the CD anyway. “Nice way to pay it forward.”
Before I could get warmed up, a booming voice came over the hall PA system. The show had started.
“Gather, Brothers and Sisters! Let us make a joyful….noooiiiise…”
I had no idea they’d get the joint jumping like a hip-hop concert. The girls outside the washroom screamed and scattered. I met up with Roach and we made quick work of stuffing all the merch into the band’s glorified Tupperware. One of their minions swooped by on a scooter-trailer and within ten minutes the gear was gone.
“Come on.” Roach dragged me away from the main doors and over to a lone security guard standing by a non-descript set of stairs at the far end of the hall. She flashed him a pass and he stepped aside.
We charged up a short flight of stairs and entered a dark hall, careful not to trip over the network of chords and cables duct-taped to the floor. We were backstage, sort of, more like in the wings. We had a side view of the band, slamming their instruments to hell and screaming into their mics. I couldn’t believe the crowd, on their feet, jumping into the air. They even had a mosh pit.
My heart thrummed to the pounding base and knock of the kick drum. The vibrations so strong I felt them in my fillings.
Roach danced like a maniac, belting out the lyrics, shooting me looks that said, do you get it now, do you feel it?
Well, I didn’t feel it, not the way she meant.
But I felt…something.
I grabbed Roach’s hand and together we surged in to the air. We laughed. We danced. We closed our eyes and let the music, the energy, the crowd take us to some other place for awhile.
Whatever it was, it felt pretty damn good.