Chapter 8 #2
“Same goes. Keep your hands to yourself.” DJ bumped his shoulder, then played a series of notes with a haunting melody. Roy realized it as a different take on the heavy metal song he and the other band members had been working on. “We’re considering a bridge to ‘Meet Your Maker.’”
“Like in the middle of ‘Master of Puppets’ by Metallica.”
DJ’s knowing look had Roy lifting a shoulder. “Lucky guess.”
“Yeah, right.” DJ’s brown eyes twinkled, but his mouth straightened as he returned to the process. His fingers kept moving over the keys, adding to the existing melody.
“A song is a road. I think for musicians, that’s what heaven would be, staying on that road, a never-ending jam session.
While the greats, your idols, they come in and out, jamming with you.
Like that studio session you were at where we invited the guys down the hall to join us.
You were kind of blissed out by it, admit it. ”
“I admit nothing.” But Roy gave him a grudging smile. It was rare Roy revealed his private passions, but DJ reached inside him and brought them forth.
Compatibility.
“Lyrics are sometimes so simple, just a conversation, but you put the music with them and it peels back the surface. You see what the words really mean, or the music gives them meanings they never had before.” DJ’s hands swept the keys, moving in front of Roy and then back, his shoulder briefly pressed against him.
“Jimmy Page, the guitarist for Led Zeppelin, said he wanted the listener to be able to hear every band member’s contribution to a song, because of how amazing the individual parts were.”
“The cohesion isn’t bad, either,” Roy pointed out. “It hits you high, low, inside and out.”
“Yeah. Composition, arrangement, harmony, they all take a song to a different level, give it a life of its own. Makes you see the miracle of it. Like Steve, Pete and I, how we all ended up at Marjorie’s, each of us carrying a love of music.
But we also had the need to play it, the drive to work at it, to grow the talent we had.
When Tal came into the mix, we knew that was it, the circle had closed.
“Plenty of bands talk about that. Someone comes in, and maybe you don’t think they’re going to fit, because you get in your comfort zone and don’t trust an outsider. But as I’ve told Tal, plenty of times, ‘Man, you’re not an outsider. You were a missing piece.”
DJ’s expression shadowed, but he didn’t get into those darker waters. He just kept playing, his expression meditative. Roy could see the fields of notes and words rolling through his head. It was the place he belonged, that had never kicked him out or left him alone.
Roy sat with him, listening. Their shoulders stayed pressed together.
“Hey, play this chord here.” DJ reached over him to show him what he meant, and started the metronome on top of the piano. “Do it on every third beat.”
Roy complied, and DJ filled in the music around it, edgy and sensual, with a touch of hunger. “See, harmony? It’s magic. Connection is what makes music work. Like when I’m playing the guitar. The pickups take what my fingers do to the strings, and feed it through the cable to the amp.”
As it became more complicated, Roy watched DJ’s expression intensify, bringing forth what was in his head, channeling it through his long fingers.
He’d always wanted to protect his client. Feeling this kind of ache in his chest along with it, as if there was a whole new consequence for failure, was new.
He’d think about that later. Not during something like this.
When DJ brought the song to a close, he nudged Roy with an elbow. “You’ve participated in Survival’s next big hit.”
“Do I get a royalty share for my two-minute contribution?”
“I think you’ve contributed more than that.” DJ gave him a sweeping look. “Wait until you hear the lyrics.”
Was this interlude appropriate? There’d been no bodily fluid exchange. Not even a kiss.
“If you like watching the creation process, you should ride with us in the bus,” DJ said unexpectedly.
“My job is to secure your environment and remain part of the wallpaper. Not sit and listen to you play.”
“You can be wallpaper in the bus. I’ll reserve you the back seat so you can watch everything in your super sexy and serious bodyguard way.”
When Roy didn’t respond, DJ gave him a mock scowl. “They debunked the rumor that the rockstar lifestyle and attitude is contagious. Though if I’m wrong, and you feel overcome by it, we probably have a spare pair of ripped jeans and an I Heart Survival T-shirt tucked in storage.”
His gaze passed over Roy’s shoulders. “It might be male stripper tight. We can pierce your ear. Pete did his own.”
“If you don’t stop, I will fold you up like a straw and stuff you in storage.”
But DJ was as persistent as a kid in a toy store with his eye on the prize. “We’re picking up that reporter and her camera man for a three-hour ride along. You know they might be sleeper rockstar assassins.”
Roy put an end to the teasing. “Dory, is there a professional reason for me to be on that bus?”
“One of your guys always rides with us.”
“Yes. While I ride in the vehicle in front or behind.”
“Any reason you can’t be the one in the bus?”
Roy stared him down. DJ lifted a shoulder.
“No,” he said quietly. “No professional reason at all. But I can tell you love the music. I bet you don’t get much chance in your job to really immerse yourself in it.
The bus is a controlled environment. I have serious hots for you, Roy, I don’t deny it, but the reason I asked is I also want to consider you a friend. Is that against the rules?”
“No,” Roy said after a moment. “But it’s a hell of a dodge of the issue.”
“You like watching me play the guitar. Don’t you?”
Roy could have dismissed the comment. Instead, only honesty came from his lips. “Your focus…it’s distracting.”
DJ’s eyes glittered at all the nuances behind those two words, and the teasing disappeared from his face. “Ride with us, Roy. Please.”
When the tour bus hit the road, Roy was on it. As DJ had so craftily pointed out, Roy required one security team member to be present in the vehicle.
The reporter and her camera man had been vetted; very little chance they were rockstar assassins. However, having them on an extended ride along was unusual, since the band liked having time to defuse or compose. After hearing the angle, Roy understood why the band had okayed it.
Leann White was doing a human-interest piece on celebrities who’d been in the foster system. She was a mother herself, of a seven-year-old boy. Her approach was respectful, easing toward more sensitive questions.
“You’ve said your earlier foster homes weren’t always the best. Are you okay expanding on that?”
“I lived on the street for about a year when I was ten,” Pete told her.
He was up in a bunk, feet dangling down as he worked on his fantasy football choices.
“I had an agreement with my foster parents that I’d show up if they had a DHHS visit, so it would look like they were earning their check.
They’d make me waffles with strawberries and whipped cream to sweeten the deal. ”
He nodded at DJ. “Let him tell you about his shoulder thing. Dislocates at the drop of a hat, so he has to be careful on stage. It popped out at that rock festival we did recently, after the stage dismount on ‘Smoke It.’”
Her blue eyes widened as she brushed back a lock of copper-brown hair. “Wow. You couldn’t tell.”
“I’ve learned to cover it.” DJ sat across from her, an acoustic guitar cradled in his lap.
“My foster dad tried to rip my arm off. Ever since, it likes to pull that shit at inconvenient times.” DJ’s gaze moved to Roy, sitting on the couch toward the back.
As promised, it offered the best view of the bus interior and exits.
Leann’s expression became steeped in sorrow and anger. “I wanted to do this piece. But there are times what I’m learning gets overwhelming. I know that seems trite—you all are the ones that went through it, not me, but…”
“Your article will help the kids in the system, and the good foster parents.” DJ touched her knee, flustering her in that DJ-way of his, but it was intended as a reassurance.
“We made it through, and things happen for a reason.
All of that, it goes into our songs. What bubblegum shit would we be singing if we didn't have that?
"Hey, I like some of that bubblegum shit. ‘Call me maybe.’" Tal, stretched out in the upper bunk across from Pete’s, punctuated the song verse with an effeminate jut of his hips. Leann’s photographer was quick to snap the shot.
"Don't do that again, ever," Pete told Tal. "I have to sleep at night."
“Seriously, we got way lucky with our last foster home,” Steve put in. “That’s how we met, and Marjorie’s the closest thing we’d ever consider to a mom.”
He sat next to Lonnie, the Olive Oyl girlfriend.
The short cotton dress over striped leggings she’d been wearing in Roy’s file photo was her preferred fashion statement.
Today the dress was red and the stockings were white polka dots against a black field.
Her shiny black shoes had thick soles and heavy silver buckles.
When Roy had first met her, she’d shaken his hand solemnly and thanked him for protecting the band.
A science geek pursuing an astronomy major, she seemed level-headed, and a good influence on Steve.
He’d successfully talked her into taking a semester break to join them in Dallas for the rest of the tour.
“Marjorie came up with the idea to help Tal sleep better,” DJ told Leann, glancing up at Tal. “When he came to crash at our place, he’d have nightmares and wander the house. She unrolled a yoga mat behind his drum kit. He slept on it like a baby.”
“Still do,” Tal said. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a nice cushy hotel bed, but sometimes I prefer to sleep with my kit.”