Chapter 13
No one liked Photo Day. Maybe the crew did, because they just had to sit around in shifts making sure the Talkers were orderly and the guys were safe, but the guys all dreaded it, that was for sure.
Photo Day was death warmed over. It was Weekend at Bernie’s.
It was what they had to do, and so they did it, but no one enjoyed it, not for a second.
Keith had learned a few things over the years: to wear comfortable shoes, to have his sunglasses on hand for when his eyes got too tired to hide it, to have sanitizer nearby, and to take breaks, even if it meant the day lasted longer.
Every year it was a miracle that Corey agreed to do it, to do something he hated purely for other people’s pleasure.
Even when he was fifteen, Corey had complained about being touched by so many people.
During Photo Day, every single person on the cruise could come and get their photo taken with the entire group.
Boy Talk stood in a line, spaced out like a gap-toothed fence, and groups of ten fans would file in, flank each guy, pose for the camera, and then move on.
It sounded so easy, a moving sidewalk of women, click, walk, click, walk.
In reality, though, each person who came through the line hugged each member of Boy Talk or shook their hands and said hello or asked a question that they’d been rehearsing for the hours that they’d been waiting, or for the last thirty years, and so by the time it was all done, the guys had been standing for six hours and had physically touched every guest on the ship and taken in several hours’ worth of word vomit.
The last two years, Keith and Scotty had worn masks, which offended some of the Talkers, but come on.
They were there, weren’t they? Keith had almost not gotten on the plane, thinking about the waves of perfume and anxiety coming off the Talkers—and all the hands, hands, hands, hands, hands—but then he thought about Shawn telling him that he was letting everyone down, and that was worse.
The lounge was empty for now, except for a few production guys with rolls of electrical tape on their belts who were setting up the backdrop and some blocking markers on the carpet.
The room was supposed to look like a Hollywood speakeasy, whatever that meant.
It reminded Keith of the basements he’d hung out in before the band got together, the fancy rec rooms that some of his friends’ fathers had poured their money into.
Sometimes Keith thought about those houses, the places he would have spent his teenage years if they hadn’t been on the road all the time.
The easy trouble he would have made, the local fun he could have had.
Boy Talk had given him everything, and it had taken everything, too.
Shawn had already turned eighteen and was ready to be done with New Jersey.
Like most things in his life, it hadn’t been up to Keith.
Shawn at least put on the performance of someone who was enjoying himself during Photo Day.
He cracked jokes and gave hard high fives.
The rest of them were reduced to their physical forms and whatever they contained.
Terrence would snap at people when he started getting tired, Scotty might make an off-color joke.
Corey barely spoke or smiled, his disdain for the whole scene oozing out of his pores.
Keith envied the women. They had to wait in line, sure, he’d seen them stretched across the hallways all the way to the end of the casino, three-quarters of the length of the ship, but when they were done, they could leave!
They could go to the bar or the pool or back to bed and he would still be there, frozen, smiling, his back aching even with a sticky patch on it to try to relax his muscles into submission.
Someone with a walkie-talkie strapped to their shoulder handed Keith a cup of coffee, which he gratefully accepted.
He was sitting on one of the comfortable sofas, watching as Bobby and Shawn talked on the foot-high stage on the other side of the room.
Jonathan was cross-legged on the floor just to their left with his eyes closed, and Keith could see Bobby keep turning to check if Jonathan was still there, like he might be a figment of his imagination.
There had been a Kabbalah guru some years ago who turned into an issue, but mostly Shawn’s strays went away on their own.
Keith himself hadn’t gotten much of a sense of Jonathan yet—he was probably focused on Corey. People usually were.
Keith couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Shawn was gesturing with his hands and pointing at things.
Scotty was on his back on the floor doing some stretches, his knees pulled into his chest. Corey and Terrence hadn’t shown up yet.
The crowd outside the lounge was so loud that it sounded like a second ocean.
Sometimes Keith wondered what would happen if they just threw open the doors and let the Talkers at them, like a Walmart on Black Friday.
What would they do to him? Would they rip his body apart?
At some point they would have to stop, when they drew blood and realized that he wasn’t actually any different than anyone else.
The coffee was too sweet, and Keith drank it anyway. Shawn jogged over and gave him a high five.
“Sup, sup, sup,” Shawn said, and humped the air.
“We’re gonna crush it. Or it’s gonna crush us.
Either way, gonna get crushed.” Shawn’s tolerance for Talker-induced pain was limitless, and sometimes Keith felt like the more he hated a particular thing, the more Shawn enjoyed it, like they were on a seesaw.
“I already feel it,” Scotty called up from the floor.
Shawn leapt over Scotty’s body and started humping the air over his face.
“We get it,” Scotty said. “You’ve got fluid hips for an old man.”
“Age is just a state of mind,” Shawn said.
He smiled, and his teeth gleamed. Keith envied his brother so much for the ease with which he moved through the world.
Shawn was five years older than Keith, and sometimes Keith wondered if it had happened in those first five years, that someone had whispered a secret into Shawn’s ear, something that would have helped him have an easier time.
It wasn’t true, of course—Shawn would have told Keith right away if there was some magic bullet.
He would never have kept it to himself. It just wasn’t his way.