5. Reconciling Sales
IAN
“I swear, if that happens again,” I said, “we’re going to stop right in the middle of our gig and do our ‘Perfidia’ warm-up.”
Archer was pacing the length of the bus, back and forth like a caged lion. He shot me his most scornful look and said very succinctly, “Psht. Right. As if.”
“We can’t let that happen again,” I said.
Mal tried to ease the tension. “Look, we ended on a high note. People were singing along to ‘The Salesman.’”
Archer rounded on him. “How can you not care that ‘Lizabella’ was so fucked up? That’s your song!”
“They’re all my song,” Mal said quietly. “Just like they’re all yours, and they’re all Ian’s. We live and die together, brother.”
I got hit with a burst of love for Mal that sparked nerve endings too overloaded with shame.
Archer scrubbed a hand over his face. “That’s right, Mal. You’re right. I just wish the first time I actually spoke to Sheree, she hadn’t been comforting me for the worst show in the history of mankind.”
I wished that too. Sheree had heard our show. Kai had stood in the wings and watched us. I couldn’t have fucked up worse.
Even Mal deflated. “I know. That was . . . fuck. That was so horrible.”
Archer and I nodded. “If only she hadn’t been so—” I said.
“—gracious,” Archer finished.
“Yeah. Forgiving. Christ.”
She’d been a descending goddess, all shimmery and kind, and had made a charming joke about her first stadium show. “She said we’d get it back in Charlotte,” I said hopelessly.
“And we will,” Mal said. He still had the energy to hope.
“She can still fire us. That clause in our contract was very clear about that.” I shook my head. I’d sucked over and over again. I’d failed the guys.
“Why are we still sitting here?” Archer was still pacing. “It’s almost two in the morning. Weren’t we supposed to leave at one? Hey, Ken? I’d really like to put a little distance between us and Atlanta. Can we get out of here?”
“Waiting on the little missy,” Ken said from the driver’s seat.
That’s right. Where was the cheerleader?
“Everyone else is gone,” Archer said. The parking garage under the Atlanta stadium had been filled with our buses an hour before, but Archer was right. The place was empty now.
“Not quite,” Ken said, gesturing through the windshield. “That’s bus two. Administration.”
“Well, what are they waiting for?” Of all of us, Mal was the most likely to go looking for answers. Sure enough, he was the one who knocked on bus two’s door. He came back with the answer. “Stadium thinks we owe them money for merch. We think they’ve miscounted and they owe us. We’re waiting on that tour manager guy, someone named Bianca, and Nicky.”
So we waited. And waited. And waited. When Ken spotted them walking across the empty garage at last, it was almost three in the morning, and the combined shame of Aftermath had melted under general exhaustion.
Welcome to my life.
I peered at the trio as they trudged under the harsh lighting. It looked to me like Nicky’s ponytail had lost some of its perkiness, and she hung her head as the tour guy spoke to her before she diverted to our bus.
I looked away as she boarded, pretending I couldn’t see her tears, but Archer reached out to take her hand as she tried to walk past toward the bunks.
“Honey, you okay? What happened?”
The kindness in his voice must have shredded the last of the starch in her spine. She melted and sort of leaned toward him.
“I lost a case of embroidered, beaded baseball jackets,” she said. “I don’t know how, but they’re gone. And I was watching for them the most.” Her voice dried up on her, and she swallowed as if she could get past the lump in her throat.
“Hey,” Mal said, trying to help. “A bunch of jackets? It’s not such a big deal. At least you didn’t suck before an entire stadium like we did.”
She blinked, but it wasn’t helping to hold back the tears. “Each jacket is four hundred dollars retail. There are forty-eight jackets in each case. That’s $19,200.”
She watched us as we carefully masked our reactions. Her eyebrows were drawn together in a curl of unhappiness at the center. “Oh,” Mal finally said. “That’s—well, that’s?—”
“A pretty big mistake,” she agreed. “If you guys don’t mind, I’m going to go to my bunk. Good night.”
“Night, Nicky.” Archer squeezed her hand before he let go, and she tried to mask her sob by raising her eyebrows and flaring her nostrils. Unsuccessful.
I turned away as she passed to give her a little privacy. Poor little fawn, trapped in the big, bad forest.
She puttered in the tiny bathroom for a while and then slipped into the bunk below Archer’s. Mal’s bunk was over them and, at least theoretically, I had the other upper bunk. If I ever slept, that was.
Ken had us on the highway, the headlights picking out the whole lot of nothing between us and North Carolina. Once Nicky was tucked away behind her curtain, Archer and Mal gave up and went to bed.
I went to the lounge in the back to get my guitar. The deep U-shaped couch was built into the bulkhead, and the part across the back of the bus was daybed deep. If I was ever going to sleep, I figured it would be there.
But I wasn’t. I got into a sort of trance state while running through the chords to “The House of the Rising Sun,” but that was as close to sleep as I got.
So, I was awake when Nicky had her nightmare.
She was whimpering. It sounded loud to me, but Archer and Mal must have been deep out because they never stirred. Ken wouldn’t hear her up front. If someone was going to wake her from her night terrors, it was going to have to be me.
I knelt on the floor between the bunks and tried to wake her without invading her privacy.
“Uh, Nicky?” I called quietly through the curtain. “Nicky, wake up.”
Nothing. She was still whimpering. The sound was . . . so lonely and scared. I couldn’t leave her to it. I edged the curtain back and tried to shift the crappy little mattress, hoping to wake her without actually touching her.
Nothing. She was moaning, her head thrashing on the dinky pillow. It was too grim.
“Nicky,” I said. I slid my hand to her small shoulder, feeling the warmth and tension below the soft shirt she wore. “Nicky, you’re okay. It’s a dream. Nicky, wake up.”
My hand did the trick. Her eyes flew open, and I turned my head so she wouldn’t see my scar. No need to terrorize the girl any more than she already was.
“What?” She tried to sit up and banged her head on the bunk overhead. She curled onto her side, cradling her head and crying.
Shit.
“It’s okay,” I said in a foolish effort to soothe her. “You were having a bad dream. It’s over. It’s okay, it’s over now.”
One of her hands reached out and clutched mine, and then both of her hands were clasping my wrist. “Ian?” she gasped.
“Yeah. I’m here. It’s okay.” I was bent awkwardly on the floor, and she was drawing herself out of the coffinlike berth by my wrist. She ended up with her head against my arm, gripping my wrist while she got her breath back.
After an awkward minute, the fists on me unclenched, and she tipped until her shoulders were back in the bunk. “Thanks,” she said.
“No problem.” Was I supposed to stay crouched on the floor? Get up? “Can I get you something? Um, water or anything?”
She shook her head, the spill of white-blonde hair released from her ponytail to fall over her eyes. She pushed it back and wouldn’t look at me. Who could blame her?
“I’m good,” she said. “You can go back to sleep. I’ll be okay.”
No need to explain that I was sitting in the lounge. I rose, glad to be released. “Well, let me know if you need, um, anything.”
“Thanks,” she said again.
Awkward. I went back to the lounge and settled on the sofa, one foot propped up so I could cradle my guitar more easily. Maybe I could play myself into more than a trance.
Most of the lights were out, but I still saw her unfold from her low bunk and head for the bathroom. On her way back, she looked into the lounge and then ducked into her bunk to pull out a loose blanket. She came forward hesitantly.
“Can I listen to you play for a while? I won’t talk. I just—I don’t want to go to sleep yet.”
I shrugged and used a hand to indicate the rest of the sofa. Instead of taking one of the narrower sides, she joined me on the deep portion. Her choice, but she’d stupidly sat on my right. Every time we passed an exit, the highway lighting came in through the skylights. She was going to be confronted with my scar. At least she wasn’t in the way of the neck of my guitar.
“What’s that you’re playing? It sounds familiar.”
“‘The House of the Rising Sun,’” I said. “It’s a really old folk song, but the best-known version is by The Animals in the 1960s.” I played the opening arpeggios, and she nodded at my side.
“That’s right. My father is a gambler and my mother made jeans.”
“Right. The Animals did it from the perspective of a man going to prison for gambling, but there are older versions where it’s sung by a woman who’s been convicted of prostitution.”
“Two very happy stories, huh?”
I shrugged. “I like it. The chord progression soothes me. Sometimes I think I can put myself to sleep with it.”
“Is that hard to do? Put yourself to sleep?”
A thick, sticky glob of self-disgust coated me in its oil. “I don’t really sleep anymore.”
She sat up again to peer at me in the dim light. “Everyone sleeps.”
“Yeah. No. Not really. I guess I get about two hours a night, which my doctor tells me is enough to stave off a psychotic break.” Barely.
“Shit. How come?”
I sighed. “It’s not clear.”
“Well, have you tried?—”
I cut her off before she could get on a roll. “Yes. Whatever you’re going to say, yes, I’ve tried it. Sleeping pills. Hypnosis. Acupuncture. Warm milk. Edibles. Sleep apps. Melatonin. Yes, I’ve tried it. I’ve tried it.”
My voice was rising as my anger got the better of me. Again.
“Okay, okay,” she said, easing back onto the pillows again. “Sorry. Calm down.”
I took a slow, long breath—in through the mouth to the count of four, hold count four, out through the nose count eight—and then did my own apologizing. “It’s my fault. I didn’t mean to land on you. I’m a little edgy, and it’s tough to listen to helpful people tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
I was getting angry again. I hadn’t even finished a sentence, and the rage was back.
“Well, if you can’t sleep, of course you’re edgy.”
Her statement, offered with complete neutrality, did nothing for my mind, but it did put a pin in the bubble of my anger. I raised an unseen eyebrow and let it go.
“Will you play that song again? That one about the cheating woman?”
“‘Perfidia’? Yeah. Here’s a quiet version by Nat King Cole.” I slowed it down even more, and she adjusted her blanket over her legs.
“That’s so pretty. Will you sing it too?”
The darkness was the right mood for the song. I sang it in Spanish to spare her the sorrow in the singer’s words, and she sighed when I finished.
“Why don’t more people know that song? It’s so lovely.”
An excellent question that I couldn’t answer. Since I was on Nat King Cole anyway, I sang “Sweet Lorraine” and then flicked over to the Elvis Costello version of “My Funny Valentine.”
“You have a great voice,” she murmured. She was getting sleepy.
“Thanks. Here, do you know this one?” I played her a slow, sleepy version of Cole Porter’s “Dream Dancing” and smiled to myself when her head finally drooped back on the pillow behind her. She was out.
I let the music drift slowly to silence so I could listen to her, to the still, quiet breaths of sleep. She shifted as if she was cold, curling onto her side toward me. The blanket slipped, so I set my guitar to the side and shifted, too, pulling the soft wrap over her shoulder.
She sighed as I did it, and the apple of her cheek rose from shadow in the faint light; she was smiling in her sleep.
The pattern of her breathing was . . . lovely.
I surrendered for just a minute, curling toward her and putting my feet up on the sofa so I could steal a moment. I molded a pillow beneath my skull to hold me as I lay there, listening to her breathe in the darkness.
Slow.
Warm.
Even.
When I opened my eyes, the light had changed. Archer was sitting at my feet, watching me, and Mal was leaning in the doorway. They were grinning.
I looked down. Nicky was gone.
“What—” My head felt odd. All of me felt odd.
Archer nudged my boot. “It’s almost noon,” he said. “Time to rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty. We have sound check at two.”
“What?” I was confused and cramped, and I really, really needed to pee. Then I jerked upright. “Wait, what time is it? What did you just say?”
Mal laughed out loud. “How do you feel?”
I had no idea how I felt. Nothing was making sense. I stood up and flexed. All my muscles lay easily along my bones. The itch between my shoulders was gone. I felt . . .
“Calm?” I said. And then as they watched me, the calm shattered. “I feel calm!” I was shouting, which pretty much went against the notion of being calm. “Fuck me! How long? Is it really noon? I must have slept for—shit!”
When had I fallen asleep? Could it have been five in the morning? Maybe as early as four?
Had I slept for seven hours?
In a row?
I wanted to cry. I wanted to dance. I wanted to pee.
“Oh, we are going to play the fuck out of this gig tonight,” I shouted. And then Mal and Archer and I were locked in an awkward three-man hug, jumping up and down despite the rocking of the bus. Nicky appeared in the doorway, wide-eyed.
“What?” she cried. “What happened?”
“What?” I swooped in and grabbed her hands, drawing her into our strange huddle. “I slept! Like a normal person! Fuck, you guys! ’Scuse me, I gotta pee. This is going to be a great night! Where are we again?”
I pushed past them, and Mal shouted after me. “Charlotte! North Carolina!”
I was going to own Charlotte. This town was made for me to rule. I was fucking unstoppable.