10. Victory
NICKY
The inventory count was perfect.
Perfect!
Not a single T-shirt went uncounted. Whatever I’d done wrong the first night, I didn’t make that mistake this time.
In fact, the difference was that instead of trying to watch every staff member selling merch, Charlotte and I spent almost the entire time locked in the storeroom together. She chewed a rubber giraffe, and I determinedly marked boxes with my own symbols. Rearranging the confusion was a beast of a job, too, since some of the merch was unaccountably packed in larger boxes, which made it hard to group black short-sleeved tees with black short-sleeved tees, commemorative programs with commemorative programs.
Charlotte sprawled on the concrete floor happily, gnawing on her chew toy and barking agreeably as I muttered and shifted and marked and counted. I was sweaty and exhausted by the end, but at last I had my mental arms wrapped around the situation.
I knew what we had in stock.
I knew what had sold.
I knew what we needed to reorder.
And the count—ahh. The satisfaction of perfect agreement.
Once the accounts were reconciled and everyone was happy, Charlotte and I treated ourselves to a nice long frolic on a stretch of carefully manicured grass outside the stadium. Every other person had long since gone home. The vast parking lots were empty. A bored stadium security guard checked us out once, saw the passes on my lanyard, and left us alone. No one else was alive. Only the puppy and I sniffed our way from bush to bush, and one of us left her mark on the world too.
By the time we made it to bus eight—perfectly on time, I might add—Charlotte and I were exercised, at peace, and ready for a good night’s sleep.
Which made the chaos we walked into all the more confusing.
Ken was in the driver’s seat. He gave me a grin when he shook his head. “Your boys are all high as kites.”
They were singing. Archer was hanging from the overhead railing. Mal was flat on his back and spilling off the kitchenette’s table. Ian was on his knees, his back to me, arms outflung as if he’d just completed an epic guitar solo. The song appeared to be a school song.
Probably their high school song.
Belted out at the top of their very powerful lungs.
Charlotte was immediately into it. She pulled her leash from my fingers and jumped over Ian’s head, running up his back and launching herself into space to get to Archer. The echo of her happy barking in no way eased the insanity on the bus.
I blinked as Archer dropped to the ground to pluck up Charlotte. As if she were as light as a kitten, he scooped her up and cradled her upside down like a baby.
“The Aftermath dog!” he shouted. Charlotte wriggled in delight and barked some more. Clearly, she wasn’t scared of loud noises. “You should have been onstage with us too! For our triumph!”
Ian and Mal repeated the word. “Triumph!” they shouted. “All hail Aftermath!”
Mal slid off the table, back arching until his hands reached the floor. He kicked his feet over his head and ended up in a heap on the carpet, laughing like a loon. Ian had dropped his I’m-Crucified-on-the-Altar-of-Music pose and was also now sprawled across the floor.
Archer, still cradling the dog, stepped over the bodies of his bandmates to get to me. Still holding the Great Dane puppy with one hand, he slid his other arm around my waist and pulled me to him.
“Did you see it?” he asked, his flushed, gorgeous face inches from mine. “Did you see our performance tonight?”
“Gah,” I said intelligently. “No, I was in the storage room?—”
He didn’t let me finish. “We were so fucking good!” he shouted.
“So fucking good!” Mal echoed.
“Epic!” Ian kicked his feet against the floor in—what, a tantrum?
And then Archer kissed me.
Just leaned his handsome, golden head down and caught my mouth with his lips.
He was kissing me.
I was too astonished to take advantage, too surprised to enjoy it. In truth, his mouth kind of bumped into mine. The deep, moving soul kiss I’d been hoping for turned out to be more like him licking my confused lips, but it was definitely a kiss. No one could deny that Archer Armstrong had kissed me.
God, if only I had photographic proof.
He released me and went back to cuddling Charlotte. He danced back over Ian and did a bump-and-grind in the only open space left, dangling Charlotte aloft like Simba. She barked in delight, her tail all but blinding him in her excitement.
From the floor, Ian caught my astonishment. He saw me standing with one overwhelmed hand on my own mouth. He winked at me.
“Are you all drunk?” I gasped. “What the hell is going on?”
“Not drunk!” Archer shouted, bringing Charlotte back down to his chest. “Not stoned. No, we are better than that. What are we?”
Mal pulled himself to his knees to answer, and Ian made a starfish on the floor. “Aftermath!” they screamed.
“No!” Archer protested. “We are a hit, that’s what we are!”
“A hit!” Ian and Mal shouted happily.
“We were an incredible success tonight,” Archer told Charlotte as he danced with the dog. “And Sheree made them turn up the houselights, and the entire audience sang ‘The Salesman’ with us. The entire place!”
Up went the dog again in The Lion King presentation. I thought she’d begin to resist this treatment, but she was utterly happy, four big paws reaching into space as she dangled from Archer’s hands.
I turned to Ken. “How long has this been going on?”
He huffed in a been-there-done-that chuckle. “They got here about half an hour ago. Don’t worry about it. They’ll crash soon as the bus gets going. Like toddlers in a car seat. Crash hard. Just make sure they don’t fall on anything breakable.”
I stared wide-eyed at the madness in front of me. They were now howling Sheree’s song “Courage.” Charlotte had discovered that she could howl too. How nice.
Ken’s radio crackled. “We’re moving out,” he said. “Next stop, Miami.”
“Miami!” Aftermath shrieked in victory. “We will own Miami!”
“Um, can I stay up here with you?” I asked Ken, who laughed at me.
The bus hadn’t been on the highway ten minutes when Archer began to visibly droop. “Oh my god,” he said, and threw himself into one of the swivel chairs.
Mal’s knees buckled, and he landed on the banquette. Ian leaned against the bulkhead and ran his hand through his long hair. “Jesus,” he said.
And just like that, the wild rumpus was over.
“Like pulling the bathtub plug,” Ken said dismissively. “Just like a cranky kid in the car. They’ll sleep now.”
The three members of Aftermath did sort of have the look of the toddler who’s had his bath and is in his jammies. All it would take was a quiet bedtime story, and they’d be out. I pulled the baby gates out from their hiding place behind Ken’s seat to make a den for Charlotte.
“No!” Archer protested. He scooped up Charlotte, who licked his ear in sleepy adoration. “Let me have one more night to sleep with my girl!”
In a last burst of energy, he flowed out of the chair with rock-star bonelessness and pushed past Ian in the doorway. Archer and Charlotte rolled into the lower bunk, and the curtain was pulled with finality. There went Archer.
Lucky puppy.
I put the baby gates behind Ken’s seat again. Mal was climbing into his upper bunk as I turned back. “I’m going to sleep for three states,” he announced before pulling his own curtain.
“Well,” Ian said, “you tried.”
“I tried.” What an abrupt transition. Ken was chuckling happily as he followed bus seven across the trackless void of night. “Okay, then,” I said uselessly.
Ian hung his head and then began making hand gestures that left me confused.
He rolled his hands in a well, there you are gesture. Then he looked at me from lowered brows and raised one eyebrow while gesturing behind him with a thumb.
I cocked my head at him. “What?”
He repeated the gesture with his thumb and then turned it into a sort of after you move with the cocked eyebrow of a question. He nodded at me.
“What is it you want, Ian? I can’t understand you.”
He shrugged uneasily and stepped to me to lower his voice. “Archer’s already asleep. He won’t know. How about you, um—why don’t you—so, okay?”
“Ian, what the hell?”
He straightened and paced away from me. His shoulders came down and he grew a few inches taller. He turned with a new calm. “I’ll protect you from nightmares if you help me get to sleep. I’m not asking you to sleep with me, just . . . to sleep with me.” His professional demeanor crumpled into uncertainty, and he shrugged. “You know?”
Seriously? Really?
Of course, I hadn’t had any nightmares while I was sleeping next to him, and I’d had dreams so bad without him that, even now, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to bed.
So—what? Okay?
“Okay,” I said. “If it won’t . . . you know. Bother anyone else.”
“He won’t even know,” Ian assured me, hands up in protesting innocence.
I was suddenly swamped by the awkwardness. “All right. Go away. I’m going to get ready for bed now.”
His expression, his little headshake said, of course, of course, take your time, and he disappeared into the back lounge.
Uck. Sorry, Archer.
By the time I joined Ian, he had the lights out in the back lounge and had moved off most of the pillows on the wide part of the sofa across the back of the bus. He sat neatly on one of the side benches and nodded to the bed-sized area.
“Can I get you a blanket—oh, you have yours, a pillow maybe? Fine, go ahead and sleep, and I’ll sit here.”
He was feeling even more awkward than I was, which perversely made me relax. I chuckled as I lay down and arranged my covers. “Are you going to sit there and watch me sleep? That’s a little weird.”
“I’m not going to watch you. I’m going to listen to you.”
“Like that’s not weirder.”
“I’m sorry. But you sleep really well. It’s . . . soothing. I actually fell asleep the other night.”
“I know. I had to climb over you to get out.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Nah,” I said. “It was nice to see you getting some rest. Are you really going to sit there?”
He’d placed himself in profile, so I couldn’t have seen his scar even if there had been lights on. He did that all the time. “I thought I’d play the guitar, if you didn’t mind.”
I shook my head and shifted toward the back wall. “You’ve played enough. There’s room here for two. You can lie next to me. Come on, you can’t sleep well sitting up. Let’s plan for success. Get a blanket. Get a pillow. Lie down.”
“Really?” Ian was maybe six-foot-three with powerful shoulders. He was a big guy, yet he sounded childlike and tentative. It made me feel protective.
“Yes, really. Do as you’re told, sonny. Go on, get a blanket and a pillow.”
He raided the bunk that, as far as I could tell, he’d never used. The moment when he lay beside me was perhaps the most awkward of an awkward fifteen minutes, but then there we were: two corpselike figures on our backs, hands tucked carefully away so we wouldn’t accidentally brush against each other. The tension was strong enough that it was clear we weren’t going to be able to sleep.
“So, you guys had a good night tonight, huh?” I asked.
There was enough light to see his big chest expand as he inhaled and then sighed. “Incredible.”
That was all I got out of him? No, we needed more casual conversation than that to relax us both. “Yeah? Why was it so incredible?”
He was silent. I was about to berate him for leaving me hanging when he spoke.
“You know when there’s something blocking an electrical current? A blown switch, a loose wire, water’s gotten in somewhere? And you fix it and try again, and then as easy as could be, the electricity is flowing?”
I didn’t know what that was like, but I could imagine. I made an encouraging noise.
“And lights come on. Things start humming the way they’re supposed to. All the gauges and dials are in the green. There was nothing, just deadness. You finally fix what’s wrong. Then there’s . . . life.”
I smiled into the darkness over my head. “Life from electricity.”
He turned his head on the pillow. “Electricity is like life,” he insisted.
“Oh, I know. How many times have I been surprised in a blackout when the light in the fridge doesn’t go on?”
“Exactly. That’s right. You don’t know how good you’ve got it until it’s suddenly gone. Well, tonight was like that. Something clicked. Some wire got tightened. Some obstacle was cleared. And there it was. Electricity. Power. Heat. Light. All the things that make life so glorious.”
He probably heard the laughter in my voice. “I think you’ve got the makings of a hit song in there.”
His chin jerked upward in a silent laugh. “Or a jingle for my next commercial.”
I shifted a little to see him better. “Commercial?”
“I’m an electrician,” he said casually, as if that made sense.
“You’re a what?” I sat up to study him. “You’re an electrician? Really?”
“IBEW master electrician,” he clarified.
“IBEW? What’s that?”
“International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Local 25 in Hauppauge, New York. Halfway down Long Island.”
“That’s a union?”
“That’s the union.”
“That’s . . . surprising. I mean, you’re so damned good on the guitar.”
“Thanks.” The arm on the far side from me came up, and he put his hand under his head. “It takes a long time for musicians to make a living at music, you know. Lots of great musicians never do. People need jobs in the meantime.”
“And you’re an electrician.” I lay down again, musing.
“My big rebellion.” He sighed.
I cocked an eyebrow, unseen. “What’s that mean?”
“Oh, nothing.”
I frowned at the ensuing silence. “Are you getting sleepy?” I asked.
“No.”
“Me neither. So, tell me about how being an electrician is an act of rebellion. Please?”
He was still for a bit, and then I felt the sofa shift as he crossed one leg into a four and shifted so he was half on his side, angled toward me.
“My dad’s a union plumber,” he said.
I shifted to match him. We weren’t facing each other, but the space between us had eased. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And when I say that, you have to know that the union part is more important to him than the plumber part. He’s a big union guy. My whole family is.”
“Is that right?” In the passing light of a highway overpass, I could see through the skylights that he was pleating his blanket under restless fingers. “Union jobs are a good living,” I offered.
“That’s true,” he agreed. “Good jobs. And my dad doesn’t mind pointing out that it was the unions that made better working conditions for everyone. Which he does. Endlessly.”
“He has a point,” I said cautiously.
“Sure.” His voice closed off that direction of discussion; there was untold history there, I thought. “He wanted me to be a plumber too. I’m his oldest, so he had plans for me.”
“But you had other plans.”
“Naturally. I was a kid. Archer and me, we were going to be rock stars. And then we met Mal and formed Aftermath, and man, I was sure our path was set in stone.”
He sounded wistful. I poked at his shoulder with one finger. “You were rock stars tonight. You’re going to be big.”
I heard the grin in his voice as he shifted to his back again. “Yeah, we were good tonight.”
I rolled to my side so I could track him. “That’s not enough for your dad, though, huh?” I’d heard the words to “Blood Burn.” I knew he wrote it. I spoke the bitter angry words because I couldn’t sing.
I can’t give in to what you say
See me true or go away
You want my love, you get my rage
And I will shred your fucking cage
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Thanks for reminding me of how healthy my relationship with my dad is.” He shifted again, rolling to fully face me. “Want to know why he wouldn’t support me being a musician? Because he says AFM doesn’t have enough power.”
“And AFM is . . .?”
“American Federation of Musicians. And they’re plenty powerful. They protect their members. They just don’t have the history that UA has.” He clarified before I asked, “UA—that’s the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada.”
He made the long title comedic, and I laughed. “So we call it UA for short.”
“Yes we do, and with the same reverence that we say the U.S. Constitution and Dolly Parton. All praise to her.”
We chuckled together. “So the musicians’ union wasn’t good enough for his son?”
“Nah. AFM was founded maybe six, seven years after UA. Just as old, right? But didn’t really play a role in all the serious social change that came with the unions. And the violence, too—has to be admitted. Dad sees the UA as a big-muscle organization. A man’s organization. Isn’t that stupid? He didn’t object to a musical career for his son because the odds are shockingly long or the pay is terrible. It wasn’t the sex-drugs-and-rock-’n’-roll mystique. No, his objection was the hairiness of the fucking union. Or lack thereof. I mean, shit.”
His shoulders were hunched, and he kicked at the blankets. Feet are hot, I thought. Needs some cooldown.
“So . . . how’d you get to be an electrician?”
He nodded his head on the pillow, organizing his thoughts. “He told me I was going to apply to get a UA apprenticeship. Archer was going to community college, and Mal had gotten into the Manhattan School of Music. Real heavy stuff. And I couldn’t bring myself to join UA, so I went down the island and applied for the IBEW apprenticeship. Crazy, huh? What a rebel.”
I nodded seriously. “You were asserting your independence.”
“Yeah.” He sounded demoralized. “It’s totally impossible to get those apprenticeships. Most people go through trade schools and then join the union. But I showed my dad. I got into the apprenticeship program. And when I walked into the house to throw it in his face, he just stood there. Grinning.”
I held my breath, afraid that if I made a sound, I’d distract him and he’d stop.
Ian scrubbed his hand over his face and then spoke with cool detachment. “He told me he’d pulled some strings. Gotten me into the program. If I couldn’t be a plumber, electrician was still okay with him.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. My big moment. Helped along by Daddy.”
“What did you do?”
“Found Mal. We got drunk. Then Archer found us and we got drunker. We were sick as lords for a few days. And then I accepted the apprenticeship program. One guy in a thousand makes it in. I’m not an idiot.”
He wasn’t an idiot. But the rage in his song made more sense now. “So, you could fix the outlet in my kitchen, huh?”
He chuckled. “I’m actually an inside lineman. That means I work on commercial and industrial contracts. But yeah, I could probably fix the outlet. What’s the problem?”
I grinned. “The problem is it’s a dorm kitchen for thirty-five MBA students, of course.”
“Ah. Someone poured beer into it.”
“Probably.”
“User error. Sorry. The IBEW is not contracted to handle this type of issue.”
The smile came easily to me, even though illumination from the skylight fell across his scar and I could see it clearly. Our awkwardness had dried up and blown away.
“So, what’s your story, Nicky? Why are you getting your MBA? Are you looking forward to a corporate life of jets and penthouses?”
“Please. You guys will get to that world long before I ever will.”
“Yeah. Probably. If we can keep playing like tonight. But hit me with it. What’s your motivation for the advanced degree?”
He’d shared freely with me. I’d return the favor. “My folks have a business in Delaware. It started out as the Swan Soft Dry Cleaners, but eventually they became pretty big for our little state. Now we have seventeen dry cleaners and an industrial cleaning plant that serves the clothing manufacturers in the region. I know it’s dull, but it’s important.”
“I didn’t say it was dull.”
“You were snoring.”
He laughed. “I only wish. Go on. Mom and Dad make fabric clean.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. That’s about it. And things were going pretty well until they hired a COO who slowly robbed them of about two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Shit.”
“I know. Their profit margin is pretty small, so that really ate into their growth plan. My dad had to delay his retirement.”
“Did the guy go to jail?”
“The case was dismissed for inconclusive evidence.”
“The fuck you say!”
“It’s true. The asshole walked. My father spends his evening following the crook on social media and shredding his professional reputation. That makes him feel better, anyway.”
“I like your dad.”
“Me too. Anyway, I’d been planning on law school, but when that happened, I decided I’d get an MBA and take on the COO job myself once I’m out, so they can retire and trust that their company is in safe hands.”
“You’re going into the family business.”
His comment had more pathos now that I knew he’d turned away from his family business. “I guess I am. Do you think that’s weak?”
“I think it’s great. I don’t object to that. My sister’s now a journeyman plumber, and one of my brothers is an apprentice.”
He’d hit the one of one of my brothers just a little hard. It made me ask for the rest of the story.
“Just one of your brothers? What do the others do?”
“I have three siblings. Betsy’s already working with Dad, and Dom is on his way. But Finn . . . he’s the baby. He’s seventeen.” His voice softened. “And Finn has a gift. In his fingers.”
He looked at his own hand, the one not bent under his head.
“What kind of gift? Guitar, like his big brother?”
“Nah.” Ian tucked his hand back beneath his blanket. “Finn can draw. Like crazy. He’s so good.”
I was hearing pride—and sorrow too. “How’s that going over with dear old Dad?”
Ian rocked his head on the pillow in a nod. “Got it in one. You know what occupation has the only union less manly than the musicians?”
I chuckled, even though it wasn’t funny. Ian’s shoulders were bunching up again.
“Big Pat O’Rourke wasn’t going to have a son of his go off to some fruity art school,” he said, his voice filled with bluster. “No sir. No way. So I said I’d pay.” The bluster was gone. His voice had gotten steely. “My big moment of rebellion. Just delayed ten years, so my dad and I could have our epic Greek tragedy of a battle over my little brother’s hopes and dreams. Anyway, that’s what I’m doing on this tour. I’m going to make enough to pay for Finn’s tuition at art school. And then Archer will go solo, and Mal and I will play state fairs, and I’ll be an electrician, and Mal will be a music teacher, and I’ll look back on tonight’s concert as a high point in my life. And Finn will be safe.”
I was wide-eyed, watching what little of him I could see in the darkness. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Kind of turned this into a big-picture sob story, huh?”
“Damn.”
He covered his face with his hand. I wanted to reach out, to run my fingers around that strong wrist and draw his hand down and tell him everything was going to be okay. But that wasn’t my place.
“It’s a good thing,” I said instead, “that you guys were so hot tonight. And you will be in Miami too.”
“Miami,” he said. “Yeah. I hope we can get it back for Miami.”
“So focus on that. Imagine a beautiful tropical place. Blue skies. White sand. Gentle ripples on the ocean.”
“The green, transparent ocean. Go on. What more?”
“You could lie on a towel on the sand,” I said. “Let the sun bake into you.” No, he’d fought the blanket off his feet. Making him warmer wasn’t going to relax him. “There’s a soft breeze blowing. Gentle but constant. It keeps you cool and comfortable. Can you feel it?”
“Feels good. Keep going.”
It probably wouldn’t have worked if the guy hadn’t had a few hours of concert madness and a massive dose of adrenaline. But he had been through that. He was tired. And he was willing to let me distract him. So I painted him a picture of tranquility.
His shoulders relaxed. His breathing deepened.
And this time, I was the one who lulled him to sleep.
Satisfied, I closed my eyes too. And I knew nothing. No nightmares.
Until Archer began screaming.