18. The Lightbulb
NICKY
The merch manager had surrendered the scanner to me without a fight. I felt righteous. He had just asked to crack open a new carton of jackets (which made me needlessly nervous; the counts had been perfect since that first disastrous concert in Atlanta) when the crowd in the stadium uttered a collective ooh.
Very different from the usual reaction to Aftermath’s opening set. “The Missing One” had been rocking, they were grooving that night, and I was humming along, but the coo from the audience surprised me.
There was a crowd around the merch stand, and a few of them abandoned their T-shirt-buying quest to find out what the crowd was reacting to. The scanner refused to accept the code on the carton, and I’d just gotten it to beep when I heard Archer’s superamplified voice tell the stadium the words, “This is Charlotte.”
Excuse me?
What, now?
The merchandise guy uttered his pro forma thanks and knifed open the carton.
“She’s the Aftermath dog,” Archer went on, and I abandoned my post.
The nearest portal to the stadium was close. An usher tried to check my ticket, but I waved my lanyard full of passes at him and he left me alone.
I lingered there, watching the introduction of Charlotte the puppy to the world. And I cooed just like everyone else in the crowd when Charlotte surrendered as willingly as any other woman would when held in Archer’s arms. She lay lovingly in the cradle of his chest, gazing at his brilliant blue eyes worshipfully. Every woman in the place felt the same tug.
Ohhh. I want that.
Mal’s head was thrown back in a full-throated laugh, and Ian wore the half grin that meant he was too amused to hide his lopsided smile. I forcibly pushed back the reminder of waking up with Ian’s erection at my back. That didn’t really happen, see?
However Charlotte had managed to wriggle her way onstage, the guys were there for it. I watched the last three songs in the set, feeling the wave of energy even from my faraway perch on the edge of the universe. There was a star quality to Archer that could not be denied.
Wow.
The merch guy appeared at my shoulder. “Can you scan another box of programs? We’re about to run out.”
“Yeah.”
I scanned the box and was immediately drawn back to the portal to watch “The Salesman.” It occurred to me that this was the first time I’d been able to watch the performance. In the VIP suite, I was supposed to always be available to the press and to Bruce. I’d never been able to just . . . watch.
Watch Archer move. Watch him sing. Watch him grin. Watch him interact with Ian and Mal.
And he was worth watching.
They ended their show with all three of them at the front of the stage. Had they rehearsed it? It looked practiced. Mal with crossed drumsticks over his head, Ian holding his guitar aloft, and Archer in the middle, holding Charlotte up to the world as she barked and howled her excitement.
When the cameraman’s image appeared on the jumbotron from behind them, their strong bodies silhouetted against the spotlights, I knew I had the image for the back of the hoodie.
The certainty blazed through me, and I raced back to the merch stand. “I need your manager,” I told the merch guy. “Can you get him or her here? Or give me a phone number?”
“Did we do something wrong?” The guy was startled.
I hugged him in excitement. “I need an image from the cameras. Can you get him?”
It took until Sheree was well into her performance for me to get all the permissions I needed. The stadium manager, the camera team, Lyre Records, Sheree’s manager, and the Pope had to phone in his approval, too, but after a lot of working the phones, I had my permission and an image capture at a reasonable dpi. It would work.
I sent the photo to the manufacturer, and in the heat of my enthusiasm, I told them to print “Big dogs of rock—Aftermath” under the photo. Cheesy? Absolutely . . . but with Archer and the dog on the front, and the trio plus Charlotte on the back, I thought I could get away with it.
Done!
Elated, I turned back to my post, suddenly ashamed that I’d left them for so long. Sheree was still belting out her “I know what city I’m in” song that closed the first set—she and Ian had selected some Hank Williams song for Montgomery, and the crowd was loving it—so the T-shirt–buying crowd was nonexistent. The guy confirmed that they hadn’t had to open any more boxes, but could I get some of the bonus CDs so they were ready for the intermission?
I found Bianca in the storeroom.
She turned, startled, a box cutter in her hand. “There you are, Nicky. It’s time you and I had a little talk.”
“Really? Sure. Does Bruce need more merch for the press? I can get you what you need?—”
“Stop. Just stop. That’s enough.”
Her tone brought me up short. Something was wrong. “What’s going on?”
She sighed, hands on her hips. “I won’t cover for you anymore, Nicky.”
I wasn’t a saint. I’d had times in my life when the sentence “I won’t cover for you anymore” would have been alarming. But in the nanosecond-long lifetime review I did once I understood her words, I could find only one thing that would benefit from Bianca covering for me.
“There was no other place for Dickie to do his interview. They were only in the storeroom for maybe twenty minutes, and I watched the whole time. I swear.”
She blinked. “You did an interview? In here?”
“Well, in Miami, not here. But yes. It’s the only place I could find that was quiet.”
“Why would someone want to interview you?”
Her question had maybe a little more contempt than I thought was strictly polite. “Not me. Aftermath. For the Sounds of the Southeast Music Review podcast?—”
“I don’t care about that.” She cut me off. “I’m talking about the fact that your counts never match.”
“My—my counts? They’ve been dead-on since that first night in Atlanta. Look, I’ll show you the reports.” I opened the tablet to find the data.
“Just stop it. Stop it, Nicky! That’s enough pretending!”
“What are you talking about?”
“‘I’m talking about the T-shirts you’ve been stealing!”
“Wha . . .?” Her words weren’t making sense. “I’m—I’m not—” In desperation, I held out the tablet. “Look! The counts are dead-on!”
“Don’t play coy. You and I both know the only reason the counts are accurate is because I’ve been replenishing the stock from the shirts that should be going to the press.”
“. . . You are?”
“Every time you’re working the merch concession, we come up ten shirts short, five shirts short, twelve shirts short. I’m sure you thought no one would notice, but you’re wrong. And I don’t want to sit in that damned bus for hours while you try to explain it away. So, I’ve taken the shirts back from the press to match what’s missing.”
I was paralyzed. It didn’t make sense. The timing was strange. The facts were wrong. Weren’t they? “How could you know?—”
“I don’t want to discuss it anymore. I came down here to tell you I wasn’t going to cover for you. If it happens again, I’m going to Bruce. I’m sorry.”
“W-wait! I don’t understand!”
But Bianca turned on her heel and left the room, her upright posture forbidding and stern.
Before the door clicked closed behind her, the merch guy stuck his head in. “Hey—CDs? It’s intermission, and it’s getting thick out here.”
I scanned a box and passed it to him. We got back to selling Sheree merch, and the crowds were thick and enthusiastic. But the entire time I was working, the questions were buzzing through my head.
If I wasn’t stealing, and Bianca wasn’t stealing . . . then who was stealing?
And what were they taking? There had been twenty-three cases of white short-sleeved T-shirts before sales opened. There were sixteen cases still in the storeroom, seven had been scanned, and the contents of five of those cases had already been sold. Before she spoke, I would have bet the other two cases were in stacks under the counter, waiting for eager Sheree fans to buy them.
So, if the counts matched at the end of the night . . .
But if Bianca was discovering a disparity before I did and sneaking shirts back into inventory without me noticing . . .
And all she had were the black tees Bruce gave to the press . . .
And . . .
And . . .
And . . .
What the hell was going on?
Too confusing. I would lay the entire mess in front of Bruce when he and someone from the stadium came for the final reconciling of how much the stadium’s merch concession owed the Sheree tour.
But when that moment came at the end of the night, Bruce appeared with Bianca on one side and a guy in a classic old man’s golfing outfit on the other. “This must be your little go-getter,” Golf Guy said, eyeing me with a creepy-uncle vibe. “Your little firebrand!”
Bruce introduced me to who turned out to be the stadium manager, who shook my hand in a sweaty grip that went on too long.
“I understand,” Bruce said with a frozen smile, “that you’ve already been chatting with Dave here tonight.”
Shit. In the who’s–stealing–T-shirts confusion, I’d forgotten about my hoodie. “Oh! Yes, I did! Thank you for getting me permission to pull a still photo from the cameras!”
Uncle Golfer was still working on oozing on me, but Bruce kept speaking. “And I’m told you woke up the Lyre legal department.”
“I didn’t realize I woke anyone.”
“And Clinton. Sheree’s manager. Who has better things to do than talk to an intern.”
“He didn’t mind?—”
“When you have something that needs approval, I expect you to come to me. There is no need to go over my head, or to bother busy people like Dave here.” He slapped the stadium guy’s shoulder with Just Us Guys Together bonhomie.
Dave insisted it was no bother, but Bruce was mad at me.
And with reason. I had to admit it: I’d let my enthusiasm get away with me. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
Beside him, Bianca did nothing more than tilt her head as she regarded me. One tiny gesture, and yet it was as if she’d slapped me. All this and I was stealing T-shirts.
I wasn’t, of course, but by that time, I knew better than to bring it up.
The count was perfect. The tour and the stadium agreed on how many shirts, jackets, programs, et cetera had sold, and on how much money the stadium got to keep and the tour got to take. This moment had filled me with quiet pride on previous evenings, but this time, it left me confused.
I sent a Did you? look to Bianca. Had she fixed things again?
She looked away with her nose in the air. Unreadable.
“All right. It’s late. We’ve got to be in St. Louis tomorrow. Dave, always a pleasure.”
“We’ll get in a game next time, Bruce.”
They shook, and Dave patted my back—but below the waist. Watch the hands there, Uncle Nasty.
And we walked in silence through the empty arena to the buses waiting underneath.
I worked up my courage as we walked. “Bruce, I’m really sorry that?—”
He shook his head and increased his pace. “I don’t want to discuss it. You’re a summer intern here for two months. You’re nothing, and you are not going to make problems for me.”
My steps faltered, and I fell behind. Bianca shot me one look of triumph and then clicked along on her heels to keep up with Bruce.
I was angry. Shocked. Embarrassed. Confused. The emotions crashed into each other in my spine and resulted in immobility and a severe wrinkling of my forehead.
As I stood in that cavernous garage, it occurred to me that I probably looked a bit like Charlotte when the puppy didn’t understand something. In her honor, I rubbed at my nose, shook my tail (sort of), and headed to the sanctuary of bus eight.
Where Ken shot me a look of sympathy that added to my confusion.
Until I got a look in the front lounge.
“My goddess!” Archer shouted. “My Nordic goddess!” He was sprawled in one of the swivel chairs. He doubled over to grab my jeans by the belt loops and tugged me forward. Surprised, I stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught me.
I found myself draped across his lap, looking up in astonishment at Archer’s sparkling eyes. The earthy, eye-watering scent of bourbon surrounded me.
“Let us know if you want help,” Ian said dryly.
I looked back, upside down, to see Mal kicked back in the banquette. Ian was lurking in the hallway, his arms crossed over his chest.
“She doesn’t need help,” Archer said. He scooped his arm under my knees, and suddenly, I was on my back across his thighs, cradled in his arms as if I were Charlotte—except I was hopelessly unbalanced and overwhelmed. “I’ve got her! I’ve got her right here!”
“Let her up, Arch,” Mal said.
Ken leaned around his enclosure. “Okay if I get going? Or do you guys need some help?”
I made a profoundly undignified dismount, wriggling away and rolling off Archer’s lap to wind up on the carpet on my hands and knees. “I’m good,” I said. “We can get going.”
Archer made a grab for me, but I scooted away and came to my feet by the table, Ian at my back. “How drunk is he?” I asked.
“Pretty drunk,” Mal said agreeably. “He’s been celebrating. We had a great moment tonight, see.”
“I saw. Charlotte made her debut, huh?” I looked around. Ian gestured behind him. Charlotte, worn out, was asleep in the lower bunk that she’d claimed as her den.
“Charlotte is a star,” Archer declared. “And so is beautiful Nicky. Come here, ice queen. Sit on my lap. It’s time we got to know each other a lot better.” He slapped his own thigh and leered at me.
Perfect. The man of my dreams wanted me but was too drunk to be able to make a single independent decision.
“How about we get you a big glass of water and maybe I can scrounge up some aspirin instead? You’ve got a big show tomorrow, Archer.”
“And we will crush that one just as easily. And Charlotte’s going to be onstage with us from now on. Right, guys? Aftermath just became a quartet. Or a sextet, because we should also have Nicky’s two beautiful breasts with us, I think. Let’s workshop those breasts, gentlemen, shall we?”
“Okay,” Ian said, stepping forward. He nudged me aside as Mal stood. The two of them got Archer on his feet and sent him to the bathroom to get ready for bed.
“I do,” Archer said gravely, “need to piss like a racehorse. Oh, I apologize, sexy Nicky. I mean I need to piss like a racehorse. No, piss like a—no?—”
“You need to pee?” I suggested.
“Yes!” he roared. “I need to pee like a pisshorse!” The bus hit a pothole, and Mal, Ian, and I staggered to keep our balance. Archer was entirely stable. “Will you excuse me, goddess? I’ll be back in a minute. And then you and I need to dance. I want to hold you in my arms and have those gorgeous tits against me.”
“Come on,” Ian said.
While Archer was bumping around in the tiny bathroom (singing about my breasts, to my distant embarrassment), Mal and Ian considered the bunks. Mal turned to me. “He’s going to need a lower berth in case he rolls out of bed. You okay swapping with him for tonight?”
Sleep in Archer’s bunk? Not with Archer, but still. The thought, right? “I’m okay with that. Let me get my stuff out of here.”
By the time I stood again, Archer had been gently pushed into the back lounge, where Mal was unfastening one sandal and Ian had the other. Archer watched them both blearily. “My foot attendants,” he said gravely. Then he laughed and laid back, landing across the daybed.
“Arch,” Mal said. “Come on, man. You’re going to sleep in Nicky’s bunk tonight.”
“I am going to sleep with Nicky,” Archer said staunchly. “Oh yes, I am. In just a minute.”
Ian, Mal, and I exchanged a look. I could all but hear the timer in my head. Three . . . two . . . one . . .
Archer was snoring.
“Yeah.” Ian sighed. “Someone will need to watch him tonight. I won’t sleep anyway. I’ve got him. Nicky, you’ve got your bunk back. And on behalf of Aftermath, please accept our apologies and our hopes that you won’t hold this against Archer.”
“Unless you want to hold it against Archer,” Mal teased. “If you want to hold anything against Archer, that’s cool with us. Right, brother?”
We all exchanged a hearty, fake chuckle over such a silly idea. Ho, ho. Funny.
I didn’t look at Ian as I announced that I was going to bed too. He could sleep alone tonight. With Archer, who was snoring loudly enough that Ian wouldn’t have to try in order to listen for the sounds of someone sleeping.
As for Ian’s impressive morning wood . . . that was his to deal with too. Not my problem.
I should have seen it coming because the day had been so crowded, but when the nightmare began, I was totally defenseless.
And trapped.
I was locked in the storeroom with something horrible coming at me in the darkness. And when it crossed into the cone of light, I saw the monster was Archer, his eyes bleeding and his mouth full of razor-blade teeth. Sheree T-shirts hung from his claws. He was screaming in enraged pain as he came after me.
I was screaming, too, and then I was on the floor of the bus, my legs still in my bunk and my chest pressed up against something warm and safe.
Ian, of course.
He held me, forced onto his ass when I launched myself out of my bunk and onto him. Tears were squeezing out of my clenched-shut lids, and I felt a wuffling nose against the hand I’d flung around Ian’s back. Charlotte was up and checking on me.
So was Mal. I turned my head against Ian’s chest to see Mal hanging out of his upper bunk. “She okay?” he asked.
“Dunno,” Ian said. “You okay, Nicky?”
I sat up and wiped my eyes. “Yeah. Bad dream. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake everybody up.”
“It’s okay with me,” Mal said, making the hallway substantially more crowded by swinging out of his bunk and lowering his feet down to where Ian and I were sitting on the floor, Charlotte sprawled across our laps and sneezing at us. “I hate these bunks, you know? How about that puppy? Time for a pee walk, little one?”
“She probably has to pee like a pisshorse,” I said solemnly. And then we were all giggling.
Ken found a place to pull over safely, and he joined us as we let Charlotte sniff her way up and down a highway hillside somewhere in West Tennessee as the sun threatened to come up.
By the time we got back on the road, Mal and Ian and I found ourselves grouped around the kitchen table. I wanted to email a few St. Louis press reporters about Charlotte the Aftermath dog and update the band’s website with the image I’d won the rights to. Somehow, I found enough understanding and acceptance to spill my entire night’s confusion to two-thirds of Aftermath.
Or three-quarters since Charlotte had dragged her boot under the table and was snoring on our feet.
She didn’t care about any of the topics. Ian was entertained by the hoodie design, and Mal was a TV detective on The Case Of The Possibly Stolen T-Shirts.
“I think it’s that guy with the mustache,” he said.
“Dean the Leaner?”
They both frowned at my nickname for the assistant tour manager. “Does that mean what it sounds like?” Ian asked.
“What, that he leans? Yeah. He likes to get in close and then lean over.” I demonstrated on Mal, who was far too big for me to lean on, but they got the idea.
“I don’t like that,” Mal said. Ian nodded his agreement. “No one gets to lean on our Nicky except one of us,” Mal continued, giving me a very brotherly leer. “Anyway, it seems clear that Archer’s the only one who gets to lean on you.”
“Not when he’s on the edge of passing out,” I said sternly. “I have my standards, you know.” They both thought that was funny. “But why do you think Dean is the T-shirt thief?”
Mal shrugged as if it were obvious. “Have you seen the mustache? The guy is a total villain. There’s no doubt.”
Ian nodded, only a hint of laughter around his eyes. “Are you sure,” he asked me, “that this Bianca isn’t just fucking with you? I mean, who says there are any T-shirts missing? Except her?”
My hands dropped from my keyboard. “Well, exactly. I can’t figure it out. If she was replenishing T-shirts that had been lost, you’d think she couldn’t do it until the end of the night, when the press had already been given their T-shirts. So the timing is wrong. And the T-shirts are wrong. Sort of. You know?”
“And the count is right,” Mal added.
“And the count is right!” I could only echo him in my insistence. “So . . . what the hell?”
“Gaslighting you,” Ian said. “That’s my verdict. Trying to make you think you’re crazy.”
“She’s doing a good job. And Bruce hates me. We didn’t even get to that yet.”
“Bruce, the tour manager?” Mal nodded. “Gavin says Sheree doesn’t like him.” He saw my question and clarified, “Percussion. Guy on the bongos. Killer timing. He says Sheree likes everyone, but she doesn’t like Bruce.”
“Well, Bruce doesn’t like me, so that seems parallel.”
Ian rocked his head in an “either/or” gesture. “Put him on the Kill List too? We’re here for you, Nicky.”
“I’ll let you know.” I smiled. “My besties are going to come to the Independence Festival on the Fourth of July. You guys will be nice to them, won’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Mal said thoughtfully. “Are they cute?”
I swatted him. “Very. You will be a gentleman, please. Even though Selene is almost engaged. But Judy would take you for a wild ride. Wait, that came out dirtier than I intended.”
Ken made the miles disappear. Mal and Ian kept me calm and happy. I was yawning and wishing I’d gotten more sleep, but the morning was a good antidote to the madness of the night before.
And then we heard a groan from the back lounge.