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When I came out of the bathroom, now wearing the Road Kings shirt, Stone was leaning against the wall, waiting for me.
“I’m not giving this shirt back,” I told him. It was a great shirt, honestly. Whoever was in charge of the Road Kings’ shirts was doing a great job.
“Fine,” Stone said. “Get your bass and follow me.”
I grabbed Princess and followed him down the hall. I dropped back to walk behind him. Stone might be grumpy and he might have a girlfriend, but he was still a delight to look at from the back view. Just looking never hurt anyone.
Stone led me to the control room and gestured to a stool. I sat down with Princess in my lap. He tapped a few buttons on the control panel and handed me a pair of headphones. I put them on. He put on a pair, too, then tapped another button, and music filled my head. It was “All These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers. A great song, one I appreciated all over again because I hadn’t heard it in a while.
When the song ended, I took the headphones off. “What was that for?” I asked Stone.
He took his own headphones off. “Learn it,” he said.
“Right now?”
“We rehearse it in an hour.”
I frowned at him. “Why?”
“Because we’re playing a gig on Friday night, and this song is going to be the closer.”
I made a surprised sound. “We’re playing a gig? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” We hadn’t played live yet.
“I’m telling you now,” Stone said.
“With four days’ notice? Where are we playing? What’s the set list?”
Stone stood up and put his headphones away. “It’s a bar downtown. We’re playing under the radar, a trial thing. We’ll see how it goes with a crowd. We’ll nail down the final set list later, but we’re gonna close with a cover, and it’s gonna be this one. So learn it.” He gave me a level look. “Or can’t you do it?”
“Fuck you,” I shot back. “I could learn it with my eyes closed.”
He nodded, as if he expected that. “Prove it, Barstow,” he said. “See you in an hour.” He left the room, closing the door behind him.
“Fuck you,” I said again to the empty room. I was tempted to add more curses, to have a temper tantrum for the usual reasons. I was being bossed around; no one had consulted me; no one had asked me whether I was ready to play a gig.
But the truth was, I was scared. It was the same fear I’d felt the first night I’d met Stone, when I said no before he could finish a sentence. Panic tried to crawl up my throat and freeze my fingers on my bass.
This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
After a gig five years ago, I overheard someone backstage talking to the lead singer about me. “She’s hot,” the guy said. “Is she actually playing?”
What he meant was, Is she just miming playing bass over a recorded track? Because it was more believable to him that a band would go to the trouble of recording a track and miming over it than that a real-life girl could play bass.
After all these years, I was a novelty, a piece of ass, eye candy.
I had learned early to expect the worst, and that the better something seemed, the more certain the letdown would be. But for three months and counting, the Road Kings had proved the exception to that rule.
In fact, they were the opposite of everything rock stars should be. They were nearing forty, and instead of ageing like sour milk, they were writing and playing better than they ever had. There were no groupies, no drugs. They were sober. They were all in serious relationships, so no one made rude comments at me, stared at my tits, or told me I should dress sexier. They worked hard. They paid me well. They were talented as shit. They treated me like a professional. And the music was good—really good.
I kept expecting it to blow up. I was braced for it.
But on Friday night, instead of wasting another day with Checkerboard Sadness, I would play with a real band for once, playing real music. I would play a Road Kings show instead of standing in the audience.
If I could just make it to Friday night, it would be worth it.
I put the headphones back on, picked up Princess, and listened to The Killers again.
“I hear you guys are playing Friday night,” Neal Watts said when he let me in the front door of his house in West Linn. He was lean, with brown hair worn slightly long and a trim beard. He wore dark gray sweatpants and a zip-up hoodie over a tee. “You can set up. Sam’s awake, but he’ll chill with us. Let me go get him.” He gave me a second glance. “Nice shirt.”
