The Five Read online

  A pained expression passed across George’s face. He took in the last of his cigarette, blew out gray smoke that scrolled away like a banner of mysterious calligraphy, and crushed the butt into the bricks.

  “My first cousin Jeff, in Chicago,” George said, “owns a business called Audio Advances. They do the setups for auditoriums, town halls, churches…you name it. Mixing boards, effects racks, speakers, whatever they need. Plus training in how to run everything. He’s doing real well.” George stopped to watch a Harley speed past on the highway, its driver wearing a bright red helmet. “He needs a new Midwestern rep. He wants to know by ten tomorrow morning if I’m in or out.”

  Nomad said nothing. He was sitting in the frozen moment, thinking that he’d had it all wrong. He was thinking that George was being hustled—courted, if you wanted to put it that way—by some other band. That the GinGins or the Austin Tribe or the Sky Walkers or any of a hundred others they’d shared a stage with had fired a manager and come to steal George away with promises of bright lights, choice weed and semi-conscious nookie.

  But no, this was worse. Because it was the real world calling, not this fiction of life, and Nomad could see in George’s eyes that ten in the morning could not arrive too soon.

  “Jesus.” Nomad’s tongue felt parched. “Are you giving it up?”

  George kept his face averted. He stared down at the ground. Small beads of sweat had gathered at his temples in the rising heat. “What can I say?” was all he could find.

  “You can say it, or not. You’re giving it up.”

  “Yeah.” George nodded, just a slight lift of the chin.

  “We had a good night!” It was said with force, but not with volume. Nomad was leaning closer, his face strained. He took off his sunglasses, his eyes the fierce blue of the Texas sky and intense with both anger and dismay. “Listen to me, will you? We sold some tickets last night! We rocked the house, man! Come on!”

  “Yeah, we did okay,” George agreed, his face still downcast. “We sold some tickets, some CDs and some T-shirts. Made some new fans. Put on a tight show. Sure. And we’re going to do the same in Waco, and the same in Dallas. And after that, in El Paso and Tucson, and San Diego and L.A, and Phoenix and Albuquerque and everywhere else…sure, we’ll do fine. Usual fuckups and miscues, broken strings, sound problems, lights blowing out, drunks looking for a fight and jailbait looking to get laid. Sure.” And now George turned his head and looked directly into Nomad’s eyes, and Nomad wondered when it was that the Little Genius had hit his wall. On the last tour through the Southeast, when two clubs had cancelled at the last minute and they were left to scramble for gigs, to basically beg to play for gas money? Was it in that grunge-hole in Daytona Beach, under the fishnets and plastic swordfish, where drunk bikers throwing their cups of beer had brought a quick end to the show and the appearance of the cops was the opener to a collision between billyclubs and bald skulls? How about the Scumbucket’s blown tire on a freeway south of Miami, with the sick sky turning purple and the winds picking up and off in the distance a hurricane siren starting to wail? Or had it been something simple, something quiet and sudden, like a gremlin in the fusebox or the death of a microphone? A floor slick with beer and vomit? A bed with no sheets and a stained mattress? Had George’s wall been made of gray cinderblock, with sad brown waterstains on the tiles overhead and the grit of desolation on the tiles underfoot?

  Maybe, just maybe, George’s wall had been human, and had been one too many A&R no-shows at the comp ticket counter.

  Just maybe.

  “Like I said, I’m thirty-three years old.” George’s voice was quiet and tired and small. He squinted against the sun. “My clock is ticking, John. Yours is too, if you’ll be truthful.”

  “I’m not too fucking old to do what I love to do,” came the reply, like a whipstrike. “And we’ve got the video! Jesus Christ, man, we’ve got the video!”

  “The video. Yeah, we’ve got that. Okay. We’ve had videos before. Tell me how this is such a magic bullet.”

  Nomad felt anger twist south of his heart. He felt the blood pounding in his face. He wanted to reach out and grab George’s shirt collar and slap that blank businessman’s stare away, because he wanted his friend back. But he stayed his hand, with the greatest effort, and he said in an acid voice, “You’re the one who wanted the video the most. Have you forgotten?”

  “I haven’t. It’s a good song. It’s a great song. And the video is great, too. We needed the visual, and it’s worth every cent. But I’m not sure it’s going to change the game, John. Not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “Well hell, how about telling me that before we spent the two thousand dollars?”

  “I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know,” George said. “Everything’s a gamble, man. You know that. Everything’s just throwing dice. So we’ve got the great song, and the great video. And I’m hoping for the best, man. You know I am. I’m hoping this tour is the one that lights the jets. But what I’m telling you now is that this is my last time out.” He paused, letting that register. When Nomad didn’t punch him or go for his throat in one of his infamous white-hot supernova explosions, which was what George had feared might happen when John heard it, George said, “I’m going to go for the rep job with my cousin. Until then, I promise—I swear to you, man, as a brother—that I will perform my duties exactly as always. I will jump when I need to jump, and I jump upon any sonofabitch who needs to be jumped. I will take care of you guys, just like always. Okay?”

  There was a few seconds’ pause, and then the person who’d come up behind them spoke: “Okay. Whatever.”

  George did jump a little bit, but Nomad kept his cool. They looked around—taking it easy, neither man showing surprise nor any hint of what they’d been discussing—and there was Berke, who offered them her own expression of absolute detachment. She wore faded jeans and a wine-red tanktop. She was twenty-six years old, born in San Diego, stood about five-nine, had short-cut curly black hair so thick it was a struggle to pull a brush through it, and eyes almost as dark under unplucked black brows. On the right side of her neck was a small vertical Sanskrit tattoo that, she’d told them, meant ‘Open To The Moment’, though her persona suggested more of a deadbolted door. She had sturdy hands with the strong fingers of the French farmers who swam in her blood. The veins carrying it were prominent in her forearms and wrists, blue channels beneath the white flesh. She was the drummer. Her arms were tight and sculpted, leaving no doubt her profession demanded physical exertion. She was a ‘brickhouse’, as Mike liked to say, due to good genes and the fact that she laced up her New Balances and ran a few miles every chance she got.

  “Hey,” Berke said, “Ariel wants to give our waitress a T-shirt.”

  George stood up, fished the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to her. “Tell her no free CDs. Got it?”

  Berke retreated without comment. A couple of boxes of T-shirts and CDs were in the U-Haul trailer, along with the gear. In sizes of Small, Medium, Large and ExtraLarge, the T-shirt was red with a black handprint splayed across the front, fingers outstretched, and the legend The Five printed on the palm in a font that looked like embossed Dymo plastic label tape.

  When Nomad put his sunglasses back on and got to his feet, George asked, “How much do you think she heard?”

  “I don’t know, but you should tell everybody before she does. Were you going to wait until the tour was done?”

  “No.” George frowned. “Jesus, no. I was just…you know…trying to figure things out.”

  “I hope they are figured out.”

  “Yeah,” George agreed, and then he walked back to the van with Nomad following. Everybody else had already climbed in through the passenger door on the right side of the van except Ariel, who was coming across the parking lot from the restaurant.

  “Those aren’t freebies,” Nomad told her, as George went around to get behind the wheel.

  Ariel gave him a look that reminded Nomad o
f how the teachers in high school had regarded him just before banishing him to the office. “One giveaway won’t break us. It’s for her daughter. And you didn’t have to be rude.”

  He climbed up into the shotgun seat beside George, who had retrieved the keys from Berke by way of Terry. Berke was sitting way in the back, with Mike; Terry was sitting behind George, and Ariel slid into the seat next to Terry. It was the usual arrangement, and only varied according to whose turn it was to drive. Jammed into every other available space were the suitcases, duffle bags and carry-alls of six individuals. George started the engine, switched on the air conditioning that stuttered and racketed and smelled of wet socks before it settled more or less into a hum, and then he pulled out of the parking lot and took the ramp back to I-35 North.

  They were due at Common Grounds in Waco at three o’clock for load-in and sound check. It was Friday, the 18th of July. On a Friday night, the show would start about ten, give or take. First, though, they had the thing with Felix Gogo, up north of Waco. The instructions had been given by email to George: turn off I-35 onto East Lake Shore Drive and keep going west until he reached North 19th Street, turn right at the intersection and go past Bosqueville on China Spring Road about six miles, couldn’t miss the place.

  As they continued away from Round Rock, Nomad was waiting for George to come out with it. The Scumbucket rattled and wheezed across the flat landscape, passing apartment complexes, banks and stripmalls. Passing huge low-roofed warehouses with immense parking lots. Passing farmland now, cows grazing out in the distant pastures that seemed to go on forever.

  Nomad was thinking that George might have changed his mind. Just in the last few minutes. That George had decided he wasn’t going to give it up, no way. Give up the dream? After all the work they’d put into this? No fucking way. Nomad felt relief; George had decided to stick to the plan, no matter what lay ahead on what was—as always—a journey into the unknown.

  And then, from the back of the van, Berke said casually, “Guys, George has something to tell us. Don’t you, George?”

  TWO.

  To his credit, George didn’t let the question hang. He had no choice, because only a few seconds after Berke asked it, Mike hesitated in plugging in the earbuds of his iPod and followed it up: “What’s the word, chief?”

  A good drummer and bass player were always in sync, George thought. They put down the floor the house was built on. So it ought to be even now, one playing off the other.

  But before he said what had to be spoken, before he opened his mouth and let the future tumble out of it, for better or for worse, he had an instant of feeling lost. Of wondering if he was advancing toward a goal or retreating from one, because in this business—in any of the arts, really—success was always a lightning strike away. Yeah, he would do fine as the rep selling audio units on the road. He would get to know the products so well he would know what the client needed before he eyeballed the venue. But was that going to be enough? Was he going to wake up one night when he was forty years old, listening to a clock tick and thinking If I had only stuck it out…

  Because that was the sharpest thorn in this tangled bush where the roses always seemed so close and yet so hard to reach, and everybody in the Scumbucket knew it. How long did you give your life to the dream, before it took your life?

  “I have nothing,” he said, which he had not meant to say and wished he could reel back in, but it was gone. He could feel John Charles watching him from behind the sunglasses with those eyes that could bore holes through a concrete block. Everyone else was silent, waiting. George shifted in his seat. “I mean…” He didn’t know what he meant, and he was letting the Scumbucket wander over into the left lane so he corrected its path. “I’ve been doing this too long,” he said, and again confused himself. But he had the wheels in control now, and his direction was set. “This is my last time out,” he went on. “I told John, back at the Denny’s. I’m giving it up.” And there it was, the confession of…what? Shame, or resolve? “I’ve got a job,” he said. “I mean, a new job. If I want it, which I do. In Chicago.” He glanced quickly into the rearview mirror and saw that everyone was watching him but Berke, who gazed solemnly out the window. He was aware that he was looking at not just one band but a couple of dozen. Mike alone had played bass in six bands, most of them workmanlike, just solid craftsmen plying their trade, but one—Beelzefudd—that had shown flashes of brilliance and had opened for Alice Cooper on tour in the fall of 2002. It passed through George’s mind that if anybody had paid their dues, these guys had, in bands like Simple Truth, Jake Money, The Black Roses, Garden Of Joe, Wrek, Dillon, The Venomaires, The Wang Danglers, Satellite Eight, Strobe, The Blessed Hours, and on and on. And because of that long list of experiences, they would know only too well—as he did—that people came and went all the time, due to burnout, exhaustion, frustration, drug addiction, death, or whatever. It was just life, cranked up to eleven.

  He told them about his cousin Jeff, and Audio Advances, and his intentions. “But I’m telling you like I told John,” he added, into their silence, “I’m not bailing on you.” He didn’t think that sounded exactly right, so he tried it again. “I’m not leaving until the tour’s done. Okay? And even then, I’ll stick until Ash finds a replacement.” He hoped he could keep that last vow, because the Chicago job needed him by the middle of September. ‘Ash’ was their agent Ashwatthama Vallampati, with RCA—the Roger Chester Agency—in Austin.

  “Well, damn,” Mike said when George was done. It was stated flatly, more of an expression of surprise than of opinion.

  “Listen, man, I was going to tell you—tell all of you—further down the road. I wasn’t going to throw it at you, like, the last night or something.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Berke asked, without turning her face from the window.

  “Yes, I am. I want the tour to be a success. Got it? I wouldn’t have pushed for the video if I hadn’t.” George glanced over to get John’s reaction, but Nomad was staring straight ahead, watching the road unspool.

  Nomad had decided to neither help George nor hurt him. This was George’s choice. George had to live by it.

  Another silence settled in. Then Mike broke it: “Sounds like a plan. I wish you well, bro.”

  “Same here,” Terry said.

  George was so relieved he almost swivelled around to thank them, but as there was a black-and-white Texas State Trooper Crown Victoria parked over on the right where it could clock the passing traffic he thought it would not be in the best interest of the band. “Thanks,” he said. “Really.”

  “You’re wrong, George,” Ariel suddenly told him, and the cool clarity of her voice popped his bubble.

  “Wrong? How?”

  “About having nothing. You have the Scumbucket. And you have us, too.”

  “Oh. Yeah, right. That’s true.”

  “Yeah, we’ll come to Chicago and move in with you,” Mike said, and George caught his lopsided grin in the rearview mirror. “Get a house with a big basement.”

  “Home theater with a candy counter,” Terry suggested.

  “Popcorn popper,” said Ariel.

  “Automatic joint roller,” Mike continued. “We’ll have to come see you, man, because in a couple of months you’ll forget we ever existed.”

  “Besides,” Ariel said, “it’s not like you couldn’t come back, if you wanted to. I mean…if things didn’t work out, you could come back. Right, John?”

  Nomad wanted to say Leave me out of this, but instead he thought about it for a few seconds and replied, “Probably not as our manager. By then, Ash would’ve found somebody else for us. I’m not saying it couldn’t be worked out, but…who knows?” Ariel must not have liked that answer, because she didn’t say anything else. “But George could get back in the game, sure,” Nomad added. He figured he ought to lighten things up, before the cloud he felt he was under rained on everyone else. After all, he was the leader of this band, so he should act like a leader and buck
it up. “Hey, we’re putting the cart in front of the horse, aren’t we?”

  “Before the horse,” Ariel corrected.

  “That’s what I meant. George isn’t gone yet, we’ve got a tour ahead of us, we’ve got an awesome video and song to promote, and anything can happen. So we go from where we are. Right?”

  “What he said,” was Mike’s affirmation.

  “Yes,” Ariel answered.

  There was no response from Berke. Nomad looked back to see her curled up on her side of the seat, her head against the tan-colored cushion and her eyes closed. “Berke?” he prompted.

  “What?” She didn’t bother to open her eyes.

  “Anything to say?”

  “I’ll wait for the written exam.”

  Nomad knew there was no use in pushing Berke for an opinion. When she wanted to disappear, she went deep. She closed her eyes and submerged into a realm no one else was able to follow. The word “loner” had been created with Berke in mind, but Nomad respected that, it was cool. Everybody needed their space. The only thing was, Berke’s seemed to be so empty.

  The highway stretched on between fenced-off fields in various shades of brown, with stands of bony trees here and there but nothing much to speak of except a few houses and barns in the distance. The route would take the Scumbucket past the small towns of Jarrell, Prairie Dell, Salado and Midway, then through the city of Temple and into Waco. The sky was bright and hot now, heat waves shimmered on the pavement, and dead armadillos drew the circling crows that dove in to tear off a swallow before the next tractor-trailer truck could scatter the feast.

  “I’ve got something to say,” Terry announced, when they were about three miles past the Prairie Dell exit.

  Nomad turned around to look at him. There had been an unaccustomed note of urgency in Terry’s voice. That wasn’t like Terry; he could be excitable, sure, but he was usually calm and measured, as precise in his speech as in his playing.

  Terry adjusted his round-lensed glasses, pushing them back up his nose with one finger. The air-conditioner was working all right, but Terry’s face looked to be damp, and his full round cheeks—“chipmunk cheeks”, Ariel called them—were blotched with red. His light brown eyes, slightly magnified by the lenses, appeared larger still, and his shaved skull was shiny with a faint sheen of perspiration.