So that no matter what came before, there was no way they could forget my performance in the onslaught of others.
Save the best for last.
That’s what I was thinking, what I kept telling myself, as I sat here on the outside, looking in. Just waiting for Jude to come outside and let me in.
But I was no stranger to waiting.
I’d waited for seven long years for Dirty to come around, to ask me to rejoin the band. I’d listened to album after album, watched them tour the world, playing my songs, with guitarist after guitarist who wasn’t me.
Then that day last year when I saw Zane at the beach… He asked me to come jam with him, just like he did so many years ago. And that jam turned into a meeting with him and Jesse, and that turned into a reunion show in Vancouver, at a dive bar called the Back Door, where we used to play. That was just over six months ago now. Me, up onstage with all four founding members of Dirty—Zane, Jesse, Dylan and Elle—for one song. Our biggest song. “Dirty Like Me.”
Then they asked me to come back to the band.
Then Jesse’s sister, Jessa, told them some ugly shit about me.
Then they fired me again.
For six months, I waited for a call that never came.
And now here I was. Poised to prove to them all how wrong they were about me, as I played my nerves out with the music. As the red door finally opened… and Jude appeared.
Big, muscular dude. Intimidating, if you didn’t know him. Or maybe even if you did. Dark, almost-black hair. Black T-shirt, gnarly tats down his arms, jeans and biker boots.
And one hell of an unimpressed look on his face when he saw me.
He gestured at the plainclothes guy, who was still loitering on the sidewalk, watching me. Just a flick of his chin. Take a walk, that gesture said. The dude was gone, around the front of the bar and out of sight by the time Jude stepped out into the parking lot and the door slammed shut behind him.
I’d switched songs, so now I was just trying not to fuck up “The House of the Rising Sun” as Jude stalked over. He stopped two feet from his bike, from me, and looked me over like he was making sure I hadn’t gone crazy.
“You kiddin’ me?” were the first words out of his mouth. They weren’t exactly hostile. More like he was mildly stunned, though not as stunned as the kid with the taco.
I stopped playing, flattening my hand over the strings to silence them. “You rode your bike here from Vancouver,” I observed. “Took a few days off?”
He crossed his massive arms over his chest. “Like to do that sometimes. Hit the road. Alone. Tune out all the bullshit.” He raked his dark gaze over me again. “You bringin’ me bullshit?”
“Guess that depends,” I said, “how you look at it.”
“From where I’m looking, it looks like bullshit.”
“No bullshit. This is an audition.” I played a few lines from Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child.” Showing off, maybe. “I’m here to audition.”
Jude still looked unimpressed as shit. “Auditions are closed. Invitation-only. Pre-screened. And I never saw your name on the list… Todd Becker.”
“So screen me now,” I said, still playing, quietly, as we spoke. “What do you wanna hear? ‘Fortunate Son’…? ‘Roadhouse Blues’…?” I played a little from each song as I spoke. “‘Dirty Like Me’…?”
Jude remained silent, arms crossed, dark eyes watching me as I played. The dude was tough to read, but the Jude I knew had always liked listening to me play.
We’d established a game, early in our friendship, where he’d toss a song title at me and I’d play it for him. If I didn’t know the song, no matter what it was, I’d learn it, quick. It was because of Jude and this little game of ours, in part, that I’d become as good as I had on guitar. Because if I ever struggled to master a song he’d requested, he never let me hear the end of it—no matter that the guy couldn’t strum out a tune to save his life. And he’d made it a favorite pastime to challenge me with the hardest songs. In some cases, songs I never would’ve learned if it weren’t for him egging me on.
“You still into Metallica?” I started playing “Master of Puppets.” Not my favorite band, but back in the day, I’d mastered “Master”—no easy task—to entertain him.
He cocked a dark eyebrow at me, so maybe we were getting somewhere. “You remember it.”
“Hard to forget. My fingers actually bled learning it.”
He grunted a little at that, which was about the closest I was gonna get to a smile right now. I knew that.
“Or how about some Rage?” I switched to “Killing In the Name” by Rage Against the Machine, another of Jude’s favorites. At least it was, years ago.
He shook his head, which I took to mean his admiration of my guitar skills was neither here nor there at the moment. So I did what I knew how to do: I kept playing. My talent was the only real card I had to play here.
Maybe it was the only card I’d ever had to play.
“Killing” was another hard song—both heavy and difficult to master. I’d mastered it. I’d played it for him enough times, long ago, that it was in my blood. Any song I’d ever learned was in my blood; once I’d learned it, good or bad, I’d never lost a song. Even when I was fucked out of my tree on whatever junk I was on. Which was probably how I’d lasted as long as I had with Dirty.
Yes, I’d OD’d on the tour bus and almost died. But I could always get onstage at show time and nail any song.
Jude just stood there, that impassive look
