“Only instead of a DJ,” Savy cut in, “she had her father hire a bunch of established bands. And us.”
There was a pause while everyone tried to fathom that. When Clay next spoke, he was surprised to hear how calm he sounded. “Who else is here tonight?”
Their bassist offered a bashful smirk. “The Physical Jerks obviously. We’re going on after them. Then Karney and the Demons follow us. And Social Distortion is closing.”
Spider said, “You booked our first gig opening for Davis Karney?”
“Crissy’s always sort of had a crush on me,” Fiasco confessed. “She told me she wanted to ‘help’ my band by hiring us to play her party. I didn’t think it would literally help us.”
After some minutes of cursing Fiasco, and slapping Fiasco, and punching him, and headlocking him, and casting various aspersions upon the wretched sperm that had made Fiasco, they dared to go inside. The building had been a cat-food factory once upon a time, the stage thrust against the far wall and the audience spread across the large, open floor where processing machines and conveyor belts had once performed their industrial duties for finicky felines everywhere. Beyond that, farthest from the stage, were a few dozen tables set up for the older folks (presumably Mr. Somebody and his cronies), complete with balloons, tablecloths, and a five-tier birthday cake. The pungent tang of cannabis was so heavy on the air you could feel it on your eyeballs, and horndogs of indeterminable age seemed to be making out in every dim corner. And I thought I had birthdays that were over the top, Clay thought.
As the hired talent, they were given access to a catwalk that ran thirty feet over the main floor, and they made their way toward an enclosed office with soap-scrubbed windows on the far end. Halfway there, Clay stopped to contemplate the raucous crowd below. Hardly a teenage girl to be found among them. More a violent cross-section of all ages and countercultures. Their only common ground seemed to be a mad desire to slam into each other—to the rhythm of the music or not. And there was a birthday clown after all, a leering grease-painted spastic hopping madly along on a pogo stick, cursing and throwing elbows at the punks trying to trip him.
Fueling this madness were The Physical Jerks, who had been together for more than twenty years, evolving from a punk band, contemporaries of Bad Religion and Suicidal Tendencies, to a mid-tempo grunge sound. Their songs had amazing titles—“Forgive Your Enemies (Lay Flowers on Their Grave),” “You Ugly, Let’s Screw!”—and Clay knew their catalogue by heart. But all he could hear now, staring down from the catwalk, was a dull roar and his own pulse beating in his head. Since coming out west, he had been asked to suspend his disbelief on multiple occasions; but the idea that the Jerks would soon finish their set and the crowd would grow still and wait for the next frontman to appear and rile them up again—and that somehow he would have to be that guy—didn’t jive with any known reality. Cameron Moreno was a natural, his caustic sense of humor capable of handling the surliest of crowds. But Clay Harper? I might as well be bleeding into a shark tank. He could hear the boos already.
“Hey,” Savy said. “You good? You look like you rode the Tilt-A-Whirl after winning the pie-eating contest.”
“Clay’s great,” Fiasco replied, with only a hint of warning in his voice. “You chose him over dozens of vocalists and now he’s going to show us why.”
The first bit of bad news, arriving in the old foreman’s office, was that they weren’t allowed to use their own equipment. The Demons were going on immediately after them and there would be no time to set the stage twice. And as thrilled as Spider was about getting to use Barrett Roethke’s drum kit, they were also warned and double-warned about messing with the amp levels or repositioning any of the microphones. Sound check? There wasn’t any time. And even Clay, with his limited knowledge of sound boards and acoustics, understood that when an opening act sounded like ass, it was usually because sound check had been shunted aside for other concerns. So, no matter what, we’re going to suck in front of a thousand people and the biggest promoter in the city. What a wonderful world.
Then a pencil-thin man with a pencil-thin mustache informed them that their playing time had fallen from half an hour to, maybe, twenty minutes. “You guys probably know from the news and gossip that Davis has been attending AA.” As the man spoke, he was simultaneously texting and staring around for someone better to talk to. “He’s positively exhausted and has a world tour starting in London next week, so let’s promise to get him out of here and off to bed.”
“Absolutely,” Savy replied, pleasantly enough. “May we look the great man in the eye when he walks by?”
Pencil Man, waving and smiling at someone else, never heard her.
“I’ll go find Crissy,” Fiasco told them. “Have her talk to her dad.”
“Forget it,” Savy said. “By the time Somebody gets the order to the right people, we’ll be on stage.”
Regardless, even if the Demons’ entourage was acting like the cool kids, with their elitist clique in the corner, Clay and the others maintained hope that Davis Karney—arguably the biggest rock star in the world right now—would show up and rectify the situation. For God’s sake, let them have ten extra minutes! Clay imagined him shouting. What’s wrong with you shallow pricks? But when Karney arrived in the flesh, accompanied by a second, more intimate entourage that included a towering bodyguard and a trophy blonde with breasts as big as her head, such wishful thinking was laid to rest. “I can still smell the goddamn cat food in this place!” Karney announced,
