If only he had more time to prepare for this moment. If only Boyle could have jumped into his body and played the show for him. What a symbiotic relation they might have then!
The eyes of the crowd were settling on him, drawing the bullseye on his back. His band was watching him too, knowing he was dragging his feet, Fiasco’s old hostility rearing up, Savy willing him to finish tuning and take his place beside her. And that was what Clay finally did, more for Savy than himself—because Savy had believed in him and didn’t deserve to be punished for his cowardice—and in so doing he discovered most of the crowd was missing. Seeing that Clay wasn’t Davis Karney, they had turned their backs in favor of the restrooms or the tables in back or the clown, who was now making naughty balloon animals for everyone not interested in the lot of nobodies onstage. The teens started texting. The horndogs drifted to the corners to heavy-pet. Even the stage security seemed to be on a coffee break. “Hey, who the hell are you guys?” some wiseass shouted, and the ever-diminishing crowd—comprised now of only the rowdiest roughnecks, who would have slam-danced to a sad Morrissey ballad—quickly picked the chant up: “Who! Are You! Who! Who! Are You!”
And still, Clay’s tongue wouldn’t come unglued from the roof of his mouth. Savy leaned close. “Breathe, man. Time to do our thing.”
Clay gave her the faintest of nods. He pressed his fingers down on the second fret of the fourth and fifth strings and struck a chord, an E power chord (in other circumstances, Fiasco might have been pleased he could identify it), and he marveled at the seismically powerful vibration that shivered from the PA to the very back of the cavernous factory. Biggest, baddest sound in the world, and if you could string enough of those sounds together, in the right order, people would come to love you. With enough talent, even the most anonymous nobody could become a God on this stage. So prove it, Clay imagined Boyle telling him. Do it, dammit!
“Why don’t you play something already?” the heckler bellowed, and Savy answered him back with the full weight of her microphone. “This is about the pissiest birthday party I’ve ever been to,” she shouted.
“Who! Are You!” the crowd chorused. “Who! Who! Who! Are you!”
“We’re Farewell Ghost,” Clay told them. “And this song’s called ‘Disaffected.’”
Spider smashed his high-hat on a four-count, and the world finally fell in sync for Clay’s racing mind. His fingers found their dexterity, and the Rickenbacker roared to life, and all his fear and doubt and wondering was swallowed in a wellspring of energy. The notes and lyrics returned to him and the voice that erupted from his throat sounded confident and powerfully pissed off. Whatever happened over the next twenty minutes, however this played out, Clay understood he was going to put everything he had on display for whatever crowd there was to witness it.
It was just like all the times they’d rehearsed, only a thousand times more intense. Savy flung her hair and worked her strings, while Fiasco hammered at his bass and Spider pounded on his snare like it was his mortal enemy.
“Disaffected” was over in a record time and they launched straight into “Houdini Nights” (a track they’d written about the roof of the Knickerbocker), and by then the crowd had swelled. Clay saw limbs colliding and flailing around in the dark at his feet.
They reached the first solo and Savy absolutely shredded it, bracelets flashing, her fingers everywhere on the frets. She played with passion and grace; art and sex and anger and soaring euphoria rolled into one. The crowd couldn’t get enough.
Around then their first stage-diver appeared. Clay spotted the guy in his periphery a moment before he took flight, leaping into the crowd with his arms and legs spread, taking half a dozen bodies down like bowling pins. In the center of the room, someone had Crissy, the birthday girl, up on their shoulders—her pink dress and tiara unmistakable—and she was pumping both fists. And somewhere in the dark beyond, her promoter father was witnessing the turning of a crowd that had been ready to filet them moments before.
There was a brief gap between their second and third song while they retuned, and Clay took the opportunity to tell everyone, “You’ve never heard of us. You didn’t even realize we were playing tonight, and in 14 minutes we’ll be gone from your lives. But if you don’t know this next song, do everyone around you a favor and go the fuck home.”
A hush fell over the crowd, which was now every bit as large as it had been for The Physical Jerks. And the challenge hung on the air: Will you know the song or won’t you?
Then Savy plunged into The Stooges’ “Gimme Danger” and the place lost its mind—half of them actually knowing the song, the others, Clay suspected, not wanting to be left out. A circle pit massed and swirled, two or three dozen bodies careening around like a hurricane over tropical coast, and when Clay shouted the opening lines, the crowd shouted right along.
Clay glanced over at Savy. Her face glowed red, yellow, blue in the stage lights and she gave him the ghost of a smile back, before a diver raced between them, clipping Clay on the elbow and spinning him sideways. He missed a note, another, but picked the riff up on the next measure. The endorphins kept pumping. Like the best rollercoaster ride in the world—better than being high, better than sex (or at least the fumbling kind Clay had
