Clay wondered if the place would be just as empty when Ghost took the stage. Halloween night couldn’t be wasted on a bunch of nobodies, right? After getting spoiled with large and raucous crowds, would they now have to deal with the sparse reception that all bands received in their infancy?
His concern faded as the second band took the stage. Delta Rose was a throwback to the heyday of 80s hair rock and the Viper filled to half capacity with balding headbangers and young headbangers who emulated their elders’ teased-out hair and button-lanced jeans jackets. what would you do for crüe?, one button read. first you eat shit, then you die, explained another.
Rose was most of the way through a high-energy set when Clay noticed the brunette across the room. She was kneeling in one of the booths along the wall, hopping up and down on her knees. Sensing his eyes, she turned, and Clay’s stare fled. Smooth. Girls love a coward. By the time he dared to look again, she was no longer paying attention—which, if nothing else, gave him the opportunity to drink her in. The girl wore a masquerade mask, the sort that went over the eyes, but didn’t disguise her hotness. Clay couldn’t tell if her preppie red blouse and white skirt was a costume, but she was a headband and racquet away from a tennis game. Maybe she belonged here, maybe she didn’t. Clay was just glad to have her in his sightline.
A few songs later, Spider called with the news that the band had been waylaid by the annual Halloween parade in West Hollywood; parking was a bitch and they would have to schlep their equipment several blocks to the Viper.
Clay jogged downhill on Larrabee Street to find them unloading in a random apartment driveway. Savy—looking straight-foxy in a gothic lace dress and blue eye shadow—offered him half an eyebrow raise. Which was about as warm as she got these days.
“You missed tonight’s game,” Fiasco informed him. “Best all-time album titles.”
“Birth of the Cool,” Spider said. “Miles Davis.”
“A.C.,” Mo added. “Everyone Should Be Killed.”
Fiasco hauled Spider’s Pearl kick drum from the van. “Big Black. Songs about Fucking.”
Savy was in no mood to lollygag. She grabbed up two guitars cases and a duffle full of cords and gaffer tape and started the upward climb. “Park in a legal space, Fee. The rest of us will roadie this shit up. Let’s move!”
Clay watched her go. She seemed nervous, not herself. He was about to ask Mo if something was wrong when he caught a kick drum in the chest. “Welcome to the big-time, baby,” Fee told him. “Don’t hurt dem vocal cords marchin’ up-zee-hill.”
The club was filling in a hurry, people clambering for position at the front of the stage. Clay recognized a few of them—faces who had worked or gone to school with one of his bandmates, faces come to life from Facebook photos, even faces from their previous shows. Devotees, seemingly of all ages, who had braved the Hollywood traffic and overpaid for parking to see them, and that made Clay swell with gratitude. Anyone could waste thirty minutes of their life on an unknown band, but to do it twice?….
Ghost assembled behind the claustrophobic stage curtain. Unlike their previous shows, they had a sane amount of time to set up, sound check, and review the set list. At the five-minute warning, the club manager poked her head through the curtains. “We have a line full of people we can’t squeeze inside. Who the hell are you guys?”
Fiasco came over and tousled Clay’s already-tousled hair. “Ready to tear the roof off?”
Clay told him, yes, absolutely, and the sky above it too. Savy was standing at his elbow, nowhere to hide back here. “You ever think we’d sell a place out?” he asked her.
“Always,” she said. Her fist reached out and he knocked it, held it there a moment.
Strumming the strings of his guitar du jour—a Schecter Banshee Elite with super-charged pickups and a gremlin-green body (the same sweet axe he’d used for the demo recording)—Clay heard they were live over the PA. The crowd responded with hoots and whoops that made his stomach churn. Less with trepidation now than with the dizzying, intoxicating power he’d soon have over the animal of the crowd.
The stage lights blinked the one-minute warning. Savy counted it off on her watch and with ten seconds left, she started into the opening riff of “Houdini Nights,” and the curtains drew apart just as the bass and drums kicked in. “Viper Room!” Clay shouted at all the faces suddenly in front of him. “Let’s dance!”
The mass hardly needed the invitation. They occupied every inch of floor space, packed in so tightly it didn’t seem you could fit a leaf of paper between them. Although suddenly it was as if a tidal wave surged through the room. Bodies were thrown in one direction, then another. Beer and expensive drinks were swept from the bar. People were body-checked out the exit door—propped open for air—disappearing momentarily; then they shoved their way back in, only to be knocked out again. Bodies were standing in booths. Bodies were dancing in the bathroom hallway. There were costumes: vampires and Thors and slutty maids and slutty cowboys. A heavily tattooed man wearing an Alice Cooper mask and nothing else crowd-surfed into the center of the room, to much dismay. He grabbed hold of the resident disco ball, the prisms flashing against his flabby skin, and a few murderous tugs freed it from the suspension bolt. Then Alice plummeted to the floor, where people kicked madly at it—the ball, presumably, not the man—and tried to circus-walk on it before bouncers waded in to take possession.
Farewell Ghost had thirty minutes of stage time and they were determined to play continuously, with no dead air, segueing from one song immediately
