reason why, too. Quirky could get you to up-and-coming. To serious success? Not likely.
“Does the notice talk about Snakes and Ladders, too?” Charlie asked. That was an important question, all right. If the New Yorker didn’t mention the opening act, they’d get pissy about it, and who could blame them?
“I think so. Lemme check.” Justin opened the magazine once more. Hadn’t he already looked? If any of them was going to go all rock star, he was the guy. He was the one the New Yorker ’d mentioned by name, after all. But nobody’d put his ego ahead of the band yet. They’d been good about that, better than a bunch of outfits that had fallen apart for the sake of somebody’s usually aborted solo career. Justin read again: “‘With them is another California band, Snakes and Ladders, with a distinctive twang.’ ”
It was a mention, yeah, but not one that would thrill the other band. Their lead guitarist wanted to be Robin Trower, or maybe Hendrix (a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?). No, a distinctive twang wouldn’t make Lenny turn handsprings.
“Put that thing somewhere,” Rob said. “If they haven’t seen it, don’t show it to them. Don’t talk about it, either.”
By all the signs, Justin wanted to blow up the little notice till it was about the size of the tablets the Lord had given Moses on Mt. Sinai. He wanted to carry it around with him the way Moses had carried the tablets down the mountain, too. No, nothing wrong with his ego, not a bit. But he wasn’t to the point where he needed another chair for it. He might nod reluctantly, but nod he did. And he opened the case of a guitar he wasn’t planning on using tonight and stashed the New Yorker inside.
The way Snakes and Ladders played showed that they, or at least Lenny, had seen the notice. He tried to coax licks from his guitar that should have been illegal, or more likely impossible. And sometimes he did, and sometimes he sounded like a man trying to strangle a cat that didn’t feel like getting strangled.
It must have been an exhausting set to play. It sure as hell was an exhausting set to listen to, for Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles and for the crowd that packed Neptune’s Resort. The applause that followed it seemed more like relief than anything else.
A voice spoke from the heavens: “Now welcome Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles!” If God had been a classic-rock FM DJ, He would have sounded a lot like that.
More relieved applause cme as the band walked out on stage. Some of the relief, Rob judged, was that they weren’t Snakes and Ladders. You didn’t always know what you would get with SF and the ETs, but brooding angst wasn’t a big part of the mix.
Rob waved as he took his place behind Justin. He looked out over the crowd before the lights went down, scouting for cute ones. Who didn’t do that? Cute ones were a main reason for joining a band to begin with. And New York City offered a variety he hadn’t seen since the last time they played in Socal.
Justin waved, too. “Good to be here,” he said, sounding calm and sane-to anyone who knew him, an illusion, but a soothing one at the moment. “I always wanted to play Carnegie Hall.”
He got a laugh. The club was packed with people in jeans and T-shirts, not the fancy-dress crowd Rob imagined at Carnegie Hall. They sat on metal folding chairs. Carnegie Hall would have had better, softer, wider seats. Something in the air said a good part of the crowd hadn’t showered any time lately. Once upon a time, tobacco fumes-among others-would have added to the fug. Nowadays, New York City’s public antismoking rules were as ferocious as anybody’s. Which, of course, didn’t stop the band from taking a few tokes before going on.
Being an engineering major, Rob had lately designed an experiment to see if he played better stoned. He’d listened to recordings of himself both wasted and straight. There didn’t seem to be much difference one way or the other. He still liked getting loaded, though, so he did.
Other guys who’d played New York had warned that fans there were different from fans in Indiana or Idaho. “If they like you, man, they really like you,” somebody’d said in wonder. “They know your shit better than you do.”
After two songs, three people in different parts of the room shouted for “Brainfreeze” at the same time. Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles hadn’t played “Brainfreeze” in at least two years. Rob had written the song, and even he didn’t like it any more. It appeared on no album. As far as he could recall, it had never been recorded. How did these dudes-no, one was a gal-even know it existed?
Justin shook his head. His poufy perm wobbled. “We aren’t taking requests yet,” he said firmly.
Other guys who’d played New York also said fans there didn’t want to listen to shit like that. They soon proved right. The crowd yelled requests between songs and even during songs, which got old real fast. But the band had Marshall stacks and the audience didn’t. The guys on the stage could play over the crowd; the converse wasn’t true. A murmur to the sound man let them do just that.
And the crowd didn’t seem to mind. New York bands had attitude. Maybe they expected their fans to show attitude, too. They damn near brought down the low ceiling when they whooped and hollered after the set, and again after the encore.
Then the band set to huckstering. CDs and posters sold briskly. “I already downloaded the music,” one girl told Rob as she bought a disk, “but I can’t download your autographs.”
“Darn right,” he agreed, scribbling his on the cover insert with a Sharpie. She paid cash, too. He approved of that. So did all his bandmates. They split the greenbacks into four equal piles after every gig. What Uncle Revenue didn’t find out about wouldn’t hurt him one bit.
Over on the other side of the anteroom, Snakes and Ladders were shilling, too. They were trying, anyhow. But next to nobody wver to them. Lenny’d put the fear of God in people, all right. That was fine for a fire-and- brimstone preacher, not so good for a rock ’n’ roller.
The other guys in his band seemed to be trying to talk some sense into him. He tossed his head. His mane flew. He didn’t want to hear it. The more they talked, the angrier he got.
He finally lost it. “Will you assholes just shut the fuck up!” he screamed, loud enough to make everybody stare at him. Hideously uncomfortable silence slammed down.
“Well,” Justin said after a moment, “isn’t showbiz fun?” Enough people chuckled-some nervously, but even so-to let Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles, if not Snakes and Ladders, get back to the serious business of separating customers from their money.
“We’re supposed to go to Connecticut with them, and Massachusetts, and on up into Maine,” Rob whispered to Charlie Storer. “What do we do if they break up?” It happened all the time, which didn’t mean it didn’t screw things up when it did. Divorces were usually expensive and inconvenient. Rob thought of his folks again.
“What do we do?” The drummer considered, but not for long. “We damn well do without, that’s what.”
Rob grunted. Charlie was much too likely to be right. Maybe they could hook up with some local band that wanted to swing through New England. That might work… if they could find a band that felt like touring… if the two outfits didn’t clash like plaid and paisley… if… if… if…
Then Rob stopped worrying about it. The young woman who set down a CD cover insert to be signed was so pretty, she should’ve been against the law. No hulking boyfriend loomed behind her, as happened much too often. When Rob found out her name was Jane, he instantly wanted to be Tarzan.
He wasn’t dumb enough to tell her that. Instead, sounding as California cool as he could, he said, “Why don’t you hang around if you’re not doing anything else later on?”
About half the time, a girl would say she couldn’t possibly because her hamster had the heartbreak of psoriasis. The other half.. Jane gave back a megawatt smile. “You mean it?” she breathed. “For sure?”
“For sure,” Rob said solemnly. “Cross my heart and hope to…” Dying wasn’t what he had in mind right then. The little death, maybe-no, definitely-but not Mr. Big. “C’mon around to this side of the table. We’ll find you a chair or something. Or what the hell? You can just sit on my lap.”
It wasn’t quite You can just sit on my face. But it also wasn’t a line most guys could try on a girl whose last name they didn’t know yet. Damned if Jane didn’t, though. She started running her fingers through his hair, which distracted the hell out of him when he tried to sign the next autograph.
Yeah, he thought, setting a hand on her leg while kind of pretending to steady her. Oh, fuck, yeah. This is why I do this stuff. What better reason was there?
Louise Ferguson took her sorry office skills to a sorrier job at one of the sorriest offices she’d ever seen. It was the American headquarters for a company that imported Japanese ramen into the States. When she’d first married Colin, Braxton Bragg Boulevard had been one of San Atanasio’s main drags. These days, steel-barred
