Page 40 of Ring My Bell

“Huh? Gerald, it’s way too early for this. Why don’t you get some sleep, drink some water, and call me back in the morning. Or call Iggy. Since he’s your friend and all.”

“Aw, I thought we’d be friends too,” he crooned sadly. Then bouncing back as only a drunk person can, he said “And you didn’t answer me! Do you or do you not want to be the anti-Raymond?”

“Er, yeah. Yeah, sure. Me and Iggy are both totally anti-Raymond.”

“Ooooh… Iggy, too! Yes… yes, that could work!”

Gerald hung up, or tried to, his phone clattering and then came the muffled sound of him singing off-key. I shut mine off and curled back around Iggy.

“What’d Gerald want?” he muttered. “Something wrong?”

“Uh uh.” Tucking my chin against the top of his head, I sighed in pleased sleepiness as he tucked his feet between my legs. “Just being drunk and weird.”

Iggy snorted softly. “It’ll pass.”

And neither of us thought much about it I the morning when we received texts from Gerald asking if we could attend a meeting with festival organizers that afternoon, but apparently we should have.

Chapter Sixteen

IGGY

A FEW DAYS LATER…

It hadn’t started snowing yet, but I could taste it in the air. Mathis rolled his eyes when I said that over our mugs of cheap cocoa, doctored liberally with very expensive rum. “Face’ll stick when the wind changes if you keep that up,” I muttered before taking a slurp of my drink.

“Maybe. But then at least the world will know how ridiculously poetic you get over precipitation, and I’ll receive all sorts of sympathy.”

“They’ll have to get in line behind the groupies.” I elbowed his ribs. Even though it was below freezing and the sky was a deep gray, we were perched on the porch rail, staring out over the winter-dormant front garden. “Have you thought about it anymore? The festival, I mean?”

After lurching out of his hangover on Friday morning, Gerald suggested we meet up with a group of the festival organizers looking to get the thing back to its roots. They wanted to bring more actual performers onto the board and have fewer industry pros and corporate sponsors running things.

Why he’d thrown our names in the hat, I had no idea. I was content to blame his enthusiasm on a few too many drinks, but something told me Gerald, for all his easygoing nature, would become a force to be reckoned with when the time came. And I had every intention of being part of whatever he dreamed up.

Mathis hadn’t been as flustered as I was. He’d been too excited about getting his piano back. Apparently, drunk-Gerald is also very good at scaring the living daylights out of assholes by using legal threats and arranged for Raymond to have Mathis’ piano shipped—at Raymond’s expense, of course—to Mathis’ apartment in San Francisco. Raymond also paid for a top-of-their-game piano tuner to come out as well. Mathis had been quietly appreciative on the outside but I had been sitting next to him when Gerald gave him the news. The man was vibrating so hard, I was surprised he didn’t transcend the visible spectrum and become pure white light.

Apparently hangovers make me all sciencey and shit.

Mathis grunted, his own sip of cocoa decidedly more delicate than mine. Not a single slurp to be heard. “The bitter part of me wants to join just to close it all down. Raymond did a lot of harm with his bullshit, and the festival will always have that stain on the name. Even,” he said, raising a hand to quiet me when I started to comment, “if they changed the name, people would remember. Especially people in the industry.”

“But,” I pointed out, “it brings in a lot of revenue for the town. It’s not like there’s a hell of a lot going on in Bremen other than the festival.”

Mathis grunted again. I was tempted to ask if maybe he had some indigestion or if the cocoa was backing up on him. “I think there has to be a workaround of some sort. Gerald said there’s been offers from a few towns in the area, hoping the festival gets moved there after the dust settles, and most of the big labels are trying to put their name at the top of the list.He’s holding off on committing anything to paper, at least till lawyers look over everything.”

It was my turn to make an undignified noise. “Maybe we should turn it over to Gerald.” Mathis’s brows show up towards his hairline. “No, just hear me out—neither of us want to be on the board, even as a stunt or something. And pulling in one of the big labels would just ruin it. It’d turn into one of those corporate bullshit things.”

“Coachella in the Mountains,” he sighed. “Valleypalooza.”

“Ugh, please tell me those weren’t actual suggestions.”

He mimed locking his lips and throwing a key over his shoulder.

We were quiet, the gray sky feeling low and heavy. “Without label backing, I don’t see how it could go forward,” I finally said. “It’s too expensive to finance out of pocket. Even if Raymond actually pays up what he owes, it’s not like we’d be able to ride in on our white horses and save the day.” A court could only do so much—if Raymond didn’t have the money, then any punishment was in name only. And from what our lawyer (holy hell, I finally had a legit lawyer who knew what she was doing!) had told me, Raymond would have pretty close to zero in his bank account even after selling his mansion, his cars, and his ridiculous watch collection and the contents of his garage.

When Monty’s broadcast went live, most of the performers he’d screwed over had come out of the woodwork. Then more had emerged when it went viral. All told, there were over a dozen of us, mostly solo artists who’d been rooked in by Raymond’s sales pitch. A few he’d taken in as groups, hopeful trios or quartets and one starry-eyed boy band who’d been smashed to bits by Raymond’s bullshit.

That one had been the worst, barely been out of their teens and already so jaded and hard-eyed when he was done with them.

Mathis pushed away from the rail and drained the rest of his mug. “Come on. Let’s get inside before I freeze off anything I’m really fond of.” When I shot him a lascivious grin, he wiggled his fingers at me. “I finally got my piano back, and I’ll be damned if I can’t play because I’m down a few digits.”

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