Page 66 of Your Rhythm
We’ll head to the station now. I can’t wait this out any longer.
I haven’t even put my phone down when it starts ringing. Shayla doesn’t bother to start with a hello.
“Do. Not. Go. There. My lawyer says there are reporters outside and the last thing we need is for them to see you or any of the guys showing up. Just stay home, Matt.”
I can’t stop the words that come out next through my clenched jaw. “I want to be there to punch his drug addict face when he gets out.Ifhe gets out.”
“That is exactly what we don’t need photos of, Matt. Atlas is pissed. They don’t even wantmethere. I’m too easy to recognize and link back to the band. Also, they think I’m completely incompetent and a walking invitation for disaster, along with a few other lovely phrases I got in an email.”
I hear a hint of the usual Shayla in her sarcasm.
“They didnotcall you that.”
“They did, and from the sound of it, they’re going to try to make this the end of my management career.”
“You’re not losing your job over one of Ace’s fuck-ups.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you feel that way.” She pauses. “Has Atlas tried to contact you today?”
“Not yet,” I answer. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Same to you.”
We hang up soon after that.
There’s still no news by eleven when Cole shows up at our place. His nose turned out to be fine, just bloodied up from the punch, but the skin under his eye is still swollen. We start attacking him with questions.
“You couldn’t pull him off the guy?” I ask. “Maybe if they hadn’t been full-on fighting when the cops arrived...”
I trail off when I see Cole bristle in his chair.
“Hey, man, I tried.” He jabs a finger at his swollen eye. “Forgive me if I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of a fistfight when the cops showed up. Racial profiling might be a foreign concept to you, but it isn’t to me.”
That shuts me up right away.
“Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”
He grunts an acknowledgement, and we try to talk about something else. JP starts banging around the kitchen. He’s been in there for almost half an hour when he walks out with the most massive plate of ham sandwiches I’ve ever seen and sets it down on our coffee table.
“What the fuck?” asks Cole. “There’s three of us. How are we supposed to eat all that?”
“I didn’t even know we had that much bread,” I add.
JP shrugs and grabs a sandwich. I’m not hungry but I take one too, just to have something to do.
“That motherfucker,” I mutter around a mouthful of lettuce and cheese. “I swear to God, if he’s doing crack or something...”
“You’ll what?” Cole prompts. “Kick him out of the band? You know we can’t replace him. As far as Atlas is concerned the rest of us could walk whenever we felt like it, but Ace—he’s the face of this thing.”
“He can’t just keep getting away with this shit. He’s going to destroy himself.”
“Ben là,” JP interjects, “that’s a bit dramatic,non?”
I reach for a second sandwich and brandish it in the air to drive home my point. “He’s underarrest, JP. He could be facing criminal charges. This is the definition of dramatic. You can’t go on tour in Europe if you’re in jail.”
“Look, we don’t even know if this is actually about drugs,” Cole says, for what feels like the thousandth time. “I think he was yelling something about that in the fight, but he was wasted. Nothing he was saying made sense.”
I shove half the sandwich in my mouth. I’m about to crawl out of my own skin. What I need is to get out of this apartment for awhile.
