Page 22 of Your Chorus
“Hey,” I try again.
His mouth twitches into the ghost of a smirk as he watches me struggle. The flare of annoyance I feel over how sure of himself he is snaps me out of my daze. Despite his promises, I know he thinks we could slap a few band-aids on all this and be happy together. I know deep down that it wouldn’t take much for him to get his way, but that’s the problem. It’s so easy to patch things up between us, only to watch them fall apart in the end. We give ourselves crutches instead of cutting the whole damn leg off.
“Nice day for it,” I grunt, subtly stepping away from him as I glance up at the sunny sky.
“So that’s how it’s gonna be? We’re going to talk about the weather?”
I narrow my eyes. “Everyone talks about the weather. It’s a normal thing to talk about.”
“Okay.” He bobs his head a few times. “Small talk. I can do small talk. You excited for the tour?”
“I am, actually.”
It’s true. The energy around us has found its way inside me. The techs—I’ve spent enough time around music industry people to know theroadiesis no longer the preferred term—are laughing as they slide gear boxes around and squirt each other with water bottles to combat the heat. There’s a giddiness in the air, and I don’t know if it’s just a frantic response to knowing we’re all going to be stuck on this bus together for the next three weeks, but it feels like the start of an adventure.
“Did you see the hockey game?”
I turn back to Cole and narrow my eyes at him. “What?”
“I’m making small talk. Did you see the hockey game? How about that sale at the shoe store? What do you think we’ll have for lunch today?”
And there’s another rare example of Cole Byrne the Comedian deciding to come out and play.
“Theshoe store?” I’m starting to crack up in spite of myself. “Who the hell are you? No wonder you never talk to people. You’re really bad at it. Like, really bad. Theshoe store.”
He starts chuckling along with me, and it’s the kind of thing that’s so stupid I start to laugh even more justbecauseI’m laughing about it. I’m wheezing so hard I grab Cole’s shoulder for support without thinking. The noise of our little inside joke party turns a few heads, and I catch Matt and Cole sharing a weird look. I don’t have time to analyze it before a shout from inside the bus claims all our attention.
“Sacrement!Welcome to the jungle, man!” JP pops his head out of the door and waves. “You guys have got to see this.”
Cole and I glance at each other before following Matt and Ace inside. We climb up the stairs just in time to hear Matt drop a few curse words and Ace demand, “What the fuck?”
Honestly, it’s a nice bus. It really is. It’s roomier than I expected, and while it hasn’t got much inside, the lounge/kitchen area we’re standing in is clean and relatively new-looking.
The reason the guys are freaking out is because everything in the bus is leopard print.
Everything.
The couches are leopard print. The curtains are leopard print. Theceilingis leopard print. I glance to my right and see that even the driver’s steering wheel has a fuzzy leopard print cover on it.
“Why?” I find myself asking. “Just...why?”
Matt echoes the sentiment, popping his head out of the bus to repeat it to our manager. “Why, Sanjay? Just...why?”
“Um, about that,” Sanjay starts to explain, as we all file off the bus. His dress shirt is even sweatier than when I arrived. “I asked the company why the interior doesn’t look like the website photos, and they told me that we ‘got Rose’s bus.’”
“And Rose is...?” prompts Ace.
At that moment, a squat, middle-aged woman in a Rhinestone-embellished Harley Davidson t-shirt appears from the depths of the parking lot and approaches through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Her dyed blonde hair is held back by a clip with a leopard print bow on it. She looks around the crowd, drops her cigarette to crush it under her heel, and in a thick Québécois accent tinged with a heavy smoker’s rasp, says the French equivalent of, “Let’s get this show on the road, shitheads.”
We all stare as she climbs into the bus.
“Our driver,” Sanjay needlessly clarifies.
Cole doesn’t often say much in front of large groups of people, but when he does, his comments are usually spot on.
I turn to find him rubbing his chin as he voices what we all must be thinking right now: “I have a feeling this is gonna be one weird fucking tour.”
It takes us the better part of an hour to get out of Montreal after that. Packing the bus turns out to be the undertaking of the century, and then there’s the business of deciding who gets which bunk. There are ten tiny pod bunks squeezed inside the bus, leaving five people to fend for themselves on the various couches every night. I take a look at the size of the bunk beds and consider offering myself up for a couch spot, but then again, there arefifteenpeople on this bus. Having a little alcove to crawl inside, no matter how small it is, seems like it might be my only shot at solitude for the next three weeks.
