Page 4 of Crazy Love
Guess it’s lucky, I dream big.
-3-
Nathaniel Darke
The real trouble starts when Bitch Slap walk on stage.
We’re all idiots for imagining Jessie Lyn wouldn’t find a way to retaliate in style. Dane writes a song about her, so she does the same.
Dane’s lyrics might be angry, but there’s at least of thread of wistfulness and melancholy about the melody courtesy of yours truly, but nobody’s attempted to assuage Jessie’s venom. It’s a full on, full throttle, sledgehammer of a track. Strangely catchy too, as demonstrated by all the air thumping and foot stamping happening in time with the synthesized drum beat.
“Perverted tit fucker. You’re a perverted tit fucker, and you’ll never be mine, because I never came, even when you banged me all the mother-fucking time.”
Dane’s face is purple.
He has his fist wrapped so hard around the neck of his beer bottle, it’s a wonder it hasn’t shattered yet. If she was a man, I reckoned he’d have had us booted out by now for glassing her. It could still happen. Dane swings first and asks questions later, and not because he’s thick. There’s a good brain in his head, it’s just going in with a killer hook generally brings about a quicker solution, and Dane does love expedience.
“Cool your shit, brother.” I wrap a hand around his wrist. “If you want to get back at her, the way to do it isn’t by leaping on stage and throwing your weight around like a gorilla, or blowing their fucking instruments up.”
“It’d be satisfying.”
“Momentarily, maybe. Think about the long term. Do you want to scupper our chance of making it big because some bitch is calling you names? Is she even calling you names? I mean, perverted tit fucker describes pretty much eighty per cent of the male population given half a chance.”
“Totally does it for me,” Knox interjects, giving his hips a lewd roll and thrust to add additional emphasis. “Does Jessie have pretty tits? How many times did you fuck ‘em?”
“One hundred and forty-three,” some smart Alec behind Dane shouts.
I make that lock around his wrist doubly tight. “What difference does it make if it was three or three hundred and three? We have a show to put on, and a record exec to impress, so keep your goddamned cool.”
“I don’t fucking care,” he swears through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, well I do. We all do.” And by we, I mean Joel and I. Who the hell knows what Knox wants. The man lives in the moment because his memory is fucked, and I don’t just mean through smoking too much weed. Kid got shot in the head with an air rifle when he was fourteen. It’s been hit and miss what goes in and makes it as far as long-term memory ever since. Ask him if he knows half our songs, and I swear most of the time he hasn’t a fucking clue, but stick a bass in his hands and muscle memory comes up with the magic. “That means staying in line, Dane. For one night, just take a fucking deep breath and hold it all in.”
“I don’t want to hold it in.” He’s staring murderous rage at Jessie, who currently has her guitar slung across her thighs, her legs spread wide and is making her instrument scream like a frickin’ master. I swear, if I’d had any idea she could play like that, she’d have been part of the band, and not the girl always hanging around or shrieking down the phone at Dane to stop playing around with his mates and get his butt over to her place. But I guess none of us ever thought to ask if she could play a guitar. I’m not even sure if Dane knew, unless he was giving her private lessons, because I swear that whammy bar technique is textbook Dane Darke.
“Dane! You can go blow up a supermarket or whatever later, but right now, you will fucking well hold it together, all right. Have you got it?” I drag him around so that his eyes are on a level with mine, and not getting glassy looking at Jessie flaunt her stuff.
“Yeah,” he groans. “Yeah, I’ve got it.” His shoulders sag a little, making him look slightly less twitchy. Still, I’m relieved when the six-stringed scream ends, and the stage is briefly bathed in darkness.
During that brief lull, I can still hear Dane snorting like a bull beside me, but unless Jessie has another song prepared to top that one, the worst is now over. I just need him to hold it together for another thirty minutes or so while Bitch Slap finish their set and Bulldozer does theirs, then we’re going to rock this place into oblivion, exactly as planned. The audience might not know it, but they’re about to watch history being made.
The spotlights turn on again, this time illuminating not Jessie, but a girl poised with a bass-guitar that almost dwarfs her. She’s only yay tall, but the thrum she plays goes right through me and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. She plays like she owns the world, like the crowd before her doesn’t matter. It’s like the audience doesn’t exist. It’s just her and the bass, and with it she’s weaving existence around her.
I snatch a look at Knox. If he could coax something half that good out of his Fender then we’d already be a household name, and the anthem I’ve been working on for the last six weeks wouldn’t still be missing its bass track. Sadly, the only brilliance Knox has ever shown has been while he’s been tapped into the collective unconscious. Unfortunately, he’s been stoned so much lately that those flashes of magnificence are being obliterated by his memory loss problems. “It’s almost there. I almost have it,” he’s said to me every blinking morning for the last week. Tonight, we somehow need to keep him away from the dreaded weed, and wired into our sound.
My thoughts don’t stay with Knox for long, they’re compelled by the woman on stage.
Her voice is a whisper at first. It slides over my senses and blends with the underlying burr of the bass.
Frickin’ hell, she’s good. I watch, afraid to move my gaze for fear of seeing one particular face in this audience; Graham Callahan came to see us tonight. I picked this time and location because the competition would be seriously lacking. And yet…Oh my God! Never mind Dane losing it, if Bitch Slap cheat us out of our prize tonight, I’m going to need sitting on, or the club will be the site of a goddamned massacre.
I can’t let this opportunity slide. We have to be so stellar compared to everyone else that there’s not a shred of doubt in his mind that we’re the perfect choice to head out on tour with Black Halo when they resume their requiem tour in the winter. God help us, but I actually contemplate heading back stage and sabotaging Bitch Slap’s set by tampering with the fuse box.
“Who the hell is that?” Joel kicks Dane in the ankles. Seems I’m not the only one who’s aware we have competition on our hands.
“Lowdy—Loveday Trevaskis,” Dane replies, though the hand he has clamped across his mouth muffles his words. “She’s Jessie’s mate from school. They used to be neighbours, or something.”
“Did you fuck her?” I ask, because these things are important to know, and not wholly because I want to know if it’s Jessie who has it in for us, or the whole of her band.
