Hidden Tracks

by Zoe Lee

  Even though they all seemed like they were in their early thirties, she felt much older than them when she chuckled lightly and replied, “I’m afraid I’m more of a wine drinker.”

  “Do you like red or white?” a new voice drawled.

  Astrid’s eyes went from Xavier, across Gin and Kayla, to the man Kayla had called Seth. His voice was quiet but she hadn’t had to strain to hear it—another singer, she’d guess. A frenzy of messy auburn curls surrounded his narrower face and didn’t quite hide his bright eyes. He looked slender but not soft beneath a simple white tee shirt, a few silver necklaces with whatever hung from them only lumps under the cotton.

  “If I know, I can go with Xavier and choose one,” Seth added.

  Barley was from Texas originally, and she knew her aversion to the American southern accent, whether Barley’s twang or this man’s more honeyed drawl, was because of him. Unlike Brits, whose enunciation got sharper and colder the angrier they got—or, her family’s did at any rate—Barley’s twang got stronger and stronger, every word slower and slower, the angrier he got. So every fight had been her clipped icicle syllables trapped futilely between his endless stretched-out syllables, and he was a bloody wordy man.

  “I prefer red,” Astrid replied, knowing this aversion was the reason she answered just a bit more sharply than she intended. “Why, do you fancy yourself a sommelier?”

  Most men would have either recoiled or slapped back.

  But Seth’s mouth only twitched, a little glow of something lighting in those already bright eyes while he stood up, chest brushing one of Trentham’s thick arms. “In another life, ma’am, I run my family’s restaurant. My sister’s the sommelier, but I know enough.”

  The ma’am made her wince. “Something dry,” she told him, then paused. “Please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and she was absolutely sure he’d done it on purpose that time.

  They left and Astrid finally sat.

  The others hadn’t been paying attention to that exchange, it seemed, already waist-high in gossip about who else would be at Pitchfork, those they’d done other festivals with or opened for or who had opened for them. Its familiarity helped relax some of Astrid’s tension, because she actually was surprised by the band’s non-response to her arrival. Most of the time when she wrote pieces like this, the bands were either hostile, sure they didn’t need her exposure, or trying to posture about how they’d never open up to a journalist, or they were too eager, sucking up and being ingratiating, nearly begging her for a good story.

  But they were just carrying on, gossiping as if they were entirely confident that this was an off-the-record meeting, a preliminary chance to get a feel for each other, nothing official. It was true of course, but she hadn’t said so, and Kayla hadn’t either.

  It preoccupied her until Xavier and Seth returned with trays of drinks.

  Seth was sitting directly across from her now, studying her while she took a very tentative sip of the red wine Xavier had put down in front of her. It was dry like she’d requested, something Spanish she thought, and surprised pleasure knit her eyebrows. Seth raised his pint of some nasty-looking dark beer an inch higher in a toast and took a healthy pull. His throat lengthened, then strained gently and elegantly as he swallowed slowly.

  Around the stem of her wine glass, Astrid’s fingers pinched in distress.

  Good thing this man isn’t actually part of the band, her mind whispered.

  It was rare for anyone to capture her attention these days, and except for a few harmless crushes while she and Barley were together, she’d never noticed another musician. From the day she had met Barley until their end, Astrid had been a creature of desire with him, ecstasy electrocuting her every time they touched, longing so fierce it was surely like addiction every second they were apart. Punctuated, as all things were, by painful, brutal times when she’d hated him, when the very thought of sex with him had been revolting, when she’d rather chop his dumb hands off than have them on her.

  When the storm had passed, when he’d gotten out of her system, she’d felt like a veil was lifted from her eyes. If she wasn’t swept up in Barley, caught in his flames, what kind of creature was she then? The answer, she’d learned during her slow, measured explorations in her thirties, was that she didn’t feel desire like that anymore. It had been a relief, frankly.

  So the frisson that she felt watching a man just swallow, was… disconcerting.

  Exhaling ever so slowly, she forced her mind back to the conversation around her, which had moved on from discussing the other bands on the Pitchfork lineup.

  “Are you only going to be with us during the festival?” Gin asked. “Astrid?”

  “Sorry,” Astrid said hurriedly. “I’m not quite sure. Usually I spend more time with a band before I write one of my longer pieces. But it’s an organic process, for me.”

  “So you want to do more than just talk about our music?” Trentham asked, frowning.

  “We talked about this,” Kayla reminded him with limited patience.

  Trentham shot her a sour look. “You gave us a marketing pitch.”

  “Jorge, you know how to translate to caveman,” Kayla began sweetly, “can you—”

  Xavier laughed suddenly, and it was very loud, which made Astrid believe that it had been unexpected, as she and the others turned to see what was making him so happy. He had one elbow crooked around Seth’s neck, his other hand clapped over his heart.

  “Bertha,” he gasped, the laughter now like a deep-voiced man giggling, if such a thing were really possible. “I totally forgot about that, oh shit. Gin, you remember Bertha?”

  “Who’s Bertha?” Kayla asked sharply, and Astrid saw her hand shoot off of Gin’s thigh.

  Gin’s mouth dropped open and then she was giggling too, tumbling sideways into Kayla, burying her face in Kayla’s neck, the force of her laughter making Kayla’s cleavage shake subtly. “Babe,” Gin laughed into Kayla’s skin, “Bertha was the bus driver on our first European tour. Maybe fifty and stout, with a prison guard kind of thing going on.”

  Astrid breathed out a soft sigh, going boneless in her chair, because this was everything she looked for in a band. She had no financial need to work after her divorce settlement, but she had chosen to become a music journalist and write in-depth features because she loved music and she found musicians fascinating. She thought learning about a band’s cohesiveness, their influences and favorite artists, their creative process, and, yes, even their bad behavior or mistakes, enriched the listening experience.

  Stories like this were a wonderful introduction to all of those deeper topics, and she couldn’t help but let her lips twist up in a knowing grin as Xavier began to tell the story.

  “But not a hot lesbian prison guard kind of a thing,” Xavier clarified, needlessly. “We go to this completely awesome venue in Berlin, maybe halfway through the tour, and then when we come on stage for the encore, the spotlights aren’t up again yet, so we can see out.”

  “And there’s Bertha,” Gin burst out between a new round of giggles.

  “She is twenty sheets to the wind, y’all,” Seth takes up the thread. “And she’s up in one of the cages with these two German guys who are in nothing but leather booty shorts. She’s in a full-on Dominatrix getup, and I got to admit, Madam Bertha had it going on that night.”

  “I could never look her in the eye again,” Jorge groaned.

  “Is she the one who…” Anita started, turned red, and then whispered into Jorge’s ear. When he nodded, before groaning again, she turned even redder and giggled too. “Oh, my.”

  Trentham leaned toward Astrid, raised his eyebrows challengingly, and said, “She had those boys licking her boots, Ms. Sinclair. When the lights came up after the encore, she had that leather skirt unzipped to her thighs and was yelling at the guy behind her to—”

  “Screw her so good, she blew her load,” Astrid interrupted him to finish smugly.

  Everyone stared at her,
gaping.

  Astrid shook her head. “Bullshit, that’s an urban legend. Everyone’s heard it.”

  “What!” Xavier yelped in outrage, jerking upright. “That’s our story. Our Bertha!”

  “I’ve heard it from at least ten bands trying to shock me or piss me off or send me packing,” Astrid told him, shrugging unapologetically. “But it takes more than that.”

  “It would,” Kayla murmured appreciatively just loudly enough for Astrid to hear.

  Trentham shot Astrid a gauging look, but didn’t say anything.

  Huffing, Xavier tugged out his hair tie and redid his knot, then hefted Seth out of his chair with a grip around his elbow as he stood up. “Doesn’t matter,” Xavier postured, “this band’s been around for ten years. If we all forgot about such an infamous story, just imagine how great the stories we haven’t forgotten are going to be, Ms. Sinclair.” He flashed a cocky smile, fit for any rock star, and Seth’s eyes flickered like he almost rolled them. “Now, we’re going to go sweat our asses off on the dance floor. Anyone want to come too?”

  Anita gave Jorge a pleading look until he conceded, Gin leapt up and went with them too, and then Kayla stood with a sigh and looked down at Astrid and Trentham. “You can stay here and chat about Trentham’s twenty guitars, but you should come dance with us.”

  She should have known that at least a portion of the night at a dance club would be spent on the dance floor, and while it didn’t seem too professional to go, there was a challenge in Kayla’s eyes too. It said that if the band had to let Astrid into their private inner world, then Astrid had damn better join in. So she rose and replied honestly, “I’d love to.”

  She hadn’t gone out to a club like this since Kerri’s eighteen birthday party in London. Perhaps a strange thing for a mother to do, but Astrid was a cool mom, all things considered. She’d been a rock star’s muse for twelve years, but there had never been a secret baby scandal, a nanny scandal, or any other clichéd type of scandal. As far as Kerri and her friends were concerned, Astrid was a mysterious, trickster goddess who’d kept a rock god all to herself.

  “I don’t fucking dance,” Trentham scoffed.

  “Yeah, because you look like you’re about to speak in tongues,” Kayla pointed out.

  Astrid trailed her downstairs and into the now-thick gyrating crowd, where they were lit up by strobe lights coming from all directions. Kayla found the others unerringly, as if she had a homing beacon, and grabbed Gin right away. Astrid had thought she was a spectacular dancer until the internet had blown up mocking her moves at one Glastonbury Festival where Barley’s band played. Since then, nothing short of sheer blackout drunkenness could get her to let go. She shifted from foot to foot a little, looking suspiciously around at the crowd, waiting for them to notice the up-and-coming rock stars among them.

  But no one seemed to be paying them any attention, or nothing more than the usual attention clubgoers paid other clubgoers who were good dancers or sexy. So she bit her lip, trying to hide a happy smile, and tossed her head and rocked and rolled her body a bit. The club was playing remixes of the pop songs that everyone knew, somehow, if they lived in a town that had more than two radio stations and an internet connection. The songs whose hooks plugged into some subterranean part of the brain, no matter how senseless the lyrics really were sometimes, helping her get pulled into the music and showing it with her body.

  She spun halfway round and came nearly nose-to-nose with Seth.

  Startled, her carefree smile tripped into surprise and her feet missed a step.

  He reached out gentle hands to catch her shoulders and make sure she didn’t lose her balance before he let his hands fall away. Given the volume of the music, she was certain that she shouldn’t have really been able to hear his voice when he asked, “Okay?”

  But she did, and it was a purring, lush, crushed velvet sound that caused another sexy frisson to run through her body. Her mouth dry, she replied, one word for one word, “Fine.”

  “Okay,” he repeated, sliding a hand through his hair, sending it floating in disheveled disarray back and then forwards onto his cheeks again. “I’m heading out. Night, ma’am.”

  “It’s Astrid,” she corrected, and when he didn’t seem to have heard, her hand flashed out and caught his wrist, her thumb and pointer finger unable to encircle its thickness. His eyes flashed over to hers, a strobe ticking over his face to make those eyes glitter. “I’m called Astrid,” she repeated, annoyed at her own stiff British phrasing. “Not ma’am.”

  His head tilted, his hair dipping to graze the shoulder seam of his tee shirt. “Night, Astrid,” he said like a concession, and she swore she felt the words this time, like Morse code done in dabs of a tongue against her skin, a thrum within the vein of his wrist she still held.

  Her hand went numb at the phantom touch and his wrist slipped free.

  She watched him until he’d wound his way out of the crowd almost dumbly, wondering if he would be with the band the rest of the week and she’d get the chance to see him again.

  “Welcome to Downbeat!” Xavier said, bopping in front of her.

  She grinned at him and danced with the group until it was after midnight and she was overheated and tired, out of practice, so she went back to her hotel excited about the story.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Seth

  “Seth, time to go,” Trentham yelled, jumping up and down a few times.

  Seth stood rigid, his guitar already plugged into the amp, the long black cord coiled like a poisonous snake next to his right bootheel, his eyes focused on it too intently.

  He should be in Maybelle, wiping down the bar at Wild Harts—playing some Hank Jr. cover songs with a bunch of local boys at a local bar, at the very most. He should not be here.

  Before two minutes ago, the realities of this hadn’t hit him, which was the only reason he was right here, just offstage holding his guitar. Out there, under the sky and the metal frame holding stage lights and sound equipment, were twenty thousand people. They weren’t all here specifically to see Downbeat, and none were here to see him, but they were here for the music, and if they heard Downbeat, then they had damn well better love every note.

  What did I promise to do, his mind gasped at him.

  Then peppermint made his nose twitch a second before Xavier’s sneakers and the bottoms of his legs in red skinny jeans came into frame alongside the coiled cord.

  Xavier’s strong hands slapped lightly into Seth’s cheeks, then his thumbs pried Seth’s head up until their eyes met. Xavier’s were wild with adrenaline and excitement, ten years of being in this band—the hard work and the maybe-too-much fun—not having dimmed his fierce joy. “Riveau,” Xavier whispered sharply. “You got to come out there with us.”

  “It’s too big out there,” Seth managed to push out, and only because he’d known Xavier since Julliard, since he was a wide-open kid who hadn’t even understood what walls were because he’d never been hurt or exploited. “I’ve done festivals, but those weren’t so…”

  “Cool?” Xavier supplied. He shook his head, his big mouth at that rakish angle that used to make Seth’s heart trip, before they’d kissed once over a woman’s shoulder and felt no spark. “Your anxiety is elitist,” he teased, then put his forehead on Seth’s. “I love you. You’re family. And Gin wrote all these arrangements for you—for us—to do together again. Okay? So you got to come out there with us and play your fucking soul out, right?”

  “I love you too,” Jorge murmured from behind Seth.

  “Rehearsals have been a little rough, which means we’re about to kill it,” Gin promised.

  “Don’t be scared, kid,” Trentham said, slapping his back. “They only care about Xav.”

  “Fuck off,” Xavier laughed, hands letting go of Seth.

  The tips of Seth’s fingers pressed into the strings on the neck of his guitar, which he hadn’t let go of, and he tapped the body against his thigh, then felt the minute vibrations come up the s
trings and pulse against his fingers. His chin came up and he looked softly at all of them, nodding only enough to make his hair shiver. He focused on the four people he had been with for two years, the two most vulnerable years of his life, who had kept him sane and healthy and non-self-destructive. They would never lie or hurt him, no matter that he’d left the band and hadn’t written songs for them for three years.

  “I love y’all too.”

  “Okay,” Xavier said, slapping Seth on the ass as he passed him by. “Let’s sweat blood!”

  It sent pleasure flashing quick and pleased through Seth, who went onstage last, behind the four Downbeat members and the other extra musicians. “Let’s sweat blood,” Seth had declared before a show at a hipster faux-dive bar in Brooklyn. “I don’t fuckin’ want ebola!” Trentham had shouted in horror. And their mantra had been born, ninety-nine percent just to embarrass Trentham, in the beginning. But it was what they did, Seth thought as he rocked up to his mic and adjusted the strap of his guitar.

  “Hello, Chicago!” Xavier roared, and Chicago roared back, a deafening tsunami.

  It was early afternoon with a sky so blue overhead that it was surreal, this giant park so full of people that it looked like a picture frame made of tall green trees with a pointillist painting stretched across it, each dot a cluster of people, the colors endless variations. Seth wore sunglasses against the sunlight, but nothing could tame the power of the crowd.

  Except maybe Xavier, who flirted with all twenty thousand people as the musicians got into place, the stagehands cleared off, and a sound assistant gave them the thumbs up.

  The set started with Downbeat’s newest single, an obvious opening gambit, but it was a rollicking number and Seth felt the wind ruffling the hem of his shirt at the small of his back playfully, and reckoned it was the right choice. He was going to play the piano in the encore Gin had arranged, but until then, he was mostly backup, reinforcing the power of the rock.