That was my plan: Have someone keep an eye on Sonia until we played our set, then play so well we’d explode the Marr into a million pieces, shove those pieces in a vat, and make Jurgen Pfeffer drink it, the sick fuck.
I chewed on an already bloody hangnail.
“Right. You know your assignment for tonight?” I asked Crock.
Crock huffed. “Goddamn, Noah. How many more times do we have to go through this?”
“Humor me.”
He looked at his watch. “Shadow Sonia every second she’s not onstage.”
“And?”
“Keep her away from the sleazebucket. The one who makes me look like a monk.”
“And?” Evan spoke up from where he was folding flyers.
Crock seemed flummoxed. That was as far as I’d coached him.
“And . . . don’t drink the cannibal beer, no matter how good my ID is?”
Ev looked up. There was a sharpness in his eyes that hadn’t been there a second ago.
“There are two Old Girls.” His lips smushed themselves bloodless. He was about to blow.
“You’re talking about Jaime, right?” Crock said. “Listen, as far as I’m concerned, while I’m on the clock I’m on Sonia duty ‘cause we think she’s the next target. But I’m happy to check on Jaime from time to time, especially if she’s wearing that sweater that shows off her—”
Ev leaped up.
“Okay, time to go,” I said, and pushed Crock out the door.
Ev grabbed the thing nearest to him, a bunch of goldenrod flyers, and threw them at the slammed door. Jaundice-colored paper rained down on the apartment.
As soon as it stopped raining flyers, I crouched down and started picking them up. They weren’t very good. No graphics. We couldn’t think of any logo to go with “gallivanter.”
Evan was still fuming. Over Jaime. At first I thought he was just mad at Crock, but then I remembered what had happened last night before I’d gotten Evan home and found out what was really at stake.
I sat cross-legged on the floor. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened between me and Jaime in the store. It was stupid,” I said, even though it hadn’t felt stupid at the time. It had felt right. “The rule has always been hands off the Old Girls.”
Evan started folding more flyers at Jojo’s table. He didn’t seem to be in a forgiving mood.
“But really. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s not like we planned it. It’s just, when I came downstairs Jay was teary because her mom was going to pull the plug on us. She just needed a shoulder to cry on and I was there. It didn’t mean anything. She knows it; I know it.”
It was a small lie. It had meant something to me. Who knew how Jaime felt?
“Listen,” I said. “If it’ll make things any easier, I’ll kiss you.”
Evan slammed his hand on the table. “Goddamn it, Noah, do you have to make a joke out of everything? When you said ‘No Old Girls,’ you really meant Crock and I couldn’t have them, but you could do whatever you want.”
“That’s not true. I swear. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. It won’t happen again.”
“It’d better not,” Ev said. He started folding the flyers again. All the rage seemed to seep out of him.
It was the maddest I’d ever seen him. And while I knew he had a lot going on, I couldn’t help thinking: The Old Girl ban had been in place for years. Why hadn’t he been this mad when I went out with Sonia?
A few minutes later, the door burst open and at last my sister came in, hauling a vinyl suitcase covered in flower decals behind her. She dumped it on the floor with a thunk.
“I’m here, nimrod. Where do you want me to set up?”
Cilla was wearing cutoff lace gloves, and her big hair was pulled off her face in a polka-dot doo-rag, like the We Can Do It! poster from World War II.
Jaime and Sonia followed, pulling a rolling rack of clothes that looked like it had come out of a Hollywood back lot. I saw feathers. I saw sequins.
I hoped they weren’t for Ev and me.
Maybe asking my sister to be our stylist was a big mistake. But I didn’t think so. The way I saw it, she got us hooked on the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle by doing Evan’s makeup to look like Bowie for that look-alike contest, which he won, which led us to Jojo, which led us to practicing more hours than we were awake.
My sister would come through for us again. She heaved the suitcase onto Jojo’s dinette, flipped a couple of snaps, and up popped an armory of beauty products. She selected a pair of scissors and held them up for all to see.
Snickt snickt went her scissors. “Who’s first?” She eyed Evan’s dreads like they were cooties.
She started with me. She’d already cut my hair, so she focused on my wardrobe. She made me lose the dog collar. Then she geared me out in this shirt that buttoned down the side and accessorized it with a bandanna. It was very Magnificent Seven. I looked like a rebel: tough but not obnoxious.
But that was nothing compared to what she did with Ev.
She’d found him a set of leopard-skin pajamas and thrown a red velvet smoking jacket over the ensemble.
All of Evan’s dreads encircled him on the floor. When they were on his head I hadn’t noticed how disgusting they were. Now they were so filthy they seemed sinister, as though at any moment they might start inching back toward Ev to infect him with something else. Cilla swept them up, put them in the trash, and took the trash right out to the dumpster. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was grossed out.
And when Ev stood up, he looked free. His natural, baby-fine blond hair fell in waves around his head. You could really see the Swedish guy in him. He looked like Dr. Tillstrom, only younger, less hunched over, and with higher cheekbones.
He didn’t look a thing like David Bowie.
He looked like himself.
He turned to me. I had to admit that Ev was a good-looking dude. The high cheekbones, the gentle blue eyes. But the best part? The best part wasn’t just that he was handsome, but that he could feel it.
Angel, awake.
This was what he had wanted. This was why we put off his surgery. This was why I was putting us all in danger.
I didn’t know how we would sound tonight, but it almost didn’t matter. All Ev had to do was stand onstage and the girls would love him.
“Ev,” I said. “It’s good to see you, man. How do you feel?”
Ev smiled a lopsided grin at all of us that looked newly, surprisingly charming. “Ready,” he said.
It was getting dark outside, but the coming night didn’t freak me out. At this time of year, twilight could linger for hours.
We weren’t finished yet.
THE CLOSER I GET TO WHAT COMES NEXT, the more I shut down.
First goes my eyesight. Things start to blur along the edges till everything—even the furniture—looks like ghosts. Then goes my hearing in a tinny hum, thanks to rock ’n’ roll. Then all the feeling goes out of my body, beginning with my fingertips, and I feel cold—oh, so cold—and it’s like I’m floating through space.
When this happens, I grab on to anything to anchor me. Most of the time the underside of a mattress. I scrunch my eyes tight, and wait to come back to earth.
The first thing I noticed about the PfefferBrau Haus that evening was that it was hot. The hops fug that covered the city was thick as Jell-O. Something was definitely brewing.
While Ev and I were waiting to get in, the world had gotten fuzzy at the edges, the way it sometimes did when Ziggy was around. But Ziggy wasn’t there, so I blamed it on the heat.
“Hey. How ya doin’,” Ev said to about the twelfth girl who wouldn’t stop staring at him.
“Remind me why we can’t go straight in?” I asked him. “Isn’t there a special entrance or something? Where the hell is Crock?”
Ev scoffed. “In the beer garden, probably. No big loss. And I thought we were waiting for the Old Girls, so we’d all go in together.”
It was true. Cilla had shooed us out
of the Maxi Pad after Ev’s makeover. “Girl stuff,” she said. “Go do a sound check or something.” I was about to make a comment about Pfeffer’s tight schedule and that it was only 5:00, but I thought better of it. Given a choice between facing down Mr. Psycho Eurotrash Brewmeister or my older sister, I chose Mr. Psycho Eurotrash Brewmeister.
So Ev and I decided to join the line that was snaking around the block, waiting to get in. Then when the girls showed, we’d cut the line. That was the plan.
Gradually, as we inched forward, I started to realize something: Kids were getting turned away. There were groups here and there, mostly boys but a few dumpy girls, who were walking away from the entrance, and they didn’t look happy.
“This is so, like, totally bogus,” I heard one girl say. Her shirt practically blinded me, all acid green and orange, so many belts hanging from her waist she looked like she had a hernia problem.
“Excuse me,” Evan said, flashing her his new confident grin.
The girl stopped, got an eyeful of Evan, and cocked her hip. She was with a friend who was taller, with stringy brown hair and a mouthful of yellow, mossy teeth.
“What’s going on up there?” Ev asked.
Acid Hernia Girl smacked her gum. “The old guy up ahead? The one with the accent? He says they’re at capacity and can’t fit anyone else in. He said something about losing their license. And we’re majorly bummed. We came all the way from Troutdale for this.”
“You here to see the Crazy 8s?” I said.
“Nah,” the girl to her right said, and she pulled a familiar goldenrod piece of paper from her rhinestone-studded purse. My breath caught. Ev didn’t look at me. We tried to pretend we’d never seen a flyer like this before. “These guys are like the house band at Jojo’s Records. They’re really good.”
It wasn’t every day you’re shown your own press. I looked up at these two, who were ogling Evan. Only Evan. They didn’t say anything like, Hey, aren’t you those guys? The Gallivanters? They just thought Ev was a good-looking kid.
Evan scratched his downy chin and said, “Have you heard them before?”
“Oh yeah. Jojo plays their demo all the time,” Mossy Teeth said. “And then, like, sometimes we hear them through the ceiling of the store. They practice upstairs. The singer has this sexy voice. I think he’s English or something. I bet he looks like Sting.”
“Or David Bowie,” Acid Hernia Girl said.
“And there was this one time they were rocking so hard this hunk of plaster came down from the ceiling and nailed this kid on the toe.”
Evan coughed. “Was the kid’s dad a lawyer?”
Acid Hernia Girl gave the fakest laugh I’d ever heard and play-slapped Evan on the arm, like, Aren’t you the cutest, wittiest thing?
“It’s okay,” Mossy Teeth said. “He didn’t feel anything. It landed on his Doc Martens. Thick soles.”
I thought about explaining how soles were under the shoe, and what she was describing was the upper . . . Ah, forget it. Not worth the effort.
The girls looked at each other, then at Ev. “If they’re turning everyone away, maybe you guys want to get pizza or something?”
Ev was done with them. “We’ll take our chances on the line. Thanks, ’bye.” And he turned away, looked straight at the wall—and even started flecking bits of beige paint from the hot bricks.
It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen Ev do a thousand times before, but that was the old Ev with the clown hair. And those two trend-sucking mall rats from Troutdale? We didn’t want them, but they’d been looking for someone to crush on. And Ev was it. The brush-off was funny when he looked goofy, but now that he was handsome, it was rude.
“You’re going to have to work on your easy letdowns. You’re a rock star now.”
He trained his eyes on me. “I’m only a stud for tonight, remember? Then I turn into Frankenstein.” He scratched his scalp, as if he were already feeling the staples holding his skull together.
He had a point.
I looked at my Mickey Mouse watch: 5:55. “This is bad,” I said. “I think we should skip the line and go to the front.”
Ev looked over my head in the direction of Jojo’s. I craned around too, but didn’t see any Old Girls. “Give ’em a few more minutes.”
We didn’t have a few more minutes. We had maybe two, and then Pfeffer would kick our asses out before we even got in. Evan wouldn’t get his dream, the Marr would spread, and every child in the Northwest would wink out one by one.
I pulled him out of the line. “Come on, man. They’re on their way. They’ll make it. Ziggy too. We need to tell Pfeffer we’re here.”
Ev pulled me back. He had a strong grip for such a skinny guy. “What did you just say?”
“I said they’ll show.”
He frowned. “Exactly who are you expecting to show so we can play our set?”
“You know,” I said. “Jaime. Sonia. Ziggy. Crock and Jojo are already inside.”
He frowned and bit his lip.
“I need you to clear something up for me,” he said. “You’re worried about Ziggy not showing?”
“No,” I said slowly. “I just said he’d be here, didn’t I? And the girls will too.” I looked at my watch again. “But right now we can’t wait. Come on. It’s time.”
I grabbed Evan’s arm and pulled him up the line, past a bunch of people who didn’t mind flipping us off, around a corner, to where Jurgen Pfeffer was standing in front of the red velvet rope, wearing an expensive suit and a turtleneck underneath, even though it was a hot day. Not even a drop of sweat on his forehead, while everyone around him was brewing in the heavy air.
He was consulting something on a clipboard as a group of kids stood close by, waiting for him to notice them and let them through.
“Hi, Mr. Pfeffer. We’re here,” I said.
He didn’t even look up from his clipboard, but put his arm firmly on the velvet rope at the entrance. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take your place at the back of the line. As you can see, there’s no more room inside until someone leaves.”
“It’s not like that. We’re the Gallivanters.”
That made him look up. “Oh, indeed.” He squinted at me. “Yes, yes, I see,” Pfeffer went on. “You’ve changed your hair since we met at Coffee Invasion.”
“Got tired of looking like toxic waste.”
His eyes shifted to his clipboard. He scratched his temple. “I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you. You see, the latest band is running a bit late and most of my customers are here to see the Crazy 8s. So I’m afraid I won’t be able to offer you a spot in our lineup after all.”
Did he just say what I thought he said? And so easily too? I wanted to bash that smug look off his face. How could he do this to us? We had to get in. We had to play. That was the bargain.
Ev tried to get him logically. “I don’t understand. You said be here at 6:00. It’s now 5:58. We did what you said.”
Pfeffer looked at his own watch, which did not have Mickey Mouse on the face. The man had really hairy wrists.
“According to my German watch, it is now 6:03,” he said, completely emotionless.
He was really going to do this to us? I hadn’t prayed in years, but I prayed now. Oh, Ziggy, where are you when we really need you? Just get us in. Face down this guy like you did before, and I’ll carry us the rest of the way.
Pfeffer was still talking. “It’s just business. I’m sure you understand.” He kept writing on his clipboard. He didn’t look up. As far as he was concerned, we were already gone.
I got crazy-dizzy then, like I was going to black out, and leaned against a brick wall. No. I couldn’t let this asshole win. There was too much at stake. There had to be another way. But I couldn’t think of one.
Evan was the first to sense the change in the air. He craned his neck around, saw something he approved of, and turned back to Pfeffer, the corner of his mouth twitching like it was about to curl up. It was the smile he used to flash on the
basketball court when he was about to fake someone out and drive the ball all the way to the basket.
He had Pfeffer. I didn’t know how, but he had him.
“Sure,” Evan said. “We understand. The girls will be disappointed, though.”
I turned around. Slinking toward us were two girls who might once have been Sonia and Jaime.
Cilla trailed behind them, carrying a comb and with a bottle of hairspray clamped to her belt like a weapon.
Sonia’s black hair was combed and combed again, plastered back from her head and secured with a little round leopard-skin cap. Everything else on Sonia was black and skintight—black jeans, zip-up jacket. She looked mysterious, like a Russian spy.
But that was nothing compared to Jaime.
Cilla had kitted her out in a skintight satin sundress with a slit up the leg that made her sway when she walked. Her lips were deep red, almost purple, and she kept them parted slightly. I don’t know what Cilla did to straighten that crazy froofy perm, but now Jaime’s hair looked downright silky, falling past her shoulders in shiny waves. And when she glanced to the side, I could see that Cilla had covered the shaved patch over her left ear with a gardenia, Billie Holiday style.
Sugar and spice, only with old-style movie glamour.
Cilla sauntered up to me and shot me a smile that looked a lot like Evan’s slam-dunk grin.
“You’re a friggin’ genius,” I said.
“About time you admitted it, nimrod. You just make sure everyone knows who your stylist is. I expect to get paying customers from this.”
I don’t know where she planned on putting these customers, since she didn’t have salon space and hadn’t even been to beauty school yet, but I would let her worry about that.
Meanwhile, the Old Girls slunk up to where we were talking to Pfeffer. Sonia lit a cigarette and blew smoke in a perfect ring from her Russian-spy lips.
The Rise and Fall of the Gallivanters Page 16