by W E DeVore
Q turned and looked at his face. His serene demeanor had returned, and his eyes were following Yvie as she walked through the crowd. She patted his chest and kissed him on the cheek. “Behave yourself, cowboy.”
“Thought I was supposed to stop being so serious,” he called over his shoulder on his way to Yvie.
“That too,” she said, rejoining Ben and Josh at the door.
They were watching Tori with concern; years of bartending experience telling them that they were looking at a woman about to make more than a few bad decisions.
Ben said, “You think we should go talk to her?”
Q shook her head. “I’ll go find Stanley. See if I can smooth things over.”
Josh looked around at the throngs of people milling inside the Cove. “Don’t take too long, this could turn into a mob if that rock star of yours isn’t back on stage soon.”
“Why does he have to be my rock star all the time? He’s not mine.”
Ben grinned. “He know that?”
“Fuck you, husband.”
She pulled him down to her and kissed him before heading back into the bar. When Q got back on stage, Stanley was sitting at the piano looking too tired.
She sat next to him and asked, “You alright, Stanley?”
“You know something I should know, Clementine?” He eyed her with suspicion. It was the first time in thirteen years that Q had heard her given name uttered from Stanley’s lips and she tried not to flinch.
“Not a thing, old man. Except that you look like you could use a bed,” she said.
“I suppose I should go on home. Did you see Tori?”
She nodded. “She walked outside and headed straight for the cash bar. Hope she’s not your designated driver. Y’all have a fight or something?”
“Walter thinks she’s been seeing someone on the side for a few months.”
“And you picked a sold-out show to ask her about it?” she asked, affecting confusion. “Your timing is crap, old man.”
He gave her a sad smile. “Is there something going on with that detective friend of yours and my wife?”
“No, Stanley. Not since they were kids,” she lied. “Why would you even think that?”
“Because my wife seemed awful interested in him and that blonde with the long legs and the great ass.”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re one to talk. That blonde with the long legs is Ben’s sister. Sounds like you were awful interested, too.”
“Even a dying man’s got to pray.” He winked at her.
“I don’t follow, Stanley.”
“I see a pretty woman, like that sister-in-law of yours, it makes me want to praise Jesus,” he said, relaxing somewhat.
“Is that what you call it?” she teased him. “Look, nobody likes seeing their ex with their next, old man. Aaron and Yvie were practically fucking on the dance floor during the last number.”
She pointed to the two of them at the bar. Sanger’s hand was low on Yvie’s hip and her arm was resting against his back.
“Aaron’s with Yvie, you have nothing to worry about.”
Liar, liar pants on fire.
Stanley nodded and smiled. “These meds make me paranoid.”
“You sure it’s not a lifetime of stealing other men’s wives backing up on you?” she asked. “Josh just told me you wrote ‘Honey Lips’ about his formerly married aunt.”
“I didn’t know Josh was related to Holly Mason,” he replied without a hint of shame. “That woman was a whole lot of fire in a five-foot package.”
“TMI, old man,” she said. “And you just proved my point.”
“I wouldn’t blame her. Tori, I mean. I never should have married someone that young…”
“Stop, Stanley. You’re just tired.” She squeezed his hand. “Go find Tori. Apologize and take her home.”
“When did you get so smart?” he asked.
“I’m not getting smarter, you’re getting dumber.” She grinned at him. “I’m serious, Stanley. Tori loves you. I know she does.”
She hugged him and said, “Thank you for tonight.”
“Tell that rock star of yours he can come jam Monday at the studio if he’s interested and his label doesn’t mind.” He looked at her for a long while. “You should make your arrangement with him more permanent, Q.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“He told me he wants you to go on tour with him next year. You should do it.”
“Not my type of music, old man,” she said. “I don’t want to give up the Beasts and the Burlesque to be a back-up singer in Dark Harm. It’s not my bag.”
He knocked on her head three times and said, “You’re still thinking too much. It was always the thing that held you back.”
“Maybe so, old man. Maybe so.”
Q walked him out the front door and kissed him on the cheek before heading back to the stage where the Beasts had already reassembled. Every man was grinning like a naughty child.
“What?” she asked.
Tommy smiled innocently. “Nothing, Walter just called the next song. It’s his turn.”
Derek unlocked his phone and handed it to her. “In case you have trouble with the lyrics, angel.”
She glanced down at the screen and handed the phone back to Derek before turning to Stanley’s brother, “Walter Gerard, I am not singing ‘Fiend.’”
She put her hands on her hips, standing her ground. Walter straightened his fedora and gestured to the packed audience. He pointed to Derek and said, “QT, all these people? They came to see that man there. We should give them what they want.”
“Fine, let him sing it, then,” she said. “I’ll play keys, I don’t mind.”
“Thought you owed me a favor, angel,” Derek said. “See all those phones out there? Every single one can take a video and push it live. A video like this could go viral, especially if my social media team pushes it from the Cove’s pages.”
“That’s great, Cincinnati, but these people aren’t exactly the Cove’s normal crowd.”
“Their money spends just as well, though, doesn’t it?”
He put his arm around Q and pulled her away from the rest of the men on stage. “I’m trying to help you, Q.”
She looked at him and caught a rare glimpse of humanity in his eyes. He shuffled his feet slightly and continued, “Look, you got me out of a bind last year, helping me finish the music for the Ball. You saved me from making a fool of myself and I almost got you killed. Besides that, I don’t think I could have ever made Scarification without you and I needed to make this album. So, please. Let me do this for you. If I sing it, it will look staged. If we sing it together, it will go viral. Trust me, I’ve been doing this a long time.”
His sincerity cut through her blind inclination to disagree with everything he said, and she thought about it for several seconds, realizing that he was right. Even if the Dark Harm fan base came through the Cove for a drink every now and again on the off chance that they might find the rock god they worshipped sitting at the bar or sitting in on stage, it would be better than where they were at now.
“Ok, you win,” she said, as she sat back down at the piano.
He slung his guitar over his back and leaned over her to play the synth lead on the piano. The crowd screamed as a single voice. She watched his fingers and internalized the part, when a lightning flash of an idea sparked in her imagination.
“We shouldn’t do it straight, Cincinnati. We should do it as a second line,” she said. She stretched her arms and yawned. “That should be the horn part.”
Charlie and Walter grinned and blew the synth lead. The audience roared to life.
“Give me your phone,” she said to Derek. “Let’s just do the damn thing. How bad can it be?”
He set it down where she could read the lyrics and sat next to her facing the opposite way. “Try to keep up, New Orleans.”
She burst out laughing. “Go on, then.”
Tom beat out a shuffl
ing rhythm and JJ followed along. Charlie and Walter blared out a heralding second-line, recreating the original synth lead. Q played a rhythmic chord progression, mimicking the guitar line she’d heard so often for most of the summer of 1998 that she could have played it in her sleep. Derek played a wah-wah pattern on his guitar, adding just enough 1970s porno sleaze to make it obvious that this was anything but a serious remake of his hit song. Not that it mattered to the crowd, who screamed so loud, Q could barely hear the horn section until the audience settled down eight bars into the song.
When the music paused, Derek leaned over her shoulder and sang into her microphone:
You want to make confessions
You want to use my body
You want to taste perfection
Your sweet little ass brings extra to the party
He slapped the back of her jeans for emphasis before tapping his phone and nudging her to sing the next verse. She shook her head and laughed, but dutifully sang:
You feed off your addiction
You jerk off, to save you time
You fight off new attractions
Faces on the places where the sun can’t shine
Q flushed as the graphic words left her mouth. Charlie and Walter put down their horns and did a two-step-forward, two-step-back maneuver that was the hallmark of Stanley’s horn section. All the men sang the chorus in unison.
I’ll be your sexual fiend
Down on my knees
I’ll be your lover or your beast
Your one fuck fantasy
Walter and Charlie punctuated the last line with some over-the-top pelvic thrusting. Q giggled at the sight of Walter’s sixty-plus-year-old broad belly moving in time to the music.
Derek resumed his seat next to her and lay back across the keyboard to reach the microphone, singing:
You want me to slide on in, my sweet archangel?
Try little sin?
“I always figured it was little, Cincinnati,” she said loud enough for it to be picked up by the microphone. The audience laughed.
He flashed his shark grin and sang again:
You want to me slide on in, my sweet archangel?
Try little sin?
“Sorry, love, this ride has a height requirement, you feel me?”
“In all my dreams, angel.”
She playfully shoved him off the bench and they jammed on the break for an extra four bars, letting Derek take a short guitar solo. He walked back over to her and tapped on the phone again to open the lyrics. She tried to remember the next verse and looked down to read it.
She immediately shook her head and said, “No. Absolutely fucking not.”
He tapped on the phone again. “Yes. Absolutely fucking yes.”
The rest of the band kept circling around while Q and Derek made a show of him pushing her to sing the last verse and she only halfway faked her end of the debate. She finally sang:
You say you need some action
Hunting that new sex partner
Chasing that quick connection
Freak that, fuck that, just to get harder
The men repeated the chorus, this time JJ and Derek joined in both the line dance and the pelvic thrusting.
I’ll be your sexual fiend
Down on my knees
I’ll be your lover or your beast
Your one fuck fantasy
Q looked out into the audience. Ben was standing on a chair at the back of the room, filming the spectacle with his phone, as were at least a dozen other people closer to the stage. Derek sat back down next to her and they both sang:
You want to make confessions
You want to use my body
You want to taste perfection
Your sweet little ass brings extra to the party
As the last note faded, he tapped his cheek and she gave him a kiss. He faked a heart attack and nearly fell off the piano bench, quickly bouncing up to count a measure and they all launched into the chorus again repeating it over and over until he finally told them to stop.
◆◆◆
It was well past three in the morning when the crowd finally cleared. Q sat at the bar next to Walter, listening to him regale Derek and Charlie with stories from good old debauched days of the Voodoo Boogaloo. As the current story devolved into what was going to be something that Q would regret hearing about her mentor’s sexual vigor in his youth, she hopped off her barstool and retreated into Ben’s office. He jotted something down on a Post-it note and put it into the inside pocket of his suit coat before opening his laptop. She curled into his lap and put her arm around his neck.
“How’d we do?”
He pointed to the number on the screen and she let out a low whistle at the giant profit margin.
“Back in black?” she asked.
“No, not quite, but enough to stay open for another month, maybe two. We need a few more nights like this to make it through the summer.”
She kissed his cheek. “Done.”
He looked at her in surprise.
“I’m calling in every favor I have, Ben. We’ll do this. Every week. Pick a slow night when there’s not much going on around town and invite some folks out to jam. Get the word out that you never know who might show up. Maybe get some food trucks out here or something. An old-fashioned fish fry. Every week.”
“What about your gigs? The album?”
“Stanley wants to jam the record live; this will give us an opportunity. It’ll make it easier in the studio. Make things go faster. And they need to start going faster. We’re almost back to square one. Don’t argue. Just tell me what night you want to do it and I’ll start calling in my favors tomorrow.”
“How are you going to get people to play for free?” he asked, not believing her.
“Do you know how many times I’ve sat in on a record for free? How many people Charlie and I’ve bailed out of jail? How many people Tom has let couch surf in his living room for a month or two? You leave it with me and the Beasts. We’ve got you.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’ve got you, Ben.”
He held her tight. “Yes, you do, darlin’.”
Derek appeared in the doorway. “I’m taking off, Q. Thanks for accidentally inviting me. That was a lot of fun. Was Stanley serious about me playing on his album?”
“He wants a guitar player and right now it’s either you or the barely functioning alcoholic that fucked the mother of his only son in Stanley’s own bed. Think you might have an edge there, Cincinnati.”
He laughed. “I will never get tired of living in this city. Come on and walk me out, angel. I need to talk to you about something.”
She hopped off Ben’s lap and walked out with him. When they reached his car, she pulled him into a hug. “Thank you, Derek. I mean it. At least we have a chance to stay open now.”
He blushed and stepped away from her. “What do you mean, a chance? How much are you short?”
“I don’t know, we’re still on the bleeding edge of bankruptcy. But we’ll stay open another month at least. He needs twenty grand, easy, to make it through the summer and get some security back. But a few more nights like this would do it, if we can pull it off. It’s ok. We’ll make it. I’m calling in all my favors, get some players back up in here. I should have done it months ago.”
“Just take an advance on your Scarification royalties,” he said. “Your contract would let you draw that, no problem.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Derek, I think I’d remember if there was an advance clause in my contract.”
“Would Ben know that?” He grinned mischievously at her. “It would be our little secret, angel. I’ll spot you. You can have whatever you need.”
“No. Thank you, Derek. But I can’t lie to him. Not about something like that. And I already owe you enough, Cincinnati. I mean it.”
He shook his head and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I’d like to be gallant and say that you don’t owe me anything, but I really would like something i
n return.”
Ah, fuck. Here we go.
Derek put his hands in his pockets. “I think I found a woman to be the Archangel on the tour. She’s good, but she’s not you.”
“I already told you, Derek. I’m not leaving my band and my business to go on tour with you,” Q interrupted.
He tweaked her nose. “If you’d shut up and let me talk, you’d know that’s not what I’m asking, angel. We’re doing two nights in New Orleans to launch the U.S. leg of the tour. One in the arena, the other at the Orpheum.”
“But the Orpheum only holds like maybe two thousand people,” she said, shocked.
“Totally the point, angel. Pay attention. We’re shooting the concert video there, at the Orpheum. I don’t want it shot in some bland arena. I want you to be the Archangel for both New Orleans shows. There’s a six-week break after we get back from Europe. I’ll need you for a shitload of rehearsals and those two shows. That’s it. That’s my favor. For seven weeks, you’re the sixth member of Dark Harm.”
“I’ve never played an arena before, Derek. I don’t know that I can do it.” Q’s stomach pooled with abject fear just thinking about playing in front of fifteen thousand people at once.
“I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think you could do it. Please, Q. This album is important to me in a way I can’t explain. I want this concert video to be something remarkable. And that means you.” He looked away for a minute. “Look, you play an arena and then the Orpheum? You’ll be larger than life on that video. I know it.”
His flattery cut through her reservations and she decided to let him have what he wanted, but she was so taken aback at his earnestness, she struggled to find the right words.
He took her hesitation as reticence and said, “Ok, ok, you’ve convinced me. I believe ten grand is your going rate for a month’s work? I’ll advance it to you, next week. As a retainer for your services. And I’ll do this every week, play here at the Cove with you and the Beasts, until you’re in the black and Ben gets a regular crowd again. We’ll use it for social media promotion for the album, Stanley’s too, if that’s what he wants. It’ll be good for all of us.”