by Mercy Brown
“Other than loading out, my work is done for the night,” he says, then hops into his seat, always shotgun in the van. I pull some fives and ones off a roll of bills and then hand him the roll. He drops it into the band lockbox, hidden beneath the center console of Steady Beth (which most rational humans would simply call “the van,” but not Soft; they’re superstitious and their van has a name. An identity.)
“Cole, how much did you have to drink?” I ask him.
“Nothing. Why?”
“Because you kissed me,” I say. “You’ve never kissed me before.”
“Why—are you drunk?” he asks.
“Me? No, of course not. I’m the tour manager—I have to stay sober.”
“Yeah, well last time you tried to kiss me you were so drunk you couldn’t walk,” he says. “Remember?”
I try not to scowl at the reminder of that night and how dumb I still feel about it.
“Yeah, but you kissed me this time.”
“And you definitely kissed me back.”
“Well,” I say. “I’m not drunk.”
“Neither am I.”
“Sonia!” Emmy calls again, and now she’s walking across the parking lot. Damn it. “Where are you?”
“Coming!” I call back. Cole smiles at me and I still wonder if he’s drunk. Or if I am. Because I’m in such disbelief that this is happening.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I tell him.
“I’ll be here,” he says.
Reluctantly, I leave him there, my head fuzzy and warm and buzzing as I cross the parking lot to the club’s back door. There, under a full August moon my bossy BFF is waiting, literally tapping her foot.
“Where’s Cole?” she asks. “Have you seen him?”
“He’s in the van,” I say.
“You really shouldn’t wander around outside of clubs like this without one of us.”
“Like you are, right now?” I point out.
“I’m serious,” she says. “You’re fierce but you’re tiny and these places are full of creeps.”
“I’ve hung out in clubs before, thanks.”
“You’ve hung out in clubs at home, where everybody knows you and looks out for you and this is not the same thing. Trust me. This is the road.”
“Listen to you, ‘the road.’ Sheesh, Emmy. This is your first night of your first tour!”
“It’s not my first time on the road,” she says. “We’ve played lots of out of town shows, and I never go out in the parking lot without one of the guys—”
“And I came out here with Cole so why the hell am I getting a lecture? Seriously.”
“What were you doing out here with Cole anyway?” she asks and one thing’s for certain, I’m not about to tell her I was just making out with him.
“Here’s the change for the merchandise table,” I say, digging the wad of bills out of my dress pocket. Emmy eyes me and lowers her voice.
“You’re keeping two hundred bucks in singles and fives in your dress?”
“No,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I put the bulk of it in the lockbox.”
“Oh okay,” she says. “Good.”
“You’re really pissing me off, you know that?” I say.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m just nervous. First night out and all.”
I’m very familiar with Emmy’s mouth when she’s nervous, she’s like a manic on four espressos. I’m just not used to being the object of her neurotic doubt. I control the urge to tell her to take the roll of bills and choke on it.
“You know I love you, right?” she says, at just the right moment.
“Please don’t make me suffocate you in your sleep on our first night on tour,” I say. “We’ve got twenty shows left to do.”
She laughs and wraps her arm around my shoulders as we walk back into the club, and I feel less like murdering her now. A little. But I’m still so frustrated that I’m not in the back of Steady Beth with Cole’s hands up my dress that I can’t safely say I don’t want to murder someone.
***
The Nyabingi Dance Hall in Morgantown is only a six hour drive from our home in New Brunswick, New Jersey, but right now it feels like a lifetime away. Sure, it looks similar to the Melody, the Budapest, the Court Tavern. But when I look around and see no one I know outside of Emmylou, her boyfriend/guitarist and Steady Beth’s designated driver, Travis Blackwell, who is manning the merchandise table for me with their cannoli of a drummer, Joey Santini, I know this isn’t Hub City. The patrons don’t look all that different in their flannel and combat boots and leather in August. Maybe more beards. I’m from Jersey so their sneers don’t throw me. But this isn’t Jersey and I don’t know what’s behind that attitude. I bristle as I field stares from guys I don’t know. It’s probably because I’m the only one here in a dress with blue hair and tattoos.
I untie my sweater from my waist and put it on, even though it’s 1000 degrees in here, and march over to the merchandise table to give Travis and Joey the roll of bills. There’s a line for the Soft 7” single, Loud is How I Love You b/w Steady Beth, and I’m not surprised by the way the crowd crushed the stage during their set. Soft is the best thing going in New Brunswick right now and if they weren’t in the ever-looming shadow of New York City, they’d probably already have a good deal with a decent indie label by now. That’s why we’re on the road for a few weeks—to see if we can outrun the shadow and get a little recognition.
Listen to me, we. But I can’t help but feel like I’m in the band now. I’ve been working their merchandise table for two years, pretty much ever since they started playing out. I help load gear, hang flyers, hang out at rehearsals, and when they’re doing their Soft thing, there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. That’s what happens when you’re music-obsessed and your best friend fronts the best band in town. Whenever they play, that’s where I want to be. Usually, standing right in front of Cole, staring at his hands as they stroke and thump that vintage P-bass like it’s a part of him.
Emmy drags me to the bathroom with her, and it’s skanky like every rock club bathroom I’ve ever been in (but nothing will freak me out the way the CBGB bathroom in New York City freaks me out because that experience is more like immersive horror theater than anything else). She’s talking my ear off about how once we graduate in the spring, this is what we’ll be doing, probably for several years before we ever break.
“Get used to it, Sunny,” she says. “It’s not glamorous but you know, it beats being stuck in Highland Park.”
“Sure,” I say, but my aspirations are less the sleeping-on-other-people’s-couches variety and more the apartment-on-the-Lower-East-Side, working-for-David-Geffen variety. I don’t tell her that, because Emmy is insanely protective of her Soft family, and I don’t want to rock her boat on our first night. I mean, the band just survived a near-death experience this spring with Travis quitting, and that only lasted a few weeks. Now it seems like Emmy’s already got me managing her band for the rest of my career.
I look out the bathroom door to see Travis and his blond, swoopy hair leaning against the wall of the club where a couple of girls have him cornered, and he’s smiling that killer Blackwell smile. Emmy sticks her head out and her grip on my arm tells me maybe she’d forgotten we weren’t at home, where everybody and their second cousins know Emmy and Travis are the hot ticket and no girl goes near Travis unless she truly wants to talk about guitar gear. Travis looks up, his eyes are immediately drawn to Emmy, and that smile turns to starlight the minute he sees her.
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing for girls to think he’s single, right?” Emmy says, relaxing. “Does more for our image.”
“Are you high?” I say. “Didn’t you want to murder one of your best friends for trying to hook up with Trap before you two were even an official couple?”
“I think ‘murder’ is a tad
strong,” she says. “Maim, maybe.”
This is the moment when Cole walks back inside the bar. He sees me standing there gabbing with Emmy and shoots me a look. Is he actually annoyed I haven’t come back yet?
Emmy goes to him and takes him by the arm, and nods in the direction of Travis. Without even hesitating, Cole goes to rescue Travis from the two women who are talking his ear off. He says something adorable to one of them, I can’t hear it but I know it’s adorable by the look on her face, and I know what a merciless flirt Cole can be—I just got McCormacked myself behind the van. The girl laughs, openmouthed, tossing her hair behind her and Cole snakes his arm around her shoulders. He says something else in her ear that makes her bite her lip and then he glances in my direction, catches me staring at him and raises an eyebrow. Being the consummate dork I am around cute guys, I stare blankly back in his direction.
All of this innuendo is too much for me without a drink, so I walk off to the bar to wait for the club manager so we can get paid. I sit there, nursing the same lousy tap beer until way past last call, waiting as Soft load the gear into the back of Steady Beth just so I can avoid Cole, simply because I have no idea what to make of him. After everyone has cleared out of the club and I still haven’t seen the manager, Cole walks back in and comes right up to me.
“Did you get paid?” he asks. “We’re ready to go.”
“Not yet,” I say. “I’m sure any minute.”
Cole turns to the bartender. “Where’s Lou?” he asks. “We need to hit the road.”
“He’s in the back,” he answers. “I’ll go get him.”
The bartender walks away and I give Cole a look, and it includes a serious lip curl. He rolls his eyes, and now things are back to normal between us, like that kiss never even happened.
“Look, Sunny, you have to be more assertive,” he says. “Especially you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re a pretty girl and men are pricks,” he says. “And club managers are the worst brand of prick there is. So get your Jersey on.”
It doesn’t escape me that for the first time ever, Cole has called me pretty, but my irritation with his audacity, his assumption that I can’t get the job done because I wear dresses, overrides any joy I might find in that realization.
“I’ll take care of this,” I say to him. “Tell the others I’ll be right out.”
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t make me use my Jersey on you,” I say. “Or I won’t seem so pretty anymore.”
“Fine,” he says. “Have it your way.”
Lou comes back with the bartender and Cole hesitates until I give him the eye, and then he walks back outside. Lou hands me an envelope and says thanks. I open it and see there’s a pile of cash in there and then put the envelope in my pocket.
“We good?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Let’s book something for the fall,” he says and hands me his card. “We’ll get them down here on a Friday or a Saturday.”
“Sounds good,” I say, feeling all proud of myself and manager-like now.
In fact, I’m feeling like such a big shot, I pull a $20 out of the envelope and hand it to the bartender, and then I take another $20 out and give it to the sound guy, who is very appreciative, if surprised by our generosity.
It’s not until I get back outside in the van where the others are milling around and Joey says, “How much did we get paid?” that I even think to count what was in the envelope. My stomach drops as I catch my stupid mistake.
“What’s wrong?” he says. “Did we get stiffed?”
I take the money out and realize that what looked like a nice, big pile, is actually a pile of singles and fives and what’s left in the envelope after I generously tipped out the bartender and the sound guy is $50.
“Fifty bucks?” Travis says. “There were over a hundred people here tonight.”
“That’s bullshit,” Joey says. “They didn’t even have to pay three bands.”
“Well, it was ninety dollars but I tipped the bartender and sound guy,” I admit, sheepishly.
“You tipped them forty dollars?” Emmy says. “That’s more than a tank of gas.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” I say. I turn pink from my stupid mistake. “I wouldn’t have if I’d known it was only ninety dollars.”
“You didn’t count it?” Emmy says. “That’s not like you. Sunny, what were you thinking?”
I was thinking about Cole, obviously, and not about what I’m here to do. I’m so pissed at myself.
“Aww, give her a break,” Cole says. “Remember the first time we played the Roxy? They paid us forty dollars for playing a packed show and we didn’t know any better. We even thanked them.”
“No, Emmy’s right,” I say. “If I’m the manager, I have to be more assertive, you even said so yourself, Cole.”
Now he looks irritated with me.
“I guess we all make mistakes,” he says, and I wonder what we’re even talking about now. Is he talking about me getting stiffed by the club, or is he talking about kissing me earlier? He climbs into the van with everybody else while I’m standing there holding fifty dollars in singles and fives feeling like the world’s biggest asshole. Like I let them all down.
“Get in the van, Sonia,” Emmy calls from the back seat. “Tomorrow’s another day and another show.”
Mercy Brown is a writer and musician from New Jersey. She spent long hours in her youth devouring romance novels and indie comics before she started fronting bands in the New Brunswick music scene, playing clubs, backyards, and basements from Boston to Alabama. In 2002, Mercy married her guitarist and effectively retired from sleeping on other people’s floors. She turned to fanfiction as a creative outlet in 2009 after her sons were born and soon after began writing books that resembled fic of the indie music scene. Loud is How I Love You is her first novel.
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