Tumblin' Dice

by John McFetridge

  Ritchie said, yeah, okay, sure. “If you don’t mind, what do we care, a few more hours on the bus.” He rubbed his neck when he said it, just wanting to get out of there then, not leave this kid feeling bad like her first in-charge tour was a disaster.

  She stood up, came over to the bed, and sat down beside Ritchie, put her hands on his neck and said, “You getting sore?”

  He said, “No, I’m fine,” and she said, you sure?

  “Yeah,” he said, “I’m sure.” Five minutes later she was on her back, holding her ankles up by her head, a pillow under her skinny butt, and Ritchie pumping away before it came to him: he’d been in rock bands, doing this on the road since before she was born.

  Then he was thinking, what the hell, it’s only rock’n’roll.

  Back on the bus, crossing another border — this time from Vermont into Quebec on their way to Casino de Montréal — Ritchie said to Cliff, just to poke him, see if this new happy mood was real, why don’t we do Pagliaro’s, “What the Hell I Got”? Cliff said, yeah sure, “Like we did at the El Mo, back in the day. I’ll play the acoustic, make it a jam.” And damn if it didn’t work, Cliff getting the whole place on its feet, singing along, “Don’t want to be lone-ly, no, no, no, don’t want to be lone-ly, without you.” They got called back for three encores.

  No, something was wrong all right.

  • • •

  Locked in the trunk of the car, pitch black, Cliff could feel the road going by and he was thinking, fuck, a number two hit in ’82, would have been number one if it wasn’t for fucking “Ebony and Ivory,” fucking novelty song, and I’m going out the answer to a trivia question — what rock star was shot in the head?

  Well, after Lennon, of course, but it’s not like the High had crazed fans. Cliff was pretty sure some speed metal guitarist got shot right onstage by a crazed fan, but he couldn’t remember his name.

  Now thinking, shit, get it together. Get out of this alive, get back to your life. Finish this tour, play the rest of the dates, and then get out.

  Barry’s idea, rob the fucking shylocks, and then this one, some French asshole in Montreal punches Cliff in the face, shoves him in the trunk, says, “You try rob me?”

  Because Cliff wanted to be the one with the gun, the tough guy, the bigshot. He was getting such a rush out of it, just thinking about it, way better than being onstage, how he was going to put the gun in the guy’s face after Barry sold him Cliff’s diamond pinky ring — damn he was going to get that back, too — and tell the guy, give me all the money. Or, put it all in here, pal, handing him the bag. He’d tried a few lines in his head, different things, seeing what would sound the best, the coolest. Then when he pulled the gun out of his coat pocket the guy stared at it and so did Cliff, looking at it in his hand like it was the first time he’d seen it. It gave him an idea, he was going to say something like Clint Eastwood, some kind of “Yeah, it’s a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world,” but then he realized he didn’t know what kind of a gun it was, and while he was looking at it the guy punched him in the face. Blood poured out of his nose and his eyes watered and the guy grabbed the gun and hit him with it, side of the face, top of the head, kept hitting him after Cliff was on his knees with his arms up over his head.

  Sam Cooke, too, shot in the head by a jealous husband, but Cliff also heard it was because he refused to sing “When a Man Loves a Woman” and the chick shot him.

  Not even a plane crash like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Ozzy’s man Randy Rhoads, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Jim Croce, John Denver, shit, Cliff remembered playing that big festival in Colorado in ’79, John Denver smiling and waving, so happy to be a country boy, nobody seeing what a dick he was backstage, or Otis Redding, Otis crashing before “Dock of the Bay” was even released. Marc Bolan would’ve been remembered for a lot more than “Bang a Gong” if his girlfriend hadn’t wrapped her Mini round the old oak tree with him in it. Half the Allman Brothers Band in motorcycle accidents.

  But no, fuck, he was after a lousy ten, twenty grand, trying to rob a shylock in a casino parking lot. Not a proper rock star death, not a sex and drugs and rock’n’roll send-off like Jimi or Morrison or Keith Moon or Bonham or on and on, not even choking on vomit or Freddie Mercury fucking himself to death or blowing off his own head like Cobain.

  He felt the car going around corners, tight turns and then uphill. Shit, was this guy taking him up Mount Royal? What the fuck for? He thought the guy was going to shoot him right there in the parking lot, blow his head off with his own gun — Barry’s gun, now Cliff was thinking, where the hell did Barry get a gun? — but the guy looked around, popped the trunk of the Monte Carlo, and shoved him in.

  And this fucking reunion tour going so well, even fucking Ritchie was happy. Even if he was trying to pass his sarcastic, pissed-off attitude, Cliff could tell. Threw him that bone with the solo in “As Years Go By,” all the guitar, putting it right up front, really just ’cause no one wanted to pay some keyboard schmuck five hundred a day. “What the Hell I Got” was good, though, taking Cliff right back to those days at the El Mo in Toronto, all those hot chicks in their tight Levis, slipping out of their tight Levis so fast.

  Marvin Gaye, he was shot in the head, too, but it was by his father — that was just weird.

  Well, fuck it, Cliff wasn’t going to beg for his life. This French fucking asshole had no idea who he was, screw him. Cliff tried to tell him, tried to get him to understand he was clearing ten grand for singing “Honey Trap” to drunken, methed-out zombies handing their hard earned cash over to blackjack dealers and slot machines, but no, the asshole slammed the trunk, said, fuck you.

  Yeah well, Cliff thought, fuck you, too. He wasn’t going to wet his pants and cry. He played fucking Live Aid in ’85, toured with the Stones, just the Canadian dates, but still, was sharing the bill with the fucking Doobie Brothers and Ted Nugent, cat scratch fucking fever in every casino.

  He was pretty sure some guy from Earth, Wind and Fire was murdered, too, and one of Booker T & the MGs, probably one of the black guys, but he didn’t know that for sure. And all those fucking rappers, shooting each other all the time.

  Fuck it. It wasn’t right. Not a rock star death, not drinking himself to death like Janis or Bon Scott. It was better than a Beach Boy drowning, the fucking irony. Brian Jones drowned, too, but Cliff was pretty sure he was high or drunk or both.

  The car stopped.

  Cliff closed his eyes. They were wet. So were his pants. He started begging, saying, “Please don’t kill me — I’ll do anything. I can get money, drugs, anything, please God,” and the trunk opened.

  Cliff kept begging, crying, hands over his face, and then he heard Barry say, “Come on, let’s go.”

  Cliff climbed out of the trunk. They were on the Jacques Cartier Bridge, the Montreal skyline lit up behind them, the cross on Mount Royal higher than all the buildings. The French asshole was on the road, a guitar strap around his neck.

  Barry said, “Get his legs.”

  Cliff said, “Jesus Christ,” and Barry said yeah, bending down, picking up the guy’s shoulders.

  Cliff said, right, yeah, grabbed the guy’s ankles, and they climbed over the railing to the sidewalk. A cab drove by. Cliff only saw the driver, guy wearing a turban talking on the phone, didn’t even glance over.

  Barry said, “Okay, now,” and they tossed the guy over. It took a while for him to hit the water, seemed like forever to Cliff, and when he did it hardly made any sound and he was washed away in the rushing current.

  They climbed back over the railing, and Barry walked to the car he’d followed them in, a BMW X5, saying, “Leave the Monte Carlo. They’ll think he was a suicide.”

  Cliff said, yeah, okay, right, getting in the X5. As they were driving away, he said, “Fuck me.” He was a mess, his pants wet where he’d pissed himself, blood and tears all over his face.

 
Barry drove over the bridge to the south shore, Longueuil, and then turned right, driving on the highway beside the St. Lawrence River. He said, “We’ll take one of the other bridges back. You know how to get to the casino?”

  Cliff said no.

  They didn’t say anything for a while, driving in the dark. There were houses on their left, post-war bungalows and brick two-stories, and the river on their right. It looked about a mile across, the skyline all lit up behind it. It was three thirty in the morning by then, a Tuesday night, the whole place asleep.

  Crossing the Victoria Bridge, the Pont Victoria, Barry said, “He was going to kill you,” and Cliff said, “I know, fuck,” starting to calm down a little, the fear going away and getting pissed off.

  Barry said, “We didn’t have any choice.”

  “I know.”

  They came off the bridge onto the island of Montreal and Cliff said, “That’s fucking it, though. No more,” and Barry said, okay, sure.

  There was a sign for the Casino de Montréal and the Vieux Port, and Barry followed it, driving through a neighbourhood looked like it used to be a slum, row houses right on the street, no front yards at all, factories and a slaughterhouse, but parts of it were going upscale, getting renovated, gentrified.

  Then Cliff said, “Oh fuck,” and Barry said, what?

  “The fucking guitar strap, haven’t you ever seen fucking CSI? Any of those shows. They’ll be able to trace it. They’ll fucking find us. Shit.”

  “It’ll come off in the water,” Barry said. “And besides, it’s Nugent’s.”

  Cliff said, what? “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  But then he started to laugh, saying, Jesus Christ, are you serious, and laughing till he cried, getting it all out.

  • • •

  Back at the casino they got straight onto the tour bus and Barry was still worried about Cliff, but starting to think it’d be okay. Figured he’d already changed the story in his head, taken out the pissing his pants and begging for his life.

  The water was running in the little bathroom, Cliff cleaning himself up, and Barry heard him say, “Holy shit, there’s hot water,” and Barry said, “Good, use it all up before fucking Ritchie gets here,” and Cliff laughed.

  Yeah, this’ll be okay. Tough part’ll be Cliff not talking about it, Barry sure that by now it was a great story and Cliff was the hero.

  He came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, and said, “Where’d you get the car?”

  “Guy I was talking to.”

  “A fan?”

  “No, a guy I was meeting.”

  “What were you meeting him for?”

  “I had to pick something up.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Forget it, okay?” Barry moved a red gym bag further under the seat and said, “Lotta chicks at the show tonight,” and Cliff said yeah, but he was looking at Barry like he wanted to know more about this guy he was meeting.

  Barry said, yeah, “There are always hot chicks in Montreal. You remember that time we played that outdoor gig, was around here on one of these islands, beautiful night and all those topless chicks in the front rows? They were hot.”

  Cliff said yeah. Barry could see him thinking about it, halfway to forgetting about what was going on now, and Barry said, “Some of those chicks tonight might’ve been those girls all grown up — Montreal is like the MILF capital of North America,” and Cliff said, yeah, “There were a couple there, down front, very hot.”

  “Let’s go find them,” Barry said, “give them something to talk about they get their hair done,” and Cliff said, yeah, okay, “Let me get dressed.”

  And Barry realized yeah, they were okay, everything was fine. They could still do what he had planned at Huron Woods, deliver the little gift under the seat.

  • • •

  Ritchie had expected there to be rumours about him and Emma. He didn’t think she’d be able to keep it quiet, and then he was a little pissed off she did. She was businesslike, if anything, mostly quick fucks and the odd blowjob after a show, like she was tucking him into bed.

  They’d crossed the border again, driving all the way to Connecticut to play Foxwoods, not as good a show as Montreal, maybe one of the weakest so far, and Ritchie thought they were losing momentum. Well, shit, they only had one more show on this leg, Huron Woods Casino outside Toronto, and then a two-week break before they picked it up again.

  Emma hadn’t even come with them, said she had a little business in New York and she’d meet up with them later.

  Now, sitting on the bus on the way past Toronto, Ritchie was thinking maybe he’d seen Emma for the last time and wasn’t too bothered about it. She was so damned serious all the time, half his age and sometimes acting like she was the older one, the mature one. That same shit he’d heard his whole life; he wanted to tell her like he told everybody else, do you think if I wanted to grow up I’d still be playing guitar in a rock band? Shit, he knew what he was doing. He thought.

  Dale was in the back of the bus with Cliff and Barry, and they were laughing and having a few drinks. Cliff had brought out a bottle of Scotch, told them all it was his “closing Scotch,” what he drank when he sold a house, and they were sipping it from little glasses.

  Jackie was sitting across the aisle from Ritchie and she said, “You don’t want one?” and Ritchie said no. He wouldn’t’ve minded a nice fat joint, but he didn’t say that, and Jackie said, “You see Cliff’s briefcase? It’s a portable bar. It’s got a few bottles, glasses, all that stirring stuff. Must be something he picked up in real estate.”

  Ritchie looked back, saw Cliff telling another story, Dale and Barry laughing, tried to remember the last time he saw Barry laugh and couldn’t think of one — ever — not even high school. This was new all right, the High having a good time on the road.

  “You going to be okay,” Jackie said, “when you see Huron Woods and Frank?”

  Ritchie said, “Frank who?” and Jackie said, “Oh my God, you don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  She leaned a little closer, Ritchie thinking this was the most Jackie’d ever talked to him in twenty years, and she said, “Frank Kloss is the Entertainment Director of the Huron Woods Casino.”

  Ritchie said, “You gotta be kidding,” but as far as he knew Jackie’d never made a joke in her life. “Frank Fucking Klostomy Bag, Frank?”

  “Wow, you didn’t know.”

  He wanted to say how would I know, Jackie, how would I fucking know, but he wanted to know more, so he shook his head and said, “Sorry.”

  She said, “No need, Ritchie. I probably hate him more than you do.”

  The highway rolling by in the dark, Ritchie said, yeah, probably, but doubted it. With Jackie, like the rest of the High, it was about the money. It was about Frank signing them to their first contract in ’74, ten years of personal management, all of them too young and too drunk and too stoned to think more than ten minutes ahead.

  But for Ritchie it was way personal.

  Jackie said, “He always said if you guys could’ve just stayed together longer, kept putting out music as the High, then everybody’d make money.”

  “Instead of just him.”

  “Yeah.”

  Now Ritchie wanted some of that Scotch, but he kept looking at nothing out the window of the bus, the highway rolling by in the dark. Fucking Frank, telling them he did the best he could. What else could he do? They were up against the huge American distributors. That’s where he said the problem was, that’s where they got ripped off. Said they had no power, no negotiating position until they had some hits, then they could get a better deal, start making some real money, but how could they keep working together, living together, spending every minute of the fucking day together in shitty apartments, shitty motel rooms, shitty vans, everybody around t
hem making millions. Hell, they hadn’t liked each other much to begin with back in high school — there was no way they could’ve hung on through that.

  Now Jackie was saying Dale freaked when he found out Frank was running the Huron Woods and they’d be playing there. “He wanted to cancel the show, but Emma says it’s the biggest house on the tour, best payday we’ll have. Where is Emma?”

  Ritchie said, how should I know? Jackie smiled at him and said, “It’s okay, I won’t tell anybody.”

  Ritchie said, “Tell anybody what?” and he wasn’t even sure there was anything to tell.

  “I told Dale,” Jackie said, “we might as well take as much of Frank’s money as we can,” and Ritchie thought, hell yes, it’s our money. Looking in the back of the bus he saw Cliff and Barry and Dale had gotten a little more serious. He couldn’t imagine much talking about old times, but still he didn’t want to go back there and hang out. Shit, Frank Kloss.

  Jackie said if he didn’t know about Frank, then, “I guess there’s no way you know about Angie,” and Ritchie turned sideways and looked right at Jackie and said, “What?”

  “Angela Maas.”

  Ritchie said, “Angie’s still with Frank?” Couldn’t believe it. No way.

  “Not with him like with him,” Jackie said, “not like a couple. I heard from Emma, she said Angie’s working for Frank again. He gave her a job awhile ago, when she got out of rehab.”

  “She just got out? Shit, how long was she in?”

  “Been in more than once,” Jackie said, and Ritchie thought, shit. He was surprised Jackie was being so nice about it and it made him think maybe he didn’t know Jackie like he thought he did.

  “She’s his executive assistant.”

  Ritchie said, “Shit,” and saw Angie Maas, hot chick hanging out on Queen West, early ’80s, Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” that chick with the Bette Davis Eyes everywhere. Frank, fucking thirty-five-year-old Frank Kloss, showing up with twenty-year-old Angie on his arm, giving her a job in the management office.