FAREWELL GHOST

by Larry Caldwell

  Fueling this madness were The Physical Jerks, who had been together for more than twenty years, evolving from a punk band, contemporaries of Bad Religion and Suicidal Tendencies, to a mid-tempo grunge sound. Their songs had amazing titles—“Forgive Your Enemies (Lay Flowers on Their Grave),” “You Ugly, Let’s Screw!”—and Clay knew their catalogue by heart. But all he could hear now, staring down from the catwalk, was a dull roar and his own pulse beating in his head. Since coming out west, he had been asked to suspend his disbelief on multiple occasions; but the idea that the Jerks would soon finish their set and the crowd would grow still and wait for the next frontman to appear and rile them up again—and that somehow he would have to be that guy—didn’t jive with any known reality. Cameron Moreno was a natural, his caustic sense of humor capable of handling the surliest of crowds. But Clay Harper? I might as well be bleeding into a shark tank. He could hear the boos already.

  “Hey,” Savy said. “You good? You look like you rode the Tilt-A-Whirl after winning the pie-eating contest.”

  “Clay’s great,” Fiasco replied, with only a hint of warning in his voice. “You chose him over dozens of vocalists and now he’s going to show us why.”

  The first bit of bad news, arriving in the old foreman’s office, was that they weren’t allowed to use their own equipment. The Demons were going on immediately after them and there would be no time to set the stage twice. And as thrilled as Spider was about getting to use Barrett Roethke’s drum kit, they were also warned and double-warned about messing with the amp levels or repositioning any of the microphones. Sound check? There wasn’t any time. And even Clay, with his limited knowledge of sound boards and acoustics, understood that when an opening act sounded like ass, it was usually because sound check had been shunted aside for other concerns. So, no matter what, we’re going to suck in front of a thousand people and the biggest promoter in the city. What a wonderful world.

  Then a pencil-thin man with a pencil-thin mustache informed them that their playing time had fallen from half an hour to, maybe, twenty minutes. “You guys probably know from the news and gossip that Davis has been attending AA.” As the man spoke, he was simultaneously texting and staring around for someone better to talk to. “He’s positively exhausted and has a world tour starting in London next week, so let’s promise to get him out of here and off to bed.”

  “Absolutely,” Savy replied, pleasantly enough. “May we look the great man in the eye when he walks by?”

  Pencil Man, waving and smiling at someone else, never heard her.

  “I’ll go find Crissy,” Fiasco told them. “Have her talk to her dad.”

  “Forget it,” Savy said. “By the time Somebody gets the order to the right people, we’ll be on stage.”

  Regardless, even if the Demons’ entourage was acting like the cool kids, with their elitist clique in the corner, Clay and the others maintained hope that Davis Karney—arguably the biggest rock star in the world right now—would show up and rectify the situation. For God’s sake, let them have ten extra minutes! Clay imagined him shouting. What’s wrong with you shallow pricks? But when Karney arrived in the flesh, accompanied by a second, more intimate entourage that included a towering bodyguard and a trophy blonde with breasts as big as her head, such wishful thinking was laid to rest. “I can still smell the goddamn cat food in this place!” Karney announced, by way of greeting. “Nelson, why can’t Ricky book the goddamn Grammy Museum for his little spawn?”

  Nelson, the pencil man, gave a quiet reply that didn’t please Karney, who ordered him to shut the fuck up and find a fucking handkerchief, which Nelson did after some dashing around. Karney then had the blonde drench the handkerchief in her designer perfume and hold it over his nose and mouth for him (even if the sickly sweet scent had already permeated the room). He was dressed in his requisite leather pants and black top hat, slanted low to hide what, up close, appeared to be hideously rendered features—beady eyes and a twisted little rat face that could make even the most loving mother question her power of creation. The stripper/centerfold clinging to him was a testament to the transformative, sexying powers of rock celebrity. Yet, overcoming harsh genetics and having a Penthouse Pet on his arm didn’t seem quite enough for the man. Over the hanky, his eyes were slits of pure rage, fixed on the ceiling and nothing else. He refused to laugh at any of the jokes his underlings attempted or even to sit on the velvet furniture that had been provided for the occasion; and when a few of The Physical Jerks approached him after their set, Karney made it clear he had no interest. “Tell Ricky-Ticky he owes me his second-born,” he yelled at no one in particular. “I’m getting three nights at the Hollywood Bowl next summer!”

  “Well, that’s supremely disappointing,” Spider mumbled. In lieu of Karney’s hatred of the backstage furniture, Clay and his band had taken up residence on a purple settee that was, in Clay’s opinion, pure joy on the glutes. The foreman’s office was growing hotter and more crowded by the minute, and Nelson was taking it upon himself to clear the room, using the bodyguard as muscle, when the door opened and a harried stage manager shouted, like Scooter in so many Muppet Shows, “Farewell Ghost. Two minutes to show, Farewell Ghost!”

  “Who the fuck is Farewell Ghost?” Karney wanted to know.

  “Don’t bother illuminating him, boys,” Savy said. She stood with her guitar case and led the way out the door.

  Clearly the crowd was expecting Karney and the Demons. Clay could hear them chanting, “Kar-ney! Kar-ney!” as he descended the metal stairs to the stage wings. But when the house lights darkened and the stage lights described a ghoulish green hue around the master of ceremonies—some hotshot KROQ personality—their hopes were collectively dashed. “They’re still about a half-hour away, you animals.”

  There was a general groan, and a few murderous threats, and as Clay followed his band across the factory floor he figured they would be hearing a lot more of that soon. His hands were numb and his feet were numb, and he couldn’t remember a single note or lyric from any of the songs they were about to play. If only he’d known about the buzzsaw they were walking into, he could have faked the flu. Laryngitis. Throat cancer. Whatever it took to elude this oncoming hell.

  Savy and Fiasco and Spider walked ahead in silence, on their own anxious trips. Clay wished they could have had some last-minute ritual—a huddle, a band mantra, something—but there was no time. Spider was already jogging up the stage steps.

  Just ahead, someone emerged from the dark under the risers. In the periphery of the emerald glow, Clay saw it was Barrett Roethke, accompanied by a bottle of Seagram’s Seven. Savy was in some kind of zone, psyching herself up, but she still had the sense to slow in Roethke’s presence. They traded greetings and in those seconds, Clay saw that it wasn’t their first words together. The drummer gave her a flirtatious wave and watched her backside flex as she ascended the stairs. Then his bloodshot eyes fell on Clay and Clay’s face confessed all. “Oh, doctor.” Roethke offered his bottle right away. “Better dull the edge, bub.”

  Clay took a hard swig and winced at the esophageal burn that ran to the pit of his stomach. Roethke grinned and Clay took a deeper, harder swig. “You probably hear this a thousand times a day,” he told the former Throne drummer, “but I’ve been a fan of yours since I could walk. Any advice?”

  “Just keep the beat. Keep everyone else in time and sounding good. Otherwise, fear not—no one’s looking at you back there.”

  “But”—Clay lifted his guitar case—“I’m not the drummer, I’m the frontman.”

  It took Roethke a moment to process this. He was looking weathered these days, aged by decades, even if it had been less than seven years since Throne’s untimely demise. Finally, a grim understanding dawned on his features. “Shhhheeeeeeet,” he moaned. “In that case, suck it up, sister.” Roethke grabbed the Seagram’s away from Clay like it was a loaded weapon. “You volunteered for center stage, right? Better play your heart out. Or these people? They will eat you a
live. And shit you out. And eat you again.”

  Clay nodded and climbed toward the stage. “Don’t let your guitarist down,” Roethke called after him, “you’ll never see the blue tigress if you do.”

  He had more wisdom to bestow, but Clay heard none of it. Terror had a way of making you deaf.

  Suicide. Psychotic fans. Plane crashes. Bus crashes. Motorcycle accidents. Mental illness. Drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs. Of all the things that had killed his favorite musicians through the years, Clay had never heard of anyone dropping dead of stage fright. Not once. But it seemed inevitable sooner or later—between the adrenaline, nerves, and pressure—that someone’s heart would just up and burst. They would pitch face-first into the crowd and their corpse would get floated around and abused for several minutes before anyone caught on. Maybe I’ll be the first. Make history. Clay Harper. Know how he went? No, but I never heard of him—so who gives a shit?

  Ten seconds under the stage lights and the sweat was already sending rivers down his face and sides. Clay plugged the Rickenbacker into one of the Demons’ amps and it replied with a concussive POP!. Everything was happening slowly, too slowly, while his mind panicked and chased its tail at light speed. And it was amazing, life’s bitter ironies: How can I be so terrified of something I’ve wanted so badly?

  If only he had more time to prepare for this moment. If only Boyle could have jumped into his body and played the show for him. What a symbiotic relation they might have then!

  The eyes of the crowd were settling on him, drawing the bullseye on his back. His band was watching him too, knowing he was dragging his feet, Fiasco’s old hostility rearing up, Savy willing him to finish tuning and take his place beside her. And that was what Clay finally did, more for Savy than himself—because Savy had believed in him and didn’t deserve to be punished for his cowardice—and in so doing he discovered most of the crowd was missing. Seeing that Clay wasn’t Davis Karney, they had turned their backs in favor of the restrooms or the tables in back or the clown, who was now making naughty balloon animals for everyone not interested in the lot of nobodies onstage. The teens started texting. The horndogs drifted to the corners to heavy-pet. Even the stage security seemed to be on a coffee break. “Hey, who the hell are you guys?” some wiseass shouted, and the ever-diminishing crowd—comprised now of only the rowdiest roughnecks, who would have slam-danced to a sad Morrissey ballad—quickly picked the chant up: “Who! Are You! Who! Who! Are You!”

  And still, Clay’s tongue wouldn’t come unglued from the roof of his mouth. Savy leaned close. “Breathe, man. Time to do our thing.”

  Clay gave her the faintest of nods. He pressed his fingers down on the second fret of the fourth and fifth strings and struck a chord, an E power chord (in other circumstances, Fiasco might have been pleased he could identify it), and he marveled at the seismically powerful vibration that shivered from the PA to the very back of the cavernous factory. Biggest, baddest sound in the world, and if you could string enough of those sounds together, in the right order, people would come to love you. With enough talent, even the most anonymous nobody could become a God on this stage. So prove it, Clay imagined Boyle telling him. Do it, dammit!

  “Why don’t you play something already?” the heckler bellowed, and Savy answered him back with the full weight of her microphone. “This is about the pissiest birthday party I’ve ever been to,” she shouted.

  “Who! Are You!” the crowd chorused. “Who! Who! Who! Are you!”

  “We’re Farewell Ghost,” Clay told them. “And this song’s called ‘Disaffected.’”

  Spider smashed his high-hat on a four-count, and the world finally fell in sync for Clay’s racing mind. His fingers found their dexterity, and the Rickenbacker roared to life, and all his fear and doubt and wondering was swallowed in a wellspring of energy. The notes and lyrics returned to him and the voice that erupted from his throat sounded confident and powerfully pissed off. Whatever happened over the next twenty minutes, however this played out, Clay understood he was going to put everything he had on display for whatever crowd there was to witness it.

  It was just like all the times they’d rehearsed, only a thousand times more intense. Savy flung her hair and worked her strings, while Fiasco hammered at his bass and Spider pounded on his snare like it was his mortal enemy.

  “Disaffected” was over in a record time and they launched straight into “Houdini Nights” (a track they’d written about the roof of the Knickerbocker), and by then the crowd had swelled. Clay saw limbs colliding and flailing around in the dark at his feet.

  They reached the first solo and Savy absolutely shredded it, bracelets flashing, her fingers everywhere on the frets. She played with passion and grace; art and sex and anger and soaring euphoria rolled into one. The crowd couldn’t get enough.

  Around then their first stage-diver appeared. Clay spotted the guy in his periphery a moment before he took flight, leaping into the crowd with his arms and legs spread, taking half a dozen bodies down like bowling pins. In the center of the room, someone had Crissy, the birthday girl, up on their shoulders—her pink dress and tiara unmistakable—and she was pumping both fists. And somewhere in the dark beyond, her promoter father was witnessing the turning of a crowd that had been ready to filet them moments before.

  There was a brief gap between their second and third song while they retuned, and Clay took the opportunity to tell everyone, “You’ve never heard of us. You didn’t even realize we were playing tonight, and in 14 minutes we’ll be gone from your lives. But if you don’t know this next song, do everyone around you a favor and go the fuck home.”

  A hush fell over the crowd, which was now every bit as large as it had been for The Physical Jerks. And the challenge hung on the air: Will you know the song or won’t you?

  Then Savy plunged into The Stooges’ “Gimme Danger” and the place lost its mind—half of them actually knowing the song, the others, Clay suspected, not wanting to be left out. A circle pit massed and swirled, two or three dozen bodies careening around like a hurricane over tropical coast, and when Clay shouted the opening lines, the crowd shouted right along.

  Clay glanced over at Savy. Her face glowed red, yellow, blue in the stage lights and she gave him the ghost of a smile back, before a diver raced between them, clipping Clay on the elbow and spinning him sideways. He missed a note, another, but picked the riff up on the next measure. The endorphins kept pumping. Like the best rollercoaster ride in the world—better than being high, better than sex (or at least the fumbling kind Clay had experienced).

  In the wings, though, Nelson the Pencil was already tapping his watch.

  They did an abbreviated version of “Just Can’t Help Falling in Hate,” a mid-tempo grinder with a hip-hop backbeat, an orphan from their old lineup, when Savy and the guys had called themselves Costly Creation. Then, before their final tune, Fiasco took the mic and dedicated their set to Crissy Rudinski, which drew a polite spat of applause from the otherwise savage mass. He went on at length about her growth as a bass player, knowing that no one in their right mind would kill the power while he was praising Ricky Somebody’s daughter, and he informed the crowd that by next year she too would be onstage, twisting their eardrums.

  The effect of the lengthy speech was two-fold: It genuinely flattered the birthday girl and it made the crowd visibly restless. So that by the time Spider counted them into “Voices in the Dark,” the reaction was madness, everyone dancing and shoving and jumping up and down. The stage was invaded with bodies, more than the security guards could handle, and Mo appeared from nowhere to help push people off. Someone was climbing a support beam in the middle of the factory. Several hooligans were throwing shoes. Even the beloved clown was ripped off his pogo stick and surfed over a crowd that tore the leisure suit from his body until his bare, skinny torso was exposed to the world. He was finally flung onstage, tighty-whities shredded, red nose stolen, and his makeup smeared with sweat, or maybe tears, as he rolled dramatically over the
center monitor and knocked the mic stand back into Clay’s collarbone. Clay slapped it away with the neck of his guitar and stepped over the writhing clown, shouting mic-less at the faces below. “This is how I emp-tee pain!”

  Savy and Fiasco picked it up, and after their fifth or sixth time through, the crowd caught the line and began shouting it too. The moment forever tattooed itself on Clay’s mind. In that moment, one thousand people knew who he was—the lonely island he sometimes inhabited, the depthless void he sometimes tight-roped over, the sense of having nothing real in his life but the music he poured everything into.

  They were strangers who loved. And for a little while, they understood too.

  At the end of the day, what more could anyone ask for?

  Next moment, Mo was shoving at some grease-lightning ’50s rebel and the rebel tripped over the clown and clipped Clay from behind, and they all went plummeting into the churning sea of bodies. The crowd let out a collective cheer, thinking Clay had leapt on purpose, and for several seconds he was buoyed up on a swaying hammock of hands, watching Savy shout his line, again and again, as long as the room would keep it going. Then someone was yanking at Clay’s guitar and someone else was tugging him in the opposite direction and he fell into a gap, landing hard on his back against the cement floor.

  He had taken someone else down with him and they were lying flat, squirming under his legs. More hands groped, lifting him to his feet, and Clay saw that who he’d landed on was none other than the birthday girl. A whole crowd of people to tackle and he’d taken out the guest of honor. “Hey, sorry!” Clay plucked her tiara off the floor before someone could stomp it and handed it back. “You okay?”

  “Incredible!” she yelled and threw her arms around his neck.