by Jo Raven
“Please stay,” he muttered. The pillow, half-over his mouth, smothered him, and his own fetid whiskey breath billowed back into his face. “Just for a while.”
“Just for a while,” he heard her say. The bed bent away from him, and his eyes flickered open. She was sitting on the side of the bed, her head cocked to the side, watching him.
Her eyes were so blue, that light blue that the older men liked, and her long, blond hair would have driven them wild. She would have been auctioned off or given as a prize years ago, because she was all of nineteen now.
Damn, he needed more whiskey.
Tryp reached for her, but sleep was coming for him. He barely moved his hand, the motion of a dying man crawling and stretching for something futile.
Warmth covered his hand.
With a deep breath, he pushed open his eyes again. Elfie’s hand was over his, holding his fingers.
As he lost his battle with the liquor, the warmth of her hand snapped through his brain, bringing back memories.
Blood.
He heard her screaming and sobbing, and Tryp sprinted though the dark hallways of the house, running down the corridor that led to the bedroom where he knew they would be. Even though Tryp was fourteen, he was already muscled and strong enough to hit that bedroom door with his shoulder and shatter the frame around the lock.
Scarlet stained the white bed.
Sariah huddled on the floor, holding her bleeding mouth and his step-father holding a belt in his fist. His sagging face twisted with rage.
Tryp swam back to consciousness on a filthy couch, smells of shit and rotten food hanging in his nose. He staggered to the bathroom to hurl the acid that was eating his stomach, but Sheridette lay splayed on the floor, a needle still piercing her arm. Crimson splashed her arm, her naked stomach, and the walls.
Another one. There was always another one.
He knew there had to have been blood, but he never saw it.
Tryp pressed his whole body against the flimsy door to the bathroom on the tour bus, begging Lynda to open the door, to let him in, to tell him that it wasn’t true, to stop the bleeding somehow, to tell him that his first child wasn’t dying in there.
Jonas had peeled him off the door and shoved him into Xan’s arms while he fought to get back to her, but Lynda finally opened the door for Jonas. He crouched and spoke softly while Tryp tried to throw Xan off and get free, but Xan had wrapped his arms around Tryp’s arms and chest so he couldn’t move or fight. Xan murmured something in Tryp’s ear that sounded like another language but he was still roaring his own pain.
In the bed, Tryp was just as paralyzed, a mammoth weight pressing him into the mattress and pillow.
On the bus, Jonas had stood as the door slid closed. “We need to take her to an ER, but I’m sorry, Tryp. These things happen. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
His legs hadn’t supported him, and he collapsed. Xan fell with him and rocked him, still murmuring.
Light.
Red light, because the sunlight shined through the blood in his eyelids, and Tryp tried to open his eyes. Gunk matted his eyelashes, the residue of blood and whiskey and nightmares.
“Tryfon, are you okay?” Elfie asked, rocking his shoulder. Sunlight glowed on her pale blond hair that was already scraped back into a knot on the back of her head, and she was wearing black cargo pants and a black tank top.
Tryp gathered his arms, pushing himself to sit up in the white sheets. Vomit coated his tongue, and broken glass filled his head. His feet felt oddly comfortable, and he stretched his toes in his socks. His boots had been placed on the floor over by the chair.
He asked her, “You stayed with me?”
“Um, yeah,” she said, her blue eyes filled with concern. “Are you all right?”
Cornflower blue. That was what his step-father had always called that shade of blue when he saw a young woman with those eyes. Cornflower blue. Just a tinge of gray in summer sky blue.
He stumbled to the bathroom to throw it all up.
Talking on the Phone while Packing Explosives
Elfie was packing the gerbs into the short holders around the front of the stage for that night when her phone rang, buzzing her butt in her hip pocket. The number on the screen didn’t have a name above it, so whoever was calling wasn’t in her contact list.
It buzzed again in her hand before she could bring herself to touch the green button, and even after she answered her thumb hovered close, ready to hang up. “Yeah?”
“Elfie? It’s Tryp.”
“What can I do you for?” she quipped as she crammed the phone between her ear and shoulder and shoved wires into the base of the tube. When the spark from the electric match jumped between the wires, it would touch off the explosive powder. The clicks of the metal clips were lost in the empty arena beyond the edge of the stage. Blue seats lined the concrete steps like layers of teeth in a grinder.
Through the phone, Tryp said, “Let’s go out tonight.”
“Looking for another chance to get cock-blocked, are you?” She checked the RFID tag on the side of the gerb and tapped the number into her tablet, setting it within the pattern, then compared the numbers. No killing the musos, she chanted in her head.
“Can you do make-up at all?” he asked.
Evidently not. “I was wearing make-up last night.”
“I mean stage make-up, to make me look different, so I can go incognito.”
“Seriously?” That sounded like such a better idea, letting instantly recognizable rock star Tryp Areleous loose among a raving-drunk crowd that would see right through some contour and hair dye in two seconds flat. /sarcasm.
“Yeah, you suck as a pimp, so this time, we’ll try you being an actual wing woman, with me there and everything.”
Another can of sparkling special effect powder, another RFID detonator, another number to record by typing it into her tablet. “Tryp, that isn’t going to work.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. We don’t have a runner tonight, so you can do my make-up in the dressing rooms, and then the drive to San Jose isn’t long. The make-up artists never pack up their shit and just charge it all to the band anyway. Come on, Elfie. Help me out. I want to be in the crowd tonight. The VIP section is boring.”
Dancing in a club was better than snorting zombie dust off of strippers’ sweaty ass cracks, which she had heard was Rade’s new thing. “Okay. I’ll need a few minutes to do the minimum tear-down, but then I’ll meet you in the dressing room.”
Rock wold do the rest for her while she babysat the muso.
Disguising Tryp
Elfie found the dressing rooms one floor below the stage level of the arena.
Technical plebes did not fraternize with the musos who never worked a day in their damn lives. When Rock had been a young technician, and he assured them that he had been hotter than any of them slackers, it was rumored that he had had an affair with Stevie Nicks, and the other techs still razzed him about it decades later, because everyone had told everyone for generations of techs. Such lore never died.
And he was a guy. Guys are supposed to make conquests.
For Elfie, if Mitch or Joseph or those guys saw her hanging out with a muso, she’d be ostracized as dating below her station in life and betraying the warrior ethos of the stage technician.
Plus, who knew how many groupies those musicians had fucked? A tech never took sloppy seconds after a groupie.
In the men’s dressing room, the naked bulbs circling the mirror glared on the empty counters and bare clothes racks. Behind the door marked Women, Tryp slept on the couch. He wore only a white towel slung low around his hips, and his elbow rested on the back of the couch.
Wow.
She scooted in the door and locked it behind her, before any of the other techs drew the wrong conclusion.
In the mornings when she woke Tryp up, he was always sick, greasy hair limp on his forehead, dark smudges under his eyes, and his body wracked by nausea. He looked like a
slow suicide by rat poisoning, and the first moment when he opened his dark eyes wrenched her heart as he curled his fists in the bedclothes like pain shot through him. Plus, his clothes from the night before smelled like old sweat and stale liquor.
A different man was lying on the couch, the vibrant tattoos on his skin glinting in the harsh light from the Hollywood make-up mirrors. Healthy muscle wrapped his body and rippled down his stomach like stacks of bricks, bulky under the ink floating on his skin. His arm, cocked under his head, was rounded with thick biceps and triceps, and his broad shoulders extended past the side of the couch. Tattoos of vines flowering with scarlet roses and blue irises laced with black thorns flowed down both his arms to his wrists, as thick as sleeves, and swarmed across his burly pecs. Vines snaked down his stomach, falling into the vee around his abdominal muscles and diving under the white towel tucked around his hard waist. Even his black hair, still damp, curled with vigor. Deep breathing filled his body, and he let it go like he was meditating.
Elfie hated to wake him up because he looked far more peaceful than he ever did in the mornings, but Tryp had said that he wanted to go out.
He sighed and shifted. His dark eyebrows flinched, but then his face smoothed and his lips relaxed into the faintest of smiles.
She really hated to wake him up.
If she went out to the stage and finished packing her equipment instead of letting Rock do it, she could kill a couple minutes, just to let him sleep.
Or she could stand here, clutching the doorjamb, until her heart slowed and her head stopped swimming in the air.
Tryp’s thick eyelashes fluttered on his cheekbones, and he opened his dark eyes. “Hey.” His hoarse voice seemed loud in the small dressing room.
Elfie cleared her throat, but her body seemed heavy, languorous, like she wanted to lie down. “Hey, yourself. Do you want to sleep for a few more minutes? I can pack up some stuff.”
“I’m fine. Smear this make-up stuff on me and let’s go.” He swung his legs off the couch and sat up, ruffling his hair. He glanced back at her. “You okay?”
“Fine. Fine. They left the make-up, right?” If she let go of the door, she might stumble. She sucked deep breaths of warm, shower-moistened air into her mouth, and the scent of soap wafted to her.
“It’s all on the counter. You want me to sit in the chair?” He stood and stretched, lengthening all those heavy muscles under his skin. The towel dropped an inch around his waist, and Elfie looked up into his black eyes.
“Sure.” Elfie experimented with unclenching her hand from the steel door frame. When she didn’t fall over, she walked to the counter.
She felt funny. Maybe she was getting sick or something. The A&R guy from Interscope Records had catered lunch for the technicians, trying anything to win Xan’s goodwill. Maybe the sushi had turned. She hoped she wasn’t going to throw up all over Tryp, especially since he had showered and everything.
Tryp sat in the make-up chair and spun to face the lights. “So what are we going to do?” he asked. “Glasses? Fake nose?”
“Just how hideous do you want to be?” She picked up a tray of blushers and bronzers, twirling a blush brush in some of the colors and considering his strong cheekbones and jaw. That bone structure made him look like Tryp Areleous. She would have to minimize that.
“Not hideous,” he said. “Just not like me.”
“Well, anything I change isn’t going to be an improvement.”
Oops.
She glanced at Tryp through the mirror, but he was smiling a little, with just a touch of wry humor.
She said, “I’m not flirting. I swear.”
“Of course not. The babysitter doesn’t flirt with the baby, even if she is two years younger than he is.”
Double oops. She stared at the make-up and the brush in her small hands. “You know about that, huh?”
“None of the other roadies are waking me up in the morning anymore, only you. You suddenly want to hang out with me and are letting other guys handle your pyrotechnics to go out with me, a band member. No one’s ever accused me of being a genius, but I’m not stupid.”
“You could have ditched me.”
“Making your job harder would be a dick move. Why don’t Rade and Grayson have babysitters?”
“I don’t know. I guess no one can handle them.”
“Oh. So you handle me well.”
She looked back at him, framed in lights in the mirror, but it wasn’t a dirty joke. Anger laced his bitter tone.
She said, “It’s not like that. They’re worried about you. Xan is ready to flame out from overwork, and Jonas is on the verge of snapping. They’re worried about you dying, and they need you sober for the radio interviews in the afternoon.”
Tryp looked away, and his eyebrows creased down. “I’m not going to die.”
“If you do, or if you get arrested, or if you break your wrist, the band will fall apart. Your drumming is genius, Tryp. Rock was saying that your fills at the ends of the lines are magic. He’s never seen anything like it, and he worked Nirvana.”
Tryp looked back at the mirror, meeting her eyes in the glass. “Bullshit. The drummer is always the easiest to replace. No one even sees me back there.”
“And yet you and Xan are the ones whom everyone recognizes after that Rolling Stone cover. Cadell can walk into Disneyland or a McDonald’s, and no one will look twice. You nearly started a riot last night, Tryfon.”
He glanced up at her, startled. “Look, all this doesn’t matter. Let’s just go out, okay? Help me hook up tonight. The stress is getting to me, too.”
Yeah, it must be.
“I was thinking,” Elfie said, and she bent down in front of him, studying his hard cheekbones. She had done stage make-up in high school. “They have nose putty here. We can change your nose, if you want. I can use some white mascara to minimize your eyes, even change the shape with some light brown eyeliner.”
Tryp was gazing right at her eyes while she scrutinized him, deliberately staring at her eyes, and she realized that her top had gaped down while she was bent over. She stood and stepped back. “Sorry.”
“Yes,” he said.
Her hands fluttered around her neckline. She shouldn’t wear loose tank tops like this, even just for work. A glimpse of boob meant something to guys. “Yes, what?”
“Nose putty. White mascara. Whatever else. Make me not-Tryp Areleous for a night.”
“Okay,” she said. At least he wasn’t going to make a big deal about her flashing him. “Okay.”
He must have shaved when he had showered because the skin on his cheeks was smooth when she brushed a little bit of spirit gum over his nose to adhere the putty to. She swirled a sallow powder in the hollows of his cheeks, the opposite of contour, and smoothed a pebble of putty over the tacky gum on his nose, raising the bridge and adding just a bit to the end.
She was standing close to him for these delicate adjustments, running her fingers over the smooth skin of his face. The clean scent of soap, and the citrus of shampoo, and something else filled the air around him. She breathed deeper, trying to identify what that was, that dark and earthy scent, and she was getting dizzy.
Elfie lifted his chin, and he looked up at her. She could just fall into his dark eyes. “Just a few more minutes,” she said.
“Take your time.” His voice was rough, probably from singing back-up for hours on stage during the show. He crossed his legs away from her and tucked his towel between his thighs.
“Look straight at the mirror.”
He did, and she whited out the ends of his thick, lush eyelashes with white mascara. A little medium eyeliner under the middle of his eyelids changed the shape of his eyes, rounding them, so they weren’t quite so exotic and tilted.
“There,” she said, stepping back and resting her butt on the counter behind her. “You look hideous. Once again, I’ve made sure you won’t get any tonight.”
He laughed and went into the bathroom to change.
Elfie held onto the counter, breathing deep, wondering why her skin felt like she had a light sunburn all over. She could feel the cotton fabric on her back and the skin on her chest, and the seam of her jeans rubbed between her legs. She even felt sweaty down there.
In just a few minutes, Tryp came back, wearing jeans that hugged his hips and long thighs and a tight, black shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and lean waist. Long sleeves covered his round biceps and all those distinctive tattoos.
“You’re still too hot,” she blurted, and her cheeks prickled like stage lights were burning her. “I mean, your hair. Maybe if we gel down your hair, you’ll look less like you.”
Tryp sat in the chair again, and she ran her fingers through his silky curls, slicking them with gel.
He closed his eyes and smiled as her fingers ran over his scalp. “Do you give back rubs, too?”
“No.” It came out more stern than she had intended because she wanted to see what the texture of that shirt was and what his shoulders felt like under it.
Tryp was still smiling, though, and she tamed his hair, combing it back behind his ears.
“What are you going to tell people that you do for a living?” she asked, desperately trying to make conversation.
“I’m going to say I’m a professional scuba diver.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? To lie to them?”
“I can’t tell them that I’m a musician.”
She stood behind him, talking to him in the mirror like they were a totem pole, her head perched on top of his. “What does a professional scuba diver do?”
“Scuba dives,” he said.
“And how is that professional?”
“Who cares? I’m lying to women in a bar about what I do for a living. It doesn’t matter how outlandish it is.”
“Sorry. I was trying to make it logical.” She combed, but his hair curled at the nape of his neck, not like a professional guy at all.
“It’s bar talk. It doesn’t have to be logical. Everyone will be too drunk to notice that it doesn’t make sense. Besides, the women are there for the same thing that I am: to get laid. Once I tell them I’m a professional scuba diver, they can make jokes about going down or getting deep.”