Once everyone had cleared their plates of enough chicken mole and rice to be believably done eating, and crewmembers from the other tables had begun to get up and leave, Angel pushed his chair back. He got up and went over to the bar in one corner of the dining room, and came back with two bottles of Jameson Black Barrel. “I’m thinking we might need this,” he said. A wry look between him and Blade acknowledged that they would once have used something much stronger to take the edge off difficult conversations. “So. Band meeting, my suite. Bring a glass if you want a drink.”
Angel’s suite was furnished in much the same rustic-luxury style as the room Eamonn and Nell had been given, only larger, with a half-wall and two steps up separating the bedroom area from the lounge, which had a couch, loveseat, and armchair in mocha leather arranged around a coffee table.
“He said ‘band meeting’ — are you sure I should be here?” Nell asked Eamonn quietly, hesitating at the door.
With the hand that held a plate of chocolate caramel torte he’d taken from the dessert table on the way out of the dining room, Eamonn gestured for her to enter; in his other hand, he carried a couple of tumblers he’d acquired at the same time. “Band meeting just means inner circle. Look, Crys and Sally are here too.”
Crys was settled in one corner of the big couch, sipping soda water with a slice of lemon, Blade beside her with a protective arm around her shoulders. Angel took up the couch’s third seat, leaning forward as he poured whiskey into three glasses on the coffee table.
Sally perched on the arm of the couch next to Angel, waving Nell and Eamonn forward to take the loveseat. “Lots of room, make yourselves comfortable and let’s fill your glasses.”
Eamonn clunked the two tumblers he carried onto the table. “While we’re waiting for the others,” he said, “I should warn you, the tour’s going to be short a driver when it’s time to hit the road.”
Angel poured a generous slug into each one. “How’s that? Also, cheers.” He picked up his glass and held it aloft.
“Sláinte. Well, let’s put it this way — Smidge had a dealer in the crew. He’s gone now.”
“I thought we got rid of Roach a long time ago,” Angel said slowly.
“We did,” Sally confirmed. “But I suspected there might be another. It was one of the drivers?”
The two of them turned to look at Blade, who couldn’t hide a flush of embarrassment rising up his neck. He took a too-big sip of his whiskey and grimaced at the burn of it, or maybe at what he had to say. “Donnie had a lot of dirt on me,” he muttered. “After Seattle, I told him to stay away from me if he wanted to keep his job with the tour, didn’t want to push him further than that.”
“Or maybe part of you wanted him to stick around in case you changed your mind, dumbass?” Angel asked, his words harsh but his expression kind. “You know it doesn’t help to keep temptation within reach.”
“Maybe at first, I don’t know,” Blade said, shame evident on his face. “I’m such a fuck-up.”
Crys gave his thigh a sympathetic squeeze, then took his hand and laid it on her belly. “No, love! You’re stronger than anyone I know, and you’ve got us to live for now,” she reminded him.
“I’ve been clean since San Diego, I swear, but… I’ve thought about it. I knew Donnie was around, knew he’d get me some if I asked.”
“I know it’s hard, man,” Angel said. “But you didn’t give in, and you won’t.” Beside him, Sally nodded her agreement. The three of them were looking at Blade with so much love and affection and concern that witnessing it made Nell feel mildly uncomfortable.
I have no business being here for this. But she couldn’t very well get up and leave. Turning away to give them at least a modicum of privacy, she caught the look on Eamonn’s face and almost gasped at the complex mix of surprise and guilt and envy there. Flipping hell. There’s an inner circle within the inner circle, and he’s just been admitted to it.
Everyone’s eyes were drawn to the door as footsteps echoed outside along the walkway. Dice came in, tossing a coffee mug from hand to hand like a juggling ball as he walked. He caught the mug and turned it right side up as he reached the coffee table, and held out a hand for Angel to pass the whiskey bottle.
Rhys followed. He too had a mug in his hands, but his was full of coffee. “I hope we didn’t keep you waiting,” he said. “We stopped by the coffee station.”
“I can see that.” Sally looked pointedly at the mug Dice was pouring whiskey into.
“I know, I know,” Dice said, “but the mugs were right there while Risk was getting his coffee, so I wasn’t going to go looking for a glass.” He dragged the desk chair over and turned it around to sit astride it, waved for Rhys to take the armchair.
“Sally, would you like to sit here?” Rhys asked.
“Nah, I’m good like this,” Sally replied, patting the arm of the couch where she was perched.
So Rhys sat. “You guys—” he began, looking earnest, but Eamonn cut him off.
“I didn’t come back to take your job or make things awkward. I wasn’t even thinking about that. I just needed to see Blade and apologize for what went down last year.”
“But you are staying,” Angel put in, somewhere between a statement and a question.
“I never expected…” Eamonn shook his head in disbelief. “But I don’t want to take someone else’s dream job away to get mine back. I could… I could play keyboards, or…”
And Rhys laughed. Kindly, gently, and with no malice; still, he was definitely laughing. “When I was in school, I would have called it my dream job. Maybe even up until now, part of me thought it was. The thing is — I’m an actor, really, more than I’m a musician. So I’m ready to bow out gracefully here. It’s not a problem.”
That stunned everyone into silence.
“I mean it,” Rhys said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a blast. I’ve loved playing bass with Smidge, I truly have. But I survived by acting you, Easy. Must have watched hundreds of videos to learn your body language and playing style, and I was being you on stage the whole time. It’s not something I can keep up forever. My agent’s getting calls for me — this higher profile thing is kind of working in my favor — and the band needs the real you, not me faking it. I’m definitely keeping the name Risk Davies as an actor, though.”
A welcome sense of relief came over the room as it sank in that the difficult conversation they’d been steeling themselves for wouldn’t be necessary.
“I get that,” Blade said at last. “It’s probably like the way I feel when we have to pretend stuff for a photo shoot or music video. I can do it, but fuck, it’s way too much effort to keep up for long.”
“That’s just you. I liked being a mechanic for the ‘Empty Girl’ video,” Dice pointed out with a grin.
Angel gave the younger drummer an affectionate look. “I doubt you’d enjoy actually fixing airplanes for a living.”
“It’d be all right if I had Kimmy to help me. She can fix anything.”
The others laughed, poured more drinks, and the conversation broke into multiple threads — Blade grumbling about the outfits they’d worn for the “Empty Girl” video, Crys asking about Rhys’s future and the calls his agent had been getting, Angel teasing Dice about hero-worshiping his drum tech. “Did you meet Kimmy earlier?” Eamonn asked Nell. “Very short hair, lots of piercings. She’s a good drummer in her own right, could probably cover for Dice if he were out sick, and she really can fix anything.”
“Can I ask how you’re going to handle the… transition?” Rhys’s question brought everyone’s attention back to the business at hand. “If at all possible, I’d like to go out without burning bridges or looking bad, you know? Reputation is gold for me right now. Does your label handle something like this?”
Angel sighed. “The gentlemen at Arleigh Hayward keep offering us new public relations people, but anyone they send or endorse will just be another spy for them.” His e
mphasis on gentlemen suggested the label’s bosses were anything but that. “We need to figure this out on our own.”
“Let’s see…” Sally called up the schedule on her phone. “There’s that party tonight, the radio show tomorrow morning, then your rehearsal slot with Gumdrop Conspiracy in the afternoon. Saturday, we’ve got sound check and the show, and then Sunday there’s a VIP brunch followed by a photo-and-autograph session. I know Kin would have set up a press conference, but I don’t see when, and I don’t know who or how.”
“So, let’s do it on stage,” Eamonn said. “It’s a platform, we’ll be in control, so we just… do it. Rhys can go out and play the first couple of songs, then — let’s say I could pull together a piano part for ‘Star Shot Down’ — we could play one all together before I get up and take over the bass. I’m kind of enjoying the idea of playing keys with a hoodie on and my head down so people are trying to figure out who I am, then coming up to the front and pushing my hood back…”
“I like it,” said Angel. “You’ll need to stay out of sight until Saturday for this to be effective, though. Are you good with that?” He seemed satisfied with Eamonn’s nod.
Blade raised a ringed eyebrow. “You play concert-quality keyboards?” Curiosity was evident in his tone, rather than doubt.
“Piano was my first love,” Eamonn assured him. “We just need to find me an instrument.”
The band, with Rhys, set off to some pre-festival industry party with their security people. The rest of the crew, given a night off-duty, had already vanished into their rooms or headed out to a bar in downtown Napa where apparently road crew from other bands were meeting up.
The courtyard was quiet in the deepening dusk, only broken by insect noises and the occasional gentle slap of water against the side of the swimming pool. “You want to watch a movie?” Eamonn asked Nell.
“What kind of movie?”
“Let’s just see what our choices are.”
“All right. As long as it’s not some cringy so-called comedy. I don’t find sex jokes and people embarrassing themselves funny.”
That made him grin. “Fair. I like science fiction and action and adventure, nothing too gory, but I’ll watch whatever you pick.”
For no reason that made any sense to her, hearing him name her favorite genres annoyed her. “You weren’t supposed to be so perfect,” she blurted out. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but there was something about Eamonn Yarrow that made her filters and defenses fail at the worst moments.
“Perfect, am I?” His voice was light and teasing, but the fractional hesitation before he spoke and the absurd lurch of hope in his eyes said otherwise.
Don’t look at me like that, you ridiculous man. And the worst part was that she liked the way he was looking at her. “I just… approve of your taste in movies?” Then, more briskly, she added, “Honestly, a cup of tea to go with the movie would be even more perfect, but I didn’t see a kettle or anything in our room.”
“Well, then,” he said, with a slightly lopsided smile, “there’s that coffee station in the reception area — it probably has tea too.”
There were, in fact, insulated carafes at the coffee station alongside the mugs, and a decent selection of tea bags, so Nell was able to make a pot of decaf cinnamon vanilla tea to take back to their room. Eamonn took a mug of coffee, shrugging when she asked him if it wouldn’t keep him awake. “I’ll be sleepy by the time I’m ready to sleep,” he said.
A small mountain of pillows filled the head of their bed, more than anyone would need for sleeping but very nice to lean against while watching the television on the opposite wall. Rancho Rosal offered several streaming services in addition to cable channels, so their choice was almost unlimited — they ended up watching Apollo 13, which both remembered seeing at some point in their teens but hadn’t watched again since then.
Just as the ending credits came up, Eamonn’s phone pinged. He reached to grab it from the nightstand and his face took on a look of dismay as he read the message.
“What is it?” Nell asked.
For answer, he held out his phone. Angel’s text message said: Check the news. Major car crash, media saying members of Gumdrop Conspiracy may be involved. Scrolling through the newsfeed on his phone with one hand, he switched the television to the local cable news station with the other.
It was the lead story. A reporter on the scene stood in front of what had evidently been a multi-car disaster. At the center of the blocked-off intersection, the crumpled remains of a black sports car were wrapped around the nose of a three-ton truck, with other cars in various states of peripheral damage nearby. A uniformed figure closed the rear doors on one of the ambulances and it raced away, sirens wailing; a firetruck and two police cars were also on the scene, their lights pulsing in the background as the reporter spoke into a microphone. “At this point, two individuals have been removed from the black Lamborghini and taken to Emergency in the ambulance you just saw leaving. One appeared to be receiving oxygen and it looked to us as if the paramedics were taking spinal precautions, but the other’s face was covered.” She paused for a moment, looking suitably somber. “We have not been able to confirm their identities, but the car is licensed to Orion Giery, front man of Gumdrop Conspiracy. Was he in the car? We know the band members are here in Napa to perform at Time Rock on the weekend. Other minor injuries are being treated at the scene. I’m Ashley Mint, and I’ll keep you updated as we uncover further information.” The news moved on to local politics and Eamonn switched it off.
“Well, shit,” he said, then, “I’m not being heartless — it’s a hell of a tragedy — but also we were supposed to perform with them on Saturday. Now what?”
“Do — did you know them?” Nell asked.
“Not really. Mom does, I think, or at least did at one time. They were huge when I was a little kid, then kind of fizzled out. Still touring and doing festivals and stuff but… they let the party life get to them. No-shows, temper tantrums, arrests, going on stage too wasted to perform competently — all that shit. Bet you a doughnut it’ll come out that Giery was driving drunk or high or both when…” He shuddered, and she wondered if he was thinking of near misses he’d had. “A band’s got to grow out of that stuff to survive. I’ve been given something here, a second chance, a gift… I want us to be looked up to when we’re older, the way the Bad Luck Opals are, not just aging party boys like Gumdrop Conspiracy.”
His determination was a beautiful thing, and yet… His ‘us’ is the band, Nell told herself. That’s where he sees his whole future. And she couldn’t fault him for following his restored dream, just as she’d never give up on her plan to attain mastership and someday own a martial arts school. “You should call your mother,” she suggested, as gently as she could. “If she did know these guys, maybe you ought to break the news to her before she sees it online or something.”
“Good thought,” he said. “Yeah.” He looked at his phone but didn’t dial.
“Bad news calls are hard to make, I know. You want me to take a walk, give you some space?”
He looked over at her, snuggled up all cozy in the bed. “No, lovely. You look so nice and comfortable. Stay here and keep the bed warm. I’ll get some fresh air while I call Mom.” He leaned over and kissed her temple. “Be back soon.”
She was half asleep by the time he came back in, only vaguely aware of him lifting the covers and sliding into the bed beside her.
By morning, it was confirmed that Orion Giery had died, and Gumdrop Conspiracy drummer Timothy Redwell was in critical condition with spinal trauma and a collapsed lung. “Looks like I owe you a doughnut,” Nell said to Eamonn over breakfast in the dining room, as the entertainment news industry exploded with reports that Giery and Redwell had been mixing alcohol, cocaine, and ecstasy before getting into the car.
“Shit, no,” Eamonn said. “I wasn’t serious about betting on that, though I wish I’d been wrong.”
“He’s always saying ‘I bet you’ this and that,” said Sally, who was sitting with them. “If you don’t shake on it, you don’t have to pay.” Erva, a tough-looking woman with tightly braided hair and arm muscles that rivaled Nell’s, nodded her agreement.
“It’s just an expression. Anyway, I don’t bet on sure things, and Giery hasn’t — hadn’t been sober in two decades.” He grimaced at the shift to past tense, pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’m going to get some more coffee. Anyone want anything?”
The doors to the dining room banged open and Blade stormed in, snarling curses. Angel and Dice followed close behind him, more in control but equally incensed. “Oh, they’re not happy,” Sally commented. “Okay, Jed’s talking to Blade. Erv, you wanna go wake Crys up? She’s the best at settling him down. I’ve got Angel.” She looked around for support, then her gaze settled on Eamonn. “You’re not the ass I thought you were. Think you could take Dice? Just, you know, get him a coffee, see if he wants to eat something.” She turned to Nell. “You might have figured out that Blade is our rage-y one. Angel’s pretty calm but he feels things deeply when they affect the band, you know? Dice… I don’t know, he’s the band’s easygoing little brother, but he still might be upset if the radio interview went really sour — oh, and there’s Risk—” Sally added as the actor slipped into the dining room, looking concerned.
“We have a mutual friend,” Nell said. “I’ll go talk to him.”
She grabbed her mug from the table and crossed the room to where Rhys stood. He seemed to be observing the crew’s response to the angry band members, perhaps absorbing and storing expressions and reactions for his future use as an actor. As he saw her approach, he gave her a tired smile. “It’s been an interesting morning.”
“No doubt,” she agreed. “I was just going to get more tea. Join me?”
“Sure. I’ve been hoping for a chance to talk to you — we have a friend in common, I think?”
Rock God in Exile (Smidge Book 2) Page 27