Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (best color ebook reader .txt) 📗

and thinks about the people

she never meets

and their secrets

that she knows like family.

She sits alone

watching Pat & Vanna

and answering all the hard questions on Jeopardy

as faceless medical terms

become people for her.

As she sits alone

weeping for catastrophic strangers,

the atheist prays.

5

Don’t Stop Believing

We need to talk. The text message flashed onto my phone’s screen in the middle of “We Will Rock You,” right as the drunken crowd really got into all the stomping and clapping. Good timing, for once, because I just had the back light LEDs flashing in time with the beat, so I only needed one hand to push the bump button controlling that group of lights. I picked up my cell with my right hand, keeping my left on the button tap-tapping away with the claps and stomps of the audience, and tap-tapped a little of my own on the screen.

Not now. Working. I hit “Send” and focused my attention on the stage. Jared was through the third verse now, and Lily was leaning on the whammy bar as her big solo came up. I hit the bump for the high sidelight and called the followspot in on Lily as she stepped downstage and dropped to one knee right in front of a stunned frat boy who looked like he just won the lottery.

I didn’t blame him. Lily was smoking hot tonight, not just in her playing but looking good, too. Her black hair was cornrowed back into a ponytail, and a yellow tank top stuck to her dark skin with sweat from where she’d been tearing up rock classics for the past hour. She was long-legged, leather-clad sex in platform shoes, and I knew firsthand that her legs were strong enough to snap that frat boy’s neck if he was lucky enough to get between them. Spoiler alert: he wasn’t.

I called into the mic for the spot to fade on a three-count as Jared stepped into the beam of light coming from high stage right as the band shifted into “We Are the Champions.” Lily threw me a tiger grin back to my position at front of house, and I blushed a little. At least I thought it was to me. It was just as likely to be for Peter, the sound guy, as it was for me. Damn guitarists. They’re almost as horny as drummers. But nothing on a bass player.

My phone flashed again, and I dropped the board into a static cue for most of “Champions.” It’s a great song but doesn’t take much on the part of the lighting director. I just set a special in place for Jared to stand in, put some blue lights on the back truss, and keep the rest of the stage dim. A long shift to purple over the course of the song, and I’m covered. I looked at the screen.

How many more songs? This is important. Of course, it’s important. It’s not like he texts me at ten-thirty on a Saturday night to tell me to pick up milk on the way home. Good thing, since we’re only halfway through a nine-month tour. I think the milk would spoil by then. But what would I know? I don’t drink milk.

Just finishing Champs, I tapped. Bat out of Hell, Baba, Flash, Satisfaction, then encore DSB. 45, then 2 hrs. for load out. I glanced up to see Jared hold his arm high on the last notes of “Champion,” and I took out everything but the backlight blues as the crowd applauded.

I looked over at Peter and nodded. He pressed a button on his console and slid a fader up, and the motorcycle roar that signaled the beginning of Meat Loaf’s classic “Bat Out of Hell” roared through the speakers. I slid up four faders on a four-count with my right hand while I pulled two more down on a six-count with my left, switching the lights from a soothing blue to a glaring red. Arik smacked the cymbals as Lily slammed the first chords of the song, then Terrence hit the piano, and we were off to the races.

Once we hit the first notes of “Bat,” the rest of the set took all my concentration. Dawn, and whatever pain in the ass errand she had for me, would just have to wait. And wait she did, for a hair over three hours, because not only did we go through the whole set list, but the kids in the audience were fired up enough to demand a second encore, which of course Jared gave them. Easy for him to do, since he was going to go take a shower and smoke a bowl while me, Peter, and Carrie led the crew of four locals in tearing down our gear, loading it all into the 24’ rental truck and under the bus before we got to take a break.

I didn’t mind, though. The guys were on fire, and the crowd was into it. So when Jared stepped up to the mic after the last bow and belted out, “Dayyyyy…after day…” and I knew we were about to dive into a Violent Femmes second encore, I didn’t mind. I just put my fingers back on the faders, popped my neck, and made the lights dance like I do six nights a week for The Spectacular Fantastics, the best party cover band on the east coast. At least that’s what our press packet says, and on nights like this, I’d be hard-pressed to argue with the overpriced PR company Jared paid way too much money to get glossy band photos and a bunch of prewritten tweets.

But three hours later, when I was drenched with sweat and really, really tired of wiping cheap beer off my lighting cables, I was far less sanguine about that second encore. We slammed the door closed on the truck, and Peter and I finally got our shot at the green room beers and a hot shower. Except I had to take a