Chapter 8

Haley

We play Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Austin. But it turns out that playing the biggest gigs of my life are the least of my worries.

It’s hard keeping my hands off Brando, since he’s a constant presence, and each time I come off stage, flushed with adrenaline, all I want to do is drag him away to a dark corner and fuck all of my energy away. But I don’t. I can’t let that happen again.

We’d already be doing it on the tour bus if it wasn’t for my other band members demanding all of my attention. After a mix-up in Portland where we end up staying three-to-a-room (I declined Brando’s invitation, of course) he decides to start flying out ahead of the crew and the band to make sure nothing else goes wrong with the hotels and venue arrangements. The fact that I can’t see him move any more heavy equipment should give me a chance to calm down, but even during the times when he’s away, I feel the echoes of his touch whenever I’m alone. A post-orgasmic bliss that refuses to fade. Like a drug, I’m itchy and thirsty for another fix of him – however much I insist to myself that I’m not addicted.

Soon, I’m thinking more about the stolen moment at the first show than I am the next performance. I twist myself into knots remembering both how good he feels, and how badly he treated me. I almost break obsessing over the memories of him lifting amps onto the tour bus, his shirt off, muscles bulging, but a cold shower or my daily run-in with Lexi usually helps me get through it. If not, there’s beer.

Eventually, I start actually looking forward to the shows instead of constantly twisting myself up in knots over each performance. It’s a big, cathartic release of all the tension inside of me, a chance to channel all of my mixed emotions and conflicts into something positive. Being on stage is the only time I let loose, and the shows are better for it.

Lexi, on the other hand, only seems to get worse as the tour goes on. She’s a tangled knot of negativity, a whirlwind of tantrums and complaints. She talks in a language of bitchy put-downs and self-pitying breakdowns. Her massive entourage follows her everywhere, sycophantic when she’s feeling good, hiding behind each other when she’s not. Me and my crew steer clear, but the times I accidentally get close to her and witness the way she never stops berating or manipulating them, I feel like I’m back in time witnessing a head cheerleader gone mad with power. I almost begin to feel sorry for her; it’s as if she can’t help it.

“What the fuck is this?!” I hear her scream as I walk through the lobby of the Texas hotel with my band. “‘Mildly interesting voice’? What does that even mean? ‘Songs that don’t match her stage presence’? Who the fuck is this guy?”

I turn to see Lexi sitting with her entourage in the lobby’s lounge area, so many of them there aren’t even enough couches. She tosses the tablet toward one of her crew, almost hitting him on the head with it, then turns her head and notices me.

“There she is! The fucking usurper!”

She even talks like an under-threat queen now. My bandmates look at me, but I nod for them to go on through to have breakfast without me. I can handle Lexi.

She gets up and stalks toward me, her long legs bringing her near me in a couple of strides. “You read the review?” she says, her voice low but menacing. “They’re saying you’re putting on a better show than me.”

“Lexi,” I sigh. I don’t have time for this. I’m too hungry and it’s too early in the morning to get into a catfight. “It was Austin – they like guitar music down there, that’s all.”

“Oh, that’s very fucking magnanimous of you. Easy to be gracious when you’re the one getting all the praise, isn’t it?”

“Since when do you care about reviews, Lexi?”

“Since they started talking shit about me, that’s when,” she hisses, leaning in. “I know exactly what you’re trying to do. It won’t work.”

I lower my head, pushing down the instinct to bite back at her crazed paranoia.

“It was one show,” I say slowly. “The reviews for every date we did on the West Coast were positive about you. I was lucky to get a paragraph at the bottom for most of them.”

Lexi’s face doesn’t soften, but some of the venom disappears from her eyes.

“Maybe you’re right about the hicks down here,” she says. She starts slinking away, but then stops and turns back around, the menace still lingering. “You’d better hope so.”

I almost run off stage when the set’s over, my blood boiling, my hands clenched into fists, heat behind my eyes. I’m so angry I could punch a wall right now. I storm through the backstage area and continue marching down the hall, breathing fire and clenching my teeth.

I stop, tense every muscle in my stomach, and scream.

“Fuck!”

Then continue steaming ahead with livid, aimless determination.

Brando’s the only person who’s dumb enough to come near me, running sideways beside me to keep up as I burst through one door after another.

“Haley, what happened?” he says, his voice muffled and distant beyond the cloud of my frustration.

“Haley?” he repeats. “Talk to me.”

I stop tensely and face him.

“My fucking guitar! First it was…out of tune…then too loud, then too quiet. I played the first half of my set sounding like some amateur at a fourth-grade school recital. Then when Mike gave me another one of my effects pedals, it was all on the wrong settings.”

“I don’t get it.” Brando shakes his head. “It was fine during soundcheck.”

He looks to the side and notices Mike standing at the end of the hallway, carrying my guitar and arguing with someone.

“Mike!” he shouts. The long-haired guitar tech runs toward us with apologetic confusion written all over his face. “What the fuck happened?”

He holds the guitar up and shakes his head. “I don’t know, seriously dude. The guitar’s a mess. The strings are way out of tune, the neck has a bow in it, and one of the pick-ups is coming loose. I swear, I’ve never seen anything like this. Maybe it’s the dry air, but…I don’t know, dude. It must have got knocked over or something.” He turns to me and hangs his head. “I’m sorry. I swear, it won’t happen again. I’ll take the guitar off stage right after soundchecks from now on, and double-check everything right up until you go on—”

“It’s okay, Mike,” I say, putting a hand on his shoulder. I look at Brando. “I know who did this.”

Brando waits, and I wonder if he knows what I’m going to say.

“Lexi.”

“No,” Brando says. “She’d never—”

“Yes. She would. She’s scared that my show might get more attention than hers, and this is the only way she knows how to stop that.”

Brando pushes his hair back with his hand and looks up at the ceiling. “Sabotaging your set?”

“What? Is it out of character for her?” I reply, voice drenched in sarcasm. “Does it go against her strict moral code? You’re right. Lexi’s the kind of person who takes criticism constructively, and would be really happy for me if I started upstaging her.”

“Okay, okay,” Brando admits. “It could have been her. Look, Mike, you make sure you take extra care with the instruments for the upcoming gigs. We’ll do soundchecks closer to the concert time, and I want you to double-check everything – not just the instruments, the amps, the mics, the lighting – everything.”

“I swear,” Mike says, nodding vigorously before turning back down the hallway, still shaking his head at the guitar.

Brando turns back to me.

“Look, don’t jump to conclusions, Haley. I know Lexi can seem like somebody poured pure evil into a pair of Louboutins, but she’s still a musician. She wouldn’t do something like this.”

“You heard Mike,” I say, skeptically. “Somebody fucked with my guitar. If not her, then who else? Nobody else hates me like she does.”

Brando shrugs. “Lexi isn’t in touch with reality. She has hundreds of people around her – working for her, depending on her. If she doesn’t do well, they don’t get her crumbs. Any one of them could have thought it was a good idea. Lexi doesn’t have a clue what half her entourage does for her. She lives in a bubble.”

“When do I get a bubble?”

He laughs warmly. “I’m not saying don’t watch your back, I’m just saying that right now you’re doing awesome. And this kind of thing is the price you pay when people start noticing how awesome you are. There’s always someone, somewhere, who’ll try to bring you down. You’ve got to just roll with it, to be tough.”

I let a pouting smile form on my lips, put my hand on his chest, and slowly caress his front from his six-pack to his pecs. “Brando, I’m much tougher than you think,” I say, before pushing him away. “I know I’m in this alone.” I take a few steps backwards down the hall, facing him still. “The question is: Do you?” I say, before turning my back to him and walking away.