Atlanta: November 9th, 1996
Roger and Gregory cornered him coming out of the toilet stall in a rest stop just over the Georgia border.
"Marc, what the hell were you thinking? This is bullshit!" Roger snapped.
Gregory wrung his hands, licking his lips nervously. "Yes, this really isn't the sort of decision to be made so quickly, there's a lot of legalities to be worked out before we can extend an offer of this nature."
Marc rolled his eyes. "Whoa, whoa. Can a guy wash his hands first? Jesus. It's not like I'm asking them to join the band, I just offered them a few gigs."
"We don't need a fucking opening act, Marc. What do they even play? Because from what I see it's probably not the kind of stuff our audience wants to see. You're not doing them any favors by putting them out there."
Marc bent down to turn on the faucet with his elbow and hit the soap dispenser. The water was frigid, of course. This was the south, goddamn it, it wasn't supposed to be cold anymore. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Roger leaned against the wall, his black eyes glinting dangerously. The sunglasses pushed up into his graying hair reflected back the rows of humming florescent lights. "You said they've played, what? A couple shows? You're talking about putting them up there in front of a thousand Cashmere fanatics. They'll ripe 'em apart. You might as well throw those kids to the wolves."
"They can handle it."
"How the fuck do you know that? What do you really know about these guys anyway?"
"I know enough. I know they can do it. They'll win the crowd over. Trust me, Roger. They're good."
Roger sighed. He looked pointedly at Gregory and jerked his head towards the doorway. Gregory scuttled out, still fretting inaudibly.
Marc hit the dryer and held his hands under the whooshing vent. He hated these things, would have much preferred to use a towel when you got right down to it. What was the point of it? They were supposed to be better for the environment, or something, but fuck if he could see how.
"I know what's happening, Marc, and it worries me."
The thing finished running and of course Marc's hands were still damp. He patted them the rest of the way dry on his pants. "And what is it that you think is happening, Roger?"
Roger just shook his head. "I see the way you look at him, Marc."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I know why you're doing this."
"Doing what?"
"Dragging them in over their heads."
"I'm not dragging them anywhere. They're good, and I like them. We're giving them a lift, and a stage. It's win-win."
"You like him. The kid, you like him. You like him a lot, 'cause if you'd only liked him a little you would have just fucked him and kicked him loose by now."
"Jesus Christ, Roger."
"Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you're not interested in him. Tell me this is entirely about the band and not some big gesture to make the guy fall for you."
"Roger. It's not a gesture. It's nothing. You just have to hear them play. Then you'll understand." He started towards the door, but Roger's hand shot out, snatching him by the sleeve and pulling him close. Their eyes met, and held.
Roger let him go.
Marc brushed at his sleeve, glaring wordlessly.
"Marc... just don't fuck the kid over, alright?"
"Thanks for the concern. It'll be fine, though. I know what I'm doing."
"Yeah. That's the worst part."
Marc shrugged him off and went out the door, shaking his head.
The Georgia night was cool and clear, with a deep black sky that seemed to go on forever. The three hulking buses rumbled on the side of the road, spilling light and exhaust into the darkness. A bunch of the roadies were milling around in the grass, smoking and eating and stretching their legs. Marc went past them all and up onto the bus.
Dance was asleep, curling up in her seat with tinny music still spilling from the Walkman clutched in her hands. Marc went further back. He stopped at the door of his cabin, fingers wrapped around the handle.
What the fuck did Roger know, anyway? He didn't have feelings for Cal, that was crazy! He liked the kid, sure, and he was impressed as hell by his music. That was all. This was a platonic thing, one musician to another. He opened the door and went inside.
The lights were off in the cabin. Cal was lying on Marc's bed, stretched out on his back with his guitar on his lap, strumming idly and staring up through the skylight above, his raven black hair falling back so that his pale face shone with moonlight, his fine chin and cheekbones looking like sculpted ivory or marble. He looked over when the door opened, and he smiled. "Hey, Marc."
Shit.
Marc cleared his throat. "What's up?"
"Oh, yeah. Sorry." Cal hit the light switch, and the soft gray interior lights clicked back on. "I couldn't see the stars with them on."
This was called the luxury suite of the bus, and it certainly was but only in a relative sense. A little five by eight compartment with a narrow bed along one wall, a mini bar and tiny desk across from that, with a tiny sink recessed into the other wall. There was a decently sized television hanging from the ceiling in the corner. He could see their elongated forms reflected in it now, stretched and exaggerated.
Cal lay his head back down on the pillow. "I like to watch the stars while I travel. Makes you wonder, right? No matter how far you're going it's really absolutely nothing on a cosmic scale. You can go all the way around the world, still gonna be fixed on this one little rock drifting in space. It's like you haven't gone anywhere at all."
"You travel a lot?"
Cal laughed. "Not really. Sort of a homebody, to be honest. That's kinda weird, I guess, for somebody whose home wasn't anything more than a couple tents and shacks. We used to move around all the time, but we didn't really travel. Just drifted across the desert, I guess. Like a group of Bedouin nomads or something. We used to move once a year, as long as I can remember. But I never left it before this."
Marc sat at the little desk. Cal hadn't stopped strumming, the lazy tinkling of notes spilled like a quiet and distant river in a steady low-key burble. "Not me," he said, "I couldn't wait to leave home."
"Why's that?"
He thought about it. Actually thought about it. He'd gotten used to just repeating the same old story. He was too big for that town, he'd know that his destiny lay in greater things, he'd wanted to escape, all that. Like he was getting ready for the clichéd biopic of his life to start at any moment. When he did answer, he spoke slowly, and the words felt true. "I just... didn't have anyone there. Couldn't connect. Or didn't want to. Nobody seemed to understand me, and I couldn't understand them. I was lonely. So I had to go find something else."
Cal nodded, and for just a moment he stopped playing. "Makes sense," he murmured.
"What about you? What made you want to go?"
He shrugged. "Dance wanted to see New York City. She bought the cheapest van she could find, got somebody to teach her how to drive, and we hit the road."
"You came along for the band?"
Cal shook his head. Outside, the crew and the roadies were starting to gather together again and file up onto the buses. "There was no band. She told me that if I made her go alone she'd never forgive me. We've always been really close... I never really thought of staying behind. Just go where she goes. I brought my guitar though. I'd play while she drove. Write songs. She said we should start a band. It was kinda just our, like, road trip project, you know?
Jesus. Marc couldn't understand how something so pure and majestic could have happened so simply, almost as if nobody had even been trying to make it. Wilderlands had simply come into being, like the universe had wanted it to happen.
"Dance bought some percussion stuff at this thrift store in Missouri and we just started putting songs together. We didn't get the idea to follow you guys until we were already in New York. Just seemed lucky, somehow."
It was by far the most words Marc had heard from Cal put together all at once. He sat back, watching him play. As the engine rumbled on and the buses started to pull back out of the lot, he reached over and switched the light back off and he just sat. And he just looked. And Cal just played.
* * *
"Can I talk to you, Marc?"
"Uh oh."
Joanna frowned. "What's 'uh oh' about?"
"You wouldn't ask to talk unless you were going to say something I didn't want to hear. You'd just say what you wanted to say. So now, if I say yes, then it's on me and I'm not allowed to get upset. And if I say no then I'm an asshole."
Joanna glared. "You're an asshole either way, Marc. Just shut the fuck up and listen, okay?"
Marc shut up. It was about three thirty in the morning. The whole crew had staggered blearily into the hotel, everybody looking like they might drop where they stood. He'd paid for Cal and Dance's room himself when Gregory started grumbling about it not being figured into the tour budget, so he was feeling a little bit cross at the moment. Then he'd made the mistake of going back down to get something from his luggage in the bus when Joanna had spotted him.
"Okay okay. I'm listening."
"It's about this band."
"You've been talking to Roger, haven't you?"
"Why, what does Roger say."
"The same thing you're probably about to say."
"I'm just not sure it's a good idea."
"Will you do me a favor, Joanna?"
"Okay, so now if I say yes then it's on me and if I say no I'm the asshole." She was smirking.
"Ha ha. How droll. Will you just listen to them? Let them play, hear what they're doing. I promise that you'll be impressed."
She sighed heavily. "You know what? Fine. I'm too tired to argue right now."
"Tomorrow, alright? I'll see if they can play some stuff for the band tomorrow."
She shook her head. "Alright, Marc. Alright."
He retrieved his things from the bus and skipped right back inside. He felt fresh and energized and buoyant, even as everybody around him was drooping off and dead on their feet. The elevator chimed one floor after the other as he ascended.
He went to room 417 and rapped his knuckles on the door. Dance answered, blinking and yawning in pajamas with little kitten faces on them. "What's up, stalker?" she asked.
"Can I come in? Just for a minute. There's something I need to talk to you guys about."
She shrugged and stepped aside. "Hey, you paid for the room. Guess you can do whatever you want."
Cal was sitting on the floor scribbling something on a sheet of paper. "Hi," he said, turning the paper face-down and shuffling it aside.
Marc came in and sat on the edge of the entertainment center. "You guys think you're up for playing tomorrow? The band needs some convincing, I want them to see what you're capable of doing."
Cal shrugged. "I guess we could do that."
Dance scoffed. "So, yeah, no problem. I guess we could. Play a couple songs in front of Cashmere, no big deal. Jesus. Talk about no pressure."
"You've played in front of me," Marc pointed out.
"It's not a problem." Cal reiterated. He seemed to be only half paying attention.
Dance narrowed her eyes. "Wait a minute. What's going on exactly? I thought this was a done deal, now we have to... what, audition? Did you not talk about this with the rest of them? Are you jerking us around, stalker?"
Cal frowned, "Come on, Dance."
She spread her arms out, affecting an expression of mock-astonishment. "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! It's just, here we are, hundreds of miles away from my van, and now they're having second thoughts?"
Marc brushed his hair back. Was this a headache coming on? "It's nothing, alright? Just come over to my hotel room tomorrow at six, play a couple songs for the band, and that's that. They just want to hear what you sound like before you get up on stage."
She humphed and sat down on the edge of the bed with her arms folded.
"We'll be there," Cal said, and that was that.
* * *
The next night Marc's hotel room was packed. Joanna and Tony were both sitting on the bed, Roger was standing leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. Marc was moving restlessly back and forth at the rear of the room, licking his lips and biting his nails. Dance was bouncing a little on the balls of her feet, tapping the tips of her drumsticks together.
Cal alone of everyone in the room looked relaxed, which was a curious inversion, as he was the only one with a good reason to be nervous. He sat alone in the corner of the room, methodically tuning his guitar. He seemed to be shutting the whole place out. As soon as he'd removed the instrument from its battered sticker-covered case there had been a change in him. He'd seemed to draw inward, like a flower closing its petals as the sun fell.
Marc couldn't help but feel a pang of self-doubt. What if they didn't like it? What if he'd just gone crazy, seeing genius where there was none? Made it all up in his head as a twisted mid-life crisis of some sort? What if Cal was nothing more than another hippie kid with a guitar, and Marc was just an old fool who'd been blinded by his own stupidity? The self-doubt blossomed into real fear, and he felt a harsh jolt of panic deep in his chest. For a single desperate moment he wanted nothing more than to dive across the room and smash Cal's guitar to pieces, shove everybody outside the room and run to the bathroom to do as many lines of coke as he could shove up his nose until he passed out.
Then Cal looked up, and his eyes met Marc's. His clear blue gaze seemed to pour out of him, pure and innocent and powerful. He looked at Marc, and he winked. Then he started playing and all Marc's fears melted away.
He played gently, a little dancing melody like a sad waltz. He looked around the room, from one person to the next, and it seemed like the music was dancing across the walls. "This is called Blue Avenue," he said, and nodded to his sister.
Dance began drumming, a little shuffling half-step staccato rhythm.
Cal started to sing. It wasn't one of the songs that Marc had heard before. He realized that he really had no idea how many songs Cal had written. Could be a dozen, could be a hundred. It didn't matter much, he supposed.
Marc scanned the room. Tony looked visibly impressed, pursing his lips and nodding. Joanna clasped her hands together. Roger uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. Marc grinned.
A transformation came over Cal as he played, the same shift Marc had seen both times he had performed before. An energy seemed to fill him, a deep dark power, bloody wine red and throbbing. Every word he sang seemed ripped right out of him, a piece of flesh torn off and thrown away. Even here, just playing in a little hotel room for an audience of four, he gave everything he had, raw and real and right before their eyes.
He sang, "Rag and bone man, walk on by. Hand in the dirt, eye to the sky. Heading down such a lonely long road. Tell him he's lost and he'll tell you it's true, strolling alone on a blue avenue..." He looked up when he sang that line, and he gazed across the room, right at Marc. It was the first time Marc had seen him turn his attention outward while he played. He felt an electric shiver run down his spine. Cal looked back down and he kept playing.
Marc felt himself swallow hard. He'd felt something then, something intense, almost dangerous.
Cal ended the first song with a flourish, leaning in and almost clawing at the guitar strings for a dissonant final shred of a note. He didn't looked up through the veil of dark hair that had fallen across his head, but he nodded to himself a little, as if telling himself that, yeah, he'd done alright.
Joanna burst into a little flurry of applause, and Dance smiled so wide that all her teeth showed.
Marc stood beside Roger. "Am I right?" he asked in a low whisper.
Roger had the tip of his tongue between his teeth, working it slowly. He nodded a fraction. "I'm still not sure it's a good idea, but... you're not wrong about him," he murmured back, "the guy can play. Where the hell did you say you found him?"
"This bar in New York... just a freak accident."
"No kidding."
"Just good luck, right?"
"I wonder."
Before Marc could respond to Roger's cryptic answer, Cal launching into another song. He played three more, but Marc had heard them before. He found himself able to relax, to simply enjoy listening, picking out the details he hadn't noticed the first time. They were good songs, there was no question of that. Not just anybody could have played them, though. It wasn't that they were so especially complex or anything like that, but they just seemed so uniquely Cal's. The words wouldn't have sounded right coming from someone else. When Cal sang them, they were all true somehow.
When the fourth and final song ended, Dance laughed and tossed her drumsticks playfully into the crowd, one each to Joanna and Tony.
Everybody was clapping and smiling. They'd loved it, even Roger looked impressed. Cal packed his guitar carefully back in the case, tossing his hair, his expression difficult to read. Marc slapped him firmly on the back. "That was amazing. God, just wonderful."
"Thanks, Marc. I appreciate you saying that." His voice was soft and low and he didn't look up. He picked up his guitar case. "I'm glad everybody liked it."
Roger stepped up, thrusting out his hand. Cal shook it with his free hand. The older guitar player grinned, shaking his head in amazement. "That was really something. Wish I could have played like that when I was your age."
Cal nodded. "Thank you very much."
"Look," Roger continued, "I don't know what you wanna do. I know this was all Marc's crazy idea. But if you want to play, well... I'd be happy to see you guys up on the stage before we go on."
Cal just nodded. He seemed to be pulling away, though he was still standing in place he seemed to be already heading out the door. "I think that would be good," he said. As soon as Roger let go of his hand he took a couple steps towards the exit.
Marc hurried after, catching him just as he went into the hallway. "You alright, Cal? You seem... I don't know. Upset?"
"No man, not at all. Not upset. Just an intense show. Or whatever you'd call it. I... I think I just wanna sit in my hotel room for a little while. Cool off, you know?"
"Yeah, okay. I get it, I get it." He didn't fucking get it.
Cal turned away and started walking down the hall, seeming bent over by the weight of his guitar case.
"Hey, Cal!" Marc called after him. He stopped, turning slightly though not all the way around. "That first song. What was it, Blue Avenue? I've never heard that one before. I was just wondering how many songs you've actually written."
Cal shrugged. "I dunno. Like twenty, I guess. That's a new one though."
"New?"
"Yeah, I wrote it like yesterday."
"Yesterday? What, just to play for us? For this?" Without being aware of it, Marc had started moving down the hall, closing the distance between them. They were only three steps apart when he stopped.
"No... not really. I was working on it when you came in the other day."
"Oh. Those papers."
"Yeah."
"I was wondering what the big secret was."
"Well, I mean..."
Marc frowned. Something was going on here, and he wasn't sure he liked it. Cal seemed off-balance in a way he never had before. "What is it?" Marc asked, almost reaching out to touch him but stopping himself. He just stood there with his arms awkwardly at his sides.
Cal tossed his hair back and he looked at Marc. His delicately sculpted features seemed to glow in the pale colored light of the hotel hall, his skin like blue porcelain. "I wrote it for you, Marc."
Then he turned and he walked away, lugging the bulky guitar case along with him.
Marc just stood where he was, rooted in place. He didn't leave that spot for long while.
* * *
Joanna found him drinking coffee the next morning. He was sitting in the corner flipping through the paper and watching people go up to the continental breakfast buffet table for their crumbly muffins and limp bacon.
She slipped into the booth across from him. "Hey Marc."
He set his cup down. "Uh. Hi Joanna. What's up?"
"Go get me a cup of coffee and I'll tell you."
"Gee, I don't even have to pay or anything? What a bargain," he grumbled as he slid out of his seat and wandered over to the coffee bar to pour her a cup. Lump of sugar, splash of milk, don't stir. At least that was how she'd taken it before.
He wondered who'd been making the coffee for her in the years since. Joanna was a chronic coffee thief, and had the bad habit of complaining about the way her victims flavored their own drinks. Roger and Tony and Marc had all banded together to keep her well supplied as a means of protecting their own beverages.
He set the drink down in front of her and sat back down.
She gave it a stir, blew on it, then had a sip. She broke into a wide smile. "Good boy, Marc! You remembered. We'll be potty training you next."
He lifted his paper and held it up between them.
"Oh come on, come on," she batted it away. "Sorry. But you had that one coming."
"What? Why do I have anything coming? What'd I do this time?"
She glared at him. "Washington."
"I had nothing to do with that! The fucking hotel security let them up there. I got rid of them right after you left. It was just a stupid misunderstanding, I swear to you."
"Okay okay, fine. I will choose to believe you."
"Very generous of you."
"I think so."
He leaned forward. "So, what about them, eh? They're good, right?"
She lifted her eyebrows. "Your little prodigies?"
He made a face.
"Yeah, they're good. They're really fricking good, Marc."
He grinned and leaned back, taking a long sip of his coffee, only then noticing that it had been significantly depleted in the time between when he'd left the booth and come back with her drink. He frowned, but didn't bother accusing her. She'd only deny it anyway.
"I mean... I don't know if they really fit with us. But they are good."
"What do you mean, don't fit? What does that mean, exactly?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. It's a different kind of music. Might clash, is all. I'll give it a shot though. We'll see how it goes tonight."
"I guess we will."
Tony slumped down into the booth beside Joanna. He set his extremely full plate down with a clatter. He had about fifteen pancakes and probably twenty sausage links. "What are we talking about?" he asked, dumping out a packet of syrup on his food and digging in ravenously.
"Tony, do I need to speak to Gregory?" Marc asked, eyeing the tenuously stacked breakfast.
"'bout what?"
"I don't know, do you think he needs to increase the food budget? I hate to think they're starving you."
Joanna snorted.
Tony took it with an expression of serenity and composure. "It says all you can eat, so that's what I'm doing. Only following instructions, aren't I?"
"Well then, I applaud your tractability."
Joanna grabbed the newspaper. "This a local paper? Are we in here somewhere?"
"I'm sure all Atlanta is abuzz," Marc said, rather dryly.
Joanna scoffed and started flipped through it, tossing discarded pages back across the table at Marc. "Hey look! Here we are. Glam-Rock icons return, limited tour playing today, blah blah, blah blah, something about you, Marc, blah blah, blah blah. I'm not even in the picture, fucking typical. Just Marc and Roger."
Tony shook his head. "The state of modern journalism is truly distressing."
"No doubt," came a droll voice from just behind Marc.
He twisted around in his booth. "Hi, Roger."
The guitarist nodded a little and leaned against the back of Marc's chair. He was rolling an unlit cigarette between his fingers and chewing on a toothpick. His eyes kept flickering up to glance across the room at the no smoking sign with no small measure of disdain.
It occurred to Marc that this was the first time that the four of them had been together without it being contractually obligated. Even during the recording of the new album, such as it was, they'd scarcely seen each other, each of them in their own recording booth with the material spliced together by the sound engineers after the fact. It felt odd, just hanging around the way they had used to do.
Joanna and Tony started arguing about the merits of real maple syrup versus artificial, and Roger of the opinion that both were awful. Things had changed a great deal in the last ten years, they had all changed. A band was like a family though, and if you could see past all the hurt and ruin, maybe you could still put things back together again. Not the way they were, but into something new.
He settled back and drank his coffee.
* * *
"Alright, we're here with Mark Warner from the rock band Cashmere. Welcome to the show Marc."
He nodded, perched on the edge of his stood. The studio lights made it feel like it was about a thousand degrees on the little set, his face felt pasty with supposedly natural makeup and his collar itched where the microphone was clipped to his shirt. "Thanks for having me on Julie, Chris. It's a pleasure to be here."
That was stretching the truth. Gregory had informed him only this morning that he'd scheduled a television interview for the band in advance of the show. Marc had been less than happy about it. He'd never liked doing TV. He'd done a couple magazine and radio interviews before the tour started, and he'd been relieved not to be doing much media during the first half of the tour. According to Gregory, however, that was going to have to change.
So here he was, sitting across from the pair of preternaturally bland Atlanta TV anchors, trying not to fidget or wriggle on camera.
"You've played four big shows since you got back together Marc," Julie led in, "how is the tour going so far? Are you back in the groove?"
"That's right," Chris broke in before Marc could answer, "you've been away from show business for nine years. I figure things have changed a lot since you were last on the road, is that the case?"
Marc licked his lips slowly. "It's been going really well. Honestly, it's like no time's passed at all. We just fell back into it. And it's only been eight years, Chris."
"Eight years, eight years, that's right, that's right. My, ah ha, my apologies, Marc!" Chris burst into a fit of highly controlled laughter.
"I don't know if things have changed that much. Not in the music world, anyway. We just play the same as always. Same equipment, same songs, same Cashmere. This isn't a comeback, Chris, it's a continuation."
He always started talking bullshit when he was on the spot, just couldn't help it. You had to say something, nothing looked worse on television than dead air. So he just said whatever came into his head. It had gotten him into trouble in the past more than once.
"That's great, that's great," Chris said, beaming a toothy smile at the cameras.
Julie, one of those news team bottle-blonde Barbies, turned to Marc and gave him what passed for a thoughtful look. "Now, you guys had a pretty wild reputation. Would you say that you've mellowed in your old age, or should the hotel owners of Atlanta be worried?"
Marc forced a laugh. Old Age? Fuck you! "I don't know if I'd say that we've mellowed, exactly, but we spend our energies more productively these days. It's really all about the music."
Chris shuffled the papers on his desk officiously. Marc couldn't help but notice that they were actually blank. "Now, Marc, for all the kids out there, what can they expect to see at a Cashmere show? The ones who might not know about you so much."
"Well Chris, I don't know if that's much of an issue. My understanding is that the records have been in pretty steady rotation. You still hear us on the radio all the time. I think the kids, the ones who are really interested in music, are already familiar with us. I'm just glad that they're going to have a chance to see us play for real, get the live experience. Music is... timeless, you know? It's not about a seventies record or an eighties record, it's not about the charts or whether you listen to it on a record player or a tape player or an eight track or a CD. I think our old stuff sounds just as fresh today as it did the day it was released."
Julie nodded solemnly. "Wow. That's very interesting."
"It is. It is interesting," Chris agreed. "And what about the old timers, Marc? The fans who maybe saw you back in the day, what is there for them with this... continuation? What's new?"
"Well. Actually, I'm glad you asked that, Chris."
"Oh good, good. I'm glad to hear that, we try and have good questions," he said enthusiastically, laughing awkwardly.
"We actually have a new band opening for us. Brand new, young guys. I guarantee you've never heard of them, but I guarantee that you will be hearing a lot more."
"Is it one of those Seattle bands, Marc? Oh dear. Has Cashmere gone grunge?" Julie laughed airily.
"Have you gone grunge?" Chris repeated, chuckling.
"Not exactly. I think it will be a good surprise for everyone though. These guys are great, great players, and we're glad to have them along."
"Well that will be fun," Chris said, turning to the camera. "Marc Warner of the band Cashmere, they're playing tonight, and if you hurry you might still be able to get tickets. And now weather."
* * *
"Jesus, not so heavy around the eyes, Wanda. I'm gonna go blind here."
She gave him that look of withering contempt which she reserved for those who dared to question her abilities. and kept right on with what she was doing.
He could already hear the sounds of the crowd outside, gradually building. It wouldn't be long now.
Cal strummed nervously in the corner, checking again that he was still in tune. Dance was pacing out in the hall, biting her lip and tapping on a hand drum. "This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy," she kept saying under her breath.
"You guys are gonna be great out there, don't worry about it."
"I know," Cal murmured, not entirely convincingly.
"Look, playing in front of a thousand people isn't really that different from playing in front of a dozen. In a lot of ways it's actually easier." That wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't entirely false either. Owning the stage was more a matter of confidence than actual ability, he'd seen shit bands crush their shows and incredible ones flame out spectacularly. But he believed in Cal.
"When did you first play in front of a crowd like this?"
"I dunno. Wasn't much older than you though." Of course, he'd played more than a hundred shows before that, as opposed to Wilderlands's four. No point mentioning that now though.
"What do you do if you freeze up?" he asked.
You die. "You just play. Block it all out and let the song happen."
Cal took a deep breath. "Okay."
Marc waved Wanda away and got up out of the makeup chair. He sent over and sat beside Cal. Without even thinking about it, he grabbed the other man's hand and gave it a firm squeeze. "You're gonna be great. I know it."
Cal half-smiled, grimacing a little, and squeezed back. "You promise?" he laughed, or tried to laugh anyway.
Marc grinned. "Sure."
Cal shook his head.
"What?"
"Man... it's crazy. You look just like you do on the album cover."
"A little older and uglier, maybe."
"No. I don't think so."
They looked at each other.
Gregory poked his head in. "Alright, you guys are up! Go go, they're waiting for you."
Cal swallowed and nodded. He picked up his guitar and walked out of the room to join Dance in the hall. Marc could hear the faint sounds of the promoter announcing them to a chorus of mixed cheers and boos.
"Think they'll be okay?" Gregory asked, peering down the hall after them.
"They'll be fine," Marc said, plopping back down in the makeup chair. "Just a couple songs, then we're on."
"The promoter wasn't happy about it," Gregory went on fretting, "a sudden change at the last minute like this? He could have just said no."
"He did."
"Huh?"
"I talked to him yesterday. He said there was no way he was letting some amateur folk band play in his place."
"Jesus. So... what?"
"I told him Cashmere wouldn't play if he said no. Told him we'd throw a free show out on the sidewalk instead."
Gregory paled. "You- What- Why- What-?" he sputtered.
"Turned out it wasn't as much of a deal-breaker as he said it was." Marc shut his eyes and let Wanda do her thing. He'd be going on himself in a few minutes, needed to clear his head space. He could hear the first chiming notes of Cal's guitar broadcast over the speakers, and he smiled. The kid was going to be just fine.
"Why do you care about these guys so much?" Gregory finally spit out. If you don't play all ten shows then you get practically nothing from the tour, Marc, you do realize that? You're contractually obligated to deliverer."
"Relax, Greg. I just called his bluff. I knew he wouldn't let us slip away over something like this. Besides. You'll all be thanking me when Wilderlands gets huge. Those guys are gonna be superstars someday, mark my words." Huh. That would be a good title for his inevitable ghost-written autobiography: Marc, My Words. He wondered if somebody had already used it. Maybe he should try and copyright it now just in case.
"It's Gregory, Marc. Gregory."
"Right. Sorry."
Just a few dozen feet away, out there on a stage in front of hundreds of people, Wilderlands was playing their music. Everything was going to work out.