By the time Hadley and I got back to the house from running our errands, my bandmates were already tuning up for rehearsal in my garage. We had a weekly gig at a college bar in the city. Nothing spectacular, but it gave us a hobby and a little extra money. For me, it was an excuse to keep writing music.
Corey played a double paradiddle at his drum kit while I pulled a couple broken strings from my guitar. He had no great musical aspirations beyond dive bars and the occasional street festival. Though he was proficient enough, Corey’s first concern was attracting the attention of women who fawned over musicians.
“Where the fuck is Scott?” I had energy to burn and there were changes to the set list that we needed to practice. There was just one problem: We were short one rhythm guitarist.
“He had a date.” Corey laid his sticks on his tom and cracked his knuckles.
Scott had always been a bit of a flake, but lately he’d been a stranger. Skipping rehearsals, never answering his phone. He would show up ten minutes before a gig, looking hungover and like he hadn’t slept in days.
“I thought he broke up with Tori,” I said, pulling a broken E string off my guitar.
“He did.” Corey leaned back against the wall behind his kit, thick arms bent behind his head. “I think he’s out with that chick from Saturday night.”
“Getting his dick wet is not a good excuse.”
“Speaking of which...” Trey, our bassist and resident buzzkill, walked in from the house and sat on a road case. “I heard what happened with Stephanie.”
In our collective of misfits, Trey was an oddity. Two happily married parents. Never arrested or institutionalized. No addictions or personality disorders. Had we not become friends, I would have hated the prick.
“Spare me the lecture. I got enough of it from Hadley.”
“What the hell were you thinking? You can’t fuck Scott’s sister and then hide from her.”
“Hey, she came on to me.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to pull your dick out for every girl who flirts with you.”
“The way things are going, Josh might have to leave the country. Or marry her.” Corey eyed me with a stupid grin. “Stephanie’s been posting photos of you from our shows on Instagram.”
“She keeps calling Hadley. Someone sent me half a dozen tit pics since last week.”
“Maybe it says something about your lifestyle that you aren’t sure who,” Trey said.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t mind if you want to throw a groupie my way.”
“Piss off, Corey.” I rubbed my hands through my hair, tired of the subject. “She’ll get bored and move on eventually.”
“I get it.” Corey barely contained a laugh. He was built like a linebacker but gossiped like a pubescent girl. “She’s been after your dick since high school. But she’s straight-up psycho. You know she keyed Clint Holmes’s car at prom in eleventh grade because he took Lisa Libby instead of her, right?”
“Clint was an asshole.”
“Senior year Michael Falk found his cat dead in the driveway after he broke up with her.”
“You don’t know it was her. Could have been a raccoon or something.”
“Sure.” He stood, placing the covers on his drumheads. “But it makes you wonder.”
“This is why I don’t date.”
* * *
There was a time I could fill a concert hall, one kid at piano performing to an audience of thousands of well-dressed patrons. Something about a child in a tailored tuxedo created a spectacle. They called me a prodigy, an oddity worth paying for. To me, playing was fun and composing was easy. The music was all in my head; all I had to do was write it down.
Standing onstage Saturday night, I sang to a couple hundred inebriated college students at the Nest. And Scott, my inept rhythm guitarist, was doing his best to ruin it.
I was going to kill him, or perhaps maim him a little. Nothing would please me more than to wrap a steel guitar string around his neck and tighten my grip until the life left his eyes. I’d strip Scott of his guitar—he’d clearly forgotten how to play the instrument and therefore had no further use for it—to demonstrate my best Babe Ruth impression, pointing to the audio booth before taking a swing at his head. The crack would be satisfying, as would the thud when the decapitated former member of my band collapsed to the floor.
By the end of the first song, it had become apparent that his body had been possessed by some unholy creature bent on destroying music as we knew it. Scott was out of tune and falling behind on the rhythm. He kept his eyes on his fingers, like it was taking all his concentration to suck this badly. I was so fucking done with his punk ass.
When the set was over, I walked right the fuck off.
Kicking through the flimsy door to the greenroom, I set down my Les Paul and picked up the first thing my eyes landed on. Scott’s guitar case went flying across the room to put a nice dent in the graffiti-covered wall. The greenroom was just a dingy little space with a bathroom attached. There were two disgusting brown couches and a counter with a mirror that spanned the distance from one wall to the other. Not fancy digs, but it matched the motif of the college dive bar where our band, Mad Electro, played on Saturday nights.
I knew better than to put my fist through the wall. Breaking my hand was not something I longed to do again. Although shattering the mirror that reflected my impotent rage would have been satisfying, I reined myself in and tamped down the urge. Two hundred hours of anger management supposedly had done me well. Whatever. I was still angry. But now I threw inanimate objects like a girl rather than throwing a punch. Progress.
Scott’s guitar case lay open on the floor. Inside, a tiny plastic bag caught my attention. Unless Scott was hiding some broken bones, he had no business carrying around eighty milligrams of oxycodone.
Noise spilled in through the door behind me. In the mirror, I stared at the guy too chicken shit to look me in the eye.
“You’re a fucking twat.”
“What the hell is your problem?” Scott collapsed onto the couch by the door. He propped his foot up on the stack of milk crates that made a coffee table. Sweat-matted hair clung to his sickly pale face.
“You sounded like shit out there.”
“So I had a bad night. Get off my back.” The middle and forefinger of his right hand bled on his lips while he chewed at his nails. Gnawing, spitting the jagged shards on the dirty green carpet.
“Maybe if you fucking showed up for rehearsal—”
“Did you see my stick nail that guy in the face? I’m like, duck!” Trey and Corey barged into the room.
“Here we go.” Scott kicked at the milk crates, scattering them across the floor. “Another one of Josh’s righteous tantrums. No one is ever fucking good enough.”
“Whoa, simmer down,” Corey said, a massive presence in the center of the toppled mess of blue crates. “What’s the damage?”
“Him.” Scott jumped up from the couch. “I’m tired of this asshole always running his mouth like he’s Mozart.” He came at me, stopping only when Corey held him back. “You’re a fucking has-been, Josh. You washed out. You’re nobody.”
“You’re out. Get your shit and go.”
“Fuck you.” He backed off and looked to Trey standing silently against the door. Scott wasn’t going to find any sympathy there. “I’m not the problem.”
“You’re an addict.”
The accusation hung in silence. Seething, breathing heavy, Scott stared at the bag of pills as I held it up.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fine. Then flush them.”
Corey turned to Scott. “Dude, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.” He shoved Corey away. “He’s full of shit.”
“Do it.” Trey came forward, trapping Scott between us. “Flush them.”
“To prove what? I’m not—”
“Then I’ll do it.”
I went into the bathroom and kicked up the lid to the toilet. Before I could get the bag open, Scott was on my back. He reached for the pills, his bloody fingers slipping down my arms. Corey tried to pull him off, the three of us crammed into the tiny room, elbows knocking into walls, feet slipping on the exposed cement floor. I was shoved sideways at the sink and dropped the bag. Scott dove for it but was yanked back, Corey with his neck in a choke.
“This is your one chance to ask for help,” I said, and dumped the pills in the toilet.
Corey dragged Scott away from me.
“All will be forgiven. Check yourself into rehab or fuck off. Those are your choices.”
“Fuck you, Josh.”
Corey let him go. Scott grabbed his guitar case and left, slamming the door behind him.
* * *
The trio that comprised Mad Electro was silent as we packed up our gear. No more needed to be said on the topic of Scott, and so the matter was closed. We could worry about the consequences later. I doubted he’d admit he needed help, and for that he had my pity.
Back inside the bar, the guys went to join Hadley at our usual table while I found the bar’s owner, Nate. His office was more like a large closet with a single desk and chair. No room for visitors to sit among the file cabinets and boxes of flyers stacked along the walls. He sat hunched over his desk with piles of money in neat rows.
Nate was a skinny middle-aged man who looked like he might have been a meth head at one point in his life. His eyes were too sunken and large in his head. His skin was tight and papery. But he always paid us in cash and invited us back week after week. I didn’t need to know his life story.
“Josh, hi.” Nate nodded as he wrapped a rubber band around one stack of cash and slid it into a white envelope. “Just in time. Here’s your take for tonight.”
I folded the cash and stuffed it in my pocket. We did pretty well here, taking a cut of the door and liquor from ten to midnight from the eighteen-and-over crowd. The Nest was always slammed on Saturdays, and I suspected the bartenders were lax on checking IDs.
“I caught a few minutes of your set.” Nate lit up a cigarette and kept counting bills. “A little rough.”
“We sounded like shit. Scott is out. We’ll be better next weekend.”
“What’s he doing for work?”
“Washing dishes at a sports bar, I think.” Though I didn’t see how that mattered. “Why?”
“I could always use another bar-back.”
“Right.”
Scott would probably poison me the first chance he got.
Nate glanced up. He eyed me for a moment. With nothing left to say, I thanked him and left him to it.
Making my way through the bar, I pushed and slithered past the bodies in the crowded space. It was standing room only, save for a set of reserved tables in the back separated from the floor by two steps to the raised platform and a wooden railing.
Trey and Corey were alone.
“Where’s Hadley?”
“She was talking to a guy,” Trey said.
“A guy?” That wasn’t helpful.
“They went to the bar.” Corey pushed a chair at me. “Sit down and relax. She’ll be back.”
Hadley was capable of taking care of herself. She didn’t need a babysitter looking over her shoulder. Nevertheless, running off with some random guy wasn’t her style. Of course, it was only under the pretense of wanting a drink that I headed for the bar. Not because I was checking up on her.
A group of teetering coeds took their drinks from Troy, the bartender, making an opening for me to slip in. Troy spotted me. After he passed off a few drinks and swiped a customer’s card, he pulled down a bottle of Scotch. Two fingers neat was passed my way. The band drank for free when we played. A nice perk.
“You see Hadley?”
Troy wiped his hands on a bar towel, then slung it over his shoulder as he looked around. “She was with a guy a second ago. Don’t know him.”
I swallowed a mouthful of whiskey. Searching the horde pulsing to the canned music pumped out over the sound system, I couldn’t spot Hadley.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I made it a quarter turn before I took a sucker punch to the face. My drink shattered on the floor. I stumbled, thrown off balance by the force of the blow. Pain flared across my cheek and blurred my vision. Noise overwhelmed me for a moment as the crowd reacted. Scott came at me again, pushing us into a wall of people. I barreled into him, shoving my shoulder into his gut to knock him against the bar. He was trapped beneath me with nowhere to run. Blind rage propelled my fist against his jaw, his nose. His skin turned wet, his face soft and muddy.
By the time Corey had me in a headlock and blood dripped from my hand, Hadley was screaming at me. Whatever. Scott started it. And I never did get to finish my Scotch. But I found Punky.