CHAPTER TWO
A week later I found myself sitting around my apartment; it was a night off from recording, and I’d slept in all morning just to avoid the fact that I didn’t really have anything to do and no one in the band to spend time with. I hadn’t bothered to go out to get breakfast--I’d ordered a big lunch on GrubHub, from one of the local pizza places instead.
I was trying to decide what to do with myself for the night; Dan was going out with Sophie to see a movie, Nick and Olivia were going to some magazine event, Jules and Fran were working on new material, and Alex and Mary were doing something--I didn’t know or care what. I thought I could see who was playing either in Miami or in West Palm, but I didn’t feel like going to any of the usual places; I could see if anyone new was on Tinder or Bumble, but I’d gotten tired of first dates and hook ups. “God, I am fucking pathetic,” I announced to my empty living room. I’d been fighting the realization for a while; it wasn’t one that any guy would want to have about himself. But I had to face facts: there had to be a reason why every other guy in the band had managed to find someone to date before I’d managed to. There had to be something.
I was considering what that might be when I heard my phone buzz on the countertop. Someone had texted me. “Please let it be Dan saying that Sophie’s on the rag or something,” I muttered to myself as I got up and threw away the leftover trash from my lunch, on my way to where my phone was. I tossed the trash in the garbage and grabbed my phone, unlocking the screen to see what the message was.
Instead of being from any of my bandmates, it was from one of the guys from Bent Bridges, Nate. Yo! Neely broke his wrist falling out of the van and either we need someone to sub for him or we’re gonna get scrubbed from the festival lineup. My eyes widened; Neely was the drummer for Bent Bridges--Nate was the lead singer. I’d played with them a few times over the years, and I knew most of their songs. I’d known they were playing Big Noisy Fest out near Tampa, but I hadn’t really given it much thought since hearing about it a few weeks before.
Shit, man! When do you go on? Tampa was about three hours away; it was a fucking haul, but it wasn’t impossible to get there in time, depending on when they were due to play. My phone buzzed almost immediately--Nate must have been waiting for my answer. I wondered how many people he’d texted.
We’re on at 8. Think you can make it here? Neely said you can use his kit, since we’re already loaded in. It wasn’t ideal, of course; I preferred my own kit. But it would make sense to use Neely’s kit if I was playing with Bent Bridges, and anyway it would save time if I didn’t have to break down my spare kit and load it into my car. If I left in the next hour, I could get to Tampa by five, and work things out with the other members of the band with enough time to play the set. I took a deep breath; there’d probably be some bitching from the rest of the band, but I didn’t really care that much. We had another two days off, so I could play the festival, maybe stay to catch day two, and be back home before anyone would notice. It’d be in the New Times and maybe a few other places, but by then, I’d have time to explain it to the other guys.
I’ll be there by 5. I put my phone down after sending the text and went into my bedroom. I was only going to be gone for a day--two at most--and I’d have Neely’s drum kit to play, but there were a few things that I always brought with me when I played a show, especially an out-of-town show, and I wasn’t about to leave without them, just because it was an emergency. I grabbed my tour backpack out of my closet and checked that I still had a clean pair of boxers and a clean tee shirt in it; I did. I went from my bedroom to my bathroom and back again, throwing in my deodorant, a pair of shorts, a pair of jeans, my toothbrush, and other items I didn’t want to go a day without. I zipped it all up, grabbed my keys, my phone and my charging cable, and fired off a quick text to Dan and Nick telling them I was going to be up in Tampa.
I had to get gas in the car--it was a long fucking drive, after all--but I was on the road headed north and west within forty-five minutes. I blasted OK Go all the way, actually enjoying the sight of swampy, scrubby Florida woods as I followed the Turnpike, singing along to each of the songs. It struck me when I took a quick break to piss and grab a coffee for myself about halfway through that it should probably alarm me more that I was this fucking excited to be hauling ass up to Tampa to play for a band that wasn’t my band on such short notice; but I pushed the thought out of my head before I could really examine how important it was. I was happy, I had something to do, and that was enough for me.
I thought about Bent Bridges a bit on the drive--traffic was better than usual, so I had enough bandwidth, mentally, to do something other than react to all the stupid drivers around me. Neely was probably totally appalled that he’d managed to break a bone the morning of a major festival date; I know I would have been. Big Noisy Fest was in its third year, and getting bigger; Bent Bridges’ slot wasn’t a headliner spot, but they were on just before the big headliner for the night, and I remembered they were slated to play the side stage the next day; they might back out of it, considering that they probably wouldn’t want to rely on a substitute drummer for too many dates, but if they were up for going on the next day, I wasn’t about to pass on the chance.
Bent Bridges had been together for maybe two years; like most of the bands in the local scene, they’d come about as a result of the death of two other local bands: Jai Alai Inferno and Hunger Strike. Bent Bridges was dope, and I’d seen their first show since I’d gone to high school with Nate and Brant; I’d learned all their songs as soon as they came out with them, and I’d talked about them whenever someone asked me about influences. There was a point--back when Molly Riot was going off the rails--when I’d thought about seeing if Nate or Brant wanted to do something on the side, but I’d held off.
It took me a moment of frantic Googling to find the festival site, which I probably should have checked on before I left the apartment; but once I was straight on where it was, it was easy enough for me to get there from downtown. I’d texted Nate from the rest stop to remind him to tell security to let me park in the area for the talent, and to give me a pass so I could get into the backstage area; otherwise I’d have driven fucking hours for no reason. But when I pulled up to the artists’ entrance, the guard there had my name on the clipboard, checked my ID to confirm who I was, and waved me past without so much as a word of complaint. I got the feeling that the festival wasn’t going exactly smoothly--the guards looked like they’d rather get the day over with and start over.
I found somewhere to park and grabbed what I thought I was likely to need for the next few hours from the car: my backpack, a spare pack of smokes, the bag I kept spare drum sticks in, and a couple of odds and ends. I probably should have been more concerned by how excited I was at the prospect of playing substitute drummer for a festival gig, but I didn’t care; it was a big change from what I’d been doing for months. I was hundreds of miles away from the rest of my own band, and I didn’t have to think about the stupid shit we were going through for a solid day or two. That was enough for me.