The Tranquility Anthology

=Star Treatment=

Alex was a washed up lounge singer.

Him and his band, The Martini Police, used to sell out huge auditoriums back on Earth. Well-revered, and Alex himself was what they called a national heartthrob.

On a lunar resort, him and the others were lucky to perform two shows a day for four nights a week.

The Martini Police, the cosmic horizon behind them in a panoramic window, were finishing their closing number.

Matt tapped lightly with his brush sticks, Jamie picked the last notes as did Nick, and Alex plonked the last few chords on the piano with his mouth kissing his microphone as he sang. The last note, and then Alex glanced up.

Scattered applause swept across Tranquility's warmly lit evening lounge, faces shadowed by retro orange mushroom lamps on the tables. It had been a while since they played to quiet rooms like this.

"Thank you very much everybody." He stood up. "That was us, Tranquility's house band. The Martini Police," he added on at the end. Something to fill the uncomfortable silence.

"As you all know, we'll be back 'ere tomorrow, so from all of us now, have a good rest of the night."

He didn't miss stage fright. It went away when the band got big, but now it crawled back in Alex's throat and dizzied his mind.

He spun around to face his bandmates, away from a crowd that couldn't care less about them.

It never settled with Alex seeing the image of his childhood friends in the foreground to the moon's dusty grey surface. He noted the brilliant glass walkway towards Tranquility Casino in the distance. Still, he figured, after the wild days in the seventies, it was good for him.

The past was left behind on Earth. Or so he thought.

Alex had been conversing with the band before the past brought itself back into his life.

"Why are you wearing that thing on your head?"

Matt brought one hand to the white fabric encircling his fluffy head of hair, his drumsticks clutched in the other.

"What's wrong with it? Keeps me hair up," He said to Nick, who was busy fiddling with guitar cables. Alex himself started organising and puttting stage equipment back in their boxes.

"Come on, a karate bandana?"

"Oi! your hair's down to there," he said, pointing to Nick's neck-length do, "as is the rest of ours. Alex is one of those guys with a goatee now-"

"I'd call it a very impressive moustache, Matty," Alex interjected. Matt deadpanned him, before returning his attention to Nick.

"Why am I the only one being bullied here about my hair choices?"

"Because, we just love you that much," Jamie quipped, a fiendish grin while he sorted and packed away his own guitar.

"Oh piss off, Jamie." His face scrunched as every other band member but him started chuckling. Alex's chest thumped with deep amusement. A conversation with his friends would be the same anywhere they were in the universe.

"It's alright, we do love you, honest," Alex said, as Matt began to bend over and collect the cables surrounding his drum set.

"We especially loved you when you brought that woman to our Blade Runner evening in my suite." He referenced a time when Matt had, under the innocent guise of being completely shit-faced, got off with someone he regretted the next morning in Alex's king-size bed.