deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 4: a new record

"So the three of them are the ones without any solid footing here before hand," Marsha remarked.

"Yeah, we're the new comers," Aurora told her.

It had been a couple of hours since she and Sam had mingled into the fold with the band and with their manager, Jon, or Jonny Z as they all referred to him. A heavier gentleman with a thick scraggly black beard and horn rimmed glasses wrapped in a shabby tweed jacket; his wife Marsha looked like the type of woman Sam would see in the neighborhoods back home in Carson City with her feathery hair and big warm smile.

The two of them had whisked Sam and Aurora to the back room with all of them as if they were their long lost family. They posted up on the other side of the room nestled in between Frank and Charlie, the latter of whom put his feet up on a little footstool so Sam could have a better look of his thighs and his knees. The black fabric comprising of his jeans hugged his legs to accentuate their shape. Joey and Scott were across the room from them with empty plates rested upon their laps.

Dan breezed into the room right then with a cup of what looked like fruit punch in one hand: the bright red color appeared even more red with the fluorescent lights overhead.

"Got a li'l drinkie of sorts?" Aurora called to him.

"Oh, no, it's just punch," he said with a smirk on his face, "it's too early for that."

"It's gotta be a certain kinda day for that anyway," said Charlie as he crossed his legs and set a hand on his right knee.

"Yeah, it's—it's not the kind of day for that," Scott cracked with a raise of those thick eyebrows.

"That's not to say I don't have a flask with me, though," Dan pointed out with a wag of his finger.

"So what's Marsha gonna make for us?" Sam asked them.

"She's got some pancakes on deck," Frank told her, "that's as far as I know, anyway. Jon might know more than us, though."

She looked over at Charlie right as he ran his hand up and down the inside of his thigh. She knew they hadn't been a band for very long, and yet his thighs looked tight and sinewy from playing drums, and she wondered how long he had been playing drums prior to then. Sam followed the inseam of his jeans towards the crotch, and then back down to his ankle. To think he had been thumping away earlier with those faded white sneakers: she took a second look to see the soles had worn and waned with overuse and scuffing on the ground. She eyed the shape of his right ankle and she wondered what it actually looked like underneath his white sock.

Jon emerged in the doorway with a glass of orange juice in hand and a beaming smile on his face.

"It's almost ready, gentlemen—ladies," he nodded at Sam and Aurora. "Marsha had to bring in a second hot plate because she wanted to make more stuff for the bunch of us."

"Got some O.J. in there, too, I see," Aurora remarked as she stood to her feet.

"Plenty of that on the table, my dear. We forgot the coffee so just juice this morning." Aurora and Frank followed Jon out of the room, and Dan took a seat on the right side of the room.

"You want a glass of something?" Charlie offered Sam in a low voice.

"I was actually wanting a cup of coffee," she confessed with a shrug. "I gotta be in the right mood for juice, you know?"

"Yeah, me, too," he said with a wrinkle of his button nose and a nod of his head: she never noticed the little cleft in his chin before until then. There was something catlike in particular about him, like he could stroke about the floor on his toes even after pounding away on those drums in the next room for their new record. His fingers were long and lanky, and even with a bit of callus on his index and middle fingers from holding onto drum sticks, they had an almost delicate look to them.