deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 8: crab society north

Billy was a bigger guy, one who dwarfed not only both Frank and Scott, but Dan and Charlie as well. The kid had shaved his head and put on a raggedy aged shirt that looked as though it was about to fall right off of his heavy body. And yet, the very second he met eyes with Sam as she stepped out of Frank's car once again, his face lit up and he showed her a little grin; he wore that shirt as if the frigid winds from Lake Ontario did not exist and it was just a regular day.
"Don't see a lot of you 'round a bunch of guys like us," he remarked in a striking, deep voice.
"Why's that?" she asked him; she held down her dark hair against the cold upstate winds and she shivered a little bit under her coat.
"Not too sure," he confessed with a squinting of his eyes, "well, and we don't really imagine a bunch of guys like us havin' groupies, either. But anyways—c'mon in. We're all friends here."
The studio was small and cramped, about the size of someone's living room plus a tiny kitchen that looked to be out of a school cafeteria. A drum kit had been crammed into the far corner of the kitchen; right next to that stood a little amp about the size of a coffee can. Sam and Frank stood on the edge of the room as Charlie, Scott, Dan, and Billy congregated in the kitchen; she shut the door behind them and she caught the sound of a soft click on the inside of the wood.
"If this goes anywhere, we should let Sam I am over here have one of the first copies," Scott suggested with a flick back of his thick dark hair.
"First copies of a record of a brand new band," Frank remarked, and he showed her a smile and a twinkle in his dark eyes. "That's like a friendship bracelet of sorts."
"Or a safe keep of sorts," she added as she adjusted the strap of her purse. She held her journal underneath her other arm: she still thought about that photograph Frank and Charlie had lent her. She considered drawing it while sitting there on the far edge of the room next to Frank: indeed, there were three small brick red chairs pressed up against the wall. Billy said something from the other room and Charlie scurried into there to tend to something.
"Where's my bass," Dan muttered.
"It's back here, Danny," Charlie called out.
"Amazing they can fit a bunch of stuff in here," Sam commented in a low voice.
"There's a couple of closets back there," Frank told her with a gesture to the right side of the room. "We've got some instruments stashed in there just in the event of recording. They're kind of crappy, though."
"Crappy li'l instruments and some cheesy little amps?" she chuckled.
"Exactly! Our label is kind of strapped for cash and other things after all."
"Do you guys get any other bands through here?"
"Do we ever! You know that one band you kept seeing a couple of times back in Manhattan, Legacy?"
"Oh, yeah."
"They're an example of one of them who come through here. There's a bunch down in New York City, like Danny's band plus Overkill—and I guess there's a shitload of them over in California, too. Legacy is just one of them."
She followed his gaze to the wall on the left. There was a little flyer right in the middle of the wall with a line of spiky text reading "METALLICA" in all capital letters. Something about that name caught her attention in particular.
"You lookin' at Metallica?" Frank asked her.
"Yeah."
"They're badass. All I know about them is they started out with a tape goin' around New York City, called No Life 'Til Leather. I'll have to share it with you at some point—it's pretty rough around the edges but it's powerful, though. They've already got two records out now."
"Wow, really?" Sam raised her eyebrows at him.
"Yeah, Kill 'Em All and they put out Ride the Lightning just this past summer. They've gone on tour already and everything."
"Wow!"
"Yeah, they're gonna go places. They're gonna take over the world at some point."
"And you guys are gonna be right there with them?"
"That's our hope. That's Jon's hope, too. We've started building friendships with them."
"I hope Aurora and I can get to meet them."
"They live over in San Francisco so we'd have to—make a few phone calls to those guys. James, Kirk, Lars, and Cliff. There was another guy with them—Dave, Dave... Mustaine, I think is his last name? Scott and Charlie both know more about him than I do. All I know is he got fired."
"For what?"
"Drinking."
"Must've been a lot," she quipped.
"Eh, again, you'll have to ask the two of them about it." The sound of distortion caught their ears, and thus Frank gestured to the chairs over on the other side of the room.
"Have a seat," he said to her in kind fashion.
Sam took the one on the left, right underneath the Metallica flyer. He took the one right next to her which left the one on the far right vacant. They were given a view into the kitchen, where Scott and Dan had slung their guitars over their shoulders, and Charlie had disappeared into the far corner of the room to tend to the drums. There was a bit of clicking behind the left side of the doorway.
"You gonna set that thing up to record ourselves on?" Scott asked, flabbergasted.
"Yeah, it's all I can find in here," Billy said, nonplussed. There was a blowing sound, followed by a soft muttering noise.
And then Sam realized he had found a microphone in there for himself. All she could see from him was his elbow and his right leg below the knee, but she could in fact hear him.
"I am the law! I am the law!" His voice was hoarse but strong at the same time. Nothing like Joey's operatic power, but more like a fierce snarl combined with a violent growl. There was something about his voice that entranced her: it was something different and the complete opposite of the clean lovely vocals that came out from Joey's mouth.
Their songs were strangely short, like only a few seconds: the longest one was about a minute, and they all seemed to bleed into each other.
She shuffled her feet underneath her chair.
"So noisy," she joked to Frank.
"This is the life we chose!" he proclaimed with glee. Scott tried to say something over his own riffing; Sam could hardly hear his own words, except for a few little snippets of his sentiments.
"By the way—Dan—let me say one thing—this doesn't leave the room—not to talk about Anthrax but..."
"But what?" Dan called out to him once he rested his fingers across the fret board of his bass. Scott held onto the pick with his thumb and his index finger and strummed it all over the strings.
"That!" he declared, which coaxed a laugh out of both Billy and Charlie. Frank looked over at her with a twinkle in his eye and one hand inside of his jacket.
"Want a piece of gum?" he offered her.
"Oh, yes please!"
He took out a small pack of gum that made her think of a pack of cigarettes with its red and white lid; he popped it open and gave her a little piece. Even against the musty smell of the room, she could feel the burn of the spearmint on her nose.
"Holy—" she sputtered and coughed a couple of times.
"Yeah, it's strong," he said, unfazed; he slipped in a piece and she was met with that fresh aroma of spearmint from him.
"Jesus—" Her eyes even began to water a bit.
"I have a little bit of a problem with halitosis," he confessed. "I've had it for a long time."
"Why's that?"
He shook his head. "No idea. Charlie thinks it's from genetics, but who knows, really."
Meanwhile, every song Storm troopers of Death whipped out into the open went onto something that Billy had set up on the counter top in there. Every so often, he leaned over to adjust the thing.
"So there's Crab Society," Dan remarked at one point as he held one finger across the second fret of his bass. Charlie twirled the drum stick in his right hand and almost let it fall onto the cymbal next to the wall; he caught it by the skin of his pinky and ring fingers and then gripped onto the bass.
"We've got time, though, Danny," Scott assured him.
"Time for what?"
"Time to name this—thing."
"What are they even recording on?" Sam asked Frank; he leaned over to look into the room.
"I don't really know," he confessed in a low voice.
"We kind of are the Crab Society now," Dan declared with a clearing of his throat: he tapped on the largest string of the bass with his first two fingers.
"Yeah, but we can't really use that name, though," Charlie pointed out.
"True. We're—Crab Society—North? Given we're upstate and all."
"North, south, east, and west," Scott chuckled.
"Which of us is north, south, east, and west, though?" Charlie asked as he attempted another twirl of the drum stick.
"I'll be east," Scott volunteered, "Danny'll be west."
"Guess I'll be south, then," Billy said with a sniffle and a clearing of his throat.
"Why do you get to be south?" Charlie scoffed.
"'Cause you're from the Bronx, Char," Billy pointed out.
"So I'm north, then!"
"Exactly!"
Sam looked over at Frank and couldn't help but laugh at what she was hearing several feet away from them.
"Welcome to our world, Sam I Am," he said with a chuckle and a lopsided smile.
"Just a bunch of guys willing to kick back for a little bit while the real thing gets taken care of," Scott called out with a raise of those thick dark eyebrows.
There was low thump outside the door.
"There he is," Frank quipped; he climbed to his feet. Whoever tried to come into the building jiggled the doorknob.
"Guys?" Joey's voice rang through the wood of the door.
"Hang on, Joey," Frank called out; there was another click in the next room there. He tugged on the doorknob but the door itself wouldn't budge.
"Want some help?" Sam offered.
"Please."
She stood to her feet and set her journal down on the chair in order to assist him: Frank lifted the doorknob itself while Sam clasped her hands onto the backs of his and gave the knob a good yank. The door flung open and Joey stumbled into the room right then: they were met with bright sunlight but a chilly gust of wind as well. His chest was right in her line of sight, but she pressed herself against the wall behind her to let him in there. He took off his mirrored sunglasses to better look at her with those big brown eyes. Stray strands of his jet black curls sprawled down his brow so she could better look into his eyes. Frank shut the door behind him and the wind settled in the room.
"Oh, hi," he breathed out at the sight of her.
"Hi," she returned the favor, and she held the journal up to her chest even though they were a foot apart. "How you feelin'?"
"Better—kinda."
"Kinda?"
"Yeah, it's—it's gonna be a bit before my body gets back up to right temperature. But I ain't miserable anymore, though."
"That's good."
"I had cannoli courtesy of my mom and my grandma," he said with a shrug of his shoulders and a smirk on his face.
"Sounds good," she replied as she ran her hands atop the crown of her head.
"Speaking of goodness, you smell good," he remarked with a look at her chest.
"Thank me for that!" Frank proclaimed.
"Joey!" Scott declared; he strode out of the room without the guitar over his shoulder. "How'd you know we were here?"
"My dad and I were driving past here and I was like, 'hey, there's Frankie's car,'" Joey replied as he tossed a pocket of his black curls over his shoulder.
"Were you with your dad?" Sam asked him.
"Nah, I was driving behind him. When I pulled over, he pulled over with me and I told him what was going on. I'm a big boy—I can do stuff." He turned his head for a look over at Scott and Charlie.
"So what'd I miss?" he asked them.
"Kinda doin' our own thing for the remainder of studio time," Scott replied. "We're callin' it Stormtroopers of Death."
"Sounds badass and nerdy at the same time. I like it."
"They were just putting together a demo tape," Frank told him. "A li'l demo and then maybe something else after that if Jonny gives 'em the green light."
"And I guess I'm going to get my paws on a first copy of it," Sam followed up with a tone of excitement.
"Well!" Joey folded his arms across the chest. "Consider it an honor, li'l one."
"I already do! I hope they go places with the whole thing, too."
"We're all hard workin' boys," Charlie declared.
"All workin' hard and then some more," she added.
"Speaking of more," he said with a raise of a finger. Charlie doubled back into the kitchen there for something. Billy, who was partially behind the wall, looked over his shoulder at him all the while. Charlie rummaged through the fridge in there, and then he came back with a pair of brown glass bottles of beer, one in each hand.
"Care for a drink?" he offered her, and she hesitated for a second. She was under the drinking age, but it was an offer from him and with a soft look on his round face all the while.
"Thank you," she said with a little smile and a taking of the bottle in his right hand for herself. The glass was cold and the edges of the cap were sharp against her hand.
"Want a little bit of help?" Frank offered her.
"All I can get."
"Here—" Charlie handed him his bottle for a second so he could pry off the cap with two fingers. That strong aroma of hops flooded out of there, and made her eyes water more than the spearmint in her piece of gum.
"You want a beer, Joey?" Scott offered.
"You know I do," Joey chuckled, "I was wantin' Irish coffee this morning when the three of them came to get me, so you know it."
Sam took out her piece of gum and held it between two fingers. She tipped the bottle back for a sip: the contrast of the spearmint and the hops clashed and she grimaced at the taste.
"That gum, right?" Frank laughed.
"Yeah—" Her stomach turned a bit but she persisted. Indeed, the contrast went away within mere seconds and she was able to take another sip from the mouth.
"Let's go outside for a bit," Billy suggested.
"Yeah, it's sunny out," Joey said as he pried off the cap from his bottle. "Kinda windy but at least the clouds've cleared out a li'l bit..." He took a hearty swig from the bottle and followed Billy and Scott out the kitchen. Meanwhile, Frank turned to Sam, who was trying to keep it down but the taste of the beer was so strong and in her face that it was hard to even bring the mouth of the bottle to her lips. He eyed the gum in her fingers.
"You wanna know a little trick?"
"For what?"
"The piece of gum. Kinda roll your fingers a bit so it turns into a little ball. It's a little hard because it's all sticky—" She tried it out regardless, and it stuck to her skin at first. "—keep going, keep going, keep going... there you go. Now put it behind your ear like Violet Beauregarde."
"Don't forget it's there, either," Charlie advised her as he took a swig from his bottle. "One of my sisters did that once and my mom had to cut it out with scissors."
She tossed her hair over her head, and then she stuck the little wad of gum behind her right ear for safe keeping. It stuck to her skin and she knew she could go back to it within time.
"So we wanna go outside?" Frank asked them.
"If you wanna," Charlie told him, "I'm actually kinda cold right now."
"Cold, even after pounding away on those drums," she remarked as she tilted her head to the left to keep her hair off the side of her head.
"I'm pretty sure Charlie was born with drum sticks in hand and without pores in his skin," Frank joked, which brought an eye roll out of Charlie.
"So d'you draw something?" he asked Sam.
"I haven't been able to," she confessed as she held the bottle closer to her chest. "I've just been so—enthralled by what was going on in here. You're a natural!"
"Me? Well, I dunno 'bout that..."
"I also don't know what I did with that picture of you guys, either."
"I think it's out in the car," Frank recalled, "I'll be right back." He doubled back to the front door, which had been jammed stuck again. "Help me out here, Charlie."
Charlie himself met up with him to lift up the door.
"Yet another thing this place needs," he muttered as he held onto the knob with his free hand, "among other things. It's one thing when Billy gets it open, though." The door swung open and Frank stepped outside.
Sam meanwhile, caught the sight of something out of the corner of her eye. She stood in the kitchen doorway to find a small cramped space, crammed full with Charlie's drum kit, those dusty guitars and bass, and that microphone the size of her hand, the latter of which Billy had placed on the counter top right next to a walkman. That was what they recorded the demo on. She turned her attention to the door on the other side of the room, which hung open even with the cool upstate winds. She made her way over to it to see the back of Joey's head: he had taken a seat on the back step there.
His hair was lush, and looked even more so there in the hazy afternoon sun. Sam could make out the sight of little glints of gold embedded in the curls at the back of his head. Combined with the darkness of his roots, his hair was thick and swirled like a psychedelic drawing. She imagined it being like a dense forest, a whole stretch of thick shrubs coupled with those tall slender dark trees in the dark earth. She tried to picture it soaking wet following a shower, all sweet smelling and delicate.
Joey gave his hair a toss over his shoulder, which only accentuated the coarsest of curls on his back. Sam thought of vines dangling down from tree branches.
He leaned over his slender thighs and rested his elbows on his narrow knees. She eyed his slim waist from behind there. He was almost delicate, especially since she got a better look at him there: he did not have his microphone in hand that time, and he was at an odd angle to boot.
She hung there in the doorway with her free hand on the edge of the threshold and she kept her eye on the gentle shape of his shoulder and his upper arm. The fingers of his left hand curled around his right elbow and he shivered from the incoming fog. Joey bowed his head a bit and she could make out the shape of the bottle in his hand.
"Sam?" Charlie called out. She returned to the main room to find him with the photograph in hand.
"Ah! Thank you!" She took the photograph for herself and crossed the floor to the chairs. She tucked the photograph into her journal and returned to them.
"Not really the best place for drawing, though, from what I can see," Frank pointed out.
"Yeah, talk about uncomfortable," Charlie nodded his head. "By the way, Frankie and I were just talking a little bit out there—if Stormtroopers of Death go anywhere, we oughtta give you something to do, seeing as you sat in with us on the recording process. The whole entire hour and whatnot."
"Oh, wow, I wouldn't know the first thing of what to do," she confessed as she took another sip of beer. A little better that time: the hoppy taste wasn't so pungent and in her face, but it still hit her tongue more than the spearmint.
"You could sit in with us on tour dates for Anthrax and Storm troopers."
"How does one open for themselves?" she asked him.
"You've—got to be on top of it all?" Charlie raised an eyebrow at that. "One state of mind versus the other, I s'pose. Something we'd have to figure out. And it can be something to show your school counselors, too!"
Scott burst out laughing right then and Billy said something.
"Hey, Frankie!" Joey called out from the kitchen doorway.
"What's up?" Frank hurried in there to see what was the matter. Charlie returned to her.
"By the way, Joey was right—it is nice outside. Kinda chilly but not a cloud in the sky now. Wanna take a walk?"
"I'd love to take a walk," she said, and without another word, the two of them filed out of there into the bright, crisp afternoon: the sun was beginning to hang low over the horizon before them. He walked at a slow pace so they could be side by side on the little dirt pathway along the side of the street. Lucky for her, the wind kept her hair on the side of her head, thus off of the piece of gum behind her ear. Charlie pushed a thick lock of his own hair off of his face in the meantime.
"Can I tell you something?" he asked her at one point.
"Um—sure? Is it important?"
"If you want it to be."
"Okay."
He then cleared his throat, but he never said anything after that. They reached a curve in the road, one lined with a series of tall trees that blocked out some of the more intense of the winds.
"Sam, we've only known each other for a little more than a week, but I feel like I've known you for years," he confessed at a quick clip.
"It's funny, I—feel the same way about you, too." She turned her head to look at him; the orange light from the late afternoon sun washed over the side of his face.
A gust of cold wind sent a chill down her spine, and he inched closer to her.
"I mean, think about it," he started again. "We're both artists. Artists look out for each other and stick together. It only makes sense that we officially call ourselves friends for each other."
Sam had no idea if it was the alcohol talking or the fact that she came to New York with a fresh new slate and it all started happening so fast, but her head began to spin a little bit from the feeling. She even had to stop in her tracks to gather herself.
"You alright?"
"I'm a little bit dizzy—this is all starting to feel like a dream."
"I assure you it's the real thing."
She lifted her gaze to his face, partially obscured in shadow courtesy of the sun: the light made it seem as though he had a halo around the crown of his head. She had a friend in Aurora and now, a friend in Charlie.
"Friends forever," she said with a raise of her bottle.
"Friends forever," he replied and he brought his bottle to his for a toast. The bottles made a clink noise and they took a drink in unison: she took another sip compared to his hearty swig. "I'm sure Frankie'd wanna join in on that, too. And I think it's just the heat of the moment, but I really wanna watch you draw now."