deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 14: in the light

"and if you feel that you can't go on,
and your will's sinkin' low,
just believe, and you can't go wrong.
in the light you will find the road.
you will find the road."
-"in the light", led zeppelin

Even through the reflection of the mirror, Sam could watch Stormtroopers of Death go forth on the stage out there: Joey had angled it so the glass could catch the sight of Scott and Dan at the forefront, right behind Billy; she could only see the crown of Charlie's head right behind the drum kit. Compared to the studio space, they had such a big and even violent sound, one laced with such dirty distortion and also a great deal of groove courtesy of Dan's fast bass.
Joey himself lingered right outside of the door, out of sight of the mirror so she could see them. Every so often, he poked his head into the room to check on her.
"How's your ankle doing?" he asked her at one point.
"Hurts," Sam groaned, to which she leaned forward to caress the lower part of her leg. "But it's not like it's shattered or anything, though. It's gonna be sore in the morning for sure."
"Oh, yeah," he replied as he adjusted the lapels of his little leather jacket. It wasn't even that cold that evening and yet he stood there at the doorway wearing a leather jacket as if the snow was about to fall over the New York skyline. "That's sump'n you don't walk away from without a li'l bitta soreness."
He turned his head to look out to the audience.
Billy said something and yet she couldn't exactly hear him from the door nearby there. Joey returned to her with his eyebrows raised, and he ambled across the floor towards her.
"What's up?" she asked him as he crouched down next to her. Stray black curls sprawled down over his shoulder as he rested his elbow up on the edge of the foot stool.
"I've been thinkin' just now," he started, and he adjusted the lapels of his jacket yet again. He shivered a little bit even though it was comfortable in that room. "I was thinking that if Metallica play here again—and I dunno, but I'm sure they will, we should all go an' see 'em. You know—the bunch of us. You, Frankie, Charlie, Scott, Aurora, Marla, and myself."
"Oh, yeah. You guys are really starting to feel like friends to me as of late. We all could consider it a full fledged group date!"
He snickered.
"Funny you say that, though, 'cause I'd be like the third wheel," he confessed in a low enough voice; the word "wheel" drowned out at the huge thump of Charlie's kick drum. Joey lunged back to shut the door a little bit, and he returned to her, once again in a crouching position.
"I'd be the third wheel for you guys," he repeated as Stormtroopers of Death started up yet again: hard, fast, loud, and without a care in the world regarding their terse lyrics.
"How so?" Sam adjusted her weight in the seat and shuffled her foot atop the cushion. "It's not like Frankie and I are dating each other."
"So far, I'm the swingin' bachelor," he said, "so far, anyways."
"Again, Frankie and I aren't dating each other," she insisted.
"So far, anyways," he repeated.
"Oh, come on—I doubt Frankie would wanna go out with me."
"Give it time, though. One time, my best friend in school started hangin' out with a girl, and he swore they were just friends. They're getting married in May."
"Yeah, but he's totally different compared to Frankie, though," she pointed out. "At least I hope he is."
"He was a hockey player—," he explained with a clearing of his throat, "—a guy I played with on my first team. Frankie's a baseball player. Tomato, to- mahto, for sure, but not much different to each other, though."
"So you're considering me and Frankie as together?" she scoffed as she folded her arms over her chest.
"Not really," he quipped with another clearing of his throat. "You guys are like a kind of a, uh—I wanna call an 'in between' sorta thing. You're considered friends but you're also en route to a relationship of sorts. One time I was in that spot, right when I first started out playin' hockey."
"What happened with that?"
"She moved away," he said with a straight face.
"Did you feel anything more with her?" she asked her.
"Yeah, but it fell away once I got my tootsies onto the ice."
"Something tells me you've got lots of stories pertaining to hockey," she noted as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
"I do, yeah. If we get a chance in a room that's quiet and a lot more homely, I'll tell ya more." He flashed her a wink and a lopsided smile. Sam gazed into his large brown eyes. She hoped he was wrong about her and Frank because she could sense it with him. She could sense it even more when she thought about Aurora's claim that he had his eye on her back in the rehearsal space.
"I came here," she started as Dan slapped the bass strings out in the other room, "as a California girl not knowing what to expect out of the East Coast, and yet it all seemed to happen like it was supposed to. It almost feels like something out of a story book, or a tall tale."
"It's like you're supposed to be here right now," Joey added. "Like you're actually supposed to be here right now. You're supposed to be here in New York." She looked down at his elbow, which he rested with about an inch of clearance from her knee. He could look right at the inside of her thigh.
"Supposed to be here and kick ass with the whole art thing," he continued, and then he knitted his eyebrows together. "How's that comin' along, by the way?"
"I've got a bit more I have to do and then I have to turn it in to the admissions office," she explained.
"I'm guessin' there's a deadline in there somewhere."
"Yeah—coming up here, so I have to get on it once we get home from Stormtroopers here."
"And you've got a paycheck coming along with them, too!" Joey's face lit up.
"That's right! Something to help me out until I get my grant. I hope I get my grant, anyways."
"You will get your grant," he promised her. "You will in fact get your grant. I dunno how that whole thing works, but I know you'll get it."
"I have to turn in the journal to admissions and then some committee decides my fate for me. If I'm approved, it'll go through this whole process to make sure I get a grant to help pay for school as well as my rent and fares for the subway."
"Wow." Joey gaped at her. "So it's like an art contest of sorts."
"Yes, yes!" She snapped her fingers. "That's exactly what it's like. It's an art contest, except the winner gets into art school and gets a bunch of money to help pay for it. And the judges are brutal, too. So it's because of that, I'm truly not sure if I'll get it or not."
"I do have faith in it, though," Joey persisted. "And I'm a little bit curious, too."
"Curious about the art in the journal?" she asked him.
"Yeah. When the guys are done here, I wanna see your journal—" The door behind him moved open, and Sam lifted her head for a look at Aurora's head there.
"There you guys are!" she declared. "Marla and I were just looking for you both—" She stopped in her tracks at the sight of Sam's leg up on the foot stool. "—what happened?"
"I tripped," Sam said as Aurora scurried into the room.
"I'm takin' care of her," Joey added as he stood to his feet and hung next to the side of the chair.
"So you missed the whole show?" Aurora's face fell.
"No, Joey set up a mirror over there to make sure I could see," Sam explained with a gesture to the other side of the room. Aurora turned her head and followed her gesture, and she brought a hand to her chest.
"Oh, good! Kind of worried me there for a second." She returned to Sam and Joey. "You should be getting your paycheck in about a week or so."
"Me?" Sam asked her, to which Aurora nodded her head.
"Yeah, keep an eye on your bank account." She brought her attention to Joey. "And you probably should, too."
He glanced down at Sam with a twinkle in his eye.
"We're both gonna get some good money!" he proclaimed.
Marla's orange head emerged from behind the door.
"What's going on in here?" she called out over the roar of the audience out in the next room. Sam gestured for her to come on inside, and Marla ducked in there to come within earshot.
"Sam hurt her ankle," Joey told her, "she was able to watch, though."
"Are you going to need any help getting back into the car?" Marla asked her.
"I'll take 'er home," Joey offered.
"You just want to see my journal," Sam joked with him.
"But I also wanna take you home, though," he insisted.
"You're so sweet, Joey," Marla remarked, and he shrugged in response.
"I try my best," he said with a shake of his head.
"Well, let's at least help her, though," Aurora offered.
The three of them congregated around Sam; Marla and Aurora put their arms around her, and she set her uninjured foot on the floor, and she slid her sore ankle off of the foot stool. Careful not to put any pressure on that injured ankle, Sam stood upon her other foot with the two of them clasped onto her for dear life.
"You got her?" Joey asked Aurora and Marla as he adjusted his jacket yet again and picked up her purse, and slung it over his shoulder.
"Yeah, we do," the latter assured him.
"Okay, follow me." Joey led them out of the room into the main part of L'Amour. Most of the audience had cleared out already, but Metallica clustered near the back of the room with drinks in each hand. Lars spotted them.
"There they are!" he called out.
"Hero of the hour," James added before he took a sip from the little red cup in his hand. Kirk and Cliff raised their cups to Sam before they took swigs themselves; Joey reached the door first, so he rounded the side of it and held it for the three girls. They were met with the cool night air all around them and the dark canopy of the night sky over their heads. Joey led them down the sidewalk to a shabby little black car parked at the far end of the curb. He reached into his jeans pocket for his car keys and he unlocked the door in one fell swoop. Up the street, the traffic light had turned red, which gave Aurora and Marla time to help Sam into the threadbare passenger seat; she grimaced at the sharp pain in her ankle once she climbed inside. Joey rounded the front end of the car and slipped into the driver's seat.
"You alright?" he asked her as she groaned and grimaced at the feeling.
"I hope so..." She shuffled her foot about on the floor and held her knee in place right underneath the dashboard. The pain subsided as she rested her foot in that little nook of the floor.
"As long as we don't go off the road," she told him as she buckled into the seat, and Joey handed her purse back; she rested her purse on her lap and looked up at Aurora and Marla.
"I'll tell Scott and Charlie what happened," Aurora vowed to her.
"I'll give Charlie a little something if the paycheck doesn't come," Marla added; she patted the roof of the car before she closed the door. Joey fired up the engine and, once the light turned green, he shifted into gear and rolled out of there. The seat was so bare that Sam could hardly look over the top of the dashboard.
"So where d'you live at?" he asked her once they reached the corner.
"I live all the way up in the Bronx," she replied, "I'll show it to you."
"Good, 'cause I—" He cleared his throat. "—I still don't really know the City all too well."
"Me, neither," she confessed, and she shifted her leg a bit to ease the pressure on her ankle. "Even after all this time of coming down from upstate to work on records and things, you still have no idea about most of these things."
"Exactly! I mean, I know the neighborhoods, but as for street names and where things are? Not a single clue. You'd haveta ask Frankie, Charlie, or Scott 'bout it. As for upstate itself, I'll be yer tour guide."
They took the next left and down a narrow, dim lit street, which Sam recognized from earlier that day, and nothing more.
"So let's try an'... get our asses to the parkway," he said. "Do you remember where that is?"
"It's coming up here, I know that." And that was all she knew about it. Joey drummed his fingers on the edge of the steering wheel. They may as well have been coasting along the pavement with no gas in the tank.
Car headlights whirred over the ground up ahead.
"Guessin' that's it right there?" he declared.
"I think so?"
Joey swallowed and he took the next right onto the freeway in front of them. They rose over the tightly woven streets and began onward to some part of New York City.
"I think we're on the right track," he said, "'cause I just saw a sign back there that said 'The Bronx'."
"Did it say anything else?" she asked with a nervous chuckle.
"I think so? 'Cause there was another sign that pointed to an exit goin' out to Long Island, so yeah. I think we're good."
"Just like over in L.A. Just follow the signs."
They fell back into silence for a moment as they left Brooklyn and proceeded on up the spine of the City. And then she spoke up again.
"So you really think Frankie might have a thing for me?"
"It's definitely possible," he confessed. "Anything's possible, y'know."
"True. For example, I didn't think—ever, in my wildest dreams—that I would be overseeing the first live show of a band called Stormtroopers of Death."
"And you didn't think you'd be hangin' with me, either," he added with a smirk at her; the glow of the headlights shone back onto his boyish dark face and his crooked teeth.
"Not at all."
She thought about what Aurora had said to her on that morning. Maybe that was a chance for Joey to get alone with her, or maybe she was given a chance to get alone with him and to ensure that he really felt the way in which he felt about her. She was in fact supposed to be there in New York City after all. Sam kept her gaze fixated on the side profile of Joey's face, at the full shape of his jaw and the darkness making up his lips, at the smooth skin around his eyes and the fine straight point of his nose. A few stray curls dangled down from the crown of his head towards his large brown eyes, which were made bigger and darker from the darkness. He resembled to a crescent moon, which was made more so the fact by the passing lights lining the freeway.
Hard to believe he was the bachelor of the band, given the beauty of the crescent moon over the glow from twilight.
At one point, he took a glimpse over at her.
"What?" he asked her.
"I'm just—looking at you," was all she could muster.
"Why you lookin' at me?"
"Because I never really got a good look at your face before," she continued. He turned his head towards her: the lights from oncoming traffic shone onto his face to make his skin look even softer than before. "You have nice skin."
"I have nice skin?"
"Yeah, it's real smooth looking. Smooth and unblemished."
"Oh, you should'a seen me when I was playin' hockey," he said, "I was anything but unblemished."
"Did you have cuts and stuff all over your body?" she teased him.
"Nah, not necessarily. I've had a hockey stick thrown at my head a few times, I've gotten those ice burns on my arms and my shins—you know, those burns from rubbin' your skin on an all too smooth surface."
"Oh, yeah, those hurt like hell."
"I've also been hit with a puck so much. I got hit in the head a lot."
"What was your favorite memory of playing hockey, though?" she asked him as they reached a bend in the road.
"Favorite memory? I've got a bunch'a those. One that comes to mind is all the times I played it in my parents' front yard with my friends and I would hit the puck so hard that it'd go flying to a nearby neighbor's house. God, we broke so many windows."
Sam chuckled at that, and she shifted her weight yet again. There was a bit of extra pressure on that one knee, which made it ache over her ankle. It was better than the pain in her ankle, but at the same time, she need not be in any more pain.
"You know, I was almost semi professional at one point," he piped up again.
"Really?"
"Oh, yeah. Still got my jersey, too! But the thing is it was either going to be that or go into music, and I had too much love for music, and I think my parents knew that, too. They knew I was too passionate about music and so I took up the drums and singing full time. I learned to sing by listening to records and trying to match up with the singers. I would sing to the Beatles and also to Led Zeppelin and Journey."
"Explains your powerful voice," she remarked.
"Nah, the power just came from singin' in little clubs all over the place upstate. Your voice is a muscle—the more you work it, the stronger and more fluid it gets, and that's what happened with me."
Signs pointing to the Bronx caught their attention right then.
"Okay, now which way do I go?" he quipped with another round of drumming on the rim of the steering wheel.
Sam guided him off of the freeway and into that familiar neighborhood. Charlie and Marla's car was nowhere to be seen by the curb in front of their complex. Joey parked right in front of the staircase and he switched off the car.
"How ya doin'?" He knitted his eyebrows together and his expression turned serious. "Like, how's your leg doin'?"
"Sore still," Sam confessed. I might need a little help getting out..."
"Okay." Joey unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out to the cool spring night. He rounded the front of the car and opened the door for her. He held his hand out for her and, once she moved her leg out to the sidewalk, she managed to climb out of the seat on her own. Her ankle throbbed in agony and her knee ached from holding it still for so long; he grabbed her purse and then he offered to help her up the steps.
"I think I got it," she assured him, "but thank you, though." She remembered the stairs inside of the building.
Indeed, once they reached the stairwell, Joey turned to her with his eyebrows raised.
"You want me to help ya?" he sweetly offered her.
"Uh—let's see..." Sam gripped onto the banister and she took one step up. She leaned forward so as to take the pressure off of her leg. Joey followed right next to her: he was slender enough that he could slip past her and wait for her a few steps up. Sam's ankle and her knee ached a bit from the stairs, but her leaning forward helped. She peered up at him every so often, at his round little face above her; he guided her up the stairs even when he never touched her once.
Once they reached her place, she took her keys out of her purse and she led him into the cozy apartment.
"Nice li'l place you've got here," he remarked as he shut the door behind him.
"It's not much, but it's home to me," she told him as she lay her purse down on the couch. Sam then turned to him as he unzipped his jacket, which in turn showed off a small sliver of his chest.
"So where's this journal?" he asked her.
"It's—in my room," she sputtered. "Curious?"
"Very much so. I wanna see what Frankie and Charlie are going so ape shit over." Sam gave her dark hair a toss back with a flick of her head and she ambled into her bedroom for the art journal in question, which she had left plunked open on the desk. The man with the stripe in his hair stared back at her with intent, such that it made her jump back a bit.
She soon recalled that Joey knew nothing about the secret drawings she made with Frank, or anything she told about Charlie. He only knew there was a sketchbook she composed to hand in for art school. Indeed, she lunged for the book and swiped it off of her desk. The very second she cradled the journal in her hands, an idea crossed her mind. Joey in the light against the blackness of the night.
She picked out one of the medium graphites from her desk drawer, and she headed out of her room and back to Joey, who had taken his seat on the couch and spread his narrow thighs apart. He turned his attention to her and showed her a sweet little smile.
"This is going to sound so dumb, but—do you mind if I sketch your face?"
Joey knitted his eyebrows together at that, but he never said anything.
"I just think about how you looked when we were driving up here," she confessed, "I wanna transscribe your facial features onto the paper here."
"You want me to serve as your model?" He cracked her a smile at her again, to which she shrugged.
"Again, if you don't mind. I just wanna draw your side profile, too. It's not like I'm asking you to take your clothes off."
He relaxed his facial expression and he showed her a slight nod. She nibbled on her bottom lip and she took a seat next to him on the couch.
"Here—just hold still," she advised him, "like—look forward so I can see you from the side." He did just that and he hunched his shoulders as well.
"No, no, no—just relax."
"Sorry, I've—I've never done this before." He lowered his shoulders and moved forward. He straightened his spine so his hair could sprawl over his shoulders and his upper back. The fact he unzipped his jacket meant less work for her.
Sam opened the journal to a fresh new page, albeit one right after the mysterious man in her dreams. She rested the hard cover of the book on her lap and she held the pencil near the tip to put the graphite down with ease; they were in far better lighting in comparison to the lights on the freeway and thus she could better make out his features. She eyed his side profile, from the straight shape of his nose to the slightly full curve of his lips to the soft brown shade of his skin.
It was a quick sketch, but one she made down to the fine little ringlets over his temple and over his forehead. At one point, she held the pencil near the top so she could better shade in his skin and his brown eyes. Given he had brown skin in comparison to Frank's pale complexion, she put down a bit more graphite on the shadows. But much like Frank and Charlie, his hair had so much texture but she wondered if the admissions office would be fickle over something as trivial as the split ends of a young man's hair. But she put extra pressure on some parts of the curls to give them depth. She moved quickly given she had no idea about Joey's schedule or if he had to be anywhere that evening. She rounded out the drawing with her signature and then she showed it to him.
"Holy shit," he muttered with a gasp.
"I think I've got a bunch of good stuff right here at the moment," she confessed to him.
"And I have a feeling I'm going to be showing up more in your world," he added with a smirk on his face. "You're quite good. Even if those admissions people don't even see it for themselves, I can tell you that."
"And you've been put onto paper!" she declared.
"And I've been put onto paper, too, yeah! That's an honor to me. It's a pleasure to be on paper."