deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 53: name changes

"live fast, die young, bad girls do it well.
live fast, die young, bad girls do it well.
chain hits my chest when i'm banging on the dash,
chain hits my chest when i'm banging on the radio.
get back, get down, pull me closer if you think you can hang."
-"bad girls", m.i.a.

Such a strange feeling it was to turn the page on what apparently was a big year for everyone, not just for Sam. It seemed like everyone had put out an album, and Anthrax were ahead of the curve of it all having done it the year before. Add to this, as the final minutes wound down for the year, she knew that Legacy would be ahead of something for themselves. The five of them seemed to be all in a world of their own. A little cluster of outsiders and yet she found herself drawn to them, perhaps more so than Anthrax—and the five of them had helped her settle into the city.
But she and Belinda were seeing them from the very beginning, right when Alex left school and spread his wings to join the rest of the adults in the room. The sun set over Finger Lakes and the lake effect itself followed. Sam and Belinda both nestled down next to Joey there in a corner of the restaurant: nothing better to do than to spend New Year's with him. He seemed to miss the fact that Legacy were on the far side of the room, and it helped that they were all men with long inky black hair down past their shoulders. They all looked the same and seemed the same to each other, and it helped that they had tucked themselves away into the shadow.
If only she could find her escape to them.
She could run over to them when Joey wasn't looking, but then again, she had no real reason to do that. Joey put his arm around her and held her close to the side of his body. He had a soft delicate musk on the side of his neck and his soft touch only brought her closer to him and his warm sweet body. Not a single bad bone in there, especially if the encounter with Genie was anything to go by. Every so often, he flashed her that lopsided grin and squeezed her a little bit, too: like a young boy with a teddy bear. He was a friend to her: she had no reason to leave.
But she still wanted to be closer to Legacy, and she didn't want Joey to get into another fight with them. There had to be a reason for him to leave, to lean closer to Belinda, who had gotten herself a glass of wine for the New Year. She noticed that glass of gentle white wine and she wondered where the rest of the bottle had gone off to.
Sam thought about the few times she tried to get Joey away from alcohol, but she needed an excuse and a way out.
"Would you like a glass of wine?" Belinda offered him at one point, and she tipped the glass closer to him.
"Oh, no, I'm tryin' to stay away from that," he told her, and he showed Sam another little smile. His cheekbones filled out like little apples and a twinkle emerged in those large brown eyes: she brought her gaze to the crown of his head, and the sight of those rich black curls up there, and she thought about running her fingers through all of them, from the front of his head all the way to the back. To feel their coarseness and their softness: she could tell they were soft.
Indeed, she thought about caressing that smooth skin on his face. Her fingers all along that gentle skin. She had gotten him away from those horrible habits, and she got her wish that he would stay away from it. But there was Belinda right next to them with that glass of white wine. She took a sip of it and, without even stopping to think for a second, Sam extended her arm towards her.
"What's up—oh, you want some, Sam?" she teased her.
"I just wanna try it," Sam quipped. "You know. See what it's like."
"It's not too strong." Belinda handed her the glass with a mischievous look on her face and she kept it right under Joey's nose. He took a glimpse down at the glass but he never moved. She took the glass and took a sip for herself. Light and delicate, indeed: but once it hit her tongue, the back of her mouth dried out a bit.
She almost skirted the glass around Joey's chest back to Belinda: he took another glimpse down at it. She had no idea if it was the alcohol itself already working its dirty tricks, but she swore she could hear Legacy themselves on the other side of the room. Over all the chitter chatter, she could pick up their voices, and she knew that whenever Alex opened his mouth, she could listen in on him and his big distinct voice. She leaned her head back a bit for a better listen to what was going on behind her.
"Kinda wish we still had those long black cloaks with us," Greg confessed. "So we can walk around here and spook the hell out of people."
"Halloween was a two months ago, though, Greg," Louie was saying.
Belinda said something to Joey and he leaned in closer a bit to better hear her. At that point, Sam could peer around the corner for a look at them there in the corner. Indeed, Alex himself was nestled back in the corner of their booth. He was silent still. Every other time she had encountered Alex, he seemed so far away and distant from everything. If they were in a world of their own, but he was more so in a world of his own.
She thought about the time she and Cliff were together on the sidewalk and Alex had kept his spot there in the window. Such an unknown and such that he frightened her a bit, but she wanted to uncover him. She wanted to know what exactly made that boy tick. But she couldn't do it with Joey right there next to her.
"Hey, and there's Chuck," Joey said out of the blue, albeit in a flat tone.
Indeed, Sam turned her attention to the front of the restaurant, and there was Chuck himself, wrapped in a heavy dark sweater and fitted black jeans at the front door: his long dark hair spread mostly over his right shoulder and looked as though he had just soaked it in some cold water. He nodded at the three of them there posted up at the wall, and she hoped that he wouldn't bring attention to them, or to Legacy on the other side of the room there.
He flashed Sam a wink and a sly smile as he walked on past her. If only she could see inside of his mind as he breezed past with that smell of fresh new soap upon his head and shoulders, but he never said anything. She could only assume that he remembered about the incident, and he seemed quick to get over to his band tucked back in the far corner of the room. Indeed, Joey never saw where he was going, but he did return to Belinda and the glass of wine.
"Did you see where the bottle had gone off to?" he asked her. Sam took a glimpse over at Belinda and the befuddled look upon her face.
"I didn't, no. Why?"
The two girls watched his facial expression, which up to that point was soft and friendly: he then hardened and became focused on something. Something that neither of them wanted to know. He nibbled on his bottom lip and he brought his attention to Sam.
"Wait right here," he told her in a flat tone of voice. Before she could object to it, he lunged away from their corner and he went off in search of that wine bottle. Belinda turned to her with a wounded look on her doll-like face.
"What did I do?" she asked Sam.
"I don't think you did anything, Bel," she assured her, "especially since he said that to me, not you."
She peered over her shoulder again, and she caught the sight of Chuck taking a seat right across the table from Alex. If she didn't know better, she swore they were playing poker over there. She returned to Belinda. She had to think fast because Joey was going to be back there soon enough. She had asked Belinda to do only a couple of things at that point: she owed her one at that point.
"Do you wanna make twenty bucks?" was all she could think of.
"Do I wanna make twenty bucks? Hell yeah, I wanna make twenty bucks."
"Okay—I want you to cover for me. If you can fend off Joey for a bit while I go hang out with them over there, I'll give you twenty bucks."
"Why should you get to hang out with them?" Belinda demanded.
"Because I'm the one working with the label," Sam pointed out. "They need me, and I quite frankly need them."
"But I sat in with you."
"Ah, you sat in with me on a jam session from them. We got to hear them jam something out, but they didn't record anything yet."
"What if they do, though?"
"What do you mean 'what if'?" Sam was taken aback by that a bit. "They're going to do it in the next couple of days, Bel."
"Yeah, but—what if we did get to hear them record something, though?" Belinda clarified.
"You wanna sit in on a recording session," she said in a flat tone of voice.
"If it's not too much to ask."
"Bel, I'm just the assistant—I'd have to tell Aurora about it and everything."
"You can do it, though, can you?"
"I think so?" Sam was reluctant and yet she acted from the seat of her pants there. Anything to get her over to that corner of the room.
"Well, if you can do it, I'll give you twenty bucks," Belinda continued. "That's just part of making a bet, I would think."
"Double or nothing, you can sit it in with me and draw while they perform," Sam hit back. "Gonna tell you this right now, just from my sitting in with Stormtroopers—it's a long and tedious process."
"Ooh, well—double or nothing, you go over there and get signatures from each of them for me."
"Okay—do you have something for those five dicks over there to sign, though?"
"I don't. You can get them to do it on a napkin, though."
"When I got that signature from Alex courtesy of Cliff, he did it on a piece of rice paper. I think we can work something out over there. So, double or nothing, you come in with me and your drawing pad while they record their debut. The flipside is I get you those signatures."
"Deal." Belinda extended her hand for her to take: she had a much firmer grip than Sam had anticipated so when she let go, she shook her hand about for a few seconds.
She then bowed away and scurried across the floor: right before she reached the table, Louie nodded at her. Chuck turned his head and his face lit up at the sight of her.
"Hey! There's our little Sammich!" Greg clapped his hands and she hovered next to Chuck, who put his arm around her hip. Alex lowered his glass of water and shot her a steely gaze. He looked so odd without that little pearl right over his brow but she knew those deep set eyes. She would never forget them: his entire head could go gray and she would still recognize those deep eyes.
"Sam, I'm glad you showed up because I have an announcement to make for all of us," Eric told her. "I literally just remembered it with you being there next to Chuck."
"Oh?" She raised her eyebrows at him.
"Right before we left and came over here, the phone in there rang and I answered it. It was Aurora. She told me that there is in fact another band down in New Orleans called Legacy and they had copyrighted the name so we have to change names now."
"Oh, shit," Chuck remarked.
"Yeah, that's what I said! So now we have to get it changed before the new year starts. Just to what is beyond me."
"What does that mean for the fan club, though?" Sam asked him.
"It'll still be the same just with a totally different name." Eric tilted his head to the side a bit. "Did you happen to eat by any chance?"
"Yeah, I did—but not a lot, though." She thought about the bottle of wine Joey sought after and the forty dollars on the line between her and Belinda. Nowhere on the table did they have cloth napkins, but there was a spare chair at the table off to the side of them. She peered to the other side of the room, where Belinda still stayed in her spot with that glass of wine.
"We're gonna be here a while," she told Eric with a raise of her eyebrow.
"Might as well chill with us for that while then," he insisted with a gesture to the table behind her.
Sam tugged the chair up to the side of the table and took her seat next to Chuck. Cliff was gone and she had no other choice but to move on into the New Year with these men, just so long as Joey didn't catch her in the act. They were her new friends but she needed to keep them to herself. All to herself, much like how she kept Anthrax all to herself. As far as her parents knew, the only friends she had made were the four girls. And there, in that corner of the restaurant, the four girls didn't have anything to do with these five men.
Something all to herself for once. Something all to herself as her form of solitude for once.
She told them that she needed something to drink, and so Chuck asked the waitress for a glass of ice water. She told them about the bet she had made with Belinda and it brought a laugh out of both Greg and Louie, but she never mentioned Joey's presence.
"Belinda is such a doll, man," Greg remarked as he took a sip from his coffee mug.
"She's a bundle of contradictions. Bit of an enigma if I'm perfectly honest. When I first met her through my friend Marla—you know, Charlie's girlfriend—I thought she was like this gentle little thing. But she isn't, though: she's a total prankster and a worker bee to boot." All the while, Alex kept himself still with his fingers rested upon the base of his glass: she took a glimpse right under the table at his long lanky legs and she thought about the times she had seen him. He was so close to her and yet he seemed so far away, especially when he bowed his head a little bit and his bangs spread a little more over his eyes.
These heavy metal guys were always so kind to their female fans, but they were something else. They acted as though they had known her for years on end.
The six of them there on the side of the room with water and coffee, and Eric offered to buy her a sandwich and some fries at one point given she hadn't really eaten anything at that point. Right before midnight and before the ball dropped in New York City, Sam had forgotten about Belinda and Joey on the other side of the room. That is, until Louie brought it up again.
"So if you give her our autographs, you'll make twenty bucks off of her?"
"Forty bucks," Sam corrected him.
"Forty bucks, that was it!"
She thought back to the night of Halloween and right before Day of the Dead, and how he acknowledged Zelda, and she wondered what went through his mind then.
"Been meaning to ask you this, Lou: how're you dealing with the break up, by the way?"
"Oh, I've long moved on from it," he told her. "Zelda and I are still on good terms—like she called me just the other day to tell me Merry Christmas. But I do think she has her moments, though."
"Yeah, she definitely did for a bit. But that's good to know that you guys are still friendly to each other, though."
"Kinda have to be, you know? You don't wanna go through life being hard on someone because of some dumb shit. You gotta direct your anger to something else."
"Like drums?" she asked him with a smile on her face.
"Like drums, right!" Louie then froze right in his tracks. "Wait a minute, what time is it?"
"It's almost midnight, I think?" Greg replied, to which he peered down at his wristwatch. "Yeah, five minutes to midnight."
"I think the restaurant itself closes at midnight," Eric said, "I think, anyways. We haven't come out here since the Stormtroopers tour."
"But Happy New Year, gentlemen," Sam declared as she raised her glass up.
"Happy New Year!" Chuck proclaimed with a raise of his glass.
"Happy New Year," Alex echoed in a near whisper: such a deep voice and yet it came out of him so softly right there. He raised his water glass and the six of them made a toast to the brand new year 1987.
But the restaurant was in fact closing right then, and thus, the six of them made their way out of there and into the cold black night. Sam spotted Belinda at the curb with her hand on Joey's upper back. Greg made a joke about something and that brought a laugh out of Eric and Alex both, the latter of whom had a big hearty laugh, one as big as his own voice, and it took Sam off guard a bit. But she returned to Belinda and Joey at the curb: she could tell Joey had a bit from that wine bottle because he staggered forward on the black pavement a bit. On one hand, it got her a chance to hang out with Legacy. But on the other hand, she wanted him to stop with the drinking.
"Hang on, guys—I have to take care of something," she told them.
"It's alright, we ain't goin' anywhere, Sammich," Chuck assured her, and she jogged over to Belinda and Joey before they reached the halfway point of the street. She sauntered up to Belinda's side, and she turned to her and jumped a bit.
"Oh, hey! I was just thinking about you."
"Huh?" Joey's speech slurred a bit.
"It's okay, Joey—I was just talking to Sam about something."
"What did you do?" Sam was shocked but she also wanted to laugh.
"It's not important," Belinda promised her as they reached her car there in that little alleyway.
"It kinda is, Bel," Sam pointed out as they stood before the back end of the car for a moment. Joey kept on going to the passenger side door. Belinda then fetched up a sigh and the cold white clouds billowed out from her mouth in the wake of the sharp cold around them.
"Okay, I need to tell you right now that it wasn't me," she began in a low voice, "I swear to you, Sam. It wasn't me. My hand on Cliff's ashes that it wasn't me. Okay, I tried to get him to stop at one glass just to keep him busy but the next thing I knew, he had downed half the bottle."
Sam gasped, and she brought a hand to her mouth to keep herself from screaming, or puking. But Belinda kept calm all the while.
"Again. I tried to get him to stop but he just kept on going. I'm glad you weren't able to see it, Sam. But—" They turned into Joey's direction and he set a hand on the back door of the car to steady himself. He stayed still for a moment, and one long enough for them to keep talking.
"—but I'll take him home, don't sweat it," she told her in a low voice. "Where does he live, by the way?"
"He lives out in Camillus. You know where that is?"
"Yeah..." Belinda squinted her eyes at that.
"Right hand turn once you reach the art shop," Sam continued.
"Okay. Sit tight with those boyos over there—I'll be right back." She watched Belinda round the back of the car, but she stopped right in her tracks, and she looked back at Sam and the wounded look on her face. She still had that same hurt expression from when she made that joke about Alex in front of Marla and Charlie.
"Again. I tried."
"It's okay—I do, too," Sam assured her, and she stepped forward and she put her arms around Belinda. "Be safe."
"I still need to give you your Christmas present, too," she added.
"My birthday's coming up though, on the twenty first—make it for that instead."
"Oh, perfect!" Belinda gave her another hug and then she doubled back to the driver's seat. "Guess I owe you forty bucks now, too?"
And Sam laughed at that.
"Nah, take your time with that," she told her with a wave of a hand.
"I don't deserve you, Sam," Belinda replied with a shake of her head: in the dim yellow light from inside the car, Sam could catch faint glimmers embedded in her blonde hair. Joey sputtered something from the front seat and she raised her eyebrows at Sam.
"Please be safe," she repeated, and Belinda climbed in behind the wheel. She turned away and returned to the five men across the street.
"Everything okay?" Eric asked her.
"Oh, yeah. Bel just had an emergency to address. I guess I get to hang out with you guys for a bit longer."
"Alright!" Louie declared, and they doubled back yet again to the studio in the trees. Sam couldn't remember anything after that and she had fallen asleep somewhere in there. It was well after midnight and she hadn't realized how tired she felt until they returned inside the safety and the warmth of the place.
She swore she felt something warm and soft next to her, like a teddy bear or better yet another body. Her fingers groped around for his hair, for his jet black hair, but she couldn't find him anywhere. The mysterious man struck again and he left her hanging yet again.
She awoke on the couch in the back room rather than her own bed. She gazed up at the dark ceiling overhead: next to her was a soft snoring, and she rolled her head over the lumpy pillow. Chuck and Alex both had fallen asleep on the floor across from her: the former looked to be laying on the floor, where the latter had found something that resembled to a sleeping bag and he had burrowed inside of there; his black hair spread over his face and those deep eyes, now hidden away with sleep. It was right there he looked so soft and even more boyish than before. Meanwhile, Chuck lay there with his hands folded over his chest and his hair fanned out from his head. It was right there he resembled to an actual Indian, even without a headdress of any sort.
Sam thought about Joey and the horrible hangover he was possibly waking up to. She hoped he was okay. She hoped Belinda got him back home in one piece, and she hoped she could make it there in time.
And the sound of her voice in the front room there brought her to ease.
"—I stayed with him all night," she was telling them. "There was no way I was gonna leave him there. When he woke up, I came back here. Anyways—what were you guys telling me? If it's not too much to ask."
"Our new name," Eric replied in a broken voice. "When Sam wakes up, we'll tell her about it. She's gotta know about it especially, because she's assistant to Aurora. Or we can totally bypass her because she's the assistant." He then let out an exasperated sigh. "God, we came up with a great name last night but we were all on the verge of falling asleep at that point. What the hell was it?"
"I wish we wrote it down," Greg confessed.
"Wait a minute, remember what Billy suggested to us a while back?" Louie spoke up.
"Vaguely. It was like two years ago, but I don't really remember it."
"Someone wrote it down?"
"I don't think so. God damn it! What was it?"
"Call Billy," Greg told him.
"Call Billy? Right now? Greg, it's five in the morning."
"He's been on the road before, Eric—he's gotta be up right about now."
Eric sighed again. "Alright, where's the phone in here?"
Sam held perfectly still with one ear on Chuck's soft snoring and the other ear on Eric shuffling around in the next room.
"Ah! Here it is." She could hear the buttons on the phone and him grumbling to himself. There was a pause, and then—
"Billy! Hey, man—what was that name you suggested to us a couple of years ago?"
Silence. And then—
"Testament! That was it. Yeah, we just got approached by the label telling us that there is in fact another band called Legacy—they're a rhythm and blues group, actually, and they trademarked the name." Another pause.
"Yeah—Yeah, I know! But yeah, thanks, man. We'll run that by Aurora when we see her."
Eric hung up the phone right there.
"We got our name, now," he declared. "Let's wake up Sam and tell her the news."
"I almost feel like she and I are kinda like bad girls at the moment," Belinda confessed.
"Why?" Eric asked her with a chuckle.
"Because she and I are sitting in while Aurora's out in California. She's the one with the label, where Sam's the assistant and I'm the assistant's friend."
"I'd rather you be bad girls than good ones," Louie told her.
"Yeah, me, too," Eric assured her as his footsteps moved in closer to the doorway there. Sam herself meanwhile, closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep again. But what a way to start off the new year with two bands around her, and one that she watched plant their seeds in the ground. She was about to watch them go forth on their own terms there in upstate New York.
Not as Legacy, but as Testament.