deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 54: a hole in the wall

The winter term started for Sam and Marla both, but the former was fixated on her travels with Aurora upstate on the weekends for all the sit ins with Testament and their recording sessions. The latter meanwhile had her hands firmly in the thick of her junior year, such that Sam saw her one time in the duration of that first week, and she looked to be in a hurry as she headed off to her new class. Her iridescent orange hair always glimmered whenever she strode onward on the other side of the corridor.
But Belinda was kind enough to stand in with her, especially since they spent their art classes together, and she had befriended Eric and Greg in particular. She usually had to head on out to Poughkeepsie around Friday afternoons for the glass work, and she proved herself to be quite the friend to Sam in the meantime.
"I had my doubts about you, Bel," she confessed to her at one point as they drove out to Ithaca on that first Friday. "You seemed a little rough around the edges when I first met you."
"That's just my sense of humor, though—I've always tried to be a clown of sorts. Marla herself can tell you that, too. Some people just don't get it or seem to realize that some girls like to be kinda out there at times. Marla was one of the few people who understood that."
"By the way, have you talked to her at all?" Sam asked her with a glimpse over at her.
"Who, Marla?"
"Yeah. I feel like I haven't seen her in a million years."
"Mar may have switched majors. I haven't seen her on the roster for any of your art classes lately. Well, Charlie's gonna be out here, too, with—what's their new name again?"
"Testament."
"Testament, that was it. Anthrax are gonna be out here with them, too. We'll have to talk to him when we get a chance."
"Good idea." As the words left Sam's lips, she thought about Joey being in the next room from them. She hoped that he would at the very least keep his distance from them, but she also hoped that she could have a moment with him. If there was one thing she couldn't stop think about, it was the fact that he had woken up in a new year with a bad hangover. She was supposed to keep him away from that.
The snow had continuously fallen over upstate New York and in its wake it left behind a thick pearly blanket, as pure white as the full moon itself when it poked its head out from behind the clouds at night. The clouds meanwhile had spread over the afternoon sun and Sam and Belinda found themselves surrounded by a sheer wonderland: the trees drooped a bit from the heavy weight of the fresh snow so they resembled to the drawings one would find in an animation book. Indeed, Sam got to thinking about expanding her art more into the more natural side of things: they were often out in the wilderness, and she could see herself and Belinda going out there even more for most of that quarter. She may as well take her pencils, graphite and colored, and go forth into a trail she had not yet found, and with Anthrax and Testament on either side of her in the mean time.
She peered down at her waist for a moment: she had lost a little weight over the Christmas break but she knew those new gentle curves were there to stay. She couldn't help but think of Joey and that little encounter they had had in his apartment a couple of months before. Even though he wanted to stop those habits, she could see it in his eyes. He wanted more from her, but she couldn't bring herself to it with him.
"So what do you reckon we could cover upon on these more advanced drawing classes?" she asked Belinda when they spotted the signs for Ithaca in time.
"No idea—it's kind of new to me, too, so it's anyone's guess. I'm thinking more technique and expanding more on your styles."
"Good, 'cause—" Sam stopped as she searched for the right words for herself. "—I'm kind of itching to do more with my art. I feel like I have to expand on it."
"Well, you got your style—that smooth, weirdly delicate, and real stark style that you can see from clear across the room—"
"I have the technique down—sort of," she confessed with a shrug of her shoulders.
"It'll be covered for this term. By the way, I still owe you forty bucks."
"Again, take your time. Did you bring your art stuff with you?"
"Well, yeah—you and I are both art students, we might as well bring our stuff with us."
Soon they rolled into Ithaca, and the sight of the big glassy black waters of Finger Lakes penetrated the blanket of white snow all around them. At one point, Aurora had described the studio of choice as "a hole in the wall", given it stood off to the side in the heart of those tall trees.
When she opened the door for Sam and Belinda, she had put a handmade sign on the front panel for them to see.
"Welcome to the hole in the wall," she read aloud.
"It's 'Over the Wall', Aurora," Eric called from the back of the room. "We've got a song called 'Over the Wall'."
"It still makes sense," Sam pointed out as she and Belinda made their way inside. Off to the left side was a small row of chairs: she recognized the slim black haired woman in the one closest to them, even with a heavy puffy jacket in lieu of her drum sticks.
"Hey, Zelda!" Sam greeted her. "What brings you here?"
"I wanted to know what was all the hubbub over here," she confessed as she adjusted the hood on her jacket, and then she reached down to smooth out the wrinkles in her dark flannel pants. "I literally just got here, too." Louie stepped into the room right then with his gloves already on his hands. He halted right in his tracks and watched her with his eyebrows raised up.
"Hi," Zelda greeted him in a soft voice.
"Hi—how are you?" Louie asked her, also in a soft voice.
"I'm doing well—about to fly out to California to talk to Zetro about something. What's all this here?"
"New album, finally. Think we might make some videos for ourselves, too."
"Cool, cool."
"How're your girls doing?"
"We just got back from a leg of a tour with Metallica."
"Awesome!" Louie strode over to her and gave her a high five.
"Yeah—yeah! It was unreal, Lou. And it couldn't have come at a better time for us, either. I thought we were done and then Aurora swooped in with a second chance and she saved our asses."
Aurora then returned to the room with the clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other. The five of them congregated right before them like a small group of school boys.
"Okay, so final line up for Testament, originally Legacy is Chuck Billy on vocals—"
"Aqui." Chuck himself shook his dark hair about, one side of which was spread right across his face and made him appear much more Indian than Sam had known, and a bit more than Joey, a half Iroquois man. She wondered which tribe he was a part of as Aurora kept at it with the roll call.
"—Eric Peterson and Alex Skolnick on guitars—"
"Right here," Eric replied, to which Alex made a pretty little wave with two fingers.
"—Greg Christian on bass—"
"Hi!" Greg himself almost stumbled forward at the sound of his own name.
"—and Louie Clemente, not Mike Ronchette, on drums."
"Yes'm." Louie put his hands behind his back, and Zelda set one elbow up on the back of her chair.
"I dunno why they kept telling me it was Mike, but I kept saying, 'no, it's Louie. It's Louie Louie!'" That brought a laugh out of all of them. "Anyways, I'm Aurora Young, here with my assistant Samantha Shelley, who's also a fan club member, along with Belinda Grimes and Zelda Carmichael, the latter of whom is with Rhode Island hardcore band Cherry Suicides. Sam and I are with the label—the producer himself should be coming here literally any minute now."
"And the two of us have been sworn to secrecy," Zelda added.
"And Zelda and Bel have been sworn to secrecy to not tell anyone about this new album whatsoever. Friends of the band are always sworn to secrecy. Alright, gentlemen! Get in your positions in the room here and we'll get started."
Before they could head inside of the sound proof room, Sam tapped on Chuck's shoulder.
"I keep meaning to ask you this, too—what Native American tribe are you?"
"I'm Pomo. Buncha basket weavers all along the coast in Nor Cal. The other side of me is Mexican."
"Hence the 'Sammich' reference," she followed along with a nod of her head.
"Right, exactly! Native American like Joey."
"He's Iroquois, right?"
"That's actually close to being right," he clarified. "Iroquois is the nation—I think he's either Onondaga or Cayuga, actually."
"Oh, I see. So even he doesn't really know."
"I think so," Chuck confessed with a light toss of his fine dark hair. "But, still. You've got two Native American singers walking on either side of you, dear li'l Sammich."
That brought a light chuckle out of her and then Eric called him into the sound proof room. Sam watched him go inside there with the four of them, and all she could think about right then was Joey himself. They were going to be another room there in the hole in the wall and she hoped that he would stay with them in there.
Aurora guided her, Belinda, and Zelda to the vast sound board, which was right underneath a wide pane of glass. Louie took his seat behind his drum kit and Greg sat right next to him with a big black bass guitar cradled on his lap: his dark hair spread down on one side of his face as he plucked those big heavy strings for a little bit. Alex and Eric took their seats on stools right behind him, and Chuck stood before a microphone on the far right side there. A bare, wide open room that needed to be separated off from itself so they could clearly record themselves without bleeding of any sort.
"Oh, man, I'm getting so many flashbacks to Stormtroopers right now," Sam told Belinda. "Except they did that in like a kitchen. Charlie was crammed back into a corner and Scott and Danny were right in front of him, and Billy just kinda sat there with the microphone in hand, and they recorded off an old disc player."
"Hey, Aurora, you want us to jam for a bit?" Chuck asked her through the microphone.
"Yeah, go ahead!"
"See how we play off of each other in here—"
Louie tapped his drum sticks together three times and he came down on his snare. He led the way for Greg, Eric, and Alex, the latter of whom had put on a pair of matte black headphones and they pushed down his bangs a bit more so they hid his eyes from view. Even with the door closed, the wall of sound could not be contained in there.
"Jesus," Zelda muttered as she tucked her hands into her coat pockets. "And I thought Metallica were really powerful."
Chuck held onto his headphones and bowed his head a bit. He awaited his cue. And then his voice seared through the sound proof wall, such that it caught all four girls off guard.
"Oh my god," Belinda blurted out. He pinched his eyes shut as he shrieked out the vocals: Sam thought Zetro had powerful vocals, but Chuck's were more melodic, but not nearly as melodic as Joey's voice. The perfect balance between the two mediums.
Meanwhile, Louie kept things tight behind his kit, even though his dark hair flew about like the arms of an octopus and his drums sounded like a blacksmith hammer.
Alex moved around a little bit with that white guitar nestled up close to his little body. He couldn't move much because of that big set of headphones and the amps close to him, but Sam could sense that he wanted to move around.
"So much metal that that room simply can't contain it!" Sam joked, but both she and Belinda jumped back again when all five of them yelled out "OVER THE WALL!" at one point. Chuck brought one hand to the side of his head and he still kept his eyes pinched shut. One man had enough power in his voice to bleed through those walls around him. Right over the wall.
"Jesus—Christ," Zelda stammered.
"Some day, they'll have to show you guys the raw tape tracks for Bonded by Blood—Exodus' album with Zetro," Aurora told them, completely unfazed by what was going on before her.
"OVER THE WALL!"
Louie and Greg had such a loud bark when they yelled out together. But there was Alex, still with his head bowed down over his guitar. All five of them worked together and yet they were so separate to one another.
The whole entire time, Sam thought about Metallica and she knew they were supposed to leave for their final stint of their tour soon, if they hadn't already. She thought about Jason and if he was doing alright on those brand new dates and in front of all of those large crowds. She had no idea if they had gone off to Europe yet, and if they did, she wondered how Lars was taking it. Those three men needed each other and they needed to play off of each other much like the five of them before her right there.
Alex soon stood to his feet with the white guitar pressed up against his slender little body. That jet black hair shone under the soft ceiling light of the sound proof room: Sam couldn't but see a faint sheen on the right side of his bangs that seemed extra light in comparison to the rest of his hair.
He nodded his head about so some of his hair fanned out from the back. Eric paid no attention to him in the mean time: he followed Greg and Louie's lead.
But Alex stepped forward for his solo, and Chuck backed off to let the boy in.
Louder and much more clear than the first time she had heard him live. His fingers crawled about the fret board like the legs of a spider. If Sam didn't know better, she swore he was summoning a small group of king cobras from the shadows behind him. He did it so effortlessly, as if the guitar was just another part of his body.
"Wow," Belinda breathed out, and it took a few seconds for Sam to realize that she had been holding her breath the whole entire time. She let out a long low whistle, and she kept her gaze fixated on him.
"Just incredible," Zelda remarked from right behind her.
"He makes it look so easy!" Aurora added with glee.
"I know, right?" Zelda chuckled, but Sam was silent, and she was silent long enough to overlook the clinkers he had made. Indeed, when he let go of the frets and shook his hand about as if he had been burned, she still kept her gaze fixed onto him.
"You okay, Alex?" Chuck called out to him over Eric, Greg, and Louie, all three of whom were still pulling along.
"Yeah—little too much mustard on that hot dog, though," he assured him as he shook his hand about again. Chuck laughed and then he proceeded to sing again.
Sam rubbed her eyes and she turned to Belinda, whose face had lit up at the sight before her.
"He's amazing!" she declared.
"He's in a league of his own," Sam told her.
Indeed, they were there in the hole in the wall all day long: their producer, who was also named Alex, had showed up in time so they could record the first tracks of the new album. It was much longer and far more tenuous than Sam had originally imagined: Louie had to go up first with the drum tracks and given the room was too warm, they had to shut off the heater and open all the doors so all of the warm air escaped. The four girls congregated in the front of the room, nestled down in their coats, right next to Eric and Greg, both of whom had comic books in hand.
"I gonna assume you guys got those from Charlie," Sam quipped; she remembered what she and Marla had said in that it was another art form.
"Nah, but we're all nerds, though," Eric assured her as he plunked open the book and lay it over his lap.
"We're going to Alcatraz, anyways," Greg pointed out.
"...why?" Sam raised her eyebrows at that, and she tried to stifle back a bit of laughter from that.
"Film a video. Probably for that first song you girls heard, 'Over the Wall'. Not sure yet."
Louie's kick drum pounded away in the room before them and it was all Sam could hear from behind the wall: she swore he would blow a hole through it at one point with that kick drum alone. He was tight and strong like a machine and yet he made such a big wall of chaos. How one guy could make so much racket was beyond her.
But there in that front room, they were like a bunch of kids hanging out together, with Eric and Greg and their comic books, and Zelda and Belinda seated next to them with glances over their shoulders; even though they had brought their art supplies with them, Sam still kept her eye on Belinda and her reading a comic book. She could assume it was for inspiration.
Meanwhile, Sam shivered under her jacket and she wondered where Alex had run off to in there.
"We're getting another new band in here soon," Aurora announced to them. "Guns 'N Roses—they're from California, too!"
"Think I've heard of them," Eric recalled. "Mainly the Los Angeles area, but I do remember seeing 'em in this dingy little place on the strip called Whisky A Go-Go. Real cool hard rock that's not quite like the big teased up hair that's absolutely everywhere right now, especially out that way. We oughta see them soon, if and when they go on tour themselves."
Sam rubbed her upper arms to better keep the warmth inside of her, but it was useless. No warmth to felt anywhere.
"I'm gonna take a walk, you guys," she declared at one point.
"I think Chuck and Alex did, too," Eric told her as he turned the page of his book.
"I was wondering where those two dudes ran off to," Belinda quipped, and then she set a hand on his shoulder. "No, wait, I wasn't done with that yet—"
Sam lifted the lapels of her coat and tugged the hood over her head, even though the snow had long stopped. She kept her hands by the lapels as she made her way to the street. A tap on her shoulder, and she turned to the side.
"Joey!"
"Hey, you!" he greeted her with a smile on his face. "Had a feeling that was you."
"What're you doing here? Besides, the obvious. You guys are recording."
"Oh, y'know—I was just thinkin' 'bout you. And I was also hopin' that you'd be out here with us, too."
"Yeah, I'm actually out here with Belinda, and Aurora, and Zelda, too. All five of us girls are out here except Marla."
"Yeah, I guess Marla's kinda swamped at the moment," he admitted with a shrug. "You want to grab some coffee?"
"Oh, yes, please. I'm trying to keep myself warm."
"Can't get warm, can ya?" he asked her, still with that grin on his face and that twinkle in his eye. She almost corrected him, but then she stopped herself.
"No, I can't. Get warm and get together with someone else."
"Come with me," he coaxed her, and they doubled back down the street to that one place that Stormtroopers had played on their tour almost two years ago. He shuddered inside of his coat as well, but she rounded to his side so they walked next to each other. She wondered where Chuck and Alex had gone off to there in Ithaca: it wasn't that large of a town, and thus they couldn't have gotten very far from there. She peered down at his waist, still slim and delicate despite the fair of amount of drinking she had witnessed from him. For all she knew, he only drank when they were together and not when he was alone. Maybe he did, but he never smelled of alcohol when she and him came together.
"So how bad was your hangover?" she asked him as they reached the crosswalk.
"On New Year's Day?"
"Yeah."
"Pretty bad. I couldn't hardly keep my eyes open at one point. But you know, it's one of those things that you ride out and flush out as best as you can, and just heal from that point onward." She flashed back to when Alex had a bit of acid in the back of their van. She knew that was exactly what he did when he returned home.
"Well, Joseph—I have to hand it to you for taking it in stride," she told him as they strode across the black pavement. "Just promise me that'll be the last time you'll do it, because I'm starting to worry about you a little bit."
"I know you do, Sam. It's mainly why I want to stop."
And it was right then that her thoughts couldn't hardly keep up with her mouth. All the fears she had developed out of Cliff's wake now made their way over to Joey. "Well, I worry about you drinking too much before a show one night and your voice is royally fucked. Or I worry about the worst thing ever."
"It killing me, I assume," he said, nonchalant.
"Having it kill you, right. I lost my boyfriend while on tour—I don't want to lose any of my best friends in Anthrax while they're out on tour, whether it's you, or Frankie, or Charlie, or Scott, or Danny."
He sighed through his nose and he set his hand on her upper back. The very touch of his hand brought the tears right into her eyes once again. She had no other way of expressing it to him than with her hand by her mouth to keep them back.
"C'mon—I'll start this off with a cup of coffee," he said to her in a soft voice, and he guided her inside that warm room. Chuck and Alex were nowhere to be seen, much to both her relief and her disappointment. They took a seat there at the far end of the counter and he asked for two cups of coffee. Sam tried to lean back and take her hood off at the same time, but she leaned into the wall behind her. Such a cozy corner of the room: she gazed across the floor to the opposite side, where Charlie had set up his drums for Stormtroopers in the two summers before, and she realized that a slight noise barrier formed right there in that little nook. Whoever sat there for that show as well as the ones for the Plasmatics and Motorhead must not have heard much that night.
Within time, they received their big white mugs of rich fresh coffee, and Joey was eager to pick up his and bring it close to him.
"We're in a—a hole in the wall," he sputtered.
"Just so long as you're not drinking," she pointed out.
"I won't. I can't drink much anyway—after that morning of New Year's, and I woke up hungover, I thought, 'there's no way I can do that again.' So—" He raised that white mug up to her. "—here I am."
He took a big swig of the coffee, such that it relaxed her. He closed his eyes, probably to better relish in that beany flavor.
"There it is," he said in a low voice.
"Happy New Year, Joey," she told him as she raised her mug to him.
"Happy New Year, Sam I am."
"By the way, what Indian tribe are you exactly? I know you've said Iroquois before but I recently learned that it's such a wide range of tribes that it's hard to pin down." She gingerly chose her words for him.
"Oh, I have no idea, to be honest. All I know is my mom's heritage comes from the Iroquois Nation here in upstate New York. Hence why my nickname is usually 'Injun Joe.' It's obvious I'm Native American—just what specifically is another question entirely."
"'Injun Joe'... remember when we were at the hockey rink and you made a joke about wearing a headdress for a show in the future?"
"Still plan on it," he said without hesitation.
"Yes!" She clinched her fist and then she reached her mug over to him for an official toast between them.
"To a new era, Sam," he declared. "A new era of Anthrax and the world of thrash metal, and a new era of you and me."