deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 68: art whores

After they had had their cups of coffee, and Sam took the honor of checking out of the hotel for herself, she stayed in the passenger seat next to Dan with her shirt off the whole hour long drive up to Boston. He had rolled up his otherwise short sleeves up to his shoulders, and showed off his muscular arms all the while; he also had borrowed a little rubber band from inside of the glove box; his mirrored sunglasses reflected the early morning sunlight the whole entire way up the freeway. Every so often, she took a glimpse behind her to Joey, who had propped his hair over the back of the seat so it would be up off of his neck. He squinted his brown eyes against the amber sunlight and he bowed his head a little bit from the intense glow over the continual skyline of small towns to the right.
"We're gonna swing by another hotel to pick up Frankie," Dan finally said at one point over the roar of the freeway
"Sounds good!" Sam declared as she gave her dark hair a slight toss back.
They took the next exit off of the freeway into a part of town near the Massachusetts state line: there was in fact a little hotel there and Frank stood under the exposed stone stairwell with his lush dark hair sprawled over his shoulders like the floppy ears of a dog and his mirrored sunglasses upon his face; Sam thought about Joey's old apartment at the very sight of him. He nodded at them and showed her a grin once they rolled up to the parking spot before him.
"Hey, all o' youses," he greeted them; Joey slid to the seat right behind Dan, and Frank climbed in next to him.
"I like this look, by the way," he said to Sam.
"I got hot last night," she explained with a shrug.
Joey muttered something to Frank, which brought a little chuckle out of him.
"What's goin' on back there?" Dan demanded.
"Fuhget about it," Frank said with a wave of his hand, and he buckled into the other passenger seat.
They rolled out of that spot and doubled back to the freeway for the rest of the way up to Boston.
Sam thought about what Zelda and Belinda had said the night after Cliff died, and she knew she was doing them justice by being in that car with those three men. She was headed for yet another brand new place that she never really knew about before and had only dreamed of in the past. She knew she would have to put her shirt back on at some point, but the feeling the cool coastal breeze on her chest and belly was something she hadn't done before, not even back home in California.
Within time, the skyline emerged under the amber sunlight: Sam spotted a large Cisco sign off in the distance. It seemed like the kind of place that had only cobblestones for streets and had horse carriages all around. When she peered out the window and beyond the freeway, she spotted a few alleyways down below that did in fact have those old earthy faded cobblestones all underneath the lush green oak trees. She wondered if it really was how she believed it to be once Dan took the next exit for the venue, a long low dark building called the Paradise Rock Club, nestled down in the heart of downtown about a block from the freeway: if she didn't know better, Sam swore it was movie theater, especially since the black sign over the front doors read ANTHRAX, TESTAMENT, and special guests THE CHERRY SUICIDES in large white lettering.
"This is also the very first time we're touring here, too," Dan explained as he rounded the corner to the back alleyway.
"What better way to celebrate than for a couple of dates," she exclaimed.
"Right?" Joey laughed.
"I guess this place is literally right by the college," Dan continued, "so we might be seein' a lot of people of your caliber tonight."
"I hope so," said Sam. They rolled up to the pale white back door, which hung slightly ajar for them. Once Dan killed the engine, Sam put her top back on and fixed her hair before she climbed out with them. They were alone there, but Frank rounded the back side of the car and joined up with her.
"Can I tell you something?" he started in a soft voice. "This has just been—eating at me for a while now."
Dan held the door for them, and she and Frank stepped into the cool, dimly lit back hallway first. Joey sauntered past them towards their dressing room, and then Dan followed suit.
"Hey, Joe—wait up—" he called after him, and that left Sam and Frank alone; he took off his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt collar, and then he ran a hand over his smooth crown of lush dark hair.
"What's up?" she asked him.
"Really hope you don't get mistaken for a groupie," he admitted in a soft voice.
She frowned at that. "Why's that?"
"Because groupies are often seen as whores or just women who sleep around with the band. I don't want my best friend to be seen like that."
"They won't know that, though," she said, albeit with a nervous feeling in her stomach.
"But that's always the assumption, though," Frank insisted. "You can't stop people from assuming shit about you, even when you know in your heart that it's not true. Not saying I don't want you around—not at all. I love the fact you're going to be with us for most of the summer. But what I am telling you is what you're about to see when you come along with us more and more. And if you don't believe me, let me show you what the people have been saying about your girls, the Cherry Suicides. Calling them the 'n' word, especially Morgan and Minerva; calling Rosita 'fake' because of her nails; calling Zelda a skinny bossy bitch. All kinds of nasty shit. We love and embrace our female fans, but most of our crowds don't. How have they acted with you and Marla?"
"Like... we're not even there," she recalled.
"There you go then. Again, I'm not trying to be 'that' guy, but it's just the truth. If only there was a way I could protect you from it, though."
"You can always be like, 'hey! Quit pickin' on my friend!' or something like that," she suggested, but he shrugged his shoulders.
"That's just a worry I've had," he continued. "Y'know, I see how Joey looks at you, but I just wonder who else out there looks at you and not like that, either. Like you're fresh meat for the taking." He then lifted his head to the hallway behind her, and she turned and followed his gaze.
"Even when there's duct tape on boots involved," he said, that time in a louder voice.
Zelda walked up to the door right behind them with Chuck's boots latched onto her feet: the silver duct tape glistened under the low golden lights on the ceiling, still in place after Greg stuck it on with haste and after a few shows under her belt. She had slicked her black hair back with a handful of gel and wore nothing but a stained dark red sports bra and a pair of pearly white gym shorts. Her flat toned stomach already had a layer of sweat all over.
"If I was hot, I would dress like that, too," said Sam, which brought a laugh out of both of them.
"Nah, I just put my head and body under a hose," Zelda assured her; she pushed open the door and Sam realized that was the Cherry Suicides' dressing room. "You guys wanna come in?"
"Sure!" said Sam as she followed her inside.
"I gotta get to our room, but I'll poke my head in in a bit," Frank promised her, and he kept on going to where Joey and Dan had run off to. Sam stood in the doorway for a second and she took in a whiff of the fresh incense in that little room. A vanity mirror stood on the left wall, as well as a small desk and a pair of accompanying chairs: Rosita's hats stood on a small rack on the wall opposite the door, and a long, shabby lumpy couch and a coffee table with a pitcher of water and a little wooden plate of smoldering incense right near the right wall. Zelda fixed her bra and she glanced down at the stains with a wrinkle to her nose.
"Does this thing make me look like I spilled ketchup all over myself?" she asked Sam.
"Sorta."
"Damn it. It's supposed to be fake blood—I was gonna put some on my shorts once we get closer to show time, too. We're trying to hone in a more gory image for ourselves. You know, something to make people take us a bit more seriously. We have the songs, we just need the image. You thirsty? I'm dyin' of thirst—"
Zelda then reached for a stack of paper cups on the other side of the table and took two out, one for herself and one for Sam. She poured them both some of that icy water from the pitcher and then she raised it for a toast. They both drank it down in unison.
"Frankie was just telling me about groupies and all the nonsense you girls put up with," Sam explained as she stepped inside more.
"Oh, yeah, we knew right away that was gonna happen with us," Zelda pointed out as she poured herself a second cup. "We just demand more from the people who claim to support us."
"I think it's a little harsh, though," Sam confessed.
"Absolutely!" Zelda brought the cup to her mouth and guzzled it down. "Like I remember it kinda got to me at first, but I'm a Rhode Island chick who's not a rich snob. I look up to Wendy O. Williams, Lita Ford, and Bessie Smith, and also Peter Murphy, Henry Rollins, and Iggy Pop. I gotta be tougher than toenails, so it's part of the shit sandwich we eat. In fact—you heard this from me—that's a song Rose wrote just the other day. Called 'Shit Sandwich.'"
"Is it gonna be on your new album?" Sam chuckled.
"We'll see." Zelda poured herself a third helping of ice water and then she set the pitcher back down on the coffee table and took her seat on the couch. "We have to talk to Aurora some more, and then hopefully—it's the hope, anyways—we'll be knocking on Jonny Z's door soon." She took a small sip from the cup and crossed her right leg over her left knee. "That's how Testament did it."
"Do you guys have a manager at all?"
"Who, us? You're looking at her." Zelda flashed her a wink, and then she stopped in her tracks, and a grin crossed her face. "Why? You wanna do our dirty deeds for us?"
"I'd have to do it plus school, though," said Sam, to which Zelda shook her head.
"It's not hard—you just have to pick up the phone and shake hands with people. You gotta have a tough skin to do it, too—I mean, you saw us struggle."
"Oh, yeah, definitely." They fell into silence for a moment, and then Sam spoke again.
"How do you cope with it?"
"What, the struggle?" Zelda asked her once she took another sip.
"Yeah."
"I usually like to poke fun at it. And the three of them do, too—like I said, Rosita wrote a song a few days ago about it called 'Shit Sandwich.' That's just our sense of humor: to be dark and bleak but not over the top with it. We make fun of the struggle because we're part of it."
"You know, Aurora and I formed a bit of a duo called the 'art vixens'."
"The art vixens?" Zelda smirked at that.
"Yeah, 'cause she thinks Joey has his eye on me and now she's married to Emile. We're like the vixens now."
"It's funny, before the wedding, like back when you guys were shopping for dresses, I actually got to talking to Belinda and she told me she liked our name. And I was like, 'thank you, that's real cool of you.' 'Cause our name is very love it or hate it, you know?"
"Oh, yeah, definitely."
"I told her it's akin to a woman stabbing herself in the chest, or a virgin sacrificing herself. And then she made a joke about cherries after that, and I started callin' her Miss Cherry 'cause of it."
"So the cherries and the vixens," Sam said.
"Together, we can be the 'art whores'!" Zelda declared.
"The art whores?" Sam burst out laughing.
"Yeah!" Zelda laughed along with her. "Yeah—you, me, Aurora, and Bel. You and Aurora are the vixens. Bel and I will be the cherries. The four of us collectively are the art whores."
She drank down the rest from the cup, and then Sam helped herself to some more.
"I gotta get you to hang out with Testament more," Zelda told her in a low voice.
"I partied with them over New Year's," Sam recalled.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah, when they were preparing to record upstate. I got to join them all the way 'til midnight."
"You gotta do it more, though. Even though Louie and I are broken up, they are literally the coolest dudes. Chuck and Eric are especially nice to Minerva and Morgan, mainly 'cause they're Hispanic boys and they're a couple of black girls, but they're our neighbors, though. I mean, Chuck lent me his boots for god's sake. And another case in point is Louie is still a really good friend to me. He'll call me once in a while and ask me how things are doing. He called me over Christmas and on my birthday. We just—can't really be a couple is all." Her face fell a little bit upon saying that but she shrugged it off.
"Even Alex?" Sam asked her as she knitted her eyebrows together and took another sip of water.
"Alex is kinda standoffish—and skittish even—I mean, you saw the way he acted towards me when you ladies were shoppin' for dresses—but it's only because he's still breaking in his shoes. I mean, he graduated high school not even a year ago. Graduated and now he's on a lengthy tour with us and the five dicks from Manhattan—well, four of them are, anyways, unless Joey has another place that we don't know about. But he's a good kid, though, Sam. I promise you." She paused for a second. "I think he's talked about you a little bit. I think—I haven't heard full conversations, but I have heard him mention you a bit before."
"Who, Alex?"
"Yeah, he calls you 'Cliff's girl.' You know, 'cause you and Cliff were together. But like I said, I never really paid much attention to it so I only ever hear him mention you by the fact you're Cliff's girl." And then the smirk returned to her face. "So Joey's been keeping his eye on you?"
"Yeah, but it's—platonic, though."
Zelda squinted her eyes and she rested her elbow on top of the couch next to her.
"You sure? Because I swore that with Mr. Clemente when we first met, and then next I know, we're moving to a little place outside Narragansett together."
"Wait a minute, how'd you guys work it out, though?"
"He quit Testament for a little bit, 'bout a year. Back when they were still referred to as Legacy and like right before you came into the picture. That was how we were able to work it out for as long as we did, but then he decided to come back because, you know—I was the one paying the rent."
"So that explains why when they were about to record in that studio upstate, they had another drummer listed," Sam recalled.
"Right! Right—Mike, I think was his name?" Zelda snapped her fingers twice. "Mike—Mike—something or other. I can't remember what it was now."
"Ronchette?"
"Ronchette, yeah! Good pull with that."
The distorted sounds of a guitar floated in from the hallway behind Sam.
"Speaking of Testament, I think that's them," Zelda said with a nod of her head. "I hear them jammin' all the time. So I kinda know Eric's tone when I hear it."
Indeed, Sam leaned back a bit but she couldn't see anything. She stood in the doorway and she spotted Eric, Alex, and Greg right down the hall upon stools.
"Little bit of Mercyful Fate," Greg was saying as he plucked at his thick bass strings.
Alex leaned his back to the wall with the guitar cradled upon his lap. He kept his head bowed a bit so his bangs hid most of his eyes from view; his arms looked a little more toned and sinewy than before. His playing at such a quick and hard pace and in such a brief amount of time endowed him with much more strength. Sam tucked her hand into her pocket and she felt Cliff's pick inside of there. Maybe she was too hard on him, especially since that was how he saw her.
He lifted his head and fixed his hair, and then he gazed on at her with a grave look on his face. The corners of his mouth were turned a little bit so it looked as though he was smiling, but simultaneously wasn't, like that of the Mona Lisa. Those deep eyes seemed deeper than before; and the black hair dye was starting to fade off from his head: the plume of white over his forehead was trying to make its return, such that it looked rather ghostly over his head.
She thought about that evening in the Bay Area, where he and Greg dueled on the front porch. If only she could see that side to him again. But she had nothing to say to him. If only she could show Alex the Joey she had seen that morning. If only she could show him the other side to him, but she couldn't.
But then he bowed his head again and returned to the three man jam between him, Eric, and Greg, and she returned to Zelda, who had climbed to her feet and made her way across the room to the small fridge in the corner behind Rosita's hat rack. She took out a little fruit cup and then she gestured to one of the hats on the rack.
"D'you hear about this band called Guns 'N Roses?" she asked Sam.
"Yeah?" She vaguely recalled Eric talking about them in the few months before.
"They're awesome," Zelda said with a twinkle in her eye. "I saw them last month here in Boston—they opened up for the Stones. Completely blew them off the stage. Their lead guitarist had on this big black top hat and afterwards, he chucked it out to the audience and I caught it." She pointed at the black top hat on the part of the rack closest to her. "Gonna see if Rose wears it tonight."
"Rose with a rose from Guns 'N Roses," Sam joked, and Zelda laughed out loud at that.
The two of them hung out in the dressing room for a little while longer until Aurora bustled into the room in a white camisole and a laminated badge around her neck and a clipboard under her arm.
"I was just thinkin' about you," Sam told her.
"I was, too," Zelda joined in with a smirk on her face.
"I have some good news, some not so good news, and some bad news," Aurora said, out of breath.
"Bad news first so it's out of the way," Sam quipped, and Zelda nudged her for that.
"Okay, the bad news is the label is getting bought out, and Sam—" She fetched up a sigh. "I think you and I are gonna lose our jobs."
"Oh, no!" Sam gasped.
"Oh, shit!" Zelda gasped with her, and they looked on at each other.
"I hope Marla finds a place to live in Hell's Kitchen because I don't wanna be stuck in the Bronx forever," Sam confessed.
"No, you don't," Zelda assured her. "I like the Bronx, but it's not really a place you wanna get stuck in."
"What's the not so good news?" Sam asked Aurora.
"The not so good news is Emile is moving to Brooklyn."
"So landlord's gonna be away from his building—sounds legitimate, though. I mean, it makes sense. You guys are newlyweds." Sam shrugged.
"Now what's the good news?" Zelda chimed in.
"Good news is if all goes well tonight," Aurora announced, "we just might see the Cherry Suicides en route to a legitimate record deal."
"Things just have to go well, anyways," Zelda said with a little wave of her hand. "So no tech problems, no drama, no nonsense, things like that."
"Absolutely."
Zelda glanced over at Sam, who raised an eyebrow at her.
"Think we can do it?" she wondered aloud.
"Hell yeah," Sam told her with an extended hand, and Zelda gave her a low five. "You got those big boots with you. You can so do it."
Within time, Minerva, Morgan, and Rosita showed up, and the latter set the black top hat upon her head to go with her black lace crop top and matching short skirt. She tucked the signature rose onto the base to make it distinctly her own. Meanwhile, Sam stayed in her spot on the couch next to Zelda and watched the three of them. Even though she wasn't properly asked to do so, just sitting there alone made her feel like a band manager.
She could hear the audience outside, and she wondered what the rest of the place looked like. She ambled across the floor and she stepped out to the hallway: next door was Charlie and Scott talking to each other about something in soft voices. The former nodded at her and his soft black curls fluttered a bit over the top of his head.
"Hey you," he said to her.
"Li'l Sam I am," Scott followed with a raise of those thick dark eyebrows. "What'chu doin'?"
"Oh, just hangin' out—I also wanna check out the rest of this place, too."
"Not much here," Charlie explained, "just a little bar and a stretch of floor enough for a thousand people."
"A thousand?" She was stunned by that.
"That's nuthin'," Joey called from their dressing room.
"Yeah, that's nuthin'," Scott echoed him.
"I think that's something," Sam pointed out, and that got a laugh out of him.
"It's general admission, too—so everyone's either gonna have a bunch of folding chairs or standing up," Charlie said. He then gestured for Sam to follow him out of the hallway, and he led her to a stretch of curtain at the very end, past Testament's dressing room. She looked over her shoulder and she spotted Louie perched on a small barren shelf on the wall with his white gloves on and his drum sticks in hand. He gave her a little wave, and she returned the favor.
"Right over here," Charlie gently coaxed her: he pushed the curtain back a little bit, and she gazed out to the small stretch of black stone floor before her, lit up with some yellow and red lights overhead. Indeed, there were a few folding chairs on the floor but everyone else congregated about the place. On the opposite wall stood a small bar with a small crowd around it to boot.
"Nothing to it," she remarked.
"Nothing to it at all," Charlie echoed, and he nodded to the left. "That's where we're gonna playing in a little bit." She spotted the stage adjacent to them. It looked awfully small, but she trusted the three bands behind her. Once the sun hung low over Boston, one of the people at the bar came backstage to check in on the Cherry Suicides.
"We're opening act, so we were born ready," Zelda told her as she flicked a little fake blood onto those white shorts.
Sam lingered back on the side of the stage a bit and she watched the four of them take to the center. Zelda mounted herself on the stool while Rosita slung her bass down low: she had written "las putas" over the bridge, and Sam eagerly nodded at that. The lights turned low and she realized how small that room truly was once it erupted in noise.
"Hello, Boston!" Minerva declared into the microphone. "We are the Cherry Suicides, straight outta Rhode Island, and we're here to make all of youses into soup! Hit it!"
They opened with that gory song that Sam recalled from that night in L'Amour. The one she and Cliff danced to. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She tried not to think of him, but she couldn't help it. She missed him right there.
There was a loud crack! and she jerked back a bit. She looked around a bit and she spotted a guy near the front had put a fire cracker right near Morgan and lit it off there. But another guy pushed him away and one of the stagehands dragged him out of there.
"Fucking hell, dude, did the room clear out!" Morgan shouted, and everyone laughed at that. Sam swayed a little bit and she shook her head as she tried to shake Cliff away. He was gone, there was nothing more she could do or say right then. But the feelings persisted, at least for the next two songs. The fourth one was "Day of the Dead", where a true mosh pit finally opened up for them.
They were moshing for the girls. Sam nodded her head at them, but then a guy close to her threw a punch to someone next to him. There was another punch, followed by a third, and a fourth, and the next one after that had been inflicted onto a woman. Zelda stopped drumming right there and she stood to her feet as a brawl broke out before them: several men but a handful of women in there as well. Sam gaped at them and she took a step back.
Even from a distance and over the wall of noise, she made out Zelda saying, "this is bullshit."
Then someone picked up a chair from the floor and chucked it towards the stage.
"Oh, no," Sam muttered as another guy threw a chair at Rosita. She ducked and held onto the top hat but it tumbled onto the stage behind her.
"Oh, my god!" Sam yelled.
"Jesus!" Zelda shouted as she bowed out from her drum kit: she picked up her sticks and ducked into the darkness. There was nowhere to go right there, and so Sam lunged to help her. But then something pulled her back.
"What the—"
"Get away from there!" She recognized Alex's big voice right behind her. She turned to find him putting his other hand on her shoulder. He yanked on her other arm and then bowed his head a bit before another couple of chairs sailed right past her ear.
He saved her life, but she wanted to save Zelda from the exact same thing.
"Alex!" she shouted over the wall of noise. "ALEX!" He dragged her off stage and back into that corridor. She tried to force herself away from him but he was such a strong boy. He threw open the dressing room door and all but shoved her inside.
"Stay in here!" he commanded. "No—Samantha, stay in here! It's not safe!"
"What're you—"
But before she could say anything more, he shut the door and left. Fuming, she threw open the door and she poked her head out to the corridor. No one there and the whole wing of the theater was silent save for the out of control mosh pit out there.
She let out a low exasperated sigh. But she spotted Louie and Greg at the other end of the hallway, both of them with spooked looks on their faces.
"What the hell!" she cried out as they came within earshot.
"I know, right?" Greg said, out of breath. "Alex just ran outside to get help and Chuck and Eric both just ran across the street to call the cops—Eric told us to stay here."
"Yeah, Alex got me off the stage—I was trying to help Zelda, but he got me off of there before I almost got hit in the head."
"But, man, Zelda's gotta be pretty pissed right now," Louie told her as he ran his fingers through his smooth dark hair. "I saw her runnin' and she looked furious."
"I bet she is—Aurora said they were supposed to get a record deal after tonight."
"Hope they can do it tomorrow night," Greg confessed as he folded his arms over his chest. "Hope there is a tomorrow night. Those girls are tough but—damn, they don't need all that."
"Zelda told me they make fun of the fact they get called whores, though," Sam pointed out. "I say 'kudos' to be honest."
"Right?" Louie chuckled; the noise on the far end of the hall and on other side of the curtain seemed to die down a bit, but it was all noise from a distance to them.
"You know, that's not a bad idea to run with," Sam continued.
"What, making fun of what they call you?" Greg asked her with a little toss of his black hair.
"Yeah. Like she and I decided to call ourselves art whores because of it."
"Buncha art whores," Louie chuckled some more.
"You guys!" Eric called from the doorway down the hall. In the dim light, Sam saw him gesturing for them to come on closer. "Come on! Come on! The cops are coming!"
"Where are the girls?" Sam demanded.
"They're fine—they're right out here, but come on!"