deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 69: cherry bootleg

Sam, Greg, and Louie all but stumbled out of the back door of the club and into the cool, late spring evening: the former turned her head to make sure nothing was going on with the actual club itself. The golden street lamps about the street lit their way and kept them cozy from the big brawl in there.
"Where are the Anthrax guys, by the way?" Louie asked them. "Did you see them?"
"I haven't, no," Greg replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
"I saw Scott and Charlie in the hallway," Sam said, "but that was before showtime, though. I dunno otherwise."
"There you are!" Eric called from across the street. He had run to the bar over there, and then he doubled back to the three of them. Even bathed with the dim light from the street lamps, his skin had washed out to a sickly pale and his hair matted to his forehead.
"Oh my god, are you alright?" Sam asked him once he came within earshot.
"No, I feel sick," he answered, "that whole thing just freaked me the fuck out back there."
"You need to sit down, man?" Greg offered him, and he gestured to the curb next to them. Eric sighed and then he sank down there in between Greg and Sam.
"Can I get you anything?" she kindly asked him, and Eric shook his head.
"Here comes Chuck," Louie announced; Sam and Greg glanced around the street until she spotted Chuck on the sidewalk to her right with his hair smoothed back.
"Alex!" he shouted down an alleyway before them, and then he gestured for him to follow suit; Alex appeared right next to him, still with that stoic look on his face. "C'mon—little man—"
Alex stopped right next to Louie, and then Chuck stepped out into the street.
"Alright, we all together?" he asked them.
"The five of us plus Sam," Greg said.
"The Cherry Suicides just bolted," Alex told them, and then he turned his attention to Sam. "Zelda ducked out from under the curtain and she ran out the back door there. And then, uh—the two black girls—what're their names?"
"Morgan and Minerva," Sam filled in.
"That was it! They just got into their van and then the four of them bounced. I asked a guy walking by me to call the cops and then I helped a little old lady with her groceries—that's why I was down that little alleyway."
"Okay," she breathed, and Chuck put an arm around her. Her heart pounded in her chest. She thought of Joey and if he had gotten somewhere safe near there.
"You alright?" he asked her.
"I am, yeah." Zelda huddled closer to her, and Greg in turn inched closer to her, and he put his arm around her. Alex gazed up to the dark sky overhead: the amber light from the street lamps made his deep eyes resemble to the dark sockets of a skull.
"You alright, Eric?" Chuck tilted his head a bit. "You don't look good."
"Whole thing scared the living daylights out of him," Louie explained. "D'you see where Anthrax run off to?"
"I saw Joey," Chuck replied. "Like I saw him run out the back door and into the street, but that was it after that. Haven't seen Scott, Charlie, Frankie, or Danny, though."
"It's gonna be a long night," Greg said.
"Absolutely. Might as well hang out." Chuck ran his hand along Sam's shoulder and her upper arm out of comfort. But her heart still hammered away inside of her chest and she still wondered about Joey. She also had no idea what hotel she was supposed to stay in, either.
"There is a bar across the street," Sam pointed out.
"Alex can't go in there," Eric blurted out.
"Oh, yeah, that's right." Someone threw a bottle of beer out the front door of the club and onto the street. The sound alone was enough to make Sam jump a bit.
"Well, we gotta get you something, man," Louie told Eric, "you look like you're about ready to pass out."
Sirens off in the distance caught their attention.
"I need to call my girlfriend, too," Chuck said, and Sam looked up at him, puzzled.
"You have a girlfriend?"
"Yeah. I only just met her, though, 'bout a month ago. Still—I gotta call her and tell her what's up. Tell her that there was this big brawl during the opening act but we all made it out okay."
He tightened his grip on her shoulder and she huddled closer to his chest. Even though he wasn't very big, but still a little bigger in comparison to Joey, Chuck resembled to that of a big teddy bear. His long smooth hair covered the back of her head, much like that of a heavy Indian blanket; Louie joined on her left side, and then Greg and Alex followed, and the five of them huddled around Eric there on the curb.
Sam recalled what she often heard in the days leading up to that night: "we don't have much, but we have each other." Even though she was still on the fence with Alex, she felt more comfortable with all of them there than she did back on New Year's.
Within time, the police showed up and began to clear the place behind them out before it all escalated into a riot, and at that point, it was nearly ten o'clock at night, and Anthrax still hadn't returned to the club to pick up their instruments, or Sam for that matter. The pitch dark sky overhead made her yearn for the safety of a soft bed with clean sheets.
"I don't even know what hotel they're staying in," she confessed to Chuck. "Danny has my things and I can't call Aurora for that reason, either."
"I think we have room in our hotel room," he said to Eric, whose complexion at that point began returning from his rest there on the curb.
"I mean, if anyone asks," he started, "we can always say that she's just with the label and that she needs a place to stay."
"Because that's exactly what it is," Sam pointed out with a befuddled look on her face, and Eric couldn't help but chuckle at that.
"Need help?" Greg offered him with an open hand, and he shook his head.
"Nah—I think I got it."
Eric shot out his arms and he stood upright right there in the storm drain. He almost lost his balance right there but he caught himself before he stumbled ass over teakettle onto the dark pavement before them.
"So where are we going?" Sam asked Chuck as the six of them began up the street, and away from the club.
"We're actually just going around the corner here," he pointed to the curb up ahead of them. "Just a single room but I think it's big enough for the six of us."
"I've been in smaller rooms, though," she admitted.
"Oh, yeah! With Stormtroopers. Although we've got a shower in there so there's no need to track down Joey for one out in the wilderness." Sam chuckled at that, and they rounded the corner: indeed, there stood a long low inn on the corner that awaited them for the night. Chuck led them into the room closest to them: she was greeted by the feeling of the cool air from the air conditioner, even though it wasn't very hot out that evening. There were in fact two beds in there as well as a blow up mattress right near the bathroom door, plus a small television on the dresser on the left side of the room.
"Our home for the next two nights," Greg told her once they were inside.
"Who's sleeping where?" she asked him.
"Good question." A brief moment of silence.
"I'll take the floor," Alex offered.
"We're sleeping head to toe, though," Greg told him.
"Well, duh," he teased him back, and that got a laugh out of her
"Head to toe on one of the beds then, Eric," Chuck joined in. "Someone's gotta keep an eye on you, anyways."
"Dibs on the one closest to the bathroom," Sam quipped.
"Dibs?" Louie giggled.
"Yeah, and you guys thought I was bad with 'shotgun'," Alex scoffed.
"Only problem with sleeping close to the bathroom is you have to step over Alex and Greg," Louie pointed out.
"That's alright," Sam assured him with a shake of her head.
"Well, we've got a lady in here with us tonight," Eric announced as he ran his fingers through his inky black hair and then he took a seat on the foot of the bed closest to the window. Sam was quick to take to the bed tucked in the far corner of the room, and Louie joined right there next to her. He had gone out and lived with Zelda for almost a year, and thus she had a feeling that he knew how to treat a woman he didn't really know very well. He took off his white gloves and flexed his fingers.
"Not gonna be needin' those for a while," he told her in a low voice.
"So what do you guys do tomorrow?" she asked him. "Just go back to the venue and then play the show you were supposed to play tonight?"
"I hope so? It'd set us off course, though, 'cause we were supposed to play two nights here in Boston with the guys and the girls. If we do just play for one night, we're out a bit of money."
"So you'd hope that maybe your landlord can think of something?"
"I've asked landlords and landladies many a number of times to fill in for Zelda and me," he confessed to her in a near whisper. "I'm a little used to it at this point."
He turned his attention to the television, which had been tuned to the news there in Boston. Alex had his eyes glued to the screen.
"They gonna try to bring the Wall down?" Greg asked him.
"Hopefully. And hopefully Reagan'll keep his damn mouth shut, too." He turned back to it with a stern look upon his face. Something about Britain having an election, and something Sam hadn't really paid much attention to before.
"Hope she doesn't get elected again," Greg said in a low voice.
"Right? I mean, if it happens, it'll be just... it's confusing, vile, abhorrent, gross, disgusting, sick, sickening, ghastly... grim..." He stopped in his tracks. "...awful... I'm running out of bemusement words."
"Unacceptable?" Greg filled in.
"Unacceptable, yeah!"
Sam turned to Louie right then.
"It's a regular thing with us," he told her in a low voice. "Alex is so in tune with everything that it's kind of comical at times."
"I haven't really seen Anthrax, or even Metallica act like that, though," she recalled.
"It's usually present in lyrics with them—especially Metallica right before Cliff passed. Master of Puppets? Refers to mind control and being manipulated. There's a song on Anthrax's new one called 'Indians' that's about the Native Americans and the piss poor treatment they go through. It's present in lyrics, but it's often hiding in plain sight, though, so if you're not aware of your surroundings, then it can be confusing. We—the whole thrash 'scene' you could call it, everyone signed to the label and them some—all kind of started in a pissed off reaction to Mr. Reagan, and Alex is like the prime example of it."
She thought back to when she and Belinda were in the parlor together, and Alex ranted a bit about the government lying to them. He was a teenage kid having entered manhood and he had his concerns about the world.
"Guess he read Animal Farm when he was in school, too," Louie continued, still with his voice down. "I remember the two of us getting into a conversation about books when I came back to the drum position, and he told me he had just finished that. He said it just opened his eyes to the world. He told me that the world we live in is dangerous and out to kill us all, but fighting for what we know is right will keep us alive. And this was—about a year before Cliff passed, too. Like right when I came back into the fold."
"When you're a kid, you're impressionable," she followed along.
"And boy, did that book make an impression on him. Could be way worse, though."
"How so?"
Louie nodded to the television on the other side of the room, and she saw the image of a young man and woman, both of whom looked to be about Alex's age in fact: she had a baby in her arms. Alex himself had gotten up and gone into the bathroom for something.
Aurora entered her mind right then and she wondered if she and Emile had plans to start a family between them. It definitely could be worse, but at the same time, he didn't act like how she did when she was eighteen; nor did he look like one. Whenever he had his attention fixed on the television screen, his expression always grew extra stern as if he had aged a whole decade.
Chuck had fallen asleep on the other bed, and Eric had picked out Gideon's Bible from the drawer in the nightstand. Sam didn't have her art supplies with her, but she did ask Louie for the little pad of paper there and the accompanying pen.
"You wanna doodle me something?" he asked her.
"If you don't mind—one of my specialties is pen and ink after all."
With nothing more than the pen in hand, she sketched out Louie's smooth black hair first, followed by his round face and his sinewy shoulders. She ran the tip of the pen over her original lines to give it a bit of depth.
"Okay, that's adorable," he remarked with a grin on his face.
"You got a pillow with you?" Greg was asking Alex.
"Yeah, right here—lay with your back to me, too. Last time Eric and I slept head to toe he kept kicking me in the face."
Greg then poked his head up from the foot of Sam and Louie's bed.
"You guys turning in soon?"
"Yeah," she told him as she signed her initials at the bottom of the narrow piece of paper. She took it off of the binding part of the pad and handed it to Louie. "Merry Christmas."
He raised his eyebrows at her, and she shrugged her shoulders at him.
"This is too cute for words," he told her. "I'm gonna keep this in the safest place ever. With my gloves." He showed it to Eric, who put the Bible back into the drawer, and he chuckled at the sight of it.
"Way cute," he remarked.
Sam then climbed under the bed sheet next to him, and she turned over onto her side. Louie slid his legs down in the bed and leaned his back against the headboard; he then shut off the lamp there on the nightstand. He lay there on his back next to her; she lay there with her eyes closed but she wasn't the least bit tired. The sheer feeling of being on a good chunk of the tour and it was only getting started that night, despite their having to call off the first night of the stop.
Eric breathed heavy within time. But Louie cleared his throat and moved his head in closer to her.
"You know, when Zelda and I broke up, it was so hard on me," he confessed in a whisper.
"Yeah, I remember she cried about it," Sam whispered back to him. "At this point, the only time I ever saw her cry." She paused for a second. "Earlier, we were talking and at one point, she mentioned you and she got this like... I wanna say wounded look on her face."
"Huh. I will tell you this, though—it helped me drum like hell on our album, though. I know that when you get to hear us it's gonna be nuts to experience. And when we first embarked on this tour, I could feel it coming out of me."
"One of the things Cliff told me when we first got together was he was driven by pain. That's why he was so good at playing bass. He had so much pain left over from his brother dying—"
"—and he just channeled it all into those four strings. God, I miss him." In the darkness, he turned his head back to her. "Can't imagine how much you miss him, though."
"Every day," she confessed. "I miss him every day."
He stared straight ahead of him into the darkness. Sam felt her eyelids weighing down; at some point, she had fallen asleep next to him, and she woke up to Alex and Greg giggling about something to each other. One of them whispered something to other and then they both laughed like a couple of kids playing around with something.
Sam lifted her head from the pillow: in the pale gray morning light, Louie was still propped in an upright position with his back against the headboard as if he was a hospital patient. His smooth black hair had spread over his face and hid his slumbering eyes from her view. She sat up next to him: she spotted the back of Greg's head right at the foot of the bed and opposite him was that light patch on Alex's head. He grinned about something, the first time Sam had ever seen him grin about anything, and then he raised his gaze to her and nodded at her.
Greg turned his head a bit for a look back at her, and he leaned over a bit all the while.
"Oh, hey," he greeted her in a soft whisper.
"We were just talking about that little sketch you made for—Clemente there," Alex explained, also in a whisper. Sam rubbed her eyes.
"What'd you think of it?" she asked them.
"Cuter than fuck," Greg said with a tilt of his head.
"Yeah, we were just joking that maybe you could sketch out a video for us," Alex added. "But I imagine it being the subject of ridicule, though."
"A-ha beat us to it," Greg said again with a tilt of his head.
"Yeah, like 'Testament are the ultimate rip-offs!' or something like that." Alex shook his head about and rolled his eyes when he said that. She rubbed her eyes again.
"Do you guys know what time it is?"
"It's—six thirty?" Greg lifted himself up and looked on at the clock on the nightstand. "Yeah, six thirty." He showed her a serious look. "Wanna go back there?"
"Is it even open?" Alex asked him.
"Good question—"
A knock on the door caught the three of them off guard, and it made Louie stir a bit. But Chuck and Eric were both still sound asleep, head to toe, on the other bed.
"Here—" Greg climbed to his feet and he sauntered over to the door, and unlocked it. Zelda stood right there before him with Sam's purse in hand, and she had something else in other her hand, something rectangular and dark.
"'Mornin', Greggy," she greeted him.
"Miss Carmichael," he returned the favor with a smirk on his face.
"I've got Miss Shelley's purse here plus a little favor from Aurora." She turned her attention to Sam, who was sitting upright in bed next to Louie. "By the way, Frankie and Danny are keeping a watchful eye on your things." She looked over at Louie, who was still sound asleep.
"Where'd they even go last night?" Sam asked her, nonplussed.
"Back to the hotel near the state line... after the brawl, they bailed along with us..." Zelda frowned. "Is he asleep?"
"Yeah. He just—got in bed next to me and fell asleep right there." Sam had butterflies in her stomach upon saying that.
"Oh. He was just laying like that, I thought something happened to him."
"No, no, he's alright. Anyways, what's Aurora want?"
"She wants you to record the Cherry Suicides' show tonight. The show for real tonight. There's not gonna be any chairs in the venue tonight so there's no brawls of any sorts. She really wants us to get a record deal."
"Is even that legal?" Sam asked her.
"Sorta. I mean, you are with us—it's not like you're some random person out there with a tape recorder. We need you to hit 'play' on this and just record the whole show until the tape fills up. And it will!"
Zelda strode past Greg and she handed her the blank cassette plus the casing. The first time Sam had done anything like this but she knew she could trust her on it. She also set the purse on the nightstand next to Louie; then Zelda turned to the other bed, at Chuck and Eric, both of whom were still sound asleep even after the chattering.
"Man, and I thought ol' Lewis over here was a heavy sleeper," she remarked. "He actually slept through road work once."
"The two of them'll sleep through an earthquake," Alex told her.
But Sam paid more attention to the blank tape cradled in her hands. Her first real work with the record label as it was about to be bought out by someone else. But it was for Zelda, and the band she had suggested to manage as well. Pushing the envelope for her friends, with love from Rhode Island.
Once Chuck and Eric had woken up, the six of them headed out of their room and back around the corner towards the rock club. Louie had on his gloves once more: he showed Sam the cartoon she had made for him as if it was his driver's license.
"The safest place I know," he told her as they made their way back in through the back corridor once again, and towards their dressing room.
Anthrax were opening that evening, which gave Sam plenty more time to prepare the cassette tape for the Cherry Suicides. She only knew of a handful song titles, and they had a whole batch of new ones: thus she hoped that Aurora or Zelda would fill in for her as she scrawled on the paper the title plus the date of the show and the venue. She also wrote: "also featuring, Anthrax and Testament."
She gazed on at that last word, and she thought about Louie as the crowd outside of the corridor erupted into applause for Anthrax. He was another one who seemed so distant from her, and yet so close at the same time.
Pain is what drives you, as Cliff had told her that one evening.
"This next song is called 'Indians'!" Joey declared into the microphone. Louie had mentioned that song!
Charlie pounded on his big bass drum as if he beckoned a drum circle. Scott came in with a big guitar riff. Frank followed with his big pounding bass. They all came together.
She peeked out from around the corner. She spotted Joey at the front of the stage.
She frowned at what rested upon his head: she could hardly see it in a decent light, but she swore that there were feathers on that man's head. He turned his head a little bit so she could make out the sight of his straight Roman nose against the bluish white light on the ceiling.
A full crown of big red and white feathers right upon his head: the fact his black curls sprawled down his shoulders and the front of his chest only accentuated the look of it. She lowered her gaze to the streams of feathers down his back. All the way down his back and his hips, and the backs of his legs, all the way down to the floor. His voice meanwhile sailed high and powerful into the rock club. Far too big for that room.
All the times he had talked about it with her and there he was for her, right in front of her.
"Oh, my Chief," she stammered.
He kept his promise to her, and it was right there she knew he would continue to do so for her. It took a full night away from him, but he did it for her. She just knew that that was the truth.
"WAR DANCE!" Frank and Scott yelled into their microphones at the same time during the breakdown. Joey danced around as if he was a little Indian boy doing a rain dance. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. She held a hand up to her chest.
She saw something out of the corner of her eye: Chuck stood right next to her.
"Are you seeing this?" she asked him over the roar of the music.
"I am!" Chuck declared with a twinkle in his eye. "My Indian brother!"
She had the duty for a bootleg to help the Cherry Suicides, but she stood there in Joey's essence, and she realized what it was all about right then and there.
And a wave of elation had swept over her.
She was a part of it all.