deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 91: the new order of things

Sam's twenty third birthday came about in a quick flash and a draw in the middle of January, but given the look on Joey's face for most of the day, she knew that she would have to enjoy every second of it all. Anthrax themselves hardly had any time to enjoy the Christmas break or the New Year given they had a pair of shows to play at L'Amour the week before.
"Consider it our birthday gift to you, though," he told her in the two days before then; even though they had been scheduled to play for two dates, she could only attend the show on Saturday given the new workload for the winter term.
In the springtime, they were to be out on the West Coast for several dates and a small taste of it all before she did.
On that afternoon before the second show, she had done her black hair up nice and dressed in the nice black and red knit sweater that her mother had sent her for Christmas. As she ran a hair brush through her hair, she gazed on at her reflection in the mirror before her. Her hair as black as Joey's crown of ringlets, but it seemed to sit far more flat upon her head than she had realized before.
A week from twenty three and she looked as though she had aged about ten years: her eyes lacked that spark from when she first started school and her skin had not that smoothness to it like when she first moved to New York. Or maybe she put too much thought into it, but she lacked that same luster as before when she bode farewell to her teenage years.
In that brief pocket of time before the accident, Cliff had seen her as beautiful, even when she got heavier over Christmas. And it was looking on at her own reflection when she realized what he meant by that. Into her own dark eyes. At her own crown of flat black hair upon her head. She couldn't see it herself, and yet he could.
Or maybe she needed something more to rejuvenate herself.
Six more months like the taste of a pomegranate seed on her tongue.
She put the brush down on the counter next to her and switched on the faucet. She then splashed some cold water onto her face. The cold feeling itself woke her up even more than the power of a warm cup of coffee. A cannon ball right to the face and an electric shock down her spine.
Using the hand towel next to her, she patted her face dry and then she gazed on at her reflection once more. It did something, though: her skin looked even tighter than before. Her dark eyes seemed far deeper and her black hair appeared blacker. Thick strands of hair lay upon the crown of her head: the one closest to her brow lay upon her head in a thick swirl. She had had a cowlick upon her head, but she had no idea when she had it the first time around, and she had no idea where it came from, either. But it lay there upon her head with the curvature of a serpent.
She patted the towel onto her head and dried off the front of her neck before she left the bathroom and put on her jacket.
It was cold afternoon there in New York City: the snows kept on coming one right after the other in the past three weeks alone. When she reached the front seat of his car, Frank told her that a Nor'easter was headed their way soon enough; he had insisted on driving her there rather than have to rely on the buses, even with all the stage hands and new help they had on hand from that point onward.
"Yeah, it's gonna be your first one, ain't it?" he teased her.
"Oh, yes, I feel like it's gonna be appropriate for the show tonight, too. Thank you for this, by the way."
"Oh my pleasure! I mean, you are a friend of us, after all. But even with it, we still have to do some convincing about the place because the thing is they see you as a civilian still."
"Which is amazing because you guys are civilians yourselves."
"Well, to you we are," he explained as they reached the first stoplight up the block. "You'll see what Joey and I were talking about when we got home with the big rowdy crowds. I should also tell you that we're not gonna be playing in New York City again until the middle of August."
"The middle of August?" she gaped at him, to which Frank nodded at her with a look of concern on his face.
"Yeah, at the Ritz. But—yeah, for real. The middle of August. The tenth, I think? Literally right after you leave."
She thought about what Joey had told her when they got home from Europe, and it was right there she relished every moment of that drive down to Manhattan from Hell's Kitchen. Indeed, by the time they had reached L'Amour and that familiar neighborhood, Sam gazeed on in awe at what became of it all. Two years since she had been there and the whole place looked as though it had come from a whole other city. Cars loaded up on either side of the street outside there and all around the storm drains. Even as Frank pulled into that familiar parking lot, the whole place was filled to the brim.
"I'm with the band!" Frank declared as he turned a corner.
"We're at home, too," Sam pointed out.
"Right! I'm with the band and yet here we are playing at home. Oh, wait—there's Billy!"
"Mr. Milano?"
"Yup, right there—" Frank rolled up to the spot before the side door of the club, and where Billy stood in the middle of, as if he was saving the spot just for them; and he backed out of there so they could park. Sam and Frank were met with a blast of icy cold air all around them; she huddled down in her coat and kept her hands tucked into her pockets.
"Haven't seen you in forever and a day," Billy told her and he showed her a smile.
"You, either!" She put her arms around him and then he led them into that warm front room of the club. The place was already filled to the brim with people despite it being three in the afternoon.
"We're making every moment together count, Bill," Frank told him over the noise of the crowd.
"You ought to anyways," Billy pointed out as he led them to the backstage area.
"Well, Sam I am here is going out to California for a thing for school this summer, though."
"Oh, yeah?" Billy gaped at her in surprise.
"Yeah, it's for my senior year," she explained to him; he held the curtain for her. "No idea how long it's going to be for, though. It could be a few months, it could be the whole school year, I have no idea."
"Oh, fuck! Yeah, let's hang out together here. Show doesn't start until—seven, you said, Frankie?"
"Yeah. The doors were supposed to open at six but I guess everyone got impatient."
While they walked across those wooden floor boards, all those Stormtroopers of Death memories came back to Sam. It was even that long ago and yet it felt like a whole lifetime altogether.
"Yeah, they consider it to be the easiest job in the world, but you can see it, though," Frank pointed out, and he glanced back at her. "Wouldn't you agree? It's not easy as it looks."
"Oh, yeah, we're having to miss you boys for weeks on end," she remarked.
"Watch your step," he warned her as he held onto her hand. Indeed, she took a glimpse down and there on the floor lay a pile of thick black cables like a bunch of big noodles. The last thing she needed was to trip on that again, even if it could be far worse than that.
With his free hand, Frank pushed the door open and Charlie, Joey, and Dan congregated in that little room in anticipation of them.
"Hey, there she is!" Joey proclaimed, and he stood up and opened his arms for her. His dark lips grazed the side of her neck, much to the beating of her heart and her toes curling inside of her shoes.
"We'll get you in with no problem," Charlie vowed to her; a clink on the floor caught their attention; she then peered past Joey and watched Charlie toss his drum sticks in the air, one after the other, and he caught them both in one hand.
"Looks like someone's been hangin' out with Zelda," Sam remarked.
"We toured with those badass chicks for weeks after all," Dan pointed out.
"Are they here?"
"They should be," Frank told her.
"They were here last night, though," said Joey.
"Oh, yeah, they were here last night," Charlie added as he tossed one drum stick again.
"When they're here, though, we're gonna load up the whole place," Billy told her. "They just draw in the crowds, more so than these fellas here."
Joey then turned his head and peered out the door behind him.
"We spoke too soon," he declared.
"Are they here?" Charlie asked him.
"Hey, what's goin' on?" Zelda's voice floated in from down the hall.
"Let's load up the place," Dan said in a bold tone of voice, and he ducked towards the door.
"Load it up!" Charlie added as he clutched both drum sticks.
"Alright, we're gonna get loaded!" Joey cracked, and Frank, Sam, and Billy all burst out laughing at that. They bowed out of the room only to be greeted by Zelda and that bob of black hair slicked back from her face by a handful of gel and her arms and legs even more sinewy and strong than ever. She threw her arms around Sam, whose spine cracked at the feeling of Zelda's new found strength.
"Whoa, jeez—"
"Well, don't kill 'er, Zelda," Dan advised her from behind her.
"I haven't seen her in so long it seems, though," Zelda told him as she held back to let Sam breathe. She peered down at her legs, now toned and strong from those duct taped boots on her feet this whole entire time.
"My goodness," Sam remarked.
"I feel like an Olympian with these things on now," Zelda told her as she adjusted her black Guns N' Roses shirt, "it's like I run a marathon every night and my legs just get stronger."
"Soon you'll be like Wonder Woman," Frank declared.
"She already kinda is!" Morgan said with a laugh. "I mean, you guys saw her all this time, she's nuts now!"
With the arrival of the Cherry Suicides came an even larger crowd for themselves to behold before them. Sam lingered off to the side by herself, and away from the crowd, a spot that she had been in before but not at L'Amour, as she watched those four women take to the stage. Morgan's voice had grown stronger and more gravelly from the European tour, and indeed, Zelda's drumming had tightened and quickened. They really were transforming into a thrash band in their own rite.
That song, "Dead Witches", had become a crowd favorite given it always turned into a ten minute long jam between Minerva and Zelda. The former always put one foot up on the speaker closest to her and bled out a solo to make Alex himself fall to his knees, while the latter never broke out a sweat whenever she hammered away at the drums.
Their signature song alongside "Day of the Dead" and Sam thought about the evening they debuted that at L'Amour. She had come full circle with them all.
Soon Anthrax took to the stage and Joey had removed his shirt and put on that little ball cap with the word "INJUN" inscribed inside with big bold lettering. Before they performed anything, Sam felt someone tap on her shoulder. She turned her head and there stood Chuck and Eric, both wrapped in heavy winter jackets.
"Hey, you guys!" she declared over the roar of the crowd.
"Hey, you—thought that was you standin' over here," Eric said right into her ear.
"Got a little time off from recording today so we decided why not?" Chuck added. He then put his arm around her and held her close to him even though she knew that Tiffany was nearby herself. She knew it would be one of many hugs from Chuck more often from that point onward.
"Alright!" Joey bellowed into the microphone. "It's good to be back home, New York. We're Anthrax and we take no bullshit whatsoever." He slung that white flying V guitar over his bare shoulder and it nearly knocked his hat off.
"Joey's got the right idea," Chuck pointed out and he opened his jacket for something, and he set a black ball cap upon his head. On the inside of the bill, in spiked lettering, it read "Suicidal."
"Where'd you get that?" Sam asked him.
"Some friends of ours called Suicidal Tendencies. We oughtta introduce you to them when you come out west."
"This first song, the four of us had been throwing around while on tour in Europe," Joey began again, that time with his hands clutched to the microphone head. "It's a cover—it's not ours, but I foresee it going on something new from us in the future. By a little French band called Trust—you guys'll like it. It's called 'Antisocial'."
He played that first riff, and Sam turned her head and peered out the window near to them right as the snow was falling outside. Something about the way in which he played that riff accentuated the soft white out there. She could pick up some snow and toss it in the air as if it were confetti or glitter to that riff.
Charlie's kick drum beckoned a uniform clap from everyone in the audience. Frank joined in with them all for what felt like a full minute, and then Dan stopped them all with a grinding thrashy riff.
Joey played along and belted it out, the best he had ever sounded before.
Then there was that singsong catchy chorus: by the song's end, everyone in the room knew it.
"That's a hit," Eric declared to her and Chuck.
"It totally is," Chuck said as the room erupted in cheers.
The sound of a cover made Sam recall that one evening she and Joey lay side by side with each other.
"Hey, what was that song that Alex played?" she asked right into his ear.
"What song? There's a bunch of them." Eric chuckled at that.
"No, I think we were in Providence together—yeah, we were! It was after the wedding, and you guys were out in the hallway and he played some riff from some band in Seattle."
Eric hesitated for a second, and then he gasped at that.
"Oh! Oh, yeah, that was—that was—" He snapped his fingers as he struggled to recall it. "—damn it. I'll have to ask him about that because I know what you're talking about now. I remember it, it was cool! Kinda psychedelic and wandering."
"Yeah, it was." She thought of what Alex had said about the Wandering Jew at the sound of that last word. And even though Joey wasn't too keen on it, the very memory of laying there with him made her recall that song.
Anthrax played for a full hour that evening, to which they ended the show with "A Skeleton in the Closet", which made Sam remember everything her mother had said to her. All the secrets left out in the open and she would have to sift through them all the while she balanced out her school work and going to hang with Testament more up in the Bay Area. As long as they were within range of the Bay Area, she could find a way over to visit them. If not, there had to be a way to them. There had to be a way over to see them.
All the secrets she had figured out with Joey, and yet there was still so much she hadn't figured out yet.
All the secrets she had figured out with Cliff, and yet there was still so much she never had the chance to figure out.
By the time Joey hit those high notes of "Gung Ho!" and Dan stood at the edge of the stage with his guitar pressed against his little body, Chuck tugged back on Sam and he and Eric took her to the backstage area.
"Whoa, what's going on?" she asked, taken aback.
"It was getting kinda rowdy there near us," Chuck replied. "They're pretty much done, too."
"Yeah, and here they come," Eric pointed to the curtain right as Charlie and Frank bowed in there, drenched in sweat.
"Wow," Sam told them.
"Phew!" Frank declared in a loud voice and pressed his hands to his hips; he then laughed at the euphoric feeling around them. Charlie followed it up with a loud whistle. Rosita hurried up to him and he put his arm around her and stuck his tongue down her throat.
Anthrax were going to be huge after that night. Sam was sure of it. It was just obvious to her that they were bound to become rock stars after that second night at L'Amour, even as Joey treated her to a little birthday gift that next Thursday on her day off.
"Not gonna make the same mistake Aurora did," he vowed to her as he drove her up towards Syracuse. "Today's all about you, Sam I am."
He had bought her a cupcake and a cup of latte from the bakery in North Syracuse and then spent a little bit of the afternoon with her down by the lake, even with the waters as black as the very night that awaited them later on. Joey huddled next to her with his head bowed and his hands tucked in his jacket pockets. His black curls fluttered about atop his head as if they were ribbons.
"How'd things go with Aurora, by the way?" he asked her at one point as she sipped on her coffee. "Because I tried callin' her the other night and she was just impossible to speak to."
"She and I got into an argument," Sam explained. "Well, I did most of the arguing. She just kind of stood there with the phone to her ear like a dumb idiot and I got really heated with her."
He shook his head at that and then he looked out to the cold inky black waters beyond the railing. Silence fell over them. Silence except for the soft cold breeze through the pine trees off to the side and the gentle lapping of the lake down below. Sam took another sip of her coffee and relished in the warmth of it. She sighed through her nose and lingered closer to Joey. Times like that she knew she could stand in comfortable silence with him.
"Remember when we first met?" he began again with a clearing of his throat.
"Yeah, it was the first day I was here," she recalled. "You and Frankie in the furniture store."
"Mmhmm. I always thought of you as like the one who mirrored me when it came to moving. Except you've got more of a grasp on it than I do."
"I don't think so," she confessed. "You've moved several times before I did. It's just hard is all."
"Hard work and hard going, too."
She finished the rest of her coffee and then he cleared his throat once more, and rubbed his hands together.
"Wanna take a walk?" he suggested.
"Yes, please."
Sam held the cup to her chest as they walked on to the pathway close to the water. Snow blanketed bushes lined the right side while a slope dropped down from the walkway on the left. Given Anthrax were going to be away during her spring break, she knew that this would be the last time she would see upstate New York in this snowy state. She glanced out past the snowy slope to the black waters. Nothing like it. Absolutely nothing like it, not even her memory of Lake Tahoe or Yosemite fulfilled the same feelings as that lake north of Syracuse and the forests all around the state.
"There's something so romantic about walking about upstate New York after a snowfall," she noted.
"It's all the trees and the remoteness," he said. "And just the way the sky is dark and the fog comes in from the lake up the road—Lake Ontario, I mean. At least the roads are clear, too. We can do whatever we want from here on out."
Her last birthday there upstate with Joey and she had to make every second count with him. The last of her own skeletons in the closet for him as he did for her.
"You know," she began again, "we're not too far from that old studio Stormtroopers recorded their album at, either."
"No, we're not. Wanna go there?"
"Yeah, I want to show you something there."
Within time, they reached the top of the pathway and within the line of sight of Joey's car. Given it had been some time since they had been there, Sam had to rack her brain for the way over to that little notch in the woods. It was also a bit of a drive but Joey himself didn't seem to mind however.
That familiar treeline emerged within view, as did that old ramshackle building before the partially collapsed sidewalk. A large snow drift piled up before the storm drain which meant Joey had to park a bit out in the street. Sam climbed out of her seat first and she led him past the drifts and towards that notch in the trees. Given a fresh blanket of snow had fallen upon them, she knew there was no way she could walk in through those trees, even with her boots on.
Joey peered in through the gap as well, and up to the canopy: all the branches collected together under the snow so it resembled to a lacy veil.
"The quiet place," she remarked.
"The what?"
"Charlie and I found this little spot when Stormtroopers of Death were making their album a couple of summers ago. We hung out here when the sun was going down, too. We called it the quiet place because we went inside here to a clearing and it was dead silent."
"Wow," Joey breathed. He looked over his shoulder to the trees across the way. No one else around.
It had in fact become the quiet place.
"When you come back here, we should hang out here again," he told her. "Hang out here and you can draw me while I'm in the trees."
She giggled at that and they returned to his car once again. Once she buckled herself into the passenger seat, she caught a glimpse of Joey looking on at her with a thoughtful expression on his face.
"You know that song we do on Spreading the Disease?" he began. "Medusa?"
She hesitated. "Yes? Yes."
"I don't remember the full mythos behind Medusa, but according to Scott, there's a star in the sky referred to as 'Medusa's head.' I don't remember the name of it, but we get the word 'alcohol' from it. Medusa was left hung out to dry after Athena turned her into the snake headed monster that we all know and love. And you know how booze makes you feel afterwards."
"Oh, yeah, how it dries out your mouth and the back of your throat big time. Especially if it's a lot of booze, too."
"Consider yourself Medusa after this," he told her in a soft voice. "The way the snow outside here just tightened up your skin, but there's something else, though. Something I can't really put into words, like there's something to it. Kinda like Medusa herself."
Her own reflection in the mirror before the first Anthrax show at L'Amour. Her own eyes as they stared back at her and the way her hair seemed far blacker than before. For a few seconds, she did in fact turn into Medusa there: she missed the snakes upon the head however. She brought her attention back to Joey and the stoic look upon his face. His brown eyes as they gazed back at her, like the cold stony stare of Medusa.
"Shall we head on back to the city?" he suggested.
"Yes please," she declared, and he fired up the car and they began on back down the road to New York City and ultimately Hell's Kitchen once more. By that time, the cold gray sky overhead succumbed to even colder blackness. She knew Marla and Genie awaited her with her birthday dinner.
"You wanna spend the night at our place?" she offered him. "You did an awful lot of driving today."
"I don't see why not," he confessed with a shrug of his slender shoulders. "It might be the last time I do." He unbuckled his seat belt and then he stopped right in his tracks. "By the way, d'you ever get into stained glass this term?"
Sam shook her head.
"Belinda's powers of convincing fell flat over the Christmas break," she replied, "and so I missed the cut with there. I don't know if I can do it spring term, to be honest. If I do, then I might be ahead of the curve a bit because she's willing to teach me some tips and tricks on it all."
"Excellent!" he said with that lopsided smile on his face.
He guided her back into the building and up to that apartment on the third floor. She opened the door where she was greeted by the look of joy on Marla's face and her open arms.
"Our birthday sister!" she declared as she held Sam close to her. Belinda stood up from the couch and joined in on the group hug.
"Our last little party together," she said, and she brushed away a tear from her eye.
"What a lumpy number this is, though," Sam told her with a straight face. "Twenty three."
"Could be worse," a man's voice near the door to the porch caught her attention. "Could be twenty four like me and Chuck this spring."
"Or me in a couple of days for that matter," said the other guy.
"Hey!" she declared as she looked on at the two of them. "Louie and Eric!"
Joey, who stood right behind them, shifted his weight at the sight of them there. Eric flashed her a wink and Louie leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs right then.
"They have something they want to tell you," Marla announced to her. "Something pertaining to their new album."
Eric nodded his head.
"We're calling it The New Order," he told her.
"The New Order—" Sam started and then she nodded her head. "I like it, it's kinda mysterious. Like those old science fiction novels you'd read in school."
"Exactly!"
"He and Chuck ran it by Zelda at the show the other day and she was like, 'that just sounds badass,' you know?" Louie said in a single breath; he had this look of disappointment on his face when the words left his lips at that.
"Hell yeah."
"So we have a cake ready for you as well as some spaghetti Bolognese," Marla told her right then. "Belinda just took it off of the heat right as you and Joey walked in."
"Oh, boy!"
Joey rubbed his hands together and he ducked into the kitchen without a second thought. Belinda and Marla joined him, as did Eric. Sam turned to Louie with a serious look on her face.
"How are you feeling, by the way?" she asked him, to which he frowned and shook his head at that.
"What do you mean?"
"Like you were mentioned Zelda just a little bit ago. Is everything alright?"
And he pursed his lips together and lowered his gaze to the floor. It dawned on her right then.
"Don't tell me you told her," she stated in a low voice.
"I kind of—had to," he confessed with a shrug of his shoulders, and her heart sank at the sound of that.
"How'd she react to it?"
"Well, she slapped me across the face and then she kissed me right on the lips, and then she slapped me again."
"Slapped you twice and then kissed you?"
"No, slapped, kissed, and slapped again. And when I say 'slapped again', I don't mean across the face."
She gaped at him. They were still in love. So much here that was left wide open.
"Louie, sit tight," she began with a raise of her finger. "I have an idea."
"No, Sam—no. Besides, dinner's ready."
"Well, seeing as I'm going to be back in California soon, I want to make myself at home ahead of time."
She made her way into her room and she fetched her journal and one of her pencils. She was leaving for California come the end of July and even as she picked up her journal and that pencil, she wasn't ready to leave as of yet. Even when she first moved there, she had to begin on packing her things early on so things would run more smoothly once the time came. She wanted her room to remain as is right there; she returned to the living room with a bit of haste and Louie burst out laughing at the sight of it.
"Would you like me to pose for you?" he joked as he leaned back with his arms atop of the chair.
"Nah. Although, I do like that position you're in right now. With your hair sprawled over your shoulders like that. Very Greek godlike."
"Who's a Greek god?" Belinda asked her as she returned to the room with a plate of food in one hand.
"Louie is. Wouldn't you agree, Bel? By the look of his hair over his shoulders like that."
"Oh, yeah." She beamed at her by the sound of that. "Anyways, there's a plate of spag bol waiting for you both in there."
Louie almost jumped out of his chair at that, but Sam kept her mind on her bedroom behind her as she beat him to the kitchen. Marla served Joey up a plate of food and Sam lingered right next to him.
"I guess I'm gonna have to start packing it in soon," she confessed to him in a low voice, and his face fell at that.
"I don't want you to go," Joey begged her. "You gotta stay and hang with us."
"I wish I could, Joey," Sam told him as Marla handed both her and him plates of Bolognese with a solemn look on her face; neither of them were ready for the new order of things coming soon. "I genuinely wish I could."