souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 106: snow on the beach

It would be after sundown when Testament took to the stage under those white lights. The whole entire time that she, Marla, and Belinda stood there on the side of the stage, Sam pictured fake snow to fall upon their heads. False snow to make up for the lack of a gray streak on Alex's head.
They did, however, stand up a small Christmas tree in one corner of the room, upon a ledge which stood high up over the crowd so it wouldn't fall over onto anyone on the floor. She kept her attention on them there in the center of the stage: she couldn't recall the last time they were that intense in their energy. Alex and Eric were tight as they entwined with each other as their guitar strings painted upon the proverbial canvas right over the crowd's heads. Every so often, during the first four songs, Greg held his bass down low before his waist and he smacked the thick heavy strings with the side of his hand and the backs of his knuckles.
That time around, Louie sat in his drummer's stool more upright so he barely moved his head of smoothed out hair about when he gave the other four men before him a rolling groove. He led the way in every part of the set: at one point, Sam swore she saw Zelda right behind him. Right there right next to him with her short bob of black hair as it glistened under the white Christmas lights.
For about a full minute during the song "Eerie Inhabitants", she recognized a portion of Alex's guitar solo from somewhere. It wasn't until after the fact when she realized that he was quoting Minerva from the Cherry Suicides' song "Dead Witches". They never launched into a full seven minute jam like they did but she knew that she had to tell them about it once she saw them again.
The titles even felt similar to one another, as if he and Minerva jammed in the same room together when they wrote those songs for their bands. In fact, that would explain why Minerva's guitar solo felt as though she borrowed notes from him. She had her guesses, but nothing that explained any of it in full. Lots of guesses but nothing to help her out and answer those questions.
Within time, they wrapped up that second night in Reseda, neatly and with a little bow on top perfect in time for Christmas time with a ten minute long jam of "Over the Wall", whereby the whole floor before Chuck and Alex collected into a tight mosh pit that swirled and moved about like a massive whirlpool. Louie and Greg kept going while Alex stood there at the stage's edge with that little red guitar pressed right up against his body.
Every so often, he lifted his head and his disheveled jet black curls sailed over him like the inky tentacles of an octopus. Even in the pale white light and even in the midst of the black hair dye, Sam could envision that little tuft of gray over his brow once more. Much like Minerva, he put one foot up on the amp right before him at one point. He bowed his head right over the strings as he plucked and picked at the strings and kept his hand high up on the guitar neck for a long time.
High contrasted with low. Hidden depths that were there and gone. A contradiction in and of itself, just like Alex himself.
Chuck and Eric stood back as the brightest of the white lights shone over him. Greg sauntered over to him to act as the glue between him and Louie.
And then Sam realized why he wasn't hard to understand, especially to those on the outside looking in.
He just stood there with his head over the guitar and played. Even though he played as though he hailed from a different level in comparison to everyone else, his movements were rather rigid. He had the power and the passion, but nothing to keep people's interest.
She started to wonder if Minerva really was in the same room with him when she wrote "Dead Witches."
He moved his head back once again and that time she kept her eyes fixated on the side of his neck and the shape of his Adam's apple as it poked out from the interior of his throat. He closed his eyes all the while; Greg bowed his head over his bass guitar and his smooth wavy dark hair dangled over those thick strings.
His presence was there but he had too many buttons left in place.
Louie hit the splash cymbals a few times and Alex set both feet down on the floor underneath him, and Chuck returned to the stage with the microphone firmly in hand.
"Yeah," he declared right into the microphone's silver head, "yeah, that's right—you can tell he doesn't shoot too many blanks." A few people in the crowd before them applauded him. "Yeah, that's my little man right over here, Alex Skolnick. Twenty years old and playing like he's been playing about that long! Right next to him is Greg Christian on bass—this is my right hand man Eric Peterson here." Eric himself rejoined him there at the front of the stage and he gave his smooth inky black hair a little toss back with a flick of his head.
"Behind us is our little power house—Louie Clemente on drums—" Louie hit the splashes twice more. "And I'm Chuck fucking Billy! Yeah!"
They relaunched into the fast pace of the song once again.
"They're gonna fuck the whole world after this," Marla said right into Sam's ear, such that it caught her off guard.
"Yeah, they are," Sam agreed with her and with a raise of her eyebrows.
"Just coiled up and rich," Marla added.
One last "OVER THE WALL!" from Chuck, Alex, Greg, and Eric, and a big crash from Louie, and they each raised their arms up. The crowd erupted into a wall of noise for them.
"Thank you, Reseda!" Chuck bellowed in a broken tired voice. "We love you and Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!" Alex followed up into the accompanying microphone.
"Happy New Year, too!" Eric rounded it out in the same microphone. Louie stood to his feet and he chucked his drum sticks into the crowd out there.
Meanwhile, Sam and Marla stepped out of the way for the five of them. Chuck and Eric hadn't even broken into a sweat the whole entire time, either. Alex ran his fingers through his jet black hair and Sam swore she saw that tuft of gray over his brow again. Louie let out a loud whistle and pressed his hands to his hips.
"Working hard tonight?" Marla joked with him.
"Man—that was brutal," he said, and he cleared his throat. "Shit, I need a drink."
Eric came up right behind him, and all the while he muttered something to himself. It took Sam and Marla a second to realize that he was singing a guitar line to himself, such that it caught their attention.
"Whoa," Marla gasped.
"Huh?" Eric raised his gaze to them.
"Yeah, do that again, Eric," Sam encouraged him again.
"Duh duh duh de duh—duh duh duh de duh—duh duh duh de duh—"
Alex strode right up to him with his guitar still slung over his shoulder. He lifted the neck and placed his fingers on the strings so he could actually play it for real. Still plugged in and still with the right amount of distortion.
"That riff's enough to make anyone run away from home," Chuck joked from across the backstage area: he then turned and planted a kiss on Tiffany's lips, given she stood there at the back the whole entire time.
"It's been stuck in my head since that last guitar solo, Alex," Eric explained.
"Gonna be on the next album?" Marla asked him.
"Hopefully, yeah. We're not gonna be in the studio until February, though."
"We're gonna be home, too," Alex added as he pressed his fingers across the guitar's neck and the sound muted away.
"You guys are recording up in the Bay Area?" Sam asked him.
"Hell to the yes," he replied with a wink. He took the guitar off of his shoulder and he ran his fingers through his hair again. Marla began chatting with Eric about something right then, which in turn gave Sam another chance to speak with Alex again. He raised those dark eyebrows to her.
"Come home with me, Alex," she whispered to him, to which he stopped right in his tracks. And then he nodded his head in response.
"I have to call my parents, though," he pointed out.
"Go ahead. I'll be right here." She adjusted the strap on her purse and he doubled back into the dressing room, the doorway right next to Chuck and Tiffany; she awaited him there with Marla and Eric right behind her and Greg and Louie off to the right. It hit her right then: she was about to take Alex home with her, back to Santa Catalina for one mere night over.
She sighed through her nose and she listened to the audience outside as they filed out of there. She thought about making her way up to the Bay Area at some point in order to visit Ruben and also to sit in with them, that is if she could. She was a friend to them after all, a friend and the first name on their fan club. The only drawback was if she returned to New York for real, it would prove to be a bit of a challenge in finding her way out of there at any given point.
The back door cracked open a little bit and Sam shivered from the cold gust of wind out there. She then felt a tap on her shoulder, and she turned to find him right behind her.
"I gotta be home in time for Christmas, though," he told her.
"Of course. I just wanna show you the new place and I wanna introduce you to my mom, too."
"You guys taking off?" Chuck called out to them.
"She's taking me down to Catalina," Alex explained.
"Catalina!" Tiffany declared. "I haven't been there in forever it seems. Have fun, kids."
Sam gave Marla and Eric both hugs, followed by Greg and Louie, the latter of whom whispered "poison garden" right into her ear.
"Poison garden and right back down to earth again," she told him with a bump of their fists.
Alex held the door for her and she strode outside to his car there in the alleyway. Even though it wasn't raining or snowing at that point, she could feel the sensation all around her. That heavy moist feeling all throughout the entire Los Angeles area.
Alex shivered under his plain black shirt, and he fumbled with the keys a bit before he unlocked the doors and tucked his guitar case into the back seat, and then he climbed into the driver's seat. Sam spared no expense and joined him there in the passenger seat next to him. He rubbed his hands together and at one point, he clasped them together and blew inside of the palms.
"Been sweating for a little bit," she noted: indeed, the side of his face had a slight healthy sheen to it from the rush of adrenaline.
"Yeah—just a little bit, though. Not a lot of sweat to go about here—nothing like that of Louie. But enough to gimme a chill, though."
"Would you like the blanket?" she offered him.
"Nah." He hesitated for a second. "How's the boat, though?"
"The boat ride? It's heated a little bit there, especially closer to the front bow—but take the blanket, though. You're probably going to need it anyway."
"Okay—" Alex fired up the car; he was quick to switch on the heater and then he backed out of there. He paused for a second as they reached the alley's end there at the sidewalk.
"What's wrong?" she asked him.
"Just waiting for the light to change." He craned his neck a bit so he could have a look outside of the back window. "There we go—" Another car passed them from behind and he backed out more and into the street.
He straightened out and he began up the dark pavement. He rubbed his hands again and blew on them some more.
"I don't think it ever gets this cold up in the Bay Area," he noted. "Jesus, I'm freezing!"
They reached the next stoplight, and Sam thought of reaching behind him for that blanket in question. He shivered and shook under that thin little shirt, but the blast of warm air told her to trust his judgment. She thought about one of the first conversations she had had with Charlie when she first moved to New York, about the snowfalls in Carson City, where it always got so cold at night given the dryness and the snow was so loose and dry as a result, like powdered sugar. At least there in Los Angeles, they had the marine layer float in from the ocean to temper things, but that still gave Alex a deep chill over his body, accentuated by the fact he had been moving about upon a stage for a touch over an hour.
The light turned over to that bright green, which almost glowed through the layer of condensation on the windshield before them.
"Which way do I turn again?" he asked her.
"Right."
"Right?"
"Right. Right!"
He chuckled at that and then he turned right, and they began the narrow two lane street. Sam knew that would take them all the way to the 405 and then that in turn would take them to the piers down in San Pedro.
"Are you sure you still don't want the blanket?" she offered him at the onramp to the freeway.
"Maybe when we get to the pier," he told her as he picked up the pace. "I can see that part of the trip being cold as all hell."
"It really is—even though I sat far away from the boat's edge, it's pretty cold, though."
He nodded his head at that.
"By the way—about that solo during, 'Eerie Inhabitants' was it? Where it was like ten minutes long—?"
"And like half of it was me soloing and Greg and Louie just keeping the pace for me?" he finished.
"Yeah! Where'd you get the idea for that?"
She took a glimpse over at him. In the dim back glow of the headlights and the lights that lined the freeway, she could look into those deep soulful eyes and the tip of his tongue as he perched it into the corner of his mouth.
"You really wanna know?" he asked her.
"Please."
"A black woman named Minerva."
"I had a feeling that was the case!" she proclaimed, and he burst out laughing at that.
"But yeah, she and I were just sitting in the back room in the venue over in Providence—you know, when we were all touring together then—and I was playing some licks and she was following along with me. Next thing I know, we're playing back and forth with each other, and she goes, 'hey, you should make that into a new Testament song' and I was like 'I do that, and you do what we're doing here for the show tomorrow in Boston' and she was like, 'deal!'"
"So that whole jam session during 'Dead Witches' was a bet with you?" Sam couldn't help but laugh at that.
"I wouldn't call it a bet 'cause there was no money involved, but she did it though! She went above and beyond with it, too. We only did it for a couple of moments—you know, she extended it out to like seven minutes. Afterwards, you know in between sets, I walked up to her and I said, 'you trying to humiliate me?' and she goes, 'why would I do that?'"
Sam clapped her hands at that.
"If anything, I lost a bet with her!" he declared.
"Why, 'cause you did it for ten minutes just tonight?" she asked him.
"Nah, because I had that glitch, remember? Kept getting a lot of feedback?"
"Oh yeah, that's right!"
"And she was like, 'I owe you one, Alex' and I was like 'nah, I owe you one, Minerva.'"
She laughed some more.
Soon, they reached San Pedro, which, even though it was still rather early in the night, had buttoned up with nothing more than a few streetlights about the place. He pulled up to the parking lot outside of the pier, and she climbed out first so as to fetch the blanket out of the back for him. He slung his guitar case over his shoulder and the two of them walked onward to the blue and white intimately lit boat that awaited them there.
Alex took his seat on the bench closest to the boat's porthole so he was nestled right inside of a corner.
"As long as this thing doesn't sink, I'll be fine here," he assured her as he leaned his guitar case against the wall next to him. He leaned forward and she put the blanket around his back and shoulders. He wrapped it tighter around his body and he shivered. She huddled closer to him so he could stay as warm as possible during the whole trip. A little trickle of warm air caressed over her head in the meantime.
The gate to the boat's floor lifted up and the anchor lifted. They were off to the races, off across the waters.
"Twenty two miles," she told him.
"Twenty two miles of this? Jesus, I'm glad you gave me the blanket." He shivered and she huddled closer to him. Even though they were tucked in the corner and thus close to the heater, they still rode upon a boat that traversed the Channel in the middle of December.
"You'll like this house," she told him. "It's cozy and it's—almost like one of those places you see in the Northeast that sell clam chowder."
"Oh, okay—so like the quintessential beach house," he said.
"Yeah, exactly!"
The waves crashed down below the bow of the boat, and Alex shivered a bit more against the cold feeling all about them.
"You're from the San Francisco Bay Area, how could you not be used to it?" she scoffed at him.
"I'm not wearing a jacket for one thing," he explained with a straight face. And then she remembered that he wasn't Joey. "It's also a different climate. Simple."
Within time, Sam spotted the bright lights of the harbor outside Avalon and she knew that Esmé awaited her just like how she promised her. They soon docked in the harbor and she picked up his guitar case, and she led him off of the boat. There at the far end, with her arms folded across her chest and her body leaned against the side of her car, was Esmé. She nodded at him as they came closer.
Sam glanced over at him and the fact that he swallowed at the sight of her.
"Hello," she greeted him and he bowed his head at her.
"Alex, this is my mom, Esmé. Mom, this is Alex."
"The infamous Alex!" She extended her hand to him and she gasped at the sight of his bare arm. "Oh, my goodness, you kids have to be freezing!"
"Yeah, it's—it's pretty cold," he remarked.
"He just played a show so he got kinda sweaty," Sam explained as she adjusted the strap on his guitar case.
"Kinda hungry, too," he admitted with a shrug of his shoulders, "you got anything to eat?"
"Plenty to eat at home, so don't you worry about a thing, deary. Sam's father and I have this philosophy that a friend of her is a friend to us."
Alex took a glimpse over at Sam with his eyebrows raised.
"I like that," he mouthed to her and she nodded at him.
The three of them piled into her car and Esmé drove them back to the house in the hills that overlooked Avalon. She led them inside and Sam pointed at a framed photograph on the wall closest to the door: one of her father when she was five years old.
"That's my dad, Ruben," she said.
"Mr. Shelley," Alex declared as he took the blanket off of his shoulders. "Lives up in the Bay Area now."
"Sam, your father is going to send you a Christmas present in the next—day or so."
"Okay—so then I'll have his new addy on hand!"
"Right! Also Alex?"
"Yes?"
"Where should we hold your guitar for the time being?" Esmé gestured to the guitar case, back onto Sam's shoulder.
"Uh—we can keep it close to the door? That is if you don't have any animals running around."
"Not at the moment, though," she told him, and Sam leaned the case against the wall, a bit away from the door so it wouldn't fall over onto the floor. Alex folded up the blanket and he set it down on the couch, and then he followed them into the kitchen. Esmé took a bottle of dessert wine out of the cupboard next to the refrigerator.
"Miss Shelley, do you have anything to drink?" he asked her as he and Sam took their spots at the bar behind the counter. "I'm kinda thirsty, too."
"I have lots to drink—oh, honey, call me Esmé," she insisted as she rested a hand on the bottle's neck.
"I can't do that, no," Alex told her with a shake of his head, and Sam chuckled at that.
"I would assume you are," Esmé said to him, "having played in front of a big crowd of people—you must be starving, too! I just had dinner but you kids can enjoy a bit of spaghetti Bolognese. I can whip some up real quick."
"My mom makes the best spag Bol, I swear," Sam whispered to his ear.
"Pour myself a little glass first..."
"How's that?" Sam asked her.
"What the wine?"
"Yeah."
"It's sweet, but not overly so. Well, it is a dessert wine so it should go with things like the petit fours we had the other day. Things like cakes—"
"A slice of pie?" Alex joined in in a small voice.
"A slice of pie, yes!" Esmé gestured to him and showed Sam a little grin. "I kind of like him, Sam."
"He does his best," she replied with a shrug.
"I really do! I really honest to god genuinely do."
"Would you like a try?" Esmé offered them both.
"I'm only twenty," Alex told her.
"It's okay—you're in good hands here," she assured him, and she poured him a small glass of that light pink dessert wine straight from the bottle. Reluctantly, Alex took the glass and took a whiff of the wine inside there. He then took a small sip.
Esmé handed Sam a small glass herself and she tried a sip of it as well.
"It is sweet," she said, "we're also gonna be here a while, Alex."
"Kinda like it," he told her, "and yeah, I definitely wanna eat something now."
"Okay." Sparing no expense, Esmé turned to the oven and fired it up to cook up a quick Bolognese for them. Sam swirled her glass as if it was brandy rather than a delicate dessert wine. She propped up her chin in the palm of her hand as she watched her mother cook up some pasta and that rich sauce.
"Hey, it's snowing," Alex declared.
"It is?" Sam peered out the front window with him: sure enough, a thin fine blanket of white powdery snow covered the manzanita shrubs outside as well as the ponderosas. She ambled across the floor and she took a glimpse up to the dark sky and the lush orange creamsicle color that told them that more was upon them. Against the lights of the harbor and the lights that decorated the street outside, she noticed the fine flakes as they drifted down.
"Never thought I'd see snow on the beach, albeit that on an island," he confessed as he took one last little sip of the dessert wine.
Soon, Esmé had made them two full plates of the pasta and that hearty homemade sauce, which also had a bit of white wine embedded within: she offered him a piece of garlic toast but he assured her that it was plenty for him. At the point they both finished in unison, Sam downed the rest of the dessert wine and Alex rubbed his eyes a bit more than usual. He had had a long day both of those days, from driving all the way down from the Bay Area and taking Sam to the pier and playing a show, to playing yet another show and joining Sam herself there on the island.
"God, I'm sleepy," he stated.
"You kids got any room for—a piece of pie?" Esmé asked them with a little smirk on her face.
"I dunno, Miss Shelley," Alex confessed, "I feel like I'm about to fall right out of this chair and roll on the floor."
"C'mon, Alex," Sam encouraged him, "you gotta have enough room in that tum left for my mom's pie. I've seen you eat before, too—you've got a bit of room in that tum."
"Well, my mom and my grandma both always joked that I have two stomachs," he noted. He nibbled on his bottom lip and then he stretched his arms up over his head, such that Sam spotted a little sliver of skin on his waist, right out from under his shirt.
"Yeah, I'll have a slice," he told them.
"Yes!" Sam cheered, and Esmé laughed at that. She served them both a plate of blackberry pie with a dollop of whipped cream on top.
"I feel so spoiled," Alex confessed as he licked a bit of the whipped cream off of the fork's tines.
"Consider yourself lucky, dear boy," Esmé told him.
"Yeah, my mom didn't move to Catalina for no reason," Sam assured him.
"It's the life," he muttered as he took one last bite of the pie. Indeed, Sam herself found her legs feeling as heavy as lead. Alex propped up his chin in the palm of his hand and he closed his eyes.
"I'm ready for bed," he confessed.
"There's only one guest bed, though," she pointed out.
"I can take the couch," he told her.
"I don't want you to sleep on the couch."
"Why not? I've slept on a few couches—and I can tell you just looking at it that that is one of the comfier ones I'll have sat my fat butt on."
Esmé took their plates and Alex stretched again.
"By the way—your fat butt?" she laughed at that.
"Yes! I have a fat butt! Samantha, I may look slim but look at my hips, though. Hips like this on this body? I'm bound to have a fat butt at some point. Probably got one now just sittin' here."
She climbed off the stool and he spun around and away from the bar's edge.
"I can't get up," he pled to her.
"You can't get up?" she laughed.
"I can't get up!" he giggled. She extended her hands to him.
"Okay, c'mere—" She grasped her hands onto his and he slid off of the stool. He almost lost his balance and he shuffled a bit like a newborn foal. He leaned against her body: his chest was right there in her face.
"Oh, jeez—" he muttered.
"Oh—hell—" She steadied him right there. His otherwise slender stomach felt so warm and full; he showed her a little smirk.
"Hello," he said in a low voice.
"Hi," she returned the favor.
"Yeah, I'll definitely take the couch," he told her right into her face.
"Get going," she teased him, and she tapped him right on the seat of his pants with two fingers. He almost stumbled out of there and into the living room.
Sam turned her attention to her mother, who shook her head at her with a smile on her face.
"What?"
"Just like me and that other boy," Esmé told her in a low voice.
"The guy you were seeing besides my dad?"
She nodded at that, and Sam started to wonder about things as she watched Alex collapse onto the couch, exhausted and very full.
She dared not ask questions about it until he was out of earshot, however. And it would have to wait until the two of them returned to the mainland within a couple of days: Esmé insisted that he stay a bit longer than a single night.
"I'd hate for you to get here and just pick up again on the next boat ride," she confessed to him over breakfast, "especially since it's such a royal pain for a round trip over here."
"My parents told me I have to be back up in the Bay Area by Christmas, anyway," Alex explained to her.
Meanwhile, Sam sat there right next to him at the bar with her cup of coffee in hand and her plate of pancakes right before her, perfectly content. It was right there that she forgot about the whole ordeal with Joey: she watched her mother and Alex converse with one another as if they were good friends. But there were moments in which Esmé had a little glimmer in her eye whenever he said something rather intelligent to her and Sam. A twinkle in her eye and her lips curled up a bit at the sight of him.
She even offered to take the both of them clothes shopping in Avalon, and Sam noticed her checking out Alex's thin lanky body a bit more in the mirrors. At one point, he showed off some new jeans that she offered to buy for him and both women gazed on at his legs and those hips in question. Sam thought about that woman on the train in West Germany, who said he was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen, and she wondered if her mother felt the same way with him.
Every small glimpse such as that happened every day for the next four days, until Sam and Alex returned to the mainland to meet up with Marla, Belinda, and Anthrax over in Long Beach for the first day of winter.
"I guess they had to cancel a couple of shows," Alex confessed to her as they huddled down in that same corner of the boat, "I dunno that's what Scott told me over the phone before we left."
"Wait. Scott is back with them?" Sam was stunned.
"I think? He was vague about it, but that's what he said, though."
Another twenty two miles and they recognized Marla's bright green hair next to Belinda's short blonde locks; behind them were Chuck, Eric, Greg, and Louie, all of them huddled there on the pier like a group of emperor penguins. Someone else stood next to them, someone off to the side.
Sam and Alex filed off the boat; as she came closer to him, the more her heart pounded in her chest.
She couldn't do it with Bill, but she could do it with Joey.
"Hey, you!" he greeted her with that lopsided grin, but she wasn't feeling it at the moment.
"Hey—" She raised a hand and slapped him right across the face. Everyone in Testament gasped at that. Joey gaped at her and then she clenched her fist and socked him right square in the stomach. He bowed forward as if he was about to vomit, but instead he gasped to better catch his breath. He clutched at himself and he looked up at her, baffled, in pain, and out of breath.
"What the—the—what the fuck?" he sputtered.
"You're with another woman!" she demanded.
He opened his mouth to say something but no sound came out. Instead his eyes widened and then he straightened himself into an upright position before her, albeit with a bit of a kink in his back given the pain in his belly.
"I thought you had gone off to another man," he confessed in a broken voice.
"No!" she said, heated. "Why the hell would I do that?"
"Why else were you movin' out to California with your counselor on a moment's notice?"
"Joey, what he was doing was illegal so Marla and Bel got me out of there. As far as he knows, I screwed luscious Louie back here."
"What?" Louie himself laughed at that.
"But that's beside the point, though," Sam continued, unbeknownst to him. "I would never just leave you for anyone, Joey. And I mean that."
She stormed away from there. She didn't want to see him again. As far as anyone on that pier was concerned, she would make her space official over on Catalina with her mother, and Alex and Testament were all free to visit any time they so wished.
"Sam!" Marla called after her. She whirled around to find her best friend gesturing to the spot behind the pier, over in the park. She walked after her and Belinda, both of whom looked at her stunned.
"Not gonna lie, that was fantastic," Belinda told her.
"It had to be done, though," Sam replied with a shake of her head. "Anyways, where are we going?"
"The bus over to Long Beach—Scott's treating us to lunch," Marla explained. "Gonna be a bit, though."
Sam turned for another look back at Joey, who moaned and groaned at the feelin.
"God, you really got me there," he muttered as he rubbed his belly. "But—it's what I get, though. It's what I get for making assumptions."
"Don't assume anything, Joey," she scolded him, "especially with me. Alright?"
Fuming, she turned and stalked away from him and towards Eric and Alex, both of whom awaited her there at the railing. Through the veil of fog as it settled over the entire Long Beach area, she spotted the Queen Mary off in the distance, illuminated with twinkling white Christmas lights despite the morning. Alex had a small white pad of paper in one hand and a pencil in the other.
"So where are you now?" Eric asked her.
"Well, right now, I'm over on Catalina at my mom's new place," she explained, "as Alex will tell you. But Marla and Bel got me back to New York, though. I'm a little divided on both, though."
"Why's that?"
"Well, because I'm kind of friends with you guys—with Testament now and my parents are both out here. But I also have my friends in Anthrax and of course Marla and Bel, too."
"The Cherry Suicides, too," Alex added with a slight turn of his head.
"And the girls, too!"
"Well," Eric started, "the best thing I can tell you to do, Sam, is to go with whatever you feel like. Go with whatever rings best to you. That was how I went about with starting Testament with my cousin. I was like 'yes! This feels so right, playing in a band.' And that was how we found each other—" He was cut off by something. "Sit tight—" He brushed past her and hurried towards Greg and Louie. "—what're you guys doing?"
Sam then turned to Alex, who never raised his head from the pad of paper.
"Gotta love how the whole place warrants rain and then it just never comes," he remarked as he shook his head. She folded her arms over the railing and stood right there next to him.
"Right? That's one of the things I miss about New York—when it rains, it rains."
"One thing I keep seeing," he said as he flexed his fingers and shifted his weight, "especially when I flick on the news report anymore is—do you know what climate change is?"
"I'm afraid I don't, no," she admitted with a shake of her head.
"It's this concept where—we as a species have advanced so far along in our technology that we pollute the earth past the point of no return. You lived in New York—I'm guessing you know the whole thing about the East River."
"It's scary polluted," she said.
"Until recently anyway, they started cleaning it up and taking better care of that water because it was getting that bad. That's just one example, too. They've found this whole thing where exhaust from cars and even from houses and cities go up into the atmosphere and pollute it there. When there's air pollution, there's a lot of heat."
"Explains why oleanders grow like weeds down here," she followed along and she recalled the idea for the poison garden. "It gets so hot here."
"They call it the 'greenhouse effect'," he continued, "Metallica recently did a song with that in mind, and I kinda wanna do something similar to that, too. Theirs is called 'Blackened'."
"I've heard that!" she declared. "It's on their new album."
"It's the opener and the one that starts out with the bass ackwards guitars, too."
"Wait, those guitars are backwards?"
"Yeah." He paused. "Yeah, you didn't know that?"
"No, I thought that was just Kirk playing around with his pedals or something." Alex chuckled at that.
"Yeah, he kinda was, though—you're actually not far from the truth with that." He took the pencil out from behind his ear and he scribbled down something on the pad of paper.
"What'cha writing?" she asked him.
"I just keep thinking about the little encounter you had with Joey back there—how you pick yourself up off the ground after something like that. I'm also thinking about—" He peered over his shoulder to ensure that no one eavesdropped on them, and then he returned to her, and he bowed his head closer to her. "Before he met Tiffany, Chuck went out with a girl who was trapped in an abusive relationship."
Sam gasped at that.
"Really?"
"I was the first person he told it about, too," he added in a low voice, "so—I dunno if he'd be okay with me telling you this, either."
"Well, I can keep secrets, though," she assured him.
"Well—apparently this girl saw an escape with him, but she couldn't click with him or some shit. So she went back to the guy and I guess he didn't take that break up too well. Chuck felt like he could've saved her from it, but he didn't, though."
"That explains why you guys were so adept at getting me away from Bill," she said in a soft voice.
"Because Chuck couldn't do it the first time around. So he was like 'hold up a minute—here's another chance at that.' So now, here I am with this paper pad. Time to write something about it."
"And now there's Joey in the mix," she added as he scrawled down a few spare lyrics.
"There's Joey—and the fact he went off with someone else. And now it's time for you to heal your soul. And it's New Year's, too, so it couldn't be a more appropriate time for that." He frowned at the paper pad and knitted those eyebrows together.
"I'm gonna have to run this by him, to be perfectly honest with you, Samantha," he confessed. "It's such a strange concept to me—like I'm on the outside looking in—but it's something I genuinely feel, especially with you in the picture."
"Do you at least have a title for this opus?" she asked him, but he never flinched at that. Instead, he wrote, in large neat letters at the top of the paper, "THE BALLAD". And he flashed her a thoughtful look.
"There it is," she said.
"There is is," he echoed her, "plus you were rubbing my butt last night. I might as well jump high."
"Wait a minute, I was?"
"Yeah. You were asleep but you were doing it."
"Are you sure it was me?"
"Positive." Sam squinted her eyes at that. She was out like a light the night before. As far as she knew, too, sleepwalking wasn't a problem with her.
Before she could say anything else, he turned his attention to the stretch of sideway right behind him. "Hey, Chuck!"