souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 130: dancing nancies

Sam signed her name on the dotted line there on a brand new check. The first time she had ever really used a check before, and it was courtesy of Scarlett.
The thought of heading back out to New York City by herself, without the help of anyone else, not even her parents, had initially terrified her. Testament had completed recording their new album and then they ran off with Megadeth on tour for the summer before Sam could help Tiffany throw Chuck a party for his twenty eighth birthday: October was when she would expect to find Souls of Black on the shelves of a record store. Anthrax weren't touring yet, and thus she knew that she could at the very least see them again before their new album dropped.
Lucky for her, the whole entire move lasted the entire summer, so by the time the release date for Anthrax came closer and closer, she had settled into her new apartment, not too far from where Marla and Belinda lived in Hell's Kitchen. The two of them still had her couch, which Genie had loved laying on that whole entire time: both women were working long hours at the glass shop up in Scarsdale and thus she had to plan out when she could visit them both then to fetch her couch. In the meantime, Scarlett vowed to get back to her as soon as she possibly could, but when that would be was another question altogether.
She took her seat on the little spindly chair in the center of the floor with her pad of paper spread upon her lap as well as the check for the first month's rent. She was alone there in New York City and yet she still had her contacts with her. She lifted her head to the cordless phone perched upon the wall.
One of the first things she did when she moved in there was hook up her phone so she could call her parents when she moved in.
She closed the envelope with the check inside of it and then she reached down for her purse there on the floor. With one hand, she opened the top there and she spotted the old photograph of Frank and Charlie as kids, still tucked inside of there next to her wallet and a brand new addition to the interior there: an address book, which still had yet to be filled out, mainly because the numbers that meant the most to her were cemented within her memory. Sam slipped the envelope inside and then she bowed over to the phone.
She dialed his number and waited.
"Hello?"
That upstate accent, still as familiar as always.
"Hi, Joey," she greeted him.
"Oh, hey! Sam I am. I was just thinking about you. How are you?"
"I just moved in and I'm about to pay my rent. What's up with you?"
"Oh, y'know. Getting ready for the new album to drop—the twenty second of August, mark your calendar!"
"Gladly," she replied, and she couldn't resist the smile on her face.
"We're actually headed out for New Zealand in about a week," he told her.
"New Zealand!" She was stunned by that.
"You still have your passport, right?" he asked, and she could see the lopsided grin on his face.
"I do, yes. Why? You want me to come along?"
"If it's not too much trouble," he said in a small voice, "I remember how much trouble you had to go through coming with us and also with Stormtroopers of Death, like the shit you had to go through with your old landlord and whatnot."
"I'd love to come along," she confessed, "I've never been to New Zealand before."
"I didn't tell you this and I wasn't sure if I would get to tell this, either, but The Cherry Suicides are relocating to Seattle."
"Really? What for?"
"There's a label up there that wants them to record something for a compilation or some shit. I don't remember the full details. But Zelda told me that a couple of weeks ago and I was like 'wow!'"
"Wow, indeed! I thought they'd never leave Rhode Island, too, like they were so adamant on staying there in Providence."
"And everyone's moving to Seattle it seems like," he remarked.
"How so?"
"I dunno, but it's like every time I turn around, someone is moving out west and it's specifically Seattle, too. You're like the one exception to that."
"Hey, so if—the new album drops on the twenty second—a couple of weeks time—and you guys go to New Zealand right then, too, you wanna do something in the mean time?"
"Uh, sure? What would you like to do?"
"How 'bout a cup of coffee? A nice little start to a return to things. The same place you took me to in North Syracuse."
"Oh, that restaurant by the lake? It burned down."
"No way!" She gaped at that.
"Yeah, back in January, I think it was? Shocked the hell out of me when I heard about it, too, I was like oh man! That place ruled!"
"What about the cafe near the hockey rink?"
"We can go there," he said, "it's middle of summer so I can't really show any hockey moves for you, though."
"That's okay," she assured him. "What matters is we get to see each other again."
"Right? So what time you want me to come pick you up?"
"Well, since I live here now, and I have a car now, I can drive up there to your place."
"Oh! Oh, cool! That saves me a great deal of time and effort."
"You're going on tour soon, anyway," she pointed out. "You've got to reserve your energy."
"You remember where my place is?"
"A block from the art shop."
"Correct a mundo! Except this time I moved upstairs—let's just say after the last tour, I needed to downgrade a bit." He chuckled at that and then he spoke. "Alright, I'll see you in a bit."
"Joey?"
"Hm?"
She nibbled on her bottom lip. "I love you. I'm glad we're back near each other."
"I love you, too," he replied, "and I'm glad we are, too."
"I'll see you soon," she told him with a puckering of her lips even though she knew he couldn't see her.
They hung up at the same time and she turned to the pad of paper on the chair's seat.
And then it all clicked right then. They were alone and she had control at that point. She ran her fingers through her blonde highlights and she couldn't resist another puckering of her lips. She had Testament around her little finger and now she had Joey in the palm of her hand as well.
She put on her sunglasses and slung her purse over her shoulder, and she headed out to the bright New York sunshine.
It really was nothing like the sunshine in California, which baked and scorched everything in its wake even in the face of cold winds. New York beckoned her with something fresh and new. She climbed into her new to her car and she began back upstate to Camillus and that familiar apartment.
Nearly four hours from Hell's Kitchen and she reached that familiar stoplight, the one with the art store on the left side of the street, and she hung a right. Joey sat there on the stairs with what appeared to be a cup of coffee right between his legs and a pair of white framed sunglasses upon his face and that ball cap with the word "Injun" properly imprinted on the inside of the bill.
"There's my girl," he declared once she rolled up before the staircase and gave her highlights a toss back from the lake winds. He showed her that familiar lopsided smile once she climbed up the steps. She greeted him with a little kiss on the side of the neck; he took off the cap and set it upon her head.
"Even with the blonde highlights, it looks better on you," he confessed as he took a sip from the little paper cup.
"You're drinking coffee before we have coffee?"
"It's lemon water," he told her.
"Oh, I see."
And then it hit her, especially when she remembered she had her drawing pad in the car with her.
"Hey, guess what?" she spoke.
"What?"
"We're alone right now."
"Yeah, we are. Aren't we?" He cracked her a little smile, that same lopsided smile she had gotten acquainted with all that time ago. He then ran his tongue along the rim of his top row of teeth, which still had the slight hole in the left side.
"You still wanna do the thing with me? The art thing where you wanted to draw me naked and also make a glass piece out of me? Going to that place is the kind of thing you do when the sun starts going down, and it's still the middle of the day, too."
"I do," she told him with a little nibble on her bottom lip. "It's gonna be a while before Scarlett gets back to me, too, so—might as well have a bit of fun with it." She flashed him a wink and he kept the smile intact upon his handsome face.
"Wait here." She held up a finger to him and then she returned down the stairs to her car again: each step of the way down, she swung her hips a bit. She was doing Testament and Joey Belladonna at the same time. She had become the ultimate art whore for sure, even with her bell bottom jeans and her plain white top. No one would guess it for a second.
She unlocked the car and opened the back door, and she fetched the drawing pad out of the back seat. She didn't have those glass cutting tools with her, but she could ask Belinda about it when she had a chance.
Sam returned up the stairs to his apartment, to which he held the door for her.
Even though it was a smaller place, he did in fact have a bit more in there with him, namely a new couch and a proper display shelf for all his records. It also smelled clean, and she knew that he cleaned right before she came over.
Without a moment's hesitation, he shut the door and he peeled off his clothes for her. It all happened so fast that it took her off guard.
"Wow, we're really not messing around are we?" she asked him: he was right before the window so the midday sunshine shone down on his skin and she could have the best light possible right then.
He took his spot there on the stool right in the middle of the floor with his legs spread open for her. She took her seat on the couch with the paper upon her lap and she gazed on at his naked body, at the sun kissed skin on his feet, his ankles, his lower legs, his knees, and his thighs. He rested his hands on the edges of the seat so she could see the entirety of his boy.
He had put on a small bit of weight since she had last seen him: she didn't ever remember him being a bit thick in the waist, but as her pencil ran over the top of the paper, she noticed the little handles over his hips. His face was also a little bit rounder and fuller, and his thighs seemed thicker as well. As if he had been working out this whole entire time.
"I put on almost twenty pounds since we last saw each other," he confessed to her. "Mostly muscle, though."
"I was just gonna say—you seem a touch heavier," she remarked with a good long glimpse to his waist. "You're also getting older, too."
"Yeah, I'll say," he noted with a sigh.
"Thirty on October thirteenth," she said.
"I'm actually okay with it," he told her as he flexed his fingers a bit.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah." He sighed again but he never moved his body. "It's just a fact of life. You get older. And it's not like thirty is old, either. I talk to older people all the time, those in their forties and fifties, and they're always like, 'oh yeah, thirty—that's still plenty young. You don't become a man until you're forty."
"I assume you don't become a woman until you're forty, either," she told him.
"Nah, women are women from the get go," he said. "I will say this, though. I can't believe I was twenty four when I joined Anthrax."
"And when you met me, too," she added as she leaned the pencil onto the side for a bit of shading around his waist.
"It's really been six years!" he proclaimed with a slight raise of his eyebrows.
"Alex was sixteen when we first met him and the guys—when they were known as Legacy," she continued. "He was sixteen and still in high school. He's going to be twenty two at the end of next month. Little man's gonna be double deuces himself."
"Wow. That's crazy."
Joey's soft tone took her aback a bit: had she said that not even a couple of years before, he would've reacted like a bull in a china shop.
She reached his arms and shoulders, followed by his chest and his neck, and then his head and lush black ringlets.
"Man, you got fast," he noted as she put down the first shading for the curls upon the crown of his head.
"I got fast the same way your voice and Anthrax all got good and nice," she told him.
"Yeah, I'll say. This new album is badass as all hell, Sam. I've got a good feeling about it."
The exact opposite as Testament! Even though she herself had a good feeling about Souls of Black, it was rather striking to hear it straight from the horse's mouth there.
"Really?" she asked him as she stopped and flexed her fingers.
"Oh, yeah. All sounds good and everyone's getting along great."
"Do you have any solos on it?" she asked him.
"Like, guitar solos or singing solos?"
"Both."
"I have one guitar solo—I won't tell ya which, though. I want it to be a surprise. As for singing—there's a song on there called 'H8 Red'—spelled h-8 and then the word 'red' after that—Charlie told me I sound excellent on it."
"Cool—I'll have to make a special event for that."
She ran her fingers through her blonde highlights and she gazed on at him, still completely naked there in the middle of the floor and with the sunlight reflected upon his brown skin.
"We're all alone in my place," he told her in a low voice. "I'm also naked."
"What're you getting at?" she asked him; she flashed back on when Alex was in her bedroom at her mother's house and she had no clothes on herself. Joey nibbled on his bottom lip: in the gray sunlight, she could see his pupils dilating against those dark brown irises. He then darted over to her before she could set the pad of paper down on the coffee table right before her. He climbed on top on her, right on top of her lap.
"Fuck me," he begged her as she dropped the paper onto the floor, "—fuck me right here, right now."
"Joey—Joey!" She tried to push him off but he was in fact a little bit heavier and also stronger. He leaned in closer to her face and parted his dark lips for her.
"My girlfriend is out of town right now," Joey whispered to her.
"And I've missed you, my dear boyfriend," she whispered back to him, to which she stopped right in her tracks. "Wait, when did you get a girlfriend?"
"Krista," he replied with a straight face. "You weren't around and so I needed someone to help tithe me over. It's totally casual, though, Sam. I promise."
"Tithe you over?" she echoed, horrified.
"You ever been separated from someone you really like and you're just absolutely filled to the brim with desire?"
"Have you tried jerking off?"
"I jerk off a lot," he assured her, "but sometimes it just ain't enough. I needed someone to help me out. If you were closer to me, I'd be willin' to call you up and we could have a little fun."
Sam glanced down at his legs, at his thick thighs, now far more sinewy and stronger looking than she had originally remembered, and his slender knees. He was right there, right there before her on display for her to behold for herself.
"Aren't you worried that you might be feeling like a piece of meat?" she asked him, to which he shook his head.
"Nah—the only time I'd feel like that is if one of you ladies wanted me to knock you up," he pointed out, and then he leaned in closer to her face. She could smell the lemons on his breath and she leaned closer to his face as well.
Her lips on his. The tang of lemon. The softness of his skin having healed.
Those deep brown eyes gazed into her own.
"Shall we move to the floor?" he asked her in a low voice.
"Nah, we can do it on the chair," she told him as she put her arms around him.
Sam leaned back in the chair and she and Joey locked lips.
So right on every way possible.
She was the one for him. He was the one for her. The way he kissed her made her wish she had a crown upon her head. She longed for the crown, especially with all these men at her feet and around her fingers like her own rings.
She needn't strip off her clothes herself, especially once she reached down and fondled him. He closed his eyes and kept his parted lips before her face.
His skin was way softer that time around, far softer than she had remembered. This time around, he had stayed away from the alcohol: his skin was softer and way silkier as a result. She never wanted to stop touching him even as he came right in her hand.
He ran his tongue along the edges of his top teeth like that of a serpent. She sealed the deal with a kiss on the dark lips.
"God, I've missed the way you taste," he whispered into her ear.
"And I've missed the way you feel," she whispered right back to him. She gave him one last kiss before he climbed off of her lap. She then looked over at the pad of paper on the table next to her.
"I'm gonna have to pay Bel a visit now," she told him; she looked down at her hands and what he had left behind there on her skin.
"Think it's gonna be big and heavy?" he asked her.
"Maybe. Is there any specific colors you want me to use? I've been feeling a lot of green and blue colors with it."
"That's good by me, Sam I am," he replied as he picked up his underwear and his jeans. He bowed into the next room to get dressed while she ducked into the bathroom and washed her hands. All the while, she pictured the glass piece she wanted to make of him. Belinda was in Scarsdale: close enough and close enough to warrant a quick visit between then and the day the five of them left for New Zealand for a brand new tour.
But for the time she had right then was reserved for Joey. She returned out of there right as he put that cap back upon his head and he reached out for her hand. He led her back outside to his car and the warm, humid afternoon, where the sun had moved closer to the west; all the while, she took to the front seat right next to him.
The radio blared on once he stuck the key into the ignition, but he was quick to turn it down before they even so much as strapped themselves in. Once Sam straightened herself out, she put on her sunglasses and she paid attention to the next song.
"Is that..." she muttered.
She recognized those riffs. Those riffs that had enough juice right behind them to make someone run away from home.
"Holy shit," Joey remarked, and they gaped at one another.
"Testament got on the radio!" Sam declared. "Wow!"
They pulled out of there once Chuck's familiar voice seared on after those riffs in question.
"That's what happens when you make music videos, I guess," Joey said with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Courtesy of my dad, too," Sam pointed out as she nodded her head and she whispered the "preach!" part of the chorus under her breath. "You know it's only a matter of time before you guys do. You do realize that, right?"
"I've seen us on TV a few times before but not on the airwaves yet, though," he confessed, and then he shrugged. "Who knows if or when it'll happen, really."
Alex's solo came on right then and she thought about him back home in California. A part of her wanted to touch him once again, at the very least touch him and run her fingers through his dark hair.
Chuck followed suit once more. She was back home and she was positive that she had made the right decision with it all, and yet she missed them. She had them in the palm of her hand for what felt like a split second in time, and now she had moved thousands of miles away from them.
Once they reached the outskirts of Syracuse, another song came on, one with an odd almost psychedelic groove to it. She thought about that night in Providence when Alex played a riff for Eric and it had a similar wandering feeling to it.
"Soundgarden? Soundgarden," said Joey.
She thought about when she got to see them: she knew they were about to head off in places, especially with a big voice such as that.
It was anyone's guess at that point.
Within time, they reached the familiar northern side of Syracuse and that hockey rink, and ultimately that cafe on the other side. That same patch of grass where Joey had pushed Alex appeared within her view: Joey himself switched off the car and then he turned to her with a glimpse over his sunglasses.
"Come to New Zealand with us," he begged her. "New Zealand and Australia."
"You really want to come along with you," she declared.
"Please," he pleaded. "Please, Sam, I beg you. We need you with us. I need you with us. I'm sure Frank and Charlie'll be happy to see you with us again."
"Joey, I just moved here," she said in a hushed voice.
"So?"
"At least let me get settled in a bit."
"It's a couple of weeks. You've got plenty of time." He picked her hands off from her lap and held them close to her. "Please. I need you with us. I've missed you for so long. I'm done playing around. I want you. I want you!"
She swallowed. If it meant that there was a stop over in Los Angeles or the Bay Area so she could see Testament again, then she could do it. She would also travel with Joey for a little bit as well. It was a win win if she did it.
And thus she nodded her head.
"I'll do it," she finally told him. His face lit up at the sound of that and Joey flung his arms around her and held her close to him. He then planted a kiss on her lips.
"Let's go have some coffee first, though," he told her; from behind those lenses, she could see the twinkle in his eye. It was such a beautiful sight to see for herself, such that she couldn't hardly resist the smile on her face as well.
As they ordered their coffee, he slipped his hand into her back pocket to feel her. Even through the fabric, she knew he could feel her. The feel of his fingers there made her smile the whole entire time they were there at the counter. As she sipped on her coffee, she thought about taking him into the bathroom for a quick wrap of her lips around him, but she decided not to until they were on the plane.
Two weeks time, and all the while, she paid Belinda a visit at the glass shop there in Scarsdale, who walked her through the whole process, from what shape she wanted the window to be to what type of glass she wanted to use: Sam decided on a wide rectangle, one that was a bit more square in shape as well as a soft shade of milky green for the background behind him. She also picked out other tones to balance it out and thus, even with her design on the paper, she looked at something that would earthy and risque in every fashion possible and she hoped Krista would see it once upon completion, when the outer rim was sealed and all the joints were soldered and the whole thing was glazed.
"Mucha would be proud, Sam," Belinda told her with a bump of the fist. "By the way, when you're ready to solder and glaze, bring it over here. Both methods are really messy—especially the glazing—and I don't want you to get your new apartment filthy with flux and grapeseed oil."
"You have ways to solder, too," Sam pointed out.
"Oh, yeah. The irons are real easy to work with and I'll walk you through it. I also just want you here because it's your first time."
A whole day surrounded by art glass and the tools in question. A whole day of dancing around it all, but once Belinda told her the length of time to build a window from the ground up, she knew that she wouldn't be able to work on it in the meantime. Not with her leaving for New Zealand in a couple of weeks time.
She was right there next to him when they got their plane tickets together there in Syracuse.
"Two tickets for beautiful Auckland, New Zealand," he said, and he peered over his shoulder at her and flashed her a little grin, and she returned the favor with a little smile.
She also wanted the window to be a surprise for Joey as well, much like that painting on canvas. But she knew she wouldn't make the same mistake as last time by leaving it in the back of the car or some other place where he could see it.
There was a spare room in her new apartment where she set up the table to work on the window and that would be closed off to anyone who came over to visit. She almost felt like a mad scientist at that point, complete with her new room and her brand new tools. Her first project to save the world ten times over and she knew that once Scarlett saw it for herself, that all bets would be off. Even in the midst of her insecurity, she had faith for this stained glass window as she drew out the glass pieces with a black marker and carved them out of the glass sheets with the brand new cutter. The whole two weeks she danced with that window, and at that point, she was ready to leave for New Zealand, the first part of a brand new tour.
There was in fact a stop in San Francisco but she had no idea if there would be enough time to pay Alex a visit especially since it wasn't that long of a stop, either.
Once they took off, Joey fell silent, such that Sam didn't realize it at first. She looked over at him and the distant expression plastered on his face.
"Been awful quiet lately," she remarked.
Joey shook his head as he kept his gaze glued to the window, out to the fluffy gray and white clouds down below the plane: America's heartland blanketed with a new storm system and yet they were flying over it. Sam looked over at him with her eyebrows raised.
"What's the matter?" she asked him, and she set a hand on top of his knee. He sighed through his nose.
"I don't know if I can do this," he confessed in a low voice.
"What do you mean?" she asked him. "You can't do what?"
"This whole thing with you and me," he confessed.
She frowned.
"What do you mean?" she repeated the question, that time in a lower voice.
"Sam, I'm gonna be thirty in October. I don't feel like the same twenty five year old kid when we first met. I feel like I've aged a great deal since then. I don't really wanna sneak around and play around, especially if there are two hearts involved."
"So what're you saying, Joey?" She squinted her eyes at him.
"I wanna get married," he confessed to her.
"To me?" She was taken aback by that.
"Unless you wanna," he replied with a shrug of his slender shoulders. She opened her mouth to say something, but she stopped right in her tracks. She thought about Alex right then, especially since Testament weren't on the plane with them. Even though she saw him as her best guy friend with a little extra tacked on, a part of her didn't want to leave him behind. Indeed, a voice in the back of her mind told her that if she got married to Joey, she would have to face the music with him. But then again, she wanted Joey with her as well. She wanted them both on either side of her, but then again, unless they lived in Nevada or Utah, there was no way she could take the both of them for herself.
"If you don't want to," he started again, that time in a low voice, "I'll ask Krista to marry me. You can be a part of our wedding but it won't be you in the bridal position."
"I want you," she blurted out. "I want you all for myself."
Joey leaned in and kissed her right on the lips without a single moment's hesitation.
"Mrs. Shelley Belladonna," she whispered into his mouth.
"Mrs. Shelley Belladonna and not just Mrs. Belladonna?" he asked her.
"Do you want me to be Mrs. Belladonna?"
"Unless you wanna."
"You know," she began with her arms folded across her chest, "if I'm Mrs. Belladonna, I'd have to change the name on my gallery."
"Oh, shit. Yeah, we could do the hyphenated name." He showed her another little lopsided grin and then he leaned in for another kiss on her lips.
"So when you wanna do it?"
"After the tour," she told him.
"Obviously," he duly replied.
"I also have to get it all organized," she remarked, and she fetched up a sigh right then. She recalled the trouble Aurora went through to get married to Emile and she was working with the label. This time around, Sam was a mere free lancer but she also just moved to New York City, which meant Joey would have to move in with her. All so much to think about after the dates in New Zealand and Australia.
And then there was telling her parents about it as well, and she knew it wouldn't fly with Ruben, her father, for one second.
Aurora's behavior made a lot more sense at that point.