The Heart Rate of a Mouse (Larry)

Chapter 6: Stars in Cities

I sleep in the next day, having managed to push interview duty onto a willing Cal and a resentful Liam. My hotel room has windows to the river, and I smoke a morning cigarette in the nude and watch Canada on the other side. We're heading over there after Detroit.

Tonight's show is sold out. Tomorrow's too. Ben said that the longer we are on this tour, the more our album is getting played, the more the word spreads, the more sold out shows lie ahead of us. And the biggest venue we're hitting now has the capacity of thirteen thousand, but the tour after this? Maybe even twenty thousand. Ben's eyes shone as he said it, and I don't know when this band's success stopped being my dream and began being his instead.

Someone knocks on the door, and I pull on some underwear as I go to open it, expecting breakfast but getting Charles instead. "You're not breakfast," I observe.

"I'm the next best thing," he deadpans, pushing past me. Charles goes to the suitcase I have in the corner and begins to throw clothes on the bed. I've never figured out who Charles works for. Is he Ben's minion when he does stuff like this - forcing me to eat, to get dressed, to take better care of myself? Or does that make him my bitch? Charles probably just works for himself.

"What are you doing?" I ask him pointedly.

"We've got time to kill before soundcheck, so let's see what Detroit has to offer."

"Not interested."

"Yes, you are," he states as he compares one of my floral-patterned shirts with the next. "We're all going. Even Liam is excited to go. He's been really happy lately, have you noticed? The kid's weird. Weirder than you."

"Hey!"

Charles ignores me. "Anyway, the girls want to go shopping for Bowie, and basically, it'll be really good for the crew to just chill out for a bit. But what's the point if Louis is moping in his hotel room, not talking to anyone as usual? No point at all. This shirt," he decides and shoves it at me. "Ten minutes, meet us in the lobby."

I scoff. "You're not the boss of me."

Charles lifts an eyebrow and shoves me backwards with a push of his hand. "You think?"

Twelve minutes later, we cram into four taxis and take a ten minute ride to some hip clothes boutique Perrie demands we visit. We spot a music shop right next to it, and our team is divided into two as the girls plus Luke and Ed, who is obsessed with Louvre, go check out clothes. Luke squeals more than the girls do, and seriously, he is so in the closet that, if he were any further in it, the bastard would be in Narnia.

The rest of us head to the music store to mess around with the gear.

Harry and Perrie don't glance at each other. Why would they? Harry wouldn't want to fuck her, anyway. In daylight, I see much clearer, and the things I thought I saw in the middle of the night after an exhausting show seem nothing more than just a bit on this side of ridiculous.

They recognise us in the music shop, the owner throwing out other customers and temporarily closing down the place so we can browse without being harassed by fans.

"Why don't I have a double-necked guitar?" Cal asks demandingly while I fall in love with an ES-335. Liam's made himself comfortable behind the drum kit at the back, just messing around.

"You know any songs about Detroit?" I call out to him, sitting down on a stool and picking the strings of the Gibson.

Liam scratches his head thoughtfully. Yeah, why would anyone write a song about this place?

"Detroit City,"  Harry says, having armed himself with a Gibson Explorer. "Bobby Bare, sixties song?" We all blink at him, and he rolls his eyes. "Jesus, don't you rockers know any country music? Here, you'll recognise it when you hear it. Can I get a twelve string?" One of the workers rushes to get him one. Harry strums a few chords on it. "So it goes like this. I wanna go home... I wanna go home..."