Absolute Beginners-Book 5 Of The Mad Mad World Series

Part 2

"If there's one thing I can't stand about touring it's this," Flake complained, waving angrily at the piles of wires, heavy cables and various bits of electronic equipment that littered the floor around him. "I've been doing this for how long and all of a sudden management thinks I need a new tech because mine's halfway back to Russia and I can't put my own equipment together? For fuck's sake!"

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger," Paul said, holding up his hands. "All I heard was Alexi had a family emergency and had to fly home as soon as he could get a flight back to Moscow. Ollie told me about the new tech only because he all but ran over him backstage. You think I'm short? This guy's a Hobbit!"

Flake growled, irritated,and hopped down from where his keyboards were half-assembled. "I can do this myself, Paul! We're almost done with this half of the tour and now I have to go and break a new guy in?"

"I'm sorry I'm late," came a voice from Paul's right. He turned halfway to see the tech he'd been speaking of rushing across the stage, a handful of cables over one shoulder and a laptop under one arm. He came to a sharp halt in front of Flake, nodded to him and Paul and said, "I'm Jason Mills. I apologize for being a few minutes late, like I said. Emu was getting me brought up to speed on what needs to be done before rehearsal starts, so if I'm not in the way..."

Flake looked the man up and down with a critical eye and said, "Not a problem. I was halfway through getting everything set up myself, do you want to see where I left off?"

"Sure. I can see from here you've got most of the patch cables where they need to go..."Jason replied as Flake led him to his set up. Paul shook his head, amused at how Flake was behaving himself and wandered over to see what Richard, Ollie and Till were doing. Ollie was showing Richard something on his iPhone and Till was stretched out on the top of a speaker case, one arm draped over his eyes. Paul grabbed a folding chair as he walked towards the trio and once he was within normal speaking distance, said, "Remind me once again why we like touring?"

"We do but we don't. But it pays the bills," Till said. "Did Flake scare his new tech off yet?"

"Nope. Of course he's behaving himself at the moment but that could change," Paul replied, settling down next to Richard and Ollie. "I don't blame him one bit but...well. We have about twenty minutes before we need to get started on sound check, I estimate. Where's Schneider?"

"Schneider is right here," came their drummer's voice from behind the road case Till was lying on. "I'm doing stretches like someone is supposed to be doing but he's too intent on watching silly cat videos on the Internet."

"I did my stretches already, my dear Christoph," Richard replied, tossing an empty water bottle over the speaker case in Schneider's general direction. He fielded it without looking and sent it right back at Richard, who caught it and threw it in a recycling bin. "Lilly threatened me with a shoe to the skull if I didn't do them. And we're not watching cat videos. At the moment."

Schneider popped up from behind the case and snorted. "Our fans would collectively shit themselves if they saw us watching cat videos. We're supposed to be evil and all that, we cannot watch cute kitten video. It's just not done."

Paul shook his head and laughed. "Yeah, well, there's a lot of things we do now that's 'just not done.' I'm tuned up and ready to go; Reesh, Ollie, Schneider, you want to go over that middle eight section in "Los" that I keep muddling up while we wait?"

As the four men turned to head backstage to practice, Till yawned hugely and flopped back onto the road case. "I'm going to lie here and nap. Wake me up when we're ready to go again."