It was a single thwack from underneath that woke Reid this time. Pulling back the curtain, he thought he saw someone hightailing toward the front. He propelled himself from his bunk to catch whoever was messing with him, but the lounge was empty.
Parallel to the driver’s seat was a captain’s chair. Reid climbed into it and pulled his knees up to his chest. The bus felt cold tonight. The road ahead was dark, but it was a commanding view.
“Just missed Indianapolis,” Kenny said. He didn’t need to take his eyes off the road to know someone had sat next to him. He glanced over to confirm it was Reid, he’d had a suspicion.
“Far to go?” Reid asked.
“Bout halfway to Chicago,” Kenny said.
Reid didn’t want to get zoomy with the Texan, but between the knocking and his own imagination he was getting creeped.
“There’s nothing…funny…about that empty bunk, is there?”
Kenny let out a good-natured little laugh.
“If you’re catching a little whiff of something, it’s probably coming from one that’s ocupado,” he said, Tex-Mex.
Reid chuckled, to keep it light.
“Yeah, but…there’s some sorta, I dunno, knocking or something.”
“Knocking?” Kenny said, still lighthearted.
“You know, like someone’s pounding on my bunk, and just now I thought…”
He hesitated.
“Spill it.”
“I thought I saw, like, a ghost or something.”
The smile fell from Kenny’s face for just a sec, but he resurrected it with a dismissive toss of the head. In his way, he was a performer too.
“Night plays tricks on you, is all,” he said, like he’d give Reid a friendly pat on the back if he didn’t have to keep his hands on the wheel.
“Yeah, what I figured,” Reid said.
The dotted white lines kept coming steadily, hypnotic. Reid fell asleep right there in the chair.
Kenny looked over at him once or twice but otherwise stayed focused.
Damn, he thought. I think the kid saw Him.
# # #
Kenny waited out rush hour at a truck stop in Gary, timed it to arrive at their hotel in Chicago when their rooms were ready midmorning. The show wasn’t until the next night but they had press scheduled, required them to be in town.
“If you think you need it, bring it,” Roncho announced, “you won’t see this bus again til tomorrow night.”
It was a bit of a hustle, the bus was double parked on Dearborn. Once inside the lobby, Roncho handed out keycards.
“I have you and Corey together,” he told Reid.
“I room with Jordan.”
“Jordan needs his own room.”
“Since when?”
“Since…about five minutes ago,” Roncho said, scanning the crowded lobby for incoming band and crew, like a mother dog looking for lost puppies. He was doing his best not to sound harried by the last-minute modification. “Please tell me you’re not going to need your own room now too.”
Reid didn’t want to seem like a prima donna. He took the card and headed up to the room. Somehow Corey had beat him up there.
“Oh, did you want the bed by the window?” Corey asked, having already claimed it with his suitcase.
“I’m good,” Reid said, trying not to seem too miffed by the overall situation. He didn’t want Corey to think it was anything personal.
“I think we can still catch breakfast,” Corey said.
Seemed like a good idea.
“Let’s do it.”
They headed back downstairs. It was a pretty nice hotel, there was table service instead of a breakfast bar. Reid hadn’t really hung out with Corey one-on-one, it dawned on him he didn’t know much about him personally.
“So, you were in marching band?” Reid asked him.
“Fultonville HS, State Champs 86.”
“Not bad.”
“Go Spartans.”
Explained why the guy played like a freaking metronome.
“How about you,” Corey asked, “were you a band guy?”
“Not so much. More of a used electric from a pawn shop guy.”
“Did the trick.”
The eggs came on big, warm plates. There was a garnish on the potatoes. Reid and Corey were just tucking in when Roncho appeared alongside the table.
“There you are,” he said to Reid like he’d been looking everywhere. “You’ve got a phoner in five minutes.”
Reid shoveled a few more bites and grabbed some buttered toast in a napkin.
“See you in the room,” he told Corey.
“You need me for anything?” Corey asked Roncho.
“Lobby at noon for the photoshoot,” Roncho said. He trailed Reid to the elevators, just to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
# # #
In the van on the way to the photoshoot, Liz razzed Jordan about his new choice of fragrance.
“You know, cameras don’t pick up cologne,” she said.
“Too much?”
“A little.”
Jordan vented his shirt, which didn’t help.
“Lila got it for me,” he said. “I want her to think I’ve been wearing it.”
“From back in Los Angeles?”
“She’s coming tonight.”
Explains the solo room, Reid thought. Still, he wished Jordan had told him what was up, one friend to another.
“She filming something?” Reid asked from the back seat.
“Some play she wants to see,” Jordan said, “excuse to come to Chicago.”
It wasn’t a long van ride, they almost could’ve walked. The shoot was in an alley, meant to look gritty. Sort of funny since they were staying in a fancy hotel. The lights were already set up, and Brandon their A&R guy was here waiting for them
“Looking well,” he said, as if this was almost a surprise, “tour must be agreeing with you.
“Still getting the kinks out,” Jordan said.
Brandon had flown in from New York. The shoot was for Les Inrockuptibles, there was an uptick of interest in France, boded well for the rest of Europe, Brandon needed to make sure this went right.
He introduced the band to photographer Giles Allard, who was dressed more fashionably than they were, and his assistant, Melani, who looked like she should be in front of the camera instead of behind it.
“Just to be natural,” Allard said. “It is, how you say, a typical day.”
He proceeded to position the bandmates in arrangements that would only be typical for human megaliths on Easter Island. Jordan was way up front toward one side, Reid and Liz in the mid-ground, Corey way in back.
Melani stood just outside of the shot, holding a reflector under Jordan’s face for fill light.
“Seduce me, you know how I mean?” Allard called to Liz in particular.
Liz was already standing sideways, wasn’t that enough? Not that she even needed to slenderize, but this was as close to French Vogue as she was going to get, so fuck if she wasn’t going to look as hot as possible. She pursed her lips slightly.
The click of the reflex camera ratcheted them along, encouraging slight adjustments in poses if not expressions. They’d done this before, they knew what to do.
Allard made additional suggestions, moved them down the alley a bit to take advantage of a rusting fire escape in the background, picturesque in a Gotham sort of way.
Brandon whispered something in Allard’s ear and they motioned for Corey to step out.
“You understand,” Brandon said to Corey.
“No worries,” Corey said. He stood on the sidelines watching the next few rounds. If he was bothered in the slightest you couldn’t tell by looking at his face, but this wasn’t the only time the unspoken question would be left dangling. Was he a hired gun or was he actually in the band?
As the shoot wrapped up, Jordan took Brandon aside and leaned in.
“How are the figures?”
“Not…where we’d hoped.”
“Is there concern?”
“We’re watching,” Brandon said.
Allard approached.
“I think I have what I need,” he said.
“Are we happy?” Brandon asked.
“We are very happy,” Allard said.
Brandon clasped the photographer’s hand to suggest sincere gratitude, then checked his watch. There was still time for late lunch.
“Nice job everyone,” he said. “Are we thinking deep dish?”
# # #
Subs and Rex, enjoying a proper day off, took advantage of the free Cubs tickets Brandon had scored for anyone who was interested.
Good seats too, in the club box behind the dugout. Hotdogs in one hand, 24-ounce drafts in the other, they could pretty much see everything.
“This place is ginormous,” Subs said, calculating the sheer tonnage of steel required to suspend the upper deck.
There was a certain grandeur about Wrigley Field. Built for the masses before the age of television, it felt like a monument to the American Century in the closing years of a millennium.
The two had gotten high back at the hotel and still managed to navigate the L to Wrigleyville. Subs was in an awestruck mindset.
“You see that science show on Discovery back in the room?”
“The one about the panthers?”
“After that, about the Big Bang.”
“I think I was in the shower.”
Subs took a bite of hotdog, wiped mustard from his face with the back of his hand, then continued.
“They said something like, for the first three hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, everything was pure energy.”
The air in the stadium happened to shift at that moment, tens of thousands of people started paying closer attention, Subs and Rex among them.
Sammy Sosa was up. Just last week, Sosa had passed Roger Maris. He was right on Mark McGwire’s heels to clinch the record for most home runs in a single season.
“This better be good,” Rex said.
Milwaukee’s Bobby Chouinard was on the mound. First pitch, Sosa let pass, ump called strike one. Second pitch, Sosa swung and missed, strike two. Expectations rising. The whole crowd was on the edge of their seats, hoping to see number Sosa hit 64 with their own eyes.
Sosa hit a foul into the stands, still two strikes. Chouinard threw one outside, then another. The count was now two-and-two. Anything could happen. Chouinard wound up, let loose a fastball, low and inside. Sosa popped it up to centerfield, it’s going, going and it’s…caught by Greg Martinez.
Inning over.
“That was underwhelming,” Rex said. He went back to his hotdog.
Subs, having almost lost his train of thought, remembered what he’d been talking about.
“Anyway, for the first three hundred thousand years, there was no matter.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The Big Bang, the universe, all this…materiality,” Subs said, extending his hand to the stadium and beyond, “it’s all made of energy…reality is energy.”
Rex shrugged, drained his 24-ouncer and looked around to see if any vendors were in the vicinity for another one.
“There is no reality,” he said.
“Really,” Subs said.
Subs thought maybe Rex was about to get philosophical.
“When I close my eyes, you cease to exist,” Rex said.
# # #
“You been to Rainbo?” Corey asked Reid back in the room.
“Think I’ve been there once or twice.”
Lunch had extended to late afternoon then they’d returned to the hotel. It was early evening. Reid was on his bed, flipping through music listings in the Chicago Reader, Corey was refreshening before going back out.
“Heading over there with Roncho, hit a few other places, you coming?”
“Thanks…think I’m just gonna chill.”
Being in clubs night-after-night for gigs was one thing, but a busman’s holiday wasn’t his idea of a good time these days. The area roughly coinciding with the double bed beneath his reclining body was about as much territory as he felt like exploring this evening.
Once Corey headed out, Reid dialed 9 for an outside line then punched the digits of his phone card. He hadn’t spoken with Kristina last night and was looking forward to a long, lingering talk about anything.
The machine kicked on. She wasn’t supposed to be working tonight, probably she was just at the supermarket or something.
“Hey, it’s me, gimme a call when you get back.”
He left the number of the hotel and his room number on their machine.
He didn’t care much for regular television, but found an old Bogart film on AMC and watched it through to the end. Kristina still hadn’t called so he tried again, and again got the machine.
“Maybe you’re working,” he said, “look, doesn’t matter how late, when you get in, gimme a call.”
He watched half a western, then shut the light. His body was tired but he couldn’t let himself fully drift off, thinking the phone would ring at any moment. He seemed to lie there for hours like that.
It sounded like Corey was talking with someone out in the hall, but when he came in he was alone. Reid listened with some amusement as Corey felt his way across the darkened room like a drunk person.
Corey fell onto his own bed fully dressed and was sawing logs within two minutes.
Reid was still half-awake waiting for Kristina to call.
But she never did.
—
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"truck stop in Gary" – I could read a whole chapter on that while snacking on deep dish.