Ghost Tour (ch.13)

September 19, 1998

Quick reminder, I’ll be reading at Rough Draft in Kingston this coming Tuesday 1/7 at 6pm, please come on out…

—

Reid eyed the bowl of fruit they always had on their rider because it seemed like a good idea, but no one ever touched it. He reached for a bag of chips.

“They redo the dressing rooms?” he asked Jordan.

First Avenue in Minneapolis was a regular stop on the club circuit. It was an old bus station everyone knew as the place Prince filmed Purple Rain. X-13 had played there several times so it was familiar, almost.

“We played the smaller room last time,” Jordan said.

The venue had two performance spaces. The smaller one held 250, this one held over 1,500. Jordan went for chips too. He and Reid stood there, crunching.

“What’d you think of Evie?” Jordan asked.

“We talked a bit.”

“You should hook up with her in LA.”

Jordan was still scoping the table for something snack-worthy so didn’t catch Reid’s skeptical eyebrow.

“You know I live with Kristina, right?”

“Did you look at her?”

Liz sat five feet away on the couch smoking a cigarette. Jordan could’ve enumerated physical attributes, it barely would’ve registered. She’d heard it all.

“Which one of you pounded on my bunk last night?” she said, blowing a peeved column of smoke into the room.

This caught Reid’s attention.

“Someone pounded on your bunk?”

Roncho came into the room at that moment flashing a wad of bills.

“I straightened up with Freddie for the last few nights, you want this now or…”

Freddie was Benzedrine’s merch guy, it was easier to let him sell X-13 shirts and give him a small cut.

“You keeping receipts?” Jordan asked.

“Every last one.”

“Hold onto it. How we doing?”

“Well,” he said, tucking the cash into his Day Planner, “you’d do better if one of you would duck out to the table after the show, just saying.”

“Get Corey to do it.”

“Corey might work but…”

“I’ll do it,” Liz agreed before Roncho had to come right out and said Corey wasn’t as much of a draw. “But I’m not doing it every night.”

She glared at Jordan and Reid to drive home that this wasn’t her forever job.

“Where is Corey, anyway?” Jordan said.

“Think I saw him in Benzedrine’s dressing room,” Roncho said.

“What’s he doing in there?”

“Just chilling, I guess.”

Roncho headed out, then doubled back.

“Oh, forgot to tell you,” he said to Reid in particular, “Kristina called.”

“Where is she?”

“Didn’t think to ask, but she left a number.”

Reid examined the scrap of paper. It was a 914 area code so she hadn’t left for Burlington, but the exchange wasn’t Clinton either.

# # #

Corey had been biding his time. They were almost halfway through the tour leg with Benzedrine, he figured it was safe to duck his head in.

“C’mon in, we don’t bite,” Billy Somerville said.

It was just Billy, Aiden Dunlop and Tommy T, always less pressurized than when Owen Kaye was around.

“How you likin’ the tour?” Billy asked.

Corey stood just inside the door but didn’t pull up a seat. Tommy T seemed indifferent to his presence, Aiden Dunlop looked up long enough to eye-fuck him before going back to staring at his shoes.

“I’m liking it,” Corey said.

“You guys with us through Los Angeles, right?”

“Yeah, then we’re opening for Jetco on the way back east.”

“Played with them a few years back,” Billy said. “They’re pretty good.”

“For sure. And you guys…you’re heading to Japan after LA?”

“Land of the Rising Sun.”

“So cool.”

Mention of Japan caught Tommy’s interest. Or maybe he’d been engaged the whole time, it was hard to tell what was going on behind the tinted glasses.

“The Japanese,” Tommy pronounced, “they all pogo while you’re playing. Sea of Japanese heads, all bobbing up and down at the same time.”

“Wild,” Corey said.

“Whole other world.”

Aiden decided it was time to chime in.

“You know the Mongolians used human heads for percussion instruments,” he said.

“I…did not know that,” Corey said.

“Pried open the skull, stretched monkey skin over the top. Tied it all together with human hair.”

Corey had run out of responses.

“I always thought it’d be cool,” Aiden continued, “couple of human skulls as rack toms, looking out at the audience.”

His bandmates seemed to think this was normal conversation, at least as far as their drummer was concerned.

“You wanna beer?” Tommy asked Corey.

“Uh thanks, I think we got some in our dressing room…”

# # #

Reid found a payphone out front near the ticket booth. He used his AT&T phone card and punched in the number Roncho had given him. He asked for Kristina when he didn’t recognize the woman’s voice who answered.

“May I ask who’s calling?” the woman said.

“It’s Reid, her boyfriend.”

“Oh, hi Reid.”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Isabella, we met our last party. You and Kristina did such a good job that night.”

It was the woman with the hot breath who started coming onto him the night he helped Kristina cater. Last person he expected to find himself talking to, but he remembered something about Kristina doing another party there this weekend, and tonight was Saturday.

When Kristina came to the phone, she was obviously in a mad rush.

“Can we talk tomorrow? I’ve got onions caramelizing.”

Reid knew the difference between caramelized and burnt was about twenty seconds.

“Yeah, sure, but where’ve you been?”

“I’ll explain tomorrow…”

“Okay, have a good party…”

Kristina left the phone off the cradle. He could hear Isabella in the background walking toward it.

“John, what do you think of the strapless?” her voice said, lazily approaching the dangling receiver. Then she hung up.

# # #

X-13 opened the Minneapolis set with Re-Entry. The seventh song off their new album had a wall-of-sound effect, Jordan wanted to come in full force. He was thinking about the kick he felt last night, nearly 2,000 fans screaming when he came out to join Benzedrine for their encore.

At the moment they were probably looking at half that. The crowd was into them, but it wasn’t quite the same as last night. He wanted more.

Reid, meanwhile, couldn’t stop thinking about Kristina at that dinner party. She had as graceful a curve to her neck as any Hollywood actress. Who was looking at that neck right now, above her starched white shirt, hair pulled back?

Their song Angels was, in part, about Kristina. He usually kept the gain low on his overdrive pedal for this one, it gave him a light distorted effect he’d almost describe as gossamer, but tonight he cranked it. It was a dark angel he brought to life.

Jordan looked over his shoulder when he first heard it. Whatever Reid was doing, he liked it, and strummed harder in response. X-13 was dynamic that way. A single shift in one person’s playing could change the whole conversation.

At the board, Subs immediately clocked what was going on.

“Here we go,” he said.

He panned Jordan’s guitar a little more to left, Reid’s a little more to the right. Created a little more space between them so the two wouldn’t cancel each other out.

Jordan changed his vocal phrasing slightly, Reid tried a new lick. Subs kept his hand instinctively on the guitar fader, rode it like an instrument in itself. Nudged it up slightly for the tasty stuff, then back down so it wouldn’t turn to sludge. You needed to follow the call-and-response.

Corey could hear that the boys were messing around, but just kept holding it down. He had half an eye on Jordan for redirection, but looked beyond at the midwestern indie crowd, some nodding, some moving herky-jerky this way and that. He couldn’t help imagining a Japanese audience, all pogo-ing at the same time, like Tommy T had described. He could just picture it.

Liz, staying locked with the drums, was glad Corey didn’t try anything fancy. When Murphy’d been drumming sometimes he’d overreach when the band started improvising. It could get messy.

The audience was digging the show. Liz looked out and noticed one guy in particular up front with knotty hair staring at her. She was on stage, so some staring was to be expected. But usually whoever would look at her while, then at Reid, then at Jordan, a rotational sort of thing. This guy was just looking at her the whole time. It was too much.

She adjusted her stance to face the drums, pretty much for the rest of the show. Corey, seeing Liz was finally making more of an attempt to include him, was happy for the recognition. They got in that much better a groove, if that were possible, since they’d been effortlessly tight since the onset.

Rex, in the wings holding Reid’s extra guitar, stood mesmerized. The tour had been in automatic mode from his perspective, he’d been thinking they finally lost it. But here they were. His favorite band was back.

Roncho was making his way from box office back to dressing room. Rex grabbed him by the arm.

“Wait,” he said.

“What?”

“This,” Rex said, motioning to what was unfolding on the stage.

Roncho paused for a moment. Someone had to manage these guys, he was usually content to let them do their thing while he took care of business. But standing here with Rex, he finally started to get it.

It was pretty damn good set.

# # #

Liz went out to the merch counter after the show, as promised. Freddie was pleasantly surprised.

“Sounded great tonight,” he said.

“You were listening.”

“I listen every night. You were on tonight.”

Some girls who were on their way to the bathroom made a giggly detour when they saw Liz sitting there.

“Oh my god,” one of the girls said, almost fanning herself, “you’re my all-time favorite bass player, I started playing bass because of you.”

“Glad to hear,” Liz said. “What’s your band called?”

“Power Pony.”

“Great name.”

The girl looked down at the t-shirts like she didn’t even know what she was looking at.

“What size should I get?”

Liz did a quick visual appraisal.

“Get a medium.”

“I will totally get a medium.”

Her quiet but equally excited friend got a medium too. Freddie handled the sale and they floated off into the crowd like the exchange had changed their lives.

“You just made their night,” Freddie said.

“I met Kim Gordon once,” Liz said, not so much meaning to equate herself with Sonic Youth’s bass player, but remembering the effect it had on her when she was this girl’s age. Hadn’t been so many years ago, but it felt like a lifetime.

“Hey, since you’re here, any chance I could take a bathroom break?”

“Go for it.”

“Anyone wants anything I’ll be back in three.”

Liz looked around the crowded bar area feeling pretty satisfied. She played music because it suited her, but it felt good to think she was inspiring young women out there.

She took a gander below the counter, gave the opened cardboard boxes a little kick with her biker boot, trying to gauge how well they were selling. She was caught by surprise when she looked back up and someone was standing in front of her.

“So, is your bus really haunted?”

It was the guy with the knotty hair who’d been staring at her the whole show. It was loud in here, she must have misheard him.

“What?”

“Your tour bus, is it haunted. You know, your tour journal.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She didn’t. She’d been present for the initial conversation when Reid agreed to do a journal, but what he was writing about, or that it was being posted at all, was news to her.

“Doesn’t matter,” the guy said. “Hey, I saw you looking at me from the stage tonight…”

Liz completely disengaged at this point and scanned the room for Freddie, seemed like way longer than three minutes already. When some guy started creeping her out she’d usually just bolt, but she was stuck here temporarily. It wasn’t just the shirts, Freddie had left his cashbox under the counter with Benzedrine’s money in it. She couldn’t abandon it, and walking off with it might get weird.

“This is the third time I’ve seen you play,” the guy said, starting to lean over the table. “I just feel like we have this connection…”

Freddie returned, hopping over the counter in a well-practiced single bound.

“Sorry, there was a line.”

“No worries,” Liz said not wasting a microsecond before slipping from behind the counter, putting her head down, and dodging through the crowd back to their dressing room before mister creepy guy could follow her.

A few minutes later, the club erupted when Benzedrine went on. She’d been watching at least a part of their set each night, from the side of the stage if not from the sound board. Tonight she poured herself a tall glass of cabernet and just stayed in the dressing room. She bobbed her foot. Even through the cinderblock walls she could still follow Billy Somerville’s bass line.

# # #

First Avenue didn’t have their own bus parking, ironic since it used to be a bus station. The tour bus was parked in the public lot directly behind the venue, it wasn’t so far to go.

Walking out alone, Liz was almost to the bus when the guy who wouldn’t leave her alone at the merch counter approached from the side.

“Hey Liz, sorry I lost you back there, I wanted to tell you, I drove all the way from Ames…”

Liz looked quickly around the empty lot. The red light went off in her head. She pulled the pepper spray from her bag.

“Back the fuck away from me!”

She yelled at him full-force and with confidence, like she’d practiced at her self-defense class back in Clinton. She had her finger on the button and pointed it at the guy’s face.

“I will fucking mace you!”

The guy backed up instantly, seemingly stunned at the unforeseen turn of events. When Liz took one step forward, he turned and ran. He was already halfway across the lot when Kenny came flying off the tour bus.

“What’s going on?” he said.

Liz was still pointing the small mace can in the direction the guy was running.

“Just some asshole.”

She tucked the can back in her bag. She seemed composed, but Kenny could see she was breathing heavily. He thought carefully before he spoke.

“Be a fool to mess with you, I can see that,” he said, shaking his head. “Still and all, someone bothering you, probably not a bad idea you come get me, let me take care of it.”

Before she had too much time to conclude this was sexism disguised as chivalry, he added,

“Just so you know, I’d say the same thing to any of the fellers in your band. It’s my job to take care of y’all.”

Liz barely took her boots off before climbing into her bunk. She lay there steaming. She could hear everyone else coming onto the bus in fits and spurts, all slaphappy in celebration of what felt like maybe the best show of the tour.

The back of the bus was soon in full party mode. They were finally starting to hit their stride. It caught everyone by surprise when Liz slammed into the lounge just long enough to say,

“Whoever’s been banging on my bunk better knock it the fuck off.”

—

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