Ghost Tour (ch.7)
September 14, 1998
Reid pulled up to the tool-and-die shop and parked behind a familiar beat-up van with green plates. Inside, he found their sound man sitting in the stairwell, scribbling a stage diagram.
“Subly…” Reid greeted Subs, wide smile.
“Mr. Foster…”
This wasn’t a band that hugged, but they shared a solid handshake. It’d been a while.
“That Rex’s van outside?”
“He drove.”
“Jesus. He upstairs?”
“Ducked out for smokes,” Subs said. He checked his watch.
Rex had been X-13’s roadie since the beginning. In the time-honored tradition, Rex was the barely-employed, knucklehead friend who would hit the road at a moment’s notice, sell merch, hump gear in-and-out of clubs. His loosely-defined driving skills were legendary.
“Rex packed yer amp,” Subs said, “figured you’d want to do the pedals yerself. If you can lose one they’ll fit in one case.”
“On it.”
Upstairs, road cases lined the hallway. An unfamiliar face on a cellphone waved to Reid as he passed, Reid waved back. He figured it was their new tour manager. People from Clinton didn’t have cellphones in 1998.
The practice space was already half emptied. Corey was meticulously packing cymbals. Liz was over by the microwave, sipping tea from a styrofoam cup.
“Where’s Jordan?” Reid asked her.
“Out with Lila.”
“You meet her yet?”
“He’s bringing her to the bar tonight for the grand unveiling.”
There’d been much speculation about the celebrity romance.
The guy who’d been on his cellphone in the hall jogged apologetically into the space.
“Sorry about that, lotta last minute details…you must be Reid,” he said extending his hand, “I’m Ron.”
“Oh, hey.”
Before the conversation could continue, Ron’s cellphone let out a cascading electronic ringtone.
“Ah, I gotta take this.”
Ron headed back to the hallway, knocking shoulders with Rex as he came stumbling in, thwacking a fresh pack of smokes against his palm to pack the tobacco.
“Foster Child,” Rex said, seeing Reid for the first time.
“Rexorcism,” Reid replied.
Band nicknames multiplied whenever Rex entered the picture, he generated most of them. He peeled open the smokes, offered the first to Liz, who took one. Reid passed. Rex lit Liz’s and his own.
“Where’d you get this Ron guy?” Rex asked.
“He’s the new TM.”
“Seems like a buzzkill.”
“He’s efficient, supposedly.”
Rex looked around the mostly packed space.
“What else?”
“I’m all set,” Liz said.
“Maybe Corey needs something,” Reid said, there were still a few loose toms lying around.
“Hey, new Murphy, you need anything?” Rex called over to Corey.
If Corey took offense, he laughed it off. He had his own ideas of how he wanted to organize his trap case, at any rate.
“Cakewalk,” Rex said, and disappeared before Ron could come back with any suggestions.
“I don’t know why I’m still here,” Liz said, looking for an empty can to tip her ash. She fetched her jacket from the couch.
Left with his only pedals to assess, Reid knelt before them on the dirty carpet.
“Let’s see here…”
He’d been testing out a different overdrive recently, but hadn’t bothered to work it into the proper sequence. Giving the pedal board a long look, he unplugged a couple of patch cables and pulled out the old overdrive. He regarded it like an old buddy.
“I’ll find room for you somewhere,” he told the pedal. You never know when you’ll need an extra.
Sticking velcro to the bottom of his new overdrive, he sandwiched it between the wah and distortion, plugged in both sides to complete the circuit.
Be a good idea to make sure it all worked, but the amp was already packed, he’d have to test it at their first soundcheck. There’d be time.
Looked like Subs or Rex had packed his Tele’s already too. He popped open both road cases to make sure they were snug tight.
The American-made ’91 was his baby. Blue pearl finish, rosewood fretboard, single coil pick-ups. The Mexican was his back-up, questionable to be seen playing out with, but in truth it sounded as good as the American, and the action was sweet.
In the hallway, Ron was wrapping up his phone call while Subs waited for quasi-building-manager Darren to figure out the freight elevator.
“Can you deal with a little step up?” Darren asked.
The Otis was manual, Darren didn’t have a lot of practice getting the floors to line up.
“Uh, you wanna maybe give it one more try?” Subs suggested, looking at the fifteen-inch differential.
It took three more tries, but Darren got within an inch. Close enough. Subs let out a two-fingered whistle, Rex reappeared, and the two began wheeling amplifiers onto the elevator.
“Need help with those?” Reid offered on his way to the stairwell.
“We got it,” Subs said.
“You sure?”
“Bus isn’t even here yet. Go home and rest, we’ll see you at the bar.”
# # #
X-13 had worked their way to honorary regulars at Jimmy’s Sidecar, mostly thanks to the welcoming spirit of Jimmy himself.
Jimmy’d been an Irish crooner. Or maybe he’d been in a doo-wop band. Story changed depending on who he was telling. Either way, he was tickled that actual musicians under age sixty liked his bar. The extra business didn’t hurt either
The bar itself was made of formica meant to look like wood. Decades of wear had created a pattern not found elsewhere in nature, but this somehow only confirmed the place’s authenticity.
With eight stools along front and a few more on the side, band and crew put a squeeze on the few other regulars, but it felt like everyone’s party.
Jimmy was happy to make cosmos for Liz and Kristina. Reid sat at the edge of their gal talk for a few minutes, then rotated his stool to tune in to Ron and Corey’s band talk.
“It’s not just the crazy crosswalks, it’s the jet lag,” Ron was saying, “it’s like you’re on another planet.”
“But don’t you just adjust?” Corey asked.
“Not really, you’re in Tokyo two nights, then maybe Osaka, then you’re out of there.”
“Are we going to Japan?” Reid said, thinking he’d missed something.
“I was just telling Corey about another tour I managed.”
“I heard they have conveyor belt sushi,” Corey said.
Two feet down the bar, Subs and Darren were getting a Clinton history lesson from a county worker named Vince who was smoking Newports. He was probably their dads’ age but seemed older.
“It was the Thruway that did it,” Vince was saying.
“How’s that?”
“Back when it was just Route 9, folks had to drive through Clinton,” Vince said. “Stop for lunch, haircut, shoeshine. Thruway came through, goodbye to all that.”
The door swung open as Jordan finally blew in with Lila Parker like they were arriving at a Hollywood premiere. She’d dyed her wispy bangs so she didn’t look exactly like in the movie, but she most definitely wasn’t from around here.
Reid offered Lila his barstool in the process of introductions. He decided to stay cool and not mention he’d just seen her film the other night.
“What can I get for you, my lovely?” Jimmy asked, laying a paper coaster on the bar in anticipation.
“Oh, I’ll have one of those…”
She pointed to the cosmos Liz and Kristina were drinking.
“And one of those!” she added, likely meaning Kristina’s formfitting X-13 t-shirt, but for a split second it seemed like she was pointing at Kristina’s ample breasts, which cracked the gals up so completely they adopted Lila immediately.
“You want a Stella, Jord?” Jimmy called, the fanciest thing on tap.
“Thanks Jimmy.”
With all stools taken, Jordan and Reid stood back from the bar.
“She like the Dewitt?” Reid asked him.
“Hard to tell, she doesn’t eat much.”
Reid took a sip of soda water, Jordan reached through to get his beer off the bar. It was pretty loud with multiple conversations by this point. Subs swiveled around on his stool and hopped up to join them.
“Bus is over at the Holiday Inn,” he told Reid and Jordan. “Driver’s sleeping, he’ll be ready to roll, six am.”
“Where’s Rex?” Jordan asked, looking around, realizing their roadie was missing.
“Said something about going out to find Murphy.”
Both Jordan and Reid noted this without comment.
“So how come Jordan won’t let me see his house?” Lila was asking Liz and Kristina, the three now huddled conspiratorially over the bar.
“It’s being ‘renovated’,” Liz offered, the official explanation.
“That’s what he said.”
“You might want to leave it at that,” Kristina said.
“It doesn’t matter, he’s moving to LA anyway,” Lila said.
Eyebrows went way up.
“Does Jordan know that?” Liz asked.
“It was his idea,” Lila said. “Well, sort of…”
Jordan tapped her on the shoulder with a mitt full of quarters.
“C’mon,” he said, “they got a good jukebox.”
Reid and Subs caught up about who was doing what back in Burlington, which left Kristina and Liz to talk in semi-private for the first time.
“I know that what happens on tour stays on tour,” Kristina said.
“Reid’s a good guy, you don’t have to worry,” Liz assured her.
“I don’t mean that, I mean…he’s been so good, it’s been ten months.”
Kristina nodded toward their cosmo glasses.
“He’s a big boy, Kristina.”
“Yeah I know but…could you…look after him a little?”
Liz shook her head slightly at what seemed a tall task. Being the only woman on a tour bus full of dumbass guys was already a seriously backwards-and-in-heels scenario. But Kristina was a soul sister, and if there was one person in this band who actually had her back, it was Reid.
“I’ll do what I can,” she said.
# # #
Reid drove as usual in these situations. Kristina was a little drunk, but funny drunk.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her seat tilted way back so she was slightly disoriented to begin with.
“I wanna swing by the Holiday Inn for a sec.”
The Holiday Inn was across town from where they lived, over by the Thruway exit. There, parked under the sulphuric glow of a buzzing floodlight, was the tour bus.
Quiet, heroic. Like a nineteenth-century whaling vessel moored in its berth, it waited one last night in port, creaking with the lapping tide, ready to set sail.
# # #
Back downtown, their house still smelled strongly of sage. Reid never told Kristina about the apparition, but he’d smudged the place when she wasn’t home to make sure it wouldn’t come back.
They didn’t bother turning on the lights, kissing hungrily just inside the living room. The alcohol was so strong on Kristina’s breath, the fumes were intoxicating. Her breasts were firm beneath the X-13 t-shirt, which she ripped off along with the rest of her clothing as they tripped through the house and fell into bed.
“You still have that stuff?” Reid asked, coming up for air.
“What stuff?” she said breathlessly.
“The coke that John guy gave you, at the party.”
Kristina paused for a sober moment and looked at him.
“Reid, you can’t take that.”
“I don’t want to take it. I want you to take it.”
She almost argued, but he was insistent, and she was just drunk enough that it felt right to roll with.
In the dim light of the streetlamp coming through the window, he watched her fully naked form as she headed into the bathroom.
In the dark, he finished pulling off his own clothes then listened. One long snuff, a second shorter one to finish it. He could almost feel it, but it wasn’t just visceral enjoyment he was after. He’d been thinking about this. It was better she took it now, with him, than with someone else while he was gone.
When she got back into bed, their bodies came together with a force so magnetic it was almost gravitational. Rubbing the tip of his tongue along her teeth was a crystalline sensation. He could taste both her and the thing she’d just inhaled.
This, along with the picture in his mind of her naked body.
It was more than enough.
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Damn, boy!