Voice. Part 2

She tuned up, and, shockingly, the whole band was ready to go by seven.

First time I've ever seen that happen.

"Okay, we'll start with 'Aftermath' and see how it goes," John said. Danny counted it off almost before she was ready, but she jumped on it just in time.

It was an easy song, like all the songs John had sent her. Straightforward chord changes, no solo, no bridge, nothing fancy. It was an unf.u.c.kuppable song. h.e.l.l, the chorus had the same chord progression as the verse-it was like a meaner, less inspired version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," the same four chords for three and a half minutes. It was so easy that the real challenge was keeping her mind from wandering. She varied the rhythm a little bit, tried to syncopate it some, and threw in a few different chord voicings to spice it up, but it was like lentils-basically bland, no matter what you threw on top of it.

She looked around the room, watching and listening to the other musicians as her hands went on autopilot. Quentin wouldn't look at her, and he seemed to be trying to push himself into the wall. Danny was grooving, though. The song was so dull that the dynamics changes were the only thing carrying it, musically, and he pushed and pulled those through effortlessly. She found herself edging closer to him, embellishing a little bit around his rhythm, and the two of them eased into a back-and-forth that almost had a little spark to it. By the end of the second chorus, she was starting to feel good, and she lit into a solo that hadn't existed in the song before.

John sang the first few words of the verse before tapering off under her onslaught. She shot a challenging look at him, but he just nodded approval. Quentin didn't seem to know what the f.u.c.k was going on, but the chords were impossible to screw up, so he kept playing what he'd been playing. John came back in after one verse figure and Case slid back into the rhythm part. Danny shot her a grin, and she found herself smiling back.

They finished the song.

"That was . . . different," Quentin said. He was scowling.

"Yeah it was," John said. He looked terribly serious, but a light danced in his eyes. "h.e.l.l yeah."

After that, they practiced hard. John seemed to warm up some and get a little more comfortable, and while his voice was still thin and off-key, he didn't suck quite as badly as he had the other night. And it was clear that n.o.body outworked him. He rode himself mercilessly, having the band play the third verse of one song about fifteen times while he sang it over and over. He didn't seem to know what he wanted, just that each new attempt wasn't quite it. He was groping toward something, Case thought, trying one thing after another like searching for a light switch in the dark.

He didn't have the musical expertise to tell Danny or Case what to do, so he left them alone, but he got exasperated with Quentin quite a bit. "Jesus, Quentin, can you just remember the change for once? And I need you to back off there, I can't hear myself!" Quentin seemed to take it okay, but Case didn't know how he managed. She'd have simply walked out if John had treated her that way.

They practiced the same ten songs for over three hours, at the end of which Case and Danny were drenched in sweat and Quentin looked like he wanted to crawl under his amplifier and hide. John was so hoa.r.s.e he could barely talk above a whisper. Case figured that couldn't be good for him-it had to be doing some damage, but whatever. It was his voice.

"Tomorrow night, seven again?" John whispered as they packed up.

Danny shook his head. "Can't do it. My-ah, I got stuff going on." He gave Case a sidelong look and then promptly looked down at his drum set.

"I can't either," Case said. "Gotta work for a living. Can't do Wednesday, either. Thursday should work."

John frowned. "Okay, then. Thursday."

Case put her guitar in the case. She wondered if she should take the amp, too, but decided against it. She'd just have to bring it back.

She was halfway out the door when she had an odd thought. That's how a musician knows she's home. It's where she leaves her gear.

She rolled her eyes at herself. "Thursday," she said to the room at large, and she left.

John was buzzed-that had been almost like real rock and roll! If they could tighten it up just a little before the show, it would be all right. For the first time in months, he felt like he was making progress.

His excitement dimmed a little when he saw Quentin staring at him, brooding like a storm cloud. "What happened to Seth?"

John looked away. "You know how it is."

"Not sure I do. How is it?" Quentin spoke quietly, but John could hear a low anger in his voice.

John sighed. He had worried so much about how to handle Quentin's cut of the upcoming show that he'd forgotten Quentin and Seth were buddies. Even if they hadn't been, Quentin didn't take surprises well. Great.

"She's good," John said. He could elaborate, but probably not in a way that would make Quentin any happier. He thought through a few options and decided to leave it at that.

Quentin stared at him for a long time before finally looking down. "Yeah," he said. He rolled up his cables, threw them in a bag, and headed toward the door. "See you Thursday."

John let out a breath he hadn't even known he'd been holding. That was one problem down. Not the one he'd actually been worried about, so it shouldn't have come as much relief, but he felt buoyed anyway.

"h.e.l.l of a rehearsal, huh bro?" he asked Danny.

"Yeah," Danny said. He had a distant look in his eyes, but he was still grinning. "That was all right."

"Thanks, Captain Understatement. That was better than all right, and you know it."

Danny shrugged. "We're getting there. Not there yet, but a h.e.l.l of a lot closer. I don't know how you talked her into coming, but good call."

That was the opening-John doubted there'd be a better one. He braced himself. "Ah, about that . . ."

Danny's distant look got a whole lot closer. "Yeah?"

"I, uh, I had to make some promises to get her on board."

"Oh, Jesus. John, do you ever think before you open your mouth? Ever? What did you tell her?"

John looked at the ceiling. "I told her the pay for the college show was two hundred bucks."

"So?" It took Danny another second to put it together. "Oh, f.u.c.k-"

"I told her that her pay for the college show was two hundred bucks," John said, cutting him off.

"Yeah, I got it. Quentin is going to murder you in your sleep."

John tried on a weak grin. "So, I was wondering if maybe I could borrow fifty bucks."

"To pay Quentin," Danny said flatly.

"To pay Quentin."

"I ought to beat your a.s.s," Danny said, but by the tone of his voice John knew that the argument was already won. "I ought to let Quentin murder you in your sleep. I ought to help."

John's smile widened. He couldn't seem to stop it.

"So I'm out fifty bucks, because I don't get my cut, and then I'm out another fifty bucks because I have to pay for Quentin. Is that about right?"

John tried, unsuccessfully, to wipe the smile off his face. "Yeah. I'll pay you back."

"Yeah, right. Pull the other one." Danny sighed and scratched his close-cropped scalp. "I'll spring for it this time, but we're gonna split four ways, evenly, after this."

"Cool," John said. "This'll work out great-you'll see."

"It better," Danny said. "Gina's gonna be p.i.s.sed," he added to himself.

"Gina," John echoed. "Your-ah, stuff you gotta do tomorrow night?"

Danny didn't say anything.

"Don't you forget Rule Number One," John said.

"Don't worry about me," Danny snapped.

John let it drop.

Chapter 3.

He can hear the sound of the crowd. On the other side of the curtain, like a beast with ten thousand heads, the ma.s.s of people chants his name: Johnny! Johnny! Johnny! The stamping of their feet vibrates up through the stage, up through the soles of his feet, into his belly, his heart.

His throat. Their voice is his voice now, raw, thunderous, and powerful.

He looks to the left and to the right, and a sneer-a pure rock-and-roll sneer, a Billy Idol sneer-no, an Elvis sneer-pulls his lip up. Case is to his right, as always, but her goldtop Les Paul has been replaced by a guitar the color of blood, so deep and rich it seems almost to be dripping. To his left stands the ba.s.s player. John doesn't recognize the man, but he's strangely unconcerned. The ba.s.s player gives him a nod. All clear, he seems to say. Danny is ready behind him, just waiting for the signal.

He looks around one more time. The crowd is frenzied now as the stage lights come up.

Standing off in the wings, just past the mystery ba.s.s player, is Bob Dylan. Highway 61 Bob Dylan, his face smooth and unlined, his hair frizzed out in a thousand directions, his eyes hidden behind black plastic sungla.s.ses. Robert Plant stands next to Dylan, shirt hanging open, arms folded. Dylan tips Johnny a nod, but Plant has a f.u.c.k-you expression on his face. Impress me, his face says. His eyes are black and flat, like sharks' eyes.

Behind both of them, an aging ex-rocker, his lined face all harsh angles and deep creases. He c.o.c.ks a finger at John and grins.

Johnny tears his gaze away. He raises his hands, and the curtain starts to rise. The noise of the crowd rises with it, the chant breaking into numberless cheers.

The band starts, and the stage sound is loud, louder than the crowd, louder than the bellowing voice of G.o.d at the instant of creation. There are no other sounds in the whole universe.

Johnny steps forward, leaning the mic stand over, inhaling deeply before the first word.

The thick, rancid scent of decaying fish rolls into his sinuses and down his throat, and he chokes.

John woke with bile already racing up his throat. He jolted awake, bolting for the hall, but it was already too late. He didn't make it even close to the bathroom, but he was lucky enough to get clear of the mattress before his dinner came forth in one great convulsion, splashing the floor and spattering the walls.

He fell to his knees, choking and retching. His hands shook like mad, and he balled them into fists, using them to support his body as he leaned forward and spasmed.

That awful smell . . .

He knew it was just a dream, but he couldn't shake the sense that that horrible smell had been there, right there in the room with him in the seconds before he threw up. Now there was just the acid stench of vomit.

Smell or no, the dream kept coming back. It had been a couple of weeks since the show, two weeks since he'd talked Case into playing with the band, and it was a similar dream every night, with slight variations on the theme. Sometimes the curtain rose and John sang. In those dreams, his voice sounded glorious, but the crowd had turned to corpses. Sometimes they were still and dead, and other times they were living corpses that jeered at him and charged the stage just before he awoke. Often, he never sang at all-that stink choked him, or the equipment wouldn't work, or worse. Once, Robert Plant had stepped forward and cut the ba.s.s player's throat before the band had started playing.

Those were bad enough, but the worst was the simplest: The curtain rose, the band played, and he sang. He sang as he never had awake, as he knew he never could, and the crowd, enthralled and enraptured, sang with him. He woke from that dream with a sense of loss so deep that he wept.

That guy really got to me, he told himself for the tenth time. He had to stop thinking about the guy from the show, the one lurking in the wings in his dream. The guy had creeped him out, and he couldn't leave the memory alone, like picking a scab. He called me Johnny. Maybe John had announced himself onstage-he couldn't remember. The guy could have overheard someone talking to him. There were plenty of explanations for that. But he knew about the money.

Yeah, and there was no good explanation for that. There was nothing to be done about it, though, and John tried to push it out of his mind.

He finished coughing and went into the bathroom to rinse out his mouth. It was still dark out. He'd have plenty of time to clean up the floor, do a little writing, and take a shower. Definitely take a shower. It would be a cold shower, since he'd stopped paying the gas bill in order to free up the cash to take a voice lesson twice a month, but he was getting used to cold showers.

After that, there would be nothing to do but wait a few hours. The show was today, and Danny would be by early in the afternoon to pick him up.

Yeah, the show. No wonder I've been having these dreams. It's just stage fright.

He repeated it like a mantra while he scrubbed the floor. Just stage fright.

Case had been busy in the two weeks since agreeing to play the show with the band. She'd picked up a few extra shifts at Applebee's and split most of the rest of her time, as usual, between practicing and looking for another job. The Applebee's gig sucked worse than Steely Dan, and the sooner she could get out of that, the happier she'd be. At least the schedule was flexible-she had no problem trading a shift to free up the Sat.u.r.day for the college trip. Weekend shifts were easy to get rid of, since there were more customers and better tips.

Probably not two hundred bucks' worth of tips, though.

Practice had gone as well as could be expected, given what they had to work with. Quentin had tightened up considerably, and she had worked out her parts to her satisfaction. Danny was solid as always, and John-well, there was nothing to be done about John. He was what he was. Still, she didn't think they were going to humiliate themselves, and that was a good first step.

Case turned in to the parking lot of the practice building at around two in the afternoon, bleary-eyed and squinting at the sun. She'd lost track of time the night before and ended up playing her guitar until the small hours of the morning-unplugged, so as not to aggravate her neighbors, with whom she already had a tenuous relationship-and she was barely awake. She had picked up an enormous coffee at the 7-Eleven on the way, and it was already half gone. She'd have to p.i.s.s something fierce in an hour or so, but that was better than falling asleep on the road.

Danny's hatchback pulled in next to her as she was getting out of her car. John got out and stretched.

"Nice day, huh?"

She stared at him through half-lidded eyes. "You look like h.e.l.l."

"Didn't sleep much," he said. "I see you're extra cheerful today."

"Let's load up."

They started moving the stuff, packing it into Danny's hatchback and into her little Toyota in any way they could get it to fit. n.o.body had a van, so they'd agreed to take two vehicles, and she had insisted that she drive one of them. They seemed like good guys, but she hadn't known them long. She'd keep control of one of the cars, thank you very much. She had some doubts about whether her ten-year-old Corolla would make it the three hours to Wichita Falls, Texas, and back, but she'd take her chances.

Quentin showed up before long. He went inside to get his ba.s.s rig, and John stopped her from following.

"Just a sec," he said.

"Yeah?"

"I'm riding with you, if that's all right."

"Not with your brother?"

"Nah," John said. "Quentin-well, honestly, you stress Quentin out."