Beneath the Stain - Part 1 (10 page)

Mackey snapped his head back in the middle of the introduction to “One Headlight” and gaped for a minute, then looked back at Stevie for permission.

Stevie looked stricken, and that was permission enough for Mackey to fly off the stage and take the guy out. He didn’t realize the rest of the band had followed him until he heard a table break next to him and saw Kell and Grant on the ground holding their own.

The resulting melee cost over $2,000 in damage and resulted in their first night in jail. Grant’s dad bailed them out via a lawyer—and was apparently so happy to see his son doing something he considered “just boys” that he not only paid damages, he had the lawyer help Grant draw up a property damage clause for most of their gigs. They only ever had to use it at the Nugget, and after Mackey turned eighteen, the judge told him that more fighting might get him real prison time, so they sort of stopped playing there after that. (The judge seemed to think it was all Mackey’s fault that shitheads in this particular bar felt free to be shitheads. Mackey sort of thought Del, the owner, encouraged that to keep up his reputation as a tough, faggot-free sonofabitch, but that didn’t stop Mackey from swinging.)

The band decided they could either give Mackey (and themselves) a brain transplant, or they could start lining up more venues out of the area.

That was how they ended up in Sacramento three or four times a week, which was where they were when the river sands by Mackey’s feet shifted hard and swept them all away.

“Is he really here?” Mackey asked excitedly, peeking onto the stage of Hepburn and Tracy from behind the curtain. The club was deceptively huge, seating nearly two hundred when it had live bands and holding another hundred more in the center of the dance floor. Kell was to his right, and Grant was behind them, close enough to touch Mackey’s body with his front. For once Mackey was focused more on what was going on around him than on Grant touching him, familiar as a lover, right in front of his brother, and his brother not knowing.

“If he is, he looks the same as everyone else,” Kell muttered. “Grant, you’re the one who got the call from the guy—what’d he say?”

Grant laughed softly, and even in the noise from the club, his breath tickled Mackey’s ear. “He said he’d be here,” he murmured. “He said he wanted to see as much of our original stuff as we had. I said we had three hours’ worth of it—it was practically all we played. He said great. Apparently he heard that one single they play on the college stations and wants to build an LP off of it. All that shit I told you about before, Kell—it ain’t changed.”

Kell breathed out. “Ooooooohhh….” He sounded like a kid at Christmas.

Mackey only had a hazy idea of what getting signed might mean. A manager? A record deal? What exactly would that entail? Would they get to play more? Have better equipment to practice with? Would someone besides Grant book the shows? Would they get to record someplace Mackey could get rid of the buzzing from Kell’s guitar that bothered him so much when they made their demo? Would they play bigger venues? More people? Their faces on a Jumbotron?

All of that jumbled together in the idea of success—that, and not having to worry about money anymore, which was sort of a mindfuck for Mackey. If he had clothes and music and a little bit of food, what would he spend all that money on?
Better
clothes? He didn’t even know what that meant.

A house
, he thought. He’d like his mother to have a house so she didn’t have to worry about an apartment. And Cheever was too old to draw on the walls, but maybe a place he could have his own room now, so he could have all his pens and paints and pencils there. A room with lots of light, because drawing kept Cheever out of everybody’s hair. If art was for Cheever what music was for Mackey, Mackey wanted to give him something good to do with it. God knew music had saved
Mackey’s
ass more than once.

“What’s the plan, Mackey?” Kell asked.

Mackey blinked at him. “I don’t know—we have the set list and we play, right? Our best.” Not like any of them had ever gone out and
not
played their best.

“Same set list?” Kell asked.

Grant spoke up. “Mackey needs his solo songs,” he said with authority.

Mackey glanced at him. “Why’s that?”

“’Cause you’re the one who’s gonna sell the band, McKay.”

Mackey stuck his tongue out, so used to hearing this from Grant that he’d come to believe it was Grant’s way of saying “I love you” in public. But then, surprisingly enough, Kell spoke up.

“Yeah—yeah. I think he’s on to something. We want to sell this guy something no one else has. Mackey’s our secret weapon. Let’s move ‘Scream’ up on the roster, and that new sweet one—whatyacallit, Mackey?”

“River Shadows,” Grant reminded him, flicking his own shadowed glance toward Mackey.

Mackey looked away, not blushing, because he couldn’t. He’d written that song for him and Grant, because more than once during the past few winters they’d parked that van by the river and had themselves a rip-roaring game of “Let’s pretend we’re not hiding the salami.”

“You like that one?” he asked neutrally.

“Hits me where I live,” Grant replied, something dark and meaningful in his voice.

Mackey glanced at him quickly, because the end of the song was about leaving the river when the sun hit the shadows, and maybe never going back. Grant couldn’t mean that, could he? He couldn’t be thinking about making that song come true.

“Yeah,” Kell said, completely oblivious to the undercurrents. “That’s the one. We’ll have that one as the… what’s that word you use, Mackey? The one before the finale?”

“Penultimate,” Mackey supplied, taking a better look at Kell because it was rare that Kell ever questioned words.

Kell had put on some weight in the last five years. He’d taken to working out, so his neck had nearly disappeared, and his guns were probably the width of Mackey’s head. He still kept his brown hair buzz cut, and his Neanderthal brow had gotten, if anything, more prominent. But he’d been eating dirt for six years working for Grant’s dad, and no one knew it more than Grant. Once, after what was supposed to be a frenzied moment having sex in the back of the van had turned into ten minutes of just kissing, long and slow and deep, Grant said something that stuck. He told Mackey that watching his old man peck the spirit out of his best friend was one of the things that drove him to hunt down gigs.

“My own future’s cut-and-dried,” he’d said, rubbing cheeks with Mackey in the sweaty closeness of the equipment and the metal siding. “That’s bad enough. Watching him suck the life outta your brother…. Mackey, just don’t ever stop writing songs for him, okay?”

I don’t write songs for him. I write them for you.

“Sh, Grant. Look at the river shadows. Ain’t it weird? In this light, this time of year, they look sort of purple.”

“Yeah, Mackey. It’s real pretty. Peaceful. Makes me want to just lie here all day.”

“With me, right?”

“Not with anyone else.”

So Mackey could hear the yearning in Kell, that need not to ever have to work in the garage for old man Adams again and hear him talk about Kell’s thick red neck and ham hands. Kell could play old Eddie Van Halen riffs from back when Eddie was hot, and he didn’t miss a note. If Kell was clumsy, it was because hatred made him that way, and Kell was angry enough as it was.

Jefferson didn’t get angry—not the way Kell did. But every day, Mackey watched him sit quietly and drink beer until Stevie got home too. Suddenly he’d stop drinking beer and start talking, and the sound of his mumbling voice was like he’d forgotten how to use real words.

If Mackey really was the thing that would sell the band, he’d have to sell it tonight.

He looked at Grant and grinned. “Hey, what do you want to do if we get a big contract? Where do
you
want to go?”

Grant’s brow puckered then, and his lower lip wobbled. Mackey almost panicked, because he’d never seen Grant cry in public. He didn’t think he could stand there watching Kell be stupid and awkward with Grant when Mackey knew how he liked his back rubbed and how he needed to turn his head so Mackey couldn’t see his face when he came apart.
If the old man calls me a fucking nancy boy behind the office door one more time, I swear, Mackey, you and me, we’ll fucking run away….

But Mackey couldn’t run away. Grant knew that. His mom needed the help with the rent and with Cheever, who was less of a terror now that he’d been identified as frickin’ brilliant. Tyson didn’t have a good program for frickin’ brilliant kids, so part of Mackey’s gig money went to pay for Cheever’s room and board at the school for the gifted in Hepzibah. And, of course, to bring Cheever reluctantly home to the shitty little apartment on the weekends so that their mom’s heart didn’t get broken without her youngest.

No. Mackey had only one way to get out, and that was up, and Grant… well, Grant probably could have gotten out five years ago, but he’d stayed for Mackey.

And told his family he stayed for Sam.

Sam was talking marriage.

Mackey knew. The first time she’d brought it up, Grant had nailed Mackey in the back room of the music store as Mackey was closing down. It was risky—risky and unnecessary. They didn’t take those kinds of chances. But when they were done, Grant had collapsed against Mackey’s back, soundless tears soaking the long hair by Mackey’s ear, clenching Mackey to him like a child clutching a blanket.

He didn’t tell Mackey what it was about then. He helped him clean up and kissed him tenderly and then took him out for what looked like a perfectly platonic steak dinner at the local tavern. Two days later, Kell made an offhand remark as they were warming up in Stevie’s parents’ garage.

“Sam says she gave you an ultimatum, partner. What’s the scoop?”

Grant answered. “Yeah, she says next year at the latest, or she’s breaking up with me.”

Kell shrugged. “She’s a nice girl. You could do worse.”

Grant rolled his eyes—and then glanced at Mackey from under his brows. “No, I couldn’t,” he said darkly.

Mackey had to make the first fifteen minutes instrumental practice. His throat was too tight to sing.

But an agent? Mackey couldn’t think of the money or the places they’d go or even the chance to go to school and study literature or languages or even music history or theory, all of which he could read about forever.

But Mackey could think about a chance to get out of Tyson, California, and to take Grant with him. Nobody really knew what touring was like. They’d heard rumors, of course. Everyone heard the term “party like a rock star.” Maybe nobody would think anything of the two of them sleeping in the same hotel room, being together. Maybe they’d write it off like they did all those other guys doing drugs and wrecking hotel rooms. Maybe being a rock star meant you got a free pass, right? Nobody would give a shit what they thought Mackey and Grant were doing as long as the music was fucking awesome, right?

So Grant worked to get them gigs and to make sure they got paid, and Mackey worked for the vague hope that someday, somehow, he and Grant could be together, free and clear, and nobody would give a shit.

So an agent or a manager in the audience? Someone who could hook them up with a record contract and a tour? That was big fucking news.

Mackey needed Grant to smile about it, and Grant couldn’t meet his
eyes.

So Mackey forgot about it. He got up on stage in his jeans and a button-up silk shirt. The shirt was made with cutaway shapes—stars, moons, lightning bolts—because Grant still bought his concert clothes. The other guys didn’t wear suits anymore, just jeans and T-shirts without holes. Stevie and Jefferson had taken to buying contrasting shirts, one in black and the other in white or one in red and the other in blue, both with the same logo. It was cool, because it was their thing, but it was also disturbing because, well, same brain.

Grant wore something designer and spiffy, Kell wore whatever was clean, and Mackey wore outrageous. It helped define them, and Mackey was prouder than ever that he led his brothers on the stage.

The set went
well.
Maybe it was the electricity from the crowd, or maybe it was that the guys all knew something was on the line, but Mackey could feel it. Every note was perfect, even the ones that came out as primal screams into the microphone, because some of Mackey’s songs weren’t gentle.

He closed his eyes and became the music, and between songs he flirted and fucked with the crowd. They played two sets, with a half-hour intermission between them. Wasn’t it funny how a half hour could change their lives?

Backstage was actually
outside
at this club, and the outside had a little walled patio with a bartender who served them drinks on the house, even though Mackey was still technically underage. Mackey didn’t drink until the set was over anyway—too much was riding on him not sounding like an asshole.

No one was allowed backstage between sets, so the guys got their comp drinks and kicked back in the barely faded August heat. Kell closed his eyes and honest to God
napped
, because old man Adams had run his ass off all week, making him work extra hours and shit. Jefferson was pretty close to the same state, because although Mackey had only seen him as a head by the office when he’d run by to pick the guys up, apparently old man Adams really was the asshole Grant had barely complained about during high school.

Mackey was bouncing on his toes, eyes closed, face toward the sky, running through the river song in his head, as well as “Scream” and their cover versions of “In One Ear” and “Stairway to Heaven,” because they liked to pay tribute to their roots.

The tap on his shoulder sent him corkscrewing into the stratosphere, arms flailing, legs kersplanging, and when he connected solidly with a warm body, his eyes shot open and he tripped over his own feet and fell on his ass.

The guy in the suit, rubbing his jaw, was considerably older than Mackey had been prepared for.

“I am
so
fucking sorry!” Oh God. This
had
to be the agent, and Mackey had just clocked him!