Beneath the Stain - Part 1 (11 page)

“No worries,” the guy said, rubbing the graying stubble on his once-square chin. “I get that a lot. I’m Gerald Padgett—uhm, is Grant Adams anywhere around? He was the one I made contact with?”

“Mr. Padgett!” Grant came from out of nowhere, helping Mackey up with one hand and shaking Mr. Padgett’s hand with the other. “Oh my God—Mackey didn’t mean it, sir. He just gets keyed up for a show, right?”

Gerald Padgett smiled wryly. “Yeah, well, I get that. I’m surprised you boys are doing another set, actually—that first one was a lulu!”

Mackey grinned, because he had no choice but to be Mackey. “Yeah, well, we performed a lulu so we could woo-woo, right?”

“Oh Jesus,” Kell groaned. “Mackey, do you have to?”

But Mr. Padgett just waved his hand. “No, no, that’s okay. It’s good to know you like to play a little. Because I’m here to make sure you boys get to play a
lot
.”

Kell let out a little whoop, but suddenly Mackey found he had a business brain after all. “Yeah, you say that, but who else you done this for? We get people telling us we should be famous all the time, but all they got for us is a chance to play their cousin’s bar mitzvah.” Until that had happened four or five times, Grant had been the only one to know what a bar mitzvah even
was.

Gerald Padgett grinned and reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a card from his old plaid suit. “That there is a very good question. You recognize that label, boys?”

“Tailpipe Productions,” Mackey breathed, looking at Grant excitedly.

“Who the hell is that?” Kell asked, glaring at Mr. Padgett fiercely. Apparently Mackey’s question had hit Kell sort of deep.

“That’s the company that produces Pineapple Express and Grendel,” Mackey said, his eyes wide. “Kell, this guy’s the real deal.”

Mr. Padgett smiled gently. “I am indeed. Now, I understand you boys are going to need a new lead guitar. We’ve got some guys ready to audition, but once you pick one, we can be in the studio next week—”

Mackey looked at Kell first and saw his nose wrinkle in confusion, and then he looked at Grant.

Who wasn’t meeting anybody’s eyes.

“No,” he whispered, at the same time Kell said, “No, goddammit! Grant, you pussy, you don’t need to get married
that
badly!”

Mackey just stared at him. Grant… well, those eyes Mackey had always loved, those pretty, golden hazel eyes were shiny, glittering, just like the songs. Suddenly Grant grabbed Mackey’s shirt collar and said, “Me and Mackey gotta talk.”

He dragged Mackey back into the club, into the tiny green room by the bathrooms, then threw the door shut behind him and locked it.

“Grant?” Mackey’s voice was so wobbly his knees were weak with it. “What—”

“She’s pregnant,” Grant said, closing his eyes.

“No.” Oh God. Grant had honor. Grant wouldn’t…. “You can leave her. Pay her,” Mackey begged, hating himself.

Grant blinked hard, and Mackey saw his eyes, red-rimmed and glossy, spilling over. “I seen how much fun that’s been for you and Kell and Jeff,” he said.

Mackey recoiled. “But you can’t…. Grant, you heard him. A chance to make music for a living. To go places. To
get out of our shitty little town and stay with m—
”

Grant closed his mouth over Mackey’s brutally, so hard his lips rubbed on his teeth, swelling, and Mackey tried not to sob. He wanted to argue, he wanted to plead, but Grant’s mouth on his had always been their best form of communication.

Grant invaded him, silenced him, then reached into his pants and stroked him, hard and without mercy. Mackey clutched at Grant’s shoulders, too weak inside to pull him off and make him talk about it, too desperate not to scratch at him and try.

But Grant stayed put, jacking Mackey off until Mackey groaned for breath, aroused so hard so quickly that he hurt. Grant knew his body by now and sank to his knees, pulling Mackey’s pants down in one hard yank.

Then Grant sucked the head of his cock in, and
God
but Grant was good at that, his lips so soft and sweet, his tongue so busy. Mackey clapped one hand over his mouth and screamed, and Grant pressed his free hand, the one not jacking Mackey, over it, and Mackey screamed and screamed and no one heard, because the sound was muffled in the music and the crowd and the combined force of their hands pressing his lips against his teeth.

Mackey came because there was nothing else he could do, and for a moment, the dressing room was so quiet they could actually make out the DJ warning the crowd that there would be five minutes of break followed by Outbreak Monkey doing their closing set.

Grant got heavily to his feet and pulled Mackey’s pants up, then leaned his forehead against Mackey’s. “You need a way to let me go,” he panted into the relative quiet. “This is it. You get to go be famous, and I’ll stay in Tyson and watch you fly.”

“No,” Mackey begged, his life opening up like a canyon under his feet, and him with broken wings and no safety net.

“Sing that river song tonight,” Grant whispered. “Sing it to me. Please. I know you’re gonna be pissed, but God. I love playing with you guys. Let me have one more set, and my song.”

Mackey wiped futilely at his eyes. “I hate you,” he moaned.

Grant wrapped those strong, load-bearing arms around his shoulders and held him. “Hate me after the set, McKay. Right now, it’s the only way we got to say good-bye.”

Grant left the dressing room first, presumably going to the bathroom to wash his face and rinse his mouth. He tapped on the dressing room door when he was done, and Mackey went to do the same.

He met his own eyes in the mirror as he washed his face and ran cold water through his sweaty hair.
Faggot. Cocksucker. Fairy.

He hadn’t said those words to himself since he and Grant had spent that first night together, because he couldn’t say those words to Grant.

But now he was all alone, and they bounced loudly around his brain.

That is, until he was on the stage, screaming his heart out in their final set, letting Grant’s riffs wash through him like prayer.

“River song last,” Mackey said in the middle of the set, and although his voice was audible to the crowd, only the band knew they were making mental changes in the set list as they played. It worked fine, though, and “In One Ear” got the crowd loud and noisy and screaming for more. They did a fake stage exit then, because they’d pulled this sort of thing before, and when the decibel level got truly fucking insane, Mackey went back onstage by himself.

He picked up his own guitar, the one he didn’t get to play unless he was doing the solo gig, and looked out into the crowd.

“You ever steal a kiss?” he asked them, and that vibe, that noisy, we’re-gonna-burn-the-place-down vibe, turned suddenly dark and smoky, and Mackey felt reassured. Yeah. They’d all stolen kisses. It was okay. He wasn’t alone. The whole world had stolen kisses, and he was playing their song.

The river makes music just like you and I make love

And the sunlight cuts through shadows like a pie knife from above

And we sit inside the purple shade of a place we’ve forged from sin

And we listen to the river whisper ’bout the end.

The end. This was the end. He poured his heart out into the song, lamenting for the lover who would be gone when the sun was high and the sweat poured down their necks, crying for the kisses that would never come again.

Because they wouldn’t. Because Grant would be gone when Mackey left the stage, and his whole world for the next week would be moving from his tiny bunk bed in the tiny apartment into the big wide world, with only the crowd to catch him.

Bonus Scene

J
EFFERSON
HAD
developed a weather sense for when Stevie’s dad was going to arrive. Stevie was always surprised, because the motherfuckin-sumbitch (as they both called him, hopefully when they were far away) liked to mess with his schedule, lie about when he was supposed to get home. Sometimes he’d leave, wait for the boys to start practicing in the garage, and come back.

But Jefferson knew.

And today, as they were sitting on Stevie’s plain blue bed looking through the dirty magazine (oh, how they both loved girls with small tits—the little ones were just so
perky
!) and talking about what attributes
their
girl would have (besides wanting them both, of course) when Jefferson’s “oh fuck!” warning system kicked in.

He was gaping at Stevie, mouth open, when they heard the car pull into the garage.

And suddenly Jefferson had had enough.

He didn’t even live here—Stevie’s dad had only made him
look
at “it,” not
touch
it, like poor Stevie—but he’d had enough.

He looked at Stevie with something that must have been scary in his eyes, because Stevie flinched back.

“What? We gotta go—we can get out the window if we….” His round face, so much like Jeff’s, had gone pale and dewy, and Jeff knew the feeling. His own hands were pretty damned slick, but so the fuck what.

“Get your stuff. You’re staying at my place,” Jefferson said quietly. “We graduate in two months. You can stay there until we can move out.”

“But your mom—”

“Isn’t gonna know you stay on our floor!” God, it wasn’t like she was there most nights anyway. She had to work like the rest of the world. “And even if she did, as long as you help with food, it’ll be okay. Get some clothes. We’ll come back for the rest. Now
go.
”

Stevie started throwing shit in his backpack with the one notebook he carried around school. “What’re you gonna be doing?” he asked, looking worried.

Well, he should be worried. Jefferson figured he and Stevie carried between them a single core of crazy. It was like a battery or something. One day Stevie would insert that core between his rib cage and his heart and then he’d be playing the drums like an epileptic seizure had hit, or turning around and whaling on someone at school who said something, half-heard and disparaging, about Stevie’s dad or the Sanders kids in general.

Well, today, Jefferson got the core of crazy.

“Me’n your dad’re gonna have a little chat,” he said. Then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the switchblade Kell had given him in the fifth grade, when Jefferson had first been forced to see Stevie’s dad touch “it” while he was watching Stevie and Jefferson play chess with their shirts off. It had been a hot day, and Jefferson’s Stevie’s Dad Sense had not yet come in to play. Since then, Jefferson had pulled out his switchblade to clean his nails, to trim his guitar strings after he’d tuned, and to puncture Stevie’s dad’s tire once when he saw the car parked at the bar when he was coming home from work with Kell, and wanted to give Stevie a chance to get out of the house before the old fucker came home.

Jefferson was going to use his switchblade for something else today.

“Stevie! Stevie! I see your car out front! You here, boy?”

Oh shit. He was starting off early. “Stay on the bed,” Jefferson hissed, and Stevie sat, looking at him like he was crazy.

Well, yes, he
did
have the core of crazy today. Tomorrow Stevie could have it.

Jefferson hid behind the door, heart beating harder than it had that one time when the whole band had gone hauling ass from the garage ’cause the motherfuckin-sumbitch thought it would be funny to come back an hour after he left.

“Stevie, your mom’s not here. Did you want to… you know… watch television?”
Watch me jerk my pecker while I slobber all over myself?
The voice got closer, and Jefferson snarled. Yeah. Yeah. All of a sudden he was in the mood for this, oh yes he was.

The door slowly opened, and Jefferson took a deep breath, waiting for Stevie’s father to start talking so he wouldn’t notice Jefferson moving.

“Stevie, son—is Jefferson here?” Average-looking white man, sort of paunchy, clean-cut with what had once been a narrow face and little piggy eyes. If not for the law, Jefferson would have killed him in his sleep. “I was thinking you boys could—
what the fuck?
”

Jefferson seized his wrist and yanked hard, sending him hurtling toward the center of the room. He stopped the guy’s momentum with an arm around the chest and, oh yes, a knife to his throat.

“J-J-J—”

“Shut. The fuck. Up.” Jefferson hissed it low in his ear while Stevie looked on in horror.

“What’re you doing, Jeff—?”

“Here’s the deal,” Jefferson said, pleasant as you please. “Stevie’s packing up and we’re moving him outta here. We’ll use your garage while you’re gone, but man, don’t never expect to see us again or you’re gonna know what this knife feels like, you understand?”

“I’ll call the cops,” Mr. Harris threatened, trying to stiffen up.

“You’ll cut your throat shaving,” Jefferson said reasonably. “And what if you
do
live long enough to call the cops? We’ll call every client you have and tell them you’re a sick pervert who likes to jerk off on his son—”