Suckers (6 page)

Dan dropped onto the couch cross-legged, as far from Ray as possible. “Just fucking barely.” He propped his elbows on his knees and massaged his temples.

“Another headache?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “You got anything stronger than ibuprofen?”

“I like Excedrin. Mostly for the caffeine hit. Want some?”

“Yeah, I’ll try that.”

As Ray got to his feet, Dan said, “You want to play for a while?”

“Are you up to it?”

“It beats sitting here doing fucking nothing.”

During the few minutes it took for Ray to come back, Dan stared at the thin carpet, the bits of grit in it. He rubbed circles into his skull, and straightened when Ray walked in with a bottle of water and a couple pills.

He held the pills over Dan’s palm. Dan thought they were going to drop right in, but Ray’s hand dipped. Skin touched skin. An electric zap shot up Dan’s neck. He clutched the pills, jerking his hand away.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ray asked.

“Yeah.” He popped them in his mouth—“Get my guitar”—and chased them with a swig of water as Ray opened the cabinet over the couch.

Dan squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing one with the heel of the hand that still held the bottle cap. Trying to get the slight graininess in his vision to go away. When Ray stood in front of him, holding out the guitar, he looked a little blurry from the eye rubbing. Dan pulled the acoustic into his lap with one hand and took another long pull off the bottle.

Pacing the bunk area, Dan rubbed his hands to distract himself from the queasiness rising in him.

Something is wrong with me.

Step, step, turn.

Something is seriously fucking wrong. By the end of jamming with Ray, he’d had to get out of there, shut himself in the bathroom, and pull at his hair to get a hold on the bees.

He was losing it.

Step, step turn. The curtains along the empty bunks brushed his arms.

Stick leaned in the doorway from the front lounge, bracing his hands on either side of the frame. “Hey, you all right?”

“Yeah. Edgy. I’ll be fine. Just one of those nights when I can’t wait for the show to start.” Step, turn.

“Burn off some of that agitation, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Won’t be too much longer. Plasticine Stars’ll be finishing up their set soon.”

“Thanks.”

Stick headed back through the lounge toward the exit, Dan turned and pushed his hands against his face. Fuuuuuck.

When they finally got on stage, Dan snapped two strings in the middle of a breakdown. He kept going, his fingers racing to keep up with fretting the whole thing on the bass’s remaining strings. Anything to keep his mind off the buzz at the back of his neck, like a black cloud growing expectant with electricity. He stayed away from the edge of the stage, out of reach of grasping hands. Their fans were used to having the chance to get a hand around his ankle, touch his guitar. But he was too off-kilter as it was, too overwhelmed. Too drowning in whatever the fuck was wrong with his head.

He changed basses between songs, grabbing the new one from Moss without letting Moss come in contact with him.

He fielded a glance from Ray, nothing from Jamie, who kept up but had a vacant look on his face. Vacant enough that Ray strolled over to the drum kit between songs, standing there to get his attention, making eye contact, making sure Jamie was aware he was still on stage, in the middle of a show. It worked, babysitting him. All the songs kicked off the way they were supposed to. But man, what a pain in the ass.

During an intro where the bass line didn’t come in for the first forty-two seconds, Dan crouched on one knee, head bowed over his pedals, eyes closed. Teeth gritted. The legs of a thousand bees crawled over each other at the base of his skull. When it was time for him to come in, he shot to his feet, turning his back to the audience. He attacked the strings with everything he had.

Afterward, everyone was subdued. The weather hadn’t improved since morning, and they were all one more night road-worn than they had been. Jamie was irritable, his mood a spiral of frustration: he first couldn’t find his jacket, then couldn’t find the drink he’d set down. He went off on Josh, accusing him of throwing it away—when it was sitting right where he’d left it. He broke a cigarette trying to get it out of the pack. Someone handed him an intact one, heading off a fit.

Brittle. Everyone seemed brittle tonight.

Dan hung at the edges, his hands in his jacket pockets. Wanting to head out to the bus but not wanting to feel guilt twist like a hook in his stomach as he walked by fans with barely a nod.

“Hey.” An unlit cigarette bobbed between Ray’s teeth. “What’s going on with you?”

He clenched his fists in his pockets. “Coming down with something, I guess. Figures, right? At the end of the tour. I get to go home sick.”

Ray reached like he was going to check Dan for a fever.

Dan ducked out of the way. “I’ll be okay.”

“Drink some water. Get some sleep.”

“Do me a favor?” Dan asked.

“Sure.”

Dan nodded toward the club’s back door. “Grab Jamie so we can get out of here, and distract whoever’s out there so I can get on the bus.”

Ray’s posture relaxed: something he could do to help. Sometimes that was all he needed. “Sure. No problem.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll do you one better, even,” Ray said. “Hold on.” He came back with Carey in tow. “Me and Jamie’ll head out first to give them someone to talk to. You guys come out after, deep in conversation. Just walk straight to the bus, talking.”

“What are you coming down with?” Carey asked.

“I don’t know. The flu. Maybe nothing. I just feel like shit tonight.”

“All right. Come on.” He started to reach for Dan’s arm, and Dan pulled ahead, saying, “Yeah, let’s go.”

He kept his head down. Carey rambled about tomorrow’s timetable: “We should be pulling in at ten. We’ve got a day room, you guys can get showers. Load-in’s at…” And up the bus steps they went.

Carey stopped at the top, one hand on the back of the driver’s seat. “All set?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Thanks.”

“Get some sleep.”

“Yeah.”

Actually, he was hungry. He dug a Hot Pocket out of the stash in the bus’s tiny freezer. BBQ beef. By the time the microwave dinged, the smell had soured his stomach. He forced a bite down, the pastry dry on the outside, sickeningly sweet on the in. It stuck in his throat, and he folded the rest in a paper towel and threw it away.

It was the perfect kind of night for getting blind drunk. A few years ago, he’d have been well on his way. Instead he dragged himself to his bunk—better to get in before the others boarded. The bees were not his friends tonight.

He pushed his buds in his ears and pulled up music on his phone. That too-real/unreal feeling was back, the plastic casing on the earbuds almost too smooth in his ears. He cranked up Bass Drum of Death to block out everything beyond his bunk. To block out the fucking bees. He buried himself in the noise of John Barrett’s guitar while the bus pulled out of the lot.

In the silence after the last note of “(You’ll Never Be) So Wrong” dipped out, Dan studied the darkness. He was genuinely worried—afraid he was going to snap. Afraid, too, that if he didn’t do something (what?) he was going to snap soon. (But what?)

Two more. He had to make it through two more shows—just hang on for two days and one last drive.

The road whistled beneath them, on and on.

He slipped out of his bunk. His feet hitting the floor jarred the pain in his skull. He grabbed hold of the bunk to steady himself. A dim light flickered from the front lounge—whoever was still up had a movie going. The door to the back lounge was shut. After using the bathroom, he came back through the bunk area and slid the door open.

The lights were on, music from the TV almost lost in the rush of wind coming in through the cracked-open window. Wind tousled Jamie’s hair as he passed the cigarette they were sharing toward Ray.

“Hey.” Ray took a drag, squinting at Dan. “I thought you’d crashed. Feeling any better?” He blew the stream of smoke out the side of his mouth, toward the window.

Dan’s head, heavy as concrete, felt like someone was trying to hammer it open. The buzzing didn’t take concentration to hear anymore. It was as loud as the rush of road from the window.

Ray took a last drag before flicking the cigarette out.

Jamie got up with a stretch. “I’m hitting it.”

“’Night.” Ray pulled the window shut. The TV got louder, not having to compete with the wind. The lounge smelled like cigarettes.

The bees hovered at the base of his skull, making his teeth vibrate. He flattened his shoulders against the wall as Jamie pushed by. His head turned, like it was being pulled by a wire, his eyes pegged on Jamie as he slipped through the doorway. He didn’t know what it meant exactly. He had something building in him, something restless. He dug his fingers against the paneling behind him.

“You really don’t look good.” Ray’s voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well.

Dan dragged his head forward. His eye twitched. The restlessness crowded his chest, making it hard to breathe. His vision started to disintegrate.

Ray moved his pack of cigarettes from his thigh to the couch to get up.

It was like watching him through a TV with bad reception. Dan’s heart thudded, hard enough that he put a hand over his chest. He swallowed, trying to calm down. He didn’t know what was happening, only that he felt like he was going to explode out of his own skin.

“Jesus.” Ray ducked his head a little to look into Dan’s face, lifting a hand toward Dan’s jaw. “What the—”

A muscle in the side of Dan’s jaw pulled tight. His shoulder clenched. His fist came up, fast. Throwing the punch was like watching someone else doing it. The contact of knuckles to the soft area under Ray’s cheek barely registered. The force knocked Ray’s head aside, made him stumble back, spilling over the front of the couch. Ray tried to get out of the way, but Dan grabbed him by the shirtfront and shoved him back, climbing onto him. Ray tried to sit up, push him off. Dan knocked him back hard enough to make Ray’s head thud on the cabinet over the couch. The magnetic catch tripped, the door popping open as Dan dragged Ray forward by the shirt.

Gritting his teeth, Ray tried to wrestle his arm off him.

Dan lunged. His teeth snapped. Ray dodged, just missing getting a hole in his cheek. As he shoved his hand up to protect himself, Dan’s teeth found purchase in the fleshy heel of it. Ray yelled out and kicked him from below. Dan felt it distantly, but his jaws loosened reflexively.

Ripping his hand free, Ray shoved him aside, palm against the side of Dan’s face as he struggled to get himself out from under him. Dan snapped his teeth again, got an elbow hard in the jaw for it. He didn’t give a fuck because his teeth scraped along the skin there, and he dove forward to try to bite it, pushed by the need to feel his teeth break through skin, feel blood burst into his mouth. He tore at Ray’s hair, but Ray had leverage now. With his forearm braced against Dan’s neck, he managed to steamroll him backward, tripping over his own feet on the patch of carpet between couch and wall.

The wall shuddered as Dan’s shoulders hit.

His vision swarmed. He tried to get at Ray with his teeth again, and Ray heaved him back with both hands on his chest.

His skull banged the edge of the audio system, pain rattling dully through bone. His knees went loose, like someone had pulled the pin out of a hinge. He clasped his head. He was hyperventilating, or close to it, breaths coming fast and shallow and panicked. He had Ray’s shirt bunched in his hand, hanging on.

“Dan.”

“Stop…”

“Dan, what the fuck?”

“Bees…” Ray’s heart thudded under his knuckles. They spread like a swarming flower through his brain. His vision muddied. Ray’s mouth, saying who knew what, became a gaping hole of darkness.

The last sensation he had was of dropping, fast.

Darkness. Confusion. He swung out at something, connected hard. A smell, bright like new pennies, filled his head with a roar like a jet taking off in his skull. He threw himself toward it, mouth first.

† † †

Darkness.

Silence.

Peace.

A familiar cough.

He peeled his eyes open to the kind of brightness you only see in the morning. He looked to one side: a window with a curtain half pulled across it. Ugly fucking curtain, textured with muted multicolors, the kind of pattern that didn’t want to be anything in particular, like it would offend someone if it were flowers or checks or stripes, so it was a bland blur.

“Hey.” Ray’s voice.

He moved his eyes to catch Ray stepping up to the side of the bed. Behind Ray was another ugly curtain, this one sectioning them off from the rest of the room.

“Hospital?”

“Yeah.” He curled his hands around the bedrail.

Movement at the end of the bed—Jamie getting up from a chair.