The Devil's Metal (13 page)

Robbie laughed. “Redding. Fuck no, Rusty.
You ever been to Redding? I got out of there as soon as I could. We
all did, except for Graham who bought a weirdo hermit shack by Lake
Shasta. Everyone else lives in Sacramento. Geez, aren’t you a
journalist?”

I looked down at the ground and handed the
smoke back to him. “I know. I read so much stuff about you before I
left, I think it was information overload.”

“Aw, that makes sense,” he said. His eyes
watched the cars coming and going on the nearby freeway. “I guess
this is a lot to handle for a small-town chick. It’s still a lot to
handle for a small-town boy. I still pinch myself, you know? Like
this might be taken away at any moment. Like my life has been
leased to me.”

“Can I quote you on that?” I asked
hopefully.

He shrugged. “If you can remember it. If
your brain thinks it’s worthy. That’s why I never do interviews if
I’m being taped. I like that you guys have to take notes. When you
take notes, you forget the bullshit and remember the good
stuff.”

I didn’t even have my notepad on me at the
moment and my shorthand was atrocious. But I nodded anyway and
tried to store Robbie’s words away in my head.
Like my life has
been leased to me
.

“So you don’t all hang out in Sacramento,” I
said, bringing the conversation back around.

He shook his head and blew smoke out of the
corner of his mouth. “No. We used to. Sage and I were best friends.
I guess we still are. But he’s been busy. Like, really busy. This
last album ate him up from the inside.”

“You can tell. It’s excellent.”

Robbie shrugged again. “I guess. I’m not too
fond of it, I think some tracks are too soft, but what can you do.
You heard Sage in there. He’s always right.”

“That’s what you said.”

“It’s all I know,” he said sadly. He passed
the smoke back to me and flashed me a cover-worthy smile. “But
that’s life. That’s part of being in a band and I’m grateful for
every day I’m with these crazy fuckers. It’s just hard being in a
relationship with five fucking people. I have enough trouble with
one relationship.”

“Your fiancé?”

“Cheryl,” he corrected me. “She’s lovely but
it’s hard. She doesn’t trust me on the road.”

“Gee, I wonder why!” I stamped my foot.

“Hey, Redwood, we have an understanding.
When I’m on the road, I’m a free man. If she had a problem with it,
I wouldn’t be…well…you know. Whatever you saw last night.”

“Speaking of,” I began, wondering how much I
should say, “are all your groupies so loosey goosey?”

“Hey, they don’t come to our shows for the
music,” he joked.

“I don’t mean
easy
,” I said. I looked
around me as if I shouldn’t be talking about it. The parking lot
was empty of living souls and the cars on the highway rumbled to
and fro. “I mean as in nuts. Crazy stalker type nuts.”

His mouth twitched and he took the cigarette
back from me, taking a final puff before throwing it on the ground
and crushing the butt beneath his boot. “Uh, well, there are a few
girls that…might have mental issues.”

I leaned in closer to him. “Yeah? What do
they look like?”

“Well, they’re hot.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t tell me you slept
with mental cases.”

He looked shocked. “No. Look, I don’t need
to get involved with a psychopath, and these chicks are clearly
psychopaths. But anyway, if you must know, they aren’t after me.
They like Graham and Sage. They follow them around on every single
tour.”

“Is one of the girls tall and thin with long
white hair and purple eyes?”

“I don’t know about her eye color but that
sounds like Sonja.”

“Sonja?”

“You’ll know if you met her.”

“I think I might have.”

He regarded me carefully. “Did it feel like
you had your soul sucked out of you, like she drained every essence
of your being and you were left with nothing but a shell?”

I looked at him askance. “Maybe. The girl I
met was in the bathroom, and yeah, I don’t know about the soul
sucking per se, but she was very strange. She told me some crazy
shit that didn’t make sense, then said she was coming after
Sage.”

He nodded. “Oh yeah, that’s Sonja. She’s the
crackpot ringleader of the GTFOs.”

“You mean the GTOs?” I was thinking of Girls
Together Outrageously, which was a more or less respected and
nearly professional groupie outfit led by Miss Pamela, Jimmy Page’s
muse (who charmed him, along with Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, and a
million other men).

“No, the GTOs are lovely ladies. We call
these chicks the GTFOs—or Get the Fuck Outs.”

I had to smile at that, despite being
riveted to everything Robbie was saying. “So who else is in this,
what was it, crackpot group?”

He listed off his fingers. “Sonja The
Soul-Sucker. Terri the Know-It-All, who, by the way, pretends she’s
a music journalist too. Don’t fall for it. She’s not. And Sparky.
She’s the short round one. You’ll see them again,
unfortunately.”

“And they’re stalking Graham too.”

“Yep. And for some reason, I guess cuz
Sparky’s all pro-Satanic cult, Graham likes to have them around.
Keeps his damned and needy soul feeling wanted. He usually goes off
with them and they leave us alone, though I shudder to think what
they’re doing.”

I made a disgusted face, not wanting to
think about it either.

“Graham’s a bit of an odd one, isn’t
he?”

A dark expression momentarily clouded his
face. “Odd is an understatement. Sometimes he can get a little
scary…”

I frowned at that, ignoring the skin
prickling feeling at the back of my neck and was about to ask
Robbie what he meant when we were interrupted.

“What are you guys doing? Get your arses
over here!” Jacob boomed, poking his ginger head from around the
corner.

I shot Robbie an apologetic look. “Sorry if
I got you in trouble with the boss.”

“Oh whatever, we pay his salary,” he said
dismissively. “I’m glad you talked to me. And again, I’m sorry
about last night. I’ll try to do my, um, wheelings and dealings in
private.”

“Thank you,” I said, and we made our way
back to the bus, feeling like a couple of kids who sneaked off of
school property.

***

The bus ride was ripe with tension. You
could feel it coming off the ugly walls and bouncing on the fake
wood cabinets. Sage and Robbie weren’t talking. Actually, Sage
wasn’t talking to anyone, and had decided to go lie down in the
back.

I decided to get cracking on my journalist
thing and get some interviews down before we arrived in Kansas
City, but my results were as flat as the passing landscape. Noelle
was back to being a pissy, spoiled brat, Mickey was trying to
coddle her and gain her forgiveness, and kept shooting me a look as
if I was the one who forced him to hook up with a groupie the night
before. I felt I got enough out of Robbie that morning and didn’t
want to push him, and Graham flat-out told me I could only
interview him between 2AM and 3AM. Total bullshit but he was
sticking to it.

“It’s the dark hour, when my mind is at my
sharpest,” he told me with total lack of irony in his voice.

I heard Robbie groan to himself and knew the
rest of the band was pretty fed up with his faux-Satanic ways but
Graham seemed to fully believe it.

We pulled into the auditorium around noon
and I was relieved to see Chip and the rest of the roadies there,
having traveled in two large Astro vans. I was also relieved to see
a stack of payphones outside of the building. I had forgotten to
call my father the night before to let him know I landed okay, and
I was itching to make a call to Mel and fill her in on everything
that was happening. Not talking to someone other than a band or
crew member was killing me inside.

My father didn’t answer so I left a quick
message telling him and Eric that I was fine and the band was
taking good care of me. I called Mel next, plunking in the last of
my stack of coins, but she wasn’t home either. Her mother seemed
glad to hear from me though and said she’d pass on the message that
I was fine and that I missed her. It was true, too. I did miss Mel
and her snarky attitude on life. Not that I wasn’t capable of
sarcasm myself, but it was nice when you felt like you had someone
else on your team that you could compare notes with. I didn’t have
that with Hybrid, and that was something I was just going to have
to get used to, hopefully sooner than later.

When I hung up the phone, I spied Sage
leaving the Astro van with one of his guitars in hand. It was
black, sleek, and sexy, just like the man himself, and his
intricately tattooed forearms bulged as he handled the musical
beast. I shook my head lightly, snapping out of my strangely
lustful daze, and decided to take my chances with him.

“Sage?” I ventured carefully, walking toward
him. He had seen me coming and seemed to be forming excuses in his
head already.

“What is it?” he asked, barely glancing at
me, walking off toward the backstage doors leading into the
building.

I trailed after him. “How are you
feeling?”

The question surprised him and he slowed
down a bit. “How am I feeling?”

“You seemed a bit snappish at breakfast,” I
said. “Last night too. Thought maybe you have an object lodged up
your ass or something. Something a doctor should remove.”

I couldn’t believe I just said that. Neither
could Sage. He didn’t just slow down, he stopped and gave me an
incredulous look. “Excuse me?”

Way to go Dawn
, I thought.
As if
he couldn’t hate you more
.

I licked my lips and tried to smile. “Well,
do you?”

He seemed speechless. This probably wasn’t
good.

But then, he did something I hadn’t
expected.

He smiled.

And then he laughed. It was short and brief,
but genuine and made the dimples stand out on his scruffy cheeks.
It was the best sound I’d heard all year.

Then he shook his head and continued walking
off toward the auditorium, strumming his guitar as he went, leaving
me with a view of a tight ass in tight black pants.

What I had meant to do was ask him when a
good time to interview him would be. I totally messed that one
up.

I watched him go for a few beats, then I
decided to give up on him for the day and try again tomorrow.
Tonight I was going to concentrate on the music and just the music.
If the band wanted to play hard to get with interviews, fine (and
if I was going to bungle up some interviews with my big, fat mouth,
fine). That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to observe and then compose
the best damn live show review. Ever.

I shuffled back to the bus, gathered my
purse, my notepad, my tape recorder, and the venue’s All Access
Pass, and went to go catch Hybrid’s soundcheck.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I discovered that although I got a perverse
sense of importance and satisfaction standing at the side of the
stage with Jacob and all the other privileged people, the best
place to see the band, any band really, was to be in the crowd with
the rest of the fans. Though I was closer to the band on the side
stage and had a great viewpoint for watching Sage work the guitar
or Graham pound away on the drums like a man possessed, it felt
removed and distant, like I was merely observing them. I wasn’t
part of the experience. So fifteen minutes into Hybrid’s monstrous
set, I excused myself from Jacob’s stoic company and made my way
down the stairs at the side of the stage and into the Kansas City
crowd.

I let the human tide, ebbing and flowing
toward the stage like multi-colored water, take me, and within
seconds I found myself squished in the middle of the floor, in
between two metal heads who only stopped banging their heads to
take a hit of pot. I was in my element here, and though I got a few
curious glances at my All Access Pass (which I did wear a little
too proudly), people paid attention to the band. And so did I.

The acoustic set from the night before was a
nice change, but this show was the real Hybrid, a living breathing
band that aptly mixed Sabbath-like downtuned licks with a dash of
Jim Morrison lyrics and the funky, blues groove of Muddy Waters.
During that show I forgot all about the talk I had with Robbie
earlier, or the unexpected sass I delivered to Sage. I was just a
fan, always a fan, a worshipper who talked to God in her head but
fell to her knees at church.

There were lights and smoke, from the stage
and from the audience, and Robbie and Sage gave the crowd
everything they had. They were dueling against each other, pushing
themselves for glory, and by that act, pushing each other. They
were both winners here with Robbie leaping into the crowd like a
soaring Messiah, making love to the microphone pole, telling the
world his secrets with the deepest of growls; and Sage slinking
along the sides, surging forward to join his equal, then
disappearing into the shadows of the stage, giving the audience
only a glimpse of his blistering fingers and the incinerating peels
of sound he demanded from his guitar.

It was an epic, flawless,
tingling-deep-in-my-belly type of show. I took notes between
songs—just the feelings flowing through me or descriptions of the
audience. Their enthusiasm built me up at times, and when a solo
threatened to bring the crowd to its knees, I was sinking down,
down, down with them, tears in my humble eyes.

It was a high unlike any other, a wave of
perfection and human unity. It was all the purple prose in the
world. It was magic.

Until I had a beer thrown in my face.

It happened near the end of the show, during
one of my favorite songs, “A Loss to Win.” It wasn’t an accident. I
was standing there, mouth agape at Robbie’s power, when I felt
someone sidle up to me. I barely paid them any attention until I
noticed their eyes flowing up and down my body and settling on the
pass around my neck. They burned there, and I could have sworn my
chest flared up with heat.