Words I Might Have Ate

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It was a Monday night and we were already finished with our first set of the night. But now it was break time and we were sitting at a booth as a jukebox cranked out old tunes from the twenties. There was a basket of breadsticks and a pizza along with cold cans of beer on the table before us, placed strategically around the stacks of records we had lugged in from the car. If we were playing to an entirely different crowd, why not attempt to sell some of our albums? A few people had stopped by and picked up a copy, much to our relief.

Meanwhile Tré had spent the past couple of minutes shoveling food into his mouth so quickly that his hands were a blur. I take another bite of my slice of pizza before placing the crust-my least favorite part- down on my plate. “It’s not as packed as it was last week.”

“But it’s still pretty early in the evening,” Mike assures me optimistically, taking a swig of his drink. “I see a couple of familiar faces though.”

“I don’t,” I announce, squinting as I look over the tables once again. There were a few bunches of people our age, obviously only there because of our set, but for the most part it was older couples who were eating or dancing slowly out on the open floor. But Mike was right, it was still early and hopefully more of our fans would arrive as the night wore on. I couldn’t play tame songs like Anthony had requested all night long. That would be boring.

Mike motions with his free hand. “Well over there are those boys who bombarded us at the bar on Friday and over there is that one girl you were flirting with on both Friday and Saturday—“

“Abigail?” I ask, immediately craning my neck to catch a glimpse of the girl in question.

Both Mike and Tré bust out in loud peals of amused laughter as I turn back to the table with a scowl on my face. “Fuckers,” I snap angrily, annoyed as I take to shredding my crust with anxious fingers.

“Did you see how quickly he turned around?” Tré wheezes, hanging onto Mike’s arm. “Oh man Billie, you’ve got it bad.”

I make a face at his words. “No I don’t.”

“Bill, you practically just bit off my head for a joke,” Mike interjects softly. “You’ve only seen her twice, ease up. You don’t want to give off that creepy stalker vibe that Tré’s perfected.”

“Yeah, that would—hey,” Tré looks stunned at Mike’s joke. He flings a piece of his breadstick at the side of Mike’s face, scowling jokingly.

“Evening.”

We all look up to see a man smiling down at us with blonde shaggy hair and brown eyes hidden behind glasses. I duck my head, taking my time in swallowing my drink. He looks like just another stuffy patron and frankly, I didn’t think I had the patience to deal with yet another one cooing about how cute we were with our little rock and roll group. We were a punk rock band for fucks sake.

“Hello,” Mike replies cheerfully.

The man glances down at our stacks of records and picks up our compilation record, 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, before flipping it over and examining the back quickly. “How’ve you boys been selling these?”

“Oh you know,” Mike waves his hand vaguely. “We’ve sold a handful here, we sold a lot more back at Gilman’s—the place we normally play at. Besides,” He picks up Kerplunk and hands it to the man. “This is our latest album. This has been selling really well so far.”

“Really,” He asks rhetorically as he studies both curiously. “How much for the both of them?”

“Twelve bucks,” Mike replies smoothly. “Six apiece.”

The man digs into his pocket and pulls out his wallet before handing over the money. “Sounds good. You guys have something going on up there.”

“Yeah,” Mike kicks me under the table and I know that he’s tired of talking to this guy and wants me to deflect some of his questions. But I take a huge bite of my pizza and smile brightly at my friend, who looks positively murderous at this point. “We’re serious about this.”

The man nods his head before smiling once again and waving. “Well have a good second set, I’m done taking up all of your break time.”

“Thanks,” I chime in for the first time, returning his wave with one of my own. “We’ll see you around.”

The man bides his goodbyes before leaving us and Mike turns to me with a clearly irritated expression on his face. “Thanks for bailing me out there, guys.”

“No problem,” Tré stretches and lets out a loud burp. “I need to smoke before we hit the stage again. Would anyone like to join me?”

“I’m game,” I announce, finishing off my breadstick and picking up my second can of beer before standing up from the table. “Mike?”

He shakes his head and kicks his feet out in the space I’ve abandoned. “I’ll watch the records while you two smoke. Hurry up, we only have ten minutes left of our break.”

Both Tré and I wave his words off easily as we use the employee’s door to get to the back alley. Tré hops up on the closed dumpster lid and roots through his pockets for his lighter. I produce the joint I had rolled before we left the house from my own pocket and quickly accept the lighter before lighting up and inhaling deeply.

I exhale slowly, my eyes closed as the familiar feeling begins to run through my body. I hand the blunt over to Tré who takes a healthy hit as well. It’s silent as we smoke off the last of my pot until Tré looks at me with a serious expression.

“What did you think about Christopher?”

“Who?” I wrinkle my nose at the name. “The record label guy from Friday?”

Tré nods his head, staring down transfixed at the glowing ember. “Yeah. What did you think about him?”

I pluck the bud from his fingers and inhale again, my mind casting to remember all that went down on Friday. We had gone out to a bar and true to his word, Christopher had bought us a pitcher of beer so we could sit down and discuss the band. But all he was interested in was signing us and then having us hand over the master copies of all of our work and then become his puppets for however long it’d take us to put out three full-length studio albums.

“I’m not down with Capitol,” I say shortly, squinting a bit as I look up at my friend through the haze. “We worked hard to build this band up to what it is today and he just wanted to take all of our independence and fix us up to be the next big corporate monster. As far as I’m concerned, he can go fuck himself.”

Tré gazes down at the ground thoughtfully, his face eerily calm.

I take a drink of my beer and hand Tré the joint so he can have the last hit. Out of my jacket pocket comes a crushed pack of cigarettes and I place one in my mouth before covering my face with my beer can and lighting up. “What did you think of him?” I lower the can away and look at him closely.

“I don’t know. I felt like we didn’t really connect with him,” Tré shrugs, finishing his last hit and throwing the roach behind the dumpster. “I don’t think Green Day would do well with Capitol.”

“Exactly,” I breath, my cigarette dangling from my lips as I twirl my bottle between my palms easily. “I love Lookout! and everything but anyone with half a brain can see we’re getting too big for them to meet our fans’ demands. And personally I’d rather stay with a label that lets us do what we want despite the fact that we’ve obviously outgrown them than move to a new label that controls everything we do.”

Before Tré has a chance to respond, the back door flies open and a waitress peers around the corner. “You guys are on in two minutes. Your friend’s already waiting.”

Tré glances over at her, his bloodshot eyes struggling to focus in on her face. “Thanks, we’ll be in in a minute.”

She nods before disappearing once again. I take another drag and stub the filter out on the wall before flicking it away. I take another swig of the beer before following Tré indoors, our movements stilted and uncoordinated.

Mike is waiting by the steps, his face clearly showing his amusement at our obvious inebriation. “Come on, you two. Maybe smoking before the second half of our performance wasn’t such a good idea.”

“Are you kidding me?” Tré begins as we start to climb up the stairs. “I couldn’t possibly eat that much and then not go out to smoke.”

I tune out the rest of their conversation as I stumble my way out onto the stage and make my way towards the microphone after slinging Blue about my neck. The dining room has filled out quite a bit since my smoke break and I’m pleased to spot a few familiar faces in the smoky audience.

“This is Going to Pasalacque,” I begin, squinting my eyes and playing a short riff to occupy my idle hands. “It’s good to see some young faces in here-- I got tired of being reminded of death every time I looked out into the dining room.” I grin widely at the laughter that ripples throughout the room before glancing back at my band mates. “Here we go again infatuation…”

-X-

We arrived back at the apartment at quarter to eleven with sixty-three dollars in each of our pockets and a healthy buzz from a dip in Mike’s stash as an act of celebration. Tré had already eaten half of the pizza that Anthony had sent us home with and challenged Mike to a Sonic the Hedgehog marathon on the Sega, which he had quickly accepted.

It was nearing on midnight when our phone rang and Mike stumbled to answer it, the alcohol in his blood clearly affecting his legs. His conversation was brief, consisting of a few questions and one particularly colorful bout of swearing before he hung up.

“There’s a bonfire down at the beach. Do we want to go?” He asks as he sits back down on the sofa and props his feet up on the coffee table. His blue eyes are bloodshot and glazed over but he still manages to fix his gaze on the both of us, a feat that hadn’t been too easy.

Tré had a beer bottle stashed between his legs and a half-eaten slice of pizza in one hand and his game controller in the other. “Who’s going to be there?”

“The usual crowd,” Mike shrugs. “It sounds like a good time.”

Tré throws the controller down on the floor and crams the rest of the food into his mouth. “I’m down. Billie?”

I look up from my current sprawled out position in the armchair and stretch widely before yawning. “Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do.” I rise from the cushions and pad into my room rather noisily.

Zero glares at me as I flip on the light and begin to root through the piles of clothes on my floor for a suitable shirt to wear. I murmur a faint response at her before pulling out a shirt and tossing it on my bed before tugging off the sweaty tee I had worn on stage earlier.

I move towards the dresser, bumping into the desk chair, swearing softly at the sharp pain that danced around my hip. There is the soft slither of leather and the quiet thump as the jacket I had draped over the back of the chair hits the floor.

I can feel a groan building up inside me as I crouch down and gather the cool leather up into my arms before I straighten up and throw it back over the chair. There’s another thump, this one much louder, and I frown as I try to remember what was in my pocket.

I pull out the familiar peeling novel and this time, the groan slips out. I have to read this. I promised David I would. I sink down onto my mattress and stare down at the book for a few moments, mentally calculating how much I could read between now and tomorrow night.

It sounded like a pretty big party down at the beach tonight and going to it would only result in a massive hang-over tomorrow. I would barely be able to drag myself out of bed tomorrow evening. But then again, tomorrow was my off day for work. I could drink a bit at the party and then come home and sleep before getting up really early tomorrow morning to read a good bit. It would be like nonstop reading on my part, almost like a marathon.

But a tiny voice in the back of my head pipes up, announcing what I was only trying to hide from myself in the end. The alarm would go off tomorrow morning and I would just hit ‘off’ so I could sleep in on my day off. And then I would barely be able to get up in time to grab the bus to David’s house.

The responsible thing would be to stay home and read a few chapters before turning in for the night. Then I could sleep for a bit before waking up and reading again before dinner with Dave and Heather. This was my opportunity to prove to not only David, but myself, that I was truly serious about this. I wanted this. But the reckless, twenty-one-year old side of me wants nothing more than to throw the book down onto the ground and go down to the beach with my best friends before drinking myself into oblivion.

There’s a short knock on the door as Mike peers around the doorframe, his eyes sparkling excitedly. “Hey man, ready to go?”

I pause, still eyeing the book in my hands thoughtfully. It’s with a heavy conscious that I turn on the mattress so I can see him properly. “You know man, I think I’m going to stay in tonight.”

Mike’s face darkens as he takes a few steps into the room. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I shake my head. “I just don’t feel up to partying tonight, that’s all. You guys go on ahead without me. Take the bus, I’ll swing by and pick you up later—save yourself the trouble of flipping a coin to decide a designated driver.” There’s a strange feeling of pride bursting over me as I realize what I’ve done. Responsibility has finally caught on to me.

“But Billie, tomorrow’s our off days. We never get days off collectively, why waste it spending it here by yourself? Just come out with us and drink a few beers. Whatever you need to do tonight can wait until tomorrow, can’t it?” Mike pleads, sounding a bit put off by my rejection.

I bite down on my lower lip, seriously contemplating throwing the book down and walking out with him. But a bigger part of me wants to do the right thing. “I’ll come pick you two up when you’re ready. Just give me a call.”

Mike nods, sighing a bit as he turns to walk out the door. I can hear Tré singing off-key in the living room as he waits for the two of us to return. He pauses on the threshold, as if a sudden thought has just occurred to him. He turns and looks me right in the eye with bright, knowing eyes. “It has to do with that book you’re holding, doesn’t it? You’re wanting to stay in tonight, I mean.”

“What?” I blink, caught completely off guard. “Mike, I—“

He does nothing but laugh a bit and shrug off my response. “I don’t know what you’re doing, Bill. And obviously you’re not going to let me in on it anytime soon but I want you to know that whatever it is, I’ll support you. You know that, right?”

“I know,” I say finally, my throat suspiciously tight. “We’ll talk tomorrow when we’re both a bit more sober, alright?”

He nods, digging in his pockets before pulling out his key loop. They clink together softly as he throws them through the air, landing softly on the mattress next to me. “I’ll call you when we’re ready.”