The Man Who Would Not Be King

Their remaining two shows in Texas blurred into each other, and Tré’s dreams stitched a messy quilt of most of the idle time. When he wasn’t asleep he pretended to be, or if this didn’t suffice he infused his mannerisms with overzealous, albeit disengaged enthusiasm. And like a backlit cloud he rolled into Georgia.

The last light of the sun having burned itself out, the sky was a smoky purple. Moisture clung to the air, thickly, plunging into Tré’s lungs alongside his breath. He nearly choked on it, so different in quality from the air conditioned interior of the bus. He reminded himself that he could adapt.

Mike sauntered into his peripheral, marked by the smoldering butt of the cigarette set steadily between his lips. “Hey,” he greeted him from around it, profile unaltered.

“’Sup?” Tré acknowledged.

Removing the cigarette first, he responded, “You ready for dinner? Billie Joe said he’s gonna meet us there, but the rest of us are looking to get going now. How does Italian sound?” Mike took another drag while waiting for an answer. It was as if he needed something else to occupy himself with whenever talking to Tré lately, something of an excuse for the dearth of words. An excuse for the scarcity of fond feeling.

Tonight, Tré was a minimalist. “Good.”

“Alright, see you in five…I guess here’s a good spot.”
**

“We can order without them; it’s fine.”

“Yeah, they shouldn’t be too much longer; they knew we were starving when they chose not to arrive together anyway. They’ll understand. Sitting on your ass all day really whets your appetite, if you guys know what I mean.” Ronnie laughed over the top of his menu, eyes crinkling, along with the others.

Tré sipped at the water that had been brought him as a precursor to his meal. He was starting to wish himself somewhere else, away from the burbling family chatter, clinking knives and forks, and above all the people assembled around the same table. Dinner banter: his forte had dropped to piano. He was drowned out, let himself be drowned out; it was simpler packed into the riverbed.

The waiter returned with a notepad ready to take back their orders to the kitchen. He stood, poised for action, until the garbled pronunciation and jabbing at the menus proceeded, upon which his pen set about furiously scribbling. The scratching stopped. He closed it with a decisive click and went away.

“So…,” Jason Freese began, a mischievous grin unfurling slowly beneath the shadow cast by the brim of his signature fedora, “what do you guys think about the new couple? We can’t let this opportunity to gossip about them—that they themselves so graciously gifted to us by being late—go to waste, am I right?” He swung his glass upward, gesticulating with it as he spoke.

Tré froze, not that he had been moving. His stillness became more still. His silence more pronounced. His appetite gurgled sickly before dying.

Would he always be last? Someone to avoid rather than confide in? He thought he knew the answer, but was it just a thought? Or was it as real as Billie Joe and Annabelle, the couple, even though that hardly seemed real? Or fair. What was fair? Was he being fair, being bitter?

Stop.

Just stop. You’re blurring.

Jason White spoke up. “I mean, I think it’s great. They make a good match, not to mention it’s great that Billie Joe has someone to support him now.” He beamed in the other Jason’s direction.

The statement ricocheted and hit Tré and tripled him like a camera exposure too long, too much time for the hurt to soak into the film. Each one of him was knocked backward. Only he didn’t move from his seat. He excluded himself from the conversation by other means: worry.

Would he be able to stand it, when they came in? It was one thing to hear it, or see them separately, but to see it, the abstract concept of togetherness…it might destroy him. Blast him apart from the core like a stick of dynamite jammed into the crevice of a rock face. Maybe he needed it to set him straight. What was happening, had happened to him, had mutated him into some creature struggling to come out on top of all the other potential prey? Or maybe his real predator was half-baked evolution, a fish busy growing legs instead of lungs.

Whatever he was he’d lost his innate reflexes, because he’d stopped breathing. While he’d been pondering exploding fish, the couple in question had infiltrated the table. The bubble of quiet encasing Tré’s thoughts seemed to burst, and all the sound came rushing in. It forced his lungs open again.

“Hey guys, what took you so long? Eh? Eh?” Jason prodded, eyebrow dancing playfully.

Billie Joe smirked cheekily. “Get out of here. I’ll have none of that, asshole!” Climbing into the seat next to Jason, he pushed him so that he swayed slightly to the side. The movement led his gaze to Tré, and his eyes shied away uncomfortably; he needed blinders.

Tré noticed. He bit his tongue to keep from crying out in pain. Dousing fire with gasoline, he averted his attention away from Billie Joe and onto his date. He knew why Billie Joe liked her. Heck, he liked her. From the waves in her hair to her soft smile, she was radiant and radiating soothing compassion. He’d lost him, he’d lost everything to her. But he couldn’t hate her.

The food came. Billie Joe and Annabelle ordered. Tré was largely taciturn, except in things concerning him. He tried to ignore him, he really did. But the particular frequency of his voice monopolized his eardrums until he was listening to Billie Joe having a conversation with himself.

“I hope they ask something different tomorrow. Y’know, like, ‘what’s your favorite superhero?’ That sorta stuff.”

His voice floated on top of everything else like a pale harmonic.

“Oh shit, I forgot to tell you guys. Pat called me and told me a Rolling Stone reporter is gonna be following us around for the next couple days; I don’t remember exactly when that starts, but, y’know, we’ll find out when he shows up at the bus door.”

Even trivialities, maybe especially trivialities, demanded Tré’s attention.

“God damn, it’s been a long time since I’ve had proper lasagna.”

He missed him.
**

He’d been outside all of two minutes, yet dark sweat gathered around his armpits. He hated the South. It was the South’s fault; everything had happened in the South. He shoved his hands in his pockets angrily. The sun beat through his sunglasses. He spit and scraped sand over the evidence with his sneaker.

“Shit.” He berated himself, grunting his frustration in low puffs. “You piece of shit, why can’t you get over him already? Huh?” Tré checked his surroundings again. “Fuck,” he swore, a bit louder.

He jumped when a crow squawked close behind him. “The fuck are you looking at?” he yelled, somewhat louder than he had intended, as he whipped around to meet its appraising black stare. It merely ruffled its feathers in response, unfazed by Tré’s aggressive display.

“I need…I don’t know what I need, but…clearly this isn’t helping. You are just making a fool of yourself, Tré Cool, and so what if this parking lot is empty because there is still this motherfucking bird judging you and you’re taking it, and not like a man, but like a fucking butthurt two-year-old. Now you’re gonna do this interview like the adult that you are and not give your band mates more reason to hate you!” Tré raised a decisive fist and brought it down into the palm of his other hand. This was determination!
**

The massive radio station headphones slipped down Tré’s head, and he pushed them up by the thick earpads. Weren’t these supposed to be professional grade? Was his head too small?

For the past ten minutes they had been bombarded with questions from the deejay, and not the amusing kind that Billie Joe had been hoping for the night before. No, these were run of the mill, the standard casual-fan pleasers. Tré’s resolve had waned into apathy, defenses battered down by the curse of business as usual.

“It’s time for a question from the fans,” the deejay, a scruffy guy in his 30s, announced into the mike. Tré’s ears perked up under the hefty weight of the headphones. This was clearly going to be the only thing of interest during the whole session, unless the deejay had saved all his best questions for last. Doubtful.

He exchanged glances with Mike and Billie Joe, who up to that moment had also been relatively unenthused by the line of questioning.

A throat clear later: “This question is from Stacey A. of Atlanta. She wants to know,” here he stopped to laugh, “‘are you single?’”

The three men dissolved into nervous giggles, unable to help themselves despite the unstated tension diffusing itself between the molecules of stale radio booth air at the mention of relationship status.

“Uh, well,” Mike began, disguising another developing snicker with a strategic cough before carrying on, “that would be single for me.” He passed the torch to Billie Joe with an only slightly apologetic look that said, “Sorry, man, you’re gonna have to deal with the rabid fan girls sometime.”

Bowing his head in defeat, yet also smirking in smug fashion, he leaned into the microphone. “I’m sorry to disappoint anyone who was hoping for a chance, but,” he said, a smile curving his speech, “I have found myself a wonderful woman that right now I couldn’t imagine living without.”

“If I may interject,” the deejay came in, “do the fans get to know the lucky lady’s name, or is it a secret?”

“Uhhh,” Billie Joe hesitated, holding onto his headphones. His eyes flicked up and around the interior of the soundproof glass walls while he made his decision. “I suppose it’s okay, but just the first name!” he hedged. “It’s Annabelle. Now go post that on your blogs or whatever you kids are doing these days.” He chuckled softly, hands trembling as he lowered them to his lap.

Tré caught a light tinge to his cheek; his heart sped up, tumbling around in his chest. It was his turn next, and he had a role to perform. The sweat already beaded around his hairline turned cold as he struggled to find a way to transform his inevitably lonely statement into a Tré Cool neologism. The deejay said something and then prompted him, which only served to scatter the delicate wisps of ideas floating around his head.

What finally left his mouth was nothing like he’d intended. “I’m not so lucky.” The words fell with a dead weight. Mike pursed his lips in reproach even as the deejay salvaged the mood with a joke piggybacking off of Tré’s remark as if it had been deadpan. Billie Joe bit his lip in embarrassment, but also in pity. It was like there was something in his peripheral vision that he couldn’t quite focus on, a blurry splotch that kept drawing his attention with its movement. It was with growing unease that he continued to deny its existence.

With a few closing comments, the deejay wrapped up the interview and thanked Green Day for their cooperation. The red broadcasting light blinked out, and they shuffled to the door wearily, all energy sapped out of them by their least favorite part of their job: forming coherent sentences for the fans to consume as holy writ.

On the way out, Billie Joe, taunted by the wriggling speck’s persistence, reached out to Tré. “Hey, can I talk to you?”

Mike looked back at the interaction, observing quietly as Tré nodded in assent. He let the distance between them widen as they exited the building.

Billie Joe motioned for them to stop when they had rounded the side of the building. He took Tré by the arm to hold him steady. “Are you okay?” he asked earnestly.

“Yeah,” Tré insisted woodenly, “I’m fine. Why do you ask?” His composure was fraudulent. Billie Joe’s chest ached when he saw it, a front directed at him.

“I’m serious.” He tightened his grip around Tré’s forearm to catch his attention. “What you said back there…it just sounded so…sad. I—I don’t want you to feel that way, Tré. You, uh, you’re amazing, y’know, just…you’re sweet and supportive, and funny—you’re goddamn funny. You’re even a solid drummer when pull your act together.” At this he smiled wryly, and then continued. “You’re not going to be lonely forever, man. There are a shit ton of girls that would be happy just to be in the same room with you, y’know? You’ve just gotta keep looking and someday you’ll meet one that makes you happy. Or your true love, if you believe in that shit.”

Tré wobbled on the edge of a fence. He took a deep breath and jumped off on the other side. “I don’t want a girl,” he admitted, voice quavering. He watched as surprise wiped Billie Joe’s face blank and he stood there processing the shock.

In an effort to regain his emotional footing, Billie Joe clarified, “You don’t want a girlfriend? Do you want to be single forever?”

Tré didn’t know where this newfound boldness was coming from, but he surrendered himself to it. “Not exactly...,” he breathed. He pulled, twisting his arm loose from Billie Joe’s grip until their hands met and he had threaded his fingers betwixt the guitarist’s. He stepped in closer.

Billie Joe took a step back. “What are you doing?” he asked helplessly, staring at the connectedness of their hands.

He couldn’t believe what he was saying. Not precisely what he was saying, but that he was saying it. “Billie Joe…I don’t want a girl, because…because I want you.” Again he closed the distance between them. His heart was beating so fast it was whirring as his free hand slid past Billie Joe’s jaw to guide his head towards his own. He pressed his lips to Billie Joe’s tentatively.

At first Billie Joe wasn’t sure how to react, but Tré’s warmth soon convinced him that all he wanted was to be close. He let himself be taken away by Tré’s feelings, and his own feelings, and then he took them and used them against him, kissing harder, and with greater speed. When a tongue swept past his teeth, his own met it. When the kisses slowed and lengthened, he sighed into them.

When he came to, he was enveloped in Tré’s firm embrace. He didn’t want to be anywhere else, but he was also outside of a radio station in Georgia, a building corner away from the tour buses where his girlfriend was presumably waiting for him. He had split himself in two. What a strange thing, survival.