The Man Who Would Not Be King

“You didn’t make me cry, you know.”

Billie Joe spoke at a normal volume, but considering the deafening cacophony at the bar, it was more akin to a whisper. Only Tré heard him.
***

Earlier on, Tré had left Billie Joe in the dressing room to go find him somewhere to take an emotionally cleansing map. He enlisted a helpful young man by the name of Scott whose main responsibility was to bring everyone on the crew coffee. After some asking around, Scott procured a cot from seemingly out of his ass. Tré was impressed and told the kid that he was going places.

They wheeled the cot to the dressing room, then realized that that wasn’t quite the best place for it. Tré went in to get Billie Joe. It turned out that he was already fast asleep, having lined up the metal chairs to use as a makeshift bed. Faced with this new development, Tré heaved Billie Joe up on one shoulder in the pattern of a fireman’s carry and brought him out to the cot. He didn’t even stir.

Billie Joe ended up a couple doors down, in another dressing room, this one currently unused. Satisfied with his work, Tré dismissed both Scott and himself and wandered aimlessly for a while.

Eventually, at around three in the afternoon, pangs of hunger threatened to collapse the walls of Tré’s stomach. He journeyed back to his dressing room, where he discovered a couple boxes of grinders. He munched on one of the veggie variety.

By this time most of the rest of the group had found the space and claimed it for their own. Once Tré’s location was discovered, Billie Joe’s absence became marked. Mike was the first to ask. “Do you know where Billie Joe is? I haven’t seen him in ages. I kind of assumed he was with you, but now you’re here, so I guess not.” He wrinkled his forehead.

Tré sighed, thinking that this would probably be an appropriate moment to spill his guts. Instead, however, he shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen him either.” He registered somewhere that he had just lied. To Mike. Blatantly. He scolded himself for not at least admitting that Billie Joe was taking some time out for a nap.

“Well I hope he shows up soon. We should practice a bit before we do this tonight.” Mike stood up and stretched his arms over his head. “I’m gonna go take a walk. See if you can locate him for me, would ya?” He exited the room.

Tré noticed Jason staring at him queerly from across the room. He bit into his sub, not meeting the other man’s eyes.
***

“I’m glad.” He placed an affectionate hand on Billie Joe, happily observing the return of some color to his friend’s face. It was certainly an improvement over that afternoon.
Billie Joe leaned into Tré and touched his lips gently to his cheek. “Thanks,” he said.
***

A half hour after Mike’s departure, Tré went to go round up Billie Joe. The sound of the door woke him and he sat up groggily, wondering at how he’d come to be in an actual bed. He questioned Tré with an eyebrow, who then paired a shrug with an expression of smugness.

The effects of the alcohol had mostly worn off, and Billie Joe looked better off for it. Tré escorted Billie Joe to the practice room, where the entire band convened. They ran through a few songs, mostly the newer ones from American Idiot, and had relatively few mishaps. Billie Joe’s guitar playing was shaky initially, but Jason covered up his mistakes with ease, no stranger to having Billie Joe stop strumming as he ran from one end of the stage to the other. They didn’t go unnoticed, however. On the tail of each one Jason shot a glance at Tré, which to Tré seemed counterintuitive, even if Jason had caught onto Tré’s weirdness today.

Afterwards everyone switched into their stage gear and split up to perform their individual pre-show routines. Tré glimpsed Billie Joe rocketing down the hallway and smiled.

“Green Day kicked off their American Idiot tour in high style, literally, ditching their scruffy punk looks of previous years for the recent phenomenon termed ‘guyliner’. Despite the jump to metrosexuality, however, their musicianship appears to have stood the test of time. So has their showmanship. Billie Joe Armstrong, the trio’s front man, was just as charismatic as ever, displaying an atomic source of energy that didn’t wane for a second…”

Tré flushed red. He never was expecting that, although he knew that with Billie Joe a kiss was far more likely than something like a handshake, and still more likely than nothing.

Mike spilled from out of nowhere into the seat to the right of Tré. His glass, empty with the exception of some discolored ice, imitated his sloppy motion, sliding across the counter to collide noisily with Tré’s. “Heyyy guyysss,” he breathed clumsily.

Billie Joe looked at him, amused. “Heyyy, Mike.” Tré acknowledged him solely with a nod and resumed spinning his glass between his two middle fingers.

With the bluntness that only comes with being drunk, Mike ignored Billie Joe completely and instead told Tré, “Your face is red.”

“Is it?” asked Tré, absentmindedly raising a hand to touch a cheek, as if that would let him know whether it was true. At least Billie Joe had been too distracted to notice Tré’s embarrassment; his head was turned to better observe some goings-on further down the bar. Like sheep, once this had caught the others’ attention, they too redirected their gazes.

A fist crashed down onto the wood of a table. Laughter erupted from those seated around it, who seemed to be mostly roadies. “And I’m like, ‘Okay, okay.’ And I nod, to make sure he thinks I’m following him, but I’m really not. So he starts talking about his girlfriend, which I wasn’t expecting, but okay, whatever. Except it looks a little like he’s gonna tear up or something. Get this, he’s like, ‘And she’s a wonderful woman, but she’s just had to go through so much shit in her life and whenever any creep gets too close to her she just, it’s bad. But anyway, come November, I’m moving back to California. No offense to her, but I need some stability in my life.’ And I’m just like, ‘Whaatt are you saying?’”

“This guy totally sounds like a mess,” interjected one of the guitar technicians.

“Was he at least a hot mess?” yelled a second guy, drunkenly.

Annabelle giggled, answering the question: “Oh, no. He was, like, balding.”

The man sitting to her right jabbed her in the ribs with his elbow. “Hey, I coulda swore earlier you said I was sexy!” he exclaimed, pointing to his own bare head.

“Oh, Bill, on you. You make it happen.”

“Make what happen?” he asked, genuinely confused, perhaps due to the alcohol currently flowing past his brain.

Annabelle rolled her eyes as Pete, across the table, focused in on the conversation with a “Wait, what?”

After a sip of beer, Annabelle continued her anecdote. “So anyway,” she said, pausing to think and narrowing her eyes in the process, “did I mention that I’m eighteen at this point?” The guys surrounding her nodded. “Anyway, I’m just kinda like, ‘God I need to get out of here,’ and I, like, look backwards towards the closet I have to lock up, to, you know, give him the hint, like, ‘Hey, I need to close up and go home and I’m also starving so leave me alone.’ But there’s just this awkward silence, and then he says, ‘I’m sorry I just rambled to you. I’m drunk.”

A few in her audience snickered.

“And then out of nowhere he just goes for it, he’s like, ‘Hey, I see you working. You look bored, it must be boring. If you ever want to talk or anything, I live in apartment two sixteen. My door is always open.’ And innocent little eighteen-year-old me is just like, ‘Dude! You really just went there, this is so creepy!’” She set down her beer, apparently finished.

Bill was still anticipating more. “Well, did you ever see him again? Is that it?”

Annabelle tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and sighed. “I did, but it was mostly not too awkward because neither of us ever mentioned it.”

“Ah, lame!”

“Well, it might be lame for you, but I assure you I was very happy he stayed sober after that,” she insisted. “You might as well learn now that once you hit thirty you’re fucking creepy to an eighteen-year-old girl.” She looked pointedly at each of the men in turn. Pete was about to protest when she cut him off. “All right, Petey, I know you’re only twenty-seven.”

“Damn straight.”

Jerking off of his stool by the counter, Billie Joe led Mike and Tré over to the raucous table, transforming it from crowded into cramped. He squeezed in between Annabelle and Bill, whereas Mike and Tré fit themselves in on either side of Pete. The table and chairs were high enough so that even though Green Day were standing, they were only marginally taller than everyone else.

The roadies, with the exception of Pete, who had been expecting this at some point, looked taken aback, and a brief but tense silence descended on the party. With only the slightest hesitation, Tré introduced Mike to Pete, while Billie Joe busied himself saying hello to the other end of the table. Conversations started, albeit slowly.

“So you run our light show, huh? How did you get into that?”

“Um, well, I did theatre in college, so I learned how to run everything there. And then I ended up working part time at this tiny all-ages venue a couple miles from my town. It had some cool indie bands occasionally.”

Billie Joe opened his mouth to ask a question, but Annabelle intercepted it before he could get it out. “No,” she smiled, “it was nothing like Gilman.”

He bit his lip in disappointment.

“It was still pretty cool though!”

“Yeah, pretty cool,” he agreed.

Just then, Jason moved into a spot recently vacated by the guitar tech. He was looking over his shoulder, but Mike called him back to attention. “Jase! What happened to that girl I saw you talking to earlier?”

Rubbing an eyebrow, he replied, “I couldn’t close, guess she wasn’t into it.”

“Aw, that’s too bad, man.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Tré, who was beside Jason, ordered another round of drinks. “Here,” he said, raising his beer, “to Jason, that he may get laid soon.”

“I’ll drink to that!” Jason gulped down his alcohol greedily.

Mike and Pete were discussing the merits of s’mores. “Oh my God, and when the marshmallow and the chocolate are perfectly merged into this—this—” Pete stumbled over his words, distracted by something taking place across from him. “Hey, Billie Joe,” he called, “I think your nose is bleeding, man.”

Sure enough, a thin trickle of blood was beginning to pool against Billie Joe’s septum, and then broke off to stream down towards his lip. Billie Joe turned away from Annabelle, alarmed. He wiped his nose with a knuckle and leaned back from the table, staring at it.

Seeing that his friend was not reacting fast enough to avoid wrecking his clothes or creating a mess for the janitors, Mike went over to him and took him by the shoulders. “Come on; let’s get you to the bathroom.”

When they were gone, Jason clamped his hand down on Tré’s bicep and dragged him away from the others. “Jason, what the fuck?” Tré whined, confused. He didn’t get an answer until they were outside the back exit. Tré scanned the area and saw an alley strewn with newspaper and broken glass. “Jason, this is so sketch. What are we doing?”

He looked straight at Jason. The way the night’s shadows fell on his tall brown hair and enhanced the eyeliner around his eyes lent his appearance a menacing air. From the way his voice sounded, Tré could tell he was gritting his teeth. He had him pushed against the brick wall, which Tré suddenly registered as uncomfortable and foreign.

“What the fuck is going on, Tré?” he growled.

Tré laughed nervously. “What the fuck is going on with you?”

Jason shook his head to clear it. He looked ready to burst into motion and assault someone or something. He sucked in air through his teeth. “Now I want you to tell me straight. At first I wasn’t sure what it was he was doing, but after that display in there…Billie Joe has a coke problem, doesn’t he?”

Tré blinked. “What?”

“Oh don’t try and play fucking dumb, asshole.”

“Jas—”

“I’ve seen you babysitting him all day. You look like you’re just waiting for him to do something stupid and give it away.”

“Jason, it’s—”

“And that nosebleed, yeah, try and explain that away. Go ahead.”

His repeated attempts to interrupt Jason’s tirade failing atrociously, Tré was glad that finally Jason seemed to be expecting a response, although furiously so. If Jason hadn’t been so intensely, unwaveringly serious, Tré would have simply laughed off the accusation, but as it was, he was not even sure how to convince him of the glaring inaccuracies of his theory. “No, for God’s sakes, Billie Joe is not a God damn coke fiend! Okay, first of all, Billie Joe hasn’t done coke in like ten years, and he was definitely never addicted to it. Second, you are way fucking out of line; I can’t even begin to —”

“The nosebleed? Why you keep watch over him? Where did he go today before the show, huh?” Jason leered.

Tré flared his nostrils in impatience. “Since when, Jason, do all nosebleeds point to a cocaine habit? You are really just making too much sense right now,” he responded, biting and caustic, thrusting his head closer to Jason’s face despite his compromised position. “Billie Joe used to get nosebleeds all the time. It’s no—”

The guitarist shoved Tré away from him with a hostile finger in the chest. Tré’s shirt snagged on the wall. “I am sick of you acting all high and mighty and like you know him better, when that’s not true! I’ve been in a band with him too! Fourteen fucking years!”

It was Tré’s turn to cut Jason off. “Is that what this is about? Are you jealous?”

Jason’s eyes flashed. “Oh, fuck you!” he spat.

“I’m just saying, maybe you should take a step back and think this through logically. I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation right now. For the last fucking time, Billie Joe is not doing cocaine, or even any other fucking drug for that matter.” Tré shook his head in disgust. “And fucking get off of me!” He struggled to free himself, but Jason had him pinned expertly.

“Not until you answer my question. Where did he go today and why are you acting like his guardian fucking angel?”

Tré exhaled resignedly. He clearly had to tell Jason something, but did not want to overstep the bounds of confidentiality that had no doubt been bestowed upon him in unspoken agreement by Billie Joe. “He just went to take a nap because he wasn’t feeling well.”

Jason scoffed, and it darted through Tré’s mind that Jason was being not merely difficult, but impossible. “Yeah, okay,” he said, stupidly.

Tré continued to the second part of the question regardless. “And I’m worried about him,” he stated quietly, more to himself.

“Why?”

“I’m sorry,” said Tré, although he was hardly sorry about withholding information from Jason, given that he was behaving like such a dickwad (in his humble opinion), “but I can’t tell you. It’s private.”

Immediately the hostility encircling Jason coiled more tightly around him. “Does Mike know?” he asked darkly, brows drawn together.

“No.”

He released Tré and reached into a pocket, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. He drew on it. “If it’s not fucking drugs, why can’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s fucking embarrassing for him, that’s why!” Tré snapped. He rotated his shoulder in its cuff, annoyed.

“If I find out you’re lying to me, Tré, you’d better watch your back,” Jason threatened and then stalked off.

‘What are you, twelve?’ the drummer thought and kicked at a heap of trash next to his foot.