Infamous

All Riley could focus on was his knee bouncing against the underside of the conference table and the constant pull he felt toward the pack of smokes in his front pocket. His bandmates sat around him at the table, each listening to the record executives who were making big promises that Riley wanted nothing to do with. As his impatience grew, his knee banged against the table, sending coffee cups stumbling and heads turning toward him. His band mates eyed him warningly, used to his cold disinterest. He smiled apologetically to the men in sweaters and khakis, sitting up straighter in his chair and turning his attention from the window.

“It would be a really great opportunity to get your music out there,” one of them spoke, glancing to Riley placatingly. “We have a partnership with the local rock station, KWX 95, and they host a festival every summer. I’m sure we could get you on the list, to open at least. Sanvarita is headlining their main stage this summer.”

Jed grinned, somewhat pointedly at Riley, and it fanned out into something more genuine, hopeful. “That sounds-“

“Like shit,” Riley answered, leaning forward on his elbow to face both record execs. “Sanvarita is practically a country band. What kind of rock station signs a country band as a headliner for a rock festival?”

The man nearest to Riley faltered, practically sputtering, leaving room for the other to jump in. “Mr. Arckadi,” he spoke, leaning around his co-worker. “Sanvarita is one of our most successful bands. Those guys work very hard and put out great music.”

Riley rolled his eyes, leaning back against his seat. “And I’m sure they make you a lot of money,” he said flippantly, “but I’m not interested in signing to a label that doesn’t know who it is. We’re an alt rock band, man. Yeah, we’re a little folksy, but we’re not opening for a mainstream country band at some sell-out festival. It’s not who we are.”

The executives faltered, one confused, the other a bit defensive. The angry one turned to the rest of the guys across the table from them, the rest of Riley’s bandmates, imploring them to be more sensible than their singer. “Mr. Hadwick, you guys, Wellsner is a great label. We go above and beyond to make our musicians happy. We really think you all could be a great fit here if you just give it a chance. Yes, we cater to more than one genre, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to serve your sound. We could have you on billboards and top charts in months.”

Riley rolled his eyes, shaking his head at his friends. “I won’t do it,” he said finitely, crossing his arms over his chest. His expression was a challenge, daring Casey, Darian, Rush, or Jed to push him on this. “Twenty Below charted without anyone’s help. We don’t need them.”

Rush sighed, turning his steady gaze to the executives. “We can’t do it without Riley,” he said to the men across from him. “He’s our singer, and if it doesn’t feel right to him, then it’s not right for us. I’m sorry.”

With a collective sigh, the band stood up from the table, ignoring the pleas from the Wellsner guys. They each funneled out of the conference room, out of the little one-floor record label in the heart of the city and onto the stained sidewalks.

Falling through the main glass doors out onto the street, the band instantly kicked up into an uproar, adding to the symphony of the city sounds. Darian groaned in annoyance, shoving Riley out of his path. “Man, that was our shot,” he complained. “Why do you always have to be like this?”

Riley laughed, pulling his smokes out of his pocket. “Like what,” he said, cigarette between his teeth. “Those guys are tools. They don’t know shit about music, I bet you. They just want to make money off us.”

“I want to make money off us,” Jed answered, swiping the cigarette from Riley’s mouth. He looked at it in disgust before tossing it to the sidewalk. He made a point of stepping on it as they headed down the street to the city parking garage. “We’re never going to get signed if you keep acting like an asshole in meetings. You didn’t listen to a single word they said.”

Riley glared at his friend and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I didn’t have to,” he answered with distaste. “Did you see that place? It looks like some bad 90s recording studio. They don’t know who they are. They’ll take anything off the street with a modicum of chance of making them a dollar.”

“And we deserve better, yeah?” Casey responded, offering Riley a smoke of his own. “Well we’re not going to get it playing shitty little dive bars on the weekend, Riley, no matter how many of us move into your tiny-ass house to save rent. ”

Riley hooked a right into the parking garage, heading toward the concrete staircase. He hung back behind the others so Casey could light his cigarette. He cupped one hand around his mouth, leaning against the glass door to hold it open. “Well, you fucking losers better get real jobs then, yeah?” he joked, breathing out a cloud of smoke.

He grinned as his friends dived for him and ducked through the doorway as Jed tried to slam it shut on him.

They scrambled into the stairwell, laughing and shoving Riley away from them as they climbed. They’d come down together to meet with the record label and try their shot, meeting each other on the third floor of the city’s only parking structure.

Riley leaned against the trunk of his car, foot up against the bumper, and watched his friends all deviate to their own. He watched as they put their band on the back-burned and headed off to deal with other responsibilities.

“Riles, man.”

He glanced to his left, offering Jed a tepid smile and moving his cigarette out of the guitarists’ reach. “What is it?”

Jed brushed against Riley as he settled down beside him against the car. “I know you think we can do this – and we will,” he added quickly, watching Riley’s temper rise, “but you’ve gotta lower your standards, man. Maybe we have to start with shitty little places like that until other doors open up. You can’t keep turning your nose up at every label that isn’t Adejiay.”

Riley frowned, greedily inhaling the last of his smoke before he tossed it to the cement. He watched the end burn orange and burn out as he considered Jed’s words. “But we can make Adejiay,” he answered, glancing to his friend then away. “We’ve put in the work for Adejiay.”

Jed chuckled, nodding. “You know we have,” he replied, nudging Riley. “But it’s not going to happen unless something gives. That label is in LA, and there’s enough talent there that they’re not going to come for us, Ri, not even if we make more noise.”

Riley nodded to his friends in their cars as they sped down the ramp and around to the floor below, shouting at the two lingering behind. Darien had a shift tonight stocking bar at a local pub, Rush always went to bed early so he could be up by six to teach drum lessons by seven, and Casey had his girl waiting to be picked up from work, like usual. It was their same routine, scraping out hours of the day to try to make this dream work.

“You’re right,” Riley answered, looking to the surprised and apprehensive face of his best friend. “You’re right,” he said again. “I’m not fucking with you, Jedidiah. Nobody is going to come and drag our asses anywhere. We’ve got to do it ourselves. Same as everything else.”

Jed frowned, straightening up. He sighed as Riley pulled another cigarette out. “What do you mean?” he questioned, not bothering to swat this smoke from his hand. It was the least dangerous of Riley’s vices.

“I mean,” Riley said around the cigarette in his mouth, fiddling through his pants pockets for a lighter, “that if we’re going to do this, then we need to do it. We can’t keep playing shitty bars on the weekends. We've gotta jump in the deep end and try not to drown.”

“Stop talking in metaphors, man,” Jed said. “Be straight with me. What crazy-ass plan is rolling around in your head now?”

Riley grinned, a little jaded, a little run down. “We should pack up our shit and go to LA,” he said, blowing smoke away from his friend. “What do we have to lose here? A shitty house? It’s too small anyway. I've got no one depending on me, and you sure as hell don’t.”

Jed scoffed at his friend’s insult. “Shut up,” he said, but considered it despite his words. Riley watched the gears ticking in Jed’s head. Since they were teenagers, Riley was always the wild one, the one with too many ideas. Jed would spend three seconds trying to talk sense into him and then he’d jump on board, ready to drown in another one of Riley’s schemes.

“You’d never get Casey to walk away from Laurel,” Jed answered, shaking his head at the improbability of it all. “He loves that girl more than he likes being in the band. And we can’t lose him. He’s better than all of us.”

Riley shook his head fast, jittery, stubbing his smoke out on the trunk of his car, tucking it in his pocket for later. “Hell, he can bring her. She’s a nurse; it’s not like she can’t get a job in LA. I bet their hospitals are ten times the size of Nazareth Gen. She’d probably make more too.”

“Rush has his lessons,” Jed added, turning his blue eyes to the impossibly dark ones of his friend.

“Fuck his lessons,” Riley bit back. “If he wants to teach rather than play, he’ll quit.”

“Darien-“

Riley laughed, shooting Jed a look. “Man, you and I both know Darien’s got nothing here,” he said. “He’d be the first one gone.”

Jed couldn’t keep a serious face, chuckling along with Riley, both agreeing on that fact.

The two musicians separated into their own cars after another cigarette and round of silence. Riley pulled out first, and Jed watched through his front window as his long-time friend headed out of the parking structure. Jed assumed that Riley would head home, but as he followed behind him in his own car, Riley took a left onto the street, waving through the open window, obviously heading somewhere new for the night. Jed stayed parked at the mouth of the street until Riley’s beige Chevy Cavalier disappeared around another corner, rolling through a red light into a right turn.

Jedidiah went home, already thinking about the state of the too-small house that they shared. Riley was out most nights, finding someone’s couch to crash on if he didn’t make it into someone’s bed. Somewhere along the way Casey had moved out without really saying so. Most of his things were still at the house, but he hadn’t slept there in months, preferring to stay in Laurel’s studio apartment. Darien worked third shift and came and went on his own schedule. He was nonexistent during the day, sleeping off his job. Most of the time, it was just Rush and Jed home; the two with normal, daylight jobs. With the drummer in bed by the time Jed got back from work, he spent his evenings picking up after his friends and bandmates, getting the place ready for another day of close-quarters and guys scrambling to scrape by.

The porch light was on when he pulled onto the street and Rush’s car was in his usual spot. Their neighborhood was a remnant of the upper-middle class who inhabited it when the city was just growing. Now it was cheap housing, a rental in a run-down neighborhood surrounded by city blocks that had outgrown the original boundaries of what the city was supposed to be. The upper-class had formed suburbs and left, leaving the city to the artists, the struggling workers, those too at home in the chaos to think about moving.

Jed let himself into the tight two bedroom. It opened up into the kitchen, which was really just a couple shelves, a sink, stove, and fridge in a room no wider than a hallway. Piles of old mail littered the counter tops like over-grown plants, fighting against organization like weeds bursting through side-walk concrete. The living room was just beyond the galley kitchen. They found Riley on the couch most mornings rather than in the room he shared with Jed, trying his best to be respectful of the time, even in his wasted state.

The light was still on in the half-bath off the living room, the over-head fan whirring in time with the city's muted rumble. As Jed stepped in to click it off, he considered what it might be like to leave this place. He doubted they’d be able to afford an apartment even half this size in LA, especially if Riley expected them to pack up and go without warning. He tucked his boots into the hall closet and headed back toward the kitchen and up the narrow, carpeted stairs to their second floor. It was cramped, with two too-small bedrooms and an even more minuscule bathroom just at the top of the stairs.

Rush and Darien’s door was closed and no light peaked out from underneath. Jed silently made his way to his own room, the one he shared with Riley. They’d managed to shove two full-size beds into the space. Riley always joked that it was good for them to be so close, a shot to experience college-style living without the price, but Jed found himself alone most nights, wondering what kind of trouble Riley was out getting himself into. Wondering if he’d drink until he’d puke, and puke until his throat was too raw to perform the next night.

Despite the trouble, Jed preferred Riley’s chaos to the quiet. He didn’t mind Riley’s mess.

Stepping through Riley’s side of the room and over the shit he kept piled on the floor, Jed shrugged out of his shirt and threw himself down onto his bed. It creaked under his weight as he shuffled to drag his comforter over him. He hadn’t bothered turning on the light, and the blinds over Riley’s bed were perpetually closed. He laid there, not moving, listening to the city around them. Their city. The city that fought against them at every turn, that provided so many opportunities for Riley to get lost.

Jed kept telling himself that Riley wasn’t serious about leaving, but he knew better than that. He knew Riley better than that. At the heart of it, Jed didn’t think it was a horrible idea. It would be hard to convince the others, harder to get them to leave their jobs and their friends, but he knew that they would do it. That they’d take one look at Riley’s conviction and follow their singer to the ends of the earth. They knew, just as Jed did, that they had to get Riley out of here.