“Nice. If you can do that a few times when I hand you guitars during my set you’re hired. I won’t bother showing you how to string tonight—that guarantees I’ll break one, you watch—but you can help us sell merch, too. Earn your keep.”
Rosemary nodded. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut and observe, and if she liked the band she’d introduce herself again and explain why she was there. She had practiced that speech a hundred times in her head on the bus. Funny how now that she’d arrived she couldn’t get enough words out of her mouth to say any of it.
The band finished setting up. Rosemary picked a wall to lean against where she could be unobtrusive.
“Excuse me, can I get in there?” A tall black man with a pierced septum and dreadlocks pointed behind her, and she realized she’d managed to block the soundboard.
“Sorry,” she muttered, resituating herself in front of the board instead of behind, hoping she wasn’t obstructing anything else.
“Come on, Rosemary Laws,” said Luce from beside her. “Let me show you how our merch setup works.”
Rosemary trailed her over to the stairs. There was an alcove underneath with a folding table in front of it. Luce hefted a suitcase onto the table and flipped it open. Inside, patches and stickers and download cards for Harriet, but also for Luce Cannon and Patient Zero and Last April and Typecast as Villains.
She pulled out some T-shirts, slipped them onto hangers, and hung them from the stair banister. They had DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT screen-printed on them in block letters. The band names nagged at Rosemary.
“It’s easy enough,” Luce told her. “There’s a price list in the suitcase. Cash only. Any questions, find me or one of the guys.”
“Um, okay. When do I sit over here instead of over there helping you with your guitars?”
“For the whole night except when we’re playing. Good question. Next?”
“Luce Cannon? Is that really you? Like, ‘Blood and Diamonds’ Luce Cannon?” As she said the name of the song, Rosemary remembered the way it had drifted into her hospital room, made itself part of her while her body fought the fever.
“In a previous incarnation. That song was a long time ago.”
“Yeah! It came out when I was twelve, and then it got big again when I was in high school. It was my favorite song for ages.”
The other woman winced. “I don’t think of myself as old until somebody says something like that.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to say you’re old. You were pretty young when it came out, right? So you’re not old now. It’s just I loved that song. I can’t believe it’s you. But—you’re famous. What are you doing here?”
Luce cocked her head. Rosemary got the feeling she’d said something wrong. She changed the subject. “Um, are the other bands selling stuff, too?”
“Yeah, but that’s not your problem. You keep my merch from walking off without cash in exchange.”
Footsteps on the stairs behind them. Another band, more gear in the guitar pile by the stage. They all shared a drum kit, Rosemary had figured out by then, as well as the bass amp and mic stands. Luce turned to help them, and, Rosemary guessed, to step away from their conversation. She had probably blown it, saying she’d been twelve when “Blood and Diamonds” came out, and getting stuck on it. But Luce Cannon! What a coup if Rosemary brought her to SHL. Everyone knew that song.
Luce came back to the table a moment later, so Rosemary must not have insulted or embarrassed her as much as she’d worried.
“Do they all get soundchecks? All the bands?” she asked Luce, eager to show she wasn’t hung up on the song. She had also decided to stop pretending like she knew anything.
“Naw. We do it to set the overall levels and the others get a line check. It’s not worth the time to check everyone and move gear twice. The room sounds totally different with people in it, anyway, but it’s ritual for me. Relaxes me a bit.”
“You don’t look nervous.”
She laughed. “I don’t get stage fright. Some anything-can-happen low-grade anxiety, maybe, but that burns off when we start playing.”
Rosemary didn’t know the difference, but she let it go.
The room began to fill. Rosemary was glad to be behind the merchandise table. She had dressed in what she thought people wore for shows, but it wasn’t like what anybody else was wearing, and she felt more overdressed by the second. They all came downstairs and took positions in the room like they’d gotten a memo she had missed. Some stood alone, Hoodies up or checking their phones, leaning on walls, looking like they belonged.
The audience demographics varied more than she’d expected: black and brown and white, teenagers and seniors and all ages in between. At the Patent Medicine show, most of the avs had been young and white and had fit into the five basic av body types, since custom bodies cost so much more. She was struck again by how different real people could be.
She had expected people to be drinking, and some held bottles or flasks, but she hadn’t spotted a bar. Whenever somebody stopped to look over the items on her table, she tried to exude a false front of confidence and belonging, smiling at them and waiting to see if they smiled back.
“What band are you here to see?” she asked one browser, trying to make conversation.
“All of them,” the woman said, and Rosemary wasn’t sure if that was a rebuke or an innocent answer. Maybe everyone came to hear everyone, not a particular favorite. Or maybe she’d made the woman uncomfortable, since she sat behind a particular band’s table. Maybe she’d implied the woman wasn’t fan enough. After that, she pressed her lips together, afraid she’d say something else stupid. What had Luce Cannon called it? Anything-can-happen low-grade anxiety.
The room now held more people than Rosemary had ever seen in one place. Each time she’d thought that recently, a new situation had come along to outdo it, but this was the most for sure. Fifty? Sixty? She had no idea how so many people fit in a space this size. She started to sweat. If she didn’t have the table and the alcove to carve out some space for her, she wasn’t sure what she’d do.
How did they stand it? Shoulder to shoulder, front to back with total strangers, with their heat and their odors. No clue if any of them had some new superbug, if a single sneeze might endanger the entire room. No clue if someone had a knife or a gun or a vendetta. If even one person panicked, the whole room would try to squeeze up that tiny staircase. People would be crushed. There were laws against this, laws to prevent gatherings like this one. She could pull out her phone and call in a violation. She held that consolation to her; the possibility obviated the need to do it. She had her space under the stairs, her table to keep her safe.
17
ROSEMARY
Shadow on the Wall
The first band started, and Rosemary turned her attention toward the stage area. She had to push the table forward a few inches in order to stand and see anything other than the hand-painted banner with the name “Kurtz” that now hung above the musicians. The shifting table earned her dirty looks from people who’d been standing in front of it, but she ignored them. Her first real live show!
The Patent Medicine show counted for something, of course; she wouldn’t be here now if that experience hadn’t blown her away. Even watching musicians record their set for SHL, with their individual camera arrays and sound booths, all knitted together to appear as if they were on a single stage; even that stirred something inside her. This had to be even better, with the band members close enough to interact with each other, and a real audience to feed off.