"Good job, Darren," Greg congratulated him when they left the stage after the final encore. "You did just great up there."
Darren simply nodded, his face drenched in acrid sweat. "That shot you gave me wore off," he said. "Can I get another one?"
He got another one. Greg shot him up and sent him back to the hotel in a limousine hired especially for the occasion. While the rest of the band engaged in their normal post-show groupie action, Darren crashed out in his bed and slept until eight the next morning.
The next two weeks went by in a haze of consecutive dates. They worked their way out of Texas and into New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Gradually, Darren's burns healed and he began to move around a little more on stage. The lidocaine soaked bandages went away but the earplug, the bandana, and the hat remained. So did the Demerol shots. Even though the blisters on his skin all popped and disappeared, he insisted upon getting his "pain shot", as he called it, before and after each performance.
"Why the fuck do you need that shit?" Matt demanded of him as Greg drew up the proper dosage prior to the first of three Denver shows. "You're not burned anymore. You fuckin' hair is even growing back!"
"It's my ear," Darren insisted. "It hurts like hell whenever I hear something loud. I won't be able to make it through a show if something doesn't dampen the pain down."
"Christ," Matt said in disgust. "Your fucking ear my ass. You're getting addicted to that shit, Darren. Don't you realize what this asshole is doing to you? He's turning you into a fucking heroin addict."
"It's not heroin!" Darren yelled. "And I'm not addicted to it. It's only for the pain. The fuckin' show must go on, man. You know that!"
The shows went on. Soon, Darren's hair had grown back enough for him to lose the hat and the bandana. But he continued to complain about his ear and demand shots before and after each performance. In addition to the pain shots, he began to drink beer again and to smoke marijuana and snort cocaine before hitting the stage. Coop joined him in all of these endeavors with the exception of the pain shots. There were occasional mistakes on the stage as a result of all this but they remained minor since both seemed to have learned to keep things at a certain level. Still, mistakes were mistakes and each one earned a furious screaming and yelling response by Matt and pleas from Jake to refrain from getting intoxicated before performing. The pleas and yells went unheard, however, since Greg was always there to let the drummer and the bassist know that he was their boss, not Matt or Jake.
The Thrill of Doing Business tour came to an end on September 3, 1984 with the last of four sold-out shows in Los Angeles. Intemperance had played 126 shows in 96 American cities before a combined total of 1,308,297 paying ticket holders. Meanwhile, The Thrill of Doing Business — the album — went platinum and continued on past, heading rapidly towards double-platinum status, which would be easily achieved — if current sale rates continued — by Christmas. Crossing the Line — the second single released — shot rapidly up the charts into the top ten and then spent nearly a month clawing its way upward from there. As the tour wrapped up CTL — as it was referred to by the music professionals associated with it — was locked in a furious battle for number one with three other songs — all of them the pop-music staples of the Top Forty chart. Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr., What's Love Got To Do With It by Tina Turner, and, the stiffest of the competitors, a song called I Love To Dance by a group called La Diferencia, which was a pop-band from Venezuela that had released an American album on the Los Angeles based Aristotle Records label. As Intemperance spent their first week back in Los Angeles, moving into their new condos and recuperating from the long, torturous road trip just completed, CTL finally peaked at number two on the charts, aced out of the number one spot by I Love To Dance. It held there for another two weeks, trying and trying to dislodge the Venezuelan group's hit — during the second week the difference in single sales was less than five hundred — but ultimately they were unable. CTL began to fall off and I Want To Dance held on, staying at the top spot for what would turn out to be another six weeks.
"What in the fuck is wrong with the music consumer these days?" ranted Matt on the day CTL began to fall. He, Bill, and Jake were sipping drinks on the balcony of Jake's new condo, out of earshot of Manny, who had been once again employed as Jake's manservant. "I mean really, I could understand if Tina Turner had aced us out of number one because Tina's at least a real musician with a rockin' voice and that song she's got going has got some fuckin' soul to it, you know what I mean?"
"I know what you mean," Jake said, and he in fact agreed with this assessment.
"But what's this I Want To Dance crap? So she wants to fuckin' dance? Who gives a flying fuck? I'm telling you, MTV did this shit to us. That and the public's fascination with goddamn third world countries."
"Actually," said Bill, "Venezuela has a standard of living quite close to that of the United States and Canada."
"What?" asked Matt.
"Oh yes," Bill said. "They have copious reserves of petroleum. They've been the largest supplier of foreign oil to the United States ever since the Arab oil embargo of 1973. They're also the only western hemisphere member of OPEC. All of this oil revenue amounts to a gross domestic product that is nearly as high as..."
"Nerdly," Matt said, taking a drag off his cigarette.
"What?"
"I don't give a fuck about their oil revenue."
Bill looked hurt. "I was just trying to tell you that Venezuela is not a third world country," he said.
Matt's face went through a few contortions as angry outbursts were formed and then headed off. Finally he nodded. "I apologize," he said. "Can we call them a second world country then?"
"That would be a more accurate portrayal," Bill agreed.
"Good," Matt said. "Anyway, that Venezuelan bitch with her hokey little accent and her fuckin' crucifix around her neck comes out of this second world country, sings about how she wants to dance, makes a video where her titties are bouncing all over the place under a tight shirt, and everyone eats it up. Nobody notices that the song itself bites ass."
"How do her titties look in the video?" asked Jake, who had not actually seen it — since he despised the whole concept of music videos — nor had he heard anything other than snatches of the actual song since it was not played on stations that he typically listened to.
"They are nice titties," Matt admitted. "Kind of grapefruit sized with lots of good bounce to 'em. And the bitch herself is kind of exotic looking. Dark hair, light skin. The kind of skin you'd like to nut on."
"Light skin, huh?" Jake said, considering. "Is she actually a native of Venezuela or are they making all that shit up?"