At ten minutes to showtime Jake and Matt were in the backstage alcove looking out over the crowd. This was something both of them enjoyed doing, Matt so he could scope out likely groupie prospects for after the show, Jake because he never tired of marveling over the fact that so many people had come to see them play. He still felt some stagefright before each performance-some of those nagging, irrational fears refused to go away-but it was nothing like the intensity it had been before that first performance. They were now seasoned performers and they put on a damn good show. A thousand people had told them that a thousand times and they knew it to be true.
There had been a few mishaps of course. When you performed live, things got screwed up every now and then. It was just a fact of life. The most common thing to happen were dropped or broken guitar picks in the middle of a song. Matt and Jake had both done this several dozen times apiece now. There had also been the time that Jake's A string had snapped in the middle of Worship Me, a semi-ballad with lots of finger-picking of that particular string. Coop had broken drumsticks half a dozen times (though he had never, not even once, dropped one, not even while twirling them around or throwing them into the air and catching them). Darren had once stepped on his power cord, ripping it out of his bass and nearly falling to his face before recovering his balance. And Bill had once gone a little overboard while running his hands across his keyboard and had accidentally turned his volume switch all the way up, creating a feedback whine that had been nearly loud enough to shatter glass.
They had learned to recover from these mishaps quickly and professionally. In the case of the lost guitar picks, the band had gotten so good at covering for it that no one in the audience-save other experienced musicians-usually even noticed. Whoever lost it would switch to hitting their strings with their fingers for the remainder of the song. If there was no break planned between the song where the pick had been lost and the next, the band would insert a break, pausing long enough for Jake to throw out a "is everyone havin' a good time" and for a new pick to be produced. In the case of the drumstick, Coop would simply miss a beat with that hand long enough to reach down and grab another from a stash he kept in a pocket between the two bass drums. He had become so proficient at this maneuver that the audience usually never noticed this either.
The things the audience did notice-the volume on the piano, the broken guitar string, the forcible removal of the power cord-the band tried not to dwell on. They simply recovered as quickly and nonchalantly as possible and went on with the show. Jake, as the voice of the band, had discovered a natural talent for making humorous comments when such things occurred.
"That's a new step Darren's working on there," he'd said after the cord tripping incident, while Darren blushed and scrambled to plug himself back in. "As you can see, it needs just a little more work."
The audience had laughed and a moment later Coop banged the sticks together and launched them into the next song.
When Bill created the feedback whine, making everyone in the house wince and cover their ears as 130 decibels washed over them, everything went quiet afterward, the audience stunned and a little shocked at this obvious malfunction of performance. Jake waited until things were at their quietest and then yelled into his mic, "Do we fuckin' rock, or what?"
Once again, laughter had erupted, followed by cheers, followed by resumption of the set as if nothing had happened.
Perhaps the most shining example of covering for a mistake had been when Jake's guitar string had broken. "Looks like I played that one to death," he told the audience-that after nearly two minutes of converting the remaining acoustic portions of the song into a rhythm that did not require the A string to be struck. He patted his Les Paul affectionately. "Can ya'll hang on a sec while I fix this thing up?"
And while he'd gone backstage and hurriedly installed a new A string, the rest of the band kept the crowd entertained with an impromptu jam session in which Matt and Bill played dueling solos while Darren and Coop kept rhythm. Once his string was in place and tuned as well as he could get it by listening without amplification, Jake had gone back out, plugged in, and joined them, inserting his own acoustic solos seamlessly into theirs and adjusting his tuning knob in between them. When he was tuned to his satisfaction, he gave a nod to the rest of the band and they wrapped up the unplanned, unrehearsed performance with an equally unplanned and unrehearsed flourish of instruments. The crowd had cheered wildly and given a standing ovation. When they quieted down, Intemperance fell back into the rest of the set they'd rehearsed, playing it out to perfection.
Such occurrences, however, were very much the exception to the rule. Most of their sets went off flawlessly, the music pouring out of them just as they'd rehearsed it. They changed their sets around every two weeks, usually cycling in new tunes they'd come up with once a month. They now had a bank of thirty-three original songs, all but two of which had been performed at least once before their fans. Tonight was the second night of a new cycle, the first night that It's In The Book would be performed for the D Street West crowd.
"Look at that one right there," Matt told Jake, pointing with his lit cigarette out into the crowd. "That brunette there in the purple blouse."
"Which one?" Jake asked. "There's like five hundred people out there."
"Over there by the bar," Matt said, pointing a little firmer. "Standing next to that fat bitch and that faggy-looking dude with the crew-cut. You see her?"
Jake dutifully turned his attention in that direction and, after a moment of searching, found the girl he was referring to. "I see her," he said. "And I believe that blouse is what the ladies call lavender, not purple."
Matt shook his head in disgust. "Fuckin' lavender? Jesus Christ, Jake. You smokin' dicks now? No dude should know what lavender is."
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," Jake said. "Anyway, what about her?"
"She's my bitch for the night," Matt said. "I'm gonna fuck her."
"Does she know this yet?"
"No, but she will. Look how shy she looks. How innocent. She might even be a cherry."
"Awfully confident, aren't you?" Jake asked. "What if she doesn't stay for the after-gig festivities?"
Matt shrugged. "Then she'll miss out on her golden opportunity to have her furrow plowed by the great and powerful Matt Tisdale. Her loss. I have a Plan B already sighted in just in case." He pointed over at the other end of the barroom. "That blond librarian looking bitch. See her? Standing next to that slut in the red mini-skirt?"
Jake didn't see her but pretended like he did. "Uh huh," he said. "And what if the first chick does stay for the party but doesn't want to boff you? You ever think of that?"
Matt looked genuinely appalled by this suggestion. "No," he said simply. "I never thought of that. Why would I?"
Jake didn't press the point any further. He knew Matt was right. So far, he had never been turned down once he set his sights on a particular female. He had even gone through a period where he and Coop were betting $20 dollars on that very subject, with Coop picking a woman at the after-gig party and Matt having to fuck her before the night was out. Matt had a one hundred percent win rate so far and it had got to the point where he had to offer ten to one odds just to get Coop to take the bet.
"And what about you?" Matt asked. "You gonna get your weenie wet tonight?"
"I don't know," he sighed. "I'm still a little fucked over about the whole Michelle thing."
"That didn't stop you from nailing that Brooke Shields looking bitch on Wednesday. I was proud of you, man. Fucking proud. You finally took advantage of the pussy that's due people of our stature and talent. How was she, anyway? I've seen her at a couple of our shows and thought about giving her a ride myself."