They sat for a moment, watching the gathering crowd. Jake was finally able to take it no more and plucked the cigarette out of Matt's hand. He took a deep drag and blew it out slowly, feeling the soothing nicotine go rushing to his head. Matt frowned in disapproval but said nothing. He did take the smoke back, however, before the singer could steal another hit off it.
"Tell me the truth, Matt," Jake said, using his don't-fuck-around voice. "Are you nervous?"
"Me, nervous?" he asked.
"Yeah. You, nervous."
Matt didn't answer for a moment. Finally, he admitted, "I've never been so scared in my fucking life."
They both had a laugh at this. A little of the tension seemed to melt away with it. A little, but not much.
"Most of it is probably irrational fear," Matt said thoughtfully. "I'm worried that we're really not as bad-ass as I think we are, that the audience here is too immature for our sound, that this is all some kind of a practical joke that O'Donnell is pulling on us because we fucked with him to get the audition."
"Yeah," Jake said. "I got my share of that too."
"Some of it is real fear though. I worry about Darren sneaking off and doing a line or having a couple shots of booze because he's nervous. He's the kind that would do that. I worry that Nerdly didn't get the levels just right and we'll come across sounding like shit. My biggest fear, though, is about fucking up. I know we rehearsed the shit out of this set, but there's always the possibility that one of the five of us will choke now that the cock's in the pussy, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah," Jake agreed. "I know what you mean. I'm afraid my voice will crack, that I'll forget the fuckin' words, that I'll drop my pick and not be able to use my finger, that I'll hit the petal at the wrong time or forget to hit it at the right time and have my guitar set for the wrong sound. Most of all, I wonder about whether I'm really cut out for this shit. Do people really want to hear me sing, man? Do they really?"
"Well, let me ask you something," Matt said. "Do you think Seth Michaels has a good voice?"
Jake shrugged. "It's not painful to listen to him. That's about the best you can say. His timbre is decent but he doesn't have much of a range."
Matt laughed. "Timbre and range," he said. "Do you think that skinny, pompous little fuck even knows what those words you used mean?"
"No. I'm thinking he probably doesn't."
"But you do," Matt said. "Not only do you know what they mean, but you make use of them. Your voice has been trained since you were what? Ten years old?"
"About that," Jake said. He had actually been nine when his parent's, who had long since realized that their youngest child was a natural born vocalist, had sent him to the first of several voice teachers.
"Your voice is made for singing, dude. If I was a chick, I'd be spreading my legs the second I heard it. You can belt out these fuckin' tunes we do like nobody else could. My voice ain't bad-I think it's a shitload better than Michaels'-but I sound like a truck grinding its gears next to you. I realized the second you bellowed into our mic that first day that you were the singer for this group. The fuckin' second!"
"Yeah," Jake said, embarrassed. Matt was not typically the mushy complimentary type. "But..."
"No buts," he said. "You answered your own question. These people paid money to come in here and listen to Michaels sing. You're better than Michaels. No fuckin' question about it. So don't you think they'd pay money to hear you?"
He took a drink of the ice water he'd helped himself to earlier. "Yeah," he said. "I guess maybe they would."
"And, of course," Matt added, "my guitar playing makes Hathaway's sound like some kid learning to play Smoke on the Water for the first time."
"Don't be modest now," Jake said. "Tell me what you really think."
"Fuck modesty. I've been playing guitar since I was twelve years old. I kick ass and I know it." He looked at Jake, his expression intent, not the least bit whimsical. "We got what it takes, Jake. We're gonna smoke those hackers right off their own stage. And it ain't gonna stop there. We're gonna put this shithole town on the map."
"It's already on the map," Jake replied, deadpan. "I've seen it there. In the Central Valley. Right between Redding and Sacramento."
"That may be so," Matt said. "But some day some enterprising motherfucker is gonna be bringing tourists by your old man's house to show them where the great Jake Kingsley grew up. Then they're gonna take 'em over to my old man's house and show them where the great Matt Tisdale grew up and the garage where we used to rehearse. Mark my fuckin' words, my man."
Jake thought this was funny, one of the funniest things he had heard all day. He would've been quite surprised to know that Matt was absolutely right.
It was 6:50, ten minutes before they were to hit the stage, when Michelle Borrows, Jake's girlfriend, finally showed up. It was Matt who spotted her first, walking through the thickening crowd with two of her friends trailing unenthusiastically behind her. He, of course, pointed them out in his usual, elegant fashion.
"Hey," he said, nodding in the general direction of the three girls, "there's your bitch." He appraised her two friends with his usual eye. "Damn. Who are the sluts she's got with her? Very fuckable."
Jake had long since gotten over being offended by Matt's terms of endearment toward the female sex. He hardly noticed them anymore. "That would be Mindy and Rhonda," he replied. "Mindy's on the left. Rhonda's the one with the big tits."
"They the bitches that keep trying to tell her she's too good for you?"
"In the flesh," he said with a sigh, wondering why Michelle had brought them along. He had met Michelle the year before in a Sociology class they both shared at Heritage Community College. Two months ago, at the beginning of the new semester, he had asked her out for the first time, expecting to be shot down. She was a very classy looking young woman, clean-cut, well dressed, and good looking; someone he figured was far out of his league. She carried herself with an air of elitism he had become familiar with in high school. Why would such a beautiful creature want to go out with a longhaired, scruffy looking musician who had not even declared a major yet? It was only the prodding by Matt, who had tired of listening to him pine about her, that had finally forced his hand. Matt told him he didn't have a hair on his ass if he didn't ask her out. So, just to prove his ass was as hairy as anyone else's, he did it. To his surprise, she said yes.
It was during this date that he discovered she had grown up in a sheltered and ultra-religious household. Her father was a teacher at Holy Assumption Parochial School in downtown Heritage-an all-girls Catholic school. Michelle had attended Holy Assumption from 9th grade until graduation. Before that, she had attended Saint Mary's School for Girls from Kindergarten to eighth grade. She had no brothers, just three younger sisters. She had never learned to socialize with boys except for brief encounters at heavily chaperoned coed dances and dates arranged by her parents with boys as socially inept as she was. Jake had been the first boy to ever ask her out.
By being the first to ask, he had scored the first date by default. But at the end of the evening, when he asked her out for a second date, she had agreed to that as well. Since then, they went out at least once a week, sometimes two or three times, depending on his schedule, which, between working at the local newspaper driving a truck, or attending classes, or practicing with the band, was often a little tight. She seemed to genuinely enjoy his company, of that he had no doubt, but he was not so stupid as to think that was the only reason she was going out with him. Her teenage rebellion, which had been staunchly and thoroughly suppressed during her high school years, was now making itself known with a vengeance. Her parents absolutely hated Jake, hated everything he stood for and represented. Jake was the epitome of everything they had always tried to keep her away from when they kept her out of the public school system. He had long hair, he played guitar, he sang that evil rock and roll music, he had no goals in life other than some misguided dream of being a professional musician, and his upbringing... Good Lord, their precious daughter was going out with a kid who had never attended a church in his life! He was the son of a man who had protested against the war in Vietnam and who had marched for civil rights, who, worst of all, worked as a lawyer for the hated American Civil Liberties Union, the group that had helped remove prayer from public schools, that had helped legalize abortion! All of these tidbits about Jake's life and his father's past and present activities were gleefully passed onto Michelle's parents by Michelle herself on a weekly basis, for no reason other than to get a rise out of them. She reveled in the newfound freedom she had to tell them "no" when they demanded she stop seeing him, to shrug her shoulders in disregard when they threatened to cut off her school fund or to take her car away from her.