“Seven miles is fine,” Shane said to the customer service agent, and gave him his location on the 10. “I need a place with a karaoke bar, if possible.” He had a hustle he liked to do where he’d bet people that he could make them cry and then he’d bust out “Brick” by Ben Folds Five and every girl who ever had an abortion would be in a puddle. It didn’t make him proud, but he had bills to pay.
“Let’s see what we have here.” The agent made a whistling sound. “Well, the Royal Californian is 6.7 miles from where you are. They have a sports bar with karaoke. If that works, shall I charge it to your existing credit card and get the truck to you?”
“How about I give the driver cash,” Shane said. He needed as little paper trail as possible.
“I’ll need to check with my manager,” the agent said, and put Shane on hold.
He was parked beneath a billboard that advertised The Wonder of Waterfront Living in the Desert! and showed a happy couple of indeterminate race walking into what appeared to be an Italian lakeside villa surrounded by palm trees. He looked to the west and could make out the obvious signs of civilization: the billboard for a Starbucks, an RV park called the Long Run, a billboard touting an upcoming concert by Rick Springfield at the Fantasy Springs Casino. That fucking guy. Twice in the same day. Had to be a harbinger.
“Cash is just fine. We’ll have a tow truck to you in about twenty minutes,” the agent said.
It was nearly four o’clock. He was supposed to be singing “Come On Eileen” in a couple hours, always his first song over at Forrest’s, everyone always losing their shit when he did that “Toora loora toora loo rye aye” bit, like it was 1982 and they were thirteen and it was the eighth grade dance.
That fucking song.
More trouble than it was worth, that was for sure.
He couldn’t think about that now.
He needed to get Gold Mike’s body out of the trunk.
Or, well... choice cuts of Gold Mike’s body.
2009 and Shane’s working the Black Angus in Northridge. They’ve got something they call the “Fun Bar,” a relic from disco years, lit up floor, big dark booths, great sound system, but no one dancing. Just frat boys over from the college drinking vodka and cranberry like they all have UTIs. At first, he’s just doing karaoke like anybody does karaoke, stand up there, let some drunk come up and sing “American Pie,” help him out when he realizes the song is eight minutes long and he doesn’t have the wind. Flirt with the bartender, maybe get a hand job in the dry storage. Woman or man. Hand job was a hand job, Shane believed in equal opportunity back then, because of all the coke and a profound lack of giving a fuck. Love is love, friction is friction.
Maybe a little guilt now, thinking about it, thinking about how he did Rachel wrong, staring at the ceiling fan twirling in his room at the Royal Californian, eleven p.m., still a hundred degrees outside, giant flying roaches committing suicide against his window every couple minutes, Shane dying for a fucking Percocet, a million of them still in Gold Mike’s van, Shane could hit himself for being so stupid, not thinking this all through, his foot throbbing, sweat sticking his shirt to his chest.
His own fault. Rachel, that is. A lot of lying. Fuck it had been his point of view back when he worked at the Angus. Go home with a hundred bucks for the night and an empty load? Fuck it. Problem was, he’d kept that point of view long into his relationship with Rachel and she was not a Fuck it kind of person, so he pretended it was just how performers were, though by the time Rachel came along, he wasn’t a performer anymore, he just performed.
“Baby,” he’d tell her, “you gotta just say Fuck it when you’re in this business, otherwise, every night would crush your spirit.”
And Rachel, she’d say, “Then you should get another way to earn a living.”
And so he had.
Kind of.
Thing was, Shane could really sing. All this other shit was ephemeral. His talent, man, that was in his genetic code. His dad played in the Catskills back in the day, singing in cover bands, even came out to California one time and brought Shane with him, doing a night at Melvyn’s in Palm Springs, which was the last time Shane had been anywhere near here. Typically, his dad would come back home the first week of September with a roll of cash, and for a month everything would be good between him and Shane’s mom. Dinners out. New clothes. Shane’s mom falling in love all over again, talking about how maybe this year they’d get married, maybe she’d go to college, then maybe law school, Shane’s mother always talking about how she was going to be a lawyer, but by the time she died, she’d spent twenty-five years as the lunch lady at Rensselaer Point Elementary down in Troy. She’d had Shane when she was fifteen. Dead by fifty-one. Got diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s and put a fucking noose around her neck two hours later. Shane’s dad saying, Maybe she didn’t really have the old-timers, because wouldn’t she have forgotten? His dad was still alive, that was the irony, doing what Shane thought of as the Dead Man’s Tour: Buddy Holly and Elvis tribute shows at Native American casinos in Connecticut, Shane keeping track of him on the Internet, that fucker doing pretty well.
But the Angus.
In comes Gold Mike. Sits at a table right by Shane’s kit, nurses a Diet Coke. Really gets into it when Shane sings. Tapping his foot. Bobbing his head. When Shane busts out “Come On Eileen” and hits his full register, Gold Mike stands up and whoops.
When he goes on break fifteen minutes later, Gold Mike follows him outside, where Shane is having a smoke and watching the traffic on Corbin Avenue.
“You got a nice presence,” Gold Mike says.
“Thanks man,” Shane says.
“Wasting it out here, if you want my opinion,” Gold Mike says.
“Just waiting to be discovered.”
“That’s not ever gonna happen,” Gold Mike says, like he knows. He’s maybe twenty-seven, but he’s one of those guys who talks like he’s been around the world fifty times. Gold Mike fingers a diamond-encrusted V that hangs around his neck.
“Whatever,” Shane says. He takes one more drag from his cigarette, then puts it out on the bottom of his shoe, like it’s a thing he does all the time, which it isn’t.
“Whatever?” Gold Mike says. “I insult you and you say, Whatever. Passivity, man, that’s an illness.”
“You want me to hit you or something?”
Gold Mike laughs hard. He’s one of those Armenian dudes who shaves his head just to look tough, Shane making out the outline of a full head of stubble. Shane isn’t much of a fighter. He’s the kind of person who will stab a guy, though.
“I been watching you,” Gold Mike says.
“How long have you been watching me?”
“A couple weeks,” Gold Mike says, like it’s perfectly normal. “You ever do any time?”
“You ever do any time?”
“A couple days here and there,” Gold Mike says.
“That must impress some people.”
Gold Mike laughs again but doesn’t respond.
“What’s the V stand for?” Shane points at Gold Mike’s neck.
“My last name is Voski.”
“Okay.”