They started out of the office. Before the door closed, Roger Chester said, “You’ll be back.”
On stage, Nomad couldn’t help but wonder what this song would’ve sounded like with Mike’s bass thumping at the bottom, and Terry’s keyboards floating in and out like golden smoke. They were almost done, it was almost finished, and Nomad still feared this song because he didn’t understand it, not the why of it, and he didn’t know what was going to happen when the last note was played.
Ariel, her mouth up close to the silver microphone, repeated the rhyme once more.
“Try and try, grow and thrive,
Because no one here gets out alive.”
Then the drums came in full-voiced again, Berke put her muscle into it, Nomad launched some soaring lines into the multi-colored air, and Ariel finished it out with an impassioned cry.
“Oh yeah, from this old world,
Could be a new world.
Could be a new old world.
Could be a new world,
Could be a new old world.
Might be a new world.
Just not the same old world.
It was the old world,
Today the new old world.
Might be a new world.”
And she let the last line stretch out until her opera-trained voice roughened and rasped and held on to its control by the thickness of a thinned-out vocal cord.
“Just not the same old world.”
They approached the end, a few seconds away. The music began to quiet, and with one last sweep of electric guitar like a sword through the air Nomad was done, and Ariel went out with the same progression that had opened the song, and Berke hit the bass and snapped a hi-hat, and it was over.
As far as Nomad could tell, nothing changed in this old world.
The audience cheered and clapped, the cameras flashed and the videos were captured, the cries instantly went up for more, Berke threw her drumsticks into the crowd, Nomad said, “Goodnight, and thank you,” and he unplugged his Strat and walked off with it. Ariel followed him, and then Berke. The house lights came up, saying the concert was done. Recorded music spilled from the speakers, the voices of some other band. The audience, nearly all of them wearing The Five T-shirts, began to file out in small groups. They were happy; it had been a good show.
Thor Bronson came backstage. He wore a white suit and his Five T-shirt. His tan glowed and his hair was lemon-yellow. Hanging on his arm was a blonde fox who could’ve been his teenaged daughter, and she was dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl and kept a BlowPop in her mouth. Nomad figured that Thor was now tapping the porn dolls. “You’re one cheap sonofabitch,” Nomad told him, referring to the fact that Thor had saved himself ten dollars by wearing the shirt, and Thor said that now the little prissy motherfucker had time on his hands he ought to come out to Cali and kick it with him. Nomad said he’d think about it, and Thor said don’t think, do. He said he was staying at the Driskill, going to meet some studio people and party for the next few days, catch some Texas sun, hear some new bands, and he said that if Nomad didn’t come visit him he would roast a pair of balls over a campfire and though he was not gay he would eat them on a slab of Texas toast with habanero sauce.
“Okay,” Nomad said.
True and his wife passed Thor and his pony in the doorway to the Green Room, and Nomad thought that if the old world didn’t crack itself wide open on that one, we were solid for the next few thousand years.
True and his wife sat in the Green Room with Nomad, Ariel, Berke, the Vista Futura’s owner, a couple of guys who ran Internet fan sites, a sound tech, and the old bearded dude who wore a beret and owned Play It Again, Man, which was a vintage vinyl and CD store out on West Anderson Lane. He’d wheeled in a handcart bearing two big boxes full of The Five CDs he was wanting to get signed, in silver marker, by the remaining members. A few other people came in and out, to meet-and-greet and take pictures. Someone, a kind soul, brought cold beers to the band. Two silver markers ran dry. The old dude supplied more from his massive backpack that smelled slightly suspicious to True. Sewn into the stained fabric was the depiction of a big marijuana leaf. True’s wife, a small-boned, attractive woman named Kate, kept glancing uneasily at the bearded dude, who had the habit of staring at people, herself included, and not blinking his bulbous eyes for what seemed to her minutes at a time. He also had the habit of getting up, pacing around the room a few times, and then sitting down again in his chair with his legs crossed under himself Indian-style. She whispered to her husband that she didn’t think that man was from earth. But True didn’t say anything. He had a bandage over his right eye. His elbow was aching under the cast, and it was time they were getting back to the Radisson because they had an early morning flight home.
“Better head in,” True announced. Ariel hugged him, and Berke came up stone-faced and sullen, and he didn’t know what she was going to do. She balled up her fist and hung it in the air and he gave her one of those fist-bump things and then she grinned at him like the dumbass he was and she hugged him too.
“Glad it’s not me having to sign all those,” True said to Nomad, motioning with his good hand toward the boxes.
“Yeah,” Nomad said. “Managers get off easy.”
True nodded. He looked at Kate and saw her staring at the bearded man and the bearded man staring back at her, a battle of the X-ray eyeballs. “Do you have a card?” True asked Nomad.
“A car? I’ve got a car.”
“A card,” True corrected. He had one of those in his left pocket, ready to give Nomad, and he took it out. “A business card, with your phone number on it.”
“Oh. No, I don’t have one of those.” Nomad accepted the card, which had True’s office number and extension on the front, and on the back, in scribbly left-hand-written ink, his H.P. number.
“You should. People need to know how to get in touch with you.” True knew that if he ever did want to get in touch with Nomad, he had the whole network of the FBI behind him as his White Pages. “Why’d you think I said ‘car’? Are your ears ringing?”
“No, it’s because nobody ever asked me if I had a card before.”
“You might think about some kind of ear protection. All of you need that. You know, your hearing is very important.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that.”
True stared at him. “You’re a little asshole,” he said, but he couldn’t do it straight-faced, he couldn’t keep the smile from creeping in.
“Yeah,” Nomad said. “I’ve heard that too.”
“You owe me some money, by the way. For certain dental expenses and mess cleanup on damage done at a Greek restaurant in Tucson, and the less you know about that the better. But I’m going to collect it from you someday. By then you’ll be rich enough to pay me back.”
“Maybe.” Nomad shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“Well,” True said, “better head in.”
Nomad’s heart ached. He put his arms around Truitt Allen and pulled him close, and True said, “Watch the elbow,” but his voice cracked when he said it. Kate stepped away a few feet, and the old bearded dude blinked and aimed his eyes at the silver-signed CD in his lap, a picture of The Five standing against a statue of one of the descending snakes on the pyramid of El Castillo at Chichen Itza, a washed-out purple-tinged glow of light all around them, and the title in dark purple lettering Catch As Kukulkan. The old dude had no way of knowing it was all computer-generated and photoshopped—no way could they afford the trip to the Yucatan—and had come from a dream Ariel had after eating a Mexican TV-dinner that evidently did not agree with her. She’s been left with a compelling and somewhat frightening image of travelling through space and time on the back of a feathered flying serpent, Kukulkan the link between the gods and human nobility, the overseer of human sacrifice. The Catch As part came from the term ‘Catch As Catch Can’, which meant getting through a situation however you could, using whatever happened to be lying around that could help. It was just something she’d come up with.