Terry started back in where he’d left off on his pancakes. Berke worked on buttered toast and a glass of water. Mike ate his scrambled eggs, Ariel sipped her apple juice and Nomad parted the window blinds a fraction so he could peer out against the glare into the parking lot.
The Little Genius was out there, talking on his cellphone. George Emerson by name, road manager, sound mixer, crisis mender, argument mediator, bean counter, and what have you. He was standing by their van, a battleship-gray 1995 Ford Econoline, three doors, with a U-Haul trailer hooked up behind. He was intent on his conversation, and he’d lit a cigarette. Nomad watched him, as he talked and smoked. George was five feet, six inches tall, had curly light brown hair—losing it on the crown a little bit, to be honest—and he wore horn-rimmed glasses and his usual button-down pale blue short-sleeved shirt and chinos. God only knew why George wore brown loafers with shiny pennies in them. Maybe it was for the shock effect. George was strolling back and forth now as he talked, trailing a plume of smoke. Not only was he a little genius, he was a little locomotive.
I think I can…I think I can…I think—
“Ya’ll playin’ here tonight?”
Laurie had returned, toothy and bright and braidy. She had posed this question to Ariel, who said, “We were at the Saxon Pub last night. Tonight we’re at Common Grounds in Waco.”
“Ya’ll are from around here, then?”
“Yeah, we’ve been living here…how long, Terry?”
“Years and years,” Terry answered.
“Our tour’s just started up,” Ariel said, in anticipation of Laurie’s next question. “That was the first show.”
“I’ll be. What do you play?”
“Guitar. And I sing some.”
“Oh, I would’ve known that,” Laurie said. “You’ve got a nice speakin’ voice.”
Nomad had let the blinds go and was drinking his bitter black coffee, but he was thinking about George and the cellphone and the smoke signals in the air.
“My daughter plays the guitar,” the waitress went on. “Just turned sixteen. She sings, too. Any advice I can pass along?”
“Stay sixteen,” Berke said, without looking up.
“Move to an island,” Mike offered, in his low raspy growl, “where agents and promoters are shot on sight.”
Laurie nodded, as if this made perfect sense to her. “One thing I’d like to ask, if I could. Then I’ll leave you guys alone. I’ve seen…like…musicians on stage do this.” She transferred the coffee pot to her left hand, balled up her right fist and did the heart thump and then the peace sign. “What’s that mean?”
Nomad studied her through his dark glasses. She was probably five or six years younger than she looked. It was the hard Texas sun that aged the skin so much. She was probably a little dense, too. Happy with her lot in life, and dense. Maybe you had to be a little dense to be truly happy. Or oblivious enough to think you were. He couldn’t help himself; he said, “Bullshit.”
“Pardon?” Laurie asked.
“It means,” Ariel said evenly, “solidarity with the audience. You know. We love you, and we wish you peace.”
“Like I said: Bullshit.” Nomad ignored Ariel, who likewise ignored him, and then he swigged down the rest of his coffee. “I’m done.” He slid out of the booth, put a buck down on the table, and walked out of the Denny’s into the hot sunshine. In this mid-July of 2008, the fierce heat was unrelenting, day after day. Drought scorched the land. The air was hazy and carried the acrid tang of a brush fire, maybe from the next county. But where was George? The Little Genius was not standing beside the Scumbucket, which was the name Mike had given their van. Then Nomad saw a wisp of smoke rise up and waft away, and he walked over to the edge of the parking lot where George was sitting on a low brick wall, still involved with his cell conversation. Or, really, George was just listening, and taking a drag off his cigarette every few seconds as cars and trucks blew past on the long straight corridor of I-35.
Nomad quietly came up behind him. George must have felt the presence of a black aura because he suddenly turned his head, looked right at Nomad, and said, “Hey, listen. I’ve gotta go, I’ll call you back, okay?” His phone buddy seemed hesitant to give it up, so George said, “I’ll let you know tomorrow. Right. Early, before ten. Yeah. Okay, then.” He put his phone away in its small clipcase on his belt, and then he drew the cigarette in as if it were oxygen to an air-starved man and spewed the smoke out through his nostrils.
Nomad said nothing. Finally George asked, “They ready yet?”
“No.”
George continued to watch the passing traffic. Nomad sat on the wall a few feet away from him without being asked, because it was a free fucking country.
They were both wearing their uniforms, Nomad thought. George’s was the uniform of the guy in control, the guy who met the accountants, if there were any accountants to be met. The guy who spoke to the banker about the loan for the new gear, if there was a banker and a loan and new gear to be had. Though George had three small silver rings in each earlobe, he still projected the conservative front, the voice of reason, the leash on these madmen and mad women who called themselves The Five. Nomad’s uniform was his Army-green T-shirt, his well-worn black jeans, his black Chuck high tops and his black glasses that cut the glare and shunned the world until he was ready to let any of it in. His was the uniform of the fighter, the rager against the machine, the take-no-prisoners bard and bastard. The teller of truths, if there were any truths to be told. As if he knew any real truths, which he doubted. But you had to dress the part of whatever play you were in, that was for sure.
He had turned twenty-nine two weeks ago. They’d given him dairy-free birthday cake and soy milk ice cream, since he was allergic to dairy. They’d taken him paint-balling. Everybody got a birthday celebration, that was part of the deal. Not a written deal, but one that was understood. Just as on stage, everybody got their time. Their appreciation, for what they did. That was an important thing, Nomad thought; to feel appreciated, like you meant something in the world and your life and work wasn’t just like a big busted-up truck spinning its tires in a mudhole. Like what you did mattered to somebody.
He was the good front man: six-one, lean and rangy, the hungry-as-the-wolf look. He could do the curled lip and the attitude as well as anybody on the knife and gun circuit. His nose had been broken in a bar fight in Memphis and he had a small scar on his chin courtesy of a thrown beer bottle in Jacksonville. He had been born in Detroit, and he had been down enough rough streets to know when to look over his shoulder and check what might be coming up on him from behind.
That was what he had decided to do now, with the Little Genius.
“Business call?” Nomad asked.
George didn’t answer, which told Nomad all he needed to know.
But in time—ten seconds, fifteen, whatever—George did reply, because he was a stand-up guy and part of the family. He said, “John, I’m thirty-three years old.”
“Okay.” That was no news; Nomad remembered George’s thirty-third back in April. “And?”
“Thirty-three,” George went on. “Ten years ago, I was ready to climb mountains. I thought I was going to have it all. You know?”
“Yes,” Nomad said, but it sounded more like a question.
“Ten years is a long time, man. In this business, it’s like dog years. And I’ve been on the road with somebody since I was twenty. First gig, with the Survivors out of Chicago.” George was a Windy City boy, born and bred. “They lasted about four months before they exploded. No survivors.” He didn’t pause to see if Nomad had cracked a smile, but that wasn’t going to happen anyway. “Then with the Bobby Apple Band, out of Urbana. Have I told you this before?”