“You okay?” Ariel asked. She’d heard Berke clearly enough outside—Somebody shot at me—and now Berke’s face had gone gray. She thought Berke was having a nervous reaction from yesterday, and who could fault her for going to pieces?
Berke rushed away to the other bathroom beyond the connecting door, where she turned on the tap, splashed water into her face and then, trembling violently, leaned over the toilet and wracked herself with a series of dry heaves audible at least two rooms away. Ariel followed to stand outside the door if Berke called for help.
“Hold it, wait a minute,” George told Ash. “Is she sick?” he called to Ariel.
“I’m fucking fine!” Berke shouted back through the cardboard door. “I’m fucking peachy-keen fabulous!”
“Who’s puking?” asked Nomad as he came out of the other bathroom, his eyes sleep-stung and squinty.
“We’re having an episode here,” George said to Ash. “Go on, I’m listening.”
“What the hell’s happening?” Terry asked of no one in particular, then he hauled himself up and went to the bathroom Nomad had just vacated. Nomad returned to bed and lay there on his back, staring up at the ceiling tiles and wondering if Mike’s daughter had been told the news yet. It was going to be a bad ride back to Austin, and not much to look forward to when they got there, regardless of his big plans from last night.
“Why are they calling it that?” The Little Genius’s question into the phone snagged Nomad’s attention. George was silent again as Ash spoke. Nomad propped himself up on a pillow, watching George’s facial expressions to get some clue of the conversation. “We’re supposed to hear from them this morning,” George said. “I guess they’ll tell us we can leave.”
Talking about the detectives, Nomad thought.
“So…what’s the deal?” At this question, Nomad’s ears again went up. “Better than what? Fifty percent?”
Berke and Ariel returned to the room, one with a hand pressed to her stomach and the other rubbing the side of her neck. In the bathroom, Berke had gotten down a couple of glasses of water and felt a little better. She was deciding whether or not to pursue this tale of the farmhouse shooter.
“Jesus,” George said. “Is he really serious?”
The toilet’s flush announced Terry’s exit from the bathroom. He looked quizzically at Nomad, who replied with a shrug.
George scratched his chin. “Can he go to seventy-five percent on the merchandise?”
“What’s he talking about?” Berke asked, but no one could respond.
Nomad didn’t want to say, but it sounded to him as if George and Ash were talking about a gig. He remembered, not without some bitterness, George’s voice of reason in the Subway last night: We’re going home in the morning. Tour cancelled. All done.
Well, it was morning, the tour was cancelled and The Five were all done. So what was this shit about?
“I hear you. I understand,” said the voice of reason. “I’ll run it by everybody. Yeah.” He nodded, as more instructions came through the digital air from Austin. “Okay, thanks,” he said, and put his cellphone away. Then he sat exactly where he was without moving, staring at the floor, as second after second ticked past.
“Are you going to make us guess?” Berke asked sharply, which was a very good sign.
“You would never,” George answered in a quiet, measured voice, “guess this in the proverbial million years.” He looked first at Nomad, then at the others. “Trey Yeager left a message for Ash last night. He wants us to keep the date at the Spinhouse.” Yeager was the Spinhouse’s booking manager, had been in the business for about thirty years at various clubs across the Southwest. “That’s not all. They want to bump us up to headliner. It’s a little more money, but Ash thinks we can get a way better percentage on merchandise.”
Nobody spoke, because they just didn’t know what to say. Then Nomad struck at the heart of the problem: “If you remember…we lost our bass player yesterday.”
“Yeah, there’s that. Ash says he can get Butch Munger to meet us in El Paso, or Trey can supply a local talent.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Berke said. “I’m not playing with a gator off the street!”
“Not Butch Munger!” Nomad’s tone was just as vehement. He was up off the bed and crouched like a fighter about to throw a right hook. “That bastard wrecked Hemp For Shemp last year!” Not only that, but Munger had a reputation for temper and had been arrested for breaking his girlfriend’s nose, charges dropped because she just loved him so fucking much.
“Guys?” said Terry.
“Look, it’s just the one show,” George said. “I know Munger’s rep, but he is good. And he kind of plays in Mike’s style—”
“Don’t you say that!” Berke came forward, crowding him, and George feared he was about to be torn apart by a ferocious lesbian. “Nobody plays like Mike! You hear it? Nobody!”
“Guys?” said Terry.
“Not Butch Munger!” Nomad almost shouted. “I won’t step on a stage with him!”
The telephone on the bedside table rang, a shrill A above high C. George reached carefully between Nomad and Berke and picked it up. “Yes? Oh, sure. We would like the Cattleman’s complimentary breakfast this morning, absolutely. Uh…that would be six. I’m sorry…that would be five. Just a minute.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Who wants coffee and who wants orange juice?”
“Orange juice,” said Terry, and then he added, “Guys, I can pick up the bassline.”
“Two orange juices so far,” George reported into the telephone.
“Coffee. Black,” Nomad said.
George paused with his ear to the receiver. “Yeah, that’d be great. Thank you.” He hung up. “She says they’re not real busy, so she’ll bring a pot of coffee, five cups and five glasses of juice.”
“Did you hear what I said?” Terry asked. “I can play the bass parts.”
George didn’t answer, waiting for Berke’s reaction. She looked down at the floor for a long time, as if pondering whether Terry was strong enough to carry Mike’s weight. Conflicting emotions fought on her face.
Then she lifted her gaze to George and said firmly, “That works with me.”
Nomad nodded. “Me too.”
“I can’t believe this! We’re going to go on without Mike?” Ariel’s was not the voice of reason, but a cry of bewilderment. “I don’t care if it’s just one show!” she said before George could respond. “Shouldn’t we…like…go home and…mourn him or something? It doesn’t seem right to keep on playing!”
“I think,” George answered, “you’re wrong about that. Let me tell you what’s happened, according to Ash. The story about Mike is in this morning’s newspaper here. It’s also in the Abilene paper. But last night it got picked up by the Associated Press and wound up on Yahoo in the news items. You know what the headline was? Sniper Kills Member of Touring Band.”
“Sniper?” Terry frowned. “Who said anything about a sniper?”
“I’m just saying what Ash told me. The newspapers reported it as a ‘rifle shot’. When it got on Yahoo, it became a ‘sniper’. Let me just tell you…a lot of people have seen that item on the web. So even though they called us ‘The Fives’ on Yahoo, we sold a hundred and sixty-three CDs of Catch last night. In one night.” The Little Genius waited for that to sink in. “We got some awesome numbers of hits, and I’ll bet if I looked at the numbers again right now they would’ve gone up…who knows how many. Ash had a call in to cancel at the Spinhouse, but they want us because suddenly we are newsworthy.” He caught Ariel’s pained expression and he didn’t dare even look at Berke. “Okay, I know it’s a shitty way to get some media shine, but why do you think all of a sudden they want us to headline? Huh?”