“You know how that went,” John Charles reminded him.
“The fucking suits,” Nomad answered. He remembered hearing from his shell-shocked friend the lead singer that the first impression of Dustin Daye from MTBF was that there were no singles. That some of the tunes—fucking ‘tunes’, they called them—were way too long, that kids wouldn’t listen to tunes that long. That this really was, and sorry but we have to be truthful, one of the worst, most confusing collection of tunes we’ve ever heard. That Ezra’s Jawbone had already set up its hard rock/country funk vibe on its first two releases, so this attempt at a product does not play to the market. That there’s no sense to be made of people sitting talking to themselves, or having ghosts—or whatever the fuck they are—roaming around. And then there’s the religion angle, and we’ll be the first to say we respect all views and opinions but this is really where the shit starts to slide. MTBF is not a contemporary Christian label; have you seen our iTunes hit list lately? No religious tunes on there, nada. So when you get into this area, you are walking on sinking sand. Your audience wants to be entertained, not preached to. This is an entertainment business. So we have to say, and we’re all in full agreement on this, that Dustin Daye is not releaseable as it is. Now, having made that clear…we can hook you up with a proven production team we have in mind who can help rework this record, but you’re going to have to give them more control to do what needs to be done, because Bogdan Anastasio and Ji Chao require complete authority.
“Those sick fucks,” sneered John Charles.
“Can you imagine that scene?” Nomad asked. “The suits sitting in a conference room listening to Dustin Daye and saying it’s shit because there aren’t any singles? And these are the same guys who’ve driven the whole fucking business over the cliff, you know.”
“Right,” said John Charles.
“Didn’t lower the cost of CDs when they could have,” Nomad said. “Should’ve dropped them to half-price. So there go the independent CD and vinyl stores down the tubes, and those indie stores were the lifeblood, man.” He stopped to sip his black coffee. “It won’t ever come back to what it was,” he told himself, in his mental voice.
“You have to keep on keeping on,” John Charles said.
“Do I?” Nomad asked, and then he saw the waitress coming with his food and John Charles slipped back into him because they both were hungry.
She again offered him no eye-contact. She thumped the steak sandwich plate down and then the platter of…
“What’s this?” Nomad asked.
Her eyes became slits when she looked at him. “It’s the au gratin potatoes, just like you asked for.”
He had smelled the yellow cheese striped across the top of the potatoes before he saw it. “I can’t eat that,” he said.
“You ordered it,” she answered.
“No, I ordered the Greek potatoes.”
“You ordered the au gratin.”
“Listen, ma’am,” Nomad said, feeling his guts start to clench. George would’ve said Easy, take it easy. “I know what I ordered.” She just stood there staring at him, her coal-black eyes fierce and her head cocked to one side as if it were getting ready to fly from her neck and bite his dick off. “Okay,” he said, and he put up both hands palm-outward to keep the peace. The other customers were watching. “Just forget it, okay?” He pushed the offending potatoes aside. “I’ll sit here and eat my sandwich, that’s really all I—”
“No, if you want Greek potatoes, I’ll get you Greek potatoes!” said the waitress, as she snatched up the au gratin. Her face was all screwed up and getting red, the anger about to burst forth like snot from her nose and spittle from her mouth. “I’ll get you Greek potatoes, but you didn’t order ’em!” It had almost been a shout.
You dumb shit, you didn’t write it down, Nomad nearly said. But he did not. He took a long deep breath and he grasped the edge of the table with both hands and he tried to force a smile that did not take. “Listen,” he began.
“Quit telling me to listen! I can hear you, you think I’m deaf?”
“No, I’m just saying—”
“You want Greek potatoes, I’m gonna get ’em for you!” She began backing away from him, as the other waitress rubbernecked out from the kitchen and the cashier girl poked her head around the corner.
It came from Nomad with surprising force: his rough whiskey voice, demanding “Stop!”
She took two more steps in retreat before she obeyed, and then she seemed to hunch her shoulders forward like a pit bull bitch about to attack.
“Please.” Nomad heard his voice tremble, as rough as it was. “Please.” He was starting to shake, he was starting to come apart at the seams. Mike was dead. George might be dead within the next twelve hours. The crucial period, the doctor had said. But right now, right this minute, this felt pretty crucial too. The Five was staggering toward its grave. Nomad thought his heart was beating too hard, he needed to calm down, easy take it easy George would say but the Little Genius was not at his side and might never be there again.
“Please,” Nomad breathed, “just let me eat my sandwich. Leave me alone and let me eat my sandwich. Alright?”
A burly sandy-haired man in a cook’s apron had come to the kitchen door and was looking over the top of the other waitress’s head.
Nomad’s waitress gave a tight little grin, a nasty little smirk of victory, and she said in a voice like a hammer driving a nail into Nomad’s skull, three beats: “No. Prob. Lem.”
Then she turned around with a dramatic sweep like Bette Davis in that movie Berke had been watching and carried the platter of cheesy potatoes away. The cook and the other waitress retreated before her. The kitchen door closed.
Nomad started eating, but he couldn’t taste anything. Whatever war he’d walked into the middle of, whatever was eating at this dominatrix waitress and made her flail out at him, he wanted none of it.
“Stay cool, man,” said one of the students, who must’ve thought Nomad was the cause of the trouble. When Nomad glanced at their table, all three of them were staring at him so he couldn’t tell which dork had spoken. He returned to chewing his way through the sandwich, and then one of the guys made the mistake of letting out a chortle, a slobbery laugh hidden behind a fratboy’s greasy hand.
Nomad felt the flashfire burn across his face. He turned his head toward them, picked out the heftiest one to aim his full beams at and said, loudly enough to be perfectly understood, “Hey, are you Moe, Larry, or that fat fuck who gets his ass whipped?”
They all glared back at him without speaking. Suddenly the couple got up from their booth and, hand-in-hand, headed for the cashier.
He wanted to tell them not to worry, that nobody was going to get hurt, that he had his spike of anger under control and they didn’t have to rush out the—
Something was slammed down upon his table so hard it made him jump.
He looked up into the face of his waitress, who had come up on him so fast he hadn’t realized she was out of the kitchen.
“There,” she said, with a twisted smile. Her eyes were small black circles of rage, but at the center of their darkness was a red glint of triumph. “That suit you?” Medusa couldn’t have hissed it better.
Nomad saw that she’d brought him a platter of Greek potatoes.