Opening Act (4 page)

“Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on you,” she said, imagining Zee up in front of the stage, jumping up and down and flailing her arms like she was trying to signal a ship from a deserted island. It would all be to attract the attention of Shay Dayton, and no doubt there'd be dozens of other frenzied, convulsive girls doing exactly the same thing, limbs flying in all directions. If Loni stayed by Zee's side, she'd risk getting her eye poked out or her kneecap busted.

“You won't be able to ‘keep an eye' on me,” Zee insisted, turning to her. As her head swiveled, the alpha earring came loose again. As she fumbled with it, she said, “This is Overlord's
last regular gig
there, for, like,
ever
. And everyone who's ever been a regular will be jammed in there to say good-bye.”

“I'm sure they'll be back,” Loni said with a slight roll of her eyes.

“Yes, but then they'll be
visitors
,” Zee wailed. “They won't be
ours
anymore. It's like, we've nurtured this band all by ourselves, from their very first gigs back in the old days when Kelly Ramos was on rhythm guitar, before he, y'know, got married and moved out of state. Idiot.” She sneered. “And we've stuck with them and supported them and loved them and watched them grow, and now we're releasing them into the world.” A little tear brimmed on the lid of one eye. An actual, human tear. Loni couldn't believe it. It seemed to be having some trouble falling—it probably wasn't up to surmounting that mother lode of mascara.

But Loni didn't mock her; she had a feeling that Zee wasn't so much celebrating the success of the band she loved as she was mourning the death of the community that had built up around them. Possibly, she didn't even realize she was doing that. But it was clear: once these local boys went national, there wouldn't be any reason for their fans here in town to come together anymore. No need for them to stay in touch, even. They'd inevitably drift apart. Zee would almost certainly invest all of her enthusiasm and emotion in some new band, but she was getting a tad old for that kind of thing now. And the new band almost certainly wouldn't be as successful as Overlords of Loneliness. Zee
had just lived through a golden age, a period of her life that she would always look back on as being filled with joy and excitement and the thrill of one good thing following another.

That's why Loni had agreed to come tonight. She didn't like Club Uncumber, and she wasn't a fan of their kind of music, but she knew how much this final hurrah meant to Zee. And, if she was honest with herself like she always tried to be, she was a little bit jealous. She'd never had a sense of community like Zee had with her fellow Overlords fans (who called themselves Underlings of Overlords, or just Underlings for short). She kind of wanted to be there to see them in their final burst of glory—and maybe get a little vicarious rush from it herself.

The low drone of the cab's radio switched from an announcer's voice to the opening chords of a song, and Zee lurched forward and said, “Turn that up, please! Driver, please turn it up!” Her alpha earring flew off again and landed on the floor. She didn't appear to notice, so Loni just picked it up and put it in her pocket. If Zee missed it later, she'd give it to her.

The driver, a jowly old woman who looked as though she'd rather just do whatever this crazy girl said than argue, dialed up the knob. Loni recognized the tune. “For God's sake,” she said, as Zee settled back into the seat next to her, wiggling her butt ecstatically to the throbbing bass line. “This is the Overlords, isn't it? This is one of the same ten songs you've been playing incessantly for a week now. We just heard it five minutes ago before we left, and we'll hear it again when we get where we're going. What, you've got to hear it now, too?”

Zee looked at her, her eyes wide and compassionate, as if sensing that Loni would never understand, and pitying her for it.

Club Uncumber wasn't any more inviting than Loni remembered it. In fact, it looked like it hadn't been cleaned since she'd been there more than a year ago, and it hadn't exactly been a model of sparkling fastidiousness even then. The walls had been painted over too many times—currently they were black and red—and had a kind of mottled look to them, like no one had bothered to scrape off whatever had fixed itself there before slapping the next layer of latex on. When she walked, her shoes experienced a very subtle pull from the floor, as though decades of substances both mundane and unnameable had created a permanent layer of stickiness. Loni crossed her arms to prevent herself from touching anything but had to reach out her hand at one point to get a stamp, in case she wanted to go back outside and then return. She couldn't imagine why she'd ever want to do that, and she didn't relish the idea of having her hand touched by something wet that had been pressed against the skin of two hundred other people. With a petri dish like that, the club could revive the bubonic plague. But she also didn't want to look like some kind of high-strung nerd either, so she just gave in and prayed she wouldn't wake up the next morning with a rash or a cough…or bald.

Zee was almost hopping up and down in excitement. In fact, forget “almost,” she
was
hopping up and down, though Loni could now see that it was in time to the music. The closer they got to the ballroom, the more she could feel the bass thrumming in the floorboards. Despite Zee's earlier insistence that they stick together, she now seemed to forget about Loni entirely and went plunging on into the ballroom, which was brimming with people. Loni followed, clutching her purse in front of her like a breastplate so it wouldn't get snagged behind her by dozens of stray elbows and spiky accessories.

She found a suitable corner, next to an ancient video game that had been unplugged but not hauled away. Loni pressed herself against it and loudly emptied her lungs—she hadn't even realized she'd been holding her breath—then took in the scene before her.

Club Uncumber, she knew, had once been a dance palace called Diamond Jim's way back in the 1940s, and you could still see the bones of that earlier venue in this one. The bandstand was gone, but its platform remained in place, and the high ceiling with its frescoes of the stars in the heavens was still there, as were the massive colonnades covered with colorful mosaics. But instead of boasting nattily dressed gents swinging big-skirted girls across the floor to nimble, jaunty jazz tunes, Club Uncumber was now dark, dank, and almost tomblike. Looking out across what had once been the dance floor, where legions of shaggy-haired hipsters now crammed together, jerking and bouncing like the band had its instruments wired to their central nervous systems, Loni couldn't see anything except a sea of silhouettes caused by a battalion of tiny, piercing cell-phone screens.

The band on the platform at the moment wasn't Overlords of Loneliness, Loni realized at once. They were the opening act, a four-man guitar combo with a drummer and a frighteningly skinny female singer who crammed the microphone so far past her lips that Loni was sure it would get hooked behind her teeth. The drummer was fairly restrained and kept looking over at the iPad he had perched on a music stand next to him—what, was he on Twitter or something?—but the guitarists were slashing out chords like they got five bucks for each one they hit and only had ninety seconds left to do it.

Loni tried to locate Zee in the crowd. It wasn't really possible. Too many girls were the same size, the same shape, and had the same hairstyle. The way everyone milled about made it like trying to count baby chickens. Or more appropriately, baby roaches. Loni sighed, succumbing to the easiest way to seem busy when alone in a crowd, by checking her phone. She hated herself a little for giving in to the urge, but she gave in to it all the same.

She was surprised to see that there was a voice mail from Byron. She hadn't even felt the phone vibrate. Well, she wouldn't, would she? Not with being jostled by the crowd so much and with the competing vibrations in the floor being so overwhelming. She tried to listen to Byron's message, but of course she couldn't hear a thing.

She texted him:
Saw you called, can't hear voice mail, at a concert. What's up?

She kept her phone in her hand so that she could feel when Byron replied, and looked back at the stage. The band—whose name, they'd just announced, was Nowhere Fast—now launched into a power ballad. Unfortunately, the singer's voice was a plaintive but rather detached wail, so that the effect was less like a woman lamenting the loss of a love than like one calling for someone to please, please help jump her car battery. Loni watched, telepathically willing her to put a little more feeling into her performance, till she felt her phone buzz in her hand.

She checked its screen and saw that Byron was calling again. She blinked in surprise. Hadn't he understood what she'd said?

She waited till the ringing stopped. Then she texted him back,
Can't take call, can't hear anything, too loud at club. What is up?

By the time she sent it, Zee had found her. “You're just going to stand here against a wall, aren't you?” she said.

Loni shrugged. “Is something wrong with that?”

“Yes, if you're still doing it when Overlords start playing. Because that will mean you have no human feeling anywhere in your entire body. But it's okay, I'm not complaining. If you stay here, I'll know where you are and won't lose you.”

“I'll stay right here, then.”

Zee slipped her tiny purse from her shoulder, opened it, and pulled out a crumpled ten-dollar bill. “Here,” she said, pressing it into Loni's hand. “In case you go to the bathroom, the table with all of Overlords' swag is right there. Get a copy of their CD.”

“But you already have one,” Loni said, holding the money away from her, unwilling to take it.

“It's not for me, it's for you.” She grinned and closed Loni's hand around the bill. “A gift.”

Loni shook her head. “I don't need one, I can just listen to yours.”

“Only if you're planning to live with me forever. Which you
said
you're not.”

She frowned and tried to give the cash back. “I can download it.”

“Except you won't,” said Zee firmly, backing away from her and lifting her arms to avoid contact with the cash. “I know you.” She dropped her arms and crossed them. “Look, we're going to the after-party, where you can get them to sign it.
All
of them. They can't sign a download. And anyway,” she said, letting her eyes glance across Loni's unfashionably large purse, “it's not like you haven't got room in that thing. You could smuggle a
dog
in there.”

Loni hit her with the purse in question, and Zee reacted like she'd been hit by a freight train. They laughed, just as Nowhere Fast announced their last tune and thanked everyone for being a great crowd. Zee squeezed Loni's forearm. “Overlords next!” she cried, and she scriggled away through a knot of already-drunk hipsters who seemed more like frat boys in disguise.

Loni stuck the bill in her jeans pocket, then felt her phone vibrate again.

It was a text from Byron.
Call me need 2 talk 2 u

She groaned in exasperation. Byron wasn't
that
much older than she was—he was only thirty-four—but in some ways he was so clearly of an earlier generation. Very few of Loni's friends actually used a phone
as a phone
anymore. She couldn't remember the last time she'd made an honest-to-God call to anyone she wasn't related to. Instead she texted.
Everyone
texted.

Can't talk, like I said too loud here, what's going on?

The lights went up, minimally, and many of the patrons started to file out to the three bars stationed in the lobby and on the mezzanine. Loni noticed that this was just what Zee had been planning for; as the ballroom emptied out, she scooted up to the front of the room, just before the stage, where a few other diehards were also staking their claims. They stood edgily together, legs wide apart, each defending her turf—or his, as there were a couple of guys in the mix as well. Loni wondered if it was wrong that she assumed they must be gay. Why else position yourself right where your face will be at the level of some dude's crotch?

For a moment, Loni thought the turf-holders might edge into a scuffle, or even an outright brawl, but they managed to keep their composure, only emitting a few warning snarls whenever one of them seemed—whether inadvertently or not—to encroach on another's territory. This wasn't very entertaining to watch, and Loni began to feel thirsty. She hated watery concert-venue beer, which always came with about two inches of foam in flimsy plastic cups that puckered when you increased the pressure of your grip even slightly, sending beer slopping over the edge and onto your clothes. But maybe they had something in a bottle? She'd pay premium if she had to. It was going to be a long night.