The Devil's Metal (2 page)

“I don’t know, Mel,” I said, wanting to
change the subject. It was making me feel hotter, dizzier. “We
broke up but it doesn’t mean the end. You never know where the
future will lead us.”

She snorted then shot me an apologetic look.
“Hey, I just don’t want to see you spend the rest of the summer
pining over him when you’ll probably get hurt in the end. Dude was
a creep for dumping your white ass anyway.”

I leaned over and slapped my thigh. “And
it’s a good ass too.”

“You can bet on it.”

I grinned at her and looked to the dry,
quaint streets of downtown Ellensburg as they came into view. I had
to get Ryan out of my head. There were more important things to
worry about, like the shitty run I had with Moonglow that
afternoon, or the rock concert we were about to infiltrate.

The venue was this small club near the
university called The Ripper. It was one of the few places in town
that played all ages shows, which was awesome when I was underage,
but now that I had turned twenty-one and was a lot more serious
about music, competing with teenyboppers for the best spot in the
house was always a full contact sport. Tonight’s band, PASTE,
featured Terry Black, the extremely foxy lead singer who screamed
better than he sung—and that wasn’t saying much. I had reviewed the
band’s debut album earlier this year for the college paper and
called it “mediocre and malicious,” but still secretly hoped I
could score an interview with him before or after the show. The
band was popular-city.

Yup, part of me dreamed that an interview
with Terry Black could be my big break. I had been writing
articles, interviews, and show reviews all summer long and sending
them to Seattle and Spokane papers hoping to be picked up. Last
year I wrote for a few community newspapers, highlighting
up-and-coming bands such as Boys N Snakes, and my current
obsession, Hybrid. This June I got my biggest break when the
Seattle Times published a review I did of a Bad Company show. No
one had really heard of the band, despite having the all-mighty
Paul Rodgers from Free in it, so somehow my review got attention.
It also got me a big fat check—which I promptly spent on groceries
for the house and a bottle of Wild Turkey for my dad. Ever since
then though, I’d had no bites. I was hoping Black would fix the
slump and maybe get me enough cash to buy a new saddle for
Moonglow. Continuing on with my wishful thinking, I was hoping Big
Ears, the music section of CWU’s paper, would make me editor and I
could finally write about the bands I wanted to without hearing
“but you’re a woman, let the men handle the noise.”

As Mel pulled the Dumpster into a packed
parking lot full of blaring 8-tracks and Pabst Blue Ribbon, my
hopes sank. Because I was writing on spec, I didn’t have a press
pass so I looked just like every other concert goer.

Except not.

The girls were young and beautiful, wearing
short shorts and skinny strapped tops. Some had on bikinis, other
see-through shirts made of crochet and netting. They were all
tanned with ironed hair and large platforms. There were even a few
wearing PASTE t-shirts that were clearly meant for children
considering the way they showed off their abs. Their lips were
frosted pink, their smiles drunk and seductive.

I was wearing a thin red t-shirt that stuck
to my skin from sweat. From a quick glance into the rearview
mirror, I could see my hair really was a rust-colored rat’s nest,
my dark brown eyes didn’t have a lick of makeup on them, and
somehow my freckles had multiplied in the last hour. My jeans were
bell-bottoms, my shoes were Frye boots—with horse shit on them. I
was going to have to compete against these girls for Terry’s
attention, and I had a feeling he wouldn’t give a fuck that I was a
so-called journalist.

Especially one that compared his voice to a
cheese grater.

I sighed, suddenly not wanting to get out of
the car.

“Dawn, you’re doing it again,” Mel
warned.

“Doing what?”

“Turn off your brain.” She began to reach
behind her for the flask.

My hands flew up to my mouth in protest.
“No, I’m fine. I need to think clearly tonight.”

She gave me a wry look. “What is with you
lately?”

“What do you mean?”

She nodded at the girls in the parking lot
who were laughing, drinking, and oblivious to the thunderstorm that
was hiding around the corner. “Where’s your confidence, girl?
You’re gorgeous and you know it. Not only that, but you’re one fine
writer. A double threat.”

“I’m just not slutty enough,” I mumbled.

Mel ripped off her sunglasses and gave me
the stare down. She had won in the staring contest against my horse
earlier—I was powerless. I looked down at my hands and dirty
fingernails.

“Are you calling them girls sluts because of
the way they’re dressed, cuz damn child you must think I’m a
downright ho in my little booty boobie get-up here,” she said with
full-on attitude.

“You’re not a groupie,” I protested.

“Who cares? I could be. What’s wrong with
trying to get some rock and roll tail? Sex is sex, Dawn, even for
the wrong reasons. I thought you were all for this women’s
liberation shit and bra burning.”

I looked down at my chest. “I didn’t need
those bras anyway.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. She wasn’t
gentle. Mel could fly off the handle and you never wanted her on
your bad side.

“It doesn’t mean you have to spread your
legs if you don’t want to,” she told me in her
I’m-a-year-older-let-me-lecture-you voice. “But let those girls be
those girls. You be yourself, loosen up, and maybe, just maybe, if
you try the groupie angle, you’ll end up getting the real
story.”

I gave her fingers a quick kiss before
shrugging them off. “You are a terrible influence Miss Melanie
Jones.”

She laughed, throwing her head back. “And
you need a good shag, Miss Dawn Emerson. You can’t have the rock
and roll without the sex. And drugs. Speaking of…”

She brought out her saddlebag purse and
brought out a joint from her slim cigarette case.

“What did I say about thinking clearly?” I
reminded her. But I ended up taking a quick puff anyway. Pot was
good for the musical experience and clearly I needed to loosen up a
little. I felt as tense as the coming storm.

We got out of the car sufficiently high. I
gathered my confidence, threw back my shoulders, and the two of us
strode proudly toward the entrance to The Ripper. We were getting
second glances from a lot of the guys. Naturally the sight of a
short, curvy black girl and a tall redhead garnered a lot of
attention in itself, plus there were Mel’s boobs swinging around in
her top and that flirtatious smile of hers. If they could get past
the mess of hair and the horse-shit boots, I knew deep down I
wasn’t anything to sneeze at either. But was I “beat out the
groupies and score an interview with a rock star” hot? That
remained to be seen.

We showed our tickets at the door to a
tricked-out bouncer, and after flashing him our IDs, he slapped a
yellow band on our wrists, proclaiming to the world that we were of
legal drinking age. I grinned despite myself. After years of
watching the “cool” older kids have their drinks in the club, it
was a relief to be able to do the same.

The club was packed even though half the
audience still appeared to be tailgating outside. It was dark and
blurry and reeked of cigarette smoke and cheap cologne. I felt like
I was floating through the crowd, feeding off the energy of music
lovers, intoxicated by the anticipation of a live show. I was in my
element and the grass was working fast to mellow me out.

Mel did her usual thing which was to ditch
me as soon as we got inside. She spotted a former flame of hers,
this real creep from New York who thought he was a ghetto
superstar, and took off to him like a moth to a flame. I didn’t
mind. I liked to be alone during a concert, the better to feel the
music and really immerse myself. Plus observing the crowd was a
major tool to creating atmosphere in music reviews, and that was
hard to do when you had Mel squealing in your ear, dissecting the
size of the lead singer’s dick by the tightness of his pants.

I found a spot against the sweating wall to
the left of the stage, conveniently close to the backstage
entrance. I kept a deceptively casual watch on it to see if I
recognized any of the roadies or managers who were going in and
out. So far, none of them looked familiar and after ten minutes the
area around the door became crowded with the frosted-lip chicks. I
felt my chest tighten. Mel was right, something really was wrong
with me. With family issues, my worries about Moonglow’s
performance, and Ryan leaving me, it seemed like everything was
stressing me out. Music was always the one thing in my life I could
count on, the drug that took me away from reality and made me feel
whole. Now, it just seemed like too much pressure to make something
of myself.

I took in a deep breath of secondhand smoke
and closed my eyes. I repeated a Zen mantra I had heard on a.m.
television until I started to feel in control again. When I opened
my eyes, Todd McFadden was standing in front of me. He worked with
me on Big Ears and since he was into the same rock and metal as I
was, I was always battling him for music reviews and shows. We were
on friendly terms, but I really couldn’t stand his chauvinistic
opinions, nor the fact that he always had one long nose hair
sticking out of his right nostril.

“Hey Red,” he cooed. He placed his hand
against the wall and leaned on it, thinking it probably made him
look cool. It just made him look like he couldn’t stand up
straight, and after getting a quick glimpse of his red-rimmed eyes,
it wasn’t far from the truth.

“Hey Caveman,” I replied. So I may have lied
when I said we were on friendly terms.

“Oh, you like the chest-beating type, admit
it.” His smile was more reptilian when high.

“The only thing that should be beat is
it
,” I retorted and turned my attention back to the stage.
“So, beat it, I’m trying to watch a show.”

“No show yet, babe,” he said, stepping in
closer. “Are you here to write or just listen?”

“Both,” I said, crossing my arms.

He nodded but stood there, not really
getting the hint. After a few awkward seconds he said, “Did you
hear I’m interviewing Terry after the show?”

I tried really hard to not let that bother
me. I failed. My eyes bugged out.

“What? How? For who?”

Todd shrugged. “Spokane. I got a job there
for the summer. Beats the hell out of Big Ears.”

I knew it did. Man, that pissed me right
off. Of course someone like Todd would be able to land a job like
that—he stole half my potential stories anyway.

He glanced over at the scantily-clad girls
at the groupie door. “You know you might have a chance if you…”

He trailed off and looked down at my top
with disdain. “Never mind. You got shafted, babe.”

That did it.

I pressed both my hands into his scrawny
chest and shoved him. Hard. He went stumbling off balance and
landed on his ass on the greasy floor. People in the crowd cried
out as their drinks spilled, then laughed at him and went about
their business.

Todd glared up at me, his face growing
visibly red in the darkness. Trying to stifle his embarrassment, he
got to his feet and pointed a finger at me.

“Real professional, Red. No wonder you’re
not going anywhere.”

And with that he adjusted the collar on his
leather jacket and stormed off into the crowd, shoving a few drunks
out of his way.

So much for de-stressing. Two seconds
talking with Todd and my heart rate was all over the place. I
hated,
hated
knowing he was doing better than I was and
hated even more that he thought I was going nowhere. Well, I’d show
him.

I tugged my shirt down and began to make my
way toward the side door. I didn’t get very far.

The lights in the house went down and the
band—minus Terry—took to the stage among cheers and hollers from
the crowd. They were all young, fashionably skinny, and trying way
too hard to imitate Alice Cooper with their weird boots, tights,
and bleeding eye makeup. They looked like ghoulish long-haired
clones of each other.

A single spotlight lit up the middle of the
small stage, and as the drummer began his roll, Terry Black stepped
out in all his glory. He was tall and thin like the rest of the
band with hair carefully disheveled in long black waves. He was
wearing a cape made out of sewn-on bats and snakeskin platform
boots. He looked like an idiot and it was only because he had a
handsome, albeit babyish, face that the women were going nuts for
him. He raised his arms in the air like he was going to fly away
and already a pair of white lace panties were tossed on the
stage.

“Minions!” he addressed the crowd in a
booming voice. “Calm down before your master.”

Oh dear lord. I shook my head, wondering why
I even wanted to interview this loser to begin with.

But the chicks went nuts and even the guys
seemed to fall for his faux-metal bullshit. And that was why I
wanted to interview him. Because he was popular.

Ugh, I was so close to being a sell-out.

I looked at the stage and saw Todd standing
on the side of it, watching the band, taking notes and chatting
with one of the roadies.

That’s what I wanted to be? Double ugh.

After about twenty minutes, I had enough of
listening to Terry scream and Todd shooting me smug looks from the
side stage. I made my way through the sweaty crowd of overheated
leather and underage girls until I was at the bar. The line-up was
wild, with people shoving and yelling, and after a few minutes
there I realized I wouldn’t be getting a drink either. I started to
look around for Mel and finally found her in the corner, sucking
face with ghetto creep. She wasn’t even watching the damn show.