The Five (14 page)

The station was being run by a heavy-set Hispanic woman and her teenaged son, who wore a black baseball cap bearing the purple Nine Inch Nails logo. Nomad bought a bottle of water from the cooler and drank half of it down as he walked back and forth alongside the Scumbucket and trailer, from shadow to searing sun and back again. The heat today was a beast, probably a hundred degrees in the shade. Ariel emerged from the station with a bottle of cold water and also an Almond Joy candy bar, which melted in its wrapper before she could eat both pieces. As she came over to join Nomad, she saw a Texas Highway Patrol cruiser slide up to the pumps opposite the Scumbucket, and a trooper got out.

Inside the station, where the air-conditioning rattled as much as the Scumbucket’s but worked at least twice as well, Terry bought a Coke and Butterfinger, and behind him Mike was ready with a ginger ale, a half-dozen glazed doughnuts and a bag of beef jerky. At the back, Berke had decided she didn’t want coffee and was making a choice among the brands of bottled tea in the cooler.

She had had an interesting night. After her drumkit was safely packed up in the trailer and the Mudstaynes’ set had ended, she’d gone off with some friends from Dallas and some friends of friends, two girls who knew Victoria Madden from Victoria’s Inkbox tattoo parlor in Austin. They were numero uno fans of the Mudstaynes, and they were going to a party at this other girl’s condo up in Highland Park, and later on Gina Fayne was supposed to drop by. So, since Berke was always open to the moment, she had climbed into the back of a cream-colored Mercedes CLK-350 convertible and, jammed in with sisters who smelled of Miss Dior Cherie and Amber Romance, went racing with the moon.

The party was full-on by the time Berke got there, maybe sixty women strong. Little lights twinkled in the indoor trees, candles burned where they wouldn’t get knocked over and burn holes in the Persian rugs, Gina Fayne snarled from Bose speakers, the scent of weed swirled around, Cosmos and Appletinis were poured into glasses with Glowstick stirrers, and caps popped from bottles repping a dozen microbreweries. Berke watched a fashion parade of beaters and plaid board shorts dance past. Somebody put a girly gangbang video on the TV, but it was hollered off. Second up was some gay male porn, again shouted off. The next time Berke glanced at the flatscreen, somebody had put on
13 Going on 30
, and it was the part where Jennifer Garner starts doing the “Thriller” dance. That seemed to strike the right chord.

Berke was hit on almost continuously, by one or two or three at a time. She knew it was her cut guns, mostly. And though she was always open to the moment and had no problem instigating things, sometimes she just liked to find a place to sit, drink a beer, and observe. So she got a seat on the brown leather sofa, fashionably distressed, and watched the drama unfold. With sixty—and more coming in every few minutes, it seemed—lesbians in one condo, the alcohol flowing and the grass freely available, lethal drama was inevitable. Berke figured there had to be at least two hundred and twenty-four personalities in the place, and half of those would be derranged or embittered in a way that just saying “
Chi Ku!”—
swallow the bitterness—could not soothe. It might start with a rupture between two dyke-a-likes, or over the noise and music you’d hear somebody shout “I am Switzerland!” which meant war had been declared or a peace treaty broken and the girl in the middle was trying for diplomacy. A liplock might be attempted, an avoidance or pushaway countering it, and then the anger would uncoil like somebody’s black snake. Or, on the other hand, a successful public liplock and tongue massage might be for the benefit of an ex, show her she’s not the only game, and Berke had seen an ice-bucket dumped over firehouse-red curls due to that particular twist of the stiletto-heel.

It was a very entertaining show, this show after the show.

Berke noted that there were lots of young chicks in here. Like nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old. Some really beautiful girls. Carried themselves with style and attitude. But everybody was looking for something, and hardly anybody knew what it was. Sex? Sure, but that was just the flesh-deep layer. It was hot flesh, it was freckled and moon-white, it was tanned and smooth, it was ebony and lustrous, it was young and soft and pliable. It was why everyone was here, it called the sisters together, and many would say this was what life was all about, this was the whole picture, this was the reality and essence of sex and domination and at the end of the night a last tender kiss or a caustic comment thrown like a slap. But, Berke thought, hardly anybody here really knows what they’re looking for…which puts us right where straights are.

Maybe it was to hang on to something as long as you could. Youth, beauty, coolness…whatever. Maybe it was about power over other people, making them dance to your tune. Striking back at people, for past indignities and pain. Whatever that thing was that you needed to find, sex was just the outer skin of it.

Sitting on this sofa, watching the bodies go past and the games be played out, Berke thought of a card her father had sent her. Not Floyd fucking Fisk, but her real father, Warren Bonnevey. It had been sent to her on the eve of her first gig, when she was seventeen. Its colors were faded, it was spotted with yellow and looked like it dated from the ’50s. On the cover were feminine-looking bees with long eyelashes flying around a hive. Where it had said
Congratu-lations On Your First Job
, the word
Job
had been marked out and
Gig
written in.

And inside, the verse had been: 

Congratulations on your new position,

I know it’s just what you’ve been wishin’.

I’d like to say a whole lot more,

But that’s what cards like this are for.

Try and try,

Grow and thrive,

You’ll be the busiest bee in a honey of a hive.

Only the last line had also been marked out, and written in her father’s hand was:
Remember no one here gets out alive
.
Love, Warren.

Strange, yes. Unsettling, for sure. But then again, her father was insane.

“Hi, I’m Noble,” said the darkly-tanned woman with blonde-streaked hair who held a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale in one hand and offered the other out toward Berke. She was maybe twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Had very beautiful green eyes, a confident voice. Wore a black tank top, slim-leg jeans and brown, scuffed cowboy boots. Nothing sparkly about her. Good enough.

Berke shook her hand, and when Noble asked if anybody was sitting next to her, Berke said no, she was welcome to park it.

“Hey, lemme ask you somethin’.”

Berke turned from the cooler and her perplexing choice of bottled teas. Mike had come up behind her, clutching his ginger ale, box of doughtnuts and bag of beef jerky, which he’d already broken into. “Go,” Berke said when Mike hesitated.

Mike glanced toward the door. Berke saw that a state trooper had just entered, a young very clean-cut looking Hispanic guy, and he came straight back to the cooler and got himself a bottle of apple juice. He nodded at them, Mike said, “How’s it goin’?” and then the trooper took his drink to the counter and started a conversation in Spanish with the woman, whom he seemed to know pretty well.

“What’re you gettin’?” Mike asked her.

“I don’t know. Is that what you wanted to ask?” She knew it wasn’t; he always approached things sideways, like a crab.

“Ever try the V8 Fusion stuff? The tropical orange is good.”

She looked him in the eyes, because he seemed awfully nervous. “What’s up?”

Mike watched the trooper leave. Except for the woman and the boy, they were alone in here. “Hey…I was wonderin’…have you thought anymore about that song idea?”

“John’s idea,” Mike explained. “You know, what he said. About everybody writin’ words to a new song.”

“Oh,
that
bullshit.” Berke gave him a thin smile. “The Kumbaya song, right?” She decided to give the tropical orange a try, and reached into the cooler for it.

“Well…yeah, okay…but…you know, maybe it ain’t such a bad idea.” Mike followed her to the counter. “I know what he’s gettin’ at, but—”

“Busy work, that’s what he’s getting at,” Berke interrupted, as she put her money up.

“Yeah, but…” Mike glanced out the window, through all the backwards soap-chalk words and prices written there. The fuelling was done. George had paid at the pump and was probably in the bathroom. Terry was getting back into the Scumbucket; it was Nomad’s turn to drive. Nomad and Ariel were standing in the shade, a distance apart. The trooper had raised the cruiser’s hood and looked like he was pouring water from a red plastic pitcher into the reservoir for his windshield-wash fluid. “Maybe it’s a good idea,” Mike said. “You know, to keep everybody together.”

“We
are
together,” she reminded him, and pocketed her change. “How could we be on tour and
not
be together?”

“Together…like…not gettin’ pissed at each other. Not blamin’ each other for the breakup. Like on the same wavelength or somethin’.”

Berke had been about to go out the door, and now she stopped and stared at him very carefully, as if searching his face for a third eye. “Maybe I
am
pissed,” she said.

He shrugged. The shrug said maybe he was pissed too, deep down, but repositioning was a fact of the musician’s life. Take it or leave it.

“And who says we’re breaking up?” Berke went on. “So George and Terry are leaving. We’ll replace them and we’ll keep going.” Before Mike could respond to this wishful thinking, she narrowed her eyes. “
Wavelength
?” she asked. “What are
you
now, a pop psychologist?”

She again started to push through the door, and a little heat rolled in but Mike stopped her by saying, “I’ve started writin’ a song. I don’t have a whole lot of it, but…I was kinda hopin’ you’d take a look at it, before I showed it to anybody else.”

Berke was silent. For a few seconds she couldn’t think of anything to say. Her face revealed no emotion—her barrier against the world, and everything that was in it—but her heart was touched. She thought for a quick fleeting instant that she might tear up, but no way she was going to let that happen. The truth was, she loved Mike Davis as much as she could love anyone. They were a team, the backbone, the foundation, the rhythm twins. He gave her a rough elbow to hold onto, and she gave him a punch in the ribs to show she needed it. They had clicked from the very first, if clicking meant the sharing of fart jokes and beer from the same bottle. And now here he stood, asking her to do this for him. It was important to him, she could see that in his eyes.
Before I showed it to anybody else
, he’d said.

But she was who she was, and even this could not be made easy. “You’re not falling for this song-writing crap, are you? Tell me you’re not that stupid.”

He smiled, but the corners of his mouth were tight. “Maybe what I’ve written is no good…likely it’s not…but nobody ever
asked
me to write words before. Yeah, I know it ain’t what I do. What I’m
supposed
to do, I mean. But who says I can’t give it a try?” He saw the flicker of derision in her faintest of half-smiles and he picked up his tempo like a double thumb slap. “If it was to be okay, and maybe start off a new song everybody could be part of…then I’d be doin’ a good thing for the band, right? And…hey…you could maybe add
your
part, too.”

“We’re not the writers.” Berke’s voice was low and patient, as if speaking to a small child or a dog. “John, Ariel and Terry are the writers. I have no idea—none,
nada
—about how to write song lyrics. Come on, let’s hit it.” She went out, with Mike following right after her.

The trooper had lowered his hood, and with a squeegee was washing a layer of dust from his windshield that the malfunctioning fluid reservoir had failed to clear.

“
Please
,” Mike said.

Berke had only taken a couple of strides from the door. Once more she stopped, because she realized there was a time to play the game of cruelty and a time not to be afraid to be kind. And this definitely, undeniably, was that.

She faced him. “Okay,” she said with a sigh, “show me what you’ve got.”

“In my back pocket. The notebook.” Cradling his ginger ale and snacks, Mike turned around so she could get to it. “Listen, really…I appreciate it. But keep it to yourself, okay? For right now, I’m sayin’.”

“Right.” She was having trouble getting the green notebook out. With jeans that tight, his balls must be either the size of raisins or swollen up like apples. “Jesus! How do you get these damned things
on
?”

“Just pull.”

“Hard ass,” she commented, and then the notebook came free. The effort of it caused her to stagger away from him a few feet.

Something hit the window between them.

There was a sharp high
crack
, and suddenly a hole appeared next to the soap-chalk dollar sign of the price on a Budweiser sixpack. Berke saw it, and Mike saw it, and they watched as silver creepers spread across the glass from the edges of the hole. Then Mike turned his face toward Berke, to ask her what the hell just happened, and Berke saw a second hole appear as if by magic—fucking wicked magic, she thought in an instant of slow-motion shock—in Mike’s forehead about an inch above his left eyebrow. The left temple bulged outward, as if a fist had struck it from within, his mouth remained open in what he’d been meaning to ask Berke, and at his feet the bottle of ginger ale burst like a bomb against the concrete.

Mike was aware of a great pressure in his head, and suddenly he was falling away from Berke, falling away from the Texas heat, falling away from the Scumbucket at the pumps and his friends who waited there, falling backward in time.