Fully Automatic (Bullet) (43 page)

Chapter Fifty-three

WHILE THEIR SECOND album was in post-production, Fully Automatic did some touring, but it wasn’t as intense as the past year, because Ethan actually wanted to be home with his wife and baby.  Brad knew they’d be full-blown touring soon and hardcore.  It was too soon to quit.  He was hungry enough for all of them, and he knew they got sick and tired of hearing him say they couldn’t “rest on their laurels,” but it was true.  He knew it and, even if they were tired, they knew it too.

He wanted to be number one i
n his fans’ hearts.  He wanted to be number one on the charts that mattered.  And there would be no resting till they got there.

Part of him started to question if they were releasing their second album too soon, but his manager assured him it was time.  They’d milked four strong singles out of their first album, ones that got solid airplay on some of the hottest metal stations around the nation, and it was time to give them new songs to play.  Brad wasn’t going to argue, and he had so many songs inside his heart and his head
and even on paper that there would always be more to share.

As the money started rolling in, Karen asked Brad if he would mind if she only worked one day a week.  She loved tattooing, but she wanted to become an exclusive artist, in demand.  Eventually, it would drive her prices higher, she said, and the quality of her art would be even better.  But she couldn’t stop working without support.  Brad didn’t mind.  She cleaned around the house, not that there was much
to
clean with just the two of them, and she was a solid companion.  His only complaint was that she was starting to act jealous once in a while.  She didn’t even have reason to be jealous.  He wasn’t fucking around on her, even on the road.  Yeah, he hadn’t been able to resist all the pussy thrown at him while touring for the first album, but since Karen had moved in with him, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.  She cared about him on some level, and he wanted to respect that.  Besides, he’d had enough groupie sex to last a lifetime from their first tour alone.  It made him feel dirty and disrespectful, and he couldn’t do it anymore.

All t
he touring became a blur.  They were on the road a lot.  They had time home here and there—a few days once in a while or even a week at a time—but they were on the road constantly.  Brad promised they’d slow down with their third album, but one night when Zane and Ethan were bitching, he sat them all down and said, “If they don’t know us or love us, they won’t want a third album.  We’ll write it and no one will give a fuck.  So help me make sure they never forget us.  Then you can have an entire goddamn year off for all I care.”

The looks on their faces told
him they understood.

They were home for a one-month
break about the time Ethan’s son was a year old.  Yeah, Brad had planned it with the folks in charge so Ethan could celebrate his kid’s birthday.  Brad knew too that Ethan wouldn’t even notice or appreciate it (probably), but he knew Val would.  While they were home, the guys met a couple nights a week, beginning to write songs for the next CD.  Ethan was lapsing into his old ways big time, and once in a while, he wouldn’t show for their practices.  It sucked, too, because Brad had finally converted one of the old bedrooms in his house into the perfect space—soundproof walls and everything.

One night, Karen was out with some of her friends and Brad’s cell phone rang.  He didn’t think much about it until he saw that it was Val.  That was weird.  They hadn’t talked on the phone in well over a year.  It was stupid, the way his body reacted.  His heart rate increased
and his senses became more acute.  He wasn’t sure if it was because he had never lost his feelings for her or if he was worried that something had happened with Ethan or the baby.  Either way, his reaction was real and palpable.  He couldn’t ignore it.  “Val.  How are you?”

She sounded concerned.  “I’m doing fine.  What about you?”

He was beginning to wonder about the nature of her call, but he knew she’d get around to it when she was ready.  “Can’t complain.  And what about the little guy?”

“Well, actually, that’s why I’m calling.  He’s been really sick tonight, and I can’t get hold of Ethan.  I wondered if you could pass a message on to him.”

So why was she calling
Brad
?  He was not and never had been his brother’s keeper.  Val knew that.  But then he realized…Ethan must have
told
her he was with him.  Best to just get it over with.  “I haven’t seen Ethan since Tuesday, Val.”

He could hear it in her voice.  “Uh, well…if you see him, would you please ask him to call me right away?”

“Yeah, sure.”  He paused.  “Hey, do you need me to help you out with the baby?”

“No, Brad.  I couldn’t ask you to do that.  Just—have Ethan call me please.”

“Yeah.”  He hung up.  Both of them knew damn good and well he wasn’t going to see Ethan anytime soon.  Brad knew exactly what was going on.  Ethan was off somewhere, probably shooting up or getting completely wasted on Jack, fucking some slutty woman, some chick who somehow satisfied his needs more than Val.  Goddammit.  What the fuck?  Ethan had a thing for slutty chicks, and, try as she might, Val just couldn’t
be
what he needed—so he sought it out when he couldn’t take it anymore.

He called Ethan then.  It didn’t even ring.  It went straight to voicemail.  Brad felt himself growing angry.  “Ethan, your wife is looking for you.  She needs you.  Your kid’s sick, all right?”  He stopped himself.  He wanted to lecture Ethan and tell him to be a man and take care of his family, but for all he knew, Ethan was lying in a ditch, bleeding to death.

He wanted to call Val again, ask exactly what she needed, but he forced himself to put the phone back on the coffee table.  She hadn’t asked for his help.  She didn’t want him.  She’d chosen Ethan…and Brad had to stand back and let Ethan do what Ethan was gonna do.  And he couldn’t say or do a goddamn thing about it.

* * *

It wasn’t long before Fully Automatic was back on the road again, this time with international dates later in the tour as well.  That made it feel real to Brad.  That meant they had made it.  They were there.

Like before, Brad thought he’d never forget a single day, a single concert,
but—while he could remember some specifics—overall, the days, the events, the cities blurred into each other.  They did other things while they were on the road too like the first time, because he and his friends had never traveled much before.  So they tried to see the sights too.  They also had fan events, meet-and-greets, appearances on local radio stations, and the like.  They were just as busy on the road as they were off, and the days flew by.

They did a lot of partying too.  They were living life, having fun, enjoying their success.  Zane and Nick had no ties at all, and so women were a big part of their parties.  Of course, being a husband and new father didn’t stop Ethan either.  Brad was being faithful on tour, though.  Karen might not be his soul mate; he knew he didn’t even love her, but he was committed to her.  He wasn’t going to cheat on her, even if the woman herself had given him carte blanche to do so when they first got together.

There was a party one night in the great state of Washington.  They’d been on a mental high for days.  He could see it in his bandmates’ eyes—they were
there
; they’d made it.  There would still be no rest, but they had done it.  Brad had started feeling that way anyway, but seeing it on the guys’ faces only reassured him that he wasn’t imagining it.

Ethan, though…the guy didn’t know when to stop.  He’d been partying harder and harder, and Brad had
resisted the urge more and more to pull him aside and beg him to get his shit together—for the band, for his kid, for his wife.  He wouldn’t listen anyway.  And why would he bother to get his life on track now?  He never had.  Yeah, the guy was a brilliant musician, but Brad was starting to see him as a liability.

For the first time, Brad started wondering if he could front the band and play lead guitar.  He started asking himself if he could do it without Ethan if he had to.

He didn’t say a word to anyone else about it—not to Zane or Nick and certainly not to the man himself.  But it was an idea that started circulating in his head.

And it was something he started preparing for.  The truly great artists died young—Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Layne Staley,
Mitch Lucker.  If he didn’t get pissed at Ethan and finally kick his sorry ass out of the band, the man could very well kill himself off.  Brad knew it was a very real possibility.

If that happened, he couldn’t ask Val on board.  Fully Automatic had a man’s voice now.  Fans would never accept Val as their singer, even if she had been their voice for years before.  The world didn’t know it.  Wikipedia did, though, and even though there was no hyperlink for her name, she was listed as a previous member.

In the meantime, though, Brad would hold out hope and save the lectures for when Ethan was sober and of a mind to listen.

Washington, though—they had an epic party.  The drugs were flowing as freely as the breasts were spilling out of girls’ tops.  He wasn’t sure how that had happened, but the girls at that particular party were freer than others, and half a dozen of them started out with a striptease.  Brad stepped out in the hallway.  His excuse was that he wanted to get some ice for the party.  In reality, though, he wanted those girls to sit on someone else’s lap, and he didn’t give a shit whose, but it wasn’t going to be his.  Most of their roadies were single, and
they loved being with the band
because
they scored—a lot.  He understood that, even appreciated it, but he didn’t want to be put in any awkward positions.  If he hadn’t wanted to be around people, he would have just gone to bed.

When he got back to the room, there was a cluster of people around the couch.  He didn’t want to look.  He figured it was something weird
or gross like he’d seen groupies do before—like pulling something ungodly out of her snatch or doing some weird trick, like putting on lipstick by holding the tube in her cleavage.  But as he stepped farther into the room, he didn’t sense fun or lightness.  No, something serious was going on.  Something seriously
bad
.

And then he realized he’d been here before.  More than once.

Sure enough, Ethan was fucked up.  His eyes were rolled in the back of his head and he looked dead.  Brad pressed his way inside the crowd.  “Excuse me.”  He put his finger under Ethan’s nose to make sure he was still breathing and then he dialed nine-one-one on his cell phone.

It wasn’t until later, when they were at the hospital and it looked like Ethan wasn’t getting out anytime soon
, that Brad called Val.  Fucking A, he hated Ethan at that moment.  He was angry at his friend because Brad had to call his wife and give him the bad news.  He had a hard enough time dealing with Valerie anymore, and to have to tell her…

Well, he had no choice.  He stepped outside in the cool air and then called her number. 

Her
hello
sounded panicked.  And she had every reason to
be
panicked.  Val was no dummy.  She knew her husband better than she wanted to.

There was no easy way to say it, but he didn’t want to blurt it out
with no finesse.  She needed a few minutes to wake up and get herself oriented.  It was after two where they were, and it was an hour later in Colorado, so Brad knew she had to have wakened from a deep sleep.  “Sorry to wake you.”

She was ready.  There was no hesitation when she asked, “What’s going on?  What’s wrong?”

There was no sense prolonging it or beating around the bush.  “He OD’d on H.”

She was quiet for a few seconds.  “So…how is he?  Is he—?”

“They’ve got him stabilized now.  He should pull through, but he’s in a coma right now.”

“Coma?”  Brad could hear the baby in the background.  “What the hell happened?  He told me he wasn’t using.”

He sighed.  Was Val really asking him that stupid a question?  “Apparently he was lying.  Like that’s a first.  You know him as well as
I
do, Val.  Ethan’s gonna do what Ethan’s gonna do.  We were partying, and you know Ethan parties harder than anyone else.”

He heard Val soothe the baby with a quiet
Shh
.  Then she asked, “Where are you guys right now?”

“Spokane.”

“I’m gonna book a flight.  Not sure when I’ll be there.”

He considered telling her not to, but he knew she would.  When it came to Ethan, the woman was stubborn.  More than that, what if this would be Ethan’s last coma?  What then?  He couldn’t tell her not to come.

It turned out that by the time Val got there the next day—that next afternoon—Ethan was out of the coma, sitting up in bed, sipping at a bowl of soup.  Brad offered to hold the baby while Val had a heart-to-heart with her husband.

Brad was nervous at first, holding the little guy in the waiting room.  But Chris could
toddle and made baby noises.  He asked, “Mama?”

Brad said, “Mama’s with Daddy.  I’m Brad.”

Chris nodded his head and then pointed at Brad’s Metallica shirt, tracing the line of the words with his finger.  He wasn’t with Chris for long, but it was long enough for him to realize that the little guy was pretty cool.  Maybe he’d want to be a dad someday too.  It made him even angrier with Ethan.  His friend was pissing away his son’s infancy and trying to kill himself in the bargain.  What the fuck was wrong with Ethan?