Read Voice Online

Authors: Joseph Garraty

Tags: #Horror

Voice (2 page)

BOOK: Voice
3.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

She exhaled very slowly. “If you call me Steph
one more time
, I’ll break your nose.”

“Ease up there, babe. Don’t be like that.” A slightly spacey smirk spread across his face.

“‘Babe’ was your last freebie, Damon. You ready to play this waste of a show or what?”

“Waste? Come on, we’ll tear it up.”

“Sure. We could have torn it up in the practice room. Less shit to move, and God knows we could use the practice. Same size crowd, too.” She moved her guitar case to her other hand. “Just get your stuff and let’s do this, okay?”

“Yeah.”

She brushed past him, feeling his eyes crawling over her body as she walked away.
Prick.

She only had time to stretch her fingers, and then the other band’s set was over. Usually, this would mean a few frantic minutes of mutually stumbling over bodies and equipment while they got their gear offstage and Case’s band got set up, but Case wasn’t in a hurry. Her band was the last one playing tonight, and if they got cut off early—well, so fucking what? The sound guy didn’t seem to care, either, taking his time to put everything in its place. He eyed Case appreciatively, but he at least made an effort to be subtle about it. She could tolerate that. Her customary stage getup was a pair of tight leather pants and a white tank top, and if not all the attention she got was welcome, most of it was, and it was manageable. Somebody had once told her, If you’re going to be in the band,
look like you’re in the band
. Good advice, she thought, but the guy who’d given it to her hadn’t mentioned the extra baggage that came with it when you were a woman. Probably had no idea.

She supposed she shouldn’t have bothered tonight. She could have played this gig in a bathrobe.
Ah, fuck that
, she chided herself.
We’re here, and Damon’s right about one thing—as long as we’re here, we might as well rock out. It’ll be like practice, only with better sound.

They did the usual indifferent sound check—two notes each from the guitar and bass, ten seconds of whacking on the drum set, and Damon mumbling some third-grade joke about testes into the mic, and then they were on.

It was
loud
, and that should have helped. Despite the empty room, there was some adrenaline that came from just being onstage, and Case tried to push the bullshit nature of the gig out of her mind and enjoy playing. She let the first few bars of music—fast, driving—push her forward, and a nasty little grin curled up the corners of her mouth as she got into it.

Then Damon forgot the first verse—just didn’t come in at all. The band played through it anyway, and Case went right into the chorus after that, assuming Damon would catch up then. The bass player, though, apparently figured they ought to repeat the verse and give Damon another chance. The result was a disaster, an aural train wreck as the two parts of the song plowed into each other at a hundred miles an hour.

The rest of the set—all five songs—went straight to hell from there. Case turned away and played with her back to Damon the whole time, certain that if she looked at him, she’d kill him on the spot.

The last song came as a mercy. The final chord died, the sound guy fired up some Van Halen through the main speakers, and Case put down her guitar and left the stage without a word. She headed toward the bar—the other guys could clear out their stuff first, and she’d take care of hers once they were out of the way. Meanwhile, if a drink had ever been in order, it was now.

“Screwdriver,” she told the bartender, and she tossed him five bucks she couldn’t really afford.

“Good set,” somebody said.

She swung her head to the right and fixed a disbelieving glare on the singer from the last band. He had a small mouth and eyes that looked way too big for his head, and, astonishingly, he looked even skinnier up close than he had onstage. “Sure,” she said. “I bet that’s what they told Mick Jagger about Altamont, too.”

The guy grinned, which went a long way toward making his eyes look almost normal-sized. “Nobody’s dead here.”

“Fuck. Nobody’s here at all.”

“Then no damage done. No problem.”

She shook her head and went back to her drink. He had a point, she guessed, but that just aggravated her further.

“I have a proposition for you,” the guy said.

“If this involves going back to your van, somebody’s going to get hurt.”

He laughed nervously. “No, nothing like that. I need a guitarist. You’re good. I like your style. Very emotive. I’ve never seen anybody play the emotion
pissed off
so well.”

“That’s because I was pissed off.”

Another chuckle. “Good reason. You want the job?”

“You have a guitarist.”
Of sorts.

“Not anymore. I fired him.”

She turned back to him, surprised. “Really? When?”

“Just as soon as you say yes.”

She snorted. “This is the worst come-on ever.”

He rolled his weird eyes, still grinning. “News flash: Not everybody on the planet is out to fuck you.”

“News flash: Between those who are out to fuck me and those who are out to fuck me over, I think just about everyone is covered.”

He put his beer down. “What a lovely persecution complex you have.”

“Persecution complex?
Emotive?
Did they just let you out of college?”

“Look,” he said, steepling his hands in front of him and trying to look earnest, “I’m in a bad spot. I got the band booked for a show at some little college in West Texas. It’ll be our first college show. I don’t want to suck.”

Case, by grace of what she assumed had to be divine intervention, kept her mouth shut.

“It’s in two weeks,” he said. “Pays two hundred dollars.”

“Two hundred dollars for the band, or two hundred dollars a person?”

The guy blinked. “You, personally, will take home two hundred dollars after you play this show.”

Shit. That was a good chunk of next month’s rent money. Three nights of shitty tips. A professional re-fretting job for her guitar, if she threw in a little extra. She’d had gigs that paid more, but not often, and only when she played with cover bands.

“How the hell did you swing that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I wrote a letter to the Student Activities Committee of every college I could find in a five-hundred-mile radius. Three hundred letters. These guys bit. Booked us, sight unseen.”

The last bit of explanation wasn’t necessary, Case thought. That they’d been booked without being heard was a given, or they wouldn’t have been booked at all.

Two hundred bucks.

Still, something compelled her to be honest with the guy. “I can’t save your band for you.”

“Ouch. Don’t hold back—tell me how you really feel,” he said, voice dripping sarcasm. “I’m not asking you to
save
the band. Danny’s pretty damn good, and—”

“Danny’s the drummer?”

“Yeah.”

“He
is
pretty damn good.”

The guy nodded. “And Quentin will do all right, I think. He sometimes chokes when he gets in front of people, but he’s solid. You’ll see. We’ll be a lot better with a good guitarist.”

She almost said something nasty about the vocals, but she stopped herself. If he was going to pay her two hundred bucks, she ought to let it go. Besides, he looked so fragile with his tiny mouth and bug eyes. He might cry.

Somebody put a hand on her hip, and she whirled, arm already half-cocked back. It was Damon, standing too close as usual and weaving drunkenly. The rest of the band and the bony chick who’d come in with the bass player stood behind him. “Good fuckin’ show, huh?” Damon said.

She lowered her arm halfway and took one step back, down the length of the bar. “Yeah, sure.”

“We’re all loaded up, and I’m gonna take off,” he said. He took a step toward her.

“Great. Get the fuck out of here. And don’t touch me again. Ever.” She took another step back.

He didn’t get the picture, or maybe he was just deaf. He took another step toward her. “C’mon, Steph—”

“Don’t.”

The note of menace in her voice must have been enough to break through the drunken fog in his brain.

“Who’s this guy?” he asked, turning to the skinny dude.

“Fuck off, Damon,” Case said.

The skinny guy, to give him credit, tried to calm things down. “It’s cool, man,” he said. “I’m John.” He held out a hand.

Damon slapped his hand away. “Yeah. What the fuck are you doing here, John?”

“Just talking business.”

Even Case recognized that as exactly the wrong thing to say.
Here it comes,
she thought.

“Business? What business do you have with my guitar player?” A light dawned in Damon’s dim brain. “Oh—you’re with the other band, the, the whatever-the-fucks.”

“Ragman,” John said. He swallowed nervously and pressed himself back against the bar.

“What business you got, Ragman?” Damon stepped toward John, getting right in his face.

“Just business.”

Damon shoved him. It was a pathetic, drunken shove, but John staggered back.

This was going to get very ugly. Damon had sixty pounds or more on John, and John looked like the kind of guy who’d never been in a shouting match in his life, to say nothing of a barroom brawl.

“That’s enough,” Case said.

“I’ll say when it’s enough.
Steph.
” Damon sneered at her, and then he turned back to John and made his move. He was big, drunk, and slow, and the movement was telegraphed seemingly hours in advance. He stepped forward and dropped his shoulder back. John just stared, with no idea that he was about to get his face caved in.

Case never explicitly gave the order, but as Damon stepped into the wide, clumsy arc of his swing, her fist moved on its own, flashing out in a blur. Damon’s head snapped back and blood flew through the air. He collapsed to the floor, moaning, with his hands clutching his face.

“Oww, fuck!”

Case gave the other guys a threatening look, but they obviously didn’t want any more of this. The drummer leaned down and tried to pull Damon to his feet. “Come on, Damon. We gotta go,” he said. Damon pushed backward, crablike.

“Hey,” he said as the guys hauled him off. He scratched at the air with one hand. Blood covered the bottom half of his face. “You’re gonna be at practice tomorrow, right?”

Case just shook her head, amazed.

She turned back to John, the skinny idiot who needed a guitarist. He stood there, shocked, his mouth hanging open and his eyes even wider than usual. Flecks of blood spattered his forehead.

“Looks like I need a band,” she said. She crossed her arms and stared at him. “So I’m in. Call me Case. Got a pen?”

She wrote her name, number, and email address on the back of his band’s mailing-list form, tore off the bottom, and handed it to him. “Your turn.”

He wrote something on the paper and gave it back. She stared at it. John Tsiboukas. “How the hell do you pronounce that?”

“John,” he said with a vague smile. 

“Okay, then, John T. Send me directions to your practice room, and I’ll see you there. If you can also send me some recordings of the songs, that’ll go a long way.” She started to go, then turned around. “Make sure your bass player knows his shit.”

She left him staring after her and went to pack up her gear.

***

 

“Did I hear that right?”

John swiveled around on his barstool. Danny stood there, arms crossed and eyebrows raised, looking for all the world as if he were about to lecture a four-year-old. That’s what big brothers were for, John figured.

“What did you just do?” Danny asked.

John grinned. “Found us a guitarist.” His voice was hoarse from singing even the short set they’d played.

“Yeah? You might want to tell Seth that.”

“Sure, no problem.” John waved it off. “He’ll be upset, but we all know he’s not very good.”

“He busted his ass to get ready for this show,” Danny protested.

“I know he did. That’s the sad part.”

“That’s pretty fucking rude, John.”

John held up a hand. “I like Seth. He’s a good guy. But we’ve been trying like hell, and—well, you heard him play.”

Danny deflated, dropped his big hands to his sides. “Yeah. That was bad.”

“Besides,” John added, “she’s
really
good.”

“She’s really
angry
, if that’s what you mean.”

“She’s good. You know it.” John tapped the side of his glass thoughtfully. “Kinda hot, too.”

Danny gave him a serious look. “Careful there, bro. You know Rule Number One.”

“No worries. I was thinking about presentation. She looks good onstage—should help get us some attention. Besides,” he added, remembering the way she’d laid out the singer of her own band, “she’d probably break me in half.”

Danny grinned. “True that. What did what’s his name do to piss her off?”

BOOK: Voice
3.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Royal Elite: Mattias by Bourdon, Danielle
The Formula for Murder by Carol McCleary
Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner
Rules to Rock By by Josh Farrar
The Temp by Cates, A. K
Outsider by Diana Palmer
Every Sunset Forever by Butler, R. E.
BlackMoon Reaper by Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Tennyson's Gift by Lynne Truss
Fresh Fields by Peter Kocan