Page 64 of The Girl with No Name
“Dunn, respectfully, what the fuck are you talking about?!”
Luna leans in. Randy seems momentarily absorbed by his beer. He drops his phone and has to scramble to find it on the ground.
“Go. Get on that stage. And fucking sing.” Dunn lifts his chin toward the third stage, where the Red Lemons are going to be playing in a little more than half an hour. “Just sing the first song. I’ll do the rest. Trust me.”
I’m already shaking my head. “There’s no way. We can’t pull this off. What are you even saying?”
Dunn shrugs. “I’ll make sure he’s watching the first song and only the first song. Then we’ll find some other stage or I’ll distract him. He’ll think you actually are the Red Lemons. They can give you a guest spot.”
“Dude. We don’t evenknowthe Red Lemons. That’s fuckinginsane.You realize this is insane, right? There’s no way.”
“Just do it. Nike, bro,” Dunn says, grinning. He grips his head. “Holy shit, I think the acid is kicking in.”
“We can’t?—”
Luna nods confidently, cutting me off. “We got this.”
All of my insides are telling me to panic. To fold. To run home. That we’re in way over our heads. That Dunn is tripping.
“Walker,” Dunn says, slapping my back. “I believe in you.”
Yeah. He’sreallytripping.
“All right, you knuckleheads.” Randy seems to have his shit back together. “I’m going to spray this all over social media. Good luck getting jobs after that. No one should associate with scum like you, stealing rooms from good people.”
Maybe the drugs are indeed kicking in. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m eight beers deep. Who knows? But I stand tall and give him the best poker face I’ve ever mustered. “Wearethe Red Lemons. What, we can’t enjoy a concert before we hit the stage? Get fucked, buddy.”
His eyes widen. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna…”
“We should probably go, though, we do need to get backstage,” Luna says. “You’re right about that. Enjoy the show.”
With that, she and I head toward stage three, with no plan whatsoever.
“So, how do we know when the drugs are kicking in?” I ask her.
“Oh, you’ll know.”
“Wait, do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Can you hear the sound of your own voice?”
Luna just about dies laughing. “Yep. They’re kicking in.”
14
REED
“YOU NEVER CAN TELL” – CHUCK BERRY
Luna and I slice our way through the crowd, which is getting rowdier and drunker as the late afternoon slips into evening.
“How the hell are we going tomeetthe Red Lemons?” I ask her. “Let alone convince them to…to let us sing a song in their set?”
She shakes her head. “You don’t have any faith in the universe, do you? I was right about that.”
“I have some faith. But this seems like a big ask.”