Page 1 of Down Beat
ONE
Rey
“Got the Life” - Korn
Fuck, I hate this city. Seems only appropriate the goddamn sky has seen fit to piss all over my arrival.
“How long do we have to layover here?” I scowl at our useless fucking manager, Rick, as he steps off the plane.
“Four days.” His jaw works the same piece of gum he’s chewed for the past three hours as he stares down at the puddles underfoot.
Cocky little shit only has his goddamn job because Daddy didn’t have enough balls to stand up to Mommy when she demanded her baby boy get a position in the family business.
“Better have us staying in a hotel with a fuckin’ five star rating this time,” I toss over my shoulder as I shrug my jacket higher and leg it for the terminal. “I swear to God if some illiterate cunt wakes me up because they can’t read the ‘do not disturb’ sign again, I’ll murder them with it.”
My brother Toby, our drummer, sighs as he passes a seething Rick. His denim vest is pulled high over his bright orange-and-red hair in an effort to protect the goods. “Fuck off and have a smoke, would you?”
I flip him the bird, aware that we’ve already drawn a crowd at the terminal windows above. It’s not all that often that a chartered plane comes in during a storm and regurgitates five denim-clad heathens and their cargo hold full of hard cases.
If Rick did his goddamn job right, we wouldn’t be here all together. But apparently scheduling isn’t his finest attribute. We were supposed to fly in tomorrow, ready to rehearse the next day prior to our two-show stopover, yet Rick, the goddamn legend, missed that flight entirely from the itinerary. He booked everything else: the venue, the accommodation, but not our fucking flights to get here. And being the middle of school vacation, the commercial liners were stacked.
I could hear his old man scream down the phone from ten feet away when Rick gave him the cost of our private plane.
“Hey, Rick.” I turn and walk backward so I can jerk my chin at the asshole. “What exactly did Daddy say when you told him how much this flight set him back?”
His nostrils flare before he answers, water kicking up around his polished, pointy-toe boots in a fine mist. “He’s making a few calls.”
“To Mommy?”
His jaw sets hard. Toby punches me in the arm as the rest of the guys pour off the plane. Our bassist, Emery, skips the second to last step and narrowly misses face-planting his drunken ass.
“He might have a solution,” Rick pipes up, drawing my focus back to him. “The added day could work out in our favor as far as recovering costs goes.”
“Yeah?” I spin back around to face forward and shake my head. “Struggling to see how, my good man.” The fuckhead’s delusional. We’re three shows into a twelve-stop tour. We’re supposed to be gaining momentum, not derailing the fucking train before it’s even reached full speed.
Some guy in a high visibility jacket opens the lower terminal door to let us in a private room they’ve set aside. Toby gives the guy a raised palm in thanks while I bowl on in to the heated haven. Rain and I don’t mix. Pretty sure I had some traumatic experience with water as a kid; nothing else explains why I hate it so much. Swimming, baths, rain, and even a shower if it goes too long, all get me twitchy. Don’t get me started about the pitchers of water the swanky hotels leave around the place. I only consume the wet shit because my vocal chords would dry up otherwise.
I shake my black denim jacket off and throw it over the nearest armchair. Toby makes a beeline for the coffeepot while Rick stands in the center of the makeshift room with his phone in hand, useless as a foreskin on a Jewish kid.
“Thank fuck that’s over,” Emery hollers as he tumbles onto a sofa. “Hostess wouldn’t give me any more alcohol.”
“Pretty sure you drank the plane dry,” Kris, our lead guitarist, murmurs. The sullen fucker finds the darkest corner in the room and makes his emo ass at home.
I pull what’s left of my smokes out of the pocket inside my jacket, and then shake out a stick. The tobacco teases my senses as I pinch it between my lips and check my pockets for my lighter. The chain on my belt rattles while I pat my way around my jeans, my frown growing deeper the more it becomes apparent I’ve lost the fucking thing. Perfect.
“Excuse me.”
I look up to find the source of the sickly sweet voice. “What?” Some hostess that’s young enough to still shit yellow gives me a well-practiced smile.
“I apologize, but this lounge is nonsmoking.”
Toby laughs as he dumps sugar in his brew.
I throw a middle finger his way, gaze still on the baby deer in my headlights. “Got a flame for me, princess?”
She frowns, thrown by my question. My guess is that my kind of arrogance wasn’t covered in her standardized training. “If you’d like to smoke, Sir, you’ll need to exit the terminal building.”
“Are you fuckin’ jerking me?”