“Yeah, I’m out too,” Ozzy said. “I’ve got a book waiting for me.”
“I’m going to go find Draven and have him rub my stomach for me,” Johnny groaned and waddle-walked down the hall, flipping Ozzy off when he laughed and snapped a picture.
I’d just pulled a throw blanket over my legs and got settled in the easy chair when Rebel and Steel claimed the couch. Rebel stretched out with his head resting against Steel’s thigh, Steel’s fingers immediately sinking into the red-gold strands to play with them. He did it to me whenever I lay beside them, so much that it finally dawned on me that he was using me and Rebel as touchstones.
“TV or music?” Steel asked.
“Music,” Rebel murmured. “I’d rather stare into the flames than at a screen tonight.”
Steel cued up Rebel’s playlist, andTruckin’by The Grateful Dead filled the room while I dove into the contents of the notebook, Rebel singing along every time they got to the line about the long, strange trip it had been.
No bull.
Page two, and I already had a question. “What the fuck was the Great Potomac Mills Fiasco of 2016?”
Steel snorted and paused with a soda can halfway to his lips. “It’s got to be epic if it has a name.”
Rebel started snickering and slapped a hand over his face. “It was beyond epic,” Rebel declared. “It’s what epic aspires to be.”
“In that case, spare no details,” I told him.
“So, we’d landed a gig playing at the Potomac Mills Mall,” Rebel said, laughing harder when my face scrunched up. “Yeah, that’s how we looked too when Ozzy told us about it. He did all of our booking back then. To this day I don’t know what the fuck he was thinking with that one.”
“Exposure, probably,” I said.
“Yeah, well, it was a shitshow,” Rebel said. “Half the gear was stuck on the side of the road with Terry and Griff. They were our roadies at the time. They’re Dash’s cousins. They were bored and had a van, so we hired them. Anyway, something went haywire with the engine, and they got stuck fifteen miles away, so we rolled up with an acoustic guitar in hand and nothing else for instruments. Not only that, but luggage was in the back of the van with the gear. You’ve seen how we travel; we like to be comfortable. It was summer, and the air conditioner was on the fritz, so it was pretty much tank tops and basketball shorts. We’d throw our flip-flops in a box by the door for when we made gas station stops, but that was it for shoes in the van. We were a mess when we went in there.”
“Is that how you played?” I asked.
“Naa, it was a mall, remember. We went on the fastestshopping spree in band history while Bruce, who was our driver at the time, took the van back for the equipment. You should have seen the look on this dude’s face when he stepped into the men’s room to see four half-naked guys standing there, clothes all over the floor, as we frantically tried to get dressed in clothes we hadn’t taken the time to try on, so not everything fit. Dash had to run back to the store for a pair of jeans he could pull up all the way, and we shredded a tank top into a belt for Johnny because his jeans were too loose, though not loose enough to fit Dash; we tried that. We even tried giving my jeans to Dash and me wearing the ones that didn’t fit Johnny, but I couldn’t zip the damn things.”
“Wow,” Kit said. “So, there were definite wardrobe issues.”
“Man, that was just the start of the wardrobe issues for the night,” Rebel groaned. “In the crazy race to get everything set up, I snagged the pocket of my jeans on something, tearing it off and leaving a hole in the back. Mid-show, Johnny tripped on a cord that hadn’t been taped down properly, and Dash reached out and managed to snag the tank top belt to keep him from falling.”
“Oh no,” Steel muttered. “I can already see where this is going.”
“Not right away,” Rebel said. “But with all the jumping around, air guitar, and that yank, yeah, the tank top belt came apart, and Johnny’s jeans started slipping. So now he’s holding the mic in one hand and the jeans in the other, still belting out the song. Meanwhile, Griff slips onto the stage behind Johnny, and he starts trying to fix the belt between songs while Johnny’s announcing the upcoming single and the other area dates we have coming up. Griff’s struggling, so Dash sticks his finger in to hold the pieces in place so Griff can tie them together, and the next thing we know, he's got Dash tied to Johnny while Ozzy, who can’t see what the fuck just happened, starts tapping out the intro to the next song.”
“All you need is a cartoon duck, and this would be comedy gold,” Steel sputtered.
“Man, I’m glad I asked for the notebook tonight,” I said. “Please tell me someone got a few photos."
“They’re in a scrapbook, along with a bunch of others back at my place,” Rebel said. “I’ll break them out one night while we’re lounging around. They’re always good for a laugh. Wait until you see some of the hairstyles we tried out over the years. Bet you’ve never seen a picture of Ozzy with a mohawk.”
“And he’d better not see one either!” Ozzy’s voice startled us both as he leaned in the doorway, shooting Rebel a pointed look. “I thought we burned those?”
Ozzy’s words were met with silence from Rebel as he lay there smirking as he stared into the fireplace.
“Rebel…” Ozzy growled.
“No one said anything about erasing the memory card,” Rebel said, a few snickers slipping out. “I just printed more the next time I went to the photo center. I’m sure he could find them floating around the internet if he looked hard enough. I’m just offering to save him the trouble.”
“Fine, but while you’re showing him the worst hair decision of my life, you make sure he sees those pictures of you with the pink mullet.”
“It wasn’t pink,” Rebel protested. “It was fuchsia.”
“It was as pink as a Barbie dream house,” Ozzy declared. “Pepto-Bismol pink should have been the name on the side of the box you used. It was so blindingly pink that you could have starred in a live-action version ofCandyland.”