“Yep,” Toad said. “He’s an awesome guy. I guess I’d just be careful, is all, if you’re getting involved with him or whatever, Rachel.”
I followed the two of them back onto the bus and went to my bunk, my mind spinning. He’d dated a famous and gorgeous pin-up fetish model with a great body, and here I was, short and not famous and wearing filthy stage clothes. I pictured my sweaty, blotchy post-show face, and my dirty, matted hair, and compared it to the perfect makeup, the smooth skin, the pouty perfection of Sophie Cleaver. I winced, burying my face in the pillow. And was it true about the girls on the road? In the short while we’d been on tour I hadn’t seen Chris with any girls backstage. He was the quiet one in his band — the others would yell and party and get all rowdy, and he always just seemed to be the quiet observer. But I barely knew him. I felt like an idiot. And what was I going to do? Ask him? Look like a jealous weirdo? And why was I jealous?
Lying there, processing these thoughts in the dark, I heard the bus engine start and felt the gentle vibration that was starting to become soothing. The bus pulled out of the parking lot, beginning our drive through the night. As I drifted off to sleep I heard the Velcro tear of another bunk curtain open and close.
FORTY-FIVE
The next day I woke up with some inane resolve to ignore Chris, or something — some juvenile plan to pull away from him and thus cause him to worry what was bothering me. I could put on this self-righteous disgust at him for all of his many affairs or whatever, and it would result in him having compassion for me and wanting to impress me or something. The plan was stupid and didn’t end up happening anyway. I didn’t really see Chris at all that day — his band had somewhere to go, a radio interview, maybe. I don’t know. They weren’t at the venue all day, their crew soundchecked for them.
We were somewhere in Florida, in a horrible part of town. There were dumpsters everywhere and it stank. Our buses were parked in the back lot very close together. There were creepy crackheads wandering around through the alleys. Toad warned us not to go far from the venue, basically not to leave the parking lot, so we hung out on the bus. Edgar was taking pictures of some of these derelicts through the bus window. I remember Toad, Timmy, and Socks had a magazine with Sophie Cleaver on the cover and were drooling over her. I was all quiet and grumpy because I was insecure. It was stupid.
I don’t really remember the show — it was one in a line of many — but I do remember feeling bad for the kids at this show because they’d had to line up outside the club and it was just such a shitty neighbourhood to have to be in. I don’t think Chris watched the show that night; I don’t remember — fuck, I guess it’s all just eclipsed by what happened after.
I was sitting on the bus after midnight, Toad and Socks playing some video game, Edgar and Timmy watching a movie in the back lounge. Fern wasn’t on the bus — she’d stayed back in the venue to use the phone or wash up or something, and Roger wasn’t going to be there until around 4 a.m. because it was only a few hours’ drive to the next venue. He was at his hotel room.
So everything seemed pretty normal. I had changed into shorts and a black T-shirt and was watching Toad and Socks’s game, then I decided to go for a cigarette. Toad, hammering controller buttons, didn’t take his eyes off the screen as I put on my hoody. “Don’t leave the lighted areas of the parking lot,” he warned. “And go into the venue, tell Fern to get her ass on this bus. I don’t want to have to spend my night chasing after any of you.”