“Crew?”
“Yeah. They load in our gear for us, help us onstage. Our show gets pretty insane. Where’s your crew?”
“We don’t have one.” I was getting pissed off.
“Right, it’s your first show. This will be our third,” he said. “We’re probably going to have a few hundred people tonight. Heathenistic Bile is really starting to take off. A few record labels have already contacted us.”
I swallowed and tried to infuse my voice with pleasantness. “That’s great. So maybe we should get our gear out of the van so when the owner gets here we’re ready to move it inside?”
“Sure. You know, my guys could help you if you need a hand with your gear — if you give them a couple bucks, of course.”
“Oh, I think we’ll be fine,” I said and turned back to the van so he wouldn’t see my scowl. There was no reason to make the gig go badly by screaming in his face that he was an idiot.
Fern and Edgar had already opened the back of the van and were gathering the gear. “That guy is a fucking moron,” I hissed when I had rejoined them. “Those two girls are his girlfriends.”
“They’ve been shooting daggers at me the whole time,” Fern muttered.
“The rest of those dudes over there are their crew,” I said sarcastically. “They’re so big time after playing two whole shows.”
Socks had come back to us in time to hear my last comment. “Well, not really a crew — a couple of their friends. They seem like good guys. The band guys, though, well . . . I don’t know.”
“Apparently their live show is insane,” I reported.
“What does that mean?” Edgar asked.
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll find out,” I muttered.
The owner arrived and unlocked the back doors, and as we watched Heathenistic Bile’s pals start carrying in guitar cases and rolling in amps, the band stood with their girlfriends, smoking cigarettes and laughing amongst themselves.
“Apparently some record labels have been talking to them,” I said.
“Oh, bullshit. It’s all bullshit. They’re just full of themselves,” Socks replied. “Their bass player was telling me that a few hundred people are coming tonight. I don’t see how, but I hope he’s right. That’d be amazing.”
“I wonder what they mean by insane,” Edgar worried. “We’re going to look boring.”
We loaded in our gear after them, carrying in the drum cases, guitars, and amps. The guys from the other band stood by and watched us, which I found extremely irritating. Every time I would come back out for another load of stuff I could feel their eyes on me, particularly the girls’, sizing up me and Fern. I wanted to scream at them that we were not there to pick up guys. We were in a band and we just wanted to play music and have fun.
The Toe was disgusting. It stank like years of old spilled beer, and it didn’t make matters any better that right beside the back door was a giant, reeking dumpster. I had to stop myself from gagging a few times as I made my trips past that thing. The stage in the bar was really small and only a few feet off the ground, and there were a few places on it that were apparently unstable and had been marked off with tape so that we would know to be careful if we stepped there. The owner was a tired old guy who Sharpied an X on our hands so that we couldn’t drink, which was fine by me. Socks was the only one of us who was of age, and I noticed that the Heathenistic Bile guys were X’d as well.
There was still about two hours until the doors opened, and apparently Heathenistic Bile was using that time to soundcheck. Our gear would sit at the side of the stage until they were finished. So the four of us decided to go eat and come back to the bar later on.