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“Oh, yeah, I needed to borrow ten. You don’t mind, do you?”
10
It’s a six-and-a-half-hour bus ride from Baton Rouge to Houston along I-10. Six buses and two trucks were making the journey. Kaira DeLeon’s bus was equipped with a flat-screen TV, a DVD player, two video game players, a refrigerator, a microwave, a treadmill, and a bathroom that included a shower as well as a makeup area. The only person on that bus, however, was the bus driver.
Kaira was sick of being alone and so had asked the guys in the band if she could ride with them. It was her first time on their bus and she knew her mother would freak if she found out. Her mother imagined all kinds of wild goings-on with a rock ’n’ roll band, but all they were doing was playing cards. Tim B, the lead guitarist, had given her a beer, but she didn’t like the taste and only took a few sips to be polite.
“Which way do we pass this time?” asked Duncan, a bald man with a goatee. He wore dark sunglasses, indoors or out. As far as Kaira could tell, all bass players always wore sunglasses.
“Left,” said Cotton, the drummer, who then handed three cards to Kaira. Cotton was also bald, but that was because he shaved his head. Duncan still had hair on the sides.
“We passed left last time,” said Billy Goat, whose last name was really Gotleib. He played keyboard.
“Too late, I already picked up my cards,” said Cotton.
They may have been wild rock ’n’ rollers at one time in their lives, but to Kaira they just seemed like a bunch of old men.
The Grateful Dead was playing over the sound system. She found the music monotonous but didn’t dare say so out loud. That would have been sacrilege to these guys. She also pretended their cigarette smoke didn’t bother her. Anything was better than another long ride alone.
She knew they all thought she was just a spoiled prima donna who didn’t know anything about music. She’d heard them say as much. They’d been making music long before she was born, and often mentioned names of famous people they’d played with, names she’d n
ever heard.
“Okay, who’s got the two of clubs?” Kaira asked. “Oh, I do.” She giggled, then placed the card on the coffee table.
She had never played hearts with real people before, only on a computer, and was losing badly. It seemed like every hand she got stuck with the queen of spades.
The bus had two couches set up at a right angle, with a coffee table in the center “for drinks and feet.” Those were Cotton’s words. Just about everything he said made her laugh.
Three other band members and all three backup singers had missed the bus. They would have to find their own way to Houston.
“Goin’ to Texas, we should listen to some Texas music,” said Tim B. He stood up, then stumbled and fell against the side of the couch. Kaira didn’t know if this was caused by the bus’s movement or by what he’d been drinking.
“I’m all right,” he said, getting back to his feet, then made his way to the CD rack. “Hey, Kaira, you ever heard of Janis Joplin?”
Kaira hesitated a moment, then said, “Oh, yeah, she really rocks!”
Cotton saw right through her. “You never heard of her, have you?”
“Uh, maybe, I’m not sure.”
“If you heard her, you’d know,” he said.
“We’re talking real music,” Tim B said as he fumbled with the CD. “Raw and to the bone.”
“And no cutesy-dootsy backup singers,” said Duncan.
“I’ll drink to that,” said Cotton, clinking beer bottles with him.
Kaira didn’t like the backup singers any better than they did, but El Genius said they added sexual energy.
“Music needs blank spaces sometimes,” Cotton said. “They take up all the blank spaces.”
“Now you’re talkin’ about music,” said Billy Goat. “Nobody makes real music anymore. It’s all just a big show.”
“Just background for MTV,” said Duncan. “It’s almost impossible for a real musician to do anything worth listening to anymore. Now it’s all I-don’t-know-what.”
“Don’t listen to them, Kaira,” said Cotton. “They been saying the same thing for the last twenty-five years.”
