None of us liked to think of that day. Chris, our keyboard player, once referred to it as “the day we lost Grant, too.” In a way, he was right. While physically, Grant had survived the fire, there was a part of him that had perished alongside Bernadette. I sometimes wondered if we would ever have the Grant we knew and loved back, instead of this broken shell that had replaced him.
Where was Grant, anyway? It was almost time for sound check. The rest of us gathered onstage: Darren and me with our guitars, Howie with his bass, Jason with his small collection of string instruments, Chris at his keyboard, and Lester behind his drum set.
Howie, bass in hand, took his place beside me onstage. “All right, then?” he asked, his Scottish brogue giving the question a lilting, songlike quality. I nodded, then shrugged.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” I said. “Being back here, I mean.”
Lester nodded in agreement, fingers tracing lightly over the keys in front of him. “I know what you mean,” he said, keeping his voice low. It wouldn’t do for Grant to overhear us; he hated the idea of us talking about him behind his back. “It feels morbid, you know?”
I did know. One year ago tonight, Grant’s girlfriend had died in this very venue in a fire caused by faulty pyrotechnics. Valentina, the owner, had rebuilt, but the rest of the band and I had expected to never perform here again, assuming that the memory would be too painful for Grant. To our lasting surprise, Grant had insisted that we return as soon as the venue had been rebuilt, picking up our weekly Friday and Saturday night booking right where we’d left off, as if the death of Bernadette was no more than a blip on the radar.
The Ball was an interesting venue, one of DC’s better-kept secrets. The Ball lacked the seedy quality of the majority of music venues, which were dimly lit, had floors sticky with spilled booze, and the smell of sweaty bodies pressed close together lingered on the air even when the club was empty. Instead, the Ball was decorated to resemble an elaborate Gothic ballroom—hence the name. In addition to the unusual dress code—latex—many of the Ball’s patrons often covered their faces with masquerade masks, lending an air of mystery to the crowd. For special events, Valentina often hired talented burlesque dancers to perform routines dangling from the chandeliers. Most people never saw more than this, and that was more than enough to keep the Ball consistently ranked among the top music venues in the city.
Most of the Ball’s regular patrons had no idea that upstairs, behind locked doors protected by a password that changed nightly, was hidden the most exclusive sex club in the city. It was this half of the club that accounted for the venue’s latex dress code.
When we’d first begun our weekly engagement at the Ball, the latex had taken some getting used to, but it had grown on us over time. Now, I think we all enjoyed the few hours every week that we could slip into our alternate personas and take a break from our everyday lives. Lester, I suspected, enjoyed it most of all. While most of us opted for a more standard “conservative” outfit of leather pants and a latex shirt, Lester dressed each week in latex briefs and a harness, better to show off his six-pack. I glanced at him now, tapping an anxious beat against his thigh with his drumsticks, and smiled in spite of myself. I had to appreciate his complete lack of shame.
As members of the band, the guys and I had unlimited access to the rooms upstairs, a perk we all took advantage of often. All of us, that is, except Grant. In fact, I was fairly certain there had been no women at all in Grant’s life since Bernadette. I understood, of course, but I was beginning to think that Grant was deliberately holding himself back, refusing to allow himself to take any pleasure in living the life he didn’t think he deserved to still have. It was a shame. Sooner or later, he was going to have to start living again. The alternative was too bleak to contemplate.
Behind me, Chris tossed a rolled up ball of paper at Lester, hitting him square in the left pec. “You heading upstairs after the show tonight?” Chris asked.
Smiling, Lester tossed the paper ball back, deliberately going wide to make the rest of us laugh. “What do you think?” he asked, winking.
A few months back, a well-known DC-based music blog had posted a glowing review of the Prince Charmings: A refreshing twist on the pretty, overly choreographed boy bands of the 90s, every member of the Prince Charmings plays his own instrument on original songs written by lead guitarist and co-founding member, Saul Horowitz . . .