Rock Revenge: Alex's Story

***

I was nervous before we even got to sound check. Sure, we’d played a bit before but that was to a crowd made up mostly of our friends.

Shit had gotten real. There would be no one we knew there tonight, no one who’d cheer and scream no matter how badly we sounded. For all I knew, the crowd would as hostile as all hell.

“There’ll be no one here at all,” Pete said. “If anyone turns up to see a band on a Thursday night, it’s their friends. And we have no friends. Not here. The ‘crowd’ won’t even rock up until around eleven. Well after we’ve played, packed up and headed home.”

He had a point. We got set up and ran through a few songs. But, even without thoughts of a hostile crowd, I was nervous. I wasn’t playing to a crowd. I was playing to one person only. I needed to prove myself and I need a reason to stick around.

“Whoa, we sound fantastic in here,” Pete said. “This place is awesome.”

“Imagine how much better we’ll sound with a crowd packed in.”

We laughed. Even without a crowd, it was good to be on stage.

“Nice work, guys,” came a shout from the back of the room. “Now, are you finished so we can set up?”

We’d gone five minutes over our allotted sound check time. I gave the other band the thumbs up and we moved off. The guys coming in were a bunch of heavy metal dudes. I wasn’t sure if they would mesh that well with us. We were more classic rock. I guess you can’t be too fussy for a first gig but it might not go well for us if the few people watching us were all their metal mates.

We rounded up our stuff.

“What say we head downstairs for a drink?” Ferdie said.

I’d managed to get this far without Alex realising and figured it was better if he didn’t know until we got on stage. I wanted to haunt him, possess his mind so that, no matter what else he was doing or how he tried to avoid it, the past would always be torturing him.

“Let’s get some food instead.” I put my jacket on. “I’m starving.”

The guys followed behind me.

In the cafe, Ferdie flirted with the waitress. In between, he’d turn to Pete.

“Ten. Surely we’ll get ten people. There have to be a few regulars who turn up no matter what. And the next band, they might have friends who get there early.”

“Ten might be doable.”

I pushed the food around my plate. The pasta had seemed like a good idea but once I got it, it was just cardboardy and blerk. Far too heavy for my stomach.

“Maybe fifteen?”

“Maybe.”

It’d be bad to do the show with an empty stomach but I couldn’t eat that food.

“What does it matter?” I asked. “If we get five people or five thousand, it’s all the same. We just have to make sure we are the greatest band they’ve ever seen. We’ll play like it’s a packed stadium, like we’re stars. Because even if five people pay to see us play, they’ve paid good money and they deserve to have us triumph.”

Pete nodded. “Well said. And Holden King will be there?”

“That’s what he said, although I can’t promise anything. He might’ve just been talking shit.”

Sally met us when we got back to the club. She went through the rundown one more time. I noticed a few people standing at the bar. All strangers. Alex wasn’t among them, and that was a relief. My hands already shook so much, I wondered if I could hold the guitar. As much as I’d talked big, even five people would be judging us. And even five people could think we sucked worse than anything they’d heard before. We weren’t mucking around in front of our friends. This was professional. No excuses.

I went to the back room and fixed my makeup, checking my lipstick hadn’t smeared. The heavy metal guys all slumped around on couches. Not one nervous glance among the five of them. One of the guys moved to let me closer to the cracked and bespeckled mirror.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I meant what I said earlier, you guys sounded great up there.”

I turned and shot him a smile. At least we had one fan here, although if he thought that was enough to get him into my pants, he was sorely overestimating himself.