ONE
I’ve got bad news in my pocket, Charlie Remick thought.
He closed his eyes and steadied himself against the load-bearing beam next to the soundboard. When he opened them, the world had righted itself, or seemed to. It was hard to tell in the darkness.
Jimmy, the guy running the soundboard, must have noticed the sudden change in Charlie’s weather and leaned over to clap a friendly hand on his shoulder. He asked Charlie if he was all right. Shouted it, really. The crowds at Brooklyn Steel never got big enough to achieve a chest-rattling roar, but tonight they were in fine form, whooping and hollering and clapping and whistling enough to beat the band … so to speak. The band wasn’t onstage yet.
Charlie nodded at Jimmy, forced a lopsided smile, and said he was all right.
He gripped his phone through his pocket. It was still buzzing with incoming text messages. He ignored it—or tried to—and decided instead to applaud with the other concertgoers, but there was something other than the bad news that made him uneasy—something that crept up his arms and forced the hair on the back of his neck to attention.
Dread, Charlie figured.
Or maybe something more sinister.
He sensed it, only for a moment—the way someone will catch a whiff of an oncoming storm in the air on a cloudless day—and then it was gone. Something big had been set into motion and he had been dragged aboard, an unwitting passenger along for the ride. He only wished he knew where he was being taken.
His pocket buzzed again.
Onstage, the lights went up—a cool mixture of blue and green—and the crowd maxed out the dial. The band took the stage, smiling and waving sheepishly as the applause reached a fever pitch, and when Joey Banes—the rail-thin singer of the Mightier Ducks—grabbed the mic and said hello, he blushed openly as three hundred (and counting) smiling faces answered him.
Charlie stood in his little spot next to the soundboard, arms crossed coolly over his purple corduroy blazer, eyes trained on the stage, looking every bit like the A&R man he was. Seth Larson, the Ducks’ drummer, gave the wing nuts on his cymbal stands a cursory—and entirely unnecessary—tightening. Charlie saw this and sighed. The wing nuts were already tight. Seth knew that. They had been tight at sound check and they were tight now. The kid simply didn’t know what to do with himself while the other guys fished picks from their pockets and plugged in their guitars.
Soon Seth would learn what all drummers eventually learn: just sit there and do nothing until you’re ready to play. Fidgeting with your cymbal stand doesn’t make you look like a pro, it makes you look nervous. And Seth looked nervous. They all did.
Charlie wished he could smile. These were the moments he loved. But the bad news in his buzzing pocket wouldn’t let him. With a decisive whip of his wrist, he pulled out his phone and powered it down. He hoped doing so would ease the invisible vise around his chest, but just before the screen went black, his eyes caught the text message that started this whole nightmare and the grip around his lungs tightened even more.
The text message.
The bad news.
Hey guys. Dad passed away last night.
His heart skipped a beat, then after a brief lull in his chest, hammered heavily on the return swing. He shook his head, trying to clear the words from his mind, but they remained—floating aimlessly behind his eyes, the way the sun will burn a ring into your closed eyelids on a bright day.
Hey guys. Dad passed away last night.
A loud squelch from the house speakers forced the crowd to cover their ears, and Charlie shot Jimmy the sound guy an icy glare. Jimmy merely responded with a whaddya gonna do shrug and dipped one of the faders on the mixer. Onstage, Joey Banes was having trouble plugging his cable into the output jack of his Strat. His hands were shaking badly.
“Jesus Christ, Joey,” Charlie mumbled impatiently. “Act like you’ve been here before.”
Jimmy the sound guy shot him a quizzical look. “You sure you’re all right, man?”
Charlie didn’t respond. He was embarrassed that he’d been heard. Joey Banes was a good kid. Seth, too. They were all good kids. And this was a big night for them.
So give them a minute for chrissakes, Charlie told himself. You’re just stressed. Stressed and worried and feeling guilty because it’s been five years since—
A wave of supportive cheers erupted. Joey had finally managed to plug his guitar in. He blushed again, giving them a bashful wave, and Jimmy the sound guy pushed the fader back up.
Charlie relaxed, but only for a moment.
Because the words were still there …
Hey guys. Dad passed away last night.
… hiding in his pocket …
Hey guys. Dad passed away last night.
… and with each subsequent buzz of his phone, more words were coming.
Which of his sisters had written the initial text? he wondered. He’d forgotten to look. Was it Susan or Ellie? And what’s more—he felt a pinch of anger now—who broke that kind of news over a text message?
It could have been either of them, really. Susan had always been a bit robotic in the emotional department and would no doubt prefer to break such news impersonally. Eleanor, on the other hand, never would have been capable of relaying such terrible words out loud without breaking into incoherent sobs, so a text message would be the more sensible—and efficient—approach.
Where was Ellie now? he wondered. San Francisco? New Orleans? El Paso? Was she back home already?
Copyright © 2023 by Scott Leeds
