Not a lot of flashy writing in this bit, just some antics of a couple of the characters remembered as they discussed the Chaos tour they recently completed.
The band and some of the staff of the recording studio are sitting around a couple of tables at a Savannah restaurant having what they think is (more on that in the next post) a bit of a post-tour celebration.
Tina is still a bit mischievous and Anita is still, well, Anita.
"Would you guys stop talking shop please?" Cheri asked from the other side of Rebecca. "It's boring."
"Alright, what you want to talk about baby-girl?"
"Claire wants to know what it's like?"
"What?" Tony asked, furrowing his brow.
"Touring! What do you think?"
Tony laughed. "Well you were with us. Didn't she believe you?"
"No! I mean yeah, I mean…." Cheri blew out an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes at him. "Must you be so difficult?"
Tony nodded, smiling at Cheri. "I'm your father. It's in the job description." Tony had long since mastered the primary rule of parenting teenagers: If you don't cause them to roll their eyes at you three times a day, you're doing it wrong.
"On stage Tony, she wants to know what it's like on stage in front of all those people."
Tony shrugged. "It depends who you are I guess. Kyle is still terrified every time he goes out. Rebecca never looks at the people, she looks straight over them. Me, I don't know. It was pretty exciting at first."
"At first?" Claire asked with some skepticism.
"Yeah. Well, we did the same show, with the same songs, in the same order, for eleven weeks. After the first few weeks it was starting to get kind of routine. "Except", he said, glaring at Tina, "when some people go changing things up on us."
Tina laughed then struck an innocent pose. "Who me?" she asked, staring at Tony through her bangs.
Tony just shook his head. "Yes you. Detroit, remember?"
Those at the table, except for Lauren and Claire, all broke out in laughter at the memory.
Finally, Cheri held her hand up then pointed to Dewayne. "Explain it to them please," she said, indicating her new friends.
Dewayne got his laughter under control, mostly, and tried to explain. "Well like Tony said, it was in Detroit. We just came onstage. As usual, it's packed, fourteen or fifteen thousand people. I always open the show with the starting solo to Invisible Lover. I'm just about to start when she," he indicated Tina, "starts wailing away on the damn saxophone!" It took a second, but we realize she's starting out with a somewhat, ahem, different, solo. The one for Last Regrets. That's the last song we're supposed to play."
"Hey! It was a good solo. I worked on it for three days!" Tina cried out.
"It was an awesome solo," Dewayne agreed, "to the wrong damn song!" The table broke up in laughter again. "So here's Tony, right…, he's not even holding the right guitar. Rebecca's back at her keyboards instead of out front, Gwen and Chrissie are totally confused, not to mention the whole lighting and effects production crew."
"What did you do?" Claire asked between giggles.
"Once those two were ready," he waved toward Tony and Rebecca, "we played the song. Then Tony starts the rhythm line to the second to last song! We ended up doing the whole show backwards."
"Let's just say our sound and production crew were somewhat less than happy with us when the show was over," Kyle added.
"Yeah, they got all legal with us and everything," Tina said. "All this 'breach of contract' this and that. Those guys had no sense of humor."
"That ended up costing us about thirty-five thousand dollars young lady!" came a voice from the second table. The voice belonged to Richard Gannon. Rich was an underutilized artists and repertoire vice-president they'd filched from Polygram to head up Cobblestone Digital. He was sitting with his wife Carly and many of the executives. It was a decidedly young group with Rich as the oldest at thirty six.
"Take it out of her pay!" Tony shouted back. "Just leave her accomplice alone."
"Accomplice?" Dewayne asked.
"Accomplice." Tony confirmed. He looked from Dewayne to Gwen sitting next to him. "Gwennie?"
"Yes Tony?" Gwen said in a little-girl voice.
"Why was the FM clip mike on Tina's sax hot and adjusted to the perfect volume at the beginning of the set? She didn't need it until the fourth song."
"I, uh, must've left it on by mistake?" she asked hopefully.
"Now Gwennie, that sax sits in a stand right in front Jerry's drums when she's not using it, right?"
"Yes"
"What happens if Jerry were to, oh, start playing the drums with that mike on?"
Gwen's face contorted into a knot. "Eww!, that That would distort something awful. That mike could never take drums."
Tony nodded and turned back to Dewayne. "Have you ever known Gwen to make a mistake like that?"
Dewayne shook his head and turned to his girlfriend. "You are so busted."
"Uh, lets let's talk about Anita!" Gwen said.
"Hey! Leave me out of it. I didn't do anything." Anita protested.
"Oh no? The boy in Birmingham you were kissing?" Gwen said, sensing a successful change of subject.
"It, was was… just a kiss, come on."
"Anita, he was like twenty !" Rebecca said.
"Well, I didn't know. He looked young."
"Yeah, he didn't look a day over eighteen. You were still twelve. You're lucky I was there; Tony would still be in jail if I let him at the guy."
Anita giggled. "Well the security man you called wasn't exactly easy on him either."