Different Circles

She reached up and touched the purple bruise and swelling on Jake’s right cheek, the result of a blow by that three-hundred-pound bouncer while he had been on his back on the stage. The brute packed a pretty good punch.

“How is it looking?” Jake asked her.

“It looks like the swelling has stopped,” she said. “Does it hurt?”

Jake shrugged. “I’ve had worse,” he said. And this was true. The beating he had received from the truckers in Texarkana and the police in New York City had been considerably worse.

“I still can’t believe that Nerdly started a fight with Pantera’s crew,” she said.

“Well,” Jake said, “one could make the argument that it was Pantera’s sound guy who started the fight when he called Sharon a ‘dick sucking kike cunt’ and then grabbed his crotch and told her to drop down and start sucking.” Jake chuckled. “And man, did he laugh when Nerdly told him that was going to have to ‘engage in honor-defending hand to hand combat’ with him for making that remark. And then Nerdly did one of those straight punches right to the asshole’s forehead. He didn’t laugh anymore after that.”

“Who would’ve thought that Nerdly could do that,” she said. “I mean, I knew he went to karate classes and all, but I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that he could take on three guys at once.”

Jake nodded. “I never would’ve believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” Jake said. “I mean, I’ve seen him take on three girls at a time before, but never three guys.”

Laura shook her head and rolled her eyes as another riff came blasting out over them, this one the riff from Early Grave. More adjustments could be heard as it played out.

“Adjusting down the midrange,” Jake remarked. “Just like it should be adjusted.”

“He really is doing them a big favor,” Laura said.

“I only hope Matt appreciates it,” Jake said.

“What about you?” she asked. “Does it bother you that the Nerdlys are helping them. You’ve got this competition thing with Matt, after all.”

“Yeah, we’ve got this competition thing going, I guess,” Jake said. “But no, it doesn’t bother me. Music should be as good as it is possible for it to be, even if it’s not my music. All Nerdly and Sharon are doing is following that rule.”

She nodded slowly. “I guess that makes sense,” she said.

The second and final day of the Tsunami Sound Festival rolled on. The lineups of the earlier bands were a bit different from yesterday’s show, but the last four bands were the same. The crowd was a little less than yesterday as well, but there were still nearly ninety thousand people out there. Jake and Laura were able to get a little bit of sleep after lunch was served, climbing into the main bed in the trailer and cuddling together under the blanket. When he woke up, his hand was throbbing so badly that he needed to pop some ibuprofen and Tylenol just to be able to keep flexing it.

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to go on?” Laura asked him, worried.

“I’ll be okay,” he assured her.

She looked very concerned but made no further mention of it.

Pantera took to Stage 1 on schedule. Their head of security was sporting a pretty spectacular bruise on his forehead and the large bouncer type, who was in charge of stagefront security, was forced to perform his role with a tight restraining band wrapped around his ribcage where Nerdly had kicked him. The band itself played as usual and made no mention of the event. Their sound, also as usual, was overly loud and atrocious. Still, their fans cheered them enthusiastically, maybe even more so than normal. By this point wildly inaccurate rumors had spread about the physical confrontation that had occurred. In all the stories it had been Dimebag Darrel and the boys who had had the confrontation with Jake and his boys. The Pantera fans all heard that Dimebag and Vinnie Paul had beaten the shit out of Jake and his drummer. And the Jake fans all heard that Jake and his bass guitarist had been the ones to beat the shit out of Darrel and Vinnie Paul (they had heard that martial arts had been involved and, since Ben was Asian, it had to have been him that practiced it). Nerdly’s name never came up in the discussion at all.

Jake popped another eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen and another thousand of Tylenol just before they reported to the stage. Once again, Pantera’s final number, Walk, was winding down as they made the journey.

“Yeah,” Jake said with a smile as he heard the hook line for the tune, “we were talking to you, motherfuckers.”

Jake continued to flex and unflex his right hand as the crew worked their way through the volume checks again. It hurt each time he did it, but he determined he was loose enough to play and not fuck up. The medications started to kick in about five minutes before showtime, bringing the throb down to a dull ache. I got this, he thought confidently.