Inside Straight

The song—their third and last encore—ended in a flourish of riffs and cymbal crashes from Michael, a final power chord from Shiver, and an explosion of pure white light from a bank of floodlights behind the stage. The audience roared, a deluge of adulation that swelled and broke over them. “Fuckin’ yeah!” The Voice screamed at the audience through the Italian night. “Thank you! Grazie! Buona notte!” They shouted back, a wordless, thousand-throated monster’s voice. Michael underhanded his half-dozen sticks into the audience as the stage lights went dark and house lights came up at the rear of the auditorium. The audience seemed to be split nearly evenly between jokers and nats, judging from the faces Michael glimpsed, but it was the jokers who were nearest the stage, the nats mostly lurking to the rear.

Roadies swarmed the stage, hooded flashlights guiding the band off to the tunnel behind the stage. “Fantastic show, DB! Great job! Esposizione eccellente!” they said, as he passed them, leading the way. He nodded, but he could already feel the stage adrenaline rushing away, and with it any sense of pleasure. The malaise and subdued anger he’d felt since leaving American Hero wrapped more tightly around him with every step he made toward the dressing room, the energy and pleasure of the performance fading.

“Fuckin’ A, that was tight,” Shivers said as the door closed behind them. He tossed his ancient, scarred Stratocaster into its case, grinning—with his red-and-black-scaled face, it looked more like a leer. “Better than the Paris show. Shit, DB, those new kicks in ‘Stop Me Again’ were killer. Just killer. S’Live, you and me gotta catch those next time.”

“Yeah,” Bottom added. He’d popped one of the champagne bottles and upturned it into his horselike snout. More of the bubbling liquid seemed to escape the sides of his mouth than went down his throat, soaking his already-sopping T-shirt. “Let’s listen to the board tape. If I punch those bass drum hits with you, it’ll be monster. Wish we’d recorded it that way in the studio. DB, man, you listening?”

He wasn’t. Michael dropped onto the couch, multiple arms sprawled out, his eyes closed. The remnants of the show still rang in his ears. The cushions at the far end sagged a few moments later under an unseen weight and Michael felt the springs move in response.

“’Sup, big guy? You ain’t yourself,” The Voice said from the air: low, sonorous, a cello bowed by a master. “You were playing angry out there—sounded nice and aggressive, but it ain’t the usual fun-lovin‘ you. ’S matter, man?”

Michael shook his head. The searing adrenaline high he’d felt during the concert was gone, as if someone had pulled a handle and flushed it away. “Nuthin’,” he said. “And fuckin’ everything. When we’re playing, it’s cool. But after …”

“Bad shit goin’ down in Egypt.” Michael glanced over to where The Voice’s head would have been and could almost see the raised eyebrows. “Hey, I ain’t fuckin’ stupid, man. I seen what you kick up on your laptop: CNN and Yahoo News instead of porn. Shit, how boring is that?”

Michael shrugged with all six arms. “Hey, I’ve been—”

The door opened and their manager came into the room: Grady Cohen, a nat the label had hired as part of their contract. “Kiss-Ass Cohen,” DB had dubbed him early on. He wondered if Grady knew why the band usually called him “KA.” Michael thought that if Grady was ever infected with the wild card, he’d turn into an empty suit. Behind him, in the theater’s backstage corridor, Michael could see the groupies waiting to be let in.

There were always women waiting, nat or joker, whatever he wanted. Only …

Grady was grinning and applauding as he strode into the room. “Hey, KA!” The Voice said loudly. “You look happy—you snag a blow job on the way back?”

Grady ignored The Voice. “Great show, boys. That’s all I need to say. The promoters are contentedly counting the ticket sales, and the label tells me that Incidental Music for Heroes shows up as number-one on Billboard next week. Numero Uno. It doesn’t get any better than that. So congratulations all around, eh? Don’t need to say more.” He clapped his hands again. He looked at each of them as if he were counting bills in his wallet. “All right, here’s the schedule. Wake-up call is at noon, and the limo will be at the hotel to get us to the airport two hours later. It’s Berlin tomorrow night, then London, then right on to New York—the label’s added Cleveland, Dallas, and Denver to the American tour. Boys, Joker Plague is hot. Hot. Enjoy the ride.” He grinned again. “And speaking of rides …”

He went to the door and opened it. “Come on in,” he said to those waiting outside. He gestured sweepingly toward the band. “Entrato. È tempo di celebrare …”

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