approached before he had a positive identification.
“How’d the interview go?”
Mike nodded, with a little confidence but no happiness. “Pretty good. Guy said if it was up to him he’d hire me, but of course he needs to get it approved first.”
“Yeah.”
“I gotta get this tie off. Man, I’m not sure if I can handle strapping this around my neck every day.”
“Aw, you’ll get used to it. Me, that would be too much, man, but you? You can handle anything, and you know it.”
The pair walked down the street, slowly, toward no place in particular.
“They’re thinking if they hire me, they’ll start me out in Dallas.”
The bassist just kept nodding, steadily, like he had from the second sentence of their conversation. “Dallas is good. Hear there’s a lot of good-looking women down there.”
“Yeah. Weather’s warm. More hotties where the weather’s really nice. Cold doesn’t make for good hottie-producing climate.”
Frank suddenly stopped, as if this was the wrong conversation and they needed to start over. He started to say something, but no words came out.
You think we can do any gigs before you move away? Mike knew that’s what he’d wanted to ask. We can get another guitar player, Nick would understand, he’d have wanted it that way, you know that, right?
Mike found himself glad he couldn’t get the words out. The two of them would never play together again, not without Nick. Maybe down in Dallas, Mike would find guys to jam with, but he’d always be looking at the guitar player, wondering how good Nick would be if they’d never gone to that gig. As for Frank, he needed to get back on the horse as soon as possible. But starting a new band didn’t mean he had to quit hanging out with Mike. Exactly the way Nick would have wanted it.
That was another conversation that they should have started; where Nick could have disappeared to, if he really went back to the Black Rock Club like they both pictured in their nightmares, if he had figured that they had taken so much from him that they might as well have the rest, wondering if he had become one of them, wondering if every one of them had been an Nick at one time, wondering how many other bands had been invited to that little town on the other side of the state.
But that conversation wasn’t going to be had. Instead, Frank continued with the one they were having; the one that fit them as well as a rental tux. “Well, hey, you see the next Stevie Ray Vaughn down there, you be sure you sign him up, okay?”
“Yeah, but wasn’t he from Austin? That’s a ways away.”
Smartass Frank was going to come up with something good in reply now. Mike hoped it was really good; they could both use a laugh.
>+<
About the Author
Greg M. Hall has many stories published online and in print, and his debut novel, Traffic Control, is available online and in select bookstores. For more of his stories, visit his website at www.gregmhall.com, his podcast at www.killbox.mevio.com, or his blog at sf.gregmhall.com. He lives in eastern Nebraska with his wife, a bunch of kids, and pet tortoise.
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