The Scream (19 page)

Another tradition. Their contract rider always included a gym-access clause, as well as the requisite food and drink demands (like Pete's bizarre insistence on six-packs of Yoo-Hoo and grapefruit-flavored seltzer in the dressing room, with which he made a vile concoction he called a Florida Yoo-Hoo spritzer).

Perspiration slicked their hair and left stains like Rorschach-blots tracking down their unfashionable sweats. Bland disco music blared through speakers flush-mounted in the ceiling; a smattering of guests in carefully coordinated togs moved through the circuit, trying very hard not to make a mess.

Hempstead leaned over to adjust the set pin on the bench press. "God, I hate this music," he muttered into the towel draped around his neck. "Whatchoo want this on, anyway?"

Jake huffed, staring at the ceiling. His T-shirt (emblazoned with a college logo that read
CATATONIC STATE
) stuck to his heaving chest, the light gray color gone charcoal in the dousing. He took another deep breath and tightened his gloved grip on the press bar.

"Two-forty."

"Two-
forty
!" Hempstead looked down at him, a bead of sweat dangling on the end of his nose. "Man, you crazy. You never lifted that much in your
life
."

"Yeah, well, I'm going to now."

"What, d'you have an extra helping of Wheaties today or somethin'?"

"I'm a masochist. Set it up, already."

"Seems like an awful lot of trouble, sometimes, just to stave off decrepitude." Hempstead grinned.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just set it up, wouldja?"

"Okay," he shrugged, "it's your hernia."

He pushed the pin into the rack of black iron blocks and watched as Jake started to suck air, going
whoof whoof whoof
like a derailing steam engine. On the third
whoof
he pushed, and pushed . . .

. . . and the weights rose up, faltered, rose a little more. . .

. . . and Jake pushed, pushed some more, his face beet-red, the veins in his forehead bulging as he let out a roar and gave it every last ounce of strength he had . . .

. . . and still, it wasn't enough.

He released his grip and let them clatter back down on their guides; they
ker-chunked
into place with brute finality. "
Damn
," he gasped.

"So you ain't Superman." Hempstead smiled. "You still sing pretty. Where d'you learn to breathe like that, anyway?"

"Lamaze classes with Rachel," Jake moaned, lifting himself painfully off the bench. "Owwww . . . I'm gettin' too old for this shit."

"Bullshee-it." Hempstead handed him the towel and slid into place on the bench. "You jus' gettin' raggedy around the edges, is all." He took a huge lungful of air, expelled it, shook the sweat out of his eyes. "Got your perimeter spread too thin, muh man." He sucked in another gust, exhaled, and pistoned the bar straight up.

"You been runnin' yo'self like a fool: takin' on the world, eatin' and sleepin' like shit, gettin' all stressed out over this thing . . ."

He levered it smoothly back down, repeated the motion-up, down, up, down-going through a full set of ten in the time it took Jake to fail once, threw in one for good measure, lowered the bar back into place with a dull
thump
, then sat up and took the towel.

". . . all kinds of weird shit can happen," he concluded.

"Yeah, so tell me something I
don't
know."

Hempstead rolled his eyes and said nothing.

"What? Are you holding out on me?" Jake waited for more, but nothing seemed forthcoming. "Would you mind filling me in already," he pressed, "or should I hold an envelope to my head to get the answer?"

"Dunno." Hempstead shrugged and shook his head. "Lotta seeds of discontent been sown in your con-
sid
erable absence. Jesse's got some kind of problem she won't talk about; Petey's been getting wasted every fuckin' night; the Bobs are restless-with you gone most the time, it all kinda flies apart."

Jake just looked at him.

"You know, Petey runs a good rehearsal," Hempstead continued, "but he ain't the leader.
You
the glue that holds this thing together, Jake, and I think everybody's gettin' a lil' bit tired of the holy war."

Jake squirmed under his best friend's appraisal and tried to shrug it off. "Comes with the territory, I guess."

"A
lotta
things come with the territory, man, and sometimes there's more than one road to go by. Best to keep that in mind."

"So what are you telling me?" Jake insisted. "That I should give it up? I can't do that. Not now."

"I ain't even sayin' that you should. But be advised: we players, first and foremost.
Not
politicians; and for sure, not saviors."

"Oh. come on, man-"

"No, Jake. You wanted to hear this, so now you will." Jake
humphed
and tried to keep his fists from clenching. Hempstead's voice was steady and low as he continued. "Ever since 'TV Ministries' hit it big, we been less of a band and more of a circus sideshow; an' ever since this whole Rock Aid thing started, you been gettin' further an' further away from what it is you're all about. Talk shows an' shit are fine, but the best hype in the world is still just hype.

"Talk is cheap, bro'. It's the action that counts."

"
This isn't just talk!
" Jake was hopping mad now. People stared nervously in their direction. "God damn it. Out of everybody, I thought at least
you
understood! These people didn't stop with warning labels; you give them an inch and they take a continent! They
have
to be stopped, or the whole game is over, and you can't do that by sitting around at the studio-"

"No, you do it by sittin' around on the Moynihan show-"

"You do it by raising money to
fight
them, God damn it! In Congress! In the courts! You do it by
matching
them, blow for blow-"

"Can we do this at a lower decibel level, please?"

"Yeah, right," Jake hissed, but his volume dropped. "I just love all the fucking support I'm getting. Makes me wonder what I'm even doing it for."

"Hate to break this to you, babe, but lots of people been wonderin' the very same thing."

"Oh, great." Jake was red-faced and miserable looking. "So what's that supposed to mean?"

"Let me put it to you simple. How many people go out an' buy Bob Geldof's solo albums, you think? As opposed to the Boomtown Rats?"

"That's not fair."

"You'll have this. Next question: When was the last time you sat in on rehearsal? Three weeks, at least? Almost a month before that?"

"Oh, Jesus . . ."

"Bottom line, Jake. Once this show is history, you're gonna have to make a decision: Do you want a band or not? I mean, you got to consider: you got a bunch of professional musicians who picked up their lives and
moved
them, from New York City to Pennsylvania, just for the chance to keep working with you. Now they sittin' around like bored little wifeys with nothing to do but watch TV till the hubby comes home."

"You want me to bring you flowers, is that it?"

"Not funny, bro'. You keep this up, they maybe start to thinkin' they made a mistake."

"Oh, man." Jake had his head in his hands now. "This sucks. I really don't need this."

"Well, you got it."

Silence dropped like a gauntlet between them. Hempstead felt he'd said enough; he waited for Jake to pick it up. The silence had allowed the hated chintzy disco pap from the speakers to intrude on their lives again.

"God, I hate this shit," Jake muttered.

"Me, too."

"You know, if Furniss has his way,
all
music will be as lame as this crap. No, worse. Even
this
is immoral, to his way of thinking. That jungle rhythm, don't you know."

Hempstead said nothing, but he smiled a little.

"I didn't choose this battle," Jake continued. "This battle chose me. I think you can appreciate the difference. If I felt like I had any choice in the matter, I'd just play with you guys every day.

"But they're trying to take that away from me, man. They're fucking with our tribal music: our freedom to play it, to be who we are. They want to take our whole stake in the culture and drive it back underground.

"Can you live with that? I know I can't."

"I hear you."

"Okay. But freedom isn't something that God doles down. It's something you fight for, if you want it bad enough. If you don't, then the people who want to control you just haul its ass away, and you're left with whatever they decide to give you.

"And it's a bitch, because
freedom
is a bitch. But what other choice do you have?"

Hempstead shrugged, remained in silence. It was clear that Jake had a psychic boil to lance. Best he get it over with, soon as possible.

"But you know what the worst of it is? I'm not even sure what side I'm on half the time. I mean, on the one hand, we've got Pastor Furniss and Esther Shrake trying to legislate morality and make the world safe for stupidity. That's easy: I know they're my enemy. We can smell each other a mile away.

"But then you get to what's supposed to be
our
side, and we've got crazy bastards like The Scream, causing riots in concert parking lots and telling people to fuck the devil and raising hell every which way and otherwise telling us that maybe the assholes on the other side of the fence were right in the first place!"

"That's 'cause you're not on anybody's side. The fact is, you're on your own. You just have to go with what you believe."

"That's what I'm doing. For all the fucking good it does me."

"That's people, Jake. They don't give a shit. They just want to go along their merry way, do whatever the hell they want. They want to have opinions, so long as they don't have to back 'em up. They want to be left alone.

Now you come in here all pissed off, and you say, 'Let my people rock 'n' roll!'; and that's cool, so long as you know that everybody doin' the same dance here. We don't want equality. We want to be on top. And because there's so many of us, and we all disagree, ain't nobody ever goin' to really win this game."

"But you have to try."

"Oh, yeah." Hempstead smiled. "Otherwise, what's the point of even playin'?"

Ah, mundanity," Rachel sighed. "How sweet it is."

She was at the kitchen counter, scrawling her grocery list on the back of a used envelope from Jake's nut file; these days, his mailbag averaged about fifty true fruitcakes a week. This one was from a Mrs. Clarence Rorbaugh of Glen Rock, Pa. It was spread out before her as she jotted down funzies like light bulbs and diapers:

Dear sir:

My friend Lois and I saw your rock music vidial, and we just want to say that you are sick. There should be a place for people like you and there already is. Its called the Loony Bin and thats where you belong.

In case you dont know mister, this is a Christian nation. People who are in leege with Satan shouldnt be a lowed to spread there filth. We rote to MTV but they wont listen because they belong to Satan too.

We will pray for you but it wont do any good if you dont repent. God loves the sinner but hates the sin and if you dont wise up and ask Jesus to forgive you, you will be damned to Hell with no one but yourself to blame.

Think about it Mister Hammer, because its your Immortal Soul your talking about.Don't be a fool. Give up your evil ways. Apoligise to God. Beg His forgiveness. Then you can now the true love that Jesus has for His disipels.

Jesus loves YOU!!!

Thats all I have to say. Think hard Mister Hammer or you will suffer the fires of Hell forever. Its your choice. You seem like a smart man so use some smarts. "For God so loved the world that . . .
"

"Don't tell me," Rachel muttered. "Let me guess." There was more-three more pages, in fact-but she really didn't have time to waste on it. She'd read a thousand clones of the sentiments therein, dispatched by a thousand identical clowns; the odds were pretty good that she was missing nothing new if she passed on the remainder of the text.

The ones that really concerned her were somewhat fewer and farther between. The most recent came last week, in fact: so brief and succinct that she could still picture every gnarled pencil stroke of its being . . .

Dear Scum!

You will die. Your family will die. You won't know when. You won't know why. God has spoken. Say good-bye.

Love,

A Friend in Jesus

Now
that
was a goddamn chilling piece of stuff to find in your mailbox. It was one of those rare times that Jake actually sent the thing off to the FBI, in fact: check the handwriting, check the style, check the Shreveport, Louisiana postmark and date. Nothing had come up, of course, and probably nothing would.

That only made it all the worse.

The most terrifying thing about it was the sense of cool control: this person, whoever it was, knew exactly what they were saying. It had the embalming fluid reek of deadly professionalism, minus none of the psychosis to be found in lesser fruitcake fare. This person, whoever it was, knew that flying to and from Harrisburg International was a matter of maybe twelve hours and three, four hundred dollars.

If he was even from Shreveport at all.

You won't know when.

You won't know why
. . .

At her feet, Natalie was making ominous overtures toward the trash receptacle. "No, baby. Don't eat the garbage. No."

Natalie paused and looked at her: the beginnings of moral inquiry. She wore a pair of purple bloomers over her last Ultra Pamper, tiny silver Reeboks, and a white tanktop T-shirt that read
I Know You Are, But What Am I?
Her wide eyes swarmed with infant guile.

"No," Rachel repeated, engaging those baby blues.

Natalie let out a toothless grin. "Nah-nah PFTHHHH!"

Rachel smiled. "You're beautiful."

Natalie, appeased, turned back to the trash.

"Natalie, NO!" Rachel yelled, and that was the end of Funtime. The Midget from Beyond Her Loins switched masks, from comedy to tragedy, in the space of a second. The wailing began. Rachel thought again of Jake's promised vasectomy, and smiled.