After Several Days, Something Happened

After Several Days, Something Happened

On the second day, we travelled to a new site. On the third day, we set everything up again. On the fourth day was the second performance. On the fifth day I stopped counting, because we’d begun to do everything again. Things were, in a word, hectic. There was no time to make new friends. Kay took the van and travelled back and forth between us and home, because she apparently had things to be doing.

Reason:
I didn’t go home with Kay—even though it would have been more than nice to see my parents, and to get away from all the insanity and just to spend some time with my best friend—because I didn’t want to leave Ian.

Honest Reason:
Or, more specifically, I didn’t want to leave Ian with Rae who, although very nice and sweet in her own way, watched him in a way that sometimes worried me. Apparently Jenna’s warning hadn’t meant too much to her.

It might have been nice to get away from all the insanity, though. Because, as much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I had to be realistic—Kyle was following me. Either he was doing it just to mess with me or because he actually wanted me, but regardless of why, it was something like upsetting.

The whole situation was bizarre. Around anyone else, he was sullen and terse, the way I’d seen him to be that first night in the tent. But he always came to seek me out when I was alone, mostly during Feral Children’s show and practice times; he practically had a sixth sense for finding me.

If I hung around the practice area, he would come and sit next to me. In addition to annoying me, this made Pete exceedingly nervous, particularly when Kyle offered tiny bits of advice like, “You need to practice your left-handed sixteenth notes, my friend.” And as amusing it was to watch Pete be nervous, especially when Kyle was being legitimately helpful, his nerves made him mess up almost constantly, and that irritated Ian. I was just waiting for the time when he asked Adnan to take Kyle out.

Adnan would have enjoyed that.

So I found other haunts. Sometime towards the two-week mark, I found the most effective one of all.

Keeley, I’d learned, was extremely apprehensive about singing, despite her amazing, amazing voice. And I, she’d learned, played the piano—and thereby the keyboard. I had an excess of time on my hands on practice and performance days, so I’d taken to helping her out while Ian was busy.

I felt like I was being inducted into a secret club, when I got to work with angel twin Hank to
learn Cremnomania’s music. If I had been them, I wouldn’t have trusted me not to take the super cool riff or whatever to Ian, but maybe they all realized that I sucked enough at music to not be able to snitch on them. Or maybe they just trusted me. But regardless, the time I spent with Keeley was uninterrupted by one certain irritating drummer.

“Go back to measure forty, would you, Kettering?” Keel found my maiden name to be amusing—or maybe not. I couldn’t really tell why she chose to call me that. “I sound like crap on that jump.”

We were hanging out in Cremnomania’s trailer. “Jesus Christ, Keel,” I muttered, as I flipped back through the pages. “You don’t sound like crap on anything. Get a grip.” She threw a shoe at me. I couldn’t dodge. There wasn’t exactly a lot of room for practicing in here—currently, I was hunched on one of the top bunks with the keyboard in my lap because Keeley needed to stand to sing.

I was just playing the first notes of the requested section when the door banged open. Dave and Kyle. They both stopped dead when they saw me. I blinked at them uneasily, but kept playing until Keel stopped singing. There was an uncomfortable pause as the last notes died away.

A Question:
Did they look so surprised and upset because I was here, and they hadn’t expected that, or because they’d been saying something about me and hadn’t expected me to be here—or didn’t know if I’d over heard?
From the looks on their faces, I was inclined to believe it was the latter.
But what, then, had they been saying?

Keeley shot Kyle a disgusted look, but leaned over him to give Dave a peck on the cheek. “Hey, you two.”

“Sloan.” Kyle greeted me with his usual Cheshire smile. I didn’t understand, and I didn’t want to understand. “What brings you here, today? I’ve been looking for you, my friend.”

There were a hundred and one things I would have liked to say, the best of which was “I’m not your friend” and the worst of which was “Hi,” but instead I just said, “Practicing with Keeley.” There wasn’t any sort of hidden message or implication in that.

“We have regular practice in an hour,” Dave said. Once again, I was out of the loop, out of the group, a floater with nothing to do. “Are you going to wear out your voice singing?” Kyle hopped up onto the bed next to me. I shifted over to give him more room. He laughed at me under his breath.

Keeley shrugged. “Eh, I guess I’ll stop. I kind of want to get something to eat before practice.” She looked up at me. “That cool with you, Kettering?”

I shrugged back. “Sure.” It wasn’t like I didn’t have experience with being on my own. I was becoming a veritable expert these last few days. Kay kept bringing me books from the library when she made her trips home. I was working my way through the philosophers. Losing that constant supply was going to be a sad event indeed, when school started for Kay.

Tilting his head at me, Kyle asked, “Kettering?” He asked me endless questions. He was always interested. I wasn’t that interesting by a long shot.

“My maiden name,” I told him. Maybe it was perverse to get delight from it, but I always enjoyed how uncomfortable he became whenever I mentioned my marriage. It was petty, but it was some sort of revenge for how uncomfortable he made me feel all the time.

But his flinching pause only lasted for a second. Then awareness dawned on his face. “No way,” he said. He’d seen the joke. “Your name is Sloan Kettering? Are you serious?” He laughed that infectious laugh. For the first time, the joke almost seemed funny—it would have been legitimately funny if I hadn’t heard it a hundred times before. I cracked a small smile.

If Kyle had been one of those people who was always cheerful, I might have genuinely enjoyed being around him. When he felt good, people around him felt good—or at least I did. He had something like charisma. It was a pleasant, attractive trait. Too bad he was far too irritating for that to ever make a difference.

“It’s not funny,” I told him. But I was laughing a little myself.

“It’s funny,” he assured me.

Dave was sneaking an arm around Keeley’s waist; clearly he wanted to take her and go have their lunch. It was sweet, the way those two were always together. They made an adorable, endearing couple. I could only imagine what Pete would think if they were in his band. At least I wasn’t a core part of the group—nor Kay—if either of the relationships had failed. Both Dave and Keel were integral parts of the interesting sound that Cremnomania churned out.

Kyle put his hand on my shoulder. I whipped my head around to glare at him. “You two go on,” he encouraged as Keeley arched her eyebrow. “I’ll hang out with old Sloan here.”

Dave didn’t stop to disagree, though Keeley might have said something. “Right, thanks, Kyle. See you later, Sloan.” I offered a salute as a goodbye as he dragged Keeley out by her hand.
I turned my head to Kyle, trying to lace my glare with disapproval. “You know that I’m married and don’t like you, right?”

He smiled at me sweetly. “You know that you’re sitting on my bed, right?”

Classy. Of course this was his bed; I’d assumed it was Keeley and Dave’s. Kyle, one. Sloan, zero. I jumped town and stalked out of the trailer with all the attitude I could muster and Kyle followed.

Fact:
Even though he annoyed me more than I could say, it was sometimes just a little bit better to have Kyle tagging along with me than to be alone. He just made me feel like someone wanted to be around me, wasn’t too busy for me. And that was a nice feeling, regardless of who provided it.

“Don’t be mad, Sloan,” he called after me. Even though I had been a runner in high school and could have easily—easily!—run far enough and fast enough that he’d never, ever be able to catch up with me, I slowed down and let him join me. When it was just him and me, Kyle could be okay. That wasn’t to say he was always okay, just that he could be.

I shook my head at him. “I’m not mad,” I said. I wasn’t really mad. “You’re just annoying as hell, let me tell you.” He ruffled my hair. “Stop that!” I protested. “I really hate it when you do that.”

He shrugged. “It’s all part of my endearing charm. But allow me to buy you an apologetic sandwich to redeem myself.” We were passing a booth that sold sausage and peppers. I didn’t know how he knew I loved sausage and peppers, or maybe it was just a lucky guess, but I was hungry and I didn’t have any money on me.

Looking at him, I gauged whether or not I would be encouraging him by accepting the sandwich. He had a bright, innocent look that I knew was all an act. “Fine,” I said. “But I’m not saying yes because I like you, or anything.”

For that, I got a playful punch on the shoulder. “Sure you don’t,” he scoffed. He grabbed my elbow to pull me over to the food booth. “Hey, Jim,” he greeted the guy behind the glass.
Jim, a man of about seventy with a comical paper hat perched on his head, bared teeth so perfect and straight and white that they had to be dentures. “Hey there, Kyle. When are you guys going on today?”

So Kyle had friends among the food vendors. That was a facet I hadn’t expected to encounter. “Not until six. Doing that whole nighttime thing today.” Cremnomania was playing at the same time as Jenna, Rae, and Molly, which meant I wasn’t going to get to see my work with Keeley pay off—a bummer, especially since I liked Cremnomania’s sound better. But I was trying to be supportive of Pete and his girlfriend. “Did you listen to that band I told you about? The Decemberists?”

Jim nodded, and his cheerful smile—the focal point of his face, really—bobbed up and down. “Yeah, yeah. I have to say, Kyle, you pick ‘em good. I especially like the parts where they’re just using the one acoustic guitar.” From the looks of him, I would not have thought Jim to be a guy who knew about music.

“Awesome.” He was really into this conversation with this older guy, talking about The Decemberists, of all things. “I’ll bring you another CD I have of theirs. But can I have two sandwiches?”

“For you, sure,” Jim teased, winking at me. I smiled at him. He, too, had charisma. Kyle dug some crumpled bills out of his pockets. “I’m not gonna charge you, kid,” he told him—when Kyle opened his mouth to argue, Jim raised one plastic-gloved hand. “If it weren’t for you, I’d have already spent a solid twenty dollars on CDs. You’re letting me use them for free. If I can’t spot you two three-dollar sandwiches in exchange, what kind of friend am I?”

Kyle looked unsure, but then Jim nodded emphatically, and he put the money back in his pocket. “All right, fine,” he conceded. “But next time you’re getting paid, or I’m not coming back for sandwiches. And that would suck, because they don’t serve sausage and peppers over at the food tent, and I really like sausage and peppers.” He gave Jim a meaningful glance.

To his credit, the old man merely laughed. “Whatever you say, kid. But I’m promising you one free sandwich for every CD you lend me. Next time, you’re paying whether you want to or not.” He winked at me again. Again, I smiled.

Taking the sandwiches and handing one to me, Kyle bumped fists with the old man. “Whatever you say, Jimbo. You don’t know how many Decemberists CD’s I have.”

“Get out of here,” Jim ordered. “You’re holding up the way for the paying customers.” We weren’t.

“Bye, Jim,” I called. A set of bored-looking parents moved up to the booth. Well, it was their own faults for insisting on accompanying their kids. These were good sausage and peppers.

An Observation:
They say a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
I couldn’t say if that was true or not.
But, for me, at least, I knew that people who had good taste in food generally had good taste in other things. It was just a matter of personal preference.
Sausage and peppers was about as good as you could get.

“Friend to the carnies, Kyle?” I teased. In actuality, I thought it was kind of sweet. Most people didn’t pay too much attention to the behind-the-scenes workers. Like, imagine what a mess this whole event would have been if there weren’t people like Jean. And imagine how hungry people like me would get if there weren’t people like Jim serving their sausage and peppers? And yet it was only ever the people like Ian and Kyle and Dave and Jenna who got the recognition for making something great.

He bit into his sandwich. “Not really. Jim’s just a cool guy. He’s a retired history teacher and a vet—fought in World War Two. And he’s got really good taste in music. He’s better to talk to than a lot of people our age, you know?”

I gestured that he had a smear of oil on his face. He wiped it on the back of his wrist. “I guess I know.”

“You should get to know him,” he said. “I think you’d like him.”

“Because you know me so well?” I teased. He opened his mouth to reply, probably a reply of a snarky nature, when I heard my name called from behind: “Sloan!”

I turned. Ian. Kyle cursed under his breath. “Sometimes I forget about him.” I wanted to elbow him in the side, but I had to save the sloppy dripping of my sandwich from falling into the dirt.

Ian jogged to catch up with us. “Be nice,” I ordered Kyle when Ian was still out of earshot. But I could already see him reverting to the usual Kyle, the one with sullen glances and muttered insults and general immaturity.

Smiling, Ian kissed me hello. I had missed him recently, always busy practicing as he was, and so everything we’d done a million times before—a kiss hello, a kiss goodbye—seemed just a little more special. “Hey Nielsen,” he greeted Kyle cordially. Kyle nodded sullenly.

“I’ll see you later,” I told Kyle. He shrugged at me, like it didn’t matter, even as I smiled at him. Fine. If he wanted to be that way, he could. I, personally, was going to enjoy spending some time with my husband, and maybe my friends. I didn’t need a rival drummer with a split personality.

He snorted. “Yeah, whatever,” he said, as if he didn’t believe it. As if it would be possible for me to avoid him. The boy’s attentive behavior was bordering on stalking. And yet here he was acting the like the wounded party, like I was messing with his head, or some other such nonsense. Quite frankly, he irritated me. And maybe I sounded like a broken record, but I had to keep repeating that to myself, so I remembered. Because sometimes he seemed halfway decent, and if I let myself keep thinking that he was halfway decent, I might come close to actually starting to like him, or even just not dislike him, and then I would have to hang out with him, and all of a sudden I would realize that I couldn’t stand him, and that would be terrible of me, because then I would be hurting his feelings.

But that wasn’t important. “Want some?” I offered Ian a bite of my sandwich.

He shook his head. “I’m not big on sausage and peppers. I like sausage, and I like peppers, but I think together they’re just a little weird.”

Ian had bizarre taste in food. He didn’t like normal things like pizza and hamburgers and hot dogs and sausage and peppers, but he loved weird things like stuffed cabbage and fish and liver. He really did like liver. It was strange and quite possibly unnatural. So I shrugged. “Your loss.” He slung his arm around my shoulders.

“So,” Ian said. “Kay just got back and there’s a little town about ten minutes up the road. I was thinking that after Jenna’s show tonight, we could go get something to eat. You up for it?”

Silly question. I had been spending hardly any time with Ian these past few days. “Yeah, absolutely,” I said. I was touched that he had thought to make plans. In the past we’d had to establish some sort of schedule, which maybe didn’t have any romantic spontaneity about it, but ensured we’d have time alone together. No schedule had been set, this time. The more I thought about the prospect, the more excited I became by it.

“Sweet,” he said. “Pete and Jenna are gonna come in another car, ‘cause we can’t all fit in the van comfortably.” Oh. When he had said “we” he’d meant all of us—not just us. I was sure my deflation was visible, like a balloon made of old rubber. Pffft. “We’ll leave around eight. Does that sound good for you?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said listlessly. Maybe it was irrational for me to be so disappointed. After all, I would still have plenty of time to hang out with Ian, it just wouldn’t be the two of us alone. But that wasn’t such a big deal, now was it? We had a lifetime—a veritable lifetime—to be together. We didn’t need to be alone right now.

Now we had arrived back at our trailer. It sort of amazed me how, at every stop, without ever making the conscious decision to do so, everyone parked in the same configuration. Jim’s sausage and peppers would always be near the entrance, Cremnomania would always park a ways off to the left of the practice tent, and we’d always be at the back of the festival, near the food.

Nobody was inside—nobody really hung out in here unless they absolutely had to, for lack of space to do much of anything. Sometimes we’d sit around and talk before falling asleep, but mostly it was come home, sleep, get up, shower, leave. Boom, boom, boom done. I washed my hands in the bathroom and Ian sat on the bed.

When I came out from the bathroom, I sat down next to Ian. “It’s been a rough two weeks,” he said. I stared out absently—he rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand—he turned my face towards him and kissed me hard—suddenly I didn’t feel half so badly about tonight not being a one-on-one deal. I leaned back and he followed and I was so veritably in love, and he was in love with me, too, and I was married and everything seemed, in that moment, perfect in my life, even though this was just kissing.

And then the door to the trailer slammed open and Adnan exclaimed, “Oh fuck shit!” Ian sat up fast enough that he banged his head on the bunk above ours. As he rubbed his head and I sat up warily, Adnan cursed us out emphatically. “What the hell, you two? Get a freaking curtain or something. Shit, yes, I’m implementing that as a rule. Anyone who doesn’t frigging sleep alone needs to get some sort of curtain to cover their respective crappy little beds. I don’t give a shit that you two are married, even though, mazel tov or some other crap. I don’t freaking need to see that. Christ!” And then he slammed the door behind him and left.

For several seconds, Ian and I just looked at each other. And then we burst into laughter. There was nothing for us to do but laugh. We laughed so hard our stomachs hurt, because if we didn’t laugh we would have been terribly embarrassed, because that had potential to be terribly embarrassing, but instead it was just funny.

When we were done laughing, I told him, “Sometimes I really think Adnan has a disorder.”

Ian smoothed my hair back. I didn’t mind it at all when he did that. At least he wasn’t trying to make it into a nasty, snarly mess by ruffling it up. “Sometimes I agree with you. But I’m afraid he might try to punch me if I told him that.”

“I could tell him,” I offered, catching his hand between my chin and my shoulder. He rubbed my bottom lip with his thumb. “I don’t think he would punch me.”

“Ah,” said Ian, “but it’s not really worth risking it, not to me.”