Boring Girls(104)

I looked sideways at him, and he was looking at me, and when our eyes met, he smiled, and I realized that I hadn’t seen him smile before. He’d always just been wearing that grouchy, scrutinizing scowl. His teeth were straight and the smile lifted his face, almost illuminated it. I smiled back.

“Look, Rachel, I was just wondering, I mean, maybe one of these nights, after the show —”

He was cut off by the sudden appearance of Fern and Toad coming around the side of the bus. Toad took one look at us and then fixed me with a leering smirk. “Oh, are we interrupting anything?”

Chris got up and the two of them did another one of those handshake things, and for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to look at Fern as she lit her cigarette.

“Nah, man, it’s all good,” Chris said. “Just smokin’ with Rachel here.” He took a last drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt into the darkness. “Well, have a good night, guys,” he said, and left.

“What was that all about?” Toad asked, lighting his own smoke.

“Nothing. He likes the band,” I said, aware that I was trying to pacify Fern as well. I had this impression that she would feel betrayed by me hanging out with Chris, though when I did finally look at her, she didn’t look perturbed. She just stood, placidly smoking and listening to our conversation while covering a yawn.

“That guy’s one lucky dude — he gets so many chicks,” Toad grinned. “You know who his ex is, right? That model, the fetish chick, Sophie Cleaver.”

Images flashed in my mind of a black-haired, corseted, ’40s-styled girl with pin curls in a bathtub wearing stockings and stilettos. I’d seen pictures of Sophie Cleaver. I swallowed hard, and Toad laughed, obviously noticing my discomfort. “She’s hot,” he pointed out needlessly.

“Why’d they break up?” I said.

“Ah, who knows? Maybe because he was getting so much action on the road,” he chuckled. Fern shot him a withering look, which I doubled. Toad had this way of talking like he was always surrounded by a group of really douchey guys.

“You barely even know him. That shit’s a rumour. He seems like a nice guy,” Fern said defensively, and I raised my chin.

“Yep,” Toad said. “He’s an awesome guy. I guess I’d just be careful, is all, if you’re getting involved with him or whatever, Rachel.”

I followed the two of them back onto the bus and went to my bunk, my mind spinning. He’d dated a famous and gorgeous pin-up fetish model with a great body, and here I was, short and not famous and wearing filthy stage clothes. I pictured my sweaty, blotchy post-show face, and my dirty, matted hair, and compared it to the perfect makeup, the smooth skin, the pouty perfection of Sophie Cleaver. I winced, burying my face in the pillow. And was it true about the girls on the road? In the short while we’d been on tour I hadn’t seen Chris with any girls backstage. He was the quiet one in his band — the others would yell and party and get all rowdy, and he always just seemed to be the quiet observer. But I barely knew him. I felt like an idiot. And what was I going to do? Ask him? Look like a jealous weirdo? And why was I jealous?

Lying there, processing these thoughts in the dark, I heard the bus engine start and felt the gentle vibration that was starting to become soothing. The bus pulled out of the parking lot, beginning our drive through the night. As I drifted off to sleep I heard the Velcro tear of another bunk curtain open and close.





FORTY-FIVE


The next day I woke up with some inane resolve to ignore Chris, or something — some juvenile plan to pull away from him and thus cause him to worry what was bothering me. I could put on this self-righteous disgust at him for all of his many affairs or whatever, and it would result in him having compassion for me and wanting to impress me or something. The plan was stupid and didn’t end up happening anyway. I didn’t really see Chris at all that day — his band had somewhere to go, a radio interview, maybe. I don’t know. They weren’t at the venue all day, their crew soundchecked for them.

We were somewhere in Florida, in a horrible part of town. There were dumpsters everywhere and it stank. Our buses were parked in the back lot very close together. There were creepy crackheads wandering around through the alleys. Toad warned us not to go far from the venue, basically not to leave the parking lot, so we hung out on the bus. Edgar was taking pictures of some of these derelicts through the bus window. I remember Toad, Timmy, and Socks had a magazine with Sophie Cleaver on the cover and were drooling over her. I was all quiet and grumpy because I was insecure. It was stupid.