I nod. "Point taken, dude."
Nothing is a priority.
Saturday, February 18
(Gus)
Tonight we play our biggest show yet. It's in London at an arena called O2. Twenty thousand people. Twenty fucking thousand. That's a far cry from playing Joe's Bar in San Diego in front of two hundred just two years ago.
Sometimes I wish we were still playing Joe's.
I'm nervous. I never get nervous, but my hands were shaking all through soundcheck. Maybe I need a drink. What am I thinking? I definitely need a drink. I haven't had one since last night. There wasn't any beer on the bus. I suspect Franco has begun his attempt at a passive intervention.
I already resent passive.
And intervention.
With two hours until the show starts, I need some grub. I'm walking back to the bus to grab a pack of cigarettes, when Clare runs up behind me. I don't know how she runs in five-inch stilettos, but she does. She's panting. She's always out of breath, probably because she's the only person I've ever met who smokes more than I do.
"Gustov," she gasps. Even my name is a pant.
I slow my pace but don't stop to wait for her. I turn my head to address her, but not enough to meet her eyes. I have trouble looking her in the eye. Every time I do I see a disappointed Bright Side staring back at me, like a ghost haunting me. I can't face it. Bright Side would've hated Clare—polar fucking opposites. "Clare." That's the extent of my greeting.
"I noticed you seemed a little off during soundcheck," she says matter-of-factly.
I'm not insulted. It's true. "I need a drink," I respond.
She's next to me now, leaning in so her mouth is near my ear. "I have something better than alcohol."
At that I do turn and face her because this woman is insatiable. "Jesus Christ, we fucked an hour ago, Clare," I say, exasperated. "I'm good for a few more hours. Thanks anyway." She irritates the hell out of me and I don't try to hide that fact from her.
She smiles seductively. It's flirtatious. It's also my cue to look away. She giggles. Her giggle is annoying on many levels: it's high pitched, which is in stark contrast to her low, husky voice; it's given too freely when it's not earned, maybe it's a nervous tick; and it's fucking loud. "No, love. Although that sounds like a fabulous idea, I'm thinking of something else."
By now we've reached the bus. I follow her up the steps before I join back in on the exchange. "Well, what is it?"
She reaches into her overcoat pocket and pulls out a small glass vial of white powder held between her pointer finger and thumb and waves it in front of my face.
My initial reaction is hell no. I don't say anything though.
She's grasped my wrist and is pulling me to the back of the bus and into the small bedroom she claimed on the first day she joined us. "Come on. Just do one line with me. It'll help you get through the show."
This is where I should stop and actually articulate the words, "Hell no," but I just keep following her like a goddamn dumbass.
While she's dispensing the powder onto a Vogue magazine that's lying on her bed and efficiently forming it into two small lines, I look at her face closely for the first time. There are shadows under her eyes that I can still see through her heavy makeup. Fine lines feather out from the corner of each eye. She's more haggard than I realized. I blurt out, "How old are you?"
She sniffs like her nose is already two steps ahead of her in its need, and looks up at me with wild eyes. "Twenty-five."
That's what I thought. Coke has aged her. I guessed her ten years older. I size up the powder lined up in front of us. "This isn't your first time, is it?"
She's rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. Her hand is twitchy. It reminds me of the prostitute that propositioned me at the bar back home the day of the funeral. "No. You're going to love it. It'll make you feel like Superman."
In spite of everything I'm looking at, which is at the very least a glaring anti-drug campaign and at best just plain sad, my mouth makes the decision for me. "Okay."
She goes first. She's quick. A pro. It makes me wonder how long she's been doing this.
I go next. I'm slow and it takes several passes. An amateur. My nose stings and my eyes are watering.
As the drug infiltrates my mind and body, I'm silently apologizing, "I'm so sorry, Bright Side. It's just one time. I won't turn into Janice." Bright Side's mom was a cokehead.
I'm justifying it away. I smoke weed on occasion and have taken pills a few times. I tell myself that this won't be any different.
Except that it is.
Clare goes with me, uninvited, to a pub around the corner. I eat, even though I'm not very hungry at this point. She smokes. She never eats. It weirds me out.
By the time the show starts I'm still flying high. I'm not lethargically going through the motions tonight. I can't say that I feel completely in control, because I'm sure as hell not, but there's this force driving me from the inside out. It amps up my anger and channels it into a fierce performance. Amazingly, the crowd eats it up. It's the strangest fucking experience of my life. It's like watching everything play out from somewhere outside myself, while at the same time feeling it so deep inside me that I swear it was never there before. It's completely surreal.
Time is inconsequential, irrelevant. Before I know it the band is telling me that's all we've got, the show's over, it's time to leave.