Color Me Crazy (27 page)

The concerts weren’t as easy to handle as a morning run. The motherfucking noise was insane, and that meant the colors were, too. It wasn’t a completely subconscious effort to keep them sorted. But he didn’t fall apart. With the citrus vial he sniffed between sets, he’d managed well enough so far.

He did a few lunges, then yanked the bandanna off his head and went inside. The air-conditioning in the hotel lobby washed over him as an icy blue waterfall. He passed up the breakfast buffet and headed to Sheik’s room. He’d left the biofeedback program in his bunk last night, and the band buses were locked up tight. Julian quaked at the thought of waking Sheik at seven o’clock in the morning, but he needed to get into the bus.

Bracing himself, he knocked on the door. Muffled sounds came from the other side, and then it jerked open. Sheik’s hulking form, which looked no less menacing in boxers, undershirt, and socks, immediately dwarfed his in the doorway.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Julian said.

“What do you want, asshole?”

“I need to get into my bunk. Give me the bus keys.”

“You don’t need in there in the middle of the fucking night. Come back in a couple of hours.” He started to close the door.

“Wait, wait…it’s not the middle of the night, you moron. And I left my biofeedback program in there.”

“Your Sensodyne game can wait until later.”

“For the billionth time, Sensodyne is a fucking toothpaste, the program isn’t a game, and it
can’t
wait.”

Like Darth Vader, Sheik mostly had one facial expression. But he sighed through his nose, flaring his nostrils like a bull about to charge, to express his irritation. “I can’t just give you the keys.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. What do you think I’m going to do? Steal the bus?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time an idiot with a guitar stole a band bus.” There was no point in arguing. Sheik wasn’t going to hand over the keys.

“Can you go down there with me then?”

Sheik crossed his arms. “You really need to do it right now?”

“Sorry, but I really do.”

“I gotta get dressed first,” Sheik said.

Julian breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, man. Meet me downstairs?”

The door slammed in his face.

The breakfast buffet tested Julian’s willpower. He held strong—oatmeal, fruit, coffee—until the beignets were brought out. How much dairy could there be in one tiny beignet? By the time he was on his fourth, because surely there couldn’t be that much, Sheik came down and began loading up a plate with eggs and at least three different species of dead animal. He put his plate on the table and pulled out a chair. “You been snorting cocaine?”

Julian frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Sheik almost grinned—as close as he ever came, anyway—and tapped at his nose. “How many beignets did you eat, you stupid fake hippie?”

Oh. Julian wiped the powdered sugar off his face. “Only one.”

“Liar.”

“Four.”

“That shit will kill you,” Sheik said. Then he shoveled in a mouthful of eggs. “Have you seen Dean and Gus this morning?”

“Nope. But unfortunately, I heard them all night long. Could you make sure my room isn’t next to theirs from now on?”

Sheik set his fork down and said, “Sure. I’ll make that a top priority.” Then he rolled his eyes in case Julian thought he meant it.

The sweet taste lingering from the beignets had turned sour in Julian’s mouth at the mention of Dean and Gus. So far, they’d lived up to his expectations by being scumbags. He’d avoided their so-called private parties, but their behavior at the after-parties was bad enough.

After-parties were boring affairs. Sitting in bars while signing autographs and acting like an idiot was tedious bullshit, and he’d never enjoyed it. Not even when he was in Slice. And he kept getting in trouble for his uncivilized behavior. Did Dean and Gus get reamed out for pouring bottles of liquor over young women and licking it off? No. That shit was encouraged. It was Julian who didn’t know how to behave at a party.
Look like you want to be here. Smile. Get off your phone.
Fuckers. All he wanted to do after a show was be alone and call Cleo. A post-concert biofeedback session was great, but a call or Skype session with Cleo was even better. He’d smell tangerines for at least an hour after, and it settled every nerve in his body.

“How many girls did they have in their room last night?” he asked.

“Four. I know because I checked IDs.”

It was Sheik’s job to keep everyone under control so the shows could go off without a hitch. That meant keeping band members out of the jails, hospitals, and rehab centers until the tour was over.

“Were they legal?”

Sheik shook his head in disgust. “Barely.”

Speaking of man whores, Cory got off the elevator. He hadn’t slept solo since the tour started, but he was at least discreet about it. And Sheik never had to ask his companions for IDs. As for Julian’s needs, webcams were wondrous things. He had a date with Cleo tonight, and his dick got hard just thinking about it. He made some adjustments beneath the napkin in his lap.

Three more bites and Sheik’s plate was clean. “Let’s go get your Sensodyne game.”

Julian and Sheik wandered down the aisle of the dark bus to Julian’s small bunk room. They pushed the door open. Julian’s laptop was out and open. That was odd. He always closed it up and put it in the pouch below the shelf, along with the headphones and other stuff.

“Grab it and go,” Sheik said. “It’s hot in here.”

“Hold on,” Julian said. “Something’s not right.”

He rubbed the touch pad, and the screen lit up. He clicked on the icon, and…
holy fuck!

“Whoa,” Sheik said. “No wonder you spend so much time hooked up to this thing.”

Porn. A gigantic cock power-drilled some poor woman. “What the hell is this?” Julian yelled.

“Well, brother, if you don’t know—”

“No, no, no…you don’t understand. Fuck!”

“That’s what it is, all right,” Sheik said.

Julian checked the disk drive. Sure enough,
How the West Was Hung
. Great. He yanked the movie out and scrounged around his bunk for the disk that went along with his biofeedback program. He looked everywhere. In the pocket, on the shelf, under the linens and pillow. His hands shook as the panic built.

“Slow down,” Sheik said. “Let me help.”

Five minutes later, drenched in sweat, the two of them got off the bus without the disk. “I’m going to fucking kill those idiots,” Julian said.

“Hold on, now. We don’t even know that Dean and Gus did it.”

“Who else would have done it?”

They stormed through the hotel lobby to Dean’s room. Sheik pounded on the door. When it didn’t open immediately, Julian pounded on it, too. Eventually, it opened. Dean stood there naked, half asleep, and probably hungover. “What the fuck?” he said.

Julian pushed the door all the way open and barged in, shoving Dean out of the way. “Where is it?” he yelled.

The room stank like stale breath, body odor, alcohol, and cheap perfume. It was dark, so Julian flipped on a lamp. The huddled shapes in the beds stirred. Gus sat up, exposing the bare ass of one of the girls in bed with him. “What’s going on?”

“Where’s my biofeedback program?”

“What time is it?” one of the girls mumbled, rolling over.

“Time to go home,” Sheik said. “Get up and get dressed.”

“Hey, you can’t kick them out of here,” Dean said. He was still naked, and Julian tossed a dirty towel at him.

“The hell I can’t,” Sheik said. “Where’s Julian’s game?”

The four girls—and fuck, they
were
young—fumbled around for items of clothing. Julian averted his eyes, scanning other areas of the room for his disk.

“Do you mean this?” a blond girl asked. She wore a pair of skimpy panties and nothing else, but Julian’s eyes went straight to the two halves of the disk she held.

“Oops,” Dean said. “Someone must have slept on it.”

Sheik dragged Julian out of the room and into the hallway, but Julian hardly felt it. All the concerts, all the noise—there was no way he could handle it if he backslid even a little in his progress. “What am I going to do now?” he groaned, shaking Sheik off.

“Call your doctor and get another one. It ain’t rocket science,” Sheik said. “Get him to overnight it.”

“It’s Sunday. And where are we even going to be in two days?”

“Georgia. I’ll get you an address. We’ll get you squared away. Why are you freaking out so much? You can skip a few days of that game. What’s the worst that will happen? You see some colors, right? I’ve known a few guys who could do that. Most musicians are freaks. You’re not special.”

Julian leaned against the wall. “Actually, I’m pretty special in regard to how I experience synesthesia. And I’m also pretty fucked. Unless you have some heroin on you?”

He meant it as a joke, but Sheik’s left eye twitched and his jaw clenched. Obviously, he didn’t see the humor in it.

“Not on my watch. You got that?”

If he could get a new disk overnighted on Monday, he’d miss three sessions. Four, tops. How bad could it be?

Chapter Fourteen

The plane would touch down in Minneapolis in about an hour. Cleo squirmed in her seat, anticipation bubbling in her stomach like champagne. But below the anticipation, something more akin to anxiety rumbled. Sometime around three weeks ago, their nightly Skype sessions had turned weekly, and the phone calls became shorter and less intimate. Julian was on tour, and it seemed Cleo was out of sight, out of mind. She smothered her misgivings. This was to be a happy reunion.

She hadn’t made the trip a surprise, no matter what Julian had said. Was it trust? Or had she just learned how to be a “good” rock star girlfriend? No. She shut that train of thought down. Julian was not Lou Michaels.

Her ears popped as the plane began its slow descent. She settled back in her seat, jittery with excitement. Swallowing repeatedly helped the pressure in her ears, but it didn’t do anything for the knot stuck in her throat.

...

Julian waited in the hotel lobby for his limo. He could have sent for any type of car, but he knew Cleo liked her rock star limos.

After tonight’s show, he’d get three days off to spend with Cleo. He could use some rest. They’d done too many back-to-back shows, more than their contracts had specified, and had been plagued by illness and injury. Concerts had been rescheduled and postponed, and now they crisscrossed the country on a nonsensical and grueling schedule. As soon as Cleo left, they’d be flying to Ireland for a music festival, then right back to the U.S. for concerts on the West Coast. And nobody was getting along—no big surprise there.

Yesterday, the band’s manager told him that Dave Gutierrez had called it quits for good. He wasn’t coming back. And they wanted Julian to keep touring. The European leg would begin in three months, then they’d hit Asia. All he wanted to do was go home. Should he just come out with it and tell Cleo that he couldn’t be what she wanted him to be? He sighed. The thought of disappointing her made him sick.

Tonight, he would finally say the three words he knew she longed to hear. He’d tried to tell her before. So many times he’d just wanted to say, “I love you.” But the words wouldn’t come. He needed to be someone she could love. Tonight, he’d do it from the stage, before tens of thousands of people, while he was front and center beneath a spotlight. At least for tonight—he’d be everything she wanted.

He glanced at the time and bounced his bag on his knee—fidgety as usual. Cleo’s plane should be landing soon. He pulled out his phone. No text yet. The phone trembled slightly in his hand. He had the shakes. Shit.

He could pull this off. No problem.

People stared at him as he kept an eye on the parking lot. They didn’t know who he was, but they looked anyway. He’d always been conspicuous. Addie would say he shouldn’t have tattooed most of his body. Maybe he should cut his hair, wear a nice shirt and trousers. But the truth was, people had always stared. He was out of place. Always had been and always would be, and it had nothing to do with how he looked.

A family walked through the door, and one of the kids squealed about a big, fancy car outside. That was his ride. He gathered up the Les Paul and his duffel bag. The black stretch limo pulled up to the front of the hotel, and he went outside to meet it.

A uniformed driver held the door open. “Mr. Lazros, may I take your bags?”

“No, thanks,” Julian said, offering the kid his hand for a shake. “I’ll keep them with me.”

“Sure thing, sir. My name’s Donnie, and I’ll be your driver tonight.”

“Nice to meet you, Donnie. Could we get a move on? I don’t want to be late.” Couldn’t have Cleo waiting on the curb in this weather. It was fucking freezing.

“Absolutely, sir.”

Donnie closed the door, and Julian settled in. A great sound system was already rocking, but he winced at the choice of music. Dead Ringer. Without hesitating, he reached over and shut it off. A television rested beneath an open privacy divider and next to the fully stocked bar, and a bottle of champagne chilled in an ice bucket.

“Mr. Lazros, when the privacy divider is up, you can communicate with me via the intercom. We’re not completely soundproofed with it closed, but near enough. And we have no security cameras in the cab.”

Julian smiled. Rock star treatment. He couldn’t resist the next question. “How are the shocks on this thing?”

Donnie laughed. “When the limo’s a-rockin’, I won’t come a-knockin’.”

“So, Donnie, after the airport, we’ll head to the arena.” He handed a security parking pass through the screen. “Hang this on the mirror, and they’ll let us right through to the unloading dock. And here,” he said, reaching through with a sateen square on a lanyard. “This is your backstage pass. Feel free to come on back and enjoy the show once you’ve parked. Just make sure you’re ready to pick us up by the time the meet and greet ends. I’m going to want out of there fast, and I don’t want to be held up, okay?”

The kid pulled away from the curb, muttering, “Fucking awesome.”