Fast Lane - Kristen Ashley Page 0,75
the dressing room and come back sniffing and swiping their noses.
And we’re not partying, but they are.
You’re Preacher and Lyla, you can find a party anywhere. Everyone wants to party with you.
Any bar you pick, you pitch up, it’s a rave.
She’s out there in her little satin slip dresses, her chucks and jeans overalls, her cutoffs and camis with a tangle of necklaces down her front, and he’s Preacher, they get noticed.
They get their pictures taken and those pictures get in magazines.
They got their foreheads together over a table, lookin’ gorgeous, lookin’ into each other, lookin’ in love, but on that table, there are three empty martini glasses and a half empty bourbon bottle next to an empty lowball glass.
Or he’s throwing some back and she’s got her face tucked to his neck and you can see her tongue is out, tasting him.
[Links fingers with forefingers steepled, bends neck and rests forefingers against his forehead before he looks up and drops his hands]
Not good.
I think we’re in Phoenix when Tim goes off the setlist.
Da-da-da-da, da da da da da, da-da-da-da, da da da da [hums beginning riff of “Life in the Fast Lane”].
The crowd loses their fuckin’ minds.
And I get it, that’s a kickass fuckin’ song.
But I can feel Preacher’s laser beam gaze searing through me as he’s lookin’ at Tim, not because he goes off set, which also is not okay, but because Tim’s message is far from lost on Preacher.
Tim stops playing when it comes clear Preach isn’t gonna jump in for the next bar, and Jesus…
Tim doesn’t back down.
He goes again.
The audience thinks this is a schtick. They’re now in a goddamn frenzy, they want us to do that song so bad they’ll tear the house down for it, and what’s hitting us is a brick wall of sound.
Preach has no choice.
He jumps in.
Tim sings and he’s practically channeling Henley.
We had a good sound system, but man, we were nearly drowned out with the crowd singing with us to that song.
I don’t know how many songs we had left after that.
I just know, there were a lot of them.
And still, when we got offstage, Preach doesn’t even hand his guitar off to a roadie.
He’s got his fingers wrapped around the neck and he backs Tim into the wall of the hall and gets in his face.
“Not cool, brother,” he says.
And Christ.
Tim still doesn’t back down.
He replies, “I know.”
We all knew something was off with Preacher.
He didn’t tell us what it was.
And that was on him.
But we knew there was something and we didn’t push, didn’t even ask.
[Lengthy pause]
[Quietly] And that was totally on us.
Interviewer’s Impressions, Recorded After Event:
Upon arrival at the cabin, the red Cherokee is again in the lane, the silver truck is not, but a blue Mini with white racing stripes over the hood and roof is.
Lyla is not waiting in the opened back door.
After knocking, I hear what I had not heard the day before.
The sounds of dogs barking, a number of them, from deep woofs to high-pitched yaps.
Lyla is opening the door at the same time speaking, telling someone to take the dogs out.
A young woman’s voice calls back, stating, “I’m leaving Bobby McGee!”
“All right!” Lyla says, dipping her chin and opening the door.
Over the dogs still barking, she apologizes for ending the session so abruptly the day before, invites me in, and as previously, she offers refreshments.
The gray cat is already in residence on the daybed, today joined by a tiger cat with black markings on gray.
As the day before, the gray cat eschews company; the tiger cat is friendly and welcoming.
A door slams somewhere in the cabin, the barking stops, and a young woman can be seen out the windows who looks a great deal like the young man the day before.
She’s dressed in an insulated vest, a long-sleeved shirt, jeans and hiking boots.
She walks along the gently sloping packed earth covered in dead pine needles that makes up the front area of the cabin with what looks like a Burmese mountain dog and what is clearly a mutt, both unleashed.
“My daughter,” Lyla explains, taking up a mug of something that’s steaming and entering the daybed as she had the day before, to sit cross-legged on it. “Should we begin?”
Lyla:
What Tim did, with “Life in the Fast Lane,” was not good.
I understood his intention, even then, and even then, I agreed with him.
But it wasn’t the right way to go about doing it.
Preacher felt betrayed.
That was their safe space. Onstage. That