a moment of stunned, awkward silence in the van and I feel my face go bright pink. I’m surprised Travis doesn’t run us right off the road since he’s staring completely wide-eyed at me in the rearview mirror.
“What?” I say, probably more defensively than is quite necessary. “Millie is hot, come on!”
“Um, yeah, she’s definitely hot,” Joey says. “I can really get behind this, I think.”
“Is that, uh, something you’ve, you know, explored, Emmy?” Cole says, trying not to laugh outright.
“Well, Millie kissed me once in the gear alcove at the Melody,” I say, and now Cole spits his Jolt Cola out all over the windshield.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Travis mutters from the front seat as Joey and Cole laugh until they cry. Travis looks up in the rearview mirror at me, trying not to laugh. He’s biting his lip but his eyes, oh God, his eyes are so fucking full of sexual mischief that I want to die.
“What’s so funny?” I say.
“You were supposed to pick somebody famous, Em,” Joey says, bonking me on the head with a rolled-up set list. “Like PJ Harvey.”
“I’d definitely have a gay experience with Polly Jean,” I say. “No question about that. Does that make me bisexual? If I like sex with guys, but would be willing to have sex with PJ Harvey? Because I’ve never actually tried gay sex, outside of that time I sort of made out with Millie. We were both really drunk, though—does that count?”
“Wait, wait, wait. You ‘sort of made out’ with Millie?” Travis asks as I realize I just made a deposit in his spank bank that’s likely going to last him until retirement. And, well, yes I did. Once. And I was really drunk, okay? Whatever.
“If you care to elaborate on that at all . . .” Joey says.
“She doesn’t,” Travis answers. “You want us to make it to Baltimore alive, don’t you?”
“Fuck me, I’m never going to be able to go bowling with the two of you again,” Cole says, shaking his head.
“What? Why not?” I say.
“Because men are pigs, Emmy,” Joey says. “In case you didn’t already know that.”
“Girls are pigs too, you know,” I say. “I’ll probably be thinking about the three of you guys gangbanging Henry Rollins all night.”
“Next subject!” Travis announces. “In descending order, the top five songs you want played at your memorial service. And, go!”
“‘Dust in the Wind,’ ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ . . .” Cole begins to rattle off his list, but I stop paying attention because I can’t take my eyes off of Travis’s crooked smile as he looks ahead down the road. Then as I’m staring at him, he glances up into the rearview mirror and winks at me and I flush pink from head to toe.
***
We make it to Josie’s Grill, the bar just off campus at Johns Hopkins where WJHU has set up for the after-party. We unload in the back and Travis goes around to the main room to talk to the sound guy and find the guys from the Corporate Secret and Vampires and Assassins. Cole, Joey, and I bring the guitars into the back room where we run into Rex, and there’s this horrific, agonized wailing coming from behind Rex’s bass cabinet and it’s Toby, their singer. He sounds like he’s giving fucking birth back there.
“Oh, he’ll be all right,” Rex says with a worn smile. “He’s passing another kidney stone, that’s all.”
“What the ever-loving fuck?” Cole says. “He’s passing a kidney stone? Right now?”
“Right here?” Joey asks.
“Yeah, it’s pretty painful,” Rex says, totally laid back, because that’s Rex for you. “I’m going to go get him a couple of shots and some Advil.”
“Holy shit,” I say. “Shouldn’t he be in an emergency room somewhere?”
“Nah,” Rex says. “They’ll just hop him up on pain meds and then he won’t be able to play.”
If this sounds insane to anyone not in a band, well, that’s understandable. If you could hear Toby wailing, crying for his mama, his grandma, his teddy bear as he rolls around on the floor back there, well, it is pretty nuts. But if you also knew how tough it is to get a gig like this and how it’s likely to lead to your single getting played on WJHU and how that might help your CMJ chart position, then you might understand why a guy would suffer an agonizing thing like passing a stone on a skanky bar floor instead of on a nice, comfy emergency