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February 11, 2008

Fallout

Written by Girth McDürchstein on February 11, 2008 9:17 PM
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When I got back to the hospital, Carl was waiting with Mikey, Riffs, and Lacey. My head was killing me. I made the mistake of glancing at myself in the mirror; it’s all swollen and bruised. I no longer look the rock star part. I may need reconstructive surgery. We’ll see when the swelling goes down.

“Girth,” Carl gasped when he saw me. He got to his feet and ran down the hall. “You look like shit.”

“My teeth hurt,” I groaned.

Carl helped me to a hard plastic seat. “Well, we got some good news. Margo’s gonna be okay.”

“Oh, thank God!”

“In fact, they said they’ll be ready to release her this afternoon.”

“Already? That seems…really fast.”

“Well, none of us have had health insurance since Kelleystein collapsed,” Mikey grumbled.

“Yeah, so either pay them $100,000 cash or she’s out of here,” Carl added. “But don’t worry—she’s all good. She’ll just need a lot of bed rest.”

“But we have a tour in three days,” I sighed.

“Can’t tour without instruments,” Riffs pointed out.

“That is true,” I said. “I did manage to grab some of our money back from La Madera, but—”

“How’d that shit go down?” Lacey asked.

“Not too good, as you can see.” I gestured at my face. “I wanted to take that motherfucker down, but he got the drop on me.”

Lacey looked somewhat relieved, I assume because of the PR nightmare of spinning cold-blooded, drug-related murder.

“Oh, that reminds me,” I said to Lacey. “This Jupiter Starshine bullshit…I’m officially out. I was trying to change myself partly for you and for the charity, but mainly for Renal. And I feel so burned by this fucking situation—so much rage, I just—I can’t be anything but Abysmal Crucifix.”

“Oh, thank fucking God!” Mikey shouted.

“Huh?”

“We were just talking about this,” Carl said. “None of us really wanted to leave the band. We just—we hated what Renal was doing to you, and to the music. At heart, man, we’re metal. Fuck this hippy-dippy bullshit.”

“You mean…you guys will rejoin?”

“Of course,” Carl said. “Ain’t no thang.”

“Besides,” Riffs said, “we still have our instruments.”

I laughed gruffly.

My cell phone rang. After what happened yesterday, I was surprised it even worked.

“Hey man,” the voice on the other end said.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“Jam.”

“What do you want?”

“I heard about what happened last night—”

“Already?”

“—and I felt bad, so…I bought back your hearse.”

“You—really?”

“Yeah, I mean…they were only asking $500, so I figured, why not? It’s the least I could do.”

“Wow, 500? You must have drove a really hard bargain.”

“Not really.”

“…Oh.”

“Yeah, so anyway, good luck on your tour. I look forward to reading your blog.”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

Jam ended the call.

I turned to the others. “So, we got the hearse back. That’s pretty cool, right?”

Riffs nodded reluctantly. The others pretended this was great news.

“I guess now all we gotta do is wait for Margo…”

Everyone nodded and remained silent. I looked at the wall clock: 7:47.

I sighed. “Who wants coffee?”