Max Collins: Scratch Fever

“Do you have any kids?”

“Kids? Me? Hell, no.”

“Then you wouldn’t be doing anybody a disservice leaving ’em behind when you went on the road, would you? If that’s what your problem is.”

He thought about that a while. Then he said, “What kind of band would I be in? I hate disco. I hate country rock. I hate heavy metal. There isn’t much I could stand to play, except old sixties stuff and maybe some of the new wave music coming out of England and the East Coast.”

And that had been the beginning of it. She had told him about her mock-Blondie band, Dagwood, which she wanted out of, and together they made plans to launch what became the Nodes. She knew about Roc, Mick, and Les, and they all got together in a friend’s garage and jammed through some material, and two weeks later they had relocated in Des Moines, to be with the booking agency that had handled the now-defunct Dagwood.

Leaving Iowa City for Des Moines seemed to be slightly rough for Jon. He didn’t say much about it but he was apparently very close to this guy Nolan, though they seemed to have had a minor falling-out of some kind lately, which made it easier to Jon to leave. So he said, anyway.

She had only seen this Nolan a few times. Actually, he seemed to be using the name Logan, but Jon always referred to him as Nolan. She didn’t know if Nolan had ever even noticed her, really; to him she was probably just some twat Jon was shacking up with. They’d never exchanged a word.

But she had noticed him, all right. Looked him over good.

He was handsome, in an ugly way. A big, lean man with the slightest paunch, with dark, somewhat shaggy hair that was graying at the temples, and widow’s peaked. He had high cheekbones, a mustache, and a mean look, but those eyes, those narrow, squinting eyes, had something else in them besides meanness. Intelligence, for sure. Humanity? Humor? Maybe not.

At the time, Nolan had been running some sort of restaurant in Iowa City, in which Jon was a partner, it seemed, though he didn’t say much about that. When she saw Nolan, he’d be dressed in a sportcoat and turtleneck and slacks, something casual, in a country club sort of way, and the guy looked good, looked right. Only something was wrong; something about him made her think of a gangster.

She used to kid Jon about that.

“I wonder what your gangster friend’s doing right now,” she’d say, sitting up in bed in a motel room, watching TV, on the road with the Nodes.

“Probably sticking up a bank,” Jon would answer, with a funny smile.

She and Jon had continued to share a room on the road, even though their romance had turned into a friendship, albeit a friendship that included sleeping together (but only occasionally screwing) and getting out of each other’s way when an attractive member of the opposite sex came along. She had a feeling Jon could have been serious about her if she let him, but her insistence that she was not a one-man woman, that marriage and whatever were not in her plans ever, cooled him off a bit.

And he did seem to like the freedom to go after the bitches, like that Darlene she’d spotted out in the bar. Jon was a weird kid, in a way, so goddamn straight. He didn’t even smoke dope — no drugs at all; no booze to speak of, either.

There was that one time, however, that he got good and plastered. It was at a party at some trailer out in the country, where a guy had a hog roast at three in the morning after the Nodes had played a particularly long night at a particularly rowdy bar. The girl Jon was with, a short little blonde in halter top and jeans, was the sort who wanted to drink but would not drink alone, and so Jon drank with her and later crawled off into the woods with her, too. But by the time he ended up back at the motel with Toni, he was plastered — plastered in the way that only someone who doesn’t get plastered often can get plastered. And he started to talk.

And he told her the damnedest things.

About him and Nolan.

And bank robberies and shooting somebody called Sam Comfort, some crazy old man who was a thief himself who Jon and Nolan were looting, and wild goddamn things about some girl getting her head blown off by somebody called Gross, and shoot-outs in lodges up in Wisconsin. And the next morning Jon asked her to forget all that stuff he told her last night, and there had never been a word about it since.

Till tonight.

“Light My Fire” was almost over.

She got back up on stage, and Jon gave her a little smile and she gave him one back, nodding, and they went into the next song.

Playing tambourine and singing back-up, she glanced over at Jon, and he was into the music — not a sign of worry. And she felt better. Jon had left a message for Nolan, and the woman in white and her big sandy-haired stooge didn’t know that. And that made Toni feel better; the cold feeling at the pit of her stomach was gone.

Then she noticed Jon flubbing the words on “Jailhouse Rock.”

And at the back of the room, standing by the double doors, the big sandy-haired man waited and watched.

THEY GOT called back for two encores. One encore was typical for the Nodes; they were good enough to expect that. A second encore indicated to Jon that the word had spread through the crowd that this was the band’s last night.

Some of Roc’s followers were shouting for “Cat Scratch Fever” again, and even though Jon and Toni weren’t featured on it, making it inappropriate for an encore, Jon went ahead and announced it and went off with Toni into the stage-right cubbyhole to wait it out.

“ That fucking thing again,” Toni said, shaking her head. Still not sweating.

“No accounting for taste,” Jon said, smiling back.

“We better do one more and put this turkey out of its misery.”

Jon nodded. “You okay?”

“I think so. I blew some words.”

“I know you did. That’s not like you.”

“Yeah, well, I started thinking about the words, and that’s deadly. As soon as you start thinking about ’em, you lose ’em.”

“Right I blew a few myself. Lots of hamburger tonight.”

Hamburger was garbled singing with the mouth right up against the mike, sounding like words but not words at all.

“Jon, that big guy’s still hanging around. When I took that little break midway through the set, he was still sitting in his booth. Then he came and stood in back and watched for a while.”

“Yeah, I know. I saw him.”

“Yeah, well, your girlfriend was there, too.”

“No kidding?”

“The one with the white outfit and the big tits? Yeah. Still here. Or she was twenty minutes ago, anyway.”

“Jesus. So she didn’t split.”

“Nope. Somebody else was out there, too.”

“Who?”

“Darlene.”

“Who the fuck’s Darlene?”

“You mean, which fuck’s Darlene, don’t you? Burlington, a couple of months ago? The Ramp? Lanky with brown hair and lots of eye makeup?”

“I think I remember.”

“Had a dyke girlfriend who wanted to cut your nuts off?”

“I remember.”

“Well, she’s out there, too, cuter than Rod Stewart’s mom. What’s that dyke’s name, anyway?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Me either. So, Jonny. Tonight’s a real stroll down memory lane, for you, huh? Maybe they’re all here ’cause it’s the Nodes’ last night.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you scared?”

“A little.”

“Yeah. Me too. I’d take another hit of Cutty Sark if I thought I could keep it down. What should we do?”

“Get back on stage and play one more song, I guess.”

They did—”Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry.

And it was the last song the Nodes ever played together, because the audience was too worn out and drunk to work up the applause for another encore, and Jon and Toni and the rest of the band came down off the stage and mingled with the crowd, as the Barn would be open for another half-hour before the lights would come up and the band’s equipment would get torn down. The jukebox started up and an Olivia Newton-John record came on, a mild protest by someone not into the Nodes’ brand of hard-core rock’n’roll. Couples slow danced. Singles who hadn’t scored shuffled toward exits, looking around one last time to see if somebody was left to come onto.