Сара Пинскер - A Song for a New Day

There were, to my knowledge, one hundred and seventy-two ways to wreck a hotel room. We had brainstormed them all in the van over the last eight months on the road. As a game, I’d thought: 61, turn all the furniture upside down; 83, release a pack of feral cats; 92, fill all the drawers with beer, or, 93, marbles; 114, line the floor with soapy plastic and turn it into a slip ’n’ slide; etc., etc.

In my absence, my band had come up with the one hundred and seventy-third, and had for the first time added in a test run. I was not proud.

What would Gemma do if she were here? I stepped all the way into their room instead of gawking from the hallway and closed the door before any hotel employees could walk past, pressing the button to illuminate the DO NOT DISTURB sign for good measure. “Dammit, guys. This is a nice hotel. What the hell did you do?”

“We found some paint.” Hewitt’s breath smelled like a distillery’s dumpster. He lingered beside me in the vestibule.

“You’re a master of understatement.”

All their bags and instruments were crammed into the closet by the entrance. The room itself was painted a garish neon pink, which it definitely hadn’t been when I’d left that morning. Not only the walls, either: the headboards, the nightstand, the dresser. The spatter on the carpet suggested somebody had knifed a Muppet and let it crawl away to die. For all the paint, Hewitt’s breath was still the overwhelming odor.

“Even the TV?” I asked. “Really?”

The television, frame and screen. Cable news blared behind a drippy film of pink, discussing the new highway only for self-driving cars. We’d be avoiding that one.

JD lounged on the far bed, holding a glass of something caramel colored. His shoes were pink. The bedspread, the site of another Muppet murder.

“We considered doing an accent wall.” He waved his glass at the wall behind the headboard.

April sat on the desk, sticks in hand, drumming a soundless tattoo in the air. “How was your day?” she asked, as if nothing was wrong.

“Excuse me a second.” I ducked into the hall and fumbled for the keycard to the room I shared with April. Our room was quiet and empty and, most importantly, not pink. I leaned my guitar bag in a corner and let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding, then lay back on the bed and dialed Gemma.

“We’re not supposed to be out here alone,” I said when she picked up. “When are you coming back?”

She sighed. “Hi, Luce. My brother is fine, thanks for asking. The bullet went straight through him without hitting any organs.”

“I heard! I’m glad he’s okay! I’m sorry, I should have asked first. But do you think you’re coming back soon?”

“No, I really don’t. What’s the matter? Do you need something?”

“A tour manager. A babysitter for these giant children you ditched me with, so I can concentrate on music instead of being the adult in the room when I’m younger than all of them. Never mind. I shouldn’t have called, and I’m sorry I bothered you. I hope your brother gets well soon.”

I disconnected. We should have been able to handle a few weeks on the road without a tour manager. Lots of bands did fine without one, but those were probably real bands, where everyone had a vested interest; I’d played solo until the label hired these so-called professionals to back me on tour.

Hewitt let me in again when I knocked. Inside the fridge, two large bottles had been crammed in sideways, gin and tequila. The painted minifridge left my fingertips pink and tacky. My prints made me complicit, I supposed. I pulled out the tequila and took a long slug straight from the bottle. Cheap, astringent stuff. No wonder they were chilling it. The armchair under the window was paint free, so I made my way to it with the tequila, trying not to touch anything else.

“Well, April,” I began, answering her question as if I hadn’t left, “since you asked, my day started at five this morning, with stops at two different TV morning shows. Then I did a radio call-in show. Then I spent two hours on the phone in a station parking lot arguing with the label about why we still don’t have our new T-shirts. Then I did a couple of acoustic songs for a local music podcast, ate a highly mediocre burrito, and came back here to find you’ve been far more productive than me. I mean, why did I waste all that time promoting our show tomorrow night when I could have been helping you redecorate?”

They were all glare resistant; not even April had the decency to look uneasy. They knew I had the power to fire them if I wanted, but I wouldn’t. We got along too well onstage.

It wasn’t in me to maintain stern disinterest. “So where did you get the paint?”

April grinned. “We looked up where the nearest liquor store was, right? We had to run across the highway to get there, and there were, like, six lanes, and it was a little, uh, harrowing. So on the way back, we tried to find a better place to cross, like maybe there was a crosswalk somewhere, and then we passed this Superwally Daycare that had a room being redone and it was completely deserted, right? But the door was open, I guess to air it out.”

A groan escaped me, and I took another chug of tequila. “You stole from a daycare?”

“A Superwally Daycare,” said JD. “They won’t be going broke on our account, I promise you. Anyway, we also went back out again to the actual Superwally and spent some money there that we wouldn’t have spent otherwise, so it cancels out.”

I was almost afraid to ask. “What else did you buy?”

“That’s the best part.” Hewitt flipped the light switch.

The room lit up. The pink television and the wall behind the headboard had been painted over with an alien-green glow-in-the-dark wash only visible with the lights off. On the wall backing the bathroom, our band logo: a sparking cannon. April’s drumsticks glowed, too; if only they’d stuck to painting things they owned.

“I hope one of you pulled a Cheshire Cat, because I need somebody to punch in the teeth.”

JD’s voice came from beside me. “Like I said: we considered an accent wall, but then we decided against it.”

I put the bottle to my mouth to keep myself from saying something I’d regret later. Dozed off for a second in the chair, then started awake when the lights came back on. April had disappeared, probably back to our room; JD was asleep on his bed; Hewitt was singing to himself in the bathroom. I might have rested my eyes for longer than I thought.

The tequila walloped me as I lurched to my feet. I tried to channel Gemma, our absent tour manager. She’d gone home three weeks before, after her brother was shot eating lunch at a mall. The label hadn’t wanted us to keep touring without her, but I had promised we’d be fine. I shouldn’t have called her earlier; this wasn’t her fault. Anyway, even if she’d been here today, she’d have been driving with me, managing the promotional appearances so I could play the pure artist. The band would still have been left to their devices, though they’d probably have thought twice about pulling a stunt like this with her around to ream them out.