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shinobicyrus · 6 years

Text

The Not-Date

A belated birthday gift for my good friend @homebeccer. I probably failed attempting three different fics until finally ended up doing one that’s pretty much a continuation of last year’s fic with her OC Phuong. Happy Birthday Becs!

Tucker waffled for three days trying to think of someplace for Phuong and him to have lunch.

The Nasty Burger always worked when he hung out with Danny and Sam- but Phuong was someone her barely knew. The idea of taking her to some trashy burger joint that had been demolished and rebuilt more times than there were Spider-Man reboots just felt...juvenile.

Not that any of his other options were any better. Restaurants were too formal, and a more casual cafe just screamed “lunch date.” Which is not what this was. At all.

He’d done his best to be as clear as could be on that. Anything resembling a date was so beyond Tucker’s ability to handle. The last thing he needed was to send mixed signals with the wrong lunch setting.

(Hell, the last thing anybody needed was prolonged exposure to the smoldering, irradiated wreck that was Tucker’s Foley love life.)

Which still left him with...absolutely no idea where they should go.

God, all this drama over Lunch. There was no word in English or Esperanto that could accurately express just how painfully pathetic Tucker was being, right now. Maybe the Germans had a word for it. This seemed like something they’d have covered.

Nah, screw that. Confidence was the name of the game. He’s totally got this. He fights ghosts on a semi-weekly basis, has gone through inter-dimension portals, hacked a robot-ghost assassin, and briefly ruled a whole kingdom as a power-crazed tyrannical ghost-pharaoh...

Actually...scratch that last one. No need to revisit that. Teenager stuff, everyone goes through that phase.

The point was, Tucker was a grown man with a tech job, an apartment, alimony payments, and goddamn time travel experience. He could handle a totally platonic lunch with a minimum of panic texts to Valerie. Sure, Ms. Hunts Her Prospective Love Interests may be in the eternal four-way-tie of scariest ladies he knows, but at least she’s safer than the alternative. There was desperate, and then there was desperate.

Sam would have broken his feeble protests on the not-date status of the lunch on the peak of a single raised eyebrow while balancing little James on her hip. Danielle would insist on being his wingman, Jazz would be a post-doc shark smelling ‘unresolved issues’ in the water, and Danny-

Danny would try to be supportive.

Valerie listened to his plight with the same patient silence she probably used for lying in wait with an ecto-rifle and suggested a practical, easy solution.

The answer was, of course, Meatheads. Which Tucker of all people should have figured out sooner- because Meatheads. You ordered at the register, but after you sat down and they brought the food to your table. Perfect middle ground.

Yeah, Tucker was counting this as a win. The bar was set ludicrously low.

He goes early because it was easier than sitting in his apartment refreshing traffic conditions on his phone trying to math-out arrival times and debate how early is early before it’s back into descriptive German adjectives levels of pathetic again. Ordered some fries to settle the nervous queasiness, which didn’t really help because cajun seasoning is delicious but the very opposite of calming.

He didn’t think anything much over Phuong being five minutes late. She was new in town, and even with GPS going to new places was a hassle.

By the time she was fifteen minutes late he was guzzling his second ill-advised mixed fountain drink abomination and jittering his leg, constantly looking from his phone to the door as though she could slip in between the ticks of seconds. Jeez, get a grip, Foley. So she was fashionably late. Watch, she was going step through that day any second and you’re gonna feel like such fixating tool Vlad will probably swoop in and sue you for copyright infringement.

Twenty minutes he- he doesn’t even know. She’d text if she was running late, right? Even if she’d come to her senses and the ‘OMG You Saved My Life From A Ghost’ gratitude finally wore off she’d still...like...tell him.

She didn’t come off as someone who would bail without warning. All that time in her apartment, Tucker thought he’d gotten a pretty good indication what kind of person she was. Witty but hiding it behind that poker face. Tough too- most people would be screeching and next to useless when that ecto-heap of a ghost crawled out of her sink. Tucker had plenty of experience with tough, kickass women, but hers was an...ordinary, down to earth strength. The kind you built for yourself by hand, brick by brick.

Sturdy. Decent. If she had something to say, she’d say it properly to Tucker’s face.

Half and hour late and no word. Checking his phone for the umpteenth time revealed it’d been a fully thirty-three seconds since he last checked. The couple a few tables behind him chatted quietly in a language that wasn’t English. Re-reading the last text conversation with her; they’d said 1:00, right? Yeah, and it was definitely today.

God, he was such a self-absorbed idiot. Phuong wouldn’t just blow him off- not without good reason. Plenty of perfectly normal reasons; in Amity, plenty of not-so-normal ones, too. Maybe he should call? Or send a text to see if she was okay? Then again, one text would probably lead another and then Phuong would quickly get an alarming amount of babbling text spam in her phone.

No, he should still send one. Just one. He typed up a quick, casual message that he immediately deleted, re-wrote to satisfy a criteria he couldn’t even be sure of, and by the time he had wasted yet another five minutes weighing tone (casual but maybe it’s too casual like he doesn’t care I mean the last one was waaaaay too desperate like wow stalker much?) and almost didn’t notice when Phuong barreled through the front door.

She was panting like a marathon runner. Clothes wrinkled, hair wild and windblown. Tuck stared dumbly at her, so she was the one who spotted him and immediately made a beeline for his table, practically collapsing into the opposite chair and still breathing hard.

“I’m...” she gasped out, wiping a sheen of sweat on her forehead. “Am so sorry. There was a- I don’t even know.” She gestured wildly, flailing and failing to charade it. “I was just. Walking. Here. On time. And there was this...this noise. And then this thing- person. I...I knew her, but. No, there was an...explosion first?”

Tucker spied the rest of the tables in his periphery. They were getting a few looks, but besides the sudden hushed indecipherable chatter from the two behind them, it would take more than a slightly disheveled woman to grab someone’s attention in Amity.

“That...would explain the uh...you know you have a bit of glass in your hair?” Tucker reached over and carefully plucked a glimmering little chunk of marble-sized glass and wrapped it carefully in his napkin.

She felt around her abused-looking hair. ”Crap! Is there any more?” She looked down at her the state of her shirt. “Shit, I look like a mess.”

Tucker slid his pop over to her. “Here, take a drink of this and just...breathe a little.”

She obediently took the cup, popped off the lid and guzzled straight from it rather than the straw. Tucker watched with almost morbid fascination while she keep chugging, throat working steadily, until she finally slammed it back down on the table like something much stiffer. An echo of leftover, half-melted ice settled hollowly. “I hate soda,” she said.

Blasphemy. Tucker had concocted - nay, perfected- that mixed drink formula himself, and the Illinoisan in him demanded she call it pop, dammit. Still, priories. “That’s fine. Let the hate flow through you. Feel better?”

She was surprised by the belch she replied with, looked sheepish, and nodded instead.

“So.” Tucker folded his hands on the tabletop. ”Explosion?”

Phuong’s brow furrowed, like she was trying to remember something but second-guessed herself. “I...I think Ember McLain tried to kill me.”

“Ah.”

The caffeine seemed to have righted her head. She narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious. “You don’t seem even a little surprised.”

“I mean, I’m a little more informed than most because of the Fentons- but yeah, we were kind of due for an Ember tantrum. She has this on-again/off-again thing with another ghost and when they go off-again, she tends to go off.”

“Like blowing up a hipster record store some people minding their own business might be walking past?”

“She’s pretty much the reason you won’t find a Hot Topic in city limits.” Seeing his opportunity, Tucker propped up his hands under his chin and grinned at her. “That doesn’t explain how you recognized her, though.”

“I...refuse to answer that questions on the grounds that it might incriminate me.”

“I didn’t know Ember’s albums were popular outside of Amity.”

“She was a world phenomenon- everybody knows her name!” Phuong burst out with what Tucker suspected was a lingering residue of musical thrall that had probably been implanted there since she was a teenager. Damn, talk about getting music stuck in your head.

“I’m only surprised you were into something so...mainstream.”

“So I’m not as picky with my music as I am with my movies. No one goes around singing lines from Hitchcock movies because they get stuck in your head.”

“Well, at least you survived an assassination attempt from your teenage-rebellion phase.”

“Only because some...some...super hero, I guess? He was literally wearing this black spandex.”

Years of training kept the grin off Tucker’s face. “Snow white hair? Glowing green eyes?”

“Yeah, that was the guy.”

“Congrats, you just got your first rescue from Danny Phantom. You’re practically an Amity...ite? Amityvill...ian? What would that be?”

Right there, Phuong looked like she had officially reached the tail end of her suspension of disbelief. “Danny...Phantom? You can’t be serious. What is he, some ghost superhero?”

“Pretty much. Keeps most of the meaner ghosts from getting too out of hand. Blowing up a shop was a little more extreme than usual- most the time it’s some floating boxes and a ‘Bewaaare’! Y’know. Wednesday stuff.”

By this point, Phuong’s fingers were carding through her already frazzled hair. “Of course there’s a ghost superhero. Why wouldn’t there be a ghost superhero. I find one nice apartment over the border with decent rent and now I’m getting blown up and there’s superheroes.” She looked up him, eyes screaming for sanity. “Please tell me he’s the only one. That’s there’s not like...a pack of super-friends or something I need to be on the lookout for.”

Their neighbors’ indecipherable conversation had picked up again- which Tucker found distracting. It was weird too- he couldn’t understand it, but he could almost swear he had heard it before. Japanese? Korean? Hindi? No...

Wait.

“Well, there’s...a couple,” he admitted, trying not to enjoy the bang as Phuong’s head met the table. “There’s the Red Huntress- she flies around on a rocket board in this red and black armor. Usually stays out of the limelight- not nearly as active in the media as Danny Phantom. Then there’s...well. I guess who could call her Phantom’s side-kick. Invisobelle.”

Two tables behind, a chair scraping and some muffled words. Tucker kept his face schooled.

“Invisobelle.” Phuong sighed. “That’s just awful.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, she’s just Phantom’s sidekick. Not nearly as popular or as active as him.”

Before Phuong could say anything else, her very discontented stomach gurgled a noisy protest.

“I,” she announced, “am so hungry I would murder the cow myself if it was faster, and I don’t care how many calories it is or what my mom would say about it because I have goddamn earned it.” She cocked her thumb back towards the line at the register. “I’m going to go up to order. Have you eaten yet?”

He tried not to sound guilty. “Just some fries?”

“Okay, tell me what you want and I’ll do it for the both of us. And I’m paying. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten.”

“I know better than to argue with you about it,” Tucker said.

“Good man.”

After she left with both of their orders, Tucker waited until she was well out of earshot before standing up and approaching the couple two tables behind theirs.

They both stiffened at his approach. One of them hunched behind an open copy of the Amity Park Angle that was three days old.

Dammit, he freaking knew he was hearing ghost-speak.

Danielle, as incognito as she could manage in aviators and a My Little Pony(TM) beanie gasped unconvincingly.

“Whoooaa, Tucker? You’re here too? No waaaayy! Only in small towns, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m completely buying this.” He pulled down the newspaper to uncover Wulf wearing a baseball cap over his flattened ears and sporting a pair of novelty shades that would be comically large on anyone but a literal giant wolfman’s long nose.

“Uh...Amiko Tuck! Kio surprizo!”

“Already tried that one, dude,” Elle warned him in a sotto whisper.

A distant, out-of-body perspective yanked him violently from solid ground so he could examine the situation from above just to confirm that yes, this really was his life and was something he had no choice but to deal with. An ache bloomed behind Tucker’s eyes- the start of a bad headache like his brain was punishing him for putting it through this. Fair enough. Taking off his glasses let Tucker both massage the pain out of his temples and make it much easier to not look at them.

“You two. Can turn. Invisible.” He hissed through the pain. “Why the hell-”

“They won’t let you buy food here if you’re not visible.” Danielle explained. “Company policy.”

Wulf picked up a large burger from a tray already littered with the wrappers of past conquest and munched on it demonstratively, like Tucker was still buying the cover story.

“And what, no one minded having a giant wolf-ghost-man just...hanging around the restaurant?”

Wulf swallowed the last of his burger and shrugged. “Ĝi estas Amity.”

Danielle nodded. “Yeah, nobody minded. Wulfy-Wulf even got a few phone numbers. He’s a total player.”

Tucker’s head canted, straining to process this new information. Wulf titled down his gunglasses and winked.

“I. Well. Okay then. That’s just brings up a whole lot of other questions I’m not sure I want answers to.”

“Estas la oreloj,” Wulf tipped his cap like an old-timey gentleman and wiggled his ears, suspiciously similar to how a puppy might. “Ĉiuj amas la orelojn.”

“No. Stop that. No making me wanna pet you instead of yelling at the both you properly about violating my privacy like this.”

“We’re not spying on you, Tuck!” Danielle insisted. “We came here to be supportive!”

“Jee, ni estas ĉi tie por vi, Amiko Tucker.”

“Oh. You were here to support me. While hiding behind last week’s Angle.”

Dani hid her cringe behind an awkward smile. “We were here for you in spirit?”

Wulf chortled. “Heh. Spirit.”

“I am so unfriending Valerie for this, the traitor.”

“Aw come on, Tuck it’s not like- we just wanted to make sure you were okay!”

“I know you two don’t get why-” Tucker cut off what he was going to say, breathed, and tried again. “I get it, I do, but I’m just having lunch with a friend, okay? I’m allowed to have those, aren’t I?”

“Well yeah, it’s just-” Danielle sent an appealing look Wulf’s way. “It hasn’t even been a year since you and-”

“Ni ne diras ŝian nomon,” Wulf growled.

Danielle rolled her eyes. “Fine. Since you and Voldemistress finishing signing the paperwork.”

“Elle, I get it. Trust me, I do. I am nowhere near ready to even start thinking about dating. Phuong’s a- look she’s pretty cool, and she’s new here, so she needs a friend to give her the Amity Survival Training. This is absolutely not a-”

“Tucker?” Phuong asked behind him.

“Dankon pro la averto, Wulf,” Tucker hissed, and turned around. His face burned under her scrutiny. “Uh...hey Phuong! You’re back. You wouldn’t believe who else had the idea to eat here today? Small towns, right?”

“Oh sure, he can do it,” Danielle grumbled.

Phuong, looking as though she hadn’t even heard him, was gaping past Tucker at Wulf. “Who...are your...friends?” The last word she said with skepticism.

Tucker spoke up quickly to cut off Dani. “Oh. Right. Uh...Phuong, this is Danielle- she’s the cousin of my best buddy Danny, and...this is my very good friend-”

“Wulf,” he stood up to his full height and took off his hat in a way that reminded Tucker of old movies, when gentlemen stood up when a lady was present. “Estas plezuro renkonti vin. Ajna amiko de Tucker estas amiko mia.”

He held out his hand...paw. Sans the claws, thank God. Phuong looked down at the massive furry hand. Looked up at the enormous, wide-shouldered wolf-man that had at least a foot on her, and accepted the handshake like it had challenged her. “Nice to meet you,” she said. Her hand was pitifully small in Wulf’s palm, but he shook it gently.

Tucker clapped his hands together. “Greeeaaat, everyone’s introduced so glad hey didn’t you say you two had to rush, Elle?”

“Huh?” Dani was hard to read with those stupid aviators, but thank God she decided to not be a little troll for once. “Oh yeah. Come on, Wulf. I forgot we had to the do that thing in that place that wasn’t here.”

“Eh? Oh! Jee, tre okupata. Ni vere devas rapidi-”

“You don’t have lay it on that thick Team Jacob she can’t even understand you.”

Plastering on a big smile, Danielle hooked her arm into Wulf’s. “It was nice meeting you Phuong.”

“Likewise. Maybe I’ll see you two around.”

Peeking over her sunglasses, she leered at Tucker. “I’m sure you will.”

“Good-bye, Danielle.”

Snickering, Danielle pulled Wulf along with alarming ease, considering their size difference. In his free paw, he held up a few scraps of paper and napkins with scribbled numbers on them. “Kio pri-”

“Dude, not now. Lot’s of things have changed in the dating scene since you’ve been alive. There’s like...a rule about not calling people right away.”

“Oh. Mi ne havas telefonon.”

“Yeah, there you go. Like phones, that’s a big one.”

Phuong waited until they were out the door. “Well they were...interesting. Wulf, especially.”

Tucker scratched the back of his head. “Yeah he. Uh. Definitely makes an impression.”

“Oh, I definitely got a few of those,” Phuong pursed her lips, chewing on a thought. “How long-”

“Since I was fourteen.”

“You two must be very close, then.”

“About as close as two guys that have saved each others’ lives get. Or...un-lives, depending on who you mean.”

“Lot of that seems to be going around,” Phuong noted with a conspiratorial little smile. Like it was their in-joke. Tucker smiled back.

A server came up bearing a tray of burgers. “A bacon-ranch half-pounder with a side of fries?”

“Oh thank God,” Phuong seized her tray and sat back down at the table.

The server looked around the surrounding tables. “Uh...what happened to the-”

“He left, sorry.” Tucker said.

“Aw dammit. I mean,” blushing, the server hastily shoved the tray with Tucker’s food at him. “Enjoy.” And scampered.

Phuong was already tearing into her burger with gusto. Tucker, taken aback, lingered over his food. She noticed him watching her, and asked with a full mouth. “Wahf?”

“Nothing. Glad I picked the right place.”

“Thowwy-” She swalloed. “Sorry again I was so late. I would have called but whatever weird guitar blasts Ember was doing cracked my phone. I swear I’m not usually this bad.”

“Trust me, happens to everyone eventually.”

“While we’re on the subject,” Phuong pointed a fry in Tucker’s direction. “Any other major Amity hazards I should know about? Because at this point, I’m pretty much numb to ridiculous bullshit, so you might as well give it to me all at once.”

“It’s...quite the list,” Tucker warned her.

“I just had a literal blast from my black-leather past that almost gave me tinnitus. I can handle it.” She opened up her arms like she was inviting a hit. “Come on, what else is there? Are dragons real too? Vampires? Wizards? Government conspiracies? Is this whole town sitting on top of a portal to hell, or something?”

Tucker didn’t answer for a long moment- mostly internally debating whether Clockwork could technically count as a wizard.

“I don’t like how quiet you’re being.” Phuong said.

“How about this? You eat, I’ll talk.”

“So do you usually go out to lunch with chaperones, or was that a one-time thing?”

They walked side-by-side down the sidewalk, parting for any fellow pedestrian going the other way. Offering to walk her home was only right, after having a literal scare from a raging dead rockstar on the rebound.

They’d been walking in amiable silence- so the question caught him off guard. “Relax,” she said. “I thought it was kind of sweet.”

“Sweet?”

“Well, I’m guessing by how much you were trying not to look embarrassed while you were introducing them that their being there wasn’t your idea.”

“No, it was definitely not.”

“Thought introducing me to your ghost-friend was a bit too soon?”

“More like either of them. Danielle had a...weird upbringing and Wulf is...”

“Very loyal, seems like. And nice. At least...I think he was being nice? I paid attention in enough Spanish classes to get the gist of it.”

“I’m actually kind of impressed,” Tucker said. “You dealt with the whole three hundred pounds of fur and claws way quicker than...well...anyone not in our immediate friend circle or non-furries.”

“What can I say? I’m learning to roll with the Amity Weirdness. After getting caught in the middle of a Rocky Horror Show street fight, the giant shaggy dog-man was pretty...tame.”

The emphasis at the end there. Tucker shook his head in mock disappointment. “I saw what you did there, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Also, he’s technically a giant shaggy wolf-man. He’s very sensitive about it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. And good side-stepping the topic, by the way. I almost didn’t notice.”

“Doing my best.” He shrugged away another rise of heat in his cheeks. It would be so easy for her to just ask, a few well-target words and Tucker knew he would unravel right in front of her. It felt too much like his feet dangling over a precipice- a feeling he was disturbingly familiar with thanks to a best bro who could fly.

“I won’t ask about her.” Phuong reassured him, and Tucker could almost feel the phantom hand pressing down on his chest east. “But if your friends’ reaction to you going out to lunch with someone is to adorably fail at the covert part of a stakeout...”

“I didn’t take the divorce very well,” Tucker admitted. Understatement of the century. Take a nerd’s natural self-worth issues and throw in the colossal failure of a marriage crashing and burning, and of course clashing with someone who knew you well enough to say just the right things that would stick long after she left.

Phuong nodded to herself. “Y’know, if you ever want to talk about it with someone who wasn’t involved, even if you want to just vent-”

“I make it a rule to never talk about exes on a d-” Tucker stopped himself, wincing.

Of course Phuong noticed. “Never discuss exes on a what, Mr. Foley?” Her smile was just the right kind of smugly teasing, and- aw hell, this lady was so, so dangerous. “I thought this was just a nice, simple lunch between friends?”

“I-it is! I-I just. See, what I meant to say was-”

“And friends,” Phuong went on, as though she didn’t hear his pitiful stammering. “Are practically honor-bound to listen to another friend go on about bad exes and shitty breakups.

“And I,” she pointed at herself, “have had some truly awful exes. Seriously, you would’t believe.”

Oh, he could probably guess. “Bigots?”

“Just the three. I got pretty good at filtering out them out, especially the ones with a fetish. You?”

“Just two. Well...three, counting the homophobe. She thought our two month relationship would somehow trump a few years of friendship with Danielle and her girlfriend.”

Phuong snapped her fingers. “I knew it.” At Tucker’s questioning look, she said: “The aviators.”

“Ha. And that was her trying to be subtle.”

“Morbidly curious what she looks like going all-out, now.”

“She will probably hit on you just to see your reaction.”

“Being irresistible to all sexes is truly a curse,” Phuong replied smoothly. “Okay, my turn: stalkers?”

“Do hauntings count?”

Without skipping a beat: “Depends on what base you go to.”

Tucker choked. “What?”

“Well? Did I stutter? Come on, Foley, out with the dirty details. Was it like that unnecessary Ghost Buster’s scene with Dan Aykroyd?”

“...just second base. But I would like to state for the record that she looked way more alive when she was luring me in before the scary kill-murder banshee mode.”

“No judgments. I’ve dated my share of cold fish.” That poker-face delivery was so deadpan, Tucker couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “I take it you made it through scary kill-murder banshee mode unscathed or am I talking to a meat-loving ghost right now?”

“Don’t joke about that- they exist.” Tucker warned her. “And nah, nothing hurt permanently except my pride. Phantom showed up and saved my dumb ass.”

“Hmm. That’s two I owe him, now. Might need to start running a tally.”

“Good luck. He’s saved this town more times than I can count, and you are talking to an obsessive nerd here.”

“Have you ever thought about leaving?” Phuong asked him suddenly. “You said it yourself- this town is dangerous. Haven’t you ever thought you could just...move away? Get out of the spooky warzone and live a nice normal life?”

“Sure. My parent’s argued about it a lot when I was younger. They might still move away when Dad retires, but I...” He looked up at the city. The billboards for Mayor Masters’ re-election campaign, the ‘BEWARE’ posters warning about spectral overshadowing, the cackling ecto-pusses swimming past in the sky. “My other family is here. Danny and Sam, my godson, Danielle, Valerie- that’s her girlfriend, Wulf. I know I don’t matter that much. When you get right down to it, they could get along just fine without me.

“But...I’m not sure I could get along very fine without them.”

“I think,” Phuong touched the side of his arm. “You are forgetting that two of those people on that list were so worried about you getting yourself hurt again they put on hilariously terrible disguises and waited over an hour at a Meatheads...just to make sure you were okay.”

Tucker stopped walking. “Oh. I. Guess they did do that. Huh.”

Phuong waited a few heartbeats to let Tucker process this new revelation that his friends cared, and gave his arm a squeeze before letting go. "Does that mean there’s a chance we can have another lunch next week? I still feel bad about making you wait so long.”

“Really, it’s fine. I’m just glad you got through your first real ghost fight unhurt and not running for the hills.”

“Thanks, I think I- wait. That ghost in my apartment doesn’t count as a real ghost fight?”

“Nah, that was just pest control. It doesn’t get serious until the ghosts name themselves and start monologuing. But I wouldn’t object to an encore lunch. And no chaperones next time- honest.”

“Great. A week should give me time to replace my phone,” she took it out, thicker, older, but still serviceable if it wasn’t for the giant crack in its screen. “There wouldn’t happen to be ghost-attack insurance I can get on my next model, is there?”

Tucker’s mouth jumped ahead without his consent. “I can fix that.”

“You. Really?”

“Yeah, for sure. May I?” She handed the phone to him, to examine. “Oh yeah, I’ve seen way worse than this. Just replace the screen, check to make sure none of the guts got jostled, an Ember-class screen protector; easy fix.”

“How much?”

“You just fed a bored tech geek with a project, consider it already paid for.”

“You’re...” She shook her head in disbelief. “Amazing. How soon can you-”

“Tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest. I can deliver it to your place, if you’d rather not wait.”

“You already know where I live, and I am a phone-addicted millennial getting psychosomatic hives from cell-separation. The sooner the better.”

“Consider it done,” Tucker pocketed it. “Tomorrow, then.”

“It’s a date.”

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silverhands-etcetera · 5 years

Text

Walking After Midnight.

I am so dehydrated. I took pretty good care of myself for the first three days of the tour. Water, exercise, etc. Things fell off on that first Sunday -what happened then? oh yeah, let’s blame France..

Switzerland was all sunny skies and parasailers as we split from Interlaken. In a couple hours we were back in France, and in a heavy rain out on the highway. We got a tray of sandwiches from the gig, so we avoided paying Switzerland prices for lunch, and headed back into the land of the Euro, -specifically, France again. on the way to Saarbruken, Germany.

Bottles of water inside the van & torrents of rain outside. It’s all grey and we’ve got PJ Harvey setting the audio moods, it’s working perfectly. I know that all of us in the band don’t meet in the middle on every kind of music. When we crossed into France the first time, coming from Germany, Aimee & I were in the front seat, she was driving (3rd position) and we were cranking out the Scorpions as a last shout out to Germany. In fact, we were listening to “Blackout” at the moment we crossed the border. I love the Scorpions. I’m not certain that everybody (or anybody) who was in the back seat at the time can even stand them.

We listen to a lot more music in this van than most band vans I have been in. Tastes vary, but I think everybody in here is gonna be cool as long as nobody plays the Eagles. There’s a world of stuff out there that I don’t know well, or know about at all. I don’t even have much music on my phone & I rely on these guys to curate the playlist for the long drives. I don’t take the time to listen to music on my own anymore, it’s a thing I need to change in my life. I count on time with my friends to keep music flowing into my ears.

—

By the time the roads straightened out & the mountains were down to reasonable levels, the sun was poking through the clouds. We were back in Germany -basically in Saarbrucken and it was early afternoon. The town is just minutes across the French border, and we were booked to play an Irish pub. Showtime wasn’t until 10 pm, and we were rolling in at 3:30. Idle hands..

The road into our part of town had us passing by a little platz with a Woolworth, a pharmacy, a bratwurst stand & a couple other odd stores. Streets extended out in every direction from the square, with retail possibilities on every corner, and then some. The town had a lot to offer, it seemed.

We checked into a bnb just up the street from the platz, and were hit by a deafening odor of sweet rot as we cleared the threshold of the building, that followed us up the stairs to our top floor room, but mercifully did not permeate our dwelling space. Every trip up & down the stairs was an exercise in lung capacity, as we all held our breath for the whole duration of the space between our apartment door & the street.

The lodging itself was lovely, modern & clean. But talk within the band centered around speculation over what the source of the odor in the hallway was. Best we can tell, it was a pile of garbage/dead things, or spoiled kimchee. Jokes about stinky things are the best. Basic humor that you can loop back around to with every new turn in a conversation.

—

Sherri & Aimee & I set out walking down to the little platz that we passed on the way in. I saw a Woolworth’s down there (I know, right?) and I wanted to look for a belt. I thought I could do without one on this trip, but my new jeans were a little contrary to this. Aimee saved me early on in the trip by offering me the one that she brought with her, and I was making it do. But everyone’s gotta keep their own pants up, so I needed to find my own. I wouldn’t wanna make my bad planning be responsible for somebody else’s saggy britches, we need to all look our tip-top, rock & roll best every day on this trip.

The Woolworth’s was a bust for good belts for me, but Sherri did find a cool backpack, and we kept on moving down the street. Lots of wonderful looking bakeries & candy shops all around the square, but no groceries visible to us. Down one of the side streets was a €1 store, and there was a rack of nylon strap belts right at the door. Nothing to write home about, but I reckon it’ll keep the gravity off of my pants until I get home, and the sign on the rack said it was only €1. I picked a grey one & took it to the cashier, who rang it up and gave me a number that was definitely not 1, or 1 plus tax. We had a very short talk in two languages where she tried to explain to me why it was so, and I tried to tell her I wasn’t gonna be buying the belt.

We went back out to the street, where the proprietor of the next shop had a rack of clothing out on the sidewalk, and a beautiful grey/brown Labrador was lounging unperturbed on a long bench. It was a second hand store, and most of the stuff on the rack was just random women’s clothing, but hanging on the end was an old black leather belt, with a simple chrome buckle. It might be just a large child’s belt, and it has been modified with extra holes to extend its grasp a few inches from its original design, but it fit me perfectly on the center hole. I told the shopkeeper that I would buy the belt if I could take a picture with her dog, and she more than happily obliged. I got to make a new friend. She was a quiet & noble dog who left me with a kiss on my ear as I snapped the photo.

With my new-found trouser security, we carried on down the street to see what else the town had for us. Plenty of bars, and a few closed restaurants, still more bakeries. We’d passed a vegetable shop on the way, & we decided to head back to round up some healthy fixings to take back to the apartment. An older couple were working the counter together, where we made our requests deli-style, through bits of English & French answered to us in German by the sweet woman who was gathering and carefully selecting every potato or onion as though her livelihood depended on our return business. We managed to pull together all the components for a supper & a breakfast, paid our order and asked her where we could buy some beer.

“ah, bier!” she said, and waved us outside. Pointing back to the square she said “to the Voolvorth, in the basement”

The Woolworth’s was actually just the street level of a larger shopping center, an entrance to the side put us on an escalator (descender?) going down to a discount grocery store. We were just looking for something to drink with supper, and our bargain sniffing tendencies sought out the cheapest Pilsner in the stack, which was on a special sale. I selected two or three bottles, and then reconsidered. This is a pretty good deal, we should get more. As I was mulling this over, Aimee spoke up & asked “should we just get a whole case?” (Case=20 one-liter bottles) Of course, she was right to ask this, and wise in making such a suggestion.

A little quick math & conversion told me that we were looking at a transaction of roughly five gallons of beer for about seven dollars. At these prices we would be foolish not to spend the money we saved on a bottle of their finest $6 whiskey.

Nothing to see here, just three smallish americans carrying 20 liters of beer about seven blocks up to their rental flat for supper.

—

Saarbrucken is actually a bigger town than it appeared to be on our little walk around the square. GPS directions in the van put us out on a highway for several kilometers and dropped us in a totally different town square with a completely different feel. This place was bustling, Lots of high fashion shopping and bars that were leaning closer to the nightclub side of things than the local taverns we saw earlier.

We’re at Old Murphy’s, an Irish Pub, -which apparently any country can have. They share a pedestrian square with several other bars, and there’s no way to get a car within two blocks of the place. Michael pulled into the taxi lane & put on the flashers while the rest of us started hauling gear into and across the cobblestones, past the shops and their window dressings with ten foot tall models in their underwear staring us in the eye like vacant, capitalist Mona Lisas, and the early drunks reveling among the tables & chairs all across the square. The ground was still damp from rain, but the evening was warm. The carrying was fine, but rolling the big amp cases across the uneven stones had to be done frustratingly slowly. It’s all good though, the lengths it takes to get to and from the gig are what I feel like I get paid for. Once we go on, I’m just happy to be there.

The stage was in the basement, in a little cavern of a room with arched ceilings and stucco walls. PA speakers were already hung and a SUPER basic powered mixer was set up. Aimee had to move & stack a row of full beer kegs to build herself a bunker to set the drums up in, and once she was settled in, the only access or egress was made by climbing over the kit. We tucked Michael’s amp halfway under the ride cymbal, put the bass amp on the floor under the crash, and set Sherri’s amp on top of it, so I had a full stack of amps to lean against.

The staff was all hip, edgy-looking young dudes, with the right tattoos, and they set us up with a round of beers. After the first set, the younger looking one with the bun in his hair, told us that they’d never had a band as “huge” as us there before. I’m not sure if he meant huge measured in size, or in decibels, but he really loved us, so we took the compliment and he took the tip jar around the room to get us some extra cash.

People filed in and out of the packed basement all night, but the first three tables stayed glued to their seats watching the show. I reckon we were pretty loud for that space, even filled with bodies and chatter, as it was almost the entire evening. But I was enjoying opening up the songs a little, and I loved the proximity to the drums. I could feel a little concussion of air pushing onto me every time Aimee hit the rack tom. Sherri’s amp was actually shaking me as we played. The music was a physical experience. It was another marathon set, all the way to 1 am, and the boys at the bar kept the pints of Guinness coming.

—

We broke down the gear and Sherri sold a few records to the folks at the front tables. I never got their story -were they already fans? did they find the show by accident?

We rolled all the amps & gear out in about five trips, and came back to do one last check. I asked one of the bartenders if they could spare us a pitcher of ice, and he was kind of perplexed and asked my why. I told him we had a bottle of bad whiskey back at the house, and he gave me a solid nod.

I waited by myself with the last armload of gear until the bartender came back with our ice, in a plastic grocery bag, full to the top and tied off. Then off I went, some random american, carrying the shittiest functional hi-hat stand on the planet, & a rented yamaha drum throne over his left shoulder, with a bag full of ice in the other hand, walking alone across a square in Saarbrucken to his waiting friends.

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