Page 6 of Bend
“First act takes the stage at 7:00.”
Buck scoffed. “Shit, I’ll be halfway to bed, but we’ll see. Thanks. Nice of ya.” I waved him off, tucking my wallet back in my pocket while Eli wound down the interview.
“Thatwasnice of you,” he said, once the old man had moved on and we sat down on a bench in front of a small market.
“I’m a nice guy.”
“A regular teddy bear.”
I cut a sidelong look over at his smirk, and he stretched his arms over the back of the bench, hand brushing over my shoulders. “How about you buy me lunch and you can do your interview right after?”
“I told you, you don’t need to interview me. I’m not even addressing the buying lunch part. You owe me lunch for getting you out of a jam.”
“You’re enjoying it.”
Strangely enough, I was. I was usually racing around on one errand or another, wrangling Les and Evan from one place to the next, or scheduling ahead for our next stop, and hardly even paid attention to the towns we were passing through. So far, today had been more like sightseeing. Eli had researched beforehand, knew all the local spots, a little bit of the town’s history, and some weird bits of trivia. He was pretty laid-back, too, friendly and charming with the locals in a manner that didn’t come off as smarmy the way I attributed to most reporters. It was more like he struck up conversations than just lobbed questions looking for a good sound bite, and I got to watch the way people warmed to him and eventually spilled all sorts of stories.
But if he thought that’d work on me, he had another thing coming.
“Come on,” he said, tapping my shoulder, then pulling his arms back to his side as he rose. He took the camera bag as I stood, too, and slung it over his shoulder.
“More interviews?”
“Nope, lunch. Then I’ll show you something really cool. Or at least, I think it’s going to be cool.”
We grabbed some sandwiches and then hopped in the rental car Eli had reserved for the day. I sat in the passenger seat with the bag of sandwiches in my lap, watching the scenery pass by in a blur of grass and fence posts. “This has to be a pretty expensive project,” I said, considering for the first time all that might be involved in filming this tour. “Aren’t doc crews usually bigger than what you’ve got, though?”
Eli glanced down at the map he’d pulled up on his phone and nodded. “They are when you’ve got decent backing. I’ve got basically none. I just really wanted to do this. So I’m footing most of it. I’ve got a buddy kicking in some for production costs, but yeah, I brought a skeleton crew. Most of them are working at half their usual rates and are close friends, so we’re shoestringing it. I couldn’t not take the chance, though. I’ve loved Porter & Graves since I heard their first show at Grim’s years ago. I think it’s going to pay off, but hey, if it doesn’t, I’ll make it up the loss eventually.”
“Someone put up their first show?” I kept a close eye on all media platforms after Porter & Graves’ last media shitstorm, but I couldn’t recall ever coming across footage of their first show.
“No. I was actually thereatthe show. I was in town visiting a friend.” Eli grinned. “I looked a little different, too. I had a purple mohawk and a little more metal in my face.”
I glanced over his profile, the clean-cut angle of his jaw, freshly shaven. “Huh. I can’t see that at all.” I tried to call up a memory of a purple mohawk but came up empty. Eli grabbed his phone and tossed it over to me. “Scroll back.”
I thumbed through his photos until I found mohawked Eli and studied it. Yeah, he’d definitely given himself a makeover. He looked good with a mohawk, too. Guess he was one of those types who could pull off damn near anything. “Why’d you ditch it? No one take you seriously?”
“Pretty much. It was harder to get backing, harder to get jobs. Not impossible, but”—he shrugged—“I guess I was just over it, too.” He smiled at me sidelong. “I remember you there, though. You look exactly the same.”
“Creature of habit, I guess.”
“How’d you end up at that show? It was early days.”
“I was managing a metal band and the lead singer had a huge crush on Les, had seen him playing around, and she told me I needed to come with her for moral support. None of the other guys in her band would.” I grinned at the memory of that show; it’d been easy to see that Les and Evan were going to make something of themselves. “I loved their sound, loved how they played off each other. So when the metal band fell apart shortly after—which I’d suspected was coming—I approached Evan and just asked for the job. He’d had his eye on someone else, but my sparkling personality won him over, I guess.”
“I’ll bet that was it. Sure you didn’t just Gorgon stare him into submission?” Eli grinned as he took back his phone and pulled off the side of the road.
“Evan’s not one to be easily intimidated.”
“I reckon not.”
I gave Eli a dubious squint, catching one side of his mouth quirking up. “The Southern’s starting to rub off on you, huh?”
“Something is.” He let out an enigmatic chuckle as he pulled the keys from the ignition. “Okay, we’re here.”
I glanced at the thick forest around us. We were literally on the side of the road, and though the shoulder was smooth as if people had parked there before, there wasn’t any visible trail or sign of where we might be going.
“This feels like a horror movie set up for a forest execution scene. Fair warning, I can move faster than you might think.”