Page 33 of Beneath the Stain

A big, battered, meaty hand wrapped around the girl’s arm—not rough, but it wasn’t the touch of a lover either. “Move, Shelia. This shit’s important.”

“Okay, Kell,” Shelia said. “Don’t need to shove, I’m moving.” She smiled sunnily at Trav while she stepped aside. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Ford. The boys will be happy to start playing again.” She sauntered into the hotel room, which was sort of cavelike, with the lights dimmed and the strong smell of pot smoke and patchouli, and Trav was left face-to-face with the oldest Sanders brother.

“Mr. Ford?” Kell Sanders said, shaking his hand. His grip was strong but sort of spread out, but maybe that was because his paws were massive. Trav wondered how he managed to play guitar with such a mighty claw, but this wasn’t the time or the place. “Pleased to meet you. Come in. We, uhm, tried to clean up and all. I mean, the maids have been real nice helping us, but, well, Mackey sort of lost it when Gerry died, and that’s why they needed to replace the table and the window. But come in, ’kay?”

Of all the things, Trav had not been expectingthat.

He took two steps into the room and looked around. The coffee table in the middle of the conversation pit held beer cans and a recently cleaned ashtray, as well as a couple open boxes of pizza in the middle. Ah, lunchtime.

The end tables held the bongs.

Dirty food containers, beer cans, wine bottles, and the occasional dime bag lined the counters. A faint scatter of green herbal powder ringed the edge of the garbage disposal, making Trav think they’d cleaned up just a little too quickly, and there weren’t any dirty needles in the sink, but there weren’t any clean glasses either.

Trav grunted.Could be worse.

“Pleased to meet you, Kell,” he said after a pause that he’dcalculatedto go on too long. “Is everyone else here?”

Kell had a huge head and buzz-cut brown hair, a few moles around his mouth, and eyes that reminded Trav of a landed fish—sort of suspended open. He was wearing an Outbreak Monkey concert T-shirt, well-ripped in the armpits and around the neck, and jeans that had no ass, just a series of frayed strings, wearing thin, where the ass used to be. When he turned around and looked back into the living room and paused, Trav honestly believed he was counting people.

“Uh, I think Mackey’s still in his room,” Kell said. “Uhm, this here’s Blake.” A kid with a wispy mustache, scraggly brown hair, and an addict’s skinny build raised an unenthusiastic hand. He was dressed a little better than Kell—his shirt was some sort of store brand, and he wore a matching vest with his newish jeans, but his eyes were bloodshot and at half-mast. Awesome.

“And my brother Jefferson, and his friend Stevie.”

Jefferson and Stevie were sitting on the love seat together, and Shelia had just taken her place between them, burrowing like a bunny into the back of the couch. She laid her head on the shoulder of one young man and wrapped her hand around the thigh of the other, knocking Trav for a loop. That relationship did not look usual, he thought before mentally smacking himself away from judgment. The boys themselves were dressed in contrasting shirts—the one on the right wore yellow and the one on the left wore green—but the logo on the front, another expensive store brand, was the same. With their matching round faces and matching sandy hair, they were weirdly twinlike.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Ford.” The twin on the left kissed Shelia’s temple, and she scooted fluidly into the other twin’s lap. “Here, I’ll go get Mackey.” The young man stood up and turned to his twin for a sec. “Stevie, do you know if he’s got anyone in there?”

Kell grunted. “I think he was stoned enough to be gay last night.”

To Trav’s surprise, the twins met eyes grimly.

“Yeah, Kell,” the one who must have been Jefferson said, his mouth flat, “that’s why.”

Kell darted a look at Trav and grimaced. “When he’s sober, he’s with girls,” he said defensively.

Jefferson and Stevie shook their heads in tandem.

“C’mon, Mr. Ford,” Jefferson offered politely. “You can help me get him up.”

Trav was surprised enough to follow Jefferson to the room at the far end of the suite. “When he’s sober, he remembers to ask girls to beard for him,” Jefferson said quietly. “Kell doesn’t like fags.”

“Fantastic,” Trav muttered savagely, not even sure he could put words to what he was thinking. “He calls me a fag, I’ll break his fingers.”

Jefferson’s shoulders slumped, and right there Trav had a sudden moment of sympathy. His sister was a little older than he was, but he also had a brother, a younger one, who had gone to college on scholarship and had shortly thereafter spawned the first of the requisite children to make up for the brother who probably wouldn’t have any, and whom Trav saw once or twice a year. They loved each other. They talked. They hugged at Christmas. They called or texted or e-mailed every week or so. How much would Trav love Heywood if they worked together, lived together, partied together, knew the cracks of each other’s asses like the backs of their hands?

“Don’t break his fingers,” Jefferson begged, like he believed Trav meant it. “Break his jaw if you want—he doesn’t sing a lot of backup, we’d be okay without him there—but Mackey don’t need to find another guitarist. It’d kill him.”

Trav blinked at Jefferson with real confusion and wondered what he’d find on the other side of the door.

“Mackey!” Jefferson banged on the door. “Hey, Mackey! You ready to get up? The new management guy is—”

The door was opened by a tall, thin, dark-haired boy with guyliner smudged heavily over brown eyes and mascaraed lashes. He was wearing a leather jacket and, as they talked, belting a spiked belt around his waist.

“Sh,” he said, squinting at Trav and Jefferson. “He’s sleeping.”

“Who are you?” Trav asked.

The guy shrugged. “A fan. No one you’ll see again. Just—” The kid shrugged again and looked away. “Don’t wake him up, okay? He doesn’t sleep good.”