“Fifty States in fifty days! Are you fucking insane?” Nick shouted into the phone in disbelief. Great publicity or not, he did not like the idea of that many tour dates stacked back to back.
“Think about it, Nick,” Jerome, Nick’s agent, pleaded. “Tears of My Soul, is a great album, but to get on Billboard, we need to market it. The dates are lined up and the venues are secured. Hell, the radio stations are guaranteeing packed houses and the promoter is shelling out cash in advance to get you there. I am telling you, Nick, it doesn’t get any better than this.”
Jerome paused, then he continued in a tone that was free from the desperation that marked his words just a second earlier. “Nick, wasn’t it you that said you liked being on the road, getting out of the studio and playing for the world?”
Nick sighed halfheartedly into the receiver while a sheepish smile made its way to his face. “I knew that drunken tirade would come back to haunt me.”
Jerome persisted. “So I tell the promoter…”
“Tell him Distortion of the Truth will do it.”
****
Nick Sparing sat alone back stage. It was thirty days into the tour, and all he could think about was the old Dire Strait’s song lyrics, Money for Nothing and Chicks for Free. He pushed the hair out his eyes, tied it into a short ponytail and stared into the mirror. He hardly recognized the man staring back. The whites of his blue eyes were streaked red from fatigue and the sudden weight loss was evident in his recessed cheeks. He cracked his knuckles. His fingers were still stiff from last night’s concert. “Dire Straits was full of crap,” he thought. This was fucking work.
Nick picked up his guitar from the floor. His fingertips caressed the strings. He played a few quick scales in hopes that his stiff joints would loosen up before he went on. Nick smiled as the music filled the tiny room. Sure his body hurt now, but in less than a half an hour he would be on stage and everything would just melt away.
A knock on the door pulled Nick from his pre-concert ritual.
Nick’s drummer, Jessie Stalworth opened the door and popped his head in. “Hey Nick, you ready?”
“Yeah, Spider. I’m ready.” Nick smiled and pictured the first time he’d seen Jessie play. Jessie was 6-foot, 6-inches in height, tall for a drummer, and rail thin with abnormally long arms and bulbous eyes. When he played, his arms and legs flailed about and the gawky percussionist looked more like a spider wrapping up a fly than one of the nation’s premier drummers.
“Cool!” Jessie looked down the hall in either direction before stepping under the doorframe and into the dressing room. “Dude, I was just checking out the crowd. Fuckin’-A Man, there are smoking babes out there. All of them are drunk and half are topless. Nick, it’s all good.”
Nick smiled and nodded. Jessie ducked back under the doorway and left, closing the door behind him. Nick returned to his guitar and played a few more chords while pondering what Jessie had said. Yeah, it was all good, but sometimes it was all too lonely.
Twenty-five minutes later, Nick hit the stage. Spider had been right, the crowd was wild and from the moment the lights went up he could feel the electricity. This was what he played for. This was the only reason he had agreed to the tour in the first place.
After forty–five minutes of high-tempo rock, the concert lights dimmed. David Saul, the band’s bassist, had picked up an electric violin during Spider’s drum solo and played the introduction to Tears of My Soul. As the high-pitched sounds of the violin filled the small venue, the crowd erupted in anticipation of the title track from the debut album.
While Dave played, Nick slipped off-stage. He grabbed an acoustical guitar from a Roadie and ten seconds later, re-emerged, dowsed in a sea of crimson from the lone spotlight. The first soft chords from the guitar sent a wave of excitement through the crowd. The violin and guitar then played in unison and Nick began to sing.
The lyrics were a personal account of the early days of Nick’s life and told of a young man’s secret desire to run off with the rich, but abused, girl next door. The melody was a bluegrass ballad. Nick had written the song when he was seventeen and now at twenty-three, it seemed to be more a part of him than his own two hands.
As the words continued to fall from his lips Nick scanned the crowd. For the most part the faces were basically the same as the ones he had seen over the past thirty nights. Then through the turned-down lights, Nick’s his eyes fell upon her. Her look was straight from the beaches of California; blonde-haired, green-eyed with a tan, slender body tucked into a pair of low hip hugging jeans. She wore a tight white tank top that accented her modest curves. Her breasts beneath the shirt were unrestrained and her aroused nipples could be seen through the thin material of the top.
Nick took a step toward the edge of the stage. He motioned for the girl to come closer. As she made her way through the crowd, Nick watched her soft full lips sing out the words to his song. Though he could not distinguish her voice from the crowd, in his mind the sound of it was angelic.
When she reached the edge of the stage, their eyes locked and Nick’s imagination began to run wild. While words continued pour instinctually from his mouth, his mind drifted away and found himself, lying in a bed with Miss California straddling his waist. Her hands were pressed flat against his chest and her naked body swayed over him in rhythm to the music.
Nick’s daydream faded with the last notes of the violin. While the crowd erupting in a chorus of cheers and whistles, Nick mouthed the words ‘Thank you’. The Cali-girl smiled and blew a kiss in his direction. Nick could feel the heat rushing across his face and he quickly turned around and strutted away. When he reached center stage, fireworks lit up the arena. On cue, Spider pounded his drums; the blinding lights returned and the girl disappeared into the sea of silhouettes.
The concert ended forty-five minutes later. Nick acknowledged the crowd and exited the stage. He tossed his guitar to a stagehand and sprinted for his dressing room to change. He hoped that the blonde blue-eyed beauty would hang around, but when he returned to the arena, she was gone. Disappointed, Nick turned and headed for the band’s charter bus. Another day another town.
Much to Shay’s dismay, her friends had hustled out of the club the instant the encore ended. She was certain Nick would come back out. There had been a connection. It was in his eyes, the way he sung to her and the tender way he mouthed ‘Thank you’ afterward. Irritated, she sat in the car, with the rain beating down against the roof and her friends rehashing the show. All the while, Shay’s dream of a meeting with Nick Sparring was slipping away.
“C’mon Jackie, admit it. You saw the way he looked at me as he sang Tears of My Soul. He wanted me and you know it. ” Sarah turned toward Shay. “Tell her, Shay. You saw him.”
