The Phantom Rest Stop: An American Idol Halloween Story (Fic)
Featuring: David Cook, David Archuleta, Neal Tiemann, The Anthemic. With special guest star, Adam Lambert!
Rated: PG-13
Warnings for: Scary events, bad language, lots of UST among pretty much everyone listed, and some implicit hooking up. Oh, and David Cook meets Satan. Maybe.
Summary: A dark October night, a tour bus on a lonely road, and some seriously bad news.
When scruffy AI7 winner David Cook and his awesome rock band go missing, can teen-star Archie and the fabulous Adam Lambert put things right?
Author's note: Are you up for an American Idol RPF cross Season 7/Season 8 Halloween slash Twilight Zone story? One that involves the inner dynamic of David Cook's band, plus elements of Cook/Tiemann, Cook/Archuleta and Archuleta-Lambert roadtrip/mystery solving? Good. Edited version, Feb 2010.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
The weather had been sad but pretty, in that way October could be. It was the mid-afternoon of a day that had never really warmed up, and now the pale light was sliding away unnervingly fast. Rocky heights soared up on one side of the road, and the mountainside dropped sharply beyond the road's narrow shoulder. The Tahoe gig had been outstanding, but the trip back to LA dragged wearily.
All day, gray clouds had huddled around the tops of the Sierras and shouldered away more and more of the blue sky, but without really doing anything, so you couldn't exactly call the weather bad. Except when the band stopped at a roadside overlook so Neal could get out and smoke and the rest of them stretch their legs, cold fingers of wind crawled up their sleeves and pants legs and down their necks. Everyone felt chilled and drowsy.
Cook, of course, picked this time to try to ply his trademark mutant mix of inspirational CEO and class clown. Joking about the glories of touring and how two years ago they would have been happy to have a bus toilet to pee in. They should bronze the urinal cake. Only Kyle laughed. Neal, unsmiling, told him to fucking fuck right off, and then Dave looked hurt, and Andy got annoyed at both of them, and gentle Monty looked worried for his paycheck.
What pissed Andy off is how Cook could be such a good, lovable man, and yet not infrequently suck so bad at the same time, primarily because of this urge he has to try to fix everything and everyone, and all the time.
We get it, Dave, we really do. How lucky we all are, you and me and Neal and all of us. Hell, for Kyle and Monty, it really was that simple. Kyle's first big-name gig, and him only 21, a young savant of percussion, and at the same time, half-like a colt, or a puppy, or a little brother. Laid-back Monty, a decade older then all of them and a steady force who knew them when, just yesterday when they were a bunch of penniless indies knocking around as the Midwest Kings. Joining Cook's band was just pure and simple upside for those two, good times, good pay, great music.
It's not that simple for us, though, Andy thinks, the three of us. We talk about the good old days, but the truth is, we were screwed. Scared and screwed. Working our asses off and none of us paying the bills. People in our lives staring us down, waiting for us to shut our mouths and get real jobs. Putting the band on hold. Neal gone to New York and me in LA. And you take off to do this insane, insane, batshit thing with American Idol. This crazy, cheesy, impossible thing. And you won, and you came back for us, just like you said you would. You did it, you fixed things. Now leave it the hell alone, he thinks, looking at Neal's glowering profile.
There was a sudden boom of thunder, and the light outside darkened. The bus swayed and slowed as gusts of wind began to shove up against them and throw a rattling rain against the windows. The driver said, "Gentlemen, I know you're all in a hurry to get home, but we're going to take this next part real easy."
"Good idea," said Cook.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
Like a lot of people, Adam Lambert had a little bit of a thing for David Cook.
It was weird, because his *real* thing of course was like the opposite. Small, slender, muscular, angular. Soulful and intense. Once, and then again, he'd fallen for a boy like that, shot through the heart with an arrow of that intensely painful passion you don't easily get over.
He was pretty sure he was still walking around with that most recent giant, invisible arrow sticking out of his chest. He gotten used to it--the impossibility of it, the stupidity, the loveliness--and he didn't even especially want to pull it out. Time and distance would heal it, he thought, hoped, wondering where and when Kris was right now, and shit, that line of thought wasn't exactly helpful.
Anyway, Cook. In Adam's head, it was like they were comrades on some sort of weird invisible team, even though realistically it really didn't work that way. Even though they were the same age, and his own record had done great after all that angst, and Adam was sure (well, pretty sure) about his own musical path, his own way, which was very different from Cook's. It was just that Cook had this gift for making you believe that things were gonna be great. And that was reassuring on the days when he has creepy feelings of disaster.
Adam thought maybe he might get Cook to write a song with him, how that would mess people up and be awesome. He wondered if Cook and his really hot band-mates might like to hang. He felt a little shy about it, which meant he probably would drunk-dial them and issue the invite one day soon when after five too many vodka.
Adam, to be truthful, also let himself get off, once or twice, to the idea of blowing Cook. It wasn't hard to imagine what his face might look like, getting there, the way David looked sometimes when he threw his head back and sang. They could have a drink, and suck each other off, and write a song, and still be friends. Oh fuck me, I'm insane, he thought. Still, it could happen. Weirder things had happened to him.
The funny thing was, by LA standards of male beauty, Cook didn't even register, or wouldn't without his platinum record. And yet: there was something so gaaaaaah about him: it was . . . counterintuitive, that's what, Adam mused. The bearishness of the dude, scruffy beard, eternal bad haircut, wide hips and shoulders, big hands, huge battered boots. His ruddy welcome of a face was an alright thing. The long grey eyes, and at their edges, the crinkles of frequent amusement. The oddly pretty mouth with its upswept top lip, opened wide to sing or laugh.
In a town full of concealer and ubiquitous tans, Cook went around untinted, with old-fashioned porcelain skin that flushed easily pink (Adam masked his own freckles and paleness and acne scars under a skillful second skin of high-priced paint, and made up his eyes with gorgeous craft).
Cook was slightly beefy (and Adam sighed, the former fat boy in him still hurt at his own judginess), a middle-American heart-throb with no New York/LA sculpting to him, walking around with those big strong arms, and thick neck, and a great ass, and a general aura of solid, warm *guyness* to him that was delectable, or delicious, or something.
Dude wore plaid flannel tops or stupid t-shirts, when he would have looked great in a clever jacket. His accessories and tatts were so small town indie-bartender, it could have been ironic, but wasn't. And he never, ever got his hair right. Made Adam want to just grab the man, cut his fucking hair, and rip his clothes off and redress him. Or not. Maybe no clothes at all, versus the plaid button downs or Katy Perry t-shirts. Mmm, no clothes.
And all Cook's people, his bandmates, the Anthemic, were so bizarrely hot. It was attractive of him to have friends like that. They were mostly from Tulsa, which Adam could only vaguely picture as someplace flat and dusty, and maybe grey like the first part of the Wizard of Oz. That made him so sad, as a kid, how Dorothy had to go back there.
But Cook's boys: the bassist was just nice, and kindly looking, a little older, but the rest of them, holy hannah. The skinny little drummer, Kyle, had a pure, ascetic face, and long flying hair like a medieval youth in a painting. And there was Andy, dark eyes watching the world skeptically from under thick, inky bangs, a slender figure in black shirt and jeans. A little bit dreamy, a little bit fierce. Neal, massive and muscular, head aggressively dyed white-blonde, and pierced and tattooed in a way that suggested complex currents of pleasure and pain: Viking, or tribal, maybe, and *definitely* fierce.
Anyways, there was this other thing Adam liked where Cook carried an actual notebook, a plain brown one that he wrote in with a drug store ball-point pen when everyone around him in LA was twoddling their iPhone or wielding a carefully displayed Moleskine and a Montblanc, if they were full of writerly pretense.
While Cook sat there, this one time Adam remembered, in the green room for a television show they were on--Cook sat there contentedly chewing on his plastic pen and occasionally furrowing his brow, and jotting down words and music, his hand flowing easily across the page. And he looked up at Adam and gave him that laugh he occasionally did to people--the "isn't this amazing?" one. And for a minute Adam felt himself setting down his glittering, LA-hardened showbiz battle-armor and just revelling in it with him: this is what we came for. We get to make this shit, this music of ours, and everything is all right.
So Adam was standing in the airport in LA and there were TVs on, like they are at airports, ubiquitous but ignored in all the hubbubb, barely audible, but then something so not right filtered through:
"American Idol winner, fiery crash--"
And his heart and mind seized up with Kris, loss, fear, Oh God and then he heard more.
Not that, not Kris, but bad. Bad as can be.
"David Cook and several bandmates--"
"Sudden storm in the California mountains--"
"Bus is believed to have plunged several hundred feet--"
"A search is on to recover the bodies, but officials say--"
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
Charlie, the bus driver, is a comfortable old hand who knows what he's doing, steering their big silver home across the country with his mouth working a cud of gum and the radio cranked to whatever sports station he can locate. He never seems to care what the teams are, or even the sport, just likes the endless patter of scores and stats, Ford commercials and beer jingles. He's seen every type of weather and road there is, so, you know, trust. Only better to let him concentrate right now. Everyone seems to decide that separately. The window wipers slap, and everyone is quiet.
A while later he speaks up, though. "Now boss, I'm not feeling totally right about this. I got my route notes right 'chere, but the miles ain't adding up, and hell if I can figure where we went wrong. The GPS is gone wonky, seems like the screen keeps freezing up. Last place we passed that I made sure of the signs was back aways. Johnson's Crossroads. But, ah, if that was right, we should be back at the main highway by now, and, uh--"
And they were clearly not. Out the rain-spattered windows, in the dying twilight, they can vaguely make out thick black forest still climbing steeply away on one side, on the other, a slender guardrail tracing out a dizzy-making drop, and a huge sweep of gray sky. It's been ages since they've seen the lights of another vehicle.
They drive. Turning around is not an option, not on this narrow road with a bus this long, unless they come to a decent turn-off with swing room. They don't.
The radio gets strange. It's been empty of everything but static for a long while, but Charlie fiddles with the buttons out of habit, looking for a game, and all of a sudden he picks up music loud and clear. Some kind of oldies show by the sound of it. The announcer's voice is oily and stilted, out-of-date somehow, like something out of a half-forgotten black and white rerun on Nick at Nite:
"Well, pals, those were some hits from long ago and far away. Were those days something, or what? Now, see if you can guess what ties our next set together."
A haunting thin voice sings:
Once I knew a young man
went driving through the night
miles and miles without a word
with just his high-beam lights
who'd have ever thought they'd build
such a deadly Denver bend?
"Huh," says Andy. "Is that--?"
"That there's Gram Parsons," says Charlie, nodding. "Now, there's a boy died way too young."
"My brother had that record," says Cook, quietly, and Andy intuits from the past tense which brother he means: the lost one whose initials are traced on Dave's skin and guitar and woven into so many of the songs the five of them sing every night.
The next song is "Time in a Bottle," from Jim Croce. Followed by Patsy Cline, lilting a lonesome tale about walking after midnight. Then Buddy Holly's vintage wail, layered over low doo wopping.
Well, that'll be the day, when you say goodbye
Yes, that'll be the day, when you make me cry
You say you're gonna leave, you know it's a lie
'Cause that'll be the day when I die--
"Hold on now," says Kyle, nervously, not liking this, as they all get it at once.
Suddenly, it's the next song, and with a shock they take in that it's Cook's voice, distorted and tinny, like a record heard distantly down a long, long hall:
So lie to me and tell me that it's gonna be alright
So lie to me and tell me that we'll make it through the night
I don't mind if you wait before you tear me apart
Look me in the eye
And lie lie lie.
Everybody freezes, and Andy, looking over, sees that Dave's face is pale and set, lips slightly parted. Then Neal says, low but demanding: "Change the fucking channel, dude."
There is an enormous crash of thunder, and the bus swerves suddenly. No one later claims to remember what happened next.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
What the hell am I doing here, again? Adam wonders as he pulls his Mustang to a stop at a distance from the scene of disaster. He remembers flashes and bits of the drive from LA, but it's like he's been driving and driving all day in a dream. What was he hoping to see, beyond the images glimpsed on a million televisions already: the broken rail, the blackened, cracked-open armor of the dismembered bus?
What's there, as always at the site of disaster in America, are a hundred white TV trucks, dozens of equipment-laden crews dragging cable and lights, packs of reporters all standing a ruler's length from one another, each speaking into their own set of mikes and camera with the pretense that fifty other people aren't going through an identical ritual only a few feet away.
He can't even say what made him get in his car and drive all this way. His stupid iPhone is sitting on the leather seat beside him, its bright little multicolored face indifferent to the fact that it's holding a fuckpile of unreturned calls and messages. Friends who want to commiserate, and gossip. Media, calling for quotes. His agent, manager, the label. All wanting him to put the seal on the event by saying something tasteful. They haven't even found Cook and the other boys, their -- found anything in the wreck yet, and he's being asked to manufacture his part in the ritual of celebrity death. No. Just. No.
Adam ends up driving back the way he came through the spirally mountain roads. He finds his hands trembling a bit as he goes. Ok, screw this shit. Decides to take the turn-off for the next town, unfamiliar as it is. Passes a white sign, somber and old-fashioned, which reads
Township of
Johnson's Crossroads
Welcome, Traveler
Main street here, wherever here is, looks like a postcard or a stage set or a dream you once had about a not-real place, a distillation of an idea of a small mountain town. All white-columned courthouse and old-style storefronts with quaint, spindled woodwork, massive distant peaks carved against the skyline, aspens lining the quiet streets and dropping down shower upon shower of golden fall leaves.
On all the front stoops stand orange pumpkins, those odd seasonal symbols, with the slightly uncanny suggestiveness to their size and roundness that makes us carve them into crude likeness of our own faces. Imitation cobwebs and black bats dangling in yard trees, here, a scarecrow, there a skeleton. October's festival, combining a dime-store version of fear and death with the innocent excitement of greedy kids and chocolate. Adam doesn't feel well. He wishes he were home in bright and seasonless LA.
He drives aimlessly through the town, looking for someplace to sit tight and get ahold of himself, a Starbucks, or he supposes, a diner or whatever they have in a Bedford Falls burgh like this. Slowly rolling, he notices someone sitting on a bench, a small boyish figure with his hands in his lap. Five blocks later, when his brain has had time to process, he turns the car around.
David Archuleta is sitting quietly on one of the town's corny old benches, sheltered by an enormous many-fingered black oak bare of all but a few red leaves. A backpack is by his side. He could pass for a high schooler waiting for a ride, though Adam's memory tells him the kid must be at least nineteen by now. He looks up as Adam approaches, and it hurts to see it, what's in his face.
"Hey. Hey, honey. It's Adam, from the show?" Adam says as gently as he can, and then thinks, idiot. He's heartbroken, not retarded. Of course he knows who you are.
Adam sits down carefully. It feels important not to fuck this up. Like everyone else who watched Idol, he remembered the two Davids. How Archie had looked at big David. How the kid's supposed to be a Mormon and impossibly wholesome, and has probably never even begun to deal with . . . Well. The way David Cook makes people feel. Or made, past tense, and shit, super-shit.
"Hi, Adam. You can call me Archie, everybody does. It was Cook who started it, back when. Because people would say hey David! and we'd both turn around."
Adam doesn't know what to say to that. He tries to feel his way. He asks, "Is your family . . . Does anyone know you're here?"
Archie is shaking his head. "I'm here by myself. I had to come! I caught a bus to this other place, and a lady gave me a ride to near where . . . But when I got there, I realized that wasn't even where I was supposed to be. I made her drop me off here, I told her someone was coming to get me, which was a lie, kind of, and I'm sorry. I just--"
And Adam is nodding, he knows, the strange impulse to drive out here like there was something he could do, to change, and he thinks maybe that's the hook to use with Archie. He takes the boy's hand.
"I know. I know you had to come see. I did too. It doesn't seem like it could be true. I know it feels horribly wrong that he's . . ."
Archie looks straight at him with fathomless eyes. "He's not. Something bad has happened, but Cook's not dead. I have to go and find him. Only . . . only I'm not sure where to start."
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
This isn't where they'd been.
They're on the bus, sure, but the road isn't one they've ever been on.
The sky is still gray and low, though the storm has ceased. But the high desert mountain scape of the Sierra Nevadas has vanished. In its place, an empty highway stretches away to a flat horizon in all directions.
There are green fields on either side, oddly lawn-like and trim. White wooden fences in a long repeating pattern. In the distance, a red barn on a ridge, bright like a child's toy, but no cows in the field, no gates, and no drive leading up to the farm.
No other vehicles appear. No people, either. Here and there are trees--it seems to be fall in this place too, wherever this place is, because the trees flair bright orange, red, and gold. But each tree is far too alike and even, each a rounded sphere as if drawn in crayon by a simple-minded artist, and there are no fallen leaves marring the perfect green grass.
After five miles pass by the bus's odometer, they come to an exit. Or at least, the turn-off is there, and the familiar green and white of a highway sign. Only the sign is blank, a unmarred green rectangle edged in white, and empty of names and numbers.
They continue on the highway. At some point, all of them have pulled out their cell phones, looked blankly at the tiny icon announcing no signal, tried anyway, punching in calls, trying text. Nothing, and no signal on the GPS either. The world is quiet except for the chug and churn of the bus engine.
Monty says, looking down: "Hell, that's weird." And Andy half-laughs at him because, hello, freaking whole world turned weird? but then Monty says "my watch stopped, too," and of course they all look at their own wrists, and everyone else's watch is just as lifeless.
Cook rubs the back of his hand across his beard, and goes up the aisle, putting a hand on each of their shoulders as he passes, then goes to stand behind the driver, speaking a few low words of encouragement.
A while later, buildings suddenly come in sight, planted right alongside the highway, a familiar looking assembly: gas pumps and their candy-colored canopy, a white-walled station with its neon-script sign "Open" in a big plate glass window, ice and vending machines squatting by the door. A long, white, two-storied building with "MOTEL" spelled out in square black and white caps on its roof sign: and also "Vacancy: Clean & Quiet: TV."
On the bus, they all breathe a little easier and catch each other's eye, give a little shrug. Okay. Okay. This is all beyond bizarre, but, now, for sure, we'll figure something out.
But as they pull in and the bus mutters to a halt, Charlie the driver wiping sweat from his brow, the uneasiness creeps right back. There's not another car in the lot. No one emerges from the well-lit little buildings.
"Motherfuck this," says Neal. Gets up abruptly, zips up his leather jacket, jams his hands in his pockets, shoulders past Cook, and stomps down the bus steps. They watch from the window as he wanders over to the gas station, picks up a handle, pushes a few buttons and watches the numbers spin. This must really be the sticks, because it's some old Mayberry-looking deal with analog numbers on little squares that flip. The pump works. The world's disappeared, but there's plenty of gas.
It feels suddenly stupid to leave him out there by himself, so they all pile off the bus. Andy pulls open the door to the gas station shop, neatly lined with rows of Valvoline, but the little counter is empty. There's a candy machine, and Neal and Andy stare wordlessly through its glass: it's full of Chuckles and Bit O Honey and vanilla cookies: all the stuff no one ever wants. Everything is marked "10 cents" in an old timey script. Neal fishes for change in his pocket, but Andy lays a hand on his wrist. Don't. For some reason, Neal actually listens to him.
Kyle is the first one to retreat back to the bus, standing there thin and shivery--the kid has zero body fat and never has enough clothes on, Andy thinks--with his long hair whipping in the wind. The kid, who is also actually a man, with a child of his own, but looks really fucking young, right now.
Dave and Neal have been poking around the front of the motel, all around the station, and Dave gives a shout: "Anybody here?" Neal adds, "Speak the fuck UP!" and mutters "you creepy bastards" for good measure, and Cook can't help but give a little chuff of laughter.
No answer. Cook herds them back on the bus.
They start driving. And they come to the barn again. Not a barn, but--the same thing. Same look, same place on a hillside, same row of perfect trees, as where they started. They pass another, identical exit, with its equally blank sign. More fields and highway. And everything appears the same, like a film strip going past. Repeating the same frames over and over. Again.
When they pass yet another exit, Monty tilts his fedora back, says quietly, "So this isn't working. What if . . . should we go back to where we started? Look around, see if we missed something when we . . . did whatever we did?"
"Did anybody keep count? How many of these, whatever, places we've passed" Cook asks and they all shake their heads. "Okay, so then I say, I mean, I vote we keep moving." Neal cuts his eyes at him. Someone wonders aloud now what time it is back there, which leads to where they're supposed to be right now, and aren't. If they've been missed yet, and where people would look, and what they would think.
It's no fun to go there, because Kyle and Monty are married, and Kyle has a kid, Andy's got a girl. And then, all of their families, parents, brothers, sisters. It's not bearable stuff. So they're kind of relieved when Neal, who's been silent through all the worrying, breaks out his private stash of Jack Daniels and pours them all a shot.
Eventually, inevitably, they come to the rest stop again.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
Adam Lambert is pretty sure David Archuleta is insane. Lovely, and determined, and loyal, and majorly cray-cray. Poor kid! He doesn't want to spook him. So he asks his next questions veeeerrry slooowly. He wonders if he should grab the kid and stuff him in the Mustang and drive like hell back to LA so he can have his nervous breakdown in peace and quiet.
Archie is talking now, and nervously waving one hand. "When I head about it on the news, I couldn't, I just--I wanted to think it was a mistake, so. I called him. And his phone was working! And I left a message and everything! I don't know . . . I don't know what I was hoping. And then I saw the news and how they said the whole bus went over the side and there was fire and no one could have survived, so how could his phone even? And then I got this."
He holds up his iPhone, passes it to Adam:
Text messages. From Cook's account. Last night, but *after.* They read like this:
10/31 11: 59 PM
cook where are uuuuu hahahaha
11/01 12: 15 AM
Wouldn't you like 2 know?
11/01 1: 00 AM
He already sed NO LOL so y u care?
11/01 1:05 AM
You can't get close if he's not there you can't get inside if there's no soul to bare
11/01 3:00 AM
BOO!
"Don't you see? There's someone on the other end, but it's not him!"
Adam puts his hand on Archie's, sees him flinch and try to cover. Is suddenly aware of himself: his blue laquered nails and rings, the largeness of his hand, and general smallness of Archie. God, he could rip someone limb from limb right now, whatever evil asshat would play it like that.
The poor damn kid. "Oh honey. I'm so sorry. Some seeping asshole maybe found the phone, and I swear to God, whoever these sick fuckers are deserve to die a gruesome death, but . . ."
"But they know something, somehow. Um, real stuff about me. That only Cook would know!" Archie is flushed now, but he looks Adam in the eye, his face all earnest and all impossibly dark lashes and knitted brow. "Because I really did--I told him one time that I--. I told him I was all, whatever--in love with him."
In love, Adam wonders, is that what you think it was? Remembering the stupid, awful, painful feelings of wanting and not knowing and being that young. He came belatedly into comfort with his own body, himself. But the last thing he's going to do is call Archie on it now, in the middle of this terrible confusion.
The boy is rushing on now, anyway: "It was um, a long time ago. It was totally stupid. And right away, I was like Oh! Why did I even say that? Why did that have to come out of my mouth? But I did!! Of course he didn't--it's wasn't like that, back. But he was amazing about it, and he would never have told anyone, ever. Ever."
Adam has a memory of watching the Show, back before he'd even made the plunge himself. Hanging out on his couch with his buddies in LA, the cracked turquoise blue plastic one, getting high, watching TV, singing all the songs. Making dirty cracks about Cook's mouth and underneath a grudging admiration for his clever song-wranglin, and feeling a secret hot excitement. Because the scruffy musician with his worn Les Paul was totally beating the System, which meant . . . ping! a seed planted itself in Adam. Inwardly taking notes while his friends dished scorn. Watching Cook work it out, thinking, I could seriously do that.
At the time, only also a reluctant pity for this pretty, awkward kid with his Star Search pageant songs and his awful father and everyone creeping creepy all over him, and the sweet, hot, naively admiring gaze he kept giving the guy who was winning the prize right from under him. Karma, that bitch. Who knew you'd lose your own heart, Adam, under the hot stage lights in front of 30 million? He sighs and tries to beat back irony, and deal with the present.
"But honey, it's . . . the sort of thing someone might guess? That they could hurt you that way. Especially if David's-- "
At that, a hot flush passes over Archie's face. He ducks his head, but when he raises it up again, his face is defiant, and his shoulders square. He's up now, all five and a half feet of him from Converse to cowlick.
"NO. Something's going on! Cook's still--there, somewhere! I know it, I don't even know how. There's something I'm supposed to do. I'm not supposed to give up! And if you don't feel that--why are you even still here?" And he marches off.
Adam follows the kid down the street. He's not dressed up, by Adam standards, just jeans and rocker boots and his eighth-best leather jacket, but at six feet tall with a shock of black hair, kohled eyes, and a face that's been on ninety million televisions, he ought to be drawing stares in a burg like this. Archie, too, his clean-cut features like a Disney marketer's dream, only suffused with sorrow and determination at the moment. But passerbys pass by. No one is looking at them. Everything's still as quiet as a dream.
Suddenly, Archie stops. It's a tiny store front, two steps up, then a fancy wooden door with an oval window. The paint is peeling off it, and a torn lace curtain sloppily blocks any view inside. A faded sign over the door reads:
TIMELESS TUNES
**VINTAGE LPs**TAPES**RADIO & REPAIR**
As Archie sprints up the step and turns the door knob, Adam hesitates on the sidewalk. A pure black cat appears from behind a neighboring step and slinks after Archie, turning to look over its skinny shoulder and show its pink mouth in a yowl. "Oh, bite me, pussy!" Adam hisses, and follows with a sigh.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
Everyone's exhausted and on edge. Cook says he thinks Charlie needs a break, and the truth is, they all need off the bus for a while before they get hysterical.
They decide to spend the night in a motel. The motel. However this works. They stop when they get to it. Again.
The group of them makes their way inside, knocking and shouting to no result. The rooms are all unlocked, and weirdly spotless. Little paper wrapped soaps. Old-fashioned nubbly bedspreads. A framed pastel portrait of a clown, the same one in every room.
Cook says bring the food off the bus, though, because no one really knows what the hell is going on, and they can't afford for anyone to get sick when they're all alone here. The Tahoe concert was supposed to be the end of a tour leg, they were due back in LA, so there's not a lot of grub left, but some. A pile in the little kitchenette where they gather. Energy bars and Cheetos, Red Bull and Gatorade, frozen burritos. Some beer.
They eat. It's subdued. Neal suddenly grins a big toothy grin, the one that's mirthless, and raises an eyebrow at Dave, points a cigarette at him.
"Persephone, is that your theory?"
"God, I didn't say that, Neal, c'mon," Cook's eyes are closed in exasperation, and Kyle says bewildered, "What? Percysephwhat?"
Reluctantly, Andy fills in the gap. "Persephone. In the Greek myths, she was a chick who got dragged down to hell, and her mom came to rescue her, only it turned out there was a rule, if you anything from the place while you were there, you could never get out again."
Kyle's eyes are bugging out at this, and Monty puts an arm around him.
Cook blows out a sigh, messes his hair back from his brow. "I don't think we're in hell, Neal. I don't know where we are. I just want to keep you guys safe. We need to start wrapping our heads around the gravity of this situation. So could you knock off freaking everybody out?"
"Wow, is that an order? Because I'm pretty sure I stopped drawing a paycheck when we fell off the fucking face of the Earth."
Oh shitcakes. A Tiemann/Cook Olympic emo pissing match. Just what they need.
Dave's red-faced and hot-eyed now: "It's not about playing boss, here, it's about being responsible for you. Which I am. Because we wouldn't even be here otherwise. I got you guys into this. Somehow. "
Andy rolls his eyes: "Oh right, that makes sense, blame you. If you'd just been a sufficiently selfish asshole, you'd have won your big prize, invited us for drinks once or twice, then left us behind while you did your victory lap with a bunch of hired studio hands who'd kiss your ass. But you wanted a real band, so you got us."
He doesn't say it aloud: And how can I blame you for taking me with you, when you might have taken Neal, and not me. A taste of fear and shame he'd felt, all those months ago, when Neal signed first. And before that, when Dave and Neal had left Tulsa. Andy had gone, too, to LA, to make it on his own. Only he hadn't had to, thanks to the fucking fairy godmother of American Idol. All he'd had to give up was the front microphone in a band that didn't exist anymore. And give in to becoming part of David Cook's story, instead of his own.
Meanwhile Neal isn't really having what Cook's offering in the way of exoneration. Neal Tiemann can look like a laughing, goofy kid, at times. He can play the poised and professional musician, all cool competence and stoic reserve. Andy's seen him poker face the corporate suits that way. He can also, on a stage, look like a blonde barbarian wrestling a mad wolf inhabiting a guitar. He can look fucking scary. He's standing now, rolling smoothly to his feet, 200 something pounds of pierced and pissed off musician.
"What sort of a fucking center of the universe thing is that to say, anyway? If I hadn't kicked your ass after Axium broke up, Dave, you'd be stuck in a fucking cubicle somewhere putting your college degree to good use while your soul leaked out your fucking eardrums."
And before Andy can intervene, the way Andy always does:
"And that goes for you, too, Skib. Please don't tell me you wouldn't have pussied out like a good Jewish son when your doctor daddy wrung his hands about your bright shiny future.
You wanna blame yourself for us being here, you better blame me first."
And this was a little too much truth for any of them to handle, wasn't it?
It was Neal who was the emotional axis that all this hung on. Neal, who'd picked Andy out to join the MidWest Kings when he was just a skinny teen, tapped Andy to sing and be the front man, while Neal wrote the songs and booked the gigs and shaped their albums.
Neal, who'd invited Dave to Tulsa when his first band had melted down, given him the back up slot in MWK --just for a while--while he got his bearings, given him a mattress to sleep on. Neal who'd added his scorching licks to both Andy's and Dave's solo albums and his relentless perfectionism to the production booth.
And when Dave hit it big, Neal who'd taken up the invitation, first, to be in David Cook's band. Put his balls in a jar and himself on a leash and harnessed his bleeding edge skills to Cook's kindly, radio-friendly anthems. For friendship? For money? For the chance, after all these years on the ragged edge, at the big time? If Neal knew himself, he hadn't said in Andy's hearing.
Fuck, fuck, fuck at all their secret sore spots being ripped open here in this lost space. Love and blame: everything they'd wanted, and what they'd got instead.
Neal and Cook were about an inch apart now, staring hotly into each other's eyes. An air of disaster wafted impalpably through the room.
Then Dave's eyes went all soft and he put one hand up and around Neal's neck, and Jesus Christ, he was just fucking incapable of resentment, the sentimental asshole.
"Yeah, you perilous motherfucker. Screw you for wanting something better for all of us. You might have kicked us away from the dock, but I'm pretty sure we all got on this boat by ourselves. And we're all in it together now. Right?'
Neal seemed to swallow something down then, and he bent his head beneath Cook's hand. And Cook and Neal went into the bedroom where they'd thrown their stuff and shut the door. Monty and Kyle shrugged and headed to the room they had chosen, wisely, at the other end of the hall, Kyle pulling out earphones as he went.
And Andy stood their hesitating, and few minutes more and he could hear thump thump thump and Cook's resonant tenor ohhhhh and Tiemann grunting. It was oddly reassuring. They weren't going to let a little Hell or Twilight Zone or wherever they were get in the way of their incredibly fucked-up usual bullshit. This was just how it was, the two of them. He sighed and went to his own chilly bed and put his head under the pillow.
Around dawn, Andy's padding down the hall looking to see if there's a Twilight Zone ice machine. He passes the room Tiemann and Cook holed up in. The door's part open and some faded lamplight falling into the hall. He looks in. His friends are sacked out in the double bed, two pale, muscular backs side by side. Neal has one intricately illustrated arm protectively hung around Dave.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
The dim little shop is filled with boxes and boxes of huge old vinyl LPs, their cardboard sleeves furred at the edges with much handling. Adam can also make out shelves stuffed with dusty-looking radios, and faded black and white photos of bouffanted musicians in cracked glass frames.
Behind the counter, there's a woman leaning, musing, on one arm, with faded caramel-colored skin and snow white hair wisping out from under a headscarf, enormous black sunglasses taking up half her tiny face. Got on an old-fashioned dainty shirtwaist dress, nipped in at the waist, and her demure, thin wrist is lined in chunky bakelite bangles, the whole deal like she's dressed for a party that happened decades ago, in the age of the Vandellas and the Ronettes and sha la la la my boyfriend.
Unable to see her eyes, Adam wonders if she's blind? Except she doesn't seem tentative like that. She doesn't say "who's there?" either. Just smiles and says, "You all looking for something in particular?"
Archie makes his way forward, stumbles out, "We're looking for my friend--he's a musician? And he's--lost?"
At first, Adam thinks she doesn't understand, because she answers:
"Oh, now, alright. Lost musicians what we got, child. Rareties, B-sides, forgotten treasures. Mmmhmm.
People come in all the time looking for that one precious song. Sometimes they don't even have a name, or a title--just a little bit of a tune, or a few words. And I have 'em sing it for me. And just like that, I lay my hand on it. Course, sometimes we gotta go a little further if it's someone who's gone and gotten themselves completely off the beaten path. You go on and sing for me, now."
Archie squares his shoulders and lifts one hand like he's cupping something invisible, sings in a high pure tone, only a little catch to his breath as he goes ahead, a melancholy minor key to it:
Try to leave the light on when I'm gone
Something I rely on to get home
One I can feel at night, a naked light,
A fire to keep me warm
The lady leans forward, holds up a thin hand, like stop! says, "Wait, I almost got it. You sure that's him, now?"
Archie looks down, then swallows, looks up, brow furrowed and starts over. His eyes are closed. His voice this time is different, richer, full of longing:
You make me fall forever, with no end in sight
When everything around is broken
Could you say that this felt right?
You make me fall forever--
And the musician in Adam is thinking "damn, now that song, why I haven't I heard that song, is that Cook?" but the shop lady waves to Archie to a halt.
"Oh yes. Oh yes. I got Him now. Mmm, a bright and shiny star, ain't got no business where he is right now. He needs your help."
"Yes! Yes! That's why I'm here. Gosh, I knew I could help Cook, I knew it. " The eagerness and hope in the boy's bright face is something to see. He's almost dancing in his hi-top sneakers, and Adam feels a protective surge, steps forward to put a hand on his shoulder, someone's got to be the skeptic here, and he's looking for the right words when the shopkeeper turns her mysterious gaze his way.
"And you there, Mister Fancy. What's on your mind?"
And why IS he here? It's a question that might take a week to answer--something about a strange bond created by the mighty hands of fate and the music wizard Simon Fuller, how they all passed through the tent flap of the Strangest Show on Earth and came out in a different world.
He's got a sudden flash memory of a day in Central Park, a vast crowd showered in sunlight and green leaves, Kris Allen arm in warm arm with him, and David Cook is laughing his big genial laugh, grabbing a glittery sign from the audience with all of their faces on it, teaching Kris and Adam a song in ten minutes flat, pulling them out front with his band who nod and lay down a hot, tight number with the two random new guys in it like it's nothing hard, taking the whole weird mystery and machine of Idol and saying "See? You can do this. And it's gonna be good." Can he explain all that, to this stranger, in the middle of all the whatever?
He grins, suddenly, rocks back on his heels, and lets fly:
The future I cannot forget
This aching heart ain't broken yet
Oh God I wish I could make you see
Cuz I know this flame isn't dying
So nothing can stop me from trying
Baby you know that
Maybe it's time for miracles
Cuz I ain't giving up on LOVE!
Objects are still rattling in the far corners of the shop when he stops. Archie is even smiling at him. Not Adam's *favorite* out of his songs, but tres apropos to the moment.
"Um, I'm here to help save the day? I've got an appetite for danger?" Adam's preening, half-joking, but really, he doesn't really have a better answer, just knows he's not leaving Archie--and Cook, if by some insane miracle this is all real--to face things on their own.
The lady behind the counter gives a dry cackle. "Mmm, that you do, I guess. And a nose for trouble. Well, alright then, if you're going with--"
From behind the counter, she draws an old fashioned microphone, shiny, fat, ribbed in nickelplate, and puts it in Archie's hands.
"Take this. Go through that curtain." Nodding to a big, dark, dense and blood-red curtain at the back of the shop.
"But what do I...?"
She nods: "You'll know when you get there. That's how it's worked so far, isn't it now? Someone's led that boy astray, you need to lead him back, alright?"
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
They decide in the morning to get the bus rolling, then to take one of the nameless exits off the highway. The exit takes them somewhere different--but not much: looks like a country road on a postcard, empty perfect fields, the road rising and dipping, white fences. Grey low clouds and blazing autumn trees, cindery red and orange.
Finally, a building they haven't seen before. A roadhouse, brick with tiny frosted windows, lonely in its empty lot. A chipped sign with fading letters announces: "Bar & Grill. Welcome Trucks and Buses."
Dave asks Kyle and Monty to stay on the bus with Charlie, let the first three scout it out. He's gotten antsy about all of them going into strange places at once, he says, with no one outside to help if anything happens. Andy notices it's the guys with spouses he's asking to hang back, and he doesn't say anything, because it makes sense that you would try extra hard to get them back to their people in one piece. And tries not to let his mind wander to the idea of never seeing again and wanting his girlfriend in his arms right then. He tags after Neal and Dave.
Inside, a dark, dank room, wooden-floored, high-ceilinged, weirdly big for how small the place looked from outside. At one end, a simple bar. Colored beer lights shed a glow that should be cheerful, but isn't: all the names in neon are at once plausible and unfamiliar: Buffalo Beer. Lucky Lager. Falls City - Extra Pale.
Neal brushes past Andy, vaults the bar. He's yanking open a cooler, palming a churchkey off the bar and prying open the top. Dave touches his shoulder: "Doc, we decided not to . . ."
"Yeah? Well, I undecided."
"Come on, man."
"Guys--"
Neal shot guns the beer. Andy watches his pale throat swallowing, the glinting rings in his lip, notes the wildness in his eye. And Tiemann's fishing behind the bar now, grabbing a full bottle of burnt-gold whiskey, twisting off the cap, snarling as Cook reaches across the bar to grab his wrist. Fuck. If Neal freaks out, they are so screwed.
Suddenly, sounds rise. The other end of the empty room is guarded by a dusty curtain. From what they saw the outside of the little brick building, there's no room for anything to be back there. Only there's music, now, and a light seeping underneath the curtain's folds.
And at once, a voice, booming and hearty: "COME! ON! IN! boys. What are you WAITING for?"
What choice do they have? Huddled together, they go through it.
And someone is there, seated in a swivel chair, under a single overhead lamp that pools its light and leaves the edges of the room in shadow.
A big moon face with a gigantic grin and aggressively white teeth, capped by an enormous set of black earphones rests over an unappetizing hairpiece. Very tiny eyes. A navy sports jacket, a golf shirt with open at the neck, a tan of self-announced fakery.
A big black microphone hangs from a boom, and the man sits surrounded by sounds boards and banks of elaborate dials. Nothing is plugged in. Yet the music is coming from everywhere and no where. Piles of LPs in illustrated cardboard jackets are stacked in corners, alongside boxes of card-deck size cassette tapes, with carefully handlettered labels. Clear plastic squares and shiny CDs spill across the floor. A large coffee cup is perched on a stack of Radio and Records magazine.
The man swings round in his swivel chair, folds big hands over his belly, and leans back. The chair squeaks.
"Well, well, well. David--can I call you Dave? Andy. Neal. THANKS FOR STOPPING BY. Me? I'm the host, well, you know, I run the SHOW. I've mostly switched to a talk format these days, and most of the orders come down from the Channel, but I made an exception for you boys. There's nothing I like more then breaking young artists. Ha ha ha ha. So to speak."
Cook and Neal and Andy exchange looks that say, not liking the sound of this, and Cook says warily and mildly, "Uh thanks, but what exactly is it you want to talk to us about? And what do you have to do with us, and how we got here . . . Mister who now?"
The Host smiles with an oily smile, and says, "Well, let's not get too bogged down in details, shall we? The names of things change, all these mergers and re-brandings, you know. WHO and WHERE aren't really as important as WHAT, as in what you need.
You are musicians, aren't you? And here you are a cross-roads, and there's a bargain to strike. Now that's a story we all know, am I right? Cause you need something from me, David Cook and Band, which is a way out. And I want something from you. So here's what I need from you--and it's a generous offer. Make a deal with me and the band gets to go back, happy and free, and be bigger then EVER.
And only ONE of you has to stay behind!"
And the three of them are shouting at once, Cook, blazing eyed and livid, "the FUCK you say!"
"Now, now, hear me out! Very generous of me to let YOU all decide amongst yourselves, don't you agree? Think about it, Andy. If Cook stays, you could be the lead singer again, just like before Dave stole that from you. Unless you're too frightened to go out there again without Cook and Tiemann--it's not like you were doing so well on your own in LA. How many copies of To Have Heroes do you think you've sold? On second thought, maybe you oughta be the one to stay behind."
The host swivels and points a fat finger.
"Now David, Cook--boy, I can see you all bursting at the seems wanting to play the responsible one, the leader. But how responsible is it, really? Without you, whose to say any of them can make it pay? And have you really done enough so your family's taken care of? Now if you were just a few more levels up, sure. Right now, you're a one hit wonder. Heck of a place to check out of your career. They'll play Time of My Life at your funeral, you know that? Definitely not "Come Back to Me" ha ha ha! Too ironic!"
"What about you, Neal? It's like you say: they'd none of them be anywhere without you, anyways. Course, there's two ways of looking at that. Andy, why, he'd be in med school by now, like his father always hoped. Cook--well, Dave Cook would be happy anywhere. Dave and Andy could have had good lives without all this--maybe better."
"But you--anything other then music for a job, and you'd have gnawed your own skin off inch by inch like a chained up animal. You love it like a sickness. Not just the money--but the road, and the bus, and your stupid guitar every night. It's the relief from the itchy, incessant fear that you'll have to stuff your songs in a shoebox and give it all up for your paycheck. It's why you mark up all your pretty skin and pierce all your tender places where everyone can see. Besides the fact you get off on the pain-- it's your proof to yourself that you're never going back.
When you had to put MWK on hold, you could feel it going, couldn't you -- the last freedom, the place inside your head you made up, before they started taking pieces away?"
Andy sees something on Neal's face that makes him ill. He sees that Dave has wet eyes and is breathing heavily. He feels dizzy, himself, and his head hurts. He wants to make the voice stop.
"STOP. Stop whatever it is you think you're doing to my friends." Cook is stepping forward. "This is not on them. They're guilty of nothing--but wanting the best for me--"
"Oh BROTHER--" the DJ's eyeroll is dramatic.
"And for themselves. And for each other. Do you really think this is news to us, the shitty thoughts and the fears and all the crappy temptations to turn on one another? Because I'm pretty sure that somewhere down that endless tour route in all those ass of nowhere towns, we've all had every stupid fear and doubt you can think of, and it still hasn't torn us apart. There's no one, no one on Earth I'd rather be on stage with every night. And I'm not going to take the faith they've put in me and let you hurt them--"
"Dave." Neal's voice is a quiet growl. "It has to be me. I'm not letting Andy stay, and you have to go back because of . . . everything." And he's reaching out an arm and pulling Cook toward him until the two of them, Neal and David, are standing pressed together, forehead to forehead. They breathe together, for a moment.
And Cook says. "No. Just, no. He can't have you. Or Andy. The only solution is all of us-- or none."
But suddenly, there's a new voice: "I know the way back."
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
When they step through the portal, the first thing that Adam and Archie see is the embrace. The look of blunt stubborness on Neal's face, the tenderness on Cook's. And Neal's hands go up, his muscular arms with their colored, mysterious pictures, and he grabs Cook pretty much by the hair and drags him in, rests his forehead against the other man's--then kisses him fiercely on the mouth.
Whether it's the piercing glinting in his lip, the mouthful of big white teeth, the look in his hooded eyes--something about Neal Tiemann kissing is painful, hot, vulnerable, and a little scary.
It does not appear to be the first time David Cook has done this particular thing.
And Adam is looking to Archie and sees: surprise. And not-surprise. And sadness. And a blush.
Adam sees Cook draw gently back, look Neal in the eye and say in his clear voice: "It's all of us, or none."
And a fat, horrible man in a head-set laughs horribly and says: "About the none part . . ."
Then a look of resolution crosses Archie's sweet face and he soldiers ahead, speaks up: "I know how to get back!"
The group turns in surprise. Adam, not exactly sure of the etiquette of riding shotgun on an otherworldy rescue mission, waves a little wave, hiiiiiii. God, it's good to see Cook and his boys. Alive. So oddly hot.
Cook looks bewildered: "Archie, what are you doing here? God, not you too! And, wow, Adam?"
Tiemann raises an eyebrow and a hand: "Hey dude! Uh, what the fuck?
"What is this, some sort of sad-ass American Idol rescue squad?" Andy sounds pissy, even to himself, but fucking Christ, it's been a long day. Or however long they've been here.
Ten minutes of sheer confusion follow, a lot of cross-talk, and gesturing, demonic posturing and threats, until Adam decides to cut to the chase. He gives a shrill whistle. There's a momentary silence.
Adam waves his long beringed fingers in the air, points to the Host: "YOU. You're a liar, or a trickster, that's the deal, isn't it? Here's the thing. I bet you don't have the power to make any of them stay, unless one of them is willing to give up the others!
But they all refuse to go without each other! And me and Archie know the way out, so screw you anyway!"
The big man lumbers to his feet, scattering CD cases anyway, shoving away soundboards and amps with surprising fury and moving forward shockingly fast.
"RIGHT. Your turn was supposed to come later, Lambert. But if you're going to be such a tremendous diva pain in the ass, fuck the plan! I'll have your pretty THROAT and the people back at the Channel can suck it!!"
And suddenly the DJ is no longer just creepy scary, but sort of nasty, filthy extra scary, with some sort of bloody looking goo running down from under his hairpiece and his fat hands sprouting something like slugs or worms, and he's reaching and reaching as Adam scrambles backward thinking you always have to be the fucking confrontational one shit shit shit.
Suddenly a bar stool comes flying through the air and collides with the thing's head with a satisfying thunk. It's immediately followed by a a furious Neal, a tight massive bundle of Nordic guitarist with a serious mad on, who winds up and delivers a bottle of Jack Daniels straight to the enemy's face. There's a sickening moment of glass and smashed thing-face-blood and roaring rage, and everyone kind of shits themself a bit, though they'll deny it later.
Without missing a beat, Neal backpedals, his hand raising up around a plastic lighter--and flick flick flick whoosh. The creature goes up impossibly fast and hot and papery, not fleshy, and Neal is staring at the burning mess of it half-hypnotized with flames licking at his boots. Until Dave gets his arms around him and drags him away.
They all run to the end of the room and huddle against the wall and Andy cries out that Kyle and Monty and Charlie are on the bus still, they have to find them.
But Archie is speaking in a loud, clear voice, holding up the strange archaic microphone in one hand and crying out, "everybody with me! Put your hand out" and they all get it, they feel it, everyone puts a hand on his arm or shoulder and there's a huge whooshing sound and a feeling like going through soft invisible veils at a hundred miles an hour.
Suddenly, they're somewhere else.
Cook and the Anthemic, all of them, Neal and Andy, Monty and Kyle and the bewildered bus driver. Adam Lambert. Archie. Standing on a bend on a mountain road. A wet autumn wind pushes by them, ruffling Neal's rough white blond crest, and Adam's long dark bangs. He reaches up a hand to straighten them and stops, puzzled.
The big silver tour bus is there, too, parked and idling, the door open.
Suddenly, there's a tinny cellphone anthem playing:
It's my declaration, to anyone who's listening
You're my inspiration,
As I stand alone against the world,
Cause you love--
"Oh!" says Archie, trying to fish the thing out of his pocket as Cook's digitized voice rocks out "and you bleed and you stole my soul to set me free--"
"Oh, I--hi Mom! I'm . . . I'm with Cook? You didn't? Oh, I thought I did. Uhm, what? We, we're on our way back to LA now from Taos. Sure, I will . . . bye!" Archie stares at his phone with wondering eyes and then at the group. "She didn't, she didn't seem to know."
And now each of them is looking at their phones, and letting it sink in that each reads: "10/31/2009 5:35 PM PST"
"Fuck me!" says Adam in exasperation. "Sure! Time travel too! Why NOT?"
Monty says: "Gentlemen, what just happened?"
Andy says: "I think--Neal just kicked Satan's ass! And that kid Dave beat rescued us."
Archie says thoughtfully, "Well, not actually Satan, I don't think, maybe, um, someone who works for him. Or did. And Adam totally helped with the rescuing. Oh, and Cook deserved to win!"
"I have got to teach this kid some things about taking the kudos," Cook says, and envelops Archie in a huge huge hug that practically lifts him off his feet. It's cool how he does that. Oh and here he comes for Adam. More hugs, heartfelt, although Adam takes the opportunity to grab a little ass as well, just to enjoy the sort of squeak Cook gives.
Andy is still talking: "Well, Neal defeated Satan's minion, or whatever, and then everything reset itself. . . '
Monty: "Well, that's a relief, going to make it a lot easier then explaining how we all came back from a fiery death . . ."
"HEY. Where the fuck's my car?"
Off the disgusted look on Adam's face, David Cook is laughing and laughing, until tears run down his face and he's bent at the waist. And Adam starts laughing too, high and merry. And Neal gives a snort and a reluctant grin and goes to whack Cook on the back before he goes into a fit, and when Cook straightens up he tries to glare and says:
"And you, asshole! Can we have a word before the next time you tackle the devil bare-handed?"
Neal just grabs Cook's jaw, gently but firmly, and shoves his tongue in his mouth, works it till Cook gets into it, until the two of them are clutching at one another oblivious and hot and melting in the middle of the road. Kyle and Monty shrug and get on the bus. Andy smirks at Adam and makes a whaddaya gonna do gesture with one hand.
But Archie is staring right at the pair, looking furious and bereft.
Suddenly and for a moment, Adam can see an older David Archuleta who will one day be: angular and resolved, dark-browed and serious, handsome like a prince in a folktale story. In his own way, fierce. Neal breaking for air, catches his eye over Cook's shoulder and sticks out a big pink tongue, and Archie looks away, a soft-faced kid again, shoving his hands in his pockets, full of confusion and heartbreak.
Adam sighs and slings his arm around his shoulders. "C'mon, hon. Now that we have our happy ending, let's quit while we're ahead. These bitches owe us a ride to LA!"
Still-young Archie is about the same height as another man Adam loves, without Kris's manliness, yet, and without Kris's happy sureness and certainty of direction (a direction that includes Adam's friendship, but not his body, his heart). Fairytale endings aren't all they're cracked up to be, Adam decides, and he's never found one with someone like him at the center anyway. Hmmm, that might make a good lyric. He wonders if he can peel Cook and Tiemann apart long enough to get something started. "Has anyone got a pen?"
Rated: PG-13
Warnings for: Scary events, bad language, lots of UST among pretty much everyone listed, and some implicit hooking up. Oh, and David Cook meets Satan. Maybe.
Summary: A dark October night, a tour bus on a lonely road, and some seriously bad news.
When scruffy AI7 winner David Cook and his awesome rock band go missing, can teen-star Archie and the fabulous Adam Lambert put things right?
Author's note: Are you up for an American Idol RPF cross Season 7/Season 8 Halloween slash Twilight Zone story? One that involves the inner dynamic of David Cook's band, plus elements of Cook/Tiemann, Cook/Archuleta and Archuleta-Lambert roadtrip/mystery solving? Good. Edited version, Feb 2010.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
The weather had been sad but pretty, in that way October could be. It was the mid-afternoon of a day that had never really warmed up, and now the pale light was sliding away unnervingly fast. Rocky heights soared up on one side of the road, and the mountainside dropped sharply beyond the road's narrow shoulder. The Tahoe gig had been outstanding, but the trip back to LA dragged wearily.
All day, gray clouds had huddled around the tops of the Sierras and shouldered away more and more of the blue sky, but without really doing anything, so you couldn't exactly call the weather bad. Except when the band stopped at a roadside overlook so Neal could get out and smoke and the rest of them stretch their legs, cold fingers of wind crawled up their sleeves and pants legs and down their necks. Everyone felt chilled and drowsy.
Cook, of course, picked this time to try to ply his trademark mutant mix of inspirational CEO and class clown. Joking about the glories of touring and how two years ago they would have been happy to have a bus toilet to pee in. They should bronze the urinal cake. Only Kyle laughed. Neal, unsmiling, told him to fucking fuck right off, and then Dave looked hurt, and Andy got annoyed at both of them, and gentle Monty looked worried for his paycheck.
What pissed Andy off is how Cook could be such a good, lovable man, and yet not infrequently suck so bad at the same time, primarily because of this urge he has to try to fix everything and everyone, and all the time.
We get it, Dave, we really do. How lucky we all are, you and me and Neal and all of us. Hell, for Kyle and Monty, it really was that simple. Kyle's first big-name gig, and him only 21, a young savant of percussion, and at the same time, half-like a colt, or a puppy, or a little brother. Laid-back Monty, a decade older then all of them and a steady force who knew them when, just yesterday when they were a bunch of penniless indies knocking around as the Midwest Kings. Joining Cook's band was just pure and simple upside for those two, good times, good pay, great music.
It's not that simple for us, though, Andy thinks, the three of us. We talk about the good old days, but the truth is, we were screwed. Scared and screwed. Working our asses off and none of us paying the bills. People in our lives staring us down, waiting for us to shut our mouths and get real jobs. Putting the band on hold. Neal gone to New York and me in LA. And you take off to do this insane, insane, batshit thing with American Idol. This crazy, cheesy, impossible thing. And you won, and you came back for us, just like you said you would. You did it, you fixed things. Now leave it the hell alone, he thinks, looking at Neal's glowering profile.
There was a sudden boom of thunder, and the light outside darkened. The bus swayed and slowed as gusts of wind began to shove up against them and throw a rattling rain against the windows. The driver said, "Gentlemen, I know you're all in a hurry to get home, but we're going to take this next part real easy."
"Good idea," said Cook.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
Like a lot of people, Adam Lambert had a little bit of a thing for David Cook.
It was weird, because his *real* thing of course was like the opposite. Small, slender, muscular, angular. Soulful and intense. Once, and then again, he'd fallen for a boy like that, shot through the heart with an arrow of that intensely painful passion you don't easily get over.
He was pretty sure he was still walking around with that most recent giant, invisible arrow sticking out of his chest. He gotten used to it--the impossibility of it, the stupidity, the loveliness--and he didn't even especially want to pull it out. Time and distance would heal it, he thought, hoped, wondering where and when Kris was right now, and shit, that line of thought wasn't exactly helpful.
Anyway, Cook. In Adam's head, it was like they were comrades on some sort of weird invisible team, even though realistically it really didn't work that way. Even though they were the same age, and his own record had done great after all that angst, and Adam was sure (well, pretty sure) about his own musical path, his own way, which was very different from Cook's. It was just that Cook had this gift for making you believe that things were gonna be great. And that was reassuring on the days when he has creepy feelings of disaster.
Adam thought maybe he might get Cook to write a song with him, how that would mess people up and be awesome. He wondered if Cook and his really hot band-mates might like to hang. He felt a little shy about it, which meant he probably would drunk-dial them and issue the invite one day soon when after five too many vodka.
Adam, to be truthful, also let himself get off, once or twice, to the idea of blowing Cook. It wasn't hard to imagine what his face might look like, getting there, the way David looked sometimes when he threw his head back and sang. They could have a drink, and suck each other off, and write a song, and still be friends. Oh fuck me, I'm insane, he thought. Still, it could happen. Weirder things had happened to him.
The funny thing was, by LA standards of male beauty, Cook didn't even register, or wouldn't without his platinum record. And yet: there was something so gaaaaaah about him: it was . . . counterintuitive, that's what, Adam mused. The bearishness of the dude, scruffy beard, eternal bad haircut, wide hips and shoulders, big hands, huge battered boots. His ruddy welcome of a face was an alright thing. The long grey eyes, and at their edges, the crinkles of frequent amusement. The oddly pretty mouth with its upswept top lip, opened wide to sing or laugh.
In a town full of concealer and ubiquitous tans, Cook went around untinted, with old-fashioned porcelain skin that flushed easily pink (Adam masked his own freckles and paleness and acne scars under a skillful second skin of high-priced paint, and made up his eyes with gorgeous craft).
Cook was slightly beefy (and Adam sighed, the former fat boy in him still hurt at his own judginess), a middle-American heart-throb with no New York/LA sculpting to him, walking around with those big strong arms, and thick neck, and a great ass, and a general aura of solid, warm *guyness* to him that was delectable, or delicious, or something.
Dude wore plaid flannel tops or stupid t-shirts, when he would have looked great in a clever jacket. His accessories and tatts were so small town indie-bartender, it could have been ironic, but wasn't. And he never, ever got his hair right. Made Adam want to just grab the man, cut his fucking hair, and rip his clothes off and redress him. Or not. Maybe no clothes at all, versus the plaid button downs or Katy Perry t-shirts. Mmm, no clothes.
And all Cook's people, his bandmates, the Anthemic, were so bizarrely hot. It was attractive of him to have friends like that. They were mostly from Tulsa, which Adam could only vaguely picture as someplace flat and dusty, and maybe grey like the first part of the Wizard of Oz. That made him so sad, as a kid, how Dorothy had to go back there.
But Cook's boys: the bassist was just nice, and kindly looking, a little older, but the rest of them, holy hannah. The skinny little drummer, Kyle, had a pure, ascetic face, and long flying hair like a medieval youth in a painting. And there was Andy, dark eyes watching the world skeptically from under thick, inky bangs, a slender figure in black shirt and jeans. A little bit dreamy, a little bit fierce. Neal, massive and muscular, head aggressively dyed white-blonde, and pierced and tattooed in a way that suggested complex currents of pleasure and pain: Viking, or tribal, maybe, and *definitely* fierce.
Anyways, there was this other thing Adam liked where Cook carried an actual notebook, a plain brown one that he wrote in with a drug store ball-point pen when everyone around him in LA was twoddling their iPhone or wielding a carefully displayed Moleskine and a Montblanc, if they were full of writerly pretense.
While Cook sat there, this one time Adam remembered, in the green room for a television show they were on--Cook sat there contentedly chewing on his plastic pen and occasionally furrowing his brow, and jotting down words and music, his hand flowing easily across the page. And he looked up at Adam and gave him that laugh he occasionally did to people--the "isn't this amazing?" one. And for a minute Adam felt himself setting down his glittering, LA-hardened showbiz battle-armor and just revelling in it with him: this is what we came for. We get to make this shit, this music of ours, and everything is all right.
So Adam was standing in the airport in LA and there were TVs on, like they are at airports, ubiquitous but ignored in all the hubbubb, barely audible, but then something so not right filtered through:
"American Idol winner, fiery crash--"
And his heart and mind seized up with Kris, loss, fear, Oh God and then he heard more.
Not that, not Kris, but bad. Bad as can be.
"David Cook and several bandmates--"
"Sudden storm in the California mountains--"
"Bus is believed to have plunged several hundred feet--"
"A search is on to recover the bodies, but officials say--"
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
Charlie, the bus driver, is a comfortable old hand who knows what he's doing, steering their big silver home across the country with his mouth working a cud of gum and the radio cranked to whatever sports station he can locate. He never seems to care what the teams are, or even the sport, just likes the endless patter of scores and stats, Ford commercials and beer jingles. He's seen every type of weather and road there is, so, you know, trust. Only better to let him concentrate right now. Everyone seems to decide that separately. The window wipers slap, and everyone is quiet.
A while later he speaks up, though. "Now boss, I'm not feeling totally right about this. I got my route notes right 'chere, but the miles ain't adding up, and hell if I can figure where we went wrong. The GPS is gone wonky, seems like the screen keeps freezing up. Last place we passed that I made sure of the signs was back aways. Johnson's Crossroads. But, ah, if that was right, we should be back at the main highway by now, and, uh--"
And they were clearly not. Out the rain-spattered windows, in the dying twilight, they can vaguely make out thick black forest still climbing steeply away on one side, on the other, a slender guardrail tracing out a dizzy-making drop, and a huge sweep of gray sky. It's been ages since they've seen the lights of another vehicle.
They drive. Turning around is not an option, not on this narrow road with a bus this long, unless they come to a decent turn-off with swing room. They don't.
The radio gets strange. It's been empty of everything but static for a long while, but Charlie fiddles with the buttons out of habit, looking for a game, and all of a sudden he picks up music loud and clear. Some kind of oldies show by the sound of it. The announcer's voice is oily and stilted, out-of-date somehow, like something out of a half-forgotten black and white rerun on Nick at Nite:
"Well, pals, those were some hits from long ago and far away. Were those days something, or what? Now, see if you can guess what ties our next set together."
A haunting thin voice sings:
Once I knew a young man
went driving through the night
miles and miles without a word
with just his high-beam lights
who'd have ever thought they'd build
such a deadly Denver bend?
"Huh," says Andy. "Is that--?"
"That there's Gram Parsons," says Charlie, nodding. "Now, there's a boy died way too young."
"My brother had that record," says Cook, quietly, and Andy intuits from the past tense which brother he means: the lost one whose initials are traced on Dave's skin and guitar and woven into so many of the songs the five of them sing every night.
The next song is "Time in a Bottle," from Jim Croce. Followed by Patsy Cline, lilting a lonesome tale about walking after midnight. Then Buddy Holly's vintage wail, layered over low doo wopping.
Well, that'll be the day, when you say goodbye
Yes, that'll be the day, when you make me cry
You say you're gonna leave, you know it's a lie
'Cause that'll be the day when I die--
"Hold on now," says Kyle, nervously, not liking this, as they all get it at once.
Suddenly, it's the next song, and with a shock they take in that it's Cook's voice, distorted and tinny, like a record heard distantly down a long, long hall:
So lie to me and tell me that it's gonna be alright
So lie to me and tell me that we'll make it through the night
I don't mind if you wait before you tear me apart
Look me in the eye
And lie lie lie.
Everybody freezes, and Andy, looking over, sees that Dave's face is pale and set, lips slightly parted. Then Neal says, low but demanding: "Change the fucking channel, dude."
There is an enormous crash of thunder, and the bus swerves suddenly. No one later claims to remember what happened next.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
What the hell am I doing here, again? Adam wonders as he pulls his Mustang to a stop at a distance from the scene of disaster. He remembers flashes and bits of the drive from LA, but it's like he's been driving and driving all day in a dream. What was he hoping to see, beyond the images glimpsed on a million televisions already: the broken rail, the blackened, cracked-open armor of the dismembered bus?
What's there, as always at the site of disaster in America, are a hundred white TV trucks, dozens of equipment-laden crews dragging cable and lights, packs of reporters all standing a ruler's length from one another, each speaking into their own set of mikes and camera with the pretense that fifty other people aren't going through an identical ritual only a few feet away.
He can't even say what made him get in his car and drive all this way. His stupid iPhone is sitting on the leather seat beside him, its bright little multicolored face indifferent to the fact that it's holding a fuckpile of unreturned calls and messages. Friends who want to commiserate, and gossip. Media, calling for quotes. His agent, manager, the label. All wanting him to put the seal on the event by saying something tasteful. They haven't even found Cook and the other boys, their -- found anything in the wreck yet, and he's being asked to manufacture his part in the ritual of celebrity death. No. Just. No.
Adam ends up driving back the way he came through the spirally mountain roads. He finds his hands trembling a bit as he goes. Ok, screw this shit. Decides to take the turn-off for the next town, unfamiliar as it is. Passes a white sign, somber and old-fashioned, which reads
Township of
Johnson's Crossroads
Welcome, Traveler
Main street here, wherever here is, looks like a postcard or a stage set or a dream you once had about a not-real place, a distillation of an idea of a small mountain town. All white-columned courthouse and old-style storefronts with quaint, spindled woodwork, massive distant peaks carved against the skyline, aspens lining the quiet streets and dropping down shower upon shower of golden fall leaves.
On all the front stoops stand orange pumpkins, those odd seasonal symbols, with the slightly uncanny suggestiveness to their size and roundness that makes us carve them into crude likeness of our own faces. Imitation cobwebs and black bats dangling in yard trees, here, a scarecrow, there a skeleton. October's festival, combining a dime-store version of fear and death with the innocent excitement of greedy kids and chocolate. Adam doesn't feel well. He wishes he were home in bright and seasonless LA.
He drives aimlessly through the town, looking for someplace to sit tight and get ahold of himself, a Starbucks, or he supposes, a diner or whatever they have in a Bedford Falls burgh like this. Slowly rolling, he notices someone sitting on a bench, a small boyish figure with his hands in his lap. Five blocks later, when his brain has had time to process, he turns the car around.
David Archuleta is sitting quietly on one of the town's corny old benches, sheltered by an enormous many-fingered black oak bare of all but a few red leaves. A backpack is by his side. He could pass for a high schooler waiting for a ride, though Adam's memory tells him the kid must be at least nineteen by now. He looks up as Adam approaches, and it hurts to see it, what's in his face.
"Hey. Hey, honey. It's Adam, from the show?" Adam says as gently as he can, and then thinks, idiot. He's heartbroken, not retarded. Of course he knows who you are.
Adam sits down carefully. It feels important not to fuck this up. Like everyone else who watched Idol, he remembered the two Davids. How Archie had looked at big David. How the kid's supposed to be a Mormon and impossibly wholesome, and has probably never even begun to deal with . . . Well. The way David Cook makes people feel. Or made, past tense, and shit, super-shit.
"Hi, Adam. You can call me Archie, everybody does. It was Cook who started it, back when. Because people would say hey David! and we'd both turn around."
Adam doesn't know what to say to that. He tries to feel his way. He asks, "Is your family . . . Does anyone know you're here?"
Archie is shaking his head. "I'm here by myself. I had to come! I caught a bus to this other place, and a lady gave me a ride to near where . . . But when I got there, I realized that wasn't even where I was supposed to be. I made her drop me off here, I told her someone was coming to get me, which was a lie, kind of, and I'm sorry. I just--"
And Adam is nodding, he knows, the strange impulse to drive out here like there was something he could do, to change, and he thinks maybe that's the hook to use with Archie. He takes the boy's hand.
"I know. I know you had to come see. I did too. It doesn't seem like it could be true. I know it feels horribly wrong that he's . . ."
Archie looks straight at him with fathomless eyes. "He's not. Something bad has happened, but Cook's not dead. I have to go and find him. Only . . . only I'm not sure where to start."
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
This isn't where they'd been.
They're on the bus, sure, but the road isn't one they've ever been on.
The sky is still gray and low, though the storm has ceased. But the high desert mountain scape of the Sierra Nevadas has vanished. In its place, an empty highway stretches away to a flat horizon in all directions.
There are green fields on either side, oddly lawn-like and trim. White wooden fences in a long repeating pattern. In the distance, a red barn on a ridge, bright like a child's toy, but no cows in the field, no gates, and no drive leading up to the farm.
No other vehicles appear. No people, either. Here and there are trees--it seems to be fall in this place too, wherever this place is, because the trees flair bright orange, red, and gold. But each tree is far too alike and even, each a rounded sphere as if drawn in crayon by a simple-minded artist, and there are no fallen leaves marring the perfect green grass.
After five miles pass by the bus's odometer, they come to an exit. Or at least, the turn-off is there, and the familiar green and white of a highway sign. Only the sign is blank, a unmarred green rectangle edged in white, and empty of names and numbers.
They continue on the highway. At some point, all of them have pulled out their cell phones, looked blankly at the tiny icon announcing no signal, tried anyway, punching in calls, trying text. Nothing, and no signal on the GPS either. The world is quiet except for the chug and churn of the bus engine.
Monty says, looking down: "Hell, that's weird." And Andy half-laughs at him because, hello, freaking whole world turned weird? but then Monty says "my watch stopped, too," and of course they all look at their own wrists, and everyone else's watch is just as lifeless.
Cook rubs the back of his hand across his beard, and goes up the aisle, putting a hand on each of their shoulders as he passes, then goes to stand behind the driver, speaking a few low words of encouragement.
A while later, buildings suddenly come in sight, planted right alongside the highway, a familiar looking assembly: gas pumps and their candy-colored canopy, a white-walled station with its neon-script sign "Open" in a big plate glass window, ice and vending machines squatting by the door. A long, white, two-storied building with "MOTEL" spelled out in square black and white caps on its roof sign: and also "Vacancy: Clean & Quiet: TV."
On the bus, they all breathe a little easier and catch each other's eye, give a little shrug. Okay. Okay. This is all beyond bizarre, but, now, for sure, we'll figure something out.
But as they pull in and the bus mutters to a halt, Charlie the driver wiping sweat from his brow, the uneasiness creeps right back. There's not another car in the lot. No one emerges from the well-lit little buildings.
"Motherfuck this," says Neal. Gets up abruptly, zips up his leather jacket, jams his hands in his pockets, shoulders past Cook, and stomps down the bus steps. They watch from the window as he wanders over to the gas station, picks up a handle, pushes a few buttons and watches the numbers spin. This must really be the sticks, because it's some old Mayberry-looking deal with analog numbers on little squares that flip. The pump works. The world's disappeared, but there's plenty of gas.
It feels suddenly stupid to leave him out there by himself, so they all pile off the bus. Andy pulls open the door to the gas station shop, neatly lined with rows of Valvoline, but the little counter is empty. There's a candy machine, and Neal and Andy stare wordlessly through its glass: it's full of Chuckles and Bit O Honey and vanilla cookies: all the stuff no one ever wants. Everything is marked "10 cents" in an old timey script. Neal fishes for change in his pocket, but Andy lays a hand on his wrist. Don't. For some reason, Neal actually listens to him.
Kyle is the first one to retreat back to the bus, standing there thin and shivery--the kid has zero body fat and never has enough clothes on, Andy thinks--with his long hair whipping in the wind. The kid, who is also actually a man, with a child of his own, but looks really fucking young, right now.
Dave and Neal have been poking around the front of the motel, all around the station, and Dave gives a shout: "Anybody here?" Neal adds, "Speak the fuck UP!" and mutters "you creepy bastards" for good measure, and Cook can't help but give a little chuff of laughter.
No answer. Cook herds them back on the bus.
They start driving. And they come to the barn again. Not a barn, but--the same thing. Same look, same place on a hillside, same row of perfect trees, as where they started. They pass another, identical exit, with its equally blank sign. More fields and highway. And everything appears the same, like a film strip going past. Repeating the same frames over and over. Again.
When they pass yet another exit, Monty tilts his fedora back, says quietly, "So this isn't working. What if . . . should we go back to where we started? Look around, see if we missed something when we . . . did whatever we did?"
"Did anybody keep count? How many of these, whatever, places we've passed" Cook asks and they all shake their heads. "Okay, so then I say, I mean, I vote we keep moving." Neal cuts his eyes at him. Someone wonders aloud now what time it is back there, which leads to where they're supposed to be right now, and aren't. If they've been missed yet, and where people would look, and what they would think.
It's no fun to go there, because Kyle and Monty are married, and Kyle has a kid, Andy's got a girl. And then, all of their families, parents, brothers, sisters. It's not bearable stuff. So they're kind of relieved when Neal, who's been silent through all the worrying, breaks out his private stash of Jack Daniels and pours them all a shot.
Eventually, inevitably, they come to the rest stop again.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
Adam Lambert is pretty sure David Archuleta is insane. Lovely, and determined, and loyal, and majorly cray-cray. Poor kid! He doesn't want to spook him. So he asks his next questions veeeerrry slooowly. He wonders if he should grab the kid and stuff him in the Mustang and drive like hell back to LA so he can have his nervous breakdown in peace and quiet.
Archie is talking now, and nervously waving one hand. "When I head about it on the news, I couldn't, I just--I wanted to think it was a mistake, so. I called him. And his phone was working! And I left a message and everything! I don't know . . . I don't know what I was hoping. And then I saw the news and how they said the whole bus went over the side and there was fire and no one could have survived, so how could his phone even? And then I got this."
He holds up his iPhone, passes it to Adam:
Text messages. From Cook's account. Last night, but *after.* They read like this:
10/31 11: 59 PM
cook where are uuuuu hahahaha
11/01 12: 15 AM
Wouldn't you like 2 know?
11/01 1: 00 AM
He already sed NO LOL so y u care?
11/01 1:05 AM
You can't get close if he's not there you can't get inside if there's no soul to bare
11/01 3:00 AM
BOO!
"Don't you see? There's someone on the other end, but it's not him!"
Adam puts his hand on Archie's, sees him flinch and try to cover. Is suddenly aware of himself: his blue laquered nails and rings, the largeness of his hand, and general smallness of Archie. God, he could rip someone limb from limb right now, whatever evil asshat would play it like that.
The poor damn kid. "Oh honey. I'm so sorry. Some seeping asshole maybe found the phone, and I swear to God, whoever these sick fuckers are deserve to die a gruesome death, but . . ."
"But they know something, somehow. Um, real stuff about me. That only Cook would know!" Archie is flushed now, but he looks Adam in the eye, his face all earnest and all impossibly dark lashes and knitted brow. "Because I really did--I told him one time that I--. I told him I was all, whatever--in love with him."
In love, Adam wonders, is that what you think it was? Remembering the stupid, awful, painful feelings of wanting and not knowing and being that young. He came belatedly into comfort with his own body, himself. But the last thing he's going to do is call Archie on it now, in the middle of this terrible confusion.
The boy is rushing on now, anyway: "It was um, a long time ago. It was totally stupid. And right away, I was like Oh! Why did I even say that? Why did that have to come out of my mouth? But I did!! Of course he didn't--it's wasn't like that, back. But he was amazing about it, and he would never have told anyone, ever. Ever."
Adam has a memory of watching the Show, back before he'd even made the plunge himself. Hanging out on his couch with his buddies in LA, the cracked turquoise blue plastic one, getting high, watching TV, singing all the songs. Making dirty cracks about Cook's mouth and underneath a grudging admiration for his clever song-wranglin, and feeling a secret hot excitement. Because the scruffy musician with his worn Les Paul was totally beating the System, which meant . . . ping! a seed planted itself in Adam. Inwardly taking notes while his friends dished scorn. Watching Cook work it out, thinking, I could seriously do that.
At the time, only also a reluctant pity for this pretty, awkward kid with his Star Search pageant songs and his awful father and everyone creeping creepy all over him, and the sweet, hot, naively admiring gaze he kept giving the guy who was winning the prize right from under him. Karma, that bitch. Who knew you'd lose your own heart, Adam, under the hot stage lights in front of 30 million? He sighs and tries to beat back irony, and deal with the present.
"But honey, it's . . . the sort of thing someone might guess? That they could hurt you that way. Especially if David's-- "
At that, a hot flush passes over Archie's face. He ducks his head, but when he raises it up again, his face is defiant, and his shoulders square. He's up now, all five and a half feet of him from Converse to cowlick.
"NO. Something's going on! Cook's still--there, somewhere! I know it, I don't even know how. There's something I'm supposed to do. I'm not supposed to give up! And if you don't feel that--why are you even still here?" And he marches off.
Adam follows the kid down the street. He's not dressed up, by Adam standards, just jeans and rocker boots and his eighth-best leather jacket, but at six feet tall with a shock of black hair, kohled eyes, and a face that's been on ninety million televisions, he ought to be drawing stares in a burg like this. Archie, too, his clean-cut features like a Disney marketer's dream, only suffused with sorrow and determination at the moment. But passerbys pass by. No one is looking at them. Everything's still as quiet as a dream.
Suddenly, Archie stops. It's a tiny store front, two steps up, then a fancy wooden door with an oval window. The paint is peeling off it, and a torn lace curtain sloppily blocks any view inside. A faded sign over the door reads:
TIMELESS TUNES
**VINTAGE LPs**TAPES**RADIO & REPAIR**
As Archie sprints up the step and turns the door knob, Adam hesitates on the sidewalk. A pure black cat appears from behind a neighboring step and slinks after Archie, turning to look over its skinny shoulder and show its pink mouth in a yowl. "Oh, bite me, pussy!" Adam hisses, and follows with a sigh.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
Everyone's exhausted and on edge. Cook says he thinks Charlie needs a break, and the truth is, they all need off the bus for a while before they get hysterical.
They decide to spend the night in a motel. The motel. However this works. They stop when they get to it. Again.
The group of them makes their way inside, knocking and shouting to no result. The rooms are all unlocked, and weirdly spotless. Little paper wrapped soaps. Old-fashioned nubbly bedspreads. A framed pastel portrait of a clown, the same one in every room.
Cook says bring the food off the bus, though, because no one really knows what the hell is going on, and they can't afford for anyone to get sick when they're all alone here. The Tahoe concert was supposed to be the end of a tour leg, they were due back in LA, so there's not a lot of grub left, but some. A pile in the little kitchenette where they gather. Energy bars and Cheetos, Red Bull and Gatorade, frozen burritos. Some beer.
They eat. It's subdued. Neal suddenly grins a big toothy grin, the one that's mirthless, and raises an eyebrow at Dave, points a cigarette at him.
"Persephone, is that your theory?"
"God, I didn't say that, Neal, c'mon," Cook's eyes are closed in exasperation, and Kyle says bewildered, "What? Percysephwhat?"
Reluctantly, Andy fills in the gap. "Persephone. In the Greek myths, she was a chick who got dragged down to hell, and her mom came to rescue her, only it turned out there was a rule, if you anything from the place while you were there, you could never get out again."
Kyle's eyes are bugging out at this, and Monty puts an arm around him.
Cook blows out a sigh, messes his hair back from his brow. "I don't think we're in hell, Neal. I don't know where we are. I just want to keep you guys safe. We need to start wrapping our heads around the gravity of this situation. So could you knock off freaking everybody out?"
"Wow, is that an order? Because I'm pretty sure I stopped drawing a paycheck when we fell off the fucking face of the Earth."
Oh shitcakes. A Tiemann/Cook Olympic emo pissing match. Just what they need.
Dave's red-faced and hot-eyed now: "It's not about playing boss, here, it's about being responsible for you. Which I am. Because we wouldn't even be here otherwise. I got you guys into this. Somehow. "
Andy rolls his eyes: "Oh right, that makes sense, blame you. If you'd just been a sufficiently selfish asshole, you'd have won your big prize, invited us for drinks once or twice, then left us behind while you did your victory lap with a bunch of hired studio hands who'd kiss your ass. But you wanted a real band, so you got us."
He doesn't say it aloud: And how can I blame you for taking me with you, when you might have taken Neal, and not me. A taste of fear and shame he'd felt, all those months ago, when Neal signed first. And before that, when Dave and Neal had left Tulsa. Andy had gone, too, to LA, to make it on his own. Only he hadn't had to, thanks to the fucking fairy godmother of American Idol. All he'd had to give up was the front microphone in a band that didn't exist anymore. And give in to becoming part of David Cook's story, instead of his own.
Meanwhile Neal isn't really having what Cook's offering in the way of exoneration. Neal Tiemann can look like a laughing, goofy kid, at times. He can play the poised and professional musician, all cool competence and stoic reserve. Andy's seen him poker face the corporate suits that way. He can also, on a stage, look like a blonde barbarian wrestling a mad wolf inhabiting a guitar. He can look fucking scary. He's standing now, rolling smoothly to his feet, 200 something pounds of pierced and pissed off musician.
"What sort of a fucking center of the universe thing is that to say, anyway? If I hadn't kicked your ass after Axium broke up, Dave, you'd be stuck in a fucking cubicle somewhere putting your college degree to good use while your soul leaked out your fucking eardrums."
And before Andy can intervene, the way Andy always does:
"And that goes for you, too, Skib. Please don't tell me you wouldn't have pussied out like a good Jewish son when your doctor daddy wrung his hands about your bright shiny future.
You wanna blame yourself for us being here, you better blame me first."
And this was a little too much truth for any of them to handle, wasn't it?
It was Neal who was the emotional axis that all this hung on. Neal, who'd picked Andy out to join the MidWest Kings when he was just a skinny teen, tapped Andy to sing and be the front man, while Neal wrote the songs and booked the gigs and shaped their albums.
Neal, who'd invited Dave to Tulsa when his first band had melted down, given him the back up slot in MWK --just for a while--while he got his bearings, given him a mattress to sleep on. Neal who'd added his scorching licks to both Andy's and Dave's solo albums and his relentless perfectionism to the production booth.
And when Dave hit it big, Neal who'd taken up the invitation, first, to be in David Cook's band. Put his balls in a jar and himself on a leash and harnessed his bleeding edge skills to Cook's kindly, radio-friendly anthems. For friendship? For money? For the chance, after all these years on the ragged edge, at the big time? If Neal knew himself, he hadn't said in Andy's hearing.
Fuck, fuck, fuck at all their secret sore spots being ripped open here in this lost space. Love and blame: everything they'd wanted, and what they'd got instead.
Neal and Cook were about an inch apart now, staring hotly into each other's eyes. An air of disaster wafted impalpably through the room.
Then Dave's eyes went all soft and he put one hand up and around Neal's neck, and Jesus Christ, he was just fucking incapable of resentment, the sentimental asshole.
"Yeah, you perilous motherfucker. Screw you for wanting something better for all of us. You might have kicked us away from the dock, but I'm pretty sure we all got on this boat by ourselves. And we're all in it together now. Right?'
Neal seemed to swallow something down then, and he bent his head beneath Cook's hand. And Cook and Neal went into the bedroom where they'd thrown their stuff and shut the door. Monty and Kyle shrugged and headed to the room they had chosen, wisely, at the other end of the hall, Kyle pulling out earphones as he went.
And Andy stood their hesitating, and few minutes more and he could hear thump thump thump and Cook's resonant tenor ohhhhh and Tiemann grunting. It was oddly reassuring. They weren't going to let a little Hell or Twilight Zone or wherever they were get in the way of their incredibly fucked-up usual bullshit. This was just how it was, the two of them. He sighed and went to his own chilly bed and put his head under the pillow.
Around dawn, Andy's padding down the hall looking to see if there's a Twilight Zone ice machine. He passes the room Tiemann and Cook holed up in. The door's part open and some faded lamplight falling into the hall. He looks in. His friends are sacked out in the double bed, two pale, muscular backs side by side. Neal has one intricately illustrated arm protectively hung around Dave.
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
The dim little shop is filled with boxes and boxes of huge old vinyl LPs, their cardboard sleeves furred at the edges with much handling. Adam can also make out shelves stuffed with dusty-looking radios, and faded black and white photos of bouffanted musicians in cracked glass frames.
Behind the counter, there's a woman leaning, musing, on one arm, with faded caramel-colored skin and snow white hair wisping out from under a headscarf, enormous black sunglasses taking up half her tiny face. Got on an old-fashioned dainty shirtwaist dress, nipped in at the waist, and her demure, thin wrist is lined in chunky bakelite bangles, the whole deal like she's dressed for a party that happened decades ago, in the age of the Vandellas and the Ronettes and sha la la la my boyfriend.
Unable to see her eyes, Adam wonders if she's blind? Except she doesn't seem tentative like that. She doesn't say "who's there?" either. Just smiles and says, "You all looking for something in particular?"
Archie makes his way forward, stumbles out, "We're looking for my friend--he's a musician? And he's--lost?"
At first, Adam thinks she doesn't understand, because she answers:
"Oh, now, alright. Lost musicians what we got, child. Rareties, B-sides, forgotten treasures. Mmmhmm.
People come in all the time looking for that one precious song. Sometimes they don't even have a name, or a title--just a little bit of a tune, or a few words. And I have 'em sing it for me. And just like that, I lay my hand on it. Course, sometimes we gotta go a little further if it's someone who's gone and gotten themselves completely off the beaten path. You go on and sing for me, now."
Archie squares his shoulders and lifts one hand like he's cupping something invisible, sings in a high pure tone, only a little catch to his breath as he goes ahead, a melancholy minor key to it:
Try to leave the light on when I'm gone
Something I rely on to get home
One I can feel at night, a naked light,
A fire to keep me warm
The lady leans forward, holds up a thin hand, like stop! says, "Wait, I almost got it. You sure that's him, now?"
Archie looks down, then swallows, looks up, brow furrowed and starts over. His eyes are closed. His voice this time is different, richer, full of longing:
You make me fall forever, with no end in sight
When everything around is broken
Could you say that this felt right?
You make me fall forever--
And the musician in Adam is thinking "damn, now that song, why I haven't I heard that song, is that Cook?" but the shop lady waves to Archie to a halt.
"Oh yes. Oh yes. I got Him now. Mmm, a bright and shiny star, ain't got no business where he is right now. He needs your help."
"Yes! Yes! That's why I'm here. Gosh, I knew I could help Cook, I knew it. " The eagerness and hope in the boy's bright face is something to see. He's almost dancing in his hi-top sneakers, and Adam feels a protective surge, steps forward to put a hand on his shoulder, someone's got to be the skeptic here, and he's looking for the right words when the shopkeeper turns her mysterious gaze his way.
"And you there, Mister Fancy. What's on your mind?"
And why IS he here? It's a question that might take a week to answer--something about a strange bond created by the mighty hands of fate and the music wizard Simon Fuller, how they all passed through the tent flap of the Strangest Show on Earth and came out in a different world.
He's got a sudden flash memory of a day in Central Park, a vast crowd showered in sunlight and green leaves, Kris Allen arm in warm arm with him, and David Cook is laughing his big genial laugh, grabbing a glittery sign from the audience with all of their faces on it, teaching Kris and Adam a song in ten minutes flat, pulling them out front with his band who nod and lay down a hot, tight number with the two random new guys in it like it's nothing hard, taking the whole weird mystery and machine of Idol and saying "See? You can do this. And it's gonna be good." Can he explain all that, to this stranger, in the middle of all the whatever?
He grins, suddenly, rocks back on his heels, and lets fly:
The future I cannot forget
This aching heart ain't broken yet
Oh God I wish I could make you see
Cuz I know this flame isn't dying
So nothing can stop me from trying
Baby you know that
Maybe it's time for miracles
Cuz I ain't giving up on LOVE!
Objects are still rattling in the far corners of the shop when he stops. Archie is even smiling at him. Not Adam's *favorite* out of his songs, but tres apropos to the moment.
"Um, I'm here to help save the day? I've got an appetite for danger?" Adam's preening, half-joking, but really, he doesn't really have a better answer, just knows he's not leaving Archie--and Cook, if by some insane miracle this is all real--to face things on their own.
The lady behind the counter gives a dry cackle. "Mmm, that you do, I guess. And a nose for trouble. Well, alright then, if you're going with--"
From behind the counter, she draws an old fashioned microphone, shiny, fat, ribbed in nickelplate, and puts it in Archie's hands.
"Take this. Go through that curtain." Nodding to a big, dark, dense and blood-red curtain at the back of the shop.
"But what do I...?"
She nods: "You'll know when you get there. That's how it's worked so far, isn't it now? Someone's led that boy astray, you need to lead him back, alright?"
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
They decide in the morning to get the bus rolling, then to take one of the nameless exits off the highway. The exit takes them somewhere different--but not much: looks like a country road on a postcard, empty perfect fields, the road rising and dipping, white fences. Grey low clouds and blazing autumn trees, cindery red and orange.
Finally, a building they haven't seen before. A roadhouse, brick with tiny frosted windows, lonely in its empty lot. A chipped sign with fading letters announces: "Bar & Grill. Welcome Trucks and Buses."
Dave asks Kyle and Monty to stay on the bus with Charlie, let the first three scout it out. He's gotten antsy about all of them going into strange places at once, he says, with no one outside to help if anything happens. Andy notices it's the guys with spouses he's asking to hang back, and he doesn't say anything, because it makes sense that you would try extra hard to get them back to their people in one piece. And tries not to let his mind wander to the idea of never seeing again and wanting his girlfriend in his arms right then. He tags after Neal and Dave.
Inside, a dark, dank room, wooden-floored, high-ceilinged, weirdly big for how small the place looked from outside. At one end, a simple bar. Colored beer lights shed a glow that should be cheerful, but isn't: all the names in neon are at once plausible and unfamiliar: Buffalo Beer. Lucky Lager. Falls City - Extra Pale.
Neal brushes past Andy, vaults the bar. He's yanking open a cooler, palming a churchkey off the bar and prying open the top. Dave touches his shoulder: "Doc, we decided not to . . ."
"Yeah? Well, I undecided."
"Come on, man."
"Guys--"
Neal shot guns the beer. Andy watches his pale throat swallowing, the glinting rings in his lip, notes the wildness in his eye. And Tiemann's fishing behind the bar now, grabbing a full bottle of burnt-gold whiskey, twisting off the cap, snarling as Cook reaches across the bar to grab his wrist. Fuck. If Neal freaks out, they are so screwed.
Suddenly, sounds rise. The other end of the empty room is guarded by a dusty curtain. From what they saw the outside of the little brick building, there's no room for anything to be back there. Only there's music, now, and a light seeping underneath the curtain's folds.
And at once, a voice, booming and hearty: "COME! ON! IN! boys. What are you WAITING for?"
What choice do they have? Huddled together, they go through it.
And someone is there, seated in a swivel chair, under a single overhead lamp that pools its light and leaves the edges of the room in shadow.
A big moon face with a gigantic grin and aggressively white teeth, capped by an enormous set of black earphones rests over an unappetizing hairpiece. Very tiny eyes. A navy sports jacket, a golf shirt with open at the neck, a tan of self-announced fakery.
A big black microphone hangs from a boom, and the man sits surrounded by sounds boards and banks of elaborate dials. Nothing is plugged in. Yet the music is coming from everywhere and no where. Piles of LPs in illustrated cardboard jackets are stacked in corners, alongside boxes of card-deck size cassette tapes, with carefully handlettered labels. Clear plastic squares and shiny CDs spill across the floor. A large coffee cup is perched on a stack of Radio and Records magazine.
The man swings round in his swivel chair, folds big hands over his belly, and leans back. The chair squeaks.
"Well, well, well. David--can I call you Dave? Andy. Neal. THANKS FOR STOPPING BY. Me? I'm the host, well, you know, I run the SHOW. I've mostly switched to a talk format these days, and most of the orders come down from the Channel, but I made an exception for you boys. There's nothing I like more then breaking young artists. Ha ha ha ha. So to speak."
Cook and Neal and Andy exchange looks that say, not liking the sound of this, and Cook says warily and mildly, "Uh thanks, but what exactly is it you want to talk to us about? And what do you have to do with us, and how we got here . . . Mister who now?"
The Host smiles with an oily smile, and says, "Well, let's not get too bogged down in details, shall we? The names of things change, all these mergers and re-brandings, you know. WHO and WHERE aren't really as important as WHAT, as in what you need.
You are musicians, aren't you? And here you are a cross-roads, and there's a bargain to strike. Now that's a story we all know, am I right? Cause you need something from me, David Cook and Band, which is a way out. And I want something from you. So here's what I need from you--and it's a generous offer. Make a deal with me and the band gets to go back, happy and free, and be bigger then EVER.
And only ONE of you has to stay behind!"
And the three of them are shouting at once, Cook, blazing eyed and livid, "the FUCK you say!"
"Now, now, hear me out! Very generous of me to let YOU all decide amongst yourselves, don't you agree? Think about it, Andy. If Cook stays, you could be the lead singer again, just like before Dave stole that from you. Unless you're too frightened to go out there again without Cook and Tiemann--it's not like you were doing so well on your own in LA. How many copies of To Have Heroes do you think you've sold? On second thought, maybe you oughta be the one to stay behind."
The host swivels and points a fat finger.
"Now David, Cook--boy, I can see you all bursting at the seems wanting to play the responsible one, the leader. But how responsible is it, really? Without you, whose to say any of them can make it pay? And have you really done enough so your family's taken care of? Now if you were just a few more levels up, sure. Right now, you're a one hit wonder. Heck of a place to check out of your career. They'll play Time of My Life at your funeral, you know that? Definitely not "Come Back to Me" ha ha ha! Too ironic!"
"What about you, Neal? It's like you say: they'd none of them be anywhere without you, anyways. Course, there's two ways of looking at that. Andy, why, he'd be in med school by now, like his father always hoped. Cook--well, Dave Cook would be happy anywhere. Dave and Andy could have had good lives without all this--maybe better."
"But you--anything other then music for a job, and you'd have gnawed your own skin off inch by inch like a chained up animal. You love it like a sickness. Not just the money--but the road, and the bus, and your stupid guitar every night. It's the relief from the itchy, incessant fear that you'll have to stuff your songs in a shoebox and give it all up for your paycheck. It's why you mark up all your pretty skin and pierce all your tender places where everyone can see. Besides the fact you get off on the pain-- it's your proof to yourself that you're never going back.
When you had to put MWK on hold, you could feel it going, couldn't you -- the last freedom, the place inside your head you made up, before they started taking pieces away?"
Andy sees something on Neal's face that makes him ill. He sees that Dave has wet eyes and is breathing heavily. He feels dizzy, himself, and his head hurts. He wants to make the voice stop.
"STOP. Stop whatever it is you think you're doing to my friends." Cook is stepping forward. "This is not on them. They're guilty of nothing--but wanting the best for me--"
"Oh BROTHER--" the DJ's eyeroll is dramatic.
"And for themselves. And for each other. Do you really think this is news to us, the shitty thoughts and the fears and all the crappy temptations to turn on one another? Because I'm pretty sure that somewhere down that endless tour route in all those ass of nowhere towns, we've all had every stupid fear and doubt you can think of, and it still hasn't torn us apart. There's no one, no one on Earth I'd rather be on stage with every night. And I'm not going to take the faith they've put in me and let you hurt them--"
"Dave." Neal's voice is a quiet growl. "It has to be me. I'm not letting Andy stay, and you have to go back because of . . . everything." And he's reaching out an arm and pulling Cook toward him until the two of them, Neal and David, are standing pressed together, forehead to forehead. They breathe together, for a moment.
And Cook says. "No. Just, no. He can't have you. Or Andy. The only solution is all of us-- or none."
But suddenly, there's a new voice: "I know the way back."
~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~~+~
When they step through the portal, the first thing that Adam and Archie see is the embrace. The look of blunt stubborness on Neal's face, the tenderness on Cook's. And Neal's hands go up, his muscular arms with their colored, mysterious pictures, and he grabs Cook pretty much by the hair and drags him in, rests his forehead against the other man's--then kisses him fiercely on the mouth.
Whether it's the piercing glinting in his lip, the mouthful of big white teeth, the look in his hooded eyes--something about Neal Tiemann kissing is painful, hot, vulnerable, and a little scary.
It does not appear to be the first time David Cook has done this particular thing.
And Adam is looking to Archie and sees: surprise. And not-surprise. And sadness. And a blush.
Adam sees Cook draw gently back, look Neal in the eye and say in his clear voice: "It's all of us, or none."
And a fat, horrible man in a head-set laughs horribly and says: "About the none part . . ."
Then a look of resolution crosses Archie's sweet face and he soldiers ahead, speaks up: "I know how to get back!"
The group turns in surprise. Adam, not exactly sure of the etiquette of riding shotgun on an otherworldy rescue mission, waves a little wave, hiiiiiii. God, it's good to see Cook and his boys. Alive. So oddly hot.
Cook looks bewildered: "Archie, what are you doing here? God, not you too! And, wow, Adam?"
Tiemann raises an eyebrow and a hand: "Hey dude! Uh, what the fuck?
"What is this, some sort of sad-ass American Idol rescue squad?" Andy sounds pissy, even to himself, but fucking Christ, it's been a long day. Or however long they've been here.
Ten minutes of sheer confusion follow, a lot of cross-talk, and gesturing, demonic posturing and threats, until Adam decides to cut to the chase. He gives a shrill whistle. There's a momentary silence.
Adam waves his long beringed fingers in the air, points to the Host: "YOU. You're a liar, or a trickster, that's the deal, isn't it? Here's the thing. I bet you don't have the power to make any of them stay, unless one of them is willing to give up the others!
But they all refuse to go without each other! And me and Archie know the way out, so screw you anyway!"
The big man lumbers to his feet, scattering CD cases anyway, shoving away soundboards and amps with surprising fury and moving forward shockingly fast.
"RIGHT. Your turn was supposed to come later, Lambert. But if you're going to be such a tremendous diva pain in the ass, fuck the plan! I'll have your pretty THROAT and the people back at the Channel can suck it!!"
And suddenly the DJ is no longer just creepy scary, but sort of nasty, filthy extra scary, with some sort of bloody looking goo running down from under his hairpiece and his fat hands sprouting something like slugs or worms, and he's reaching and reaching as Adam scrambles backward thinking you always have to be the fucking confrontational one shit shit shit.
Suddenly a bar stool comes flying through the air and collides with the thing's head with a satisfying thunk. It's immediately followed by a a furious Neal, a tight massive bundle of Nordic guitarist with a serious mad on, who winds up and delivers a bottle of Jack Daniels straight to the enemy's face. There's a sickening moment of glass and smashed thing-face-blood and roaring rage, and everyone kind of shits themself a bit, though they'll deny it later.
Without missing a beat, Neal backpedals, his hand raising up around a plastic lighter--and flick flick flick whoosh. The creature goes up impossibly fast and hot and papery, not fleshy, and Neal is staring at the burning mess of it half-hypnotized with flames licking at his boots. Until Dave gets his arms around him and drags him away.
They all run to the end of the room and huddle against the wall and Andy cries out that Kyle and Monty and Charlie are on the bus still, they have to find them.
But Archie is speaking in a loud, clear voice, holding up the strange archaic microphone in one hand and crying out, "everybody with me! Put your hand out" and they all get it, they feel it, everyone puts a hand on his arm or shoulder and there's a huge whooshing sound and a feeling like going through soft invisible veils at a hundred miles an hour.
Suddenly, they're somewhere else.
Cook and the Anthemic, all of them, Neal and Andy, Monty and Kyle and the bewildered bus driver. Adam Lambert. Archie. Standing on a bend on a mountain road. A wet autumn wind pushes by them, ruffling Neal's rough white blond crest, and Adam's long dark bangs. He reaches up a hand to straighten them and stops, puzzled.
The big silver tour bus is there, too, parked and idling, the door open.
Suddenly, there's a tinny cellphone anthem playing:
It's my declaration, to anyone who's listening
You're my inspiration,
As I stand alone against the world,
Cause you love--
"Oh!" says Archie, trying to fish the thing out of his pocket as Cook's digitized voice rocks out "and you bleed and you stole my soul to set me free--"
"Oh, I--hi Mom! I'm . . . I'm with Cook? You didn't? Oh, I thought I did. Uhm, what? We, we're on our way back to LA now from Taos. Sure, I will . . . bye!" Archie stares at his phone with wondering eyes and then at the group. "She didn't, she didn't seem to know."
And now each of them is looking at their phones, and letting it sink in that each reads: "10/31/2009 5:35 PM PST"
"Fuck me!" says Adam in exasperation. "Sure! Time travel too! Why NOT?"
Monty says: "Gentlemen, what just happened?"
Andy says: "I think--Neal just kicked Satan's ass! And that kid Dave beat rescued us."
Archie says thoughtfully, "Well, not actually Satan, I don't think, maybe, um, someone who works for him. Or did. And Adam totally helped with the rescuing. Oh, and Cook deserved to win!"
"I have got to teach this kid some things about taking the kudos," Cook says, and envelops Archie in a huge huge hug that practically lifts him off his feet. It's cool how he does that. Oh and here he comes for Adam. More hugs, heartfelt, although Adam takes the opportunity to grab a little ass as well, just to enjoy the sort of squeak Cook gives.
Andy is still talking: "Well, Neal defeated Satan's minion, or whatever, and then everything reset itself. . . '
Monty: "Well, that's a relief, going to make it a lot easier then explaining how we all came back from a fiery death . . ."
"HEY. Where the fuck's my car?"
Off the disgusted look on Adam's face, David Cook is laughing and laughing, until tears run down his face and he's bent at the waist. And Adam starts laughing too, high and merry. And Neal gives a snort and a reluctant grin and goes to whack Cook on the back before he goes into a fit, and when Cook straightens up he tries to glare and says:
"And you, asshole! Can we have a word before the next time you tackle the devil bare-handed?"
Neal just grabs Cook's jaw, gently but firmly, and shoves his tongue in his mouth, works it till Cook gets into it, until the two of them are clutching at one another oblivious and hot and melting in the middle of the road. Kyle and Monty shrug and get on the bus. Andy smirks at Adam and makes a whaddaya gonna do gesture with one hand.
But Archie is staring right at the pair, looking furious and bereft.
Suddenly and for a moment, Adam can see an older David Archuleta who will one day be: angular and resolved, dark-browed and serious, handsome like a prince in a folktale story. In his own way, fierce. Neal breaking for air, catches his eye over Cook's shoulder and sticks out a big pink tongue, and Archie looks away, a soft-faced kid again, shoving his hands in his pockets, full of confusion and heartbreak.
Adam sighs and slings his arm around his shoulders. "C'mon, hon. Now that we have our happy ending, let's quit while we're ahead. These bitches owe us a ride to LA!"
Still-young Archie is about the same height as another man Adam loves, without Kris's manliness, yet, and without Kris's happy sureness and certainty of direction (a direction that includes Adam's friendship, but not his body, his heart). Fairytale endings aren't all they're cracked up to be, Adam decides, and he's never found one with someone like him at the center anyway. Hmmm, that might make a good lyric. He wonders if he can peel Cook and Tiemann apart long enough to get something started. "Has anyone got a pen?"