(no subject)
title: no rest for the wicked
author: chimneypot
a/n: part one. the antics tour, from daniel's point of view. gen. au. also this is completely made up because i'm lazy about research. if someone wants to help out with facts, go ahead!
I.
*
“Well, shit,” Sam says, looking at the bus. “Back on the road again, boys.” He’s grinning, though, and he looks pleased to be there as he stares up at their new home for the next few months.
“This should be fun,” Carlos says archly. Paul just stares at the bus in badly-disguised horror. Daniel is full of anticipation and anxiety - pleased to be out there, putting Interpol out there, connecting with fans, and anxious about how long the tour is going to be this time around. If he’s honest, he would have preferred more of a break. He still feels ragged after touring for Bright Lights. What with Antics being written on the road, and recorded in the middle of nowhere, he had less time in New York than he wanted. It’s like having an affair with a married woman, and having to leave before the morning sun reaches the bedsheets.
He hasn’t seen any of them for the entire duration of their break. By the time they reached New York it was as though they’d lapsed into stereotypes of themselves, so that at any point Daniel could say exactly what (or who) Carlos was doing, or where Sam was. Not that it was unpleasant, exactly, just predictable, and sort of stifling. But it had also been fun, a whirlwind of cities, the first taste of fame for them all as a band. It’s not like he can complain, really, especially when he thinks about his job in Matador.
He’s learned that they’re all different about touring. Last time it was so new, but this time, they’re prepared. Paul hates it; hates the sense of dislocation, the endless flickering faces of new cities he’s forced to deal with. Carlos loves the opportunities it affords him to get fucked up in new ways with new women. Sam is the most laid-back about it (as always) but nowadays, he misses his wife more than he lets on and has a tendency to sit in front of the television for hours, sometimes, not really watching but staring into space. Daniel spends most of the tours worrying, though he’d never admit it to the others.
The first tour, they didn’t really know what they were doing. They weren’t sure if they were really allowed to do this: play for two, maybe three hours, and then go party? And get paid? Carlos, of course, was the first to get into it; Paul and Sam both started to go out regularly soon after, with Daniel the last. They played venues that were getting bigger and bigger with crowds that knew more and more of their lyrics. Paul stopped bitching about The Strokes as much. They’d sit up nights, sometimes, when they came back from their respective clubs and bathrooms, talking about their music. About what they’d created together. Carlos said straight out that he wanted his music to affect people as strongly and spiritually as drugs. Paul wanted it to change the world - not that he’d admit it, of course, but after enough whiskey he’d stumble around the subject enough that Daniel was able to jigsaw-puzzle what he really meant. Sam just wanted to keep doing what he loved and get paid for it.
Daniel’s answer is, ironically, the most selfish. Yeah, he wants people to be affected by the music, and yeah, he wants to keep doing what he loves and get paid for it. He doesn’t quite want to change the world - he doesn’t think in vague, idealistic terms like Paul. What he gets the biggest rush off is of knowing that Interpol is his achievement, in a way where it’s none of theirs. And yeah, they’ve all admitted it in the past, jokingly; Sam calls the band his baby, sometimes. But it’s more important to Daniel than he’d willingly let them know: Interpol is, first and foremost, his. That’s why he does the press. That’s why he makes them hug before shows. That’s why he loves them all sometimes and hates them other times.
*
The first night is fucking fantastic. They play a great show and the crowd is fucking awesome, and afterwards they’re all high off endorphins and sharing a bottle of champagne in the dressing room. The plan is to play a few American dates and then fly out to Europe to begin the tour in earnest; to Australia, after that, then Japan, then Mexico, Canada, and finally back to the States. If he’s honest, Daniel would rather not think about the itinerary: from the sound of things, they’re going to be on the road for more than just a few months. From the sound of it, he’s going to be raising a family on the road.
“To Interpol,” Daniel says, raising his highball glass (nobody had been able to find champagne flutes, not that they really cared anyway). “Uh. Fucking brilliant show. You were all great. May they all go like that. And so on.”
“I’d also like to dedicate this glass to the really hot chick in the front row. May our fans continue in that vein,” Paul adds, mock-pompous, and Carlos clinks their glasses together and they all knock it back. Out in the rain, they’re signing autographs and people are calling his name, and really, Daniel thinks, how could he have been apprehensive? How could he have wanted anything else? All these different people are here, waiting for them, waiting for him, because he’s touched them somehow, he’s made a difference in their lives, however large or small. When they pass the fans and turn into the street, he feels a little overwhelmed. They all are.
“Am I mistaken, or are we having a warm rosy glow moment?” Carlos says, and he’s pretending to be sarcastic but Daniel can see the secret smile that’s taking even his mouth hostage.
“Heaven forbid,” says Paul, but he’s grinning widely, his big eyes catching the reflection of the headlights as the taxis stream past.
“Fuck stagelights, if they stuck me up there I’d light the fucking place up,” Sam says, necking out of a bottle of beer. “Jesus, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever said, but whatever. It’s good to be back. I think we need to celebrate. And say farewell to this beautiful city.”
It’s their last night in New York for fuck knows how long. They’re going to go and get well and truly fucked up - Daniel, personally, intends to be too drunk to talk, and he knows that he’s probably not alone here - and then get onto the bus and make their way south. The bar they go to is one of Sam’s regulars, but they’ve all been here a few times. Daniel likes the place; it has a relaxed, friendly vibe, the lights are just dim enough, and the DJ plays some fantastic stuff. They’ve all invited some friends along to say goodbye. He and Sam do a few lines off a CD case in the bathrooms, “since it’s a special occasion,” Daniel explains. Sam just rolls his eyes affectionately. Around twenty minutes later he can feel the harsh-edged buzz beginning to suffuse through his blood, the twinkle-bell brightness in his brain. Carlos comes up to him at the bar and they do tequila shots and have a longwinded bullshit conversation about why New York is the best city in the world.
“You’re high as a fucking kite, aren’t you?” he asks with a wide Cheshire cat grin glittering on his face.
“I’m just keeping up with you,” Daniel says, and Carlos laughs, and then his friend Kate comes and drags him off to the dancefloor. He dances for what feels like forever and then he bumps into Paul and they do more blow, crowded together in a cubicle like teenagers smoking at school. Paul’s eyes are the most beautiful silver-shimmering shade of blue beneath the UV junkie lights, and Daniel tells him so with a grin.
“You silver-tongued flatterer,” Paul says. “If I didn’t know you better, Daniel Kessler, I’d swear you were trying to charm more blow out of me.”
“That’s Carlos’ game,” Daniel protests, and then he hugs Paul and walks out of the bathroom. And that’s how the night goes, in a slightly blurred fashion, distorted around the edges like an old recording, the faces of people he loves (at least for the night) one after each other, a bright circus of warm flickering colours and music, and he feels like its king. He feels like standing on the edge of a skyscraper and letting his voice unfold like a bright flag into the warm dark night, until it reaches the stars. He feels amazing. He feels like a rock star - there’s no other way to describe it. Daniel fucking Kessler, the guitarist of Interpol, touring his second album. How many people get that.
“We’re the lucky ones,” he tells Sam, who throws a heavy arm around his shoulder and tells him that he’s never spoken truer words, and this is the last thing he remembers all night.
*
The next morning he has the worst motherfucker of a headache ever, reminding him of why he saves the Class As for special occasions - he doesn’t understand how Carlos can do this on a regular basis, honestly - and when he looks at his watch he realises that they have an interview in half an hour.
“Fuck,” he says, and sits up in his bunk. “Fuck!” He stands up and nearly falls over, and then nearly throws up. When the black blotches have cleared from his vision and he can stand without feeling like he’s about to swan-dive into the carpet he shouts, “Guys, wake the fuck up, we have an interview.”
Silence.
“Oh, come on to fuck,” he says, and pulls open the nearest curtain. Paul squints up at him and pulls the blankets further over his head.
“Paul, man, wake up, we have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Get to Walgreens, I hear they’re having a crazy sale on shampoo and I want to stock up.” His head is pounding out a broken-piano symphony, keeping time with the waves of nausea in his stomach, and he is totally not in the mood for this. “We have to get to the fucking interview, what do you think?”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Dan, you can’t pull it off,” he hears from behind him, and he turns around to see Carlos unfolding himself from his bed. “I hate you, by the way,” he says grouchily, and then stumbles into the bathroom.
“Mutual,” Daniel calls after him, and then, “Oh for Christ’s sake, Paul, wake up! Jesus wept.”
In the end they’re only ten minutes late for the interview, even with the fight for showers and coffee (a compromise was eventually reached: Daniel and Paul got the latter, Sam and Carlos the former).
“Late night?” the woman asks, a vixenish film-noir babe with a clasp of feathers holding caramel hair away from her large-eyed face.
“You could say that,” Daniel says, rubbing his face. Beside him, he can almost feel Carlos’ interest in the girl, and he finds it incredibly annoying for no reason at all. He wishes he’d fought harder to have a shower - he feels so dirty, even with his fresh clothes. It makes him feel as though he’s at a disadvantage. “Where are we again?” he asks the interviewer. “So I can sound enthusiastic.” He knows that they were heading south, can feel it in the sticky heat pawing his body, but the specifics are all hiding behind his persistent headache.
“Florida,” she says.
“My old stomping ground,” Sam says with a wide grin, turning on the charm. Daniel sits back, mildly relieved. At least he can count on Sam for some back up; sometimes these things can be torturous, when Paul is clearly not paying attention and Carlos is grilling the interviewer. The cameras roll and he does his best to be gracious and charming and stop Carlos from sounding like too much of an asshole, and then he goes back to the bus and sleeps for another five hours, waking up just in time for soundcheck.
*
They settle back onto the road relatively well, recovering last tour’s roles with ease. He wouldn’t say they’re considerate of each other, exactly; none of them are the type of men to tiptoe around. Except for himself, maybe. Tolerant, is a better word. Daniel tries his best to be patient with the others’ quirks: Carlos, for example, is insistent on a particular brand of orange juice and considers the purchase of any other brand as a complete lack of respect for his personal freedom and an affront to his rights not only as a consumer, but as a human being.
“Jesus,” Daniel had said. “Look, sorry, all right. I didn’t even look at the fucking carton. If it’s such a big deal buy it yourself.”
“It’s just the principle of the thing,” Carlos had insisted, and before Daniel could respond Paul said, “Only one specific brand helps with your PMS, huh,” which ended that discussion fairly quickly.
If he’s honest, though, he feels like he’s probably the least imposing member of the band. He still remembers that interview that Paul and Carlos did in that café in Paris when they had to talk about each others’ annoying quirks, where they immediately started to bitch him out. He’d been annoyed by that, and also maybe a bit hurt, because what the fuck, since when was getting up early to do your laundry a crime? Too perfect, they’d said, like he was some sort of fucking alter boy. If it was so fucking annoying then he’d let someone else do it this time around, and see how they liked it then. Besides, they all had way more annoying habits than him.
But he’d also forgotten how much fun touring could be, right at the beginning. The high from playing was better than any drug he’d ever tried, and every night he’d stand on the stage with the sweat on his face shimmering like stars and just revel in being part of such a beautiful machine, of the sheer power of the music. In those wonderful kaleidoscope hours they could communicate without words, the four of them, painting their music onto the silence, bringing thousands with them into a bright, endless world. He gets such a fucking rush off seeing all those faces looking up at him - up on that stage, he doesn’t have to be Daniel Kessler if he doesn’t want to be. He doesn’t have to be anyone. He doesn’t have to be a messy, unreliable, irregular human body, running on semisolids and gas and liquids, eternally struggling and destined one day to fail. All he is is sound; his heart is a stave and his fingers are semi-quavers and when he closes his eyes he isn’t there at all anymore.
It’s worth all the hassle, the interviews, the constant questions, the wasted hours of black tarmac and endless ribbons of road unwinding beneath them, the fights, just for those hours on stage. That feeling is what he tries to hang onto when it starts to get a bit too much. It’s when that feeling starts to fade that the trouble starts.
The afterparties are always good too. They invite whoever they want along; they’ll just get followed anyway. Daniel used to play a game with himself last time - pick out which women were groupies of which member. Carlos’ were, predictably, the easiest to single out, all Dita von Teese types, cranberry lips and tight black satin. Paul got a combination of the indie rock girls who’d never gotten over Ian Curtis and the out-and-out groupies who just wanted to bang the lead singer. Daniel got motherly types, for some reason: he had a sneaking suspicion that all they wanted to do was to bring him home and make him soup. He hates thinking about the women this way: after all, they’re human beings too. But in a weird way, they’re the ones being objectified: not that he cares, mind, but it’s true. This party, they’re starting off backstage, drinking with some of the soundguys and one or two of Paul’s friends from around town, and then moving onto the club. Walking out, he’s mobbed again by enthusiastic men and luminescent ladies, visible only in blacklight.
Next to him, Carlos is trying to pretend that he’s pissed off with this invasion of privacy, but a rebellious little smile keeps protesting at the corner of his mouth. He makes like he’s sick of signing autographs, big rockstar, but he does sign each of them, carefully, asking their names. “Where are we going again?” Daniel asks him as they move between people.
“Don’t ask me, man. Paul knows some place. He was here before, or something,” Carlos says vaguely, not really paying attention, and then purrs, “He-llo,” at a lovely pale young thing with green eyes, who doesn’t look more than sixteen and can’t possibly be more than eighteen. Carlos has that look on his face as he signs her CD: calculating and almost cold, not outwardly lascivious but definitely considering.
“Carl,” Daniel hisses. “Come on, she’s so young.”
Carlos raises his eyebrows in a who-what-me? kind of way that makes Daniel grit his teeth and says, “Once there’s grass, Danny,” with a smirk.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Not to me, and I’m the only one who can legitimately call it my business, so I guess it shouldn’t really bother you, should it?” All nice and polite, his voice breezy and free of bite, but his eyes are hard. Carlos hates it when people interfere with him like this - playing morality police, he called it once. He and Daniel have fought about it before, when he insisted that Daniel had no business in his private life, and Daniel had argued that there was little distinction on the road between public and private life.
“What has that got to do with anything, Dan, aside from just inflating your own self-important belief that you have to interfere with everything?”
“What it has to do with everything is that if you get done for any of the stupid shit you do, it will reflect badly on Interpol, and it will reflect badly on me!” Daniel had spat back. “You think I worry about this for fun?”
“Not for fun,” Carlos had sneered. “Living vicariously, maybe. I don’t think you’ve quite mastered fun, not yet.”
Now the memory of this resurfaced as Carlos turned back around to the girl, handing back the CD and leaning in closely to talk to her. Daniel sighs. There’s no point in protesting any further, not if Carlos has decided this is personal. Sometimes it seems like he does things like this deliberately to shock Daniel, to provoke him. And yeah, it does provoke Daniel, and not because he’s so incredibly shocked at Carlos banging a questionably legal girl, because that’s pretty much in the rock star handbook, but because it’s childish and pointless to deliberately try and provoke someone you have to work with. He’d point this out, but he knows the response he’d get: “Daniel, darling, I don’t give a shit what you think about me,” and a pronounced huff that would indicate the opposite.
“Daniel!”
He blinks and Carlos is snapping his fingers in front of Daniel’s face, an amused smile twisting across his face like a cat with a piece of string. “Internal monologue getting a bit much, huh? Come on, we’re leaving.”
They walk the few blocks together, and Carlos bitches the entire way about how rock stars should be able to hire cabs, “even if I want to just go to the restroom, I want a man in a car to drive me,” and Daniel bitches about how it’s getting cold already. At the entrance to the club he notices that the girl isn’t there any more.
“Hey, where’d she go? That girl you were talking to?” he says casually.
“Oh, I asked what age she was. And then I balanced it against how pissed off you’d be, and I decided that it would behove me to humour you, at least at the beginning of the tour.”
“You’re too good to me,” Daniel says dryly, but he actually is grateful, deep down. Moments when Carlos displays actual awareness of others’ feelings are few and far between.
“Don’t you forget it,” Carlos says, and winks, and then they walk into the club.
*
The American dates all tend to blur together, but in a comforting, homey sort of a way. When Daniel came to the States for the first time at eleven, he’d been endlessly amazed at the diversity of it: it was so big, and had so many cities, and so many different sections. Of course France had been the same, to a certain extent, but America was like a country that had diffused across a vast space. He remembers being awed, a little, just by the sheer vastness of it, and the strange, lonely openness that came with the space. With the sense of newness. If Europe was home, America was a hotel; impersonal, temporary, and always open for business.
Now that he’s older he tends to see how similar America is, how remarkably homogenised it is for such a huge place. It’s kind of nice on tour, to always know that there’s going to be a Starbucks nearby, or that he’ll be able to pick out exactly the kind of coffee he wants at Publix, from the same aisle probably. While everything tends to blur together after awhile, foreign or not, it provides a sense of consistency that Europe doesn’t. He thinks Paul likes it too, and wonders if maybe it comes from some sense of novelty that both never got over, of some deeply ingrained foreignness that will always be with them. They’d sat out in a parking lot, one night, drinking from bottles of Bud: a quiet night, near the end of their last tour, when they were tired but still fighting, still together.
“I don’t think I’d change it,” Paul says, with a vague smile. “Having lived in different places. Would you?”
“I loved France,” Daniel says. “I’ve always intended to go back there someday. I think that in one respect, it’s… having moved a lot forces you to really decide who you are, and what your goals are. Because you constantly have to define yourself. You can’t say ‘oh, I’m an Englishman, and I live by the English way of life’. You have to figure it out for yourself.”
“I think it’s strange. You know, when people talk about having grown up in one place… having allegiance to that place. How can you love a place until you’ve seen another? How can you appreciate it until you get to come back to it?” Paul sounds dreamy, with the softness in his voice he gets when he thinks about Mexico. The same fondness Daniel supposes he gets in his own voice when he thinks about France. They’re both of them eternal travellers, really.
“To travelling,” Daniel says with a faint grin, and they clink their empty bottles, and Paul throws his over his shoulder to hear it burst on the ground behind him with a sound like a broken car alarm choir.
author: chimneypot
a/n: part one. the antics tour, from daniel's point of view. gen. au. also this is completely made up because i'm lazy about research. if someone wants to help out with facts, go ahead!
I.
*
“Well, shit,” Sam says, looking at the bus. “Back on the road again, boys.” He’s grinning, though, and he looks pleased to be there as he stares up at their new home for the next few months.
“This should be fun,” Carlos says archly. Paul just stares at the bus in badly-disguised horror. Daniel is full of anticipation and anxiety - pleased to be out there, putting Interpol out there, connecting with fans, and anxious about how long the tour is going to be this time around. If he’s honest, he would have preferred more of a break. He still feels ragged after touring for Bright Lights. What with Antics being written on the road, and recorded in the middle of nowhere, he had less time in New York than he wanted. It’s like having an affair with a married woman, and having to leave before the morning sun reaches the bedsheets.
He hasn’t seen any of them for the entire duration of their break. By the time they reached New York it was as though they’d lapsed into stereotypes of themselves, so that at any point Daniel could say exactly what (or who) Carlos was doing, or where Sam was. Not that it was unpleasant, exactly, just predictable, and sort of stifling. But it had also been fun, a whirlwind of cities, the first taste of fame for them all as a band. It’s not like he can complain, really, especially when he thinks about his job in Matador.
He’s learned that they’re all different about touring. Last time it was so new, but this time, they’re prepared. Paul hates it; hates the sense of dislocation, the endless flickering faces of new cities he’s forced to deal with. Carlos loves the opportunities it affords him to get fucked up in new ways with new women. Sam is the most laid-back about it (as always) but nowadays, he misses his wife more than he lets on and has a tendency to sit in front of the television for hours, sometimes, not really watching but staring into space. Daniel spends most of the tours worrying, though he’d never admit it to the others.
The first tour, they didn’t really know what they were doing. They weren’t sure if they were really allowed to do this: play for two, maybe three hours, and then go party? And get paid? Carlos, of course, was the first to get into it; Paul and Sam both started to go out regularly soon after, with Daniel the last. They played venues that were getting bigger and bigger with crowds that knew more and more of their lyrics. Paul stopped bitching about The Strokes as much. They’d sit up nights, sometimes, when they came back from their respective clubs and bathrooms, talking about their music. About what they’d created together. Carlos said straight out that he wanted his music to affect people as strongly and spiritually as drugs. Paul wanted it to change the world - not that he’d admit it, of course, but after enough whiskey he’d stumble around the subject enough that Daniel was able to jigsaw-puzzle what he really meant. Sam just wanted to keep doing what he loved and get paid for it.
Daniel’s answer is, ironically, the most selfish. Yeah, he wants people to be affected by the music, and yeah, he wants to keep doing what he loves and get paid for it. He doesn’t quite want to change the world - he doesn’t think in vague, idealistic terms like Paul. What he gets the biggest rush off is of knowing that Interpol is his achievement, in a way where it’s none of theirs. And yeah, they’ve all admitted it in the past, jokingly; Sam calls the band his baby, sometimes. But it’s more important to Daniel than he’d willingly let them know: Interpol is, first and foremost, his. That’s why he does the press. That’s why he makes them hug before shows. That’s why he loves them all sometimes and hates them other times.
*
The first night is fucking fantastic. They play a great show and the crowd is fucking awesome, and afterwards they’re all high off endorphins and sharing a bottle of champagne in the dressing room. The plan is to play a few American dates and then fly out to Europe to begin the tour in earnest; to Australia, after that, then Japan, then Mexico, Canada, and finally back to the States. If he’s honest, Daniel would rather not think about the itinerary: from the sound of things, they’re going to be on the road for more than just a few months. From the sound of it, he’s going to be raising a family on the road.
“To Interpol,” Daniel says, raising his highball glass (nobody had been able to find champagne flutes, not that they really cared anyway). “Uh. Fucking brilliant show. You were all great. May they all go like that. And so on.”
“I’d also like to dedicate this glass to the really hot chick in the front row. May our fans continue in that vein,” Paul adds, mock-pompous, and Carlos clinks their glasses together and they all knock it back. Out in the rain, they’re signing autographs and people are calling his name, and really, Daniel thinks, how could he have been apprehensive? How could he have wanted anything else? All these different people are here, waiting for them, waiting for him, because he’s touched them somehow, he’s made a difference in their lives, however large or small. When they pass the fans and turn into the street, he feels a little overwhelmed. They all are.
“Am I mistaken, or are we having a warm rosy glow moment?” Carlos says, and he’s pretending to be sarcastic but Daniel can see the secret smile that’s taking even his mouth hostage.
“Heaven forbid,” says Paul, but he’s grinning widely, his big eyes catching the reflection of the headlights as the taxis stream past.
“Fuck stagelights, if they stuck me up there I’d light the fucking place up,” Sam says, necking out of a bottle of beer. “Jesus, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever said, but whatever. It’s good to be back. I think we need to celebrate. And say farewell to this beautiful city.”
It’s their last night in New York for fuck knows how long. They’re going to go and get well and truly fucked up - Daniel, personally, intends to be too drunk to talk, and he knows that he’s probably not alone here - and then get onto the bus and make their way south. The bar they go to is one of Sam’s regulars, but they’ve all been here a few times. Daniel likes the place; it has a relaxed, friendly vibe, the lights are just dim enough, and the DJ plays some fantastic stuff. They’ve all invited some friends along to say goodbye. He and Sam do a few lines off a CD case in the bathrooms, “since it’s a special occasion,” Daniel explains. Sam just rolls his eyes affectionately. Around twenty minutes later he can feel the harsh-edged buzz beginning to suffuse through his blood, the twinkle-bell brightness in his brain. Carlos comes up to him at the bar and they do tequila shots and have a longwinded bullshit conversation about why New York is the best city in the world.
“You’re high as a fucking kite, aren’t you?” he asks with a wide Cheshire cat grin glittering on his face.
“I’m just keeping up with you,” Daniel says, and Carlos laughs, and then his friend Kate comes and drags him off to the dancefloor. He dances for what feels like forever and then he bumps into Paul and they do more blow, crowded together in a cubicle like teenagers smoking at school. Paul’s eyes are the most beautiful silver-shimmering shade of blue beneath the UV junkie lights, and Daniel tells him so with a grin.
“You silver-tongued flatterer,” Paul says. “If I didn’t know you better, Daniel Kessler, I’d swear you were trying to charm more blow out of me.”
“That’s Carlos’ game,” Daniel protests, and then he hugs Paul and walks out of the bathroom. And that’s how the night goes, in a slightly blurred fashion, distorted around the edges like an old recording, the faces of people he loves (at least for the night) one after each other, a bright circus of warm flickering colours and music, and he feels like its king. He feels like standing on the edge of a skyscraper and letting his voice unfold like a bright flag into the warm dark night, until it reaches the stars. He feels amazing. He feels like a rock star - there’s no other way to describe it. Daniel fucking Kessler, the guitarist of Interpol, touring his second album. How many people get that.
“We’re the lucky ones,” he tells Sam, who throws a heavy arm around his shoulder and tells him that he’s never spoken truer words, and this is the last thing he remembers all night.
*
The next morning he has the worst motherfucker of a headache ever, reminding him of why he saves the Class As for special occasions - he doesn’t understand how Carlos can do this on a regular basis, honestly - and when he looks at his watch he realises that they have an interview in half an hour.
“Fuck,” he says, and sits up in his bunk. “Fuck!” He stands up and nearly falls over, and then nearly throws up. When the black blotches have cleared from his vision and he can stand without feeling like he’s about to swan-dive into the carpet he shouts, “Guys, wake the fuck up, we have an interview.”
Silence.
“Oh, come on to fuck,” he says, and pulls open the nearest curtain. Paul squints up at him and pulls the blankets further over his head.
“Paul, man, wake up, we have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Get to Walgreens, I hear they’re having a crazy sale on shampoo and I want to stock up.” His head is pounding out a broken-piano symphony, keeping time with the waves of nausea in his stomach, and he is totally not in the mood for this. “We have to get to the fucking interview, what do you think?”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Dan, you can’t pull it off,” he hears from behind him, and he turns around to see Carlos unfolding himself from his bed. “I hate you, by the way,” he says grouchily, and then stumbles into the bathroom.
“Mutual,” Daniel calls after him, and then, “Oh for Christ’s sake, Paul, wake up! Jesus wept.”
In the end they’re only ten minutes late for the interview, even with the fight for showers and coffee (a compromise was eventually reached: Daniel and Paul got the latter, Sam and Carlos the former).
“Late night?” the woman asks, a vixenish film-noir babe with a clasp of feathers holding caramel hair away from her large-eyed face.
“You could say that,” Daniel says, rubbing his face. Beside him, he can almost feel Carlos’ interest in the girl, and he finds it incredibly annoying for no reason at all. He wishes he’d fought harder to have a shower - he feels so dirty, even with his fresh clothes. It makes him feel as though he’s at a disadvantage. “Where are we again?” he asks the interviewer. “So I can sound enthusiastic.” He knows that they were heading south, can feel it in the sticky heat pawing his body, but the specifics are all hiding behind his persistent headache.
“Florida,” she says.
“My old stomping ground,” Sam says with a wide grin, turning on the charm. Daniel sits back, mildly relieved. At least he can count on Sam for some back up; sometimes these things can be torturous, when Paul is clearly not paying attention and Carlos is grilling the interviewer. The cameras roll and he does his best to be gracious and charming and stop Carlos from sounding like too much of an asshole, and then he goes back to the bus and sleeps for another five hours, waking up just in time for soundcheck.
*
They settle back onto the road relatively well, recovering last tour’s roles with ease. He wouldn’t say they’re considerate of each other, exactly; none of them are the type of men to tiptoe around. Except for himself, maybe. Tolerant, is a better word. Daniel tries his best to be patient with the others’ quirks: Carlos, for example, is insistent on a particular brand of orange juice and considers the purchase of any other brand as a complete lack of respect for his personal freedom and an affront to his rights not only as a consumer, but as a human being.
“Jesus,” Daniel had said. “Look, sorry, all right. I didn’t even look at the fucking carton. If it’s such a big deal buy it yourself.”
“It’s just the principle of the thing,” Carlos had insisted, and before Daniel could respond Paul said, “Only one specific brand helps with your PMS, huh,” which ended that discussion fairly quickly.
If he’s honest, though, he feels like he’s probably the least imposing member of the band. He still remembers that interview that Paul and Carlos did in that café in Paris when they had to talk about each others’ annoying quirks, where they immediately started to bitch him out. He’d been annoyed by that, and also maybe a bit hurt, because what the fuck, since when was getting up early to do your laundry a crime? Too perfect, they’d said, like he was some sort of fucking alter boy. If it was so fucking annoying then he’d let someone else do it this time around, and see how they liked it then. Besides, they all had way more annoying habits than him.
But he’d also forgotten how much fun touring could be, right at the beginning. The high from playing was better than any drug he’d ever tried, and every night he’d stand on the stage with the sweat on his face shimmering like stars and just revel in being part of such a beautiful machine, of the sheer power of the music. In those wonderful kaleidoscope hours they could communicate without words, the four of them, painting their music onto the silence, bringing thousands with them into a bright, endless world. He gets such a fucking rush off seeing all those faces looking up at him - up on that stage, he doesn’t have to be Daniel Kessler if he doesn’t want to be. He doesn’t have to be anyone. He doesn’t have to be a messy, unreliable, irregular human body, running on semisolids and gas and liquids, eternally struggling and destined one day to fail. All he is is sound; his heart is a stave and his fingers are semi-quavers and when he closes his eyes he isn’t there at all anymore.
It’s worth all the hassle, the interviews, the constant questions, the wasted hours of black tarmac and endless ribbons of road unwinding beneath them, the fights, just for those hours on stage. That feeling is what he tries to hang onto when it starts to get a bit too much. It’s when that feeling starts to fade that the trouble starts.
The afterparties are always good too. They invite whoever they want along; they’ll just get followed anyway. Daniel used to play a game with himself last time - pick out which women were groupies of which member. Carlos’ were, predictably, the easiest to single out, all Dita von Teese types, cranberry lips and tight black satin. Paul got a combination of the indie rock girls who’d never gotten over Ian Curtis and the out-and-out groupies who just wanted to bang the lead singer. Daniel got motherly types, for some reason: he had a sneaking suspicion that all they wanted to do was to bring him home and make him soup. He hates thinking about the women this way: after all, they’re human beings too. But in a weird way, they’re the ones being objectified: not that he cares, mind, but it’s true. This party, they’re starting off backstage, drinking with some of the soundguys and one or two of Paul’s friends from around town, and then moving onto the club. Walking out, he’s mobbed again by enthusiastic men and luminescent ladies, visible only in blacklight.
Next to him, Carlos is trying to pretend that he’s pissed off with this invasion of privacy, but a rebellious little smile keeps protesting at the corner of his mouth. He makes like he’s sick of signing autographs, big rockstar, but he does sign each of them, carefully, asking their names. “Where are we going again?” Daniel asks him as they move between people.
“Don’t ask me, man. Paul knows some place. He was here before, or something,” Carlos says vaguely, not really paying attention, and then purrs, “He-llo,” at a lovely pale young thing with green eyes, who doesn’t look more than sixteen and can’t possibly be more than eighteen. Carlos has that look on his face as he signs her CD: calculating and almost cold, not outwardly lascivious but definitely considering.
“Carl,” Daniel hisses. “Come on, she’s so young.”
Carlos raises his eyebrows in a who-what-me? kind of way that makes Daniel grit his teeth and says, “Once there’s grass, Danny,” with a smirk.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Not to me, and I’m the only one who can legitimately call it my business, so I guess it shouldn’t really bother you, should it?” All nice and polite, his voice breezy and free of bite, but his eyes are hard. Carlos hates it when people interfere with him like this - playing morality police, he called it once. He and Daniel have fought about it before, when he insisted that Daniel had no business in his private life, and Daniel had argued that there was little distinction on the road between public and private life.
“What has that got to do with anything, Dan, aside from just inflating your own self-important belief that you have to interfere with everything?”
“What it has to do with everything is that if you get done for any of the stupid shit you do, it will reflect badly on Interpol, and it will reflect badly on me!” Daniel had spat back. “You think I worry about this for fun?”
“Not for fun,” Carlos had sneered. “Living vicariously, maybe. I don’t think you’ve quite mastered fun, not yet.”
Now the memory of this resurfaced as Carlos turned back around to the girl, handing back the CD and leaning in closely to talk to her. Daniel sighs. There’s no point in protesting any further, not if Carlos has decided this is personal. Sometimes it seems like he does things like this deliberately to shock Daniel, to provoke him. And yeah, it does provoke Daniel, and not because he’s so incredibly shocked at Carlos banging a questionably legal girl, because that’s pretty much in the rock star handbook, but because it’s childish and pointless to deliberately try and provoke someone you have to work with. He’d point this out, but he knows the response he’d get: “Daniel, darling, I don’t give a shit what you think about me,” and a pronounced huff that would indicate the opposite.
“Daniel!”
He blinks and Carlos is snapping his fingers in front of Daniel’s face, an amused smile twisting across his face like a cat with a piece of string. “Internal monologue getting a bit much, huh? Come on, we’re leaving.”
They walk the few blocks together, and Carlos bitches the entire way about how rock stars should be able to hire cabs, “even if I want to just go to the restroom, I want a man in a car to drive me,” and Daniel bitches about how it’s getting cold already. At the entrance to the club he notices that the girl isn’t there any more.
“Hey, where’d she go? That girl you were talking to?” he says casually.
“Oh, I asked what age she was. And then I balanced it against how pissed off you’d be, and I decided that it would behove me to humour you, at least at the beginning of the tour.”
“You’re too good to me,” Daniel says dryly, but he actually is grateful, deep down. Moments when Carlos displays actual awareness of others’ feelings are few and far between.
“Don’t you forget it,” Carlos says, and winks, and then they walk into the club.
*
The American dates all tend to blur together, but in a comforting, homey sort of a way. When Daniel came to the States for the first time at eleven, he’d been endlessly amazed at the diversity of it: it was so big, and had so many cities, and so many different sections. Of course France had been the same, to a certain extent, but America was like a country that had diffused across a vast space. He remembers being awed, a little, just by the sheer vastness of it, and the strange, lonely openness that came with the space. With the sense of newness. If Europe was home, America was a hotel; impersonal, temporary, and always open for business.
Now that he’s older he tends to see how similar America is, how remarkably homogenised it is for such a huge place. It’s kind of nice on tour, to always know that there’s going to be a Starbucks nearby, or that he’ll be able to pick out exactly the kind of coffee he wants at Publix, from the same aisle probably. While everything tends to blur together after awhile, foreign or not, it provides a sense of consistency that Europe doesn’t. He thinks Paul likes it too, and wonders if maybe it comes from some sense of novelty that both never got over, of some deeply ingrained foreignness that will always be with them. They’d sat out in a parking lot, one night, drinking from bottles of Bud: a quiet night, near the end of their last tour, when they were tired but still fighting, still together.
“I don’t think I’d change it,” Paul says, with a vague smile. “Having lived in different places. Would you?”
“I loved France,” Daniel says. “I’ve always intended to go back there someday. I think that in one respect, it’s… having moved a lot forces you to really decide who you are, and what your goals are. Because you constantly have to define yourself. You can’t say ‘oh, I’m an Englishman, and I live by the English way of life’. You have to figure it out for yourself.”
“I think it’s strange. You know, when people talk about having grown up in one place… having allegiance to that place. How can you love a place until you’ve seen another? How can you appreciate it until you get to come back to it?” Paul sounds dreamy, with the softness in his voice he gets when he thinks about Mexico. The same fondness Daniel supposes he gets in his own voice when he thinks about France. They’re both of them eternal travellers, really.
“To travelling,” Daniel says with a faint grin, and they clink their empty bottles, and Paul throws his over his shoulder to hear it burst on the ground behind him with a sound like a broken car alarm choir.