When we reached the beer garden, Morgan wasn’t even there yet. She was always late. I should have known.
I texted her, and she replied right back.
“b ther soon wait 4 me.”
So there was nothing to do now but wait around with Shawn’s friends, who of course had been at the beer garden for at least an hour by then.
Jason Gibbs was already mostly drunk. Right away he bought me and Shawn a beer.
Jason was a few years younger than us. I even used to babysit him. In high school, he was the basketball star, but of course no one from Muldoon ever gets a scholarship anywhere so he’d worked at the mill for a while with Shawn. Now he was a highway patrol cop; I had no idea how he’d gotten the night off. He was always a little jerk as a kid. He used to try to take Polaroids of me peeing from outside their bathroom window. For a while, though, I’d hoped that maybe he’d influence Shawn to go to the patrol academy too, and I guess I still did, so mostly I tolerated him as one of my husband’s friends.
Shawn drank his beer down as fast as I’d ever seen him drink. I bought the next round, getting a vodka tonic for myself this time.
“Whoa, Ashley!” Jason pressed his plastic beer cup into my drink. “Somebody’s partying tonight!”
“It’s been a long day,” I confessed.
Jason tapped Shawn’s arm. “You better watch your wife, bro. It’s fair time. She keeps going like that, might end up with somebody else’s dick in her ass. Not saying whose, I’m just saying.”
Shawn finished the last of his second beer. “You might end up with somebody’s dick down your throat, dude,” he said. Some of his color had come back. “And I’m saying whose. Mine.”
“Charming, as ever,” I said to both of them. But I didn’t mind that Shawn had actually sort of stuck up for me, even if it was by threatening his friend with forced fellatio in the middle of ordering more beer.
I tried to express as much of my annoyance with Jason as possible, but I was distracted by the way his long, horsey face was capped by whatever spiked thing he was trying to do with his hair. A couple of strands actually kept bobbing up a down idiotically whenever he laughed, which I don’t think he was aware of.
“I don’t know, bro,” Jason said, now without taking his eyes off me. “We have a history, me and Ashley. She told you didn’t she? She used to beg my parents to go out of town. She said I had the biggest cock of all the kids she babysat for. When they got home, she used to be, like, ‘No Mr. And Mrs. Gibbs, you don’t owe me anything. Little Jason took care of all my needs.’ Your wife’s a nympho, bro! Seriously!”
Apparently my husband thought the high-pitched voice Jason used to impersonate me was the funniest thing in the world. Shawn was laughing, and now Jason started laughing at his own joke, and this only made Shawn laugh harder. Apparently this was how much easier it was for Shawn to put the locker room out of his mind than it was for me.
“No, dude!” Shawn said. “You don’t even know! I mean, she kind of is a nympho!” My husband laughed hilariously at this revelation.
All I’d wanted was to have a drink and to try to calm down a little. And now I had to deal with this.
The worst part was that I didn’t even know what to say. I thought about bringing up how I knew Jason used to whack off to Tina Frame’s picture in the yearbook, but I didn’t have it in me. I was too mentally fried, and I didn’t care. I just sat there shaking my head like some prudish idiot.
“Ashleeeey!” Morgan’s arms suddenly wrapped around me from behind. She almost knocked me off my barstool.
I stood and hugged her back, spilling my drink. “Where the hell have you been?”
Morgan was already completely tanked. She gave me a big, whiskey-tainted kiss on the cheek. It was weird how happy I was to see her. For a moment I almost started to cry.
“You and me,” Morgan said, shaking her hips with each word in a little drunken dance, “are going to …”—she held up the back of her wrist, stamped with a green T—“the Bryce Tripp concert!”
Jason scoffed. “Bryce Drip’s a fucking faggot.”
“And we’re leaving these two losers”—Morgan traced a circle in the air, then pointed at Jason’s and Shawn’s faces—“right here in the fucking lame ass beer garden.”
Morgan displayed her stamped wrist again, then tilted her head coyly, held out her tongue, and, like an inebriated pole dancer, gave her stamped wrist a long, sexy lick.
Jason glanced at Shawn.
Now Morgan grabbed my wrist and pressed it against hers, transferring the green T concert stamp to my wrist, just like we used to do years ago to sneak one of us into the movie theater.
Before I could finish the last of my drink, Morgan was pulling me away by the hand. I didn’t even so much as wave to Shawn before leaving him there.
On the way through the carnival, Morgan hung on my shoulder and whispered, “I’ve been sleeping with Jason.” She made a gagging sound. “Gross, huh! I know, I know.”
I was surprised. “Morgan!” She had this great body, but I’d always been the one with the more-or-less cute face. She was always trying to prove that she was attractive by sleeping with one guy or another. But I hadn’t expected she’d sleep with Jason. “Why him?”
“It’s okay, Ash,” she said. “Because I’m already cheating on him!” Morgan snorted a laugh. “Don’t tell him! It’s way more fun cheating on him than it is sleeping with him!”
I couldn’t help but laugh with her.
“You’re fucking crazy,” I said. I was actually feeling a little better.
As we passed the Tilt-A-Whirl, I whispered, “So who are you cheating on him with, then?”
She held a finger to her lips. “Shhhhh. Not saying.”
“Who? Tell me.”
“Not saying!”
Morgan bounded ahead. I had no idea who her mystery guy was, but I worried it might be someone married if she wouldn’t tell me. Knowing Morgan, though, I’d find out one way or another before too long. She never kept a secret.
She was already through the concert gates, waving at me to follow her in.
Suddenly I flashed on the body in the locker room, again. I’d actually managed to forget about it for a little while, but now the image of its mouth hanging open came back to me. I’d kept glimpsing its teeth while I’d helped Ian carry it.
For some reason this made me nervous about sneaking into the concert. We weren’t kids any more, and I’d be mortified if I got caught now, as an adult, especially tonight. I even knew the woman collecting tickets and checking stamps. Her husband was one of the truckers at the company I worked for.
Morgan gave me a shrug from the other side of the gate. Then she impatiently waved me in again.
“Hurry up!” she yelled.
I stepped forward, trying to keep as far from the counter as possible, holding up my wrist with its faint green T. I’d never been as good as Morgan was at playing things cool.
Of course the woman collecting tickets recognized me.
“Ashley! Hi! I thought you weren’t going to the concert?”
“Hey Helen,” I smiled, scared. She already suspected me, I could tell. “Well, my friend bought me a ticket,” I said awkwardly. “We came in earlier? I just went out for a sec to say hi to my niece.”
I had no idea where these lies were coming from, or how believable they were.
“Well let’s see that stamp of yours.”
My heart was pounding. This was so stupid. Someone had just died and I was about to get caught sneaking into a concert by some musician I’d never even heard of and whose bus had even blocked my car in.
“I’m gonna be late!” I joked nervously.
Helen took my hand and examined the stamp. This was it. I glanced around. What would she do? Were there security guards she would call? I saw one guy, arms folded, standing at the entrance to the grandstands. I was pretty sure he was already looking over at me.
“That’s what I thought!” Helen declared, inspect
ing my stamp. “Ashley!” She frowned and clucked her tongue. “You’ve almost worn your stamp off already! I can barely see it. Here.” She plunked her rubber stamp into the inkpad and gave me a fresh T. “Enjoy!”
As soon as I was through the gate, Morgan grabbed my arm and hurried me toward to the grandstands.
“You totally thought fucking Helen Sandburg was going to arrest you or something, didn’t you!” She laughed at me. “I saw the look on your face! You did! Always such a good kid.” She squeezed my neck. “Ah, that’s why I love you.”
I hated that Morgan thought about me that way. But it was true. I let that ass-hole Jason treat me like shit. I let Shawn belittle me after I’d just wiped vomit off his shoes. And now I was afraid that sweet wouldn’t-accuse-a-fly-of-buzzing Helen Sandburg would turn me into the cops. It was a good thing Morgan loved me, however innocent she thought I was.
I was suddenly determined to get completely wasted.
The concert was packed. It was disorienting to see the rodeo grounds transformed into a country music venue and filled with so many people from out of town. I led Morgan all the way to the standing-only area in front of the stage. We must have missed all the opening acts because Bryce Tripp himself was already playing. He was sitting on a stool wearing boots and a sleeveless shirt, looking like an underwear model with a guitar and a cowboy hat. I thought maybe he was even wearing makeup.
He was singing some ballad that nobody seemed to know except for a small group of middle-aged women I didn’t recognize, each holding up a cigarette lighter and swaying idiotically.
Pretty much everybody else was at least as drunk as they were, but more restless. A couple of guys I recognized from Biggs, the next town over, started yelling at the stage.
“Hey dick lick! Pick it up, pretty boy! Too fucking slow!”
Bryce Tripp seemed to get the hint. Next song he called out his backup band, slung on an electric guitar, and started playing a much faster song whose only lyrics I could catch were “beer” and “bullets.”
Half the crowd was down in front of the stage dancing drunkenly. Morgan bought beers and managed to pour a shot’s-worth each of whiskey from her purse flask. “Boilermakers!” She yelled over the speakers.
I could tell already that the concert wasn’t going to end well. There was just this feeling in the air. Too many guys who basically wanted to drink, and drink more, and then break whatever rule they could find to break. Halfway into his set, Bryce Tripp slowed it down again, this time playing a crooning love song. A guy nearby took the opportunity to slow-dance with this girl I vaguely recognized from the beer garden. He had his hands all over her, then he started really grabbing her ass. I was pretty sure she’d been with somebody else at the beer garden. It was actually kind of weird how the guy wasn’t just grabbing her ass but totally reaching around and down between her legs, and she was just letting him go at it.
That’s when I got knocked over.
Some guy had trampled into me, fists swinging. As I fell, his elbow caught me behind the ear. I spilled what was left of my second boilermaker and scraped my palm.
“Ass hole!” Morgan screamed and tried to help me up.
This was just as the guy who’d knocked me down—it was the same guy I’d seen with the girl in the beer garden—punched the guy she was dancing with squarely in the face. But then yet another guy I’d never seen before pushed them both right back into us, and we got knocked over again.
An all-out brawl broke lose.
Morgan and I crawled to the edge of the stage, and Bryce Tripp finally stopped playing. A security guard took over the microphone while a handful of rent-a-cops tried to stop the melee. I checked my palm, which was only barely bleeding, and my head, which felt fine, but this may have had a lot to do with how drunk I was at that point.
When I looked up, Morgan was talking to Bryce Tripp. I couldn’t believe it.
“Why’d you stop playing?” she yelled out while the scuffle continued on, barely abated, behind her.
I was sure Bryce Tripp would just ignore her, but he actually smiled and said something. Neither of us could make it out over the bullhorn.
“What?” Morgan screamed. I hadn’t seen her this drunk in a long time.
Bryce Tripp smiled again and shook his head. I couldn’t believe it, but he actually approached us at the foot of the stage and kneeled down to talk to us.
“They won’t let me keep playing,” he said. “It’s actually in my contract.”
He had these crazy icy-blue eyes. I honestly don’t think I’d ever seen anyone better looking from this close, in person.
“You know,” he added, and shrugged. “The ‘safety of the performer at risk’ and all that.”
Morgan was in full flirting mode. “So you always do what they tell you to do?”
She had this weird ability to flirt without making a total ass of herself, no matter how drunk she was.
Bryce Tripp laughed. He was even cuter with a full grin. I actually felt this wave of attraction pass over me when he spoke.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I usually do pretty much what they tell me.”
Morgan put on a pout and pretended like she’d lost interest. “Well, that’s a shame.”
“No, not really,” Bryce Tripp shot back, still grinning. “I get paid all the same. This is my third brawl in two months. Just means I get the night off. Which is fine by me.”
He stood, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a stack of what looked like business cards.
“Couple of backstage passes,” he said, handing one to Morgan and one to me. “Looks like I’m free for the evening. Why don’t you come on over and say hello.”
Then he just gave us this friendly wave and left.
As soon as he’d left the stage, Morgan clutched her pass and screamed.
“Oh my fucking God! How do we get back there?”
There was a little security gate beside the stage which seemed to be the only way in.
By then the brawl had shifted toward the grandstands and we were able to make our move. We had to avoid an inebriated trucker pinned to the ground by a couple of security cops, but we managed to race to the side of the stage without getting knocked over again.
I couldn’t stop laughing. I hadn’t forgotten the body, but I was so drunk by now, I actually didn’t care that someone had just died.
This little panicking security guard was the only person manning the backstage gate. He was so focused on the brawl, standing on his toes and yelling into his cell phone, that he just waved us in without even really looking at our passes. He was probably used to letting local girls with passes backstage.
The area behind the stage was strangely empty. There were these couches set up outside, and a cold-cut buffet, and coolers of what I assumed to be beer, but no one was around. Bryce Tripp’s trailer—the same one that had blocked my car—was now pulled up alongside this sitting area.
But Bryce Tripp himself was nowhere to be seen. I don’t know what I expected, but not this.
Morgan grabbed a beer from a cooler and sat on the couch.
Just then someone came out of the trailer. A guy. He was dressed in tapered jeans and a fitted shirt and looked ready for an L.A. nightclub.
He lowered his sunglasses, and it was only now that I realized fully that this was Bryce Tripp, the same guy who’d just been singing twangy country songs in a Stetson.
“How do you like my disguise?” he asked.
“I can’t say it’s an improvement,” Morgan said.
He folded his glasses and stashed them in his vest pocket.
“So where we going?” he asked. “If I’m going to buy you drinks, you two have to lead the way. I’ve never been here before. Where are we, anyway? Muldoon? Is that what it’s called?”
“Muldoon,” I confirmed, stupidly.
Morgan laughed. “Which means there’s only one place to go! Come on.”