Five Flavors of Dumb - Antony John [97]
Ed was still bright red, and had begun pacing around the room in tiny circles. I got the feeling I was killing him softly, but it was already 7:55, and although I knew all rock shows started late, I figured that wasn’t really our call to make.
“Finn? Finn?” cried Ed. “Hi. It’s Ed.”
Ed grimaced as he tried to make out Finn’s reply. Eventually he gave up and held the phone away from his ear. “It’s really hard to hear him,” he complained.
I rolled my eyes. “Welcome to my world.”
“Oh, right. I see what you mean.” Ed brought the phone back to his ear. “Look Finn, we need you here right now. Josh has bailed and we need a fifth member. . . . Oh, I see. Well, never mind.”
“What?” I exploded. “What’s going on?”
“Finn’s hanging out with Grace in Pacific Place Mall. He says it’d take at least ten minutes to get here.”
“Then tell him to leave now!”
“She says you need to leave now. . . . What’s that? A poop. Right now? Oh.” Ed frowned. “Finn says make that fifteen minutes.”
“Tell him forget the poop. Mom and Dad can deal with it when he gets here.”
Finn obviously heard me well enough, because Ed immediately shook his head. “He says no go. This is his chance to show that he’s a responsible babysitter.”
I ripped the phone away from Ed and gave it to Tash, who took over seamlessly: “Hi Finn, it’s . . . You are? . . . Great!” She hung up. “He’s on his way,” she said triumphantly.
While Ed struggled to work out what had happened, Kallie appeared before me, tugging her sleeves anxiously. “What’s Finn going to play?” she asked.
I sighed, but there was no use in lying at this stage. “He’s going to play guitar.”
“So who’ll be singing?”
“You know who’ll be singing, Kallie.”
Her eyes grew wide and she shook her head. “I can’t. I couldn’t. I’m just . . . not like Josh.”
“Which is exactly why you’re still here and he’s not.” I could feel her pulling away, taking refuge in her pessimism. “You can do this, Kallie, I know you can. I’ve seen you mouthing the words to the songs. Josh has pushed you around for too long. It’s time to push back.”
Before Kallie could respond, Mike poked his head through the door. “You’re on in three,” he shouted. When I pretended not to understand, he held up three fingers helpfully.
Then the games really began.
“Okay, Ed,” I said. “Mike doesn’t know I can understand him, so from now on I need you to act like you’re interpreting for me. I’ll watch his lips carefully, so don’t worry about signing correctly, just drag it out as long as you can.”
Ed twirled his drumsticks and raised his thumbs in agreement.
Next I sent Kallie to the ladies’ room so she wouldn’t be around when Mike came to find out why we hadn’t gone onstage. After Ed and I had spent thirty seconds going back and forth with meaningless signs, Ed informed Mike that Kallie had stage fright and was barfing in the bathroom. (Coincidentally, this turned out to be true.)
A couple minutes later, Mike reappeared, and this time Will was fixing a new string to his guitar. Mike threw his hands up in disgust, but he left without saying a word.
After three more minutes he loomed in the doorway and I knew we wouldn’t be able to fob him off again. I don’t think he really cared when we started, but by now he had an inkling that something was wrong, and he wasn’t about to make it easy for us.
“You’ve got two minutes. No excuses. I don’t care if you’re missing strings or heaving all over the stage, you get your asses up there. Hear me?”
Ed tried calling Finn again, but there was no answer. I knew he’d be racing over, but we’d exhausted our quota of delaying tactics, and there could be no more excuses. I left Dumb warming up, and ran into the auditorium to search for Finn.
It was crammed full, everyone facing the empty stage in readiness for something magical to occur. I couldn’t see over them to the entrance, so I began looking for a pathway through them, which