six MARGARET part 2
We hooked up for the first time back in Warsaw, the night Brady invited me to join Five Ways onstage to sing “Owen” as an encore. Those debut collaborations became a regular thing but the sex remained a secret until yesterday, when the tabloid journalists who set Kev up and staked out his tour coach with night-vision gear also got shots of me sneaking away from Brady’s wagon. By that point I’d taken up smoking again and now everyone knew absolutely fucking everything.
The news broke immediately in pixels and print. Then Five Ways’ hardcore PentaFans declared a social-media fatwa on Citizen Samurai.
Like nervous birds, Melanie’s texts flocked to my phone in buzzing increments of panic as our online following fell from five to four million. Tumbled to three and then hovered near two until the East Coast woke up to a fetid brunch of bottom-feeding news. Mel stopped texting when we lost a comma and slipped below one million.
Hours before Kev’s show-stopping freakout the band’s manager Mike flew in to attempt damage control. He brought a stack of tabloids from Heathrow and summoned four-fifths of Five Ways to meet aboard Brady’s chrome-whale tour bus for a serious congress over lunch, monitored by the band’s lawyer on speakerphone.
Brady boosted me into a bunk up front before the others came. I curled into a ball behind a guitar case and some pillows. Muted my phone, poked it around the corner like a periscope and spied while Mike and the boys plotted Kev’s ambush-intervention.
Mike held up a copy of The Mirror.
This nonsense? It’s crippling our comeback and killing the brand, he said.
He slapped the newspapers down in front of Brady.
Your girl’s at home with a baby on the way and you’re shackin’ up with your supportin’ act? And you three. Where the fuck were you muppets while our Kev was turnin’ into Tony Montana?
I pinched and spread to zoom in on Mike’s face as he outlined the band’s plan of attack. They would write letters loaded heavy with shame, laced with guilt and leveraged over sentiment to create a united front and underwrite a single nuclear demand: If Kev refused to seek treatment, he’d be forced to leave Five Ways.
I want him seated here, okay? Right where I am now, Mike said. Pat and Maxy, let’s have you two on this side. We’ll put Tony and Brady there and I’ll park myself at the end. Box him in. Make it tough for him to do a runner before we’ve had our say, yeah?
Mike shooed the band from the cramped dinette booth. He grunted, hauled himself from behind the table, struggled to his feet and sighed. Tucked his shirttail into his trousers and asked the boys to consider how the thoughtless actions of two fools had interrupted his Lake District holiday, jeopardized the reunion tour and put the band’s collective dick in a bees’ nest.
I follow you boys online, Mike said. You’re all viper-quick to take the piss outa Lily Allen every time she twerps. Chirps? Tweetsncries? I’ll agree she puts her foot in it often enough but that ain’t bad publicity. The bird’s controversial. Controversy sells papers, gets folks clickin’ and Googlin’ but this type of press? This shit only makes the public hate you. And before you ask me again Patrick I’ll say yeah, with this sum of money at stake you are most definitely your brother’s fuckin’ keeper.
Everyone agreed to return to Brady’s coach with letters in hand to confront Kev over a catered dinner at six.
©2017 J.R. Schaefers — all rights reserved.