Chapter Five: You Soldier On

“Hey!” Kåre rips me free from my rumination. I blink. “Hey, you disappeared.”

“Sorry.” I look down at the kohl pencil in my hand and roll it between my fingertips.

“I’ve been talking to the air for a full minute.”

“Sorry,” I say again. I have no idea how long I’ve been standing there propped up against the wall, wallowing, with only one eye finished. “I was just thinking. About Micke’s band being here.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty shitty that they didn’t tell you,” he nods, catching my eye for a moment in the mirror.

“I’m also waiting for you to be done so I can finish up my other eye.”

He leans forward, touching up the corner of his eyelid and then blends his eyeshadow with the tip of his index finger. “Fine. I’ll leave.” He shakes his head to let me know he thinks I’m ridiculous, tousling his back-combed hair a bit with one hand, taking his time just to irk me.

I take another swig of wine. He zips up his little glittery black makeup bag. Me, I only have this one pencil I found rolling around in the bottom of my dusty duffle bag.

I grab his arm on his way out. “What were you trying to say to me, anyway?”

“No, it was…” his voice trails off. “… it was nothing.” I get the distinct feeling that it wasn’t, though.

Once he leaves, I finish, arrange my hair to cover what I’ve completed and place my hat back on top to keep it all in place.

In reality, I don’t even need to call Micke. Besides, I can’t or I’ll lose my shit and ruin the makeup I just put on. I can hear Micke’s message without putting myself through it, anyway. It only turns my stomach now. Even if he wanted nothing more than to make me a little less miserable than I’ve always, always managed to make myself. Och om det är Axel:  ‍

I look my reflection in the eye. “Seriöst, sluta nu!” I say in unison with Micke’s voice in my mind. And my lips turn up slightly, in an almost imperceptible, bittersweet smile.

“You alright in there?” Tor calls out from around the corner, beyond the open bathroom door. “What, he’s talking to himself in the mirror again. That’s never a good sign!” he laughs. “Enough with the primping already!”

“I don’t know if you all are even ready for this!” I set down the eyeliner pencil and exit like a model taking to the runway, striding assertively into the center of the room, tossing my hair and striking a commanding pose before turning on my heel and heading back to retrieve my wine from the bathroom because I forgot it. “It’s a good thing the unwashed hipster thing is cool right now, that’s all I can say.”

“I never thought I’d say this but you’re worse than Kåre,” Tor coughs and covers his face with his bandaged hand.

“Only worse because he actually looks good when he’s done!” I drop myself onto the couch beside Kåre too closely, and we collide. He smiles faintly and shoves me away.

“By the way, you still haven’t made us a set list and we’re on in like ten minutes,” Tor reminds me.

Kåre glances around and plucks up the paper and sharpies we acquired for precisely that purpose from the floor. I set to work scrawling out song titles, reasoning it out loud, “No, wait, if we do that one too early, I’m going to lose my voice by the halfway point…”

And Tor weighs in: “I seriously can’t play that one tonight. It gets way too busy on the chorus!”

“Shit, we haven’t played that one in a while!” Kåre leans in tight against me again to get a better look. “I hope I even remember it.”

“Well, it may be now or never!” I shrug.

The mood shifts abruptly. Not like a flipped switch; more like I, the hangman, dropped the trapdoor on the scaffold.

Kåre sighs. “Shut up, Axel.” He stands up abruptly and starts rummaging in the beer crate for something to take on stage, probably to avoid meriting my remark with anything resembling a response.

“What the fuck did that mean?” Tor asks after the longest second of my life.

“Oh, he’s just being a drama queen,” Kåre scoffs, popping the top off of his beer bottle, allowing it fly and fall where it will. Then he tosses the bottle opener back onto the table in a gesture of casual annoyance. “His career is over, he’s a washed-up has-been… Tor, I’ve had to listen to that the entire trip.”

“My career is over,” I say under my breath as I scribble out a copy of the setlist for Tor. “I’m ending it. Tonight.”

Thankfully, that’s the point at which Ola pops his head around the doorframe and asks, “You guys gonna be ready soon?”

Who ever thought I’d be so happy to see that guy?

“We shall be there momentarily!” I pass the hastily constructed setlist off to Tor, grab my own copy along with a bottle of water and a beer and make my exit.

As I do, I hear Tor ask, “Is he fucking serious?”

And Kåre, he says defiantly, derisively, “No, he’s not. He just says shit like this. He’ll change his mind the second he sets foot on stage.”

The venue itself has no backstage area, only the venue over the venue has one, so we have to walk through that venue, where there’s a hip hop night going on, down a flight of stairs, sneak through the main entryway and enter our venue, where we will have to fight our way through a throng of fans to make it to the stage.

I’m attempting to stifle my irritation as we file out through the upper level, which is twice, maybe three times as big, and is currently host to ten individuals. I suppose it’s still early in the night for a club. But with the last album, I definitely would have been playing that stage.

Self-abasement grabs the reins, a burden that crushes me hunchbacked. As I bear it along the barren dancefloor, it rides me ragged, cracking its whip of cruel commentary all the while. It’s sad. It’s ridiculous that this — this is going to be my last show. This is how the world ends. I’ll have to buck against it, cast it off, if I’m ever to give a good performance tonight. The lights throw its looming shadow across the wall, distorting the beast, ameliorating it with their rhythmic dance. Soon its shadow dominates and floods my vision with darkness.

However, when I reach the top of the stairs and look down, the light hits my eye, and all the ugliness dissipates without any kind of epic struggle. Down there, it’s a madhouse. The place is packed.

As we approach, it becomes apparent how problematic this situation is. Several fire safety codes must have been violated to create this environment. Patrons are spilling into the venue’s entry, flooding the foot of the stairs, pooling there as the flow into the venue itself has slowed to a mere trickle.

I wave at Tor and Kåre to stop in mid-descent as I survey the situation in shock. “How the hell are we supposed to get to the stage?”

Tor shakes his head as if to shake off slumber. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Kåre bursts out laughing, slapping his hands down on his thighs, and nearly doubling over. “Are all these people here for a has-been?!” he crows, then takes hold of the rail with one hand as a precautionary measure to keep his balance.

“Fuck off!” I toss a glance back at him, but I cannot hide the gaping grin of unbridled disbelief dominating my face. What a relief.

I mean, that kid said the show was sold out, but this is insanity. And now they’ve even spotted us. Some of them are staring, others pretending there’s nothing to see, but occasionally peering up all the same. How will we get to the front of the venue without being mobbed? How does anyone get in there?

“Oh shit,” Tor says suddenly, scratching his beard while gazing up at the ceiling. “I totally forgot. Lisa texted me from the merch table a half hour ago to say we might want to learn to crowd surf.”

“And you didn’t think to ask her why?” I raise my eyebrows at him.

“I did. She didn’t answer.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and fumbles to unlock it. “No wait, she did.”

“And?”

“Yeah, she said it’s a madhouse,” he smirks.

I stare at him, deadpan.

“Oh, and hold on, hold on. There’s more. People who couldn’t get tickets bypassed security and pressed themselves up against the patio glass,” he reports.

I sigh and motion for the two of them to form a huddle. “Okay, we need a strategy!”

“Yeah, we sure do!” Kåre quips.

“There’s no choice but to push through as best we can.” I glance over my shoulder down at the crowd. “If we lose anybody along the way, well then… fallen comrades are not to be forgotten, but I’m afraid we’ll have to carry on without them. It’s a battle-zone out there!”

Then it hits me, what I’ve just said. But before I can get stuck on a gaff, Kåre catches on, patting my shoulder like something right out of a tacky Hollywood war drama. “Be brave boys, be brave!”

“We’re going in!” I bellow, fist raised, brandishing my beer bottle as a makeshift battle baton.

We descend and surge onward.