17-6: “Moe Batriani”
I followed Tim as he opened the door and walked up the five-step staircase that led us onto the stage. It felt like I was living in the limelight right from the moment I stepped foot on stage; rays of colorful lights struck me from above as I glanced around me, absorbing the moment. Seeing how high-profiled of a band Coldplay is, the cramping size of the venue startled me. The floor was small; about a good 600 people would be able to stand there to watch the show. Then I gazed up at the balcony; maybe 100 people can be seated there? 200? 300? 420? I don’t know, honestly, I’m a terrible estimator.
I suddenly realized that everything grew silent to my ears. For some odd reason, I started to feel so many few eyes fixed on me…. Then I snapped out of it, realizing that Coldplay stopped their sound check to give an intrusive look at Tim (Wait, Tim’s still with me?!) and I.
“I’m sorry… Did we interrupt something?” I asked kindly.
“You interrupted our sound check,” Will said from behind his drum set, crossing his arms with drumsticks glued to the palm of his hands. Chris stood up and walked from behind his heavily spray-painted colorful piano to casually confront me and Tim. Like Will, Chris also crossed his arms. Jonny and Guy decided not to pay any mind to us as they tended their appropriate instruments to tune them up.
“How’d you two get in here?” Chris politely asked with a voice that was trying to mask his annoyance. “Well-mannered and respecting fans would usually wait for hours outside for the doors of the venue to open.”
“Well-mannered and respecting bodyguards would usually give fans their phones back after taking a picture with the band for them,” Tim snapped as he crossed his arms.
“Why is everyone crossing their arms now?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Chris said—to Tim, that is.
“One of your bodyguards stole my phone after he took the picture we all posed for earlier today when we first met outside the venue,” Tim said.
“Huh…. So that’s why I saw Craig and Clint run through the doors,” Chris said, looking behind him at the doors at the floor. Then he turned back to us. “I still don’t get why you two decided to sneak your way in here, though. I mean, had you two stayed out there and waited like well-mannered and respecting fans should, then maybe you would’ve had your phone returned to you by now. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
“See Rezzy?!” Tim backhanded my arm. “Even Chris Martin knows that I would’ve had my phone back by now!”
“Oh, so it was your idea to sneak you and your friend in?” Chris said to me.
“Yes,” I confessed.
“I can’t take this any longer; I have to get my phone back,” Tim said. He jumped six feet off the stage and barrel-rolled onto the floor upon impact and dashed out of the doors.
“What do we do with him, Chris?” Will asked Chris, referring to me.
“Good question, William,” Chris said as he turned to face him. “The only reasonable thing for us to do is to kick him out of the venue.”
“But then that’d be pointless,” Guy said, tuning his bass as he was sitting on a wooden stool. “He still has a ticket; a one-way ticket to get back inside if we were to kick him out now, that is.”
“Damn, good point,” Chris said.
“Leave me out of this,” Jonny said. He finished tuning his guitar and placed it on the guitar rack and walked backstage.
“I’ll tell you what, um, Razzy, is it?” Chris said.
“No, my name’s not Razzy; it’s Rezzy. R-E-Z-Z-Y. Rezzy. There is no ‘A’ in there if you haven’t figured that out by now.”
“Listen, just listen to my compromise. I don’t want to kick you out of here for sneaking in with your friend, I just don’t. I would feel bad if I do.”
“I’m listening…”
“We’ll put all of this behind us—”
“—like how you and Joe Satriani put all of that mess behind you because he thought you ripped him off with a song like ‘Viva la Vida’?”
“We won’t talk about Satriani.”
“Why not? My dad loves Satriani!”
“I said we won’t discuss Joe Satriani.” I could hear the annoyance resonate in his voice. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity as him growing more annoyed with me was starting to turn me on. Time to spice things up, I thought.
“Why? The man’s a musical genius!” I said. “I mean, what’s that one song he does? There’s a guitar solo in it, I believe… Um—”
Craig and Clint, the bodyguards, busted through the door with Tim being aggressively held by his arms as if two police officers were taking in a handcuffed prisoner back to his cell.
“I got my phone back!” Tim said, lifting a leg up, referring to what was in his pocket as the bodyguards were till holding him by his immobilized arms.
“Tim! What the hell happened to you?” I yelled from the stage as if I was on a mountaintop.
“I got some good news and I got some bad news,” Craig, the taller bodyguard announced.
“Who’s he talking to?” I said to Chris; as if he cared either way.
“Which do you want first, Chris?”
“Tell me the good news first,” Chris said as he hopped off the stage to confront them directly.
I sat on the edge of the stage with my feet dangling about five feet above the floor. I watched Craig to see what ‘news’ he would share with Chris, that sexy beast. Still, even when they’re about forty feet away from me or so, they chattered publicly as opposed to a confidential confrontation.
“The good news is that I managed to return the fan his phone back,” Craig boasted.
“It was a team effort, Craig! I’m tired of you taking credit for everything all the time,” Clint complained.
“Oh yeah? All the time? Remember that one time we saved Jonny from getting mauled by a wild bear that one time we were in Alaska? I had split the credit with you 50/50 when I’d explained it to Will when we returned to the cabin after the fact.”
“Okay, I’ll give that one to you.”
“So what’s the bad news?” Chris said, preventing Craig and Clint any further digression.
“The fan kicked me in the balls after Craig returned the phone to him,” Clint said. Chris sighed as Will snickered from behind his drum set after Clint had said “balls.”
“Sheesh, you speak as if you’re talking behind my back, all three of you,” Tim said.
“Throw him out,” Chris instructed his bodyguards. He reached into Tim’s pocket and ripped both of the tickets for tonight’s show. That evil bastard! Immediately I was turned off from Chris Martin’s body all because of what he did—the evil act of ripping tickets that Tim had bought with his hard-earned money. I grew infuriated, thinking that Tim’s money has now been robbed of him, the tickets being wasted. The bodyguards insisted as they exited the venue with a screaming and apologetic Tim. They reentered the venue seconds later and Tim was no longer with them. Chris then quietly said something else to them. Next thing I knew, all three of them started to walk towards me. Shit. I’m next to go, I thought. I didn’t want to suffer the same fate Tim had just suffered, so I decided to do the only sensible thing—run.
Finishes with 17-7 here...