“Don’t you dare! I’ve pushed a boundary already tonight. Let’s not batter it down and salt the earth around it, okay?”
“Oh, very well.” Dmitri gave a long-suffering sigh, then grinned. “I’ll make it from Santa. Can’t fault presents from the Big Man, right?”
“Asshole!”
Laughing, they started walking back toward Black Rock City.
It was now fully dark, and the velvety blackness above them was illuminated with the distant glow of uncountable stars. As his eyes fully adapted to the dark, Dmitri could see the Milky Way arching toward the horizon, a brilliant band of mottled light and dark. It wasn’t a sight he was used to, and the vastness made him feel small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Then Andre reached out to take his hand and give it a squeeze, and his heart leapt.
“Thanks, Dmitri,” Andre said quietly. “You helped me get through something I never thought I could do. I’ve felt like my hands were tied about Sibila, but you helped me take back a little bit of control. Maybe thingscanget better.”
On second thought, maybe he wasn’t so insignificant after all.
Friday dawnedon a blur of media interviews, fan meet-and-greets, and what practice they could snatch in between the promo sessions that Greg had arranged. The F-Holes seemed to be a hot commodity this year, if the sheer number of questions they’d answered from mass media, Instagram influencers, vloggers, and industry reporters was any indication. Dmitri was certain by the end of their fan session, where he’d signed so many autographs that his wrist began to hurt, that they’d talked to at least half of the tens of thousands of people in Black Rock City.
Then, during their last interview with MetalMind, Luka had sprung a surprise on him.
“We’re not only highlighting our existing albums tonight,” he told the reporter. “We’re actually debuting a piece that will lead off our third.” Then he’d stubbornly refused to give any more information about it, just smiling mysteriously as the interview concluded.
Afterward, Dmitri took Luka aside. “For the love of all that’s holy, please tell me you aren’t about to make us perform the song I wrote.”
Luka smirked. “Of course I am. It’s a great piece, and you saw how many more interviews we had this year. We’re on the way up, and we need to really wow this crowd. What better way than debuting a great new song no one has ever heard?”
Dread filled Dmitri. Luka knew the business side of things better than he did, but he wasn’t certain he was ready for anyone outside of the band to hear the piece. Sure, he’d agreed, after he saw the lyrics Luka had written for it, that it could go on their next album, but that wouldn’t be out for months yet. “I can’t! It’s personal.”
Luka shook his head. “Dmitri,everysong is personal, both to the player and to the listener. Otherwise, it would just be noise.”
“But we won’t be ready. We haven’t rehearsed it fully!” He desperately tried to come up with additional arguments against it, but that was the only one he could think of.
“You and I rehearsed it several times before we played it for Andre. Tell me you don’t know every note of it by heart. I’ve also been over it with Kit, Andre, and Kris, and they feel ready. We’ve got this.”
Dmitri couldn’t think of any other arguments against it other than “I don’t want to,” so he finally had to acquiesce to Luka’s insistence. But his stomach was tied up in knots right up to the time they were standing in the wings, waiting for Sultana to finish their set.
“Look, you felt nervous last year, and nothing bad happened,” Andre pointed out. He waved a hand at the stage. “We rocked it.”
“Of course we did,” Kris agreed. “Dude, why do you look green? It’ll be fine!”
“Last year was different,” Dmitri moaned. “We weren’t doing a song I wrote! What if they hate it?”
Anxiety roiled inside him. Rocktoberfest was the only concert that had ever given him stage fright; last year had been because it was the biggest crowd they’d ever played in front of, but even though that had turned out fine, it paled in comparison to the thought of performing his own, deeply meaningful composition. Luka was making Dmitri bare his soul on stage to thirty thousand people. The bastard.
As if summoned by Dmitri’s thoughts, Luka came up and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve got this,” he said softly. “I understand. I had the same feeling the first time I performed an original piece.”
“Liar,” Dmitri said, but he smiled. “I bet you threw it in their faces and dared them not to like it.”
“That didn’t mean I wasn’t ready to hurl if they didn’t.” Luka gave him a small shake. “It’s a great song, they’ll love it.”
“Easy for you to say,” he muttered. “Mr. Genius Songwriter.”
Luka shook his head, then pointed to Dmitri’s electric cello. “We won’t do it until the end of the set, so you’ll be warmed up and ready. The stage crew already knows when to bring out the acoustic instruments, so you don’t have to worry about it.”
With a final clap to his shoulder, Luka walked away to where Kit stood. Dmitri watched him go, and then he stuck out his tongue at Luka’s back.
“Oh, real mature,” Andre said, jostling his shoulder.
“I’d rather throw a brick at his head, but there aren’t any that I’ve seen backstage.” He turned to look at Andre. “Do you really think they’ll like it?”
