“You guys let me sleep forever,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face.
Ripper and Kenny start laughing so hard a few crew members duck their heads in from the other room and immediately crack up. I force my gaze up to Theo’s face. Oh no.
“He gotdicked.” Ginny cackles.
Someone—Ripper, probably—has taken advantage of the fact that Theo was out like a light to draw crude, elementary-style penises on both of his cheeks. The tips face outward, pointing toward his ears. It’s impossible to look at him without laughing.
Theo rubs a hand through his bed head self-consciously as a group gathers around him. “What am I missing?” he asks me.
I graze my cheek with my fingers. “You’ve got a little, uh . . . ”
“Dick on your face,” Bowie says bluntly. He gives Ripper, Kenny, and the crew members who are laughing a white-hot glare. “Real cool, guys. Real mature.”
Ripper kicks his feet up on the couch. “Hannah, back me up: What’s the number one rule of touring?” I shrug apologetically at Theo. “First one to fall asleep gets a dick on their face. It’s a college-era rule.” “Let me get you a washcloth,” Bowie says, hurrying for the small sink, muttering about what Roger Braverman would think. Theo shakes his head, dark hair tumbling over his forehead. “Bowie, it’s okay. This isn’t my first inking.”
I think back to what he told me about being bullied when he was a kid. Maybe that’s why he’s so good at taking our punches. “Just so you know,” I find myself saying. “The dicks have come for us all at one point. So don’t go feeling special.”
He flashes a small smile before accepting Bowie’s washcloth and rubbing alcohol. Before I know it, he’s sitting down next to me and leaning over my notebook, the washcloth pressed to his cheek. “You writing new songs?”
I stiffen and pull it away. “Trying to.”
“Excellent.” Theo scrubs at his face. His tone turns conspicuously casual. “Bowie told me you guys are holding secret practices.”
Kenny groans and shakes his head. “Bowman Jericho, aka Benedict Arnold.”
Bowie’s voice is high-pitched. “He was going to find out eventually!”
“I wish you’d let me sit in.” Theo pulls the washcloth away, revealing a mess of marker on his cheek. It’s impossible not to stare. We’ve entered the Vegas Strip, and there’s enough light through the windows to illuminate his features, castingpainterly shadows under his eyelashes and lips. The bad scribbled ink is a stark contrast to the art of his face.
Physically, it’s the closest we’ve been since Dr. G’s party—when, for a moment on the rooftop, Theo was the only thing I could think about, and it was like I’d cracked a window to let some sunshine into a forgotten room. As cool as I’d played it, the experience had left me unsettled. Unsettled, and writing.
“We’re here,” Kenny sings as we round the corner into the MGM. The whole bus explodes into action, Ripper and Bowie launching from their seats to stare out the window. We’ve played Vegas before, but at small, shitty venues. This time, Manifest got us suites and we’re playing the Park MGM’s massive Dolby Live theater. It’s not sold out—it seats four thousand people—but yet again, it’s more major league than we’ve been before. Rumor is, the Theater’s talent booker bumped another band for us.
Bowie turns from the window. “You know . . . it’s starting to feel like this viral moment we’re having is more than a moment.”
A pop of light goes off outside the bus. “Hannah Cortland!” yells a nasally voice. “Ripper, my man! Welcome to Las Vegas!”
As one, we squint. A wiry man with graying hair stands in the bus loading zone, holding up a camera. He’s snapping pictures at a superhuman rate.
“Holy shit.” Ripper’s tone awed. “Is this our first paparazzi?”
“I think the singular is paparazzo,” Bowie says.
We gaze for a moment in silent wonder.
“I’m going to introduce myself first,” Kenny says, rushing off the bus, and we all scramble after him.
The paparazzo’s name is Kevin, and he’s a father of four who lives in one of the suburbs outside Vegas and once dreamed of exhibiting his photos in galleries, but now feedshis family selling pictures to online gossip accounts. Kenny gets all this out of him in the first two minutes after shaking his hand.
“Suit!” Kenny shouts, tossing Theo his phone. “Take one of me and Kevin.”
By the time we hustle into the hotel lobby, Kevin has more content than he knows what to do with. The lobby’s massive, bigger than 95 percent of the venues we’ve played, all marble and full of fresh-cut flowers.
“There they are!” calls an unmistakable voice, the British-accented baritone that launched a million record sales. Booker Morris, lead singer of Dead to Rights, cuts a path through the lobby, a longneck beer in one hand, lit cigarette in the other. Even the hotel staff turn to stare.
Booker slaps Kenny’s hand and hugs Ripper with one arm, narrowly avoiding lighting him with the cigarette, then turns to me. Years ago, before they blew up, we toured with Dead to Rights, so our friendship goes way back. “When I said to meet us at the MGM, I didn’t mean camp out in the lobby, stalker.”
Booker tosses his cigarette on the floor and grabs my face with both hands, kissing me on the forehead while his beer sloshes against my cheek. “Hannah fucking Cortland.” He pulls back. “You’re on fire, girl. Every time I open my phone, there you are.”
