“I like to run one clean, one dirty. Plus it’s good to have a backup.”
“That’s worth dragging an extra fifty pounds around?”
“Definitely. And the smaller one’s only forty pounds.”
“You know, in your own way, you’re kind of anal-retentive.”
Scott laughed. “That’s most musicians.”
Carver pointed at the larger amp. “Can I just start putting shit on the dolly and taking it out?”
“Sure, yeah.” Scott finished bundling the last cable and gathered them up in his arms, then grabbed a mic stand. He finally processed the ADPhi comment and said, “Wait, were you a frat boy at Duke?”
“Holy shit,” Carver said, laughing as he brought the dolly over and slid it under the larger amp. “I really haven’t seen you in a while, huh? Yeah, I was.”
They headed for the doors, and Scott propped one of them open with a doorstopper then let Carver go ahead of him with the dolly. “What was that like?”
“Honestly, I liked it. I think I got lucky with my pledge class, though.”
“I was always curious about it,” Scott admitted. “Curious about the whole college experience, I guess.”
“You would have hated it. You never would have made it past pledging.”
“Why? Did you get hazed?”
“Yeah, and when that shit started you would have just walked out. You have too much respect for yourself.”
“What did they make you do?”
“Nothing that bad. Everyone’s afraid of killing somebody and losing their charter, so it’s just supposed to be a little embarrassing. But some of it was, uh…”
Scott glanced over at Carver, who’d gone pink in the cheeks as he guided the dolly along. “What, you liked it?”
“Shh,” Carver said, even though they were completely alone in this hallway. “Not all of it. Just, like — one time every pledgewho didn’t drink enough that night had to line up naked so one of the brothers could paddle us on the ass. He didn’t hit us that hard, it was just to embarrass us, but he was really hot, and I knew when he hit me I was gonna get a boner. I was scared shitless.”
“And?”
“He ended up stopping before he got to me because the frat president showed up at the house we were in, and they couldn’t let him see what they were doing ‘cause he was duty-bound to report hazing.”
“Was it always that homoerotic?”
Carver shrugged. “Not always. Often.”
Scott was more titillated by this than he expected to be. “Did you sleep with any of your brothers?”
“Oh, yeah, like ten of them.”
“Ten?”
“Don’t say ten like it’s a million. That’s basically every guy I fucked in college.”
“Ten frat boys is a lot of frat boys, is all.”
“They weren’t all the stereotype,” Carver said. “You know I like them sensitive, the poets and shit.” He winked at Scott, who glanced away, amused.
They reached the lobby, and a teenage BCC employee jogged up to Carver to hand him a Red Bull. Carver stopped pushing the dolly and got his money clip out to hand the girl a tip.
She started to walk away, then spun on her heels. “Sir, this is a hundred.”
