Page 48

He’s quiet for a moment, which is rare enough that I look at him.

“When I’m writing, I don’t have to make anything easier for somebody else.”

I slow the machine slightly as I work around the edge of the waveform.

“What does that mean?”

“It means if something sucks, it can suck in a song. If I’m pissed off, I can write pissed off. If I miss something, I can leave it there without turning it into a joke five seconds later.”

That gets my attention. “You know you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make a joke when you don’t want to answer.”

He turns his head enough to look at me. “You’ve mentioned it.”

“Because you keep doing it.”

“Maybe I’m funny.”

“Maybe.”

He laughs, but there’s no argument in it.

I wipe the tattoo again and study the section before continuing. The upper sweep is almost finished now, and the darker shading along the shoulder is starting to balance the weight of the lower section.

“Was Europe mostly like Amsterdam?” I ask.

“In what way?”

“The crowds.”

He thinks about it. “No. Amsterdam was the first time people knew our lyrics. But there were other nights that got to me for different reasons.”

“Like what?”

He’s quiet long enough that I assume he’s deciding how much to tell me.

“Prague.”

I glance up. “Why Prague?”

“Biggest crowd we’d played to at that point, maybe forty thousand already inside when we went on.”

I stop wiping long enough to look at him. “Forty thousand?”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re saying that casually.”

“I was terrified.”

That makes me smile. “I can’t even imagine that.”

He laughs. “Most of them weren’t there for us. We knew that going in. We were the opener from the States, and there were definitely people in that stadium who had no idea who we were.”

I start working again while he talks.