prompt: band, title: the roadie less travelled in "the next big thing" flash fiction

“What was he like, Frank?” “Who?” “Zevon,” I asked the sasquatch, half honest curiosity, half changing the subject, “you must have some crazy stories, working the road for Warren Zevon.”

Frank smiled slightly. “I mean, you worked the business, what’re they all like? Gregarious when times were good, bitterly paranoid when they weren’t. Those drugs just amplified both. He was a genius. He truly loathed himself too. That’s the bitch of success, isn’t it? That bubble of fans and contractual yes-men. Trapped like a bug in amber. You can’t change or grow or experience a life anymore, left in horrible stasis with everything you had before The Metamorphosis, all your best and worst metastasizing into psychic cancer until you finally succumb. Coming into it with more talent than most didn’t alter Warren’s endgame.”

“Oh yeah,” I sloshed my coffee, “that’s why I joke I’ve chosen to fail into middle age, to Keep It Real so I’ll be humble in my inevitable success.” “Does anyone laugh?” I swirled the mug more, stray grounds finally dispersing. “It used to make me laugh. Years ago.”

“In the end,” Frank theorized, “real people are far more interesting than the celebrities rendered imaginary by that thin air up high on pedestals. They can grow. They can change. The rich and the famous sublimate into their myths and disappear. And as a yeti, I should know for myths.”

There was an awkward pause between Frank and I and the rest of the Denny’s as well. The neon lights in the windows audibly buzzed. Fluorescents flickered sickly lime-greens above our heads.

“My dad was in bands,” I finally said, “he played the piano. Played like kids run through summer fields. Factory work gnarled his hands near the end but when he was young, my father could just Cook. Just flat-out Cook on the keys.”

“He went to my grandmother for my mother’s hand, engagement band in his pocket. My gramma always liked him. She told him her daughter was crazy, that she’d ruin his life. She offered him a few thousand dollars to go out to California instead, with his band, to get famous instead. He said no. He said he loved her. They married. He worked in a godawful gun factory to feed my brother and I until the chemical exposures there ate away his heart and killed him young. He never went to California until it was where his grown sons lived. That’s where he died. Had a heart-attack in my brother’s living room, in The Valley. Died telling my brother not to worry, it was all going to be okay.” I looked up at Frank. “Sorry, man, this is about you, I’m rambling here.”

“What was he like, Mike?” “Who?” “Your father,” the sasquatch inquired, far more interested in Dad than any semi-famous static images he moved amps for or that I’d once run coffees for, “he sounded amazing.” “Yes,” I said, “he was.” And so, I told my friend Frank some stories instead.