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Monday, 8/1: Travel Day

 

"How long do we have again?" Nick asked, long legs stretching over the top of one of the booth tables.

 

Howie glanced at his watch. "About 25 minutes."

 

Nick flashed a shit-eating grin. "First to answer pulls McDonald's duty. Y'all never learn."

 

"Aw, hell." Howie hauled himself to his feet and stretched. He looked down at me. "Can I borrow a piece of paper and a pen?"

 

I handed over my whole notepad, yawning too deeply for the smart remark I usually had for anyone who wanted to "borrow" something I obviously wouldn't be getting back. Last night had been an even later night than Saturday had been, making it a fairly miserable schlep down to the bus, but at least we were getting a slightly later start today: The caravan was pulling out at 8:30 for a full day of driving to the next show in Atlanta, meaning today was more or less a day of rest.

 

Howie clicked the pen. "All right," he muttered as he wrote. "Coffee all around. Sausage McGriddle for me...Brian?"

 

"Hotcakes platter."

 

"Nick?"

 

Another shit-eating grin. "The biiiiig breakfast platter."

 

"Good God. A.J.?"

 

"Hmmm. How ‘bout a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit."

 

"Bob!" Howie shouted to the back of the bus. "Want anything from McDonald's?"

 

There was a shuffling in the back and a deep-voiced reply. "Hold on. I'll come with you."

 

Howie waved a hand dismissively. "No, don't get up. I'm walking all of a block to McDonald's. I think it'll be OK."

 

A heavy sigh. "Suit yourself. Hotcakes platter."

 

Howie turned to the bus driver. "Frank?"

 

It was a polite but pointless question, I could already see. Frank, a skinny man with a Nu Yawka accent that made me almost homesick, had already taken a huge bite of a Clif bar.

 

"I'll pass. You guys are gonna be eating while I'm driving anyway," he said through a mouthful of organic oats and deliciousness. I thought about asking him for one tomorrow.

 

"Fair enough." Howie turned to me. "What do you want?"

 

I got up, shouldering the purse I'd finally dug out of my suitcase; I'd even put my wallet back into it and everything. "I'll just go with you."

 

For a moment Howie seemed ready to argue, and then he just shrugged. "Eh. It'll be nice to have some help carrying."

 

"Don't look so alarmed." I raised my voice so Bob could hear me. "I'm such a pain in the ass, nobody'll mess with us."

 

A responding grunt came from the back. Howie turned to the others, beaming. "What a peach!"

 

"She'll fit in great in Georgia," A.J. quipped. The last thing I heard as we stepped off the bus was a chorus of good-natured boos.

 

The closest McDonald's was a block and a half away, apparently at the bottom of an office building that hadn't quite woken up for the day. The sun was still fairly low in the sky, casting long shadows over the tops of our heads, but a humid heat was already rising. I was grateful I'd pulled my hair back today, although a ponytail for me was really just a slightly more controlled poof near the top of my head.

 

I studied Howie out of the corner of my eye as we walked. He was the shortest of the bunch, only a couple inches taller than me; even half-hidden by sunglasses, topped by a fauxhawk, his face looked much younger than just this side of 40. He had a little bit of a Ted Mosby thing going on, I reflected, thinking of How I Met Your Mother. He seemed to radiate contentment; I couldn't imagine him expressing the dark doubts my other two one-on-one subjects had so far.

 

"Wanna do your one-on-one today?" I asked him hopefully as we strolled down a street just starting to hum with Monday morning activity.

 

"If you think we'll find a good time for it," he replied, handing me my notepad. "Usually what happens is we end up playing video games or watching a movie or something until at least half of us fall asleep." He grinned. "Travel days are awesome when you're old and cranky like us."

 

"I'm not sure cranky is the word I'd use so far."

 

"You haven't spent an entire day on the bus with us." He nodded toward the McDonald's, and we stepped inside. "You think you're a pain in the ass."

 

Surprisingly, it was quiet. Maybe we were beating the worst of the commuter crowd. The teenage girl behind the counter looked profoundly bored. She had a huge pimple on her chin and about a dozen earrings.

 

"I'm gonna need both of you to remove your sunglasses," she droned. "We had an armed robbery two days ago. It's standard operating procedure till they find the guy."

 

Well, that made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I pushed my sunglasses up into my hair. Howie hesitated for a second, and I heard him half-sigh as he took his off and hung them from the neck of his T-shirt.

 

The girl's eyes grew very round, and her jaw dropped in frank astonishment. Gone was the teenage apathy; here came the teenage freakout.

 

"Buh...buh..." she stammered.

 

Maybe A.J. had been wrong about their not getting recognized anymore.

 

Howie shot me a look that begged me for a speedy death. "Maybe you better order," he mumbled, digging his wallet out of his pocket and fishing out a 20.

 

I smiled sweetly and handed him my notepad. "But I don't even know what I want yet. In the time you take to order, I might figure it out," I replied through my teeth, just as quietly.

 

He glared at me. "I'm gonna spit in your coffee," he muttered.

 

"Oh yeah? Good thing I'm not getting any."

 

With that, he stepped up to the counter, all charming, toothy smiles, and proceeded to rattle off the various orders on the notepad, plus an Egg McMuffin and a large Diet Coke, no ice, for me.

 

The cashier remained transfixed behind the counter. "Y...you're..."

 

"A valued customer," her manager, a guy in his early 20s with impressive sideburns, finished smoothly as he came to her side. He gave her a stern look. "And YOU are on break."

 

She backed away from the counter and toward the back of the kitchen, her eyes never leaving Howie until she bumped into the counter behind her boss. Only then did she turn and flee.

 

The manager was apologizing. "She went to some big concert last night. The Backstreet Boys, if you can believe it. So! Can you run your order by me one more time?"

 

 

**

 

By the time we finished eating breakfast, we were well out of Orlando and well into Top Gun, which was playing on a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall that began one row of bunks. The Xbox on which the guys had been playing Call of Duty yesterday had been somewhat hastily mounted to the wall below it, its disc port facing downward, and a few wireless controllers were Velcro'd up next to that when the guys weren't using them to kill brain cells. A fridge that barely qualified as mini sat below that, full of beverages and random snack food.

 

Nick had shoved a duffel bag full of DVDs under one table, but by the time Maverick showed up at the pool to watch Iceman congratulate himself on being named Top Gun, he had it on his lap and was rooting through it, looking for the next movie, I presumed.

 

"Whatcha lookin' for?" I asked.

 

"Something else explody that we can watch after this is done," Nick replied without looking up. His face brightened. "Oh, hey, Star Trek. Any objections? It's the new one."

 

The rest of us shook our heads.

 

"Honestly, if we had other Star Trek movies, they'd probably get watched, too. You seen any of ‘em?" A.J. said to me.

 

Had I seen any of ‘em? My stepdad, the only dad I'd ever known from the time I was in first grade, had loved Star Trek. The two were inextricably connected in my mind. I thought about telling them how he'd made me watch all the movies at least twice, how I'd watched nine straight hours of Next Generation reruns with him one day in high school when they thought I had mono. How, when I'd raced back to Quincy the day of his sudden and terrible death four years ago, one of the first things I'd done was unearth his tape of the Next Generation finale and cry hysterically through the whole thing.

 

I thought about saying all those things, and instead, I swallowed the sudden, horrifying lump in my throat, raised a fist, opened my mouth, and out came a righteously angry "KHAAAAAAAN!"

 

 "That's a yes." A.J. grinned as the others chortled. "See, but the new one, man, that's the whole package. Explosions and nerdy shit and the occasional hot alien chick for the guys, and you got the sexy men for the girls. No homo," he added quickly.

 

"Not that there's anything wrong with that," Nick added as he continued to rummage through, finally pulling out Star Trek.

 

"Whatever, I'll back him up on that." Howie grabbed the DVD from Nick almost as soon as the younger man had it out of the bag. He held it up as an exhibit, the young Captain Kirk's eyes smoldering as he sneered up from the box. "I'd go ‘mo for Chris Pine. Don't write that down," he said to me.

 

I grinned and held up my notepad in front of my face, making a show of scribbling absolutely nothing on the paper. "It'll cost you."

 

"See, I knew you people didn't have souls!" Nick crowed.

 

 

**

 

By the end of Star Trek, morning was almost over, rain was falling steadily on the road outside, and the bus had grown quiet and chilly. I was curled up against one arm of the couch, arms wrapped around my knees, the drapey jacket from that old-lady travel ensemble thrown over my shoulders, struggling like a child to keep my eyes open.

 

A balled-up piece of McDonald's trash bounced off my poofy ponytail. "Thought Miss Journalist wasn't supposed to go to sleep before the rest of us," I heard Brian say.

 

"No journalism, need sleepy," I muttered.

 

"I heard that." Nick's muffled voice sounded from across the bus, and I cracked an eye open. He had his head down on his arms at the table.

 

I surveyed the rest of the bus. Howie's head was resting on the back of the couch, a few feet away from me, and his mouth was hanging open in a most undignified snore.  A.J. had his head in one hand and his elbow propped up on the table, but was visibly nodding off. Brian had his feet up on the other booth table and his head leaned back, half-watching the TV, eyes at half-mast.

 

I watched Brian for a moment, both my eyes open now. It was so strange to be so close to someone I'd once crushed on so hard, to see him stretched out in half-asleep repose. To see that he was a normal guy. A painfully beautiful normal guy.

 

He turned his head and caught my thoughtful stare. Oh, hell. I willed myself not to look away. Instead, I cracked a small smile. He held my gaze for a couple seconds. Winked at me.

 

And then stuck his tongue out at me.

 

Well, enough of that. I stretched, shrugging into my jacket, lowering my feet to the floor and reaching by default for my laptop, which was never far away. "Are you guys always so exciting on travel days?"

 

"Only the long, rainy ones." Brian watched me pull my laptop out. "What are you always working on, anyway? A nap wouldn't actually kill you."

 

"Sorry to disappoint you, but my work here is never done." I opened it up, turned it on, then dug out the Internet-anywhere broadband card Thomas had bought me on his expense account and had implored me not to destroy. "Tweets, blogs, videos, the actual story. The whole package," I added, echoing A.J.'s overenthusiastic remark about Star Trek.

 

"You gonna write about how exciting we are today?" came Nick's muffled voice again.

 

"At least a few hundred words." Actually, I would probably fart around on Google Reader for at least 20 minutes, but I was bored and didn't feel like sleeping all day. "What are you guys gonna do when we get to Atlanta?"

 

"Well, we won't get there till dinnertime, in all likelihood." A.J. straightened up, blinking hard to wake himself up. "So, yeah, probably eat dinner."

 

Nick turned his head on his arms, and I could see a wicked grin even though he still sounded sleepy. "And then maybe go out and get a little nuts."

 

I shook my head. "Anyone ever tell you guys you're just a bunch of overgrown frat boys?"

 

"Whatever, get any bunch of thirtysomething guys in a room together for an extended period of time, and I guarantee they'll act like college dudes, too. Old School? That shit is real." A.J. yawned and got to his feet, stretching. He headed for his bunk. "And for the record, that includes calling naptime."

 

 

**

 

The rain never really abated, and between slow driving and stops, the 440-mile trip slowed to somewhere around 10 hours. I could have screamed.

 

As everyone drifted one by one back to their bunks to nap in the afternoon, Howie, who had been sleeping in the same position for three hours, came to with a start. His snore turned into a loud snort as he jerked upright and rubbed his neck.

 

I snickered. "Y'all right over there?"

 

"I'm good." He shook his head as if to clear it, then glanced over at me. "You busy?"

 

"I wouldn't say I'm doing anything constructive." Technically, I really wasn't. I couldn't think of anything else to do for work, so I was farting around on Google Reader again.

 

"Then can we do my one-on-one?"

 

I closed my laptop and smiled at him. Three in two days. At this rate, I'd be done with the real work of my reporting by the end of the day tomorrow. I didn't anticipate I'd be that lucky, though.

 

We hardly needed somewhere else to do it. I just pulled out my phone and plunked it on the couch between us. There would be slightly more ambient noise, but it was the most comfortable interview setting I could've asked for at that moment.

 

By now, a lot of my interview questions had become more or less the same. My biggest question for Howie was how his age affected things. With Kevin gone, he was the oldest bandmate, the only married one (anymore, my inner monologue said snidely) and a relatively new dad, and sometimes, when everyone was goofing off, he seemed to exude a quiet, mature serenity.

 

He seemed surprised by that assessment. A confused smirk twisted his face. "Really?"

 

"Really." I pulled one leg up underneath me. "It's not that you seem old, mind you. It's more that everyone still seems so young, and you slightly less so. Like an old soul."

 

Howie laced his fingers across a flat stomach and looked up at the ceiling. "I don't feel old," he said finally. "I don't think any of us do, when we're out on the road like this. We all get together, and it's like no years have passed at all. You know?" He looked at me. "How long have you been doing what you do?"

 

I smiled a little. "Nine years."

 

"And how much has your life changed in that time?"

 

I considered his question. Three years ago, I'd moved halfway across the country. I was writing for a huge magazine instead of a smallish alt-weekly. I rode a boat halfway to work every day. I walked out of my office building and saw Radio City Music Hall.

 

But really, what had changed besides the scenery? I'd never been married, except to my job, which demanded it, especially during weeks like this. No kids. No pets. Nothing tangible to my name that had cost more than my camera. No boyfriends or steady dates or, hell, second dates in the last five years. I'd had the same best friend since I was 20, and our conversations still drifted to the past more often than I would have liked. If I were a man, the appropriate label would've been "man-child." I wasn't sure what kind of woman that made me.

 

"The scenery has changed," I said slowly. "The rest, not so much." I found myself grasping for words. I wasn't usually the one answering questions. "It's clichéd, but I guess...I guess the world sort of passes you by when you're working all the time."

 

Howie nodded. "You get to doing something for so long that it's all you are."

 

I nodded, too.

 

"Well, that's sort of how I feel." Howie straightened up. "We've been doing this twice as long as you've been doing what you do. And we've all been on an incredible ride together."

 

He examined his thumbnail with sudden interest. "And that ride, and all its ups and downs, and all its trappings and benefits, has been all we've known for almost 20 years, especially for the guys who haven't gotten married yet. Kevin got off that ride to live the rest of his life, but the rest of us, we just kind of shrugged and stayed on. My wife gets it. She lets me stay young. I'm not saying Kevin's doesn't. I'm just saying I'm not quite ready to give it up like he did.

 

"So when I'm doing this," he continued, "it feels like a day hasn't passed, you know? Like, this line of work ages 99 percent of the people who do it, but for me, I just blinked and all these years went by on the calendar, but not in my heart.

 

"‘Cause I still love doing this, and I still love these guys like brothers, and I can't imagine what it will be like when the day comes that I feel otherwise for longer than a few minutes every couple weeks." He met my eyes. "You know?"

 

He had me there. A rainy, completely unsuspecting Monday afternoon, on a bus in the middle of Cousin Country, Georgia, and the hundredth or so musician I'd interviewed had pierced my heart. All I could do was blink at him.

 

Howie smiled knowingly. "I thought you might."