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Tuesday, 8/2: Atlanta

 

By rights, I should have tossed and turned all night after hanging out with Brian, but two fingers of bourbon was enough to make me fall sound asleep as soon as I got back to my room. I awoke refreshed early the next morning and pulled open my blinds to see the early-morning sun shining brightly on Atlanta.

 

I was pretty sure no one from the tour would be up this early, nor would commuter traffic be a big deal. It was time to do some exploring, time to walk off this bum knee. I grabbed a shower, put on yesterday's now-dry jeans and last night's tee - no sense in dirtying more laundry - popped a couple of Advil and headed downstairs, camera and purse slung over my shoulder.

 

My body had never allowed me to be a morning person, which was too bad, because my heart loved mornings, loved the sights and sounds and smells of the world waking up for the day. The smell of coffee permeated the lobby, which was bustling with activity. A TV screen in the corner was showing CNN. It was like being in a very cushy airport terminal.

 

I stepped outside. The sun was still low enough to cast long shadows, but the light was golden and full of promise. I might have expected the rain to do nothing but create an uncomfortable blanket of humidity, but it had cooled down the air significantly; it couldn't have been a hair over 70 outside.

 

A perfect morning in an unfamiliar city, and as far as I could tell, I had it all to myself.

 

Olympic Centennial Park was just a couple blocks from the hotel, a peaceful green oasis I'd always wanted to see. I wandered that way, stopping frequently to snap photos. The morning commuters wouldn't descend en masse for at least another hour.

 

On my walk, I passed an Au Bon Pain. I did a double-take, surprised to see my usual pre-ferry breakfast stop, which I'd been so sure was a Northeast thing. I stopped in and picked up a huge Diet Coke and two bagels, one for me, one for the pigeons.

 

Sitting in the park, looking out at a fountain shaped like the Olympic rings, I was enveloped by the cool breeze and the quiet rush of the water that danced around the rings. The pigeons flocked eagerly to me as I tossed bits of bagel in their direction.

 

This was how I liked to spend my mornings off, right down to the Au Bon Pain, when the weather was nice and I actually bothered to get up early enough to enjoy it. So much of my time was "me time" because I had no one to share it with, but this was one way I preferred to spend it.

 

I leaned back and watched the birds waddle away. Howie's question yesterday about the lack of true change in our lives had gotten under my skin. How much of my life had been swallowed up in my career. How much time I had spent in the office or on the road instead of building relationships, especially romantic ones.

 

Mine was a terribly solitary profession. It demanded total commitment. It demanded that you shelve your personal life. I had accepted that when I got into it. But it had been so much easier when I was 22, with no interest in settling down. My 20s were behind me now, and the little voice in my head had begun to insist more loudly that I do my part to help perpetuate the human race. Journalism didn't silence that voice, any more than it silenced your humanity.

 

But I hadn't yet met a person who was worth changing my life for. At least, no one had stuck around long enough to prove himself worth of me changing my life. I wondered if I would. I wondered, more and more these days, if marriage or babies were in my future. It was easier to wait, to be lonely for a while, if that stuff was still waiting for me. If it wasn't, then I wasn't sure what the meaning of my being lonely really was.

 

My phone began to vibrate wildly in my pocket, followed by a tinkle of piano, the ringtone I had assigned to Thomas. What in the blue hell was he doing calling me at 7:30 in the morning?

 

I answered the phone with a sigh. "Yeeeeees?"

 

"Oh, good, you're awake. The rock-star lifestyle hasn't laid you too low." He sounded annoyingly fatherly.

 

"Not exactly. But I have managed to fall down a flight of bus stairs and spend an entire day being bombarded by McDonald's farts just in the last 24 hours."

 

A note of panic. "You're not claiming workman's comp for that first one, by chance, are you?"

 

I rolled my eyes so hard I hoped he heard it. "Oh, get real, Thomas."

 

"Well, anyway, I read your daily emails. Thought I'd give you a call before this stupid friggin' 8 a.m. meeting. Hear my favorite staff writer's voice and all that." His tone was more than a little facetious. He paused, and I thought I heard him take a slurp of coffee. "How's it going? Other than injuring yourself."

 

I crossed my legs, taking care not to put pressure on my knee. "Oh, it's going. We're in Atlanta today. Driving to Charlotte overnight."

 

"How's the story coming?"

 

"I've got a perfectly disgusting amount of notes and three one-on-one interviews done."

 

"Good. Great. Your blogs have been solid. I wouldn't mind a little more video, but you already pointed that out. See if you can post those separately from your text posts. Uh, let's see. Tweets have been..." He seemed to be grasping for words. "Appropriate."

 

I snickered to myself. Thomas' grasp of social media was slippery at best.

 

"I think I wanna have you talk with the tour manager," he continued. "Get an outside perspective on the tour, what she sees in them."

 

I groaned. "Oh, Christ, Thomas, you and I both know she's a bitch on wheels. In fact, one of the band members used those exact words to describe her."

 

"Yeah, yeah. Be that as it may, she might have some useful things to say. You've interviewed worse."

 

"Ugh. Fine. I'll do what I can. I don't think she's particularly interested in talking to me, so if I can't get an interview, I don't really know what to tell you."

 

"All you can do is try. So, any other issues so far?"

 

I hesitated a moment. I knew I needed to tell him about the issue with Brian, but extricating that from my feelings on the matter, which I felt strongly I didn't need to tell him about, was easier said than done.

 

"I'm gonna take your silence as a yes," Thomas said, a bit frostily.

 

"Well...it's nothing I can't resolve before I come back." I scratched the back of my head and focused on the fountains, hoping the sight of the undulating water would keep me calm. "The one interview I have left is being a little...I don't know. Uncooperative probably isn't the word I'd use. We're developing a really good rapport, but he's not especially interested in talking to me on the record, and I'm not really sure why."

 

"Uncooperative is absolutely the word I'd use." Thomas sounded dismissive as he replied readily, objective to a fault from his place hundreds of miles away from my experience here. "He can't possibly have a good excuse. He knew you were coming. He can't avoid you forever. Keep working on him. Your rapport ought to help."

 

"Oh, I know. I have a feeling it will be a good interview for that reason, when I finally get it." If I ever got it. I blew out a breath. "I'm getting along pretty well with all of them, so that's a plus. I think they trust me."

 

"Well, and we're not exactly out to gotcha them, either," Thomas pointed out. "We're not sugarcoating anything, especially if you get something really good, but our purpose in your being there is not to make them look entirely like douchebags. Unless they make themselves look like it."

 

"And I don't think they're doing that at all. It's the most bizarre thing." I watched the fountain. "They're having a great time. It's like they haven't aged at all. They're just a bunch of goofballs. And after spending an entire day on the bus with me yesterday, I kinda feel like they don't think they've got anything to hide." I smirked. "Kinda refreshing when you're dealing with people whose lives are an open book whether they like it or not."

 

"They couldn't have much to hide. They're not exactly Guns N' Roses."

 

I laughed at that, and he chuckled a little, too. "You don't sound particularly unhappy, I must say. Are you actually enjoying yourself out there?"

 

Yes, I wanted to say. I was. The guys were fun, and I was beginning to feel that only out of obligation, not out of need, was I working as hard as I was. And I had forgotten how good it was to spend some time backstage. But was that really what he wanted to hear, from one journalist to another?

 

"I don't know," I parried. "Am I supposed to be?"

 

"Well, we talked a little about your precious Hunter S. Thompson going out on assignment like this. I hope you're approaching your reporting that way. But I hope you're approaching your living that way this week, too. You're a person, ya know? Not just a journalist. It's OK to be a little gonzo in your reporting. We need a little more of that."

 

He paused. "And truthfully, I think you need a little more of it, too."

 

Now I laughed hard. It was as if he and A.J. had played a round of golf together before the tour. How much more ironic could it get?

 

"I'm glad you think that's funny," Thomas said, clearly annoyed.

 

"It's not," I said, wiping my eyes. "It's just that you're not the only person I've heard that from this week."

 

"Well, if you have your editor and the band telling you to go gonzo this week, it must be right. You have my blessing. Not that it ought to matter to you," he said, facetious again. "I'm not pulling you off this assignment unless you get charged with a felony or sleep with a band member or something."

 

Good God, had he hidden a camera on me or what?

 

"Is that all it takes?" I said.

 

A heavy sigh on the other end. "You're gonna put me in an early grave, Michaels."

 

I grinned. "That's what I like to hear from my editors."

 

 

**

 

"You should have come out with us last night instead of trying to nurse yourself back to health or whatever," Nick chastised me over lunch. "We found an awesome bar to watch the Marlins game in."

 

"True story," A.J. added. "Totally divey. Dartboards, Golden Tee, PBR signs. Huge TV. Full of hipsters who were doing a shite job of pretending they weren't interested in the game. We could have been wearing T-shirts saying, ‘We're the Backstreet Boys,' and nobody would have blinked." He grinned. "Actually, they probably would've thought we were being ironic."

 

I smirked, not unkindly. "Sounds a lot like Staten Island."

 

We were sitting in a burger joint a few blocks from the venue. We'd gone late enough in the afternoon that the lunch crowd had mostly evaporated, leaving little work for Jay, a handsome black man who was nearly 7 feet tall and a solid block of menacing muscle, intimidating to behold as he looked shiftily around from his place at the end of the table.

 

"You'd've fit right in," Howie said. He grinned. "You seem like a little bit of a hipster. You certainly write for a total hipster publication."

 

"No, no, friend." I popped another fry in my mouth, gathering my thoughts as I chewed. "I write for a publication that hipsters make fun of. When a band hipsters like gets mentioned in Rolling Stone, they all roll their eyes and shuffle away. See"-and here I adopted a National Geographic-like British accent-"the garden-variety hipster prides himself on liking stuff no one else listens to. Notice how he goes far out of his way to pick up records he may think are garbage but can be assured you've never heard of."

 

"So, as someone who writes about music, what would you recommend that hipsters think is so 10 minutes ago?" A.J. said.

 

"Ignore him," Brian said. "In other words: What are you listening to right now?"

 

"Right now?" I gave them a flirtatious smile. "The voices of a classic boy band."

 

Nick threw a fry at me. "Boooooo."

 

I leaned back in my chair, reflecting back on the bands I'd been listening to in order to cleanse the pop music from my brain at the end of the day. Not that I would mention that part. "Minus the Bear's always a favorite. Some old Wilco. Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros."

 

"Wilco's pretty good," Howie said. "None of that's exactly our thing, but they're pretty good."

 

"Joe Strummer - ah, God, why does that name sound so familiar?" Nick said.

 

"He was in the Clash." I sipped my Diet Coke. "He put out a couple records with some guys called the Mescaleros before he died. Pretty sweet stuff. A real strong kinda world-music vibe."

 

"God, you're a hipster," A.J. said, elbow on the table as he popped what was left of his turkey burger into his mouth. He swallowed almost without chewing and grinned.

 

I crooked a finger at him. "Give me your sunglasses."

 

He passed down his mirrored aviators, a curious look on his face. I put them on and slouched in my chair, affecting a bored look, tugging some of my hair over my face with one hand and thumbing my iPhone idly with the other.

 

"Meat is so mainstream," I deadpanned. "I found this great vegan place around the corner. You've probably never heard of it. They have BYO-vinyl night. Totes killer."

 

Light applause greeted my impression.

 

"Your acting chops are really shining through today," Brian said. "I think you missed your real calling."

 

"Yeah, nicely done. But you're missing an unnecessary scarf," Nick added. "Too bad it's the one month out of the year it's too hot for Brian to wear one."

 

It was no lie. I'd seen Brian sport an unnecessary hipster scarf in 90 percent of the publicity materials I'd received, but the heavy, humid, hellish heat had them all in T-shirts and jeans and not really any other accoutrements.

 

Brian popped a fry into his mouth. "You're a douche," he said casually.

 

Nick grinned across the table. "Love you, too, B-Rok."

 

"You guys still use those nicknames?" I passed A.J.'s sunglasses back down the table.

 

All four of them snicker-snorted. "We haven't in a million years," Howie replied. "I'm pretty sure our fans use them more than we ever did."

 

I clapped a hand over my heart. "A teenybopper fantasy dashed."

 

"For our fans? Or for you?" A.J. grinned like he knew he had me trapped.

 

I laid my forehead on the table as an accusatory chorus of "Ahhh..." surrounded me. "Guilty. At least, 13 years ago."

 

"Ah, but this is the one place you don't have to treat it like a guilty pleasure," Howie teased.

 

"Thirteen years, huh? So you would have been, what, in about the fourth grade?" Brian quipped.

 

I glared at him, doing my best to suppress a smile. "Oh, blow me. I saw the ‘Backstreet's Back' clip on TRL for the first time the summer after high school."

 

"Did we ever see you out in the audience?" Nick asked.

 

"That you did not." I smiled. "This tour is a first for me. You forget so quickly, I was a broke student when I was listening to you guys." I sipped my Diet Coke. "Anyway, living in a college town, it obviously didn't last all that long. Something about nobody letting me live it down for a whole semester when they found out I stood in line to buy Millennium."

 

"Can I ask a totally self-absorbed question?" Brian said. "Did you have a favorite song?"

 

I mock-sighed. "You guys will really think I'm strange..."

 

"We already do," Nick said cheerfully, and it was my turn to throw a fry at him.

 

"My favorite song of y'all's is ‘Just Want You to Know.'" I shrugged. "Yes, I was well into what y'all seem to think is my hipster phase the first time I heard it, but it was catchy, and it was different, and the video was objectively hilarious."

 

They all looked at one another. Unspoken communication seemed to pass among them.

 

"Noted." Brian winked at me.

 

The whole exchange made me feel a little funny inside. Now it was out in the open that I was covering a band I had once loved. The look they'd exchanged gave me the strange sense that it was going to come back to bite me before I flew back to New York.

 

 

Chapter End Notes:

(Seriously, Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros will change your life.)