One for the
Roadies Adam Matcho
There are two glasses of
Fireball on the bar.
My coworker ordered them
for the night ahead.
“It’s cold out there,” he
says. “We may need it.”
In the Obituary Department,
we sit, all day, and write death notices.
Tonight, in the Southside,
we sit on barstools a block away from the Rex Theater. We need to get into a
sold-out show.
Earlier, we met a group of
four, two couples, and they all needed tickets.
Claimed they came as far as
six states away.
“Really?” I said.
“Well, more like six
counties,” one of the guys said.
They were as floored by the
sellout as we were.
I remembered my coworker calling earlier that day.
“So I just called the Rex,
and they’re sold out.”
“What?” I said. “How is
Todd Snider sold out?”
I’d seen him at the Rex
three years ago: there were maybe 70 people. Now the place was packed. Good for
Todd Snider. Sucks for us.
We had friends who would be
there too.
They were parents. They
faced catastrophe daily. They preordered tickets.
The plan was made over
beers. Our friends would inquire from the inside for leftover will call tickets.
Ask about standing room.
My coworker and I would
work our angle. Our angle was drink another beer, a shot of Fireball, and walk against
the wind, into the Rex and demand sanctuary.
“You work for the paper,”
our friend, the wife, had said. She has this way of talking that fills you with
warm belief, like tomato soup. Like Fireball. “Just show them your IDs. Explain
you are a media sponsor.”
I flashed my work ID. It
said OBITS right across the middle.
“Well maybe you can put
your thumb over that,” she said.
Working as a journalist is
one thing. Writing obituaries is something else—no interviews, no bylines. It
probably doesn’t get you into folk concerts either.
She finished her drink and
stood beside her husband.
“There’s got to be a way
for you to get in,” he said.
“If there’s anybody who can
make it into that show, it’s you two,” she said.
* * * *
My coworker and I amble into
the Rex and act like we know nothing about a sold-out Todd Snider show.
The air inside feels like a
dank blanket. The walls, plastered with concert posters, tunnel us along to a
girl in an usher’s outfit at the ticket booth.
“Do you guys have tickets?”
We offer a small, unified,
“No.”
“Sorry. The show’s sold out,”
the ticket booth girl offers with a practiced compassion.
“Is it really sold out?” my coworker says.
“Yes.”
“There’s nothing you can
do?” I say.
“No, guys. Sorry.”
Our friends inside had
texted. They may sell standing room tickets later.
“What about the unclaimed
will call tickets?” I say. “Will you sell those off later?”
It was something they’d
decide, depending on the number of attendees.
“Probably around 9:30,” she
says.
A shaved-head, bouncer-sized
man creaks a barstool beside the ticket booth as he sits. Ink stamper in hand,
he glances side-eyed at his coworker, the ticket booth girl, regarding me and
my coworker.
“What are the chances of you
selling those tickets?” I say. “Is this like a 50-50 thing?”
“Yeah. It’s 50-50,” the
bald guy says, touches his goatee. “But it’s sold out now.”
His curtness was like a
rabbit punch. The bartering was over. The girl in the ticket booth, who’d been
patient with us, gives a pity-filled half-smile.
“I completely understand,”
I say, nodding at her. “Thank you for your help. ”
* * * *
My coworker and I stand
across the street from Todd Snider’s tour bus.
“Todd!” my coworker calls
from cupped hands.
“We need tickets, Todd!” I
echo and watch my breath disappear.
Todd does not respond.
The Carson Street traffic
is infinite. It becomes white noise, an oscillating fan.
“Do you want to walk up
that way?” my coworker says, pockets his hands, braced for the wind. “I think
there’s a cool bar a little further down.”
Beneath the bar neons and saloon lighting, we walk not speaking of the grim
reality we may not see this show.
The smell of food frying is
like a landmine and almost staggers me. Bass from one of the clubs tremors the
street and my stomach grumbles. I know I need food or booze soon.
“Here,” my coworker says,
stops in front of Piper’s Pub.
The bar is full down the
line, so my coworker and I post up at the very end. I have to shift a bit when
the waitresses hustle past. They carry shot glasses of beer bottles and
pitchers and boats of cheese and bacon fries.
Friendly with our drink
orders, the bartender compliments my coworkers’ wallet. He doesn’t mind we scrunched
in at the end of his bar.
“She said if anybody could make it, it’d be
us,” I say. Wash it down with Belgian beer.
“I know,” my coworker says.
“This is important. We have to get into this show.”
“How do you like work so
far?” I say. Although it seems he’s been there for years, he’s only been an
obituary clerk for a month.
I forget this because of
the way time passes—almost works against you—when you handle death’s
indiscriminate touch.
“Fine,” he says. “I think I
just need to keep doing it.”
“It can be a lot at first,” I say and remember
my first month, all those years ago. “But once you get it, you get it.”
“We really don’t write them exactly,” he says
and sips dark beer.
“No,” I say. “We structure
them more than anything.”
We were there to ensure semicolons
were applied properly. We nixed the Oxford comma. We made sure the faithful obituary
readership knew Joey Klingensmith passed away and didn’t past away. That Rhonda Roman was formerly of Arnold and not formally from anywhere.
“It’s like every other job,” I say. “You get
used to it. You just have to keep a sense of empathy.”
My coworker nods. He comes
from retail.
If you come from retail,
you can handle death. You can handle people, crazed with grief, when they want
to yell at God but are on the phone with you.
“I guess it’s good to know
we help people,” I say.
“But don’t you ever feel
bad?” my coworker says. “I mean we’re getting a bonus this month because people
died.”
He was right. The newspaper
set revenue goals and we received bonuses if we make those goals.
“After a while, you don’t
even think like that,” I say. “It’s just like scanning lava lamps or groceries.
You move along to the next one until you’re done.”
The image is of me.
Standing beside a cash register, dead bodies roll along a conveyor at a jerky
pace. I scan each one’s forehead. There’s a ding. Next.
* * * *
“You guys leaving already?”
the bartender says.
“Yeah,” I say. “We have to
get into a sold-out show at the Rex.”
“So I’ll see you in five
minutes then,” he laughs.
We laugh and say, “Yeah
right.”
We say, “Fuck that. We’re
getting in.”
* * * *
There’s a couple leaning
against the Rex like people waiting for drugs. They are half the group we met
earlier, the ones who lied about states and counties.
“They’re still not selling
them,” the woman says.
Trying not to acknowledge a
pang of heartbreak, I shiver a nod. “Well we’re about to go in there and see,”
I say.
The ticket booth girl. The bouncer
on the stool. They are eyeballing us as soon as we step inside.
Music and lights flood into
the lobby from the adjacent room.
We ask about the standing
room tickets.
“Sorry, guys,” the blond in
the ticket booth says. “We are packed tonight.”
My coworker points and
squints at the entrance to the main room, where we can hear Todd Snider’s raspy
rhymes cut through the buzz of the crowd.
“I see a spot where we can
stand right there,” he says.
The bouncer shifts his
knees so he’s physically inserted himself into the conversation.
He takes a breath. He says, “The show’s sold out, fellas.”
“I’m really sorry,” the
ticket booth girl says. “It’s a big crowd.”
“That’s fine,” I say and
turn around. “You’re just doing your job.”
The couple we saw outside
is gone, probably keeping warm in a bar.
I think of the six block
walk back to my car. The Squirrel Hill Tunnels. The goatee of that bouncer. All
of these things are prompting me to call it off.
“You know what,” my
coworker says. “I think I’m drunk enough to go knock on that tour bus.”
We both stare at Todd
Snider’s bus, curbed in front of the Rex’s backstage entrance.
I feel rejuvenated by my
coworker’s optimism. He’s right: we are drunk enough.
The tour bus is locked.
My coworker taps the tinted
glass. Nothing.
I knock, louder, on one of
the windows, also tinted. Again, nothing.
Now we are both banging the
bus like a bongo. We stop when a lanky guy in bummy clothes and beard walks around from the front of the tour bus.
“Can I help you guys?” he
says.
We saw him walking in and
out the back entrance earlier. He is a Todd Snider roadie.
“We’ve been trying to get
into this show for an hour now,” my coworker says. There is desperation and
humanity in his voice. We know this is the last chance.
“Aw, fuck,” he says. “You
guys should have asked me earlier. I don’t know if I can do anything now.”
“What
about now?” my coworker says. He understands obituaries, how you can die every
day, how there may never be another tour bus scene at a Todd Snider show again.
“Listen,” the roadie says. “Just wait on the sidewalk and I’ll be right back.”
“We’ll wait wherever you
want us to,” my coworker says as the roadie rounds the theater’s corner.
“This has to work,” I say,
roused by the prospect.
“Yep,” my coworker says and
I can tell by his quick words and bouncy posture, that even through the beer
and the cold and the Fireball and the sold-out show and the bouncer on his
stool, he has this hopeful adrenaline raging inside too.
The roadie is back, stoic
as before.
“You’re on the list,” he
says.
We bombarded him in thank you’s and handshakes. He seems eager to move on to his next
roadie duty, as if he simply checked something off his to-do list by getting us
on the list rather than salvaging our entire night.
“What’s your name, man?” I
say to the roadie before we rush away.
“Brian,” he says.
“Brian,” I say. “Thank you
so much. If you die in Pittsburgh and need a good obituary, we’ve got you.”
Brian’s confused smirk
makes me think how maybe we aren’t so different. He’s a roadie for Todd Snider;
we are roadies for death.
“Thank god for roadies,” I
say, walking into the Rex for the third time of the evening.
The same workers are there
in the ticket booth, on the stool.
The girl asks if we are who
we are and we say yes, we are.
“Sorry about the confusion
earlier,” she says.
When the bouncer stamps the
back of my hand upon entry, he tries to impale it.
* * * *
Todd Snider is onstage.
Only him and his acoustic guitar. He is singing “If Tomorrow Never Comes”.
The room is filled with chairs
and the standing fans are crowded around a bar in the back. Because we didn’t
have to pay, I now have twenty more dollars to drink.
I snake up to the bar, the
absolute corner, just like in Piper’s Pub. Good things like this don’t happen
for me. My response for great news and terrible news is the same: indulge.
I find out what my
coworker’s drinking because I am buying him one. I want to toast and hoot and
sing along and stomp my boots on the floor.
Calling my name from the
bend of the bar’s sharp corner are our friends. They have a spot at the bar
where we can stand too.
The show is great. An
acoustic double set where Todd is playing Muddy Waters and Jerry Jeff Walker
covers. He takes song requests from the crowd like a man facing a firing
squad.
“It’s been an excellent
show,” our friend says. He is smiling and drinking and hands me a shot in a
plastic cup.
I sniff and raise it and my
friend says, “I like that you don’t even ask what it is.”
I take a guess at the
liquor but my nose never worked too well anyway.
“It’s Jager,”
he says.
I shoot it down and set the
cup on the bar.
“I knew you guys would make
it,” his wife says.
* * * *
My coworker wants to meet
Todd Snider.
Our friends loved the show
and have children at home, so they will see us later. I capture them both in
one hug and drunkenly tell them I love them.
There’s a crowd around the
corner, yelling at the tour bus. We put ourselves in the center and talk to a
guy who said his girlfriend got kicked out of the show. He claimed Todd Snider
owed him a t-shirt.
A silhouette emerges from
the front of the bus. A shadow with its head tucked, hands wrist-deep in
pockets. A current runs through the group until the Rex’s lighting reveals the
person is not Todd Snider, but his roadie, Brian.
“Sorry guys,” Brian says,
blank as a chalkboard, “Todd’s done for the night.”
Brian opens the backstage door
to the Rex and disappears. The door does not slam. It gives me time to turn
myself sideways and slide through the slowly collapsing space.
The Rex is full of empty
folding chairs. There are three girls hanging around the stage. I see the
bouncer and the ticket booth girl at the other end of the room.
The door opens and Brian is
leaving, carrying instruments in black cases.
Fearing the bouncer will
see me and charge like a hippopotamus, I follow Brian. Before I can open the
door, it rips open again and there is my coworker. And Brian.
“Can we help you with
something?” my coworker says.
“Sure,” Brian says, nods
his head to the stage, to a pile of musician’s tools.
We are carrying two
guitars, an amp and microphones.
Brian meets us in the
middle of the street.
“You can take that over
here,” he says and leads us around the tour bus, where we were knocking two
hours ago. The storage section at the bottom of the tour bus is open and we
pass Todd Snider’s instruments to Brian. He stashes them under the bus and
thanks us.
“Thank you,” I say. “You’re
the one who got us into the show earlier.”
“Oh, good,” Brian says, as
if I’d just reminded him. “Glad I could help.”
Adam Matcho is
an obituary writer. He is a former technical writer, novelty shop clerk,
basketball coach and gas station attendant. His chapbook, Six Dollars an Hour: Confessions
of a Gemini Writer, was published by Liquid Paper Press
and his essay collection, The Novelty
Essays,
was published by WPA Press. When not writing death notices, Adam tries to write
about life. He lives in a former craft shop with his wife, two sons, and too
many animals.