Free Tempter by Nancy A. Collins Page B

literally,” the drummer chuckled.
    The Gris-Gris Club’s owner, a sixty-year-old hippie with a bottlebrush beard, stuck his head into the room. “Y’all ready? I’m gonna go ahead and announce you.”
    “Sure thing, Cap’n. C’mon, Paulie, I’ll lead.” Arsine put himself in front of the bassist, who placed his right hand on the drummer’s shoulder. “Okay, we got four steps to the door, then we’re turnin’ right…”
    Hoo-Yah paused to look at Rossiter. “You feelin’ okay, ace?”
    “Yeah. I’ll be there in just a second.”
    Rossiter stared into the mirror over the sink. His skin looked like wax paper. The sweat seeping from his armpits felt like refrigerated maple syrup. He should have done more than one line of coke. The Johnny Walker wasn’t doing that much good, either. If his guts cinched themselves any tighter, he’d look like a termite. Both hands were trembling now, fingers drumming nervously against his thighs. He couldn’t go on stage like this. He was going to blow lunch all over the audience. Wouldn’t that look great as a write-up in Rolling Stone ?
    He grabbed the half-empty whiskey bottle off the makeup table. His hands were shaking so badly there was no way he could pour it in a glass without getting it all over his shoes. As he lifted the bottle to his lips, he caught a glimpse of something moving deep inside the mirror.
    Rossiter lowered the bottle and stared at his young doppelganger standing behind him. He suddenly realized that the room in the mirror was different than the one he was standing in. In fact, he was pretty sure it was the dressing room at the Super Dome. Rossiter had seen it only once before, when he went backstage to say hello to Mick last year. In the mirror there were tables heaped with flowers and buckets of iced champagne.
    His doppelganger walked to a door at the back of the mirror, then turned to look at him. Rossiter realized with a start that the doppelganger was no longer young, but the same age as he was, dressed in an electric blue suit that shimmered like the skin of an exotic lizard. The doppelganger winked a ruby-red eye at him and disappeared through the door in the direction of the chanting stadium that awaited him.
    “Alex! C’mon, man! What’s keeping you?”
    Rossiter blinked and the reflection in the mirror turned back into the Gris-Gris Club’s dismal dressing room. He turned to smile at Arsine. “Sorry...nerves...”
    “It’s cool, man; I know where you’re comin’ from. You okay?”
    Was he okay? Rossiter was surprised at how good he felt. It was as if all the cocaine in Colombia was surging though his veins. He could tie tigers together at the tail. He could snap oaks in half with his bare hands.
    “I feel great,” he grinned. “Let’s go and kick some butt!”
    He’d almost forgotten what it was like to be in front of an appreciative audience. He couldn’t get over the way they applauded when he took the stage. The crowd was too young to have seen Crash in its hey-day. Hell, most of them were probably toddlers when Blood Moon Rising was released. Still, this did not diminish their enthusiasm. It was like going to bed with a woman who loved you after years of bought sex; it was good, hot, and over before he could fully savor it.
    When the band finished its last set, the crowd whooped and stomped their feet until the band returned for an encore. Then the audience wouldn’t let them go for another three songs. Rossiter closed the show with “Sour Milk Sweetheart” and for one delirious moment it felt just like 1991.
    Afterward, Rossiter smiled as he sat in the dressing room and wiped the sweat from his face, the vision of the Superdome’s dressing room still shimmering behind his eyes.
    “Alex?”
    He turned to stare at the man standing in the doorway. He was Rossiter’s age, with thinning, sandy hair and wire-rim glasses. The man glanced around the cramped confines of the converted supply room that served as the dressing