The Opening Act

Cara Schultz

You know you’ve hit rock bottom, generally, when the bar you’re performing at has a neon sign proudly displaying a naked pin-up woman at its front. You know that you’ve started digging with a spoon to get deeper when said naked-woman sign only has some of the lights working so just one boob is lit up in pallid yellow and pink. 

Robin, as she’ll tell anyone who’d listen, is having what most people would call a “bad night.” It didn’t start bad. It started as a last-minute gig, someone needed to fill in a slot, a bit of happenstance. Of course The Elvis Impersonators (none of them are Elvis impersonators or even play anything adjacent to Elvis; it’s an ironic name) jumped at the chance, of course they all piled into Betty’s incredibly small car and drove to the venue that turned out to be a bar with a single flickering boob in the window. 

There are a lot of things that Betty’s “contact” didn’t tell them - chiefly that it was a bar, but moreover that it was a bar frequented pretty much only by high schoolers with big Xs on their hands, not even trying to do anything particularly dangerous, just dancing on the creaky floorboards because they’re too bored to do something else, or something. Also that they weren’t even going to be the main act and that that position was occupied by a trio of men in head-to-toe jeans playing, alternately, the same exact song repeated six times with new lyrics and the “Hotel California” guitar solo on loop. 

Which brings Robin to where she is now: their three songs over, Betty draping herself over one of the jean men (gross), Robin trying very hard not to fall off her rickety stool while Bradley stares out at the crowd. 

“We were better than them,” Bradley says, waving one hand over the whole place, encompassing the kids in their Euphoria makeup and the other band and also, maybe, the entire world. “You know we were.” 

Robin does. 

“We oughta be, like, touring. Actively touring, not just performing at these - whatevers.” 

“Yeah.” A herd of college students huddles in the corner, too cool for everything, in what Robin can only describe as Soviet dominatrix chic. Half of them have the same Xs on their hands as the teens; their older friends nurse artisan seltzers and pass them around discreetly. Get out now, she wants to tell them, don’t stay here, don’t you dare give up on anything, but they’d think that was weird. They’d be right for it, too. 

“We should be on top of the frickin’ world.” Bradley closes her eyes and inhales, long, deep. Robin wishes she’d breathe her in, too. 

“We should, yeah.” Here is a thing about Robin, the bassist, if you’re so inclined to hear it: she’s very good at following others’ leads. Let’s form a band, let’s stay together forever, let’s be four parts of one soul, never mind anything else. She’d listened and gone along with it and picked up bass as well as she could, supporting, always supporting. 

Nobody makes it as a solo bassist. Guitarists have a chance, and there’s a cinematic quality to someone pounding at the drums (Bradley and Bernie, respectively, have proven that plenty) but the bass… 

Robin does not claim to be a musical expert. All she claims to be is one quarter of The Elvis Impersonators, the greatest rock band there never was. 

“You’re not mad,” Bradley points out, and then literally points her finger in Robin’s face. She thinks that if she tries to boop her on the nose - if she touches her at all, if she does anything other than leave right now, let this thing that’s hung unspoken between them for six years stay exactly where it is - she may simply crumble, become yet another layer of dust on this creaky, sticky floor. 

(She doesn’t think about why it’s sticky because she doesn’t want to think about it and sometimes it’s as simple as that) 

“Too tired to be mad,” Robin grunts, and this is true. She can feel the speakers rattling through the soles of her feet, and of course there’s no high of a good performance to carry her through it. 

“Okay.” Bradley hops off her stool and starts to wave. “Hey, Betty! We’re going home in five minutes, alright?!” 

Betty, a woman of few words despite her status as the band’s singer (a group of contradictions, the Elvis Impersonators are, which is why they have a song called “A Group of Contradictions” with no less than four hundred and thirteen plays on Spotify), waves back, gives her a thumbs-up. 

“Alright, we’re going home, are you happy now?” 

“No-” 

“Sorry, this sort’ve thing makes me mean.” Bradley stares at her hands like they’re about to sprout something, like she’s not a person who knows herself. Robin almost envies her for this. 

She knows exactly who she is - somebody who wants with her whole self and rarely ends up where she hopes to be. 

Usually she ends up in places like this, where the sign has apparently gathered enough energy to light up both boobs for five entire seconds. 

“We’re leaving in five, make sure to get our merch before it’s gone!” Bradley yells, gesturing to the pile of bumper stickers and home-burned CDs sitting on a largely unattended table. They operate on an honor system here. It’s worked out fine so far. Robin wonders how long they’ll be able to keep it up. 

Then all of that disappears, because Bradley turns back to her. 

“What? Do I have something on my face?” 

“Could you try and find Bernie?” Bradley asks. “She’s, like, gone.” 

“Probably in the bathroom.” 

“I don’t want to know what the bathroom in this place looks like.” Bradley shivers with her whole body. 

“Well, neither do I!” Robin almost falls off the stool, gesticulating as wildly as she ever has. Another thing that Robin has learned, during her time on the road (read: going around the town where she and the rest of the Elvis Impersonators live and performing in high school gymnasiums), is that you pick up people’s gestures when you spend enough time with them. 

Robin was not always a big-gestures person. She knows this. And yet! Here she is, arguing with every part of her not to go into the bathroom. 

“Fine, let Bernie get kidnapped or eaten by the monster sink or whatever.” Bradley flips her fringe, a thing which Robin knows from experience isn’t so much a cool-person thing so much as a she-can’t-see-that-well thing. It’s endearing anyway. 

“Like you’d notice,” Robin retorts, and even to her own ears she knows it’s petty, sulky, the petulant words of a child and not those of an adult woman, but she can’t put them back into her mouth any more than she can rewind the night and stay at home instead of doing…this. 

This seems to be enough for Bradley, anyhow, since she gives Robin a blank stare that rattles her down to her bone marrow and then leaves in the direction of the bathroom. Robin watches her go. 

“Rough night,” a gravelly voice notes. There’s no inflection in it, no question. Just a pure statement of fact. Robin turns around to see the bartender - a woman around her age, already pouring her something without even asking. 

“Yeah,” she says. No use in lying about what’s obvious. “You?” 

“Eh. It’s a living. Always good for business when we have live music, so that’s…that’s good.” 

“Glad to help.” 

“You’re not one of the…?” The bartender gestures to the gaggle of students. Robin snorts. 

“God, no. I graduated university last year.” Barely, she doesn’t say. With big dreams, she doesn’t say. 

“Okay. Good.” 

“Why’s that good?” 

“Because otherwise I’d lose my job,” the bartender cackles, pointing to her drink. “I can’t serve minors.” 

“Oh, right, duh.” Robin smacks her forehead, exaggerated, always exaggerated. Who was she, before the Elvis Impersonators? Not a person she’d like to remember; not even a person she’d likely be friends with, but at least that person wasn’t here, waiting for Bradley to get Bernie out of the bathroom so they could all leave

“You guys were pretty good.” The bartender cups her chin in her hands. Robin waits for her to continue, but she doesn’t. “What?” 

“Sorry, just…I don’t know, in a movie this would be the part where you’d be like, ‘you guys were amazing, don’t give up on yourselves, you’re better than this!’ Or something, I don’t know.” Robin sighs. “We’re kind of a conceited bunch.”

“Yeah, I got that.” The bartender lets out another sharp laugh. “Especially with the coordinated names and everything. Let me see if I’ve got it right - Betty, Bradley, Bernie, and you are…?” 

“Robin.” 

“Really? Not - I don’t know, Birdie or something?” 

“Birdie?” 

“I don’t know!” 

“Those are their actual names! We didn’t change our names for the band. Who does that?” 

“A lot of people, I think.” 

“Name one.” Robin leans forward a little. She is not losing her balance. 

“D’you want me to Google it? The cell service in here is terrible-” 

“See! It’s not weird.” Robin can’t help but feel a little proud of herself. The bartender just rolls her eyes, props herself up on her elbow. “And now I feel better. Was that your plan?” 

“Nah. I’m just bored myself - can’t hurt to have someone to share that with, yeah? This isn’t some, like, magical coming-of-age story where I Make You Better.” Somehow Robin can hear the capital letters spoken out loud. “We’re both people just, you know, trying to make it and all that. I’ve got my own life, you’ve got yours. Will I see you again? Probably not. But you’re okay to talk to, Robin.” 

“You too.” Robin wonders if she should shake hands. That feels too formal. Is a high-five better for this…whatever it is? The Elvis Impersonators don’t do casual gestures - they sleep in a pile like puppies, like one creature with four beating hearts, and if Bradley notices the way Robin tenses up when she lays a lazy hand over her back then she’s never said a thing about it. 

Here’s this woman, though, looking at her with that lopsided grin and those glittering eyes, and Robin thinks maybe, maybe. 

“Hey, Robin!” Bradley walks out with Bernie trailing behind her as Betty starts to pack up the equipment, looping the extension cords around and around. “We’re heading out!” 

“See you around, then,” Robin says. Not a question - she’s picked up that much. Maybe she’s a sponge of a woman; maybe she’s just quick. Either way, the bartender nods at her, keeps on that smile, nudges her away. 

“Maybe I will.” The bartender watches her leave, and the sign flickers behind them all as they drive out into the murky night.