Different Circles

Greg was discharged from the emergency room at nine o’clock that evening, just as the band was stepping back onto the stage following their intermission period. The driver that had been sent to retrieve him asked if he wanted to go to the arena.

“No,” Ghan said. “I just want to go back to my room and get some sleep.”

And so that was where he went. And the show went on just fine without him being there.

Matt was feeling pretty much back to normal by the time he and the band returned to the hotel after the show. He was very tired and had a stronger than average alcohol buzz going on, and a decent cocaine high as well, but all of the out-of-my-head lingering from the pot brownies seemed to be gone at last.

“Never again,” he vowed to himself. “I will never try edibles again. I swear it on my fuckin’ Strat.”

And, though he had broken many vows in his lifetime, most of them made to himself, a few of them even sworn on his Strat, this was one that he kept. For the rest of his life, he never again tried ingestible marijuana products, not even when they became fashionable with the rise of California’s legal medical marijuana industry, which would be approved by referendum in only another six months.

The party tonight was in Austin’s room. A total of nine Dutch groupies accompanied them back to the hotel to entertain them. Matt decided he would make an early night of it. He would grab a few hits, maybe a few lines, maybe a blowjob, and then grab one of the groupies and take her back to his room for a gash-fest and then kick her out immediately after. He really needed to get some sleep before repeating the whole cycle tomorrow. He took a moment to wonder if Greg had been sprung from the hospital and would be resuming duties tomorrow or if he were locked up in some Rotterdam psychiatric hospital, being held under the Dutch equivalent of a 5150 hold. He decided he did not really care, one way or the other.

The thirteen of them piled out of the limousine and entered the hotel lobby. The doorman immediately rushed over to Matt.

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Tisdale,” he said politely, “but I am informed that the front desk has an important message for you.”

“The front desk?” Matt asked. “What is it?”

“I was not made aware of the contents of the message, sir,” he replied. “I was just told to inform you of its presence.”

“No, no, no,” Matt said, shaking his head. “You were supposed to say, ‘it’s that big counter at the front of the lobby where the clerks work, but that’s not important now.’”

“I beg your pardon,” the doorman said, looking quite confused.

“Jesus fucking Christ, dude,” Matt said. “Haven’t you ever seen the movie Airplane?”

“I am sure I have not,” he said.

Matt shook his head again. “And you call this an enlightened country. All right. Thanks for the message. I guess I’ll go see what this shit is about.”

“Very good, sir,” the doorman said, still looking quite confused. He turned and returned to his station.

“Head on up without me,” Matt told the band and the groupies. “Something I gotta check out real quick. I’ll be up in a few.”

The expressed their understanding and continued their trip to the elevators. Matt turned ninety degrees and headed for the lobby desk. Since it was well past eleven o’clock now, there was only one desk clerk on duty. She was a woman in her early twenties, not too bad looking. Nice titties, a pretty face, a little chunky perhaps. Matt categorized her as “would do in a pinch” on his scale of fuckability.

“Hey, baby,” he greeted when he reached the desk. “I hear I got a message waiting for me.”

“And you are?” she asked, her English with a particularly heavy Dutch accent, which caused Matt to instantly upgrade her to “would let her blow me if there was no chick with a tongue ring in the vicinity” status.

“Matt Tisdale,” he said. “You know? The musician?”

“Of course,” she said with a small nod. “Mr. Tisdale. And what name are you checked in under, sir?”

“Norm Worthington,” he told her.

“Short for Norman?” she asked.

“Yeah ... I suppose,” he said with a sigh. He really was not fond of his middle name, even in the diminutive form.

“Norman is a very noble name,” she said.

“No shit?”

“No shit,” she replied. “You should use it in its entirety. Anyway, let me go get your message.” She walked to a series of cubbyholes in the little room behind her and pulled out an envelope from the one with his room number on it. She carried it back to the desk. “Here you go, sir.”

“Thanks,” he said, taking the paper from her, still digging on her accent. “Hey, listen. What time do you get off?”

“I’ll be off shift at midnight,” she told him.

“Why don’t you pop on up to Room 1208 when you get done,” he suggested. “Me and the boys are having a little after show party up there. And I didn’t see any tongue rings on any of the other girls.”

“Tongue rings?” she asked, confused.

“Just a little categorization algorithm that I use,” he said. “What do you say?”