Day 7
Borders instore performance, Madison, 3 May 2005
They think they've broken us, but they haven't. They're letting us out of the bunks now, so long as one of us is in the back lounge with Cary. When it's me I just try to act dumb and avoid conversation. When Matt's in there you occasionally hear raised voices and he often comes out with more gaffer on his face. Dave is withdrawn and spends most of the time drumming with a pair of straws.
Jason and Claire are content to watch Cartoon Network in the front lounge, and every day I see Jason hand a wad of bills through the curtain to John.
At the gigs we continue to act as if nothing's going on. Cary likes to sit at the side of the stage during soundcheck demanding that we play Rush tunes, which he sings in his reedy voice.
We're watched the whole time. In Minneaolis I tried to give a signal that we were in trouble by playing weird, wrong notes, but then Jason forced me to practice for five hours in the trailer. They won't tolerate mistakes.
We played at an out-of-town Borders today. We could order whatever we liked from the café. I'd been acting all subservient to lull Cary into thinking he'd won, so he suspected nothing when I humbly served him a Totally Turtley chocolate cheesecake. Little did he know that I'd laced it with some barbiturates I'd found in the bathroom cabinet. Little did I know that they were in fact asprin, and so instead of rendering him unconscious, they made him impervious to pain, as I discovered when I slammed his hand in the lid of the trunk. That bought me another night in the bay. But I can take it.
I can take it.
