Title: Teardown

Author: William Campbell Powell

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 12/10/2024

Heat Level: 2 – Fade to Black Sex

Pairing: M/NB

Length: 104100

Genre: Contemporary, literature/general fiction, contemporary, NB/nonbinary, pansexual, British, musicians, blues band, European music clubs, road trip, Germany, living rough, secrets, self-discovery

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Description

Growing up in a dead-end, Thames Valley town like Marden Combe, Kai knows there’s no escape without a lot of talent, hard work—and luck.

Two weeks before the Clayton Paul Blues Band plans to set out on tour to Germany, their singer quits, and drummer Kai takes matters in hand. With bandmates Jake and Jamie, they recruit a talented new singer—the enigmatic Dominique—as the new face of the band and set out on the road to Berlin in a rickety white van.

Dogged by mishaps and under-rehearsed, the band stumbles through their first shows, zig-zagging between chaos and brilliance. But as the first gig in Berlin draws near, the band begins to gel. They’re clicking with their audience, and even the stone-hearted Kai starts to crumble under the spell, first of Dom and then…of Lars.

As the end of the tour approaches, Kai must make hard choices. Dom? But she’s keeping a dark secret. Lars? Not after the acrimony of their last parting. The band? Or will that dream crumble too?

Excerpt

Teardown
William Campbell Powell © 2024
All Rights Reserved

The bus passed an abandoned car on the grass verge. Last week, a sign on the windscreen said Police Aware, but evidently, not so aware that someone couldn’t set fire to it in the interim. That was my cue to get off. I rang the bell, and the bus pulled to a halt about fifty yards short of a block of single-storey industrial units. It had been built in the 1960s, and the brickwork left much to be desired. Ditto the ironwork and the paintwork. Don’t even think about asbestos. The third unit along was the one I was looking for. The sign read The Band Hut, and it fit right in with Marden Combe…

I pushed open the door, and all was gloom within. Thick cardboard and felt covered the windows. I called “Hi” to Wally at the front desk, hunched over his phone, and the autopilot grunted back. I moved past room 1 (a folk-metal trio), room 2 (empty), and into room 3, signed with gloss white paint roughly slapped over its matt black outer door.

Usually, with great rock stars taking interviews in their home studios, there wasn’t an amp in sight unless it was some boutique marque they’d been paid to endorse. The studio would be airy, bright, and wood-panelled in glossy pine, with walls featuring three or four iconic guitars. Double-insulated patio doors would lead onto a beautifully manicured lawn, the whole set tastefully in the Cotswolds.

In Marden Combe, they did things differently. Black felt covered the walls and ceiling of Studio 3. Underfoot, recycled carpet tiles clung to my shoes, sticky as only years of spilt beer could accomplish. Worn and curling patches showed where the bass drum spikes had caught between two tiles and where the studio’s cobbled-together frankenamps had been dragged too many times. Gaffa tape glinted under fluorescent lights, hasty repairs criss-crossing the floor. Other marks—cigarette burns mostly—clustered round the amps; the still-potent reeks of ancient tobacco and stale weed lurked at the edge of awareness. A tired but eclectic collection of posters hung on the walls, providing a potted archaeology of Marden Combe’s indigenous music of the last half decade.

Jake was already set up and sitting on a Band Hut amplifier, cradling his beloved Fender Stratocaster. He didn’t look up, but I didn’t expect him to. He hunched over the fretboard, fingers spider-dancing their scales. Half in shadow, he was a little spiderlike himself, all spindly limbs that gangled and writhed. His hair, too pale for a spider, was cut short and neatly combed.

After a minute, he finished his phrase, and we nodded to each other. Jake wasn’t a great conversationalist, so I didn’t push him out of his comfort zone. It was called ‘letting the music do the talking’. It suited both of us.

It took me about ten minutes to get the studio’s drum kit set up the way I like it, with my own cymbals in place. All the while, Jake happily noodled on his Strat. Clay breezed in just as I was finishing up.

Clay was the kind of guy you’d want fronting a blues band. Beautiful, with ebon-black skin and close-cropped hair, he had a solid baritone voice with a growl that went up to eleven. Today, he wore jeans and a T-shirt from a Kyla Brox show, but on stage, he was sharp-cut suit and moves. Twenty-six years old and—speaking entirely in my capacity as detached observer—hot and classy as fuck.

“Hi, Clay,” I called.

“Hi, Kai. Where’s Jamie?”

“He said he’d be a few minutes late. The boss is making him do overtime.”

Which, given that it was Sunday, was brother Jamie’s standard polite fiction for his housemates roping him into cleaning the kitchen. A little unfair, given that Jamie is possibly the tidiest human being on the planet. If Clay had been thinking, he’d have remembered that.

“That’s a bugger,” said Clay.

“Yeah. Tell me about it.”

But then he just stood there. Like a kid busting for a pee but afraid to ask the teacher.

“D’you need a hand getting stuff out of the car?” I asked.

“No.” He held up the flight case that held his mic and harmonicas. “How long do you think he’s going to be?”

“I don’t know. He said a few minutes, but I’ve no idea what that is in real minutes.”

Clay sat on an amp, then got up and walked over to the soundproof door. He opened it and the second door beyond it. He peered through the gloom. I could hear the folk-metal band getting into their groove, and good luck to them, but I was glad there would be a vacant studio between us and their sawtooth D minors.

No sign of Jamie though.

It was like something was up with Clay. I was almost tempted to ask him if he was okay. But what if he said no? That was why I didn’t ask personal questions within the band. We played blues together, and we planned escape. We memorised the names of one another’s significant others so we could be polite if they showed up at a gig. Clay’s significant other, Sirelle was—again, in my capacity, et cetera, et cetera—hot, but she was also Little Miss Disdain. Jake did not have a significant other that wasn’t made of wood and didn’t have six strings. Jamie had been a sore test of memory up until Louise, but he was currently unattached. That was it.

Clay was making me nervous though. So:

“Are you going to set your mic up, Clay? I’ll help you set levels so you’re all ready to go when Jamie gets here.”

No reason he couldn’t do it himself, but I was also music tech, so I was allowed to ask.

“Uh, no.”

Then, he expelled a deep, doom-laden breath, and I knew this day, which had started only medium crap, was going to end full-on shitstorm.

“I can’t wait for Jamie,” he decided. “Ah, guys…I’ve got an announcement to make.”

Jake looked up but carried on playing irritating little shreds.

“Good news?” I asked, more in forlorn hope than expectation.

“Well, yes. Sort of. I’ve got a new job.”

That doesn’t happen a lot in Marden Combe. Let’s not piss on the parade just yet.

“That’s good. Well done. So, what’s not to like about that?”

“It’s…in London.”

“Good pay, then, I guess. But I don’t fancy your commute.”

“Oh, it’s not Central London. It’s in Acton. But you’re right about the commute. Apart from that, though, it’s a pretty good job. It’s a real step up in my career.”

It was my turn to take a deep breath. “Okay. So why aren’t you dancing for joy?”

“Well, it’s a big project, and they need to get started right away. So, I’m starting next week. There’s no flexibility on that date. We’re up against the wire.”

“Right. What happens when you go on holiday the week after? Are they okay with that?”

“That’s just it, Kai. This is a huge project. It’s a fantastic opportunity. I’ll be in right at the ground floor. I need to be there. I’ve promised them I’ll be there.”

Ah. This is goodbye, then. Why can’t you just fucking say it?

“So what happens to the Clayton Paul Blues Band? What happens to the tour? Köln, Aachen, Berlin? All those German punters waiting to see us two weeks from now?”

Clay wouldn’t meet my eye.

“I can’t pass this up, Kai. It’s a dream opportunity for me.”

“And you can’t wait?”

“They won’t wait. I aced that interview, but there’s a bunch of guys almost as good, ready to start tomorrow. White guys.”

“That shouldn’t matter. There are laws…”

“Shit, Kai. Don’t tell me you don’t know how discrimination works. The manager liked me, stuck his neck out to make the offer. But if I start pissing them about, making conditions… It wouldn’t be discrimination, no sir. But it would be ‘we need someone who can start immediately’—that’s what they’d say.”

I nodded. I did know. White male privilege, Kai. “And the band? Your band. Us. The Clayton Paul Blues Band that goes on tour in two weeks?”

“I don’t know.” It was a scream of desperation, and it made Jake stop shredding. Something had gotten through to him.

“I don’t know,” Clay repeated, quieter. “It’s just a tour. It’s not the fucking Beatles going to Hamburg to find their destiny.”

“No, it’s not. In the great scheme of history, it’s just a piece of fun.”

“Well, then. You’ll get over it.”

Eyeroll. Do you know how crass that comes across, Clay? And a deep breath.

“With the greatest of respect, Clay, fuck you. I do not plan to ‘get over it’. I said it’s just a piece of fun, but that’s why it matters. Marden Combe is a shithole of the first water. Nothing happens here. Nothing good has ever come out of here. If we stay here all our lives, dying will be the best thing that ever happens to us.

“So yes, it’s a piece of fun. And no, it’s way more than that. It’s the hope of escape. It’s the dream in our waking lives that makes all the crap worth enduring—the crummy job or the even crummier no-job.”

A father who was too distant. A step-mom who was too close. But I didn’t say it. Nobody else’s business.

Clay shook his head. “I can’t be responsible for the crap in your lives, Kai.” It was a whisper.

Jake turned back to his guitar and started adjusting his pedal board. He wasn’t going to get involved if he could help it.

“Okay,” Clay continued, “you’d better cancel it—”

“Your band. Your tour. Haven’t you got the balls to cancel it yourself?”

“I thought…you could find a stand-in for the tour. If you wanted it that much.”

“A stand-in? And keep the band going afterwards, Clay? Is that what you want? This band as your bolthole, waiting for you to return when the new job settles down?”

I let that sink in, then asked him, “Can you commit to that?”

“Shit! I don’t know.”

“Don’t know? Or don’t want to tell us?”

“Put it on hold. We can put the band on hold, can’t we?”

“How long for?” I asked him.

“I don’t fucking know! I’ll be flying over to the US quite a bit. And there’s a bunch of guys in Japan I’ll need to work with. Six months, maybe?”

And then it hit me. I knew why Clay couldn’t meet my eye.

“The Cherry Tree. You must have known about this last night, and you didn’t say a fucking word. We’re already in the Last Chance Saloon. This is Boot-fucking-Hill.”

I’d struck true. His mouth hung open, and the longer it stayed that way, the more certain I was.

“Y-yes, Kai. I had the offer, but I didn’t know if I was going to take it. Honest, guys. But I thought it over, slept on it, and knew I had to take my chance.”

Well, it might be true, but my money was on Clay being too chicken to stuff the band in front of Simon. It had been too long a pause, while he crafted a damage-limitation lie.

“This’ll cost us our Saturday slot,” I said. “You know that, don’t you? Simon knows we won’t find a new singer in time.”

“One of you could—”

“Simon’s already got a plan to fill our slot, else he wouldn’t have given us ‘the talk’ last night. He’s a lovely guy, but he’s a businessman too.”

“He wouldn’t do that to you, Kai. You’re one of his golden…kids.”

Well, it was true, about being a ‘golden kid’ at least. Simon had taken me under his wing when I first got the notion I might become Kai. But that didn’t change a thing because Simon taught self-reliance and owning the consequences even while he was still putting the pieces back together, with himself as the prime example.

“You know better than that,” I said. “He owes the band nothing. He owes me nothing. And neither of us would have it any other way.”

But I did owe Simon. Maybe what I owed him was enough notice to give another band a clear shot at the residency.

Which was all very noble but not the issue at hand. Time to wrap this shit up, Kai.

“You said six months,” I began.

Six months. Six months without a band. I felt the dread rise up like a wave, ready to pull me under. The Clayton Paul Blues Band was my life.

Had been my life.

Six months though. Six months was more than enough time to build a new band. If I could pull the rest of the guys through.

Jake was in shock, biting his lip. His eyes darted about the room, to me, to Clay, back to the fretboard, where spider fingers shaped chaotic chords.

“No good. Jake, you don’t want to be six months without a band, do you?”

Jake put on his best rabbit-in-headlights gurn.

Bad move, Kai. This isn’t ‘pulling the guys through’.

But maybe I hadn’t screwed up. Maybe Clay sensed that the worst was over.

“No, you’re right,” he said. “It’s not fair to ask you to wait. It’s been a blast with you guys, but all good things come to an end.”

He held out his hand. “Kai? No hard feelings? Maybe play together someday when all this is done?”

I shrugged. But…why burn bridges? If I’d had the chance, wouldn’t I have done the same?

“Maybe.” I shook his hand. “Good luck with your escape from Alcatraz, Thames Valley. And don’t cancel the tour. I want to think about that.”

He shook hands with Jake too. There was an awkward silence. Jake went back to his guitar and began dabbing harmonics.

“Look, guys,” Clay said. “I’d like to stay and say goodbye to Jamie, but I guess you’ll want to talk over what’s next, and you won’t want me around for that. I’ve paid the Band Hut man, so the room’s yours till ten o’clock anyway. Least I could do. Okay?”

The Band Hut man. Clay, his name’s Wally. He’s been the set-up guy for two fucking years here, and you can’t be arsed to remember his name.

Clay’s harmonicas and microphone were still in his flight case, unopened. He picked the case up, squared his shoulders, and left the Band Hut, leaving us to pick up the shards of a blues band.

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Meet the Author

William lives in a small Buckinghamshire village in England. By night, he writes contemporary, speculative, historical, crime and other fiction. His debut novel, Expiration Day, was published by Tor Teen in 2014 and won the 2015 Hal Clement Award for “Excellence in Children’s Science Fiction Literature”. His short fiction has appeared in Metastellar, DreamForge and other excellent ’zines. By day, William writes software for a living, and in the twilight, he sings tenor, plays guitar, and writes songs.