As the band starts breaking down their equipment for Libedo to take the stage, she finds me in the now-fairly sizable crowd - God knows how - next to the rickety steps. She's still holding the scarf to her head, which has blood caked on it liberally, including a thick, faint smear high across her forehead, and that, mixed with copious sweat, gives her contrived amateur makeup a clownish hue. As she puts her arms around my neck in the din of chatter and the Dillinger Escape Plan pumping out the PA, for the first time since I've known her, she beams, all happy. You know, maybe the nutcase wasn't joking about her day job only being a temporary thing. I mean, she was fucking that crowd, riling it up, titillating it, finally cumming all over it, consecrating it in her blood. Her black eyes are clear and bright and the smile on her face is sincere as she says, "What did you think, baby?!"
"I was floored, you did great!" I yell, just noticing Nealsie's and Jennifer's stunned looks. Keeping with some type of chivalrous code, I turn toward the flummoxed pair. "Jennifer and Nealsie, this is Deborah, Deborah, my friends Nealsie and Jennifer."
On her best behavior, Deborah shoots her hand out quickly and they all shake, Jennifer all antsy, soon wiping it on the club's banister next to the stairs.
"You were great," Nealsie says to her. "This joker here finally got one right," he says to me, laughing.
"Is your head okay?" Jennifer asks.
"Oh, it's just a little blood. It's only rock'n'roll, sister."
And she turns back to me, arms back around my neck. "So, wanna go fuck in the bathroom?"
"What?"
"What?" she mimics. "God ... listen, I gotta go help load the gear or they'll kill me. I'll catch up with you later."
With that she saunters off, bloody scarf back to her head, accepting greetings and awed proclamations from the crowd, basking in the light. Deborah's earned it: she's probably gonna have to get stitches. Me, I don't know what to think. But Nealsie does.
"Damn, she likes you. I thought you barely knew her?"
"Yeah, I do, but ... God," I shake my head, still stunned.
"She seems ... strange," Jennifer gets out of her pretty mouth.
"Yeah, you can say that again."
"She's wicked, I mean, I'd actually pay to see her!" he trills.
I look at him slyly. "Shit, maybe you shoulda paid tonight."
He lets it go like he doesn't hear it and babbles on.
"I mean, that was a real show, tremendous performance value. If she can avoid cutting her pretty face up too much with beer bottles or getting stabbed or shot, that girl has a future in rock'n'roll, particularly the fringe. Now the band ... "
Nealsie prattles on in his assessment, and I add a point or two, and soon Libedo goes on. I'm looking around for Deborah, I see her a couple times but she's otherwise occupied and I start to feel jealous - absurd. Then she disappears. As Stinking Lizaveta plays their hard-to-define instrumental groove meets Sabbath meets something, I look around for her but she doesn't reappear, and I find that, despite all the caveats yelling 911 and good gracious stay away from that one, I'm deeply disappointed.
