Trevor fiction: Keys (The Early Days)

Truth be told, Trevor had better things to do than keep Amy company when she busted Mitchell’s balls. The Vincent needed a tune-up and some time on the road. There were girls out there who needed him. The world to dominate.

Cliches like truth be told aside, Trevor knew better than to believe in Truth, Justice, and the American Way. It was nothing more than some loser’s idealistic dream of the way things ought to be. It had nothing to do with real life.

Still, busting on Mitchell was one of the best ways to eat up some time now that the band was officially on break. For two-months, but a break was a break. After the past year and a half of non-stop touring, two months was paradise.

It was also time he had no fucking idea how to fill.

Good thing Amy brought him, they realized fast. She didn’t have the key to Mitchell’s place. The big idiot had locked her out, probably knowing the master ball-buster was jonesing for some action. The druggie’s kid wouldn’t let them in, even if he could. The kid had long ago decided he was the guardian of the apartment building — and Mitchell’s place, in particular. Which meant no one got past this little twit of a kid unless Mitchell okayed it.

Mitchell usually okayed Trevor. He really must have needed some peace.

There was only one way in: Trevor had to pick the lock. No problem.

Blondie was sitting in front of the TV, eating cold pizza, when the door opened. “Hey, Trev,” he said, “Want so–” He put the pizza down on the coffee table in front of the couch and stood up when he saw Amy. “What the fuck?”

She walked right up to him and did that chin-grab thing she always did. And just like always, Mitchell looked annoyed and batted her hand away. “What do you want?”

“Mom sent me to unpack you. You’ve been home three days, she’s finished with all Trev’s laundry–”

Trevor beamed at Mitchell, for once fine with being Mommy’s Little Pet. The Good One.

The truth was, he’d run out of clean socks. Okay, he’d done that a long time ago, but they’d started to get crusty, he’d worn them so many times. He was afraid to look at his feet, in case something had started growing there.

“So where is it?” Amy was asking when Trevor stopped thinking and wiggling his toes, sighing at the softness of the cotton. He’d never take clean socks for granted again.

Mitchell waved his arm at the bedroom.

“Well, come on,” Amy said.

“Just take the whole fucking thing,” Mitchell said. “You’re going to, anyway.”

“You have clean clothes?” Trevor asked him.

“Enough,” Mitchell said with a shrug.

“Last time,” Amy said, her voice hard. So was the corner of her jaw, the spot where Mitchell would start throbbing when he got pissed. “Last time, you made Mom go through all the magazines and stuff you’d bought before she got to the clothes. She only wants the clothes this time.”

Mitchell shrugged again. Even though Trevor knew it was Mitchell’s default comment when Amy was around, it still pissed him off. He wanted to grab the guitar player and scream, “Speak!” in his face.

Amy seemed every bit as frustrated. Not that Trevor blamed her. So far, no balls had been busted. If anything, Mitchell had the upper hand so far, what with the mystery of the door and now… His eyes grew huge as he followed Amy into Mitchell’s bedroom.

The suitcase sat on the floor beside the dresser, open. Clothes spilled out of it like they had exploded out in their haste to escape the tour-induced funk. And sure enough, peeking out from the jeans and underwear, Trevor could see guitar magazines and all the other shit Mitchell lugged around with him.

Amy sighed, pulled a laundry bag out of Mitchell’s closet, and sat down on the floor to sort through it.

“One dirty black ShapeShifter t-shirt, one dirty black ShapeShifter t-shirt, one dirty black ShapeShifter t-shirt,” she said as she stuffed each thing into the laundry bag.

“See a theme?” Mitchell asked. He grinned like he was proud. Probably was, the big idiot.

Trevor sat down on the edge of Mitchell’s bed and lit a cigarette. Mitchell helped himself to a light and sat down beside his bass player.

“Aren’t you sick of me?” Trevor asked.

Mitchell just shrugged.

Amy had gotten to the socks. She turned to Mitchell. “You know, this thing you have with the color white is scary. Where do you find this many black socks?”

He shrugged again. “Ask Ma.”

Amy shook her head and moved a few magazines into a stack in front of the bottom drawer of Mitchell’s dresser.

It went that way, with Amy saying very little and Mitchell saying even less. Trevor was considering curling up for a nap in Mitchell’s bed when Amy got to the bottom of the suitcase. “Is this really all of it? It doesn’t seem like enough.”

Mitchell, of course, shrugged. Trevor didn’t offer the explanation that girls had helped themselves to most of the Big M’s clothes, wanting their very own precious souvenir of their quick five minutes with the wanna-be stud.

Amy patted a pocket in the side of the inside of the case. It made a strange sound.

Trevor leaned closer. Maybe this would be the thing that saved this whole stupid-assed excursion. So far, it had been a major bust. The Vincent was calling him; he could feel it.

“What’dja find?” he sing-songed.

Amy got up on her knees and pulled at the elastic holding the pocket shut. She peered in, then gasped. “Mitchell!”

“What?”

Trevor had to give the big idiot credit. He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. If there was any way of calling Amy’s bluff, he was ready.

“C’mon, Aim,” Trevor said. “Let’s see it.”

“It’s no big deal,” Mitchell said.

Trevor figured it had to be a deal — a very big one. That was the longest sentence the big idiot had said in almost an hour.

Amy reached into the pocket in question and pulled out a handful of hotel room keys. The plastic kind, with the stupid-assed strip that usually worked only one out of three times. Which was about how often Trevor managed to get them in the door the right way.

One at a time, Amy tossed them on the bed.

By the time she’d finished emptying out the pocket, there were over one hundred room keys sitting on the bed.

“I should make you mail these all back,” she said.

Mitchell shrugged — only one shoulder this time. Amy was bitch enough to make him do it, and they all knew it. “They tell you to just throw ’em out,” he said. “They’re no good after you leave. So, I figured, what the fuck. I’ll be old-school. Chi-Check says you can tell a musician’s road doggedness by how many hotel keys he’s got.”

“He meant the actual keys. The metal ones. On those plastic tags. Like the ones they gave us way back when we went to …” Trevor looked at Amy. “Umm. Nevermind.”

She let him off the hook. “Mitchell, you’ve got every flyer from every show you’ve done so far. You’ve got t-shirts with the cities listed on the back. What do you need room keys for?”

“To remember the girls?” Trevor suggested as he lit another cigarette.

Mitchell just shrugged. Which was fine with Trevor; the one thing Amy didn’t need to know was that most of those keys had been his at one point. A few had been Daniel’s. Even fewer were goody-goody Eric’s, who most often stood at the front desk and handed the key into a warm hand.

This was more than a collection showing how road-worthy ShapeShifter was. It was a band bonding thing.

Trevor wondered if maybe he ought to stick up for Mitchell a little bit. But Amy was standing up, Mitchell wasn’t helping with his own dirty laundry, and it was clear the adventure was over.

Somehow, he felt like the only balls that had been busted were his.

The Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is the key. When we were a the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last April, I was — as always — struck by the suitcase overflowing with hotel room keys. Put it together and … it’s like a ready-made outtake.