One Last Thing Before I Go Read Online Free PDF Page B

banging out beats in her womb. When he was four, he built himself a drum set out of buckets and boxes, setting it up next to his father’s stereo speakers, and he would drum along to the Beatles and Crosby, Stills & Nash using chicken skewers. They bought him a drum set when he was six, and started him on drum lessons, figuring he’d move on to something else within a few years. But the drums, it turned out, was the single lifelong commitment Silver would make. When he sat behind his kit all the restless parts of him—his throbbing legs, his fluttering heart, his racing mind—all came together under one unifying rhythm. It wasn’t something he understood consciously, but drumming was the only time Silver was at rest.
    After Casey was born, there was a noticeable change in Silver’s songwriting. His ballads became grittier, more passionate. He was seeing the world differently. The Bent Daisies began to mature, and the roving A&R guys they’d been meeting for years took note. A year or so later, they were finally signed, in a small deal with a major label. Their first single, “Rest in Pieces,” rode one of those perfect accidental waves up the charts, and they were international rock stars for a few weeks, as these things go. Long enough to taste it and never forget.
    Then Pat McReedy came down with a fatal case of front man’s disease and decided he would do better with a solo career. The three remaining Daisies, Danny Baptiste, Ray Dobbs, and Silver met for drinks to decide their next move, but they could see the truth in each other’s eyes. The only thing worse than not having your dream come true is having it come true for a little while. Ray moved down South to work for his brother-in-law and they never heard from him again. Silver still ran into Danny on gigs once in a while—they overlapped in some of the same wedding orchestras—where they would share a rueful grin, a lazy man-hug, and would occasionally, when the band heated up, throw old familiar riffs at each other that no one else could hear.
    It would have been easier to swallow, he suspected, if Pat had crashed and burned, as they all expected (hoped) he would. But years later Pat is still out there in Los Angeles, winning Grammys and sleeping with movie stars, and Silver’s only consolation is the shrinking residual check he still gets every month for “Rest in Pieces,” which sadly remains his greatest source of income, his orchestra gigs and professional masturbation notwithstanding. Publicly, Danny and Silver wish Pat well. Quietly though, at gigs, when they’ve had enough from the open bar to loosen their tongues, they are not above expressing the sincere hope that Pat is, right at that moment, snorting that fatal cut of blow off some model’s ass, or sliding the business end of a shotgun past his pouty, front-man lips to the back of his throat. If Pat did kill himself, they’d both find it in themselves to say generous things when the VH1 film crew showed up.
    * * *
    Tonight he is playing a wedding with the Scott Key Orchestra. Silver slaps away at his kit, pretty much on autopilot, ignoring the one or two drum geeks that always stand on the side to watch. Every so often at these things, someone figures out who he is and he draws a slightly bigger crowd, but after a while they all come to realize that there’s nothing any more exciting about watching a once-famous drummer than any other drummer, and they go back to their arugula salads and filet mignon entrees.
    They are seven pieces and two backup singers tonight. You do this long enough, it isn’t even music anymore, just trained monkeys being put through their paces. Scott stands at the mike, singing “The Way You Look Tonight” with too much lounge lizard lilt in his voice, compressing the lyrics and stretching the odd vowel for effect, and you just have to be thankful that Sinatra isn’t alive to hear it. Baptiste grins at Silver and rolls his eyes. Silver nods back and tosses in