Adam stood at the bar, trying not to focus on the barrel blocking the door, on the brown outs interrupting his performance. It was as though the elementals of air and fire had been conspiring to oust him from the stage. The solution, the barrel, trapping him inside with Juan and that hideous smell. Stargazer Stella Verne’s prophesising in the morning’s Gazette came flooding back, and he knew without equivocation that he’d made the wrong decision on the bridge.
He’d done his best on stage, as Benny had taught him. He’d blocked out the storm, the smell, and the audience, maintained an inward gaze, focussed on his voice and his guitar. He should be euphoric but the articulation of his songs pricked in his mind over and again, as though an irate archer were using his meninges for arrow practi
