Page 56 of Shame Me
“I can’t.”
“This bus isn’t the smoothest ride,” the driver said as if in apology.
“I don’t think that’s your fault.” He smiled at me but didn’t say another word.
Mick raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t come up here for idle chitchat, did you, kid?”
I hoped my return smile at Mick would butter him up for what I was about to ask. “Am I that obvious?”
“Considering you’ve never joined me an’ Schultz for a conversation…”
“Yeah, okay.” I let out a soft breath. I didn’t want to convey my worry, but I hoped to get what I needed from this man. “I, um, know this might be an odd request, but I was wanting to kind of tally our expenses and earnings to see what they look like.”
He cocked his head and grinned. “Good luck with that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I can give you copies of the settlement sheets, but I don’t know when we’ll have numbers from merch—and you won’t get any numbers about sales from the label until they release them.”
“And when’s that?”
“They usually do it quarterly.”
I looked out of the large windshield at the crowded city street in front of us. I’d lost track of the days, but it was obvious that we were in rush hour traffic, and I wondered when we’d get out of it. So I wouldn’t be able to crunch numbers like I’d wanted—but maybe I could still get an idea of what we were earning at least from the tour. Then I could try estimating merch and sales.
But I neededsomething…because watching all the money we spent was making me queasy.
Nodding, I asked, “When do you think you could get me those?”
“What? The settlement sheets?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re really wanting to do this?” This time,Icocked my head as if challenging him. “All right. I’ve got ‘em here in this case—but you can’t have the originals.”
“Can I take a picture of them with my phone?”
“Yep.”
The numbers were mind-boggling, and I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around them while I took pictures. But I could tell almost immediately that, once we got to headliner status, we’dbe making way more than now. From what I could tell, the venues took about a third of gross ticket sales, and then we had to split what was left with the other two bands—but our band wasn’t even making five thousand dollars a show. Back in Denver, we would have shit our pants if we’d made that kind of money each night—but it was just the four of us back then. Now, we had a crew and other expenses and so goddamned many of them.
But I was determined to figure out if we were profitable or not.
And I was afraid the answer was going to be the latter.
It wasn’tuntil our next day off—a Thursday—that I was able to dig into the numbers. We were in Nashville and had a show the following night, but the drive there had been long and uncomfortable, so none of us really wanted to check out any of the sights, which was a bummer. We’d been in two major music cities in the space of a week and hadn’t been able to absorb any of their culture.
But, by that evening, I had used up several pages in the lone notebook I’d bought at a Walmart somewhere on the road. On these pages was a rough estimate of our expenses, and those numbers freaked me out enough to call a band meeting.
Justthe band.
We were eating sandwiches and chips and Cy had already shuffled the cards, hoping to get in a few games before we went to bed. And, although Zack had been stone-cold soberonstagesince the Chicago incident, I could smell liquor on his breath now.
I’d have to deal with that another day…but I hadn’t yet had the chance. And, if I didn’t address the money issue, we might all be fucked.
Zack said, “So what’s so important about the money that we have to talk about it on our day off?”
“I’m nervous about how the numbers add up.” When Zack raised an eyebrow, I continued. “Okay…let’s look at the debt. We’ll be on the road a total of 27 days—and every single day there are costs: hotels, gas, per diems, the occasional group meals, the wages of the crew, Mick, and the bus driver, and probably other shit I haven’t even thought of. But I started there.”
