Spree by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online

feelings. “Hobby! I’ve given this thing three years of my life, working in bands with you, driving all over the goddamn country in that lumber wagon of a van, sleeping in roach motels, fencing with moronic club owners. Jesus! What do you want from me?”
    She looked at him with something approaching regret. Sighed. Said, “Sit down.”
    He frowned at her.
    “Sit down,” she said, and she sat on the edge of the bed, pushing the suitcase back out of the way.
    He sat, too.
    “Jon, this isn’t your dream. Music. It’s always been second place to you. You’ve got your comic book, now. That’s your dream. You’ve realized it.”
    “Toni . . .” He didn’t know what to say, exactly. He supposed she was right, in a way. Music wasn’t the passion of his life: cartooning was. Playing in rock bands was something he’d gotten into in junior high, for the hell of it. He’d only gotten back into music a few years ago, when his efforts to make it in the comics weren’t paying off.
    But now he had Space Pirates —a monthly comic book of his own. He wrote it and drew it. Penciled, inked, lettered it. It was a small-press book, for the so-called direct-sales market—which meant his book didn’t get on newsstands, rather went only to the specialty shops catering to the hard-core comic-book fans—and what it was bringing in would, at first anyway, only amount to around eighteen grand a year. Which meant he needed another source of income, and playing in a band with Toni, weekends, could provide that.
    “We made a deal, you and I,” Toni said. “We said we’d try to make it together. Really make it. But I don’t think you’re willing, anymore. I think you want to stay in one place and play weekends. You’re holding me back, Jon. You aren’t ready to go back on the road full-time. You can’t , and draw your comic book.”
    “Damnit, I tried ,” he said, meaning he’d tried to make it in rock with her. “What about the goddamn record?”
    With their previous band, the Nodes—which had gone through several incarnations—they had put together an album of original material, thirteen songs written by Jon and/or Toni. This was about a year ago, before Space Pirates , before the Nodes broke up, when they were playing a circuit throughout the Midwest and South, driving a hundred thousand miles or so a year. Like a lot of bands, they had put the album out themselves, when none of the major record companies responded to their tape; and had sold the album at their various performances. Midnight Records in New York, a record store that specialized in offbeat small-label product, had even distributed it to other specialty record shops, and overseas. It had gotten some airplay, on college stations primarily, across the country.
    But nothing substantial had come of it, and the frustration of that had led to the group disbanding. Toni and Jon had been putting the pieces back together, these last six months, during which time Jon had placed Space Pirates with a small publisher and was spending more and more time at his drawing board and less and less at his synthesizer keyboard.
    “I financed that fucking album,” Jon said, pointing to himself, as if there were some confusion as to who he was talking about.
    “I know you did,” she said.
    The money he’d spent came from that last job with Nolan; money didn’t come harder earned than that.
    “You got some major exposure because of me, Toni. You got some very nice reviews—that guy in The Village Voice said you were ‘distinctive and powerful. ’ ”
    She smiled at that; a sad smile. “The exact words of the review,” she said. “You remembered.”
    “Yeah. I remember what he said about my songwriting, too, but let’s not get into that.”
    Below them the record store’s stereo was booming; they were open Sundays. Springsteen.
    “Springsteen,” Jon said.
    “Springsteen,” Toni smiled.
    “I hate Springsteen,” Jon said.
    “What?”
    “I never told you