The next day Jessi met her family at the venue where her father and uncles were having their massive retirement party. She brought her new boyfriend along for the ride. When she walked into the backstage area, she immediately ran over to her parents and hugged them in turn. “Mama! Daddy!” she cried with glee as she threw her arms around their necks.
“Hey baby girl”, they both said. “Bet you’re excited to graduate with your bachelors’ next month?” Brie added.
“Oh yeah. I actually have an invitation to work for the American consulate in Jerusalem after graduation as a translator.”
“So, we’ll be seeing quite a bit of you?” David said with a smile.
“Yeah. Heck, I could house sit for you while you two are traveling.”
David looked at the young man who was keeping a respectful distance while Jessi greeted him and her mother. He got her attention and signed, Jessykah, who is that?
She looked over her shoulder and smiled softly. She signed her response. That’s my new boyfriend, Dad. She waved him over. “Daddy, this is my new boyfriend David.”
Her father held up a hand and fought off a bout of laughter. “Really? You’re not pulling my leg.”
“Nope. His name is David. David Yaron. We met at JUHI while I was out there for my semester abroad.”
“At least he has a good name”, her mother commented. “You have the give the boy that, Michael.”
Her father sighed and gave into the urge to laugh. “I know. I can’t bitch about that, at least.” He extended his hand to the young man. “It’s nice to meet you, David. I’m Jessi’s father, David Draiman.”
The young man took David’s hand and shook. He had a good strong grip. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Draiman. Jessi spoke of you and your wife quite regularly.”
“Did you two start dating over in Israel?”
“No, actually. We were just good friends. I was awaiting acceptance to Loyola. It’s the best foreign language in America, let alone the world. I’m doing my semester abroad over here.”
“Do you have a nickname or something, because things are going to get rather hectic around here with two David’s. And we can’t call me Michael because of Mike Wengren.”
“My middle name is Adam.”
“Ok, so I’ll be David and you’ll be Adam so that there’s no confusion.”
The young man nodded. “That’s fine.”
“Well, Adam, it’s nice to meet you. I hope that you enjoy the show when we do it. We’ll play getting to know you over lunch later. Right now, I have to do a sound and lighting check for the show, so I’ll catch you a little later.”
The boy nodded. “Yes sir. I look forward to dining with you.” He took Jessi’s hand and they walked away. As they made their way to the audience he draped an arm over her shoulders and kissed her temple.
David smiled. “He seems nice enough.”
Brie wrapped her arm around his waist and rested a hand over his stomach, her head on his chest. “I have to agree. We’ll find out just how nice he is over lunch. But we can’t deny they are cute together.”
David shrugged. “True. He seems like he really cares for her. We’ll see how much soon enough.” He kissed his wife’s temple. “Now, my dear, as much as I want to stand here with you and just hold you like this, I have to go to work. Our youngest son says he figured out what was wrong with the laser light display in ‘The Sickness’ and ‘Remnants/ Asylum’; and he wants Jordan and me to do ‘The Animal’ so that he can make sure he has the programming for the fake rain shower that Jordan begged me to do.”
“Where did she get the idea to do that?”
“Some video she saw on YouTube”, he said with a shrug. He put his monitors in his ears and gave his wife a kiss. “I’ll be back in a few.”
“I’ll be right here.” She smiled as he walked out onto the stage and started talking to Marc. Two more days and I’ve got him all to myself. I’m so excited. This is going to be the best show they’ve ever done.
---------------
David looked out at Marc. “Ok, son. You’re the one in charge. What would you have us do?” he asked into the mic.
“Actually, Dad. Do you think you can come out here and watch the displays to let me know if that’s what you were looking for?”
“Sure.”
“Uncle Danny, Uncle, Mikey, Uncle John. Do you guys mind playing so that we have a reference point for the lights?”
“Not a problem”, was the general consensus.
David slipped off of the stage and jogged out to where Marc was standing. He pulled his monitors out of his ears so that he could hear what the audience would be hearing. Marc spoke again. “Let’s start with ‘Remnants/ Asylum’, and then I’ll skip ahead and you guys can do ‘Down with the Sickness’. Cool?” He was answered with random playing of instruments. He laughed and hit the necessary button to start the light show. He had a five second delay before the music was supposed to start. He nodded and pointed to the stage where the music came up and the lights started.
David stood with his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the impressive display that his youngest son had created as the introduction that had been filmed so many years before played. He hadn’t changed much over the years, but they had shot new footage a few days before for the part where he fought his way out of the ambulance to run to the show. He was excited to see how it had turned out. He was also excited to see the turn out for the show was.
The music picked up and the lights started to form shapes as he watched. He smiled to himself. He liked what he was seeing. It was better than what he had originally imagined. He leaned in and spoke to his son. “Wow, this is… this is better than I had originally pictured. You, my son, are a bad mother fucker with a computer.”
Marc smiled. “Glad you approve, but it gets better. This is only part of what I was agonizing about last night.”
David contained his shock. Once the song was over, Marc fast forwarded through the other effects until five second before “Down with the Sickness”. He pointed to the stage where Dan, Mike, and John started playing. At the point in the intro where David came in with a whisper, a 2D image of ‘The Face’ came up. David was impressed. When the monkey call came up the lights shot apart and reformed into a 3D image of ‘The Guy’ from the ‘Ten Thousand Fists’ cover. David let out a laugh. “Marc, how the hell did you manage that?”
“That’s my little secret, Dad. I can’t tell you or I’d have to kill you. Anyway, it involves a bunch of computer terms that you wouldn’t understand. Binary codes, Java script, HTML… I’d confuse you two sentences in.”
David just nodded. “Say no more. But, that was kick ass.”
“Thank you. I just wanted to give you more than your money’s worth.”
Little did Marc know, but he’d done that and so much more.
----------------
After having lunch with Jessi and her new boyfriend, Brie went to the local rock station with David so that he and the guys could do another pre- performance interview. They were pimping this concert like a $2 hooker. They were going to learn at this interview how quickly the tickets had gone.
Brie stood with the other wives outside the radio booth where the interview was being held. The guys were all standing around the mics, no head phones, and waiting for the show to come back on air.
“And welcome back to Q101, Chicago’s Alternative Rock station. It’s your main man Dougan here with a band born and bred right here in the heart of the south side. They are putting on their final show in just two days and we’ll be there to cover the entire thing. I’m talking about the one and ONLY Disturbed!”, the DJ said and hit a button to give the sound effect of cheering. The guys all said hello and what’s up over the noise. “Welcome back home, gentlemen. Now, I’m sure that everyone is wondering and has asked, but I’ve just GOT to ask; why not do a final tour? Why just one last show?”
Dan answered. “We’ve all had all kinds of crazy things happening in our lives. David’s had weddings and grandkids. I’ve had grandkids born. Hell, I think we’ve all had a few grandkids born in the last year.”
“David, there was a wedding in your family in the last year?”
David nodded. “Yeah. My son Jeremiah got married. His twin brother James had a set of twin girls three months later, and just last month, Jeremiah had a son.”
“Wow, brother. You have a big family. What’s the count up to now?”
“Ten kids, eleven grandchildren from six of them. Half of them are married. All of my kids have graduated and gone off to college.”
“And there are some interesting awards in your family, right?”
“Oh yeah. Two are multi- platinum recording artists with countless awards to their credit. One is a Nobel prize winning doctor who is working on finding a cure for cancer. And the baby of the family is an Olympic gold medalist.”
“Nice. Now, let’s talk about this show you guys are doing. From what I’m understanding, it’s going to be insane to put it simply. I mean, it’s going to be sheer mayhem.”
“Would we do it any other way?” Mike asked.
“Very true. Now, who are some of the acts you’re going to have at this thing?”
They all started naming off the other bands. “Five Finger Death Punch, Reckless Disregard, Halestorm, Crosshairs.” John continued after they all stopped trying to figure it out. “I think we’ve all stopped trying to keep track.”
“How long are you guys going to be onstage yourselves?”
“We’re actually doing a three hour set”, David said.
“And why is that?”
“We don’t want to disappoint the fans. This is the last show we’re going to do. We didn’t want to have to sit down with a list of all of the songs we’ve done over the years and have to go, ‘Well, this one’s out for time constraints. This one too. And this one, and this one… we want to be able to perform everything that the fans have come to expect us to.”
“Rumor has it that M. Shadows and Synyster Gates of Avenged Sevenfold are going to be there. Confirm or deny?”
“We can’t really do either, to be honest”, David said with a shrug. “Just wait until the day of the show and you’ll find out.”
“So what possessed you all to offer the show for free to everyone around the world?”
“Our wives”, the men all said in unison.
“Wow.” The guy laughed. “Ok,.. I know I’m probably asking a no brainer, but please tell me you’re not going to disappoint and that you’re going to do ‘Down with the Sickness’.”
“Like the fans are going to let us get away with NOT doing it”, Mike laughed.
“Yeah. That’s true. So, this is the last time we’re going to hear ‘The Noise’ in concert. “
“Yep. The next time will be at my funeral. I swear it’s going to be etched into my tombstone”, David chuckled. He glanced into the other room at Brie whom mouthed, Believe me, it’s already there, buddy boy. It’s already done.
The DJ laughed. “Is that your wife that’s mouthing in there, David?”
“The love of my life. She said it’s already there. I’m screwed.”
“Well, folks, it’s time for a break. When we come back, we’ll be talking about the live broadcast and how quickly the limited amount of tickets that were made disappeared. Right now, we’re going to play a little bit of David singing with his daughter Jordan in a re- recording of ‘The Animal’ right here on Chicago’s own Alternative Rock station, Q101 FM.”
---------------
After finishing rehearsals that afternoon, Marc made his way to his older sister’s room to drive home a point. After arriving back at the hotel, before getting ready to go to dinner with his girlfriend, he got on his laptop and made sure the he could find some of the footage of the concert where the King of Pop got the shit burnt out of his face so that he could make sure that his sister understood the importance of hitting her marks in the songs where there was going to be pyrotechnics.
He knocked on the door and waited for her or her wife to answer the door. Her wife was the face he saw with his nephew close behind her. “Hey, Marc. What bring you down here?”
“Mercedes is getting ready to go to dinner and I needed to show Jordan something. May I come in?”
Davina stepped out of Marc’s way and let him in. Jordan was sitting on the couch in the small sitting area of the suite. “Hey baby brother. What brings you down here?”
“I have something I want to show you. This is to drive home the importance of what we’ve been arguing about the past few days.”
Jordan sighed. “Ok. Let me see it.”
He set the laptop in her lap and pulled up the video. He watched her face rather than the screen. When the video was over, he took the computer from her lap. “That is what will happen to you if you don’t hit your marks tomorrow and the day of the show. I hope this makes my point about hitting your marks for the pyro home because if it doesn’t there will be a huge problem tomorrow and you will have effectively ruined Disturbed’s final show.”
“OH MY GOD, MARC! That man must have been scarred for life from that.”
“He had countless surgeries on his face. No one really knows how much of his face was his to begin with and how much was his from the surgeries when he croaked at the age of 50.”
“Yikes. Ok. I’m cool. I’ll hit my marks. Don’t worry. I’m not going to end up like that. My kid means far too much to me.”
“Nice to hear. Well I’ll catch tomorrow for rehearsal, and everyone else at dinner tomorrow night.” He gave Levi a hug before making his way down the hall to his room again so that he and his girlfriend could go to dinner. He reached into his pocket and made sure the small velvet box was in his pocket. He was going to ask her to be his wife tonight. He was hoping that he didn’t tip her off. He wanted to surprise her. All he wanted to do was surprise her.
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