Becoming

Fortunes Of War

At the end of the week, Dave had finished recording his contribution, but had opted, with Tamar's blessing, to remain in London until Ade was ready to leave, enjoying the chance to spend time with his lover without their families around. The two men were in the studio just noodling about on their guitars whilst the sound engineer did some editing the final song of the album, when Bruce, sporting a new and very short haircut and a worried expression, knocked on the door.

Ade looked up and waved him inside. "Bruce! This is a surprise, as is the hair. What's up?"

"Do you have tour dates booked yet?" Bruce asked first thing.

"No, I hadn't got that far yet, figured we'd wait for the album to come out, since we'd only be doing club dates anyway," Ade said. "Why?"

"I hate to ask this so last-minute," Bruce said, "but I'm desperate. Will you tour with me, Ade? We're supposed to start in less than two weeks and the bloke Roy and I hired for the tour just bailed on us. Since you made some contributions to the album, you already know half the material, and you're the only bloke I can think of other than Janick or Dave who'd be able to learn the rest in that short a time."

"Right... I certainly wasn't expecting that," Ade said slowly. "Erm, what's the schedule look like, then? I've got to talk to Nathalie before I can give you an answer, but I know that's the first thing she'll want to know about. We'd had plans to take the kids to Maui at some point this summer, although we've not booked that one yet, and if it'll be a long tour, she'll want to hire a nanny or at least an au pair to help with the kids whilst I'm gone."

Dave quietly packed up his guitars as he didn't think they'd be doing any more jamming today, given the conversation taking place in front of him.

"Yeah," Bruce said, pulling out a computer printout with a listing of tour dates. "We're supposed to start 5 July at Mastetrax Festival in Madrid, and wrap things up in Buenos Aires on 22 November, so about five months. But we'll have a couple weeks off in August, between the UK and the US, so maybe you could schedule your trip for then?"

"Tamar and I would be fine with you coming in August," Dave put in. "And if you put off releasing your album until after Bruce's tour is done, Ade, then you can do whatever small tour you were thinking of doing in December and January – or in January and February, if you wanted to give yourself a longer break, yeah?"

Bruce blinked and turned to Dave with a slightly startled expression. "Blimey, Dave, I'm sorry for ignoring you, mate! I was so relieved to catch Ade here to ask him to join my tour that I never even noticed you there."

Dave chuckled. "It's okay, and I can certainly understand your worries."

Pulling out and checking the watch he still had set to Montreal time, Ade frowned a bit. "Bruce, can the decision wait for a couple of hours? Like I said, this isn't something I can really agree to without talking to Nathalie first, and she'll not be home for another hour to hour and a half yet."

"I understand that, mate," Bruce said with a nod. "Yeah, a couple of hours won't make a difference at this point. If it's a yes, then I'm all set, and if it's a no, I'd not be able to do much of anything else in the way of finding someone until tomorrow in any case." He hesitated, then asked, "Would you two care to hit a pub whilst waiting until it's late enough to call Nathalie? Or did you still have work to do here?"

Ade glanced at Dave, who gave a slight nod. "A pub sounds good," he told Bruce. "Davey and I were just jamming a bit whilst waiting for the sound engineer to finish up the last bit of mixing before sending the lot to the producer for the final mixing and all that. You're lucky you came today, in fact, as it's our last day in studio here." He cased his guitars as he spoke.