Neil, the pianist, had been in bands long enough to know that hatred in music rarely announces itself openly. It lives in small things. In how someone counts off a tune. In how loudly they laugh at their own jokes. In how they lean into the microphone as if the room exists only to receive them. Francis did all of this. He had a way of closing his eyes on the long notes that suggested he believed angels had been summoned. Neil suspected the angels had declined the invitation. Rehearsals became unbearable. Francis talked about “energy” and “connection.” Neil thought mostly about escape routes. Unfortunately, they were on tour, which meant the nightly obligation to appear united before strangers.
Hatred, like improvisation, eventually seeks expression. The idea came to Neil while he was walking through a hardware store in a prairie town whose name he had already forgotten. In the aisle with cleaning supplies he noticed a small bottle labeled “liquid smoke.” Nearby was another bottle of something less culinary, a hunting scent designed to attract deer. The plan was not sophisticated. That evening, while the rest of the band argued with the sound engineer, Neil wandered near the microphone stand. He dabbed the smallest imaginable amount beneath the foam windscreen. It was a smell that suggested a campfire extinguished in a swamp.
The show began. Francis approached the microphone with the usual theatrical calm. The first song required intimacy. He leaned close, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. Then he hesitated. Neil watched with the quiet focus of a scientist observing an experiment. Francis continued, though his face twitched slightly between phrases. By the second verse he had begun to angle his head away from the microphone, singing across it rather than into it. By the chorus he looked vaguely alarmed. The audience noticed none of this. They heard a band performing. By the third song he wiped the microphone with his sleeve.
Between tunes he leaned toward Neil and whispered, “Do you smell something?”
Neil shrugged. For the remainder of the set Francis performed at a cautious distance from the stand, as if the microphone were a small but unpredictable animal. Neil felt a poisonous satisfaction. Later that night, as the band packed equipment, Francis approached him again.
“That was weird,” Francis said. “I kept smelling something awful.”
He laughed about it, the way people do when something unpleasant refuses to explain itself. Neil nodded sympathetically. On the drive to the motel, however, Neil noticed the odor still clinging faintly to his own hands. It followed him into the van, into the elevator, into his room. He washed repeatedly but could not entirely remove it. For the rest of the tour he played with a subtle, persistent reminder that revenge, like perfume, has a habit of lingering on the person who applied it.