Row K

Marek brought my guitar out of the wings at ten past four and walked it past me, to Ezra, because I’d told him to at breakfast, and he held it the whole way across the deck the way you’d carry a thing that wasn’t yours to drop.

Birmingham holds thirteen thousand. It’s the room the March clip came from, the four million in a week, and at soundcheck it’s a grey plain with the barrier across it and the seats going up into the dark on three sides. The loading door at the back of the floor was up, all the way, because the local crew were bringing in the last of the cases, and the daylight came in through it and lay across the concrete in a long pale strip, nearly to the barrier. I’d never seen daylight on the floor of an arena. I’d been in a hundred…