The night that Daria disappeared was the Spiral's first night playing the Zen.(1) Jesse had lined up the gig – as always, he knew a girl who knew the owner and who was all too eager to see him swing his ax (2) as long as he played it with his shirt off. And better yet, they were actually going to pay the band. Which was good – he was looking forward to having a meal that he didn't have to literally scrape out of the fridge.
Jesse and Nick had wanted to change the band's name while they were setting up. By the intro, they still hadn't agreed. So Trent had to go to his fallback. "We're Mystik Spiral. But we're thinking of changing our name." Jane said that eventually that phrase was going to go on their banner. He made a mental note to hide the band signs from Jane.
After all the crap with Monique, it felt good to howl it out, to get that entire horrible moment of dumping without dating out of his body along with the vicious pain of coffee crawling out of his face:
"I'm glad you're happy watching my pain/ burning crop circles on my soul's waves of grain/ We had no love scene but you've cut to the chase/ you're chopping off my nose to spite my face/ Ow, my nose! Ow, my face! Ow, my nose! Ow, my face! Ow..."(3)
He didn't even care that the room wasn't packed. Jesse's little brother would have to do some promotion, if he could get the kid to quit "helping" with the lyrics. (4) Daria and Jane were there for amoral support and a few of the people were howling along. If they kept getting that kind of response they might even be able to turn down the amplifiers.
As he came to the end of his set, he heard Janey say "Get burger!" to Daria. That sounded good. Food and his nearest and dearest – it would be a great way to top off the night. It also felt like a zen sort of way to end the song.
Jane flagged him down at the end of his set. "Hey, did you see where Daria went?" she asked him.
"Didn't she go into the bathroom?" The small audience made it easy to see everything that went on from his vantage point on the stage.
"That was half an hour ago!"
"Huh."
"Hey Trent, could you help us get the drum set off stage?" Jesse was working up a sweat, the stage lights bouncing off of his muscular upper arms.
Before Trent could answer, Jane had bounded across the stage and was helping Jesse lift the drum kit off the floor. "You go look for Daria, I'll take care of Jesse."
Daria shouldn't have been too hard to find. The Zen was just a converted warehouse; all there was too it was the stage, a bar, the bathrooms and the rest was just a giant cement box where giant shelves lined with cereal boxes used to tower.
He saw some girl dripping black wander into the bathroom, so he assumed it was the lady's. He wasn't sure, as he'd seen girls and guys go in and out of there all night. He knocked on the door. "Daria, you in there?" he called.
The door whipped open and the girl dripping black attacked him with a Cthulhoid screech. "Have some respect for female modesty, please!"
Yeep! Female stuff. "Uh, OK," he mumbled, backing away from the closing door.
"Can't find her," he told Jane as he returned to the stage. "Maybe you can go into the bathroom yourself and see?"
Jane wrinkled her forehead. "I've been in there once. I'm not going in there again."
It was Labyrinth (5) law: if a creature guarded the swamp, stay out of the damn swamp.
They loaded the van and were walking around the corner when they saw Daria dashing out the back entrance.
"Daria!" Jane yelled from their place on the sidewalk.
Daria dived into the cab like a robber making off with the loot. Trent didn't know anyone could move that fast with those boots on; apparently that tiny body had built up some strength from wearing those weights on her legs for so long.
As the cab screeched away, he was aware that somehow, the weird black-haired girl was in their midst. Trent shrugged; in club life you wind up with random people hanging out with you all the time. That was the price of alcohol as a social drug and the inability of a person to hear you tell him or her to go away over loud music.
It made for a weird night. The black-haired girl kept "forgetting" Jane's name, and then "forgetting" her own name.
"Is she a cheerleader or something?" Trent whispered to Jane.
"Or something!" Jane whispered back.
Max and Nick became embroiled in an argument about the band's name that ended somehow in calling each other names until Trent had to confiscate their toothpicks.
But for all the weirdness, he had a full stomach for the first time in weeks and Monique for awhile was not on his mind.
1 The first time this club appeared in Daria it was billed "the Zen." Later in the series, it became "the Zon" and is frequently erroneously referred to as "the Zone." I explain this to myself as the club frequently changing owners.
2 Slang for "guitar"
3 Direct lyrics from the episode "Ill."
4 It's established in the Daria Database that Jesse has a little brother, Danny, who is the official band promoter. Mostly this means he tacks posters to telephone polls, but it's evident Danny has possibly more vision than Mystik Spiral.
5 That movie with the puppets and David Bowie