'Tampa? Okay, kinda a home gig then?' But the drummer had already bound on board Mona, another bundle of excitement, albeit a broader, taller, stronger bundle. What had he said about a slice of home? Whitley shook his shaggy grey head. He wasn't sure he'd ever had a band this young on the road before.
'Nick, get in here, man, I'll give you all the tour,' Whitley called up, and mounted the steps that opened onto the driver's seat.
'Alright, umm, dudes,' he called forward to where the rest of the band had gathered in the cramped shared area Whitley called the lounge. 'Uhhh, I ain't a schoolteacher type, so how bout I make this real quick while we're waiting for the tour manager. I got an itinerary here somewhere but we'd better hang on I guess.'
Nick came up the steps behind him, the rest of the band traipsed up the centre aisle. The low ceiling brushed Mitch's head. 'Right, I'm Whitley, and this is my seat,' he said, slapping the leather upholstery. 'That's my only rule, man. No-one sits in my seat. Alright? Alright. That's my guitar,' Whitley went on, pointing to the ceiling, where a battered acoustic hung by its strap from two hooks. A veritable forest of pine air fresheners hung from a dial on the dashboard. 'And that's my sound system,' he said, pointing at the dial, a CD player and a collection of buttons. 'Turns the speakers on and off all over the bus. We'll have us some good times with that. Y'all like Foghat?'
Whitley shrugged at the perplexed faces. 'Alright. Where most of you are standing, that's the kitchen.' The young musicians looked about their cramped surroundings. Kelsey, Julia, Mitch and Francis barely fit into the room, which was essentially a corridor. On the right as Whitley and Nick looked from the cab, and inset in a wall of cupboards, there were two electric hobs, a small microwave and a tiny sink, all grouped around a 4ft by 3ft window. The countertops were clean, but worn; in a couple of places cracks had been covered with duct tape. 'Go on, poke around.'
They hesitated; perhaps they felt like they would be intruding. Never mindd, Whitley thought. They'd soon feel at home. Kelsey was first to get involved, pulling open the cupboard to the right of the inset. Inside was a fridge. 'Don't have much call for keeping stuff on the road,' said Whitley. 'Just pick up milk when we stop places. Wanna tip for on the road? You know them tiny cartons of long-life milk? Rob as many as you can from diners and truckstops. Takes twenty of them to wet your Cheerios, and they taste like hell, but they're good forever.' Whitley lent past Julia and opened a cupboard on his left. Inside was a refuse sack full to the brim of of the tiny cartons. 'Got hundreds of them in there, help yourself!'
Whitley shuffled forward, pushing everyone back into the lounge. A rickety fold-up table was currently down on the left side of the room; a similar table was folded against the wall on the right. On either side of each table, facing the direction of travel and against the direction of travel, were low benches covered in worn red velvet. A seam was burst on one, and dark yellow foam protruded. The carpet was faded orange, and though it had obviously been recently cleaned, not a square foot of it wasn't stained. There were a number of cigarette burns on the left hand side of the carpet, though not on the right. Whitley saw sharp-eyed Francis had noted this. 'Smoking on the left, non-smokers on the right, see?'
Beyond the 'lounge', through a heavy felt curtain, was the sleeping area. On both sides of the narrow corridor were two bunks, each with another felt curtain across it. Beyond these, on the right, were two more bunks and, on the left, a dressing table and large wall-mounted mirror surrounded by lightbulbs. 'See?' Whitley grinned. 'I thought of everything, man. You girls got your own damn powder room!' Whitley assumed the surprise on Julia and Kelsey's faces was due to gratitude, not shock at the spartan conditions. 'Yeah, I know it's, like, harder for girls on the road. There's... well, there's not a lot of privacy in here. There just weren't girls and boys in bands together back in the day. I drove Tammy Wynette's crew once, but Tammy had her own bus. Man, her boys were dirty dogs...'
'Anyway, down there's storage. I see most of you already stowed your gear, I'll go tie it down later, just in case. And past that is the toilet on the left and the shower. It don't run hot most of the time, but it'll get you clean.'
'So,' Whitley proclaimed, turning proudly to the band. 'Whaddya think of my lady?'