Thinking the Worst

From the moment I heard from Bruce that Charles was in New York City, auditioning for a new band, I was panicked. If this was true, it would be a band-breaker. I must have called Bonnie twenty times that weekend looking for Charles, but I just kept being told that she didn't know where he was. That just made me more paranoid, because Bonnie always knew where Charles was...she didn't trust him to be faithful. If she was telling me that... then she was lying, and if she was lying to me about that...then the rumor had to be true...or she would have been grilling me...about how to locate him. I knew that events were happening very fast that I had no clue about...and that made it very hard to have any strategy to counteract those events. I kept wondering "what band is he auditioning for?"...and I knew that there were very few bands that Charles would not be hired to play in if he went after a job. I was convinced that by the time I found out the answer to that question, it would be too late for me to do anything about it. And if that happened, the damage to Avalanche would be fatal. Charles not only brought incredible musical talents to the band, but he also added to the band's overall credibility as a serious act...because he had left a nationally known band from Chicago, as well as having earned two Platinum Album awards for his work on two Steve Miller albums..."Fly Like An Eagle" and "Book of Dreams". It raised the public perception of the band to a level where we  weren't considered local at all, and if Charles were to leave, replacing him with a musician of his caliber and status was going to be next to impossible. I didn't know anyone who I thought could take his place, and even if I had, I wasn't sure any of us could go through the process of starting all over again in rehearsals...although with the right guy, we would have probably done it. I knew I already had the right guy...and it felt like I was losing him. As the weekend went on, I got increasingly worried, angry, and high...and that is not a very good combination for rational thinking. All I knew was, that when I finally did find Charles...he was going to have a lot of explaining to do...