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Vince first realized the gig wasn't going well when someone threw an entire carton of eggs onto the stage. It flew open and raw eggs went in all directions, where they knocked the trumpet out of Howard's hands and narrowly missed ruining Vince's new boots. Vince yelped in alarm and dodged the shell and splatter, and then the entire audience rushed the stage.
When it was all over, their instruments were in pieces around them. Vince had a glass of ice pressed against his swelling right eye, and Howard's face and neck were marked with scratches. The club owner stood over them, glaring at the mess.
"You owe me," he said, "precisely fifteen thousand Euros."
"We're only being paid twenty Euros to begin with," Howard protested.
"And now you're being paid nothing," said the club owner. "Fifteen thousand Euros to fix this mess."
"How exactly are we supposed to do that?"
"Your problem," said the owner. "Go sell an instrument if you need the money."
"All our instruments are broken," Howard said. "No one's going to want to buy a smashed guitar and some loose keyboard pieces."
"Your problem," the owner repeated. "Now get the hell out of my club. If you don't get me that money, I'll have the bailiffs after you."
Howard's tiny eyes flashed. "Come on, Vince. We're going to go where we're appreciated." He stalked out of the club, leaving Vince to hastily put the glass down and follow him.
The riot had apparently spread to the carpark. The van, or what technically remained of it, was scattered over the tarmac, car doors over one way, tires another way, steering wheel somewhere else entirely. Howard and Vince surveyed the damage.
"Can we stop by Costa Coffee on the walk home?" Vince asked, but Howard didn't say anything. Howard's bravado had dissipated as soon as he caught sight of what used to be the van, leaving him twitchy and shifty-eyed. Vince took his hand and tugged him in the general direction of Dalston. It would be a long walk home.
When they finally made it home, Naboo was sitting in the front room with Bollo, looking at a clumsily-wrapped package with dead brown leaves poking out of it. Vince said, "Awright, Naboo?"
Naboo looked at him. "You owe back rent."
Howard groaned. Vince said, "Yeah, thing is, Naboo, we're both a little strapped for cash at the minute. How about an extension?"
"You've had extensions," Naboo said. "This is the fourth time I've had to ask you ballbags for rent. What happened to the gig money?"
"Yeah, about that," Vince said. "We didn't actually get paid tonight. We might, technically, owe the club fifteen thousand Euros. But the next gig will be sure to pay more."
"You've never had a paying gig," Naboo pointed out.
"Well, these things take time," Vince said.
"You've never been paid. You've never given me rent. You've just been living in the flat for free and using my credit card to buy instruments."
"We don't have the instruments anymore," Howard said disconsolately. "Or the van. We have nothing."
"You have five months' accumulated back rent," Naboo said. "Plus whatever you owe the club. You need to sort it out before the bailiffs come round."
"How are we supposed to sort it out?" Howard said. "Our only way of making money just got destroyed. There's no easy fix here. What am I supposed to do, just ring up my dad in Leeds and ask if he's got a few thousand Euro lying around? Should we sign ourselves up for indentured servitude?"
Naboo cocked his head with interest. "…Oh, no," Howard said.
"If you help me with the shop, I'll count that as rent," Naboo said. "And if you make this delivery for me it should take care of club damages."
"Delivery?" Vince asked incredulously. "Who do you think we are, the intergalactic Royal Mail?"
"No, I think you're a couple of jerkoffs who can't pay their bills," Naboo explained.
"What are we delivering?" Howard said. His eyes got even squintier from suspicion. "How is one delivery supposed to cover thousands of Euros' worth of damages?"
"If you take a look at the Imet currency exchange rate, you'd understand why," Naboo said.
"Who is Emmett and why does he need a delivery?"
"Not Emmett, the Imet. From the planet Imeazuno. They've got an order in for some ceremonial headdresses. I've been trying to figure out how to get the order in on time and still make it to Glastonbury with Bollo."
"Primal Scream is playing," Bollo said.
"Hold on, we have to go to another planet?" Howard asked. "How are we supposed to get to another planet? There's no Tube station for Kalamazoo."
"You could use the space travel button."
"Space travel button?" Vince said.
Naboo pointed at the opposite wall, where there was a huge candy-red button with a sign underneath reading SPACE TRAVEL.
"Why have we not noticed that before?" Vince said.
Naboo picked up the package in front of him and handed it to Vince. "Give this to the leader of the Imet. They'll transfer the money over to me."
"How are we supposed to know where the leader is?" Howard asked. "Or who it is? You could at least give us a map."
"Follow the signs," Naboo said. He moved to the other side of the room and swiftly pushed the button. Vince only just managed to grab onto Howard before there was a flash of light that obliterated the room.
When the flash faded, Vince was standing on what felt like sand. It shifted and crunched under the heel of his Chelsea boot like sand, but it was dark like topsoil, which felt wrong to Vince. It stretched out in all directions around him and Howard, flat and burnished under the sun's harsh light, and there were no plants or flowers or oases to be seen. The only thing he could see that wasn't flat and sandy-soily was a line of square brown blocks somewhere in the middle distance. Vince shifted the package in his arms so that the leaves weren't poking him.
"I think we need to go that way," he told Howard, nodding towards the blocks in the distance. "It's the only thing that might be a city."
"So now it's come to this," Howard said. "From the highest zenith to walking through the dirt. I used to be the toast of the town, Vince. My name was on everyone's lips."
"Because you owed them money," Vince said.
"Deliverymen," Howard said grimly. "We're artists, Vince. We should have left the mundane world behind long ago. We started out with a dream to become the best jazz/rock fusion band in Leeds –"
"No, we didn't," Vince said. "Maybe you did. I just wanted to pull shapes."
"What happens now, Vince?" Howard said. "Do we try to find another zoo to work at? Do we just turn our back on the band altogether?"
"Let's get this delivery finished first," Vince said. "Then we can think about what happens next."
Howard didn't look especially pleased, but he fell into step with Vince. They trudged towards the brown squares ahead.
When they finally arrived, Vince could see that the blocks did indeed seem to be buildings, but they had no windows and the only thing that looked like an entryway had no door, just an open space cut into the brown rock. Vince poked his head around the corner of the space and called, "Hello?"
There was a faint skittering sound from the darkness inside the structure, but otherwise no one answered. "Do you think no one's home?" Vince asked. He stepped inside. The floor felt like it was made of the same brown sand as the ground, but he couldn't be sure.
"Can't be sure," Howard said. He hovered in the entryway, looking skittish. "Maybe this is the standard greeting on this planet. Just don't show up. Are there any lights?"
Vince peered into the darkness. "What about those?" he said finally, inclining his head towards some stubby outgrowths on the wall that vaguely resembled candles.
Howard came inside, fumbling a lighter out of his pocket, and held the flame to one of the growths. It sputtered into light. The walls of the building were bare and brown and windowless.
"Maybe we should have let them know we were coming," Vince said. "Or at least tried to look up an email address."
There was another skittering sound, closer this time, and the brown sand by Howard's feet shifted. Before Vince could say anything, two fleshy stalks popped out of the sand, waving frantically; it took a minute before Vince realized they were antennae, attached to something that wasn't quite a face, just two big eyes and a wide gaping mouth and no nose at all. Under a thick layer of brown sand, its flat, formless body was the exact color of a beige, furry slug.
Howard yelped and pressed himself against the wall. The creature yelped back and skittered over to the other side of the room, where it flattened itself against the ground and covered itself with what looked like furry tentacles.
"Awright?" Vince asked the creature. "We've come to deliver a package. Er, I don't suppose you could take us to your leader, could you?"
The creature's tentacles shifted and one antenna popped up. Vince wondered how to act out the word 'delivery.' He knew how to talk to lions and monkeys, but he'd never learned how to speak to aliens.
The creature lifted its eyes up from the ground and looked at Vince quizzically. Its mouth stretched open and summoned up a voice from somewhere in its dull beige body. "Leader," it said. "Leader, leader." It wrapped a surprisingly silky, warm tentacle around Vince's wrist and gently tugged him towards the deeper shadows of the building.
"Come on, Howard," Vince said. "I think it knows where we need to go."
"It's going to eat me," Howard said, pressing so hard against the wall that it was a wonder he didn't melt into it.
"It doesn't have any teeth," Vince pointed out. "Come on."
Howard reluctantly followed them. At some point the darkness receded and they were in another room, a larger one, where the growths that gave off light were somehow more ornate and the walls were marked with crude carved lines. There was another creature in the far corner of the room, waving its tentacles around forcefully.
Vince and Howard's little guide interrupted with a sharp chirping noise. The other creature – slightly larger, its beige body marked with darker tan spots – whirled around and then flinched when it saw Vince and Howard. It burrowed under the sand and stayed there, quaking.
The guide chittered unintelligibly, but whatever it said the other creature seemed to understand. It turned its wide eyes towards Vince and Howard, then stood a little taller in the dirt and said, "Book," to the guide.
"Book," the guide said uncertainly.
"Book, book, book," the other creature said. "Book."
The little guide let go of Vince's wrist and shimmied over to one of the carved lines in the wall, where it put a tentacle into the recess and retrieved a battered, dog-eared book that Vince eventually recognized as a dictionary. The guide gave the book to the other creature, who flipped through the pages with an angled tentacle before seemingly coming to a decision, looking up and saying, "Mail?"
"Yeah," Vince said. "Are you the leader? We have a package for you."
The other creature came and took the package from Vince and opened it with surprisingly dexterity considering its lack of thumbs. When it saw the contents – a messy tangle of brown sticks and dead leaves – it squeaked with excitement and slid its antennae through the wood. It looked like a sad Christmas wreath hanging around the other creature's maybe-neck, but both it and the guide were yodeling happily and bouncing up and down in the sand.
"Reminds me of you after a TopShop sale," Howard said.
Vince chose not to rise to the bait. "Do you think they'll give us a tip?"
"I don't know if aliens give tips," Howard said. He looked at the guide and the other creature, who were waving their tentacles in celebration, and said, "Em, excuse me? Naboo said you would pay him for the package?"
The other creature stopped celebrating and tilted its antennae back and forth. It went over to another one of the lines and stuck a tentacle in. Faintly mechanical noises floated out and then ended with a long beep. The other creature looked at them and said, "PayPal."
"PayPal," the guide affirmed.
"Great," Howard said. "Well, we've had a lovely time here on your lovely barren post-apocalyptic wasteland, but we've got to get back to Earth. Do you actually know how we can get off this planet?"
If the aliens noticed Howard being rude, they didn't mention it. The guide came and took Vince's hand and the other creature beckoned them to follow out of the room. Vince and Howard went along.
A series of dark, cavernous paths finally led to another bare, brown room. There was an open window cut out of the wall that looked out onto the expanse of sand and sun. Across the room was a large amber button on the wall, with a plaque underneath written in what looked like millions of different languages. The one that Vince understood read SPACE TRAVEL. The two aliens looked at Howard and Vince expectantly.
"I guess we're off then," Howard said. The sand underneath them rumbled conversationally.
Before Vince could take a step towards the button, the rumble grew into a roar, and the sand outside the window shifted to reveal what he could only describe as a thing - it blocked the sun with its pale larval body, its grey-lipped mouth slavering open and showing jagged, broken teeth. Vince didn't even have the time to flinch before it brought its jaws together and crunched the entire wall of rock down like a twiglet, the amber button that was Vince and Howard's only way home sparking and groaning before the thing swallowed it.
The little guide and the other creature had jumped into Vince's arms and were hiding their eyes in his shirt, whimpering. Vince was pressed up against Howard's back. Howard was frozen in place, just for a moment, before he turned and told Vince, "Run!"
Vince didn't even hesitate. They ran down the passageways, the thing's roar following every step, dodging bits of falling brown rock, until finally the ground stopped shaking and it was quiet again.
The walls behind them had vanished without a trace into the thing's mouth; they were standing half in shelter, half out. Howard said, "What in the name of Brian Mahesh Christ was that?"
The other creature picked its head out of Vince's shirt. It looked around fearfully and then said something in its chittering language.
"I don't –" Howard said.
"Was it a monster?" Vince asked.
The other creature and the little guide looked at each other. The other creature nodded its tentacles and said, "Monster."
"Monster," the little guide emphasized.
Vince put the aliens down. "We've got to figure out a way back to Earth, Howard. We can't stay here forever."
Howard looked at the aliens. "Do you have a way to contact Earth?"
"Mobile," the other creature said.
"What do you mean, mobile?"
The little guide reached up a tentacle and tapped the pocket of Vince's jeans, where he kept his phone. "Mobile, mobile."
"We can't ring Earth on a mobile," Howard said, but Vince was already flipping the phone open and scrolling through his contacts until he got to Naboo's name. It only took a second but the phone began ringing.
"I suppose we can, then," Howard muttered. Vince ignored him. When Naboo answered the phone, Vince could barely hear him over the strains of Hot Hot Heat playing Goodnight Goodnight in the background.
"Awright, Naboo," Vince said. "How's the festival?"
"Muddy," Naboo said. "There was a freak flood. Half of Glastonbury is under water."
"Great," Vince said. "Thing is, Naboo, me and Howard have run into a spot of bother here on this planet. Our way home just got eaten by a monster."
"We won't be able to get you until the roads are clear," Naboo said. "Also, Bollo's meeting up with Fatboy Slim later."
"But…we're trapped on an alien planet," Vince said.
"It'll be a couple of days," Naboo said. "Ask the king to put you two up in the spare room. Did you meet the king?"
The other creature clapped two tentacles together. Out of the ruins of the building, what seemed like a few hundred other aliens that Vince hadn't even known were there emerged and began swiftly rebuilding the wreckage. They moved with incredible swiftness, pulling hunks of brown rock from under the sand and smoothing it like clay until what had been rubble and dust began to look like a building again.
"…I think we met the king, yes," Vince said.
"Ask them to put you two up in the spare room. We'll be there as soon as we can. Got to go, don't want to miss the next act." Naboo hung up.
"Wait –" Vince said, but it was too late.
"What'd he say?" Howard asked.
Vince turned to the other creature. "Do you think we could stay here for a few days until our ride comes?"
The other creature – who Vince had privately decided he was going to call Elvis, since it was the King – checked to see that the repairs were coming along and then gestured at Vince with a tentacle before heading down a corridor.
"I don't suppose we have a choice, do we?" Howard said. Vince was already following after Elvis.
The room that Elvis brought them to was bare except for a thin mattress on the floor. It was draped with dishwater-colored fabric. Elvis pointed at the mattress and waved its tentacles happily.
"…There's only one bed," Howard said.
"Bed!" Elvis said, looking inordinately pleased with itself. Then, slowly and laboriously, "Hos-pit-ality."
Howard sank down on the bed and put his head in his hands. "I'm not going to get a wink of sleep."
Vince said, "C'mon, Howard, it's not that much different than the keepers' hut." Elvis was still waving its tentacles. Vince said, "Cheers, it's lovely."
"Dinner!" Elvis said decisively, which could have meant anything, and shimmied out of the room.
"I don't know why they only talk in nouns," Howard said without picking his head up. "Maybe those are the only English words they can say. It's like a planet full of reading primers. Do you think that worm thing will come around again?"
"Maybe that's why they don't decorate," Vince said. "It's not really worth hauling furniture back from John Lewis when a monster comes by every day and wrecks the place. Probably easier to keep everything brown."
"It's more russet than brown," Howard said primly.
Vince was fairly sure if he allowed it, Howard would go into excruciating detail about all the various tones of brown and their uses and applications. "Is the bed comfortable?"
Howard shrugged. "It's a bed, I suppose. I don't know what these are made of but they're nice and soft. Try them."
Vince pressed a finger into the dirty-looking fabric. Howard was right; they looked deeply uninviting but felt luxurious, like a cross between velvet and silk.
At some point when Vince was examining the fabric, an alien came in looking official. It was carrying a tray of something, which it gave to Howard. It said, "Dinner!" and then respectfully disappeared.
Vince and Howard looked at the tray. There were two lumpy, vaguely ceramic mugs full of greenish liquid, and some brown things that looked a little like potatoes.
"Do you think we can eat it?" Vince asked.
Howard picked up one of the brown things and stuck his thumbs into it. It promptly burst open and stained Howard's hands a vivid blue.
"Well, at least one thing is colorful," Vince said. "How is it?"
Howard resignedly put a bit of blue stuff in his mouth and chewed it. "Not bad." He reached for the mug. His sticky fingers made a surprisingly musical sound as they brushed around the handle. Vince picked up a fruit and carefully broke it open; the soft flesh inside was the deepest pink and redolent with a scent that reminded him of guava and honeysuckle.
The green liquid in the mugs seemed to be a kind of cool, sweet tea, which worked a bit like chamomile in that Vince was ready for bed by the time they'd finished eating. The official-looking alien (A maid? A butler? It was difficult to tell) came in and whisked the tray off, making pleased noises when it saw that everything had been eaten. After it had gone, Howard looked warily at the bed and said, "Maybe we could sleep in shifts."
"Don't be silly," Vince said. "There's plenty of room for both of us. You probably won't even have to tell me not to touch you."
Howard looked doubtful. "It's the size of a matchbox."
"A comfortable matchbox," Vince said. "Just try it."
"All right, but I'm not going to be able to sleep," Howard warned. He took his shoes and socks off, lay back on the mattress and was instantly out cold, making soft whuffling noises through his nose.
Not wanting to wake him, Vince arranged himself to fit into the empty space on the mattress. He lay and looked at the ceiling for a while, and when Howard mumbled, "Make sure to put it on the lemur," and pulled Vince close to him, he didn't protest.
It was rare that Howard allowed Vince to be this close to him without going twitchy, and Vince hoped he wouldn't fall asleep so he could enjoy it for as long as it would last. He always forgot how soft Howard was, how easily he could fit in the place where Howard's shoulder met his throat, where the skin was delicately freckled and always smelt of aftershave and the soap that Howard liked.
Vince turned carefully so his head was on Howard's chest. He counted every breath, every heartbeat, until it was no good struggling against his own closing eyes and he allowed himself to grow heavy in Howard's arms, knowing Howard wouldn't let him go.
When he opened his eyes, Howard was still asleep. Somehow during the night they had twisted around each other so that Vince wasn't quite sure where Howard ended and he started. He allowed himself to trace the spot on Howard's shirt that divoted over his navel briefly and then began untangling himself.
Howard made grumpy, half-awake noises at him but allowed Vince to move him about until he could get up more or less gracefully. Vince considered waking Howard fully but he still looked comfortable, so Vince went to explore on his own.
He wasn't sure what he was going to find, until he turned a corner and found the little guide sitting in an empty room, making happy sounds of industry and weaving what looked like spiderwebs into the same dirty fabric that had been on Vince and Howard's bed. There was a finished pile of fabric dumped in a corner of the room and a plate full of the potato fruits by its side. It looked up and chirped what sounded like a greeting.
"Awright," Vince said. "What're you making?"
The little guide flapped the scrap of fabric at him. There were a few of the potato fruits sitting next to it, and it pushed one over to Vince with a spare tentacle.
"Thanks," Vince said. "Do you have a name? I'm Vince. Vince Noir, rock and roll star."
The little guide said "Vince," and pointed a tentacle at him. It pointed another tentacle at itself and said something that Vince couldn't pronounce.
"Right," Vince said. It seemed rude to continue not calling the guide by a name, but ruder to try to say its name and fail. He thought about all the books about explorers that Howard was always reading. "Would you be okay with me calling you Magellan? He was the first human to travel all around my planet."
The little guide thought about this for a minute. "Magellan!" it said happily and nodded its antennae. "Vince. Magellan."
"Genius," Vince said. He watched Magellan weave for a few moments longer and absently broke the potato fruit open. The pulp inside was jungle green, and for a moment Vince felt a bit homesick. The juice stained his fingertips as he took a bite.
"Have you ever thought about doing something colorful?" he asked Magellan.
Magellan looked blankly at him.
"Can I?" Vince said and pointed at the fabric sitting between them. Magellan looked wary but didn't stop him, so Vince pressed his fingers to the fruit and then touched them to the fabric, leaving a glossy green stain.
Magellan's mouth formed an O of shock. "Broken," it said and huddled into Vince's side. "Broken, broken."
"It's not broken, just different," Vince said. "We can change the whole thing. Look." He pressed some more of the pulp into the scrap. The juice saturated the fibers until three-quarters of it was green.
Magellan looked at the scrap like Vince had just invented fire. "Use?" it said, poking the scrap. "Use?"
"You can use it to make the place look nice," Vince said. "Or wear it. Maybe it could be a scarf. I've got a spare sewing kit in my jeans you could use."
Magellan thought for a moment. It went over to the pile of fabric, dragged one over, and then dexterously broke open a fruit and pressed the juice, pink this time, into the fibers. Vince wasn't sure of what they were doing but at least he was looking at something that wasn't brown.
Vince and Magellan sat and dyed everything that could be dyed until they were out of fruit and fabric. Magellan picked up the finished fabric and bustled out of the room, returning with more aliens in tow. They were all carrying more supplies and looking hopeful, so Vince sat for a while longer and went through the dyeing process again. He thought next he'd show them how to make paint, or maybe there was something around that he could bedazzle.
After everyone had taken their newly dyed cloth away, Vince went to stretch his legs. He wasn't quite sure how to get back to the alien guest room but he figured he'd find it sooner or later.
Someone was playing music down the corridor, silvery notes that Vince didn't recognize. He poked his head around the edge of the entryway and saw Howard sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by aliens and mugs of liquid. He was patiently explaining how different levels of fluid produced different sounds, long Northern fingers tracing around the rim of the mugs and tapping against the handles and somehow creating a sound that was a bit like classical and a bit like pop and a bit like something that had never been created. There were two little aliens sitting in his lap, watching his hands and occasionally letting Howard guide them into making their own music.
Vince had to brace a hand on the wall as a wave of tenderness crashed into him. Howard seemed completely focused on finishing the music lesson, and Vince didn't want to interrupt. He looked on for a few minutes more and then quietly left.
Over the next while (it was hard to tell how much time had passed; it wasn't clear what was day and what was night on the planet) Vince made dyes and paints and pigments while Howard gave music lessons and built rudimentary instruments for the aliens. Vince showed them how to paint on the walls and sewed them capes to wear. Slowly what had been bare and silent turned bright and lively, until Vince looked around and barely recognized where they were.
At some point Elvis came to see them, wearing the eagle cape that Vince had made in homage to the Earth Elvis, and took both their hands, saying, "Occasion, occasion." It tugged them towards the entryway that led outside.
"What's the occasion?" Howard asked, but Elvis just brought them out onto the warm, brown sand.
The occasion, it seemed, was a sort of concert that the alien children were giving. They gathered together on a makeshift stage in vivid patchwork colors, holding instruments that were bigger than they were but somehow coaxing music out of them anyway. Vince couldn't recognize the song, but the adults in the crowd were waving their tentacles in what seemed to be a dance.
"I would have thought you'd have taught them jazz," Vince told Howard.
"Only the properly experienced can understand the art of jazz," Howard said. "A child who learns jazz becomes old before their time, childish things left behind forever…"
"Is that why you grew a mustache when you were five?"
"Shut your mouth," Howard said. "They worked hard on this, let them play." Just as he finished, Vince heard the ground rumble.
"You don't think –" Vince started, and then before he could say another word, there was a familiar roar and a huge pale body blocking the sun.
Howard froze. "No –"
The monster opened its grey-lipped mouth and lunged forward. Just as it was about to swallow the stage and everyone on it, the monster froze, its yellow eye taking in the riot of colors of the stage and the buildings and the aliens, and mushroom-colored bruises began to appear along its body. It twisted back, groaning unbearably.
The alien children had stopped playing when the monster attacked, their lacy tentacles still on their instruments. As the monster thrashed and groaned, they began to play again, louder, their antennae rigid with concentration.
As they all watched, the monster, overwhelmed by color and music, fell sideways onto the ground. It fought to raise its head one last time but instead shriveled and died under the sun. It immediately crumbled into dust and blew away.
For a moment, nobody did anything. Then Elvis began whooping, followed by the rest of the crowd, and the children put down their instruments and formed a triumphant circle around Vince and Howard, celebrating.
Naboo and Bollo showed up in the middle of the celebration. Vince looked up suddenly and they were flying in on a magic carpet, Bollo expertly steering them into a safe landing.
Naboo looked at him. "Awright, Vince."
"Awright, Naboo," Vince said. "How was the trip?"
"Got hung up around Mercury," Naboo said. "You two ready to go?"
Vince and Howard looked at the aliens. Elvis stopped whooping and raised its tentacles in salute. After a minute, the other aliens copied the gesture. Vince allowed himself to bask in the attention for a minute.
He turned to Naboo. "I'm ready. Howard?"
"Ready," Howard said, a little wistfully. He waved goodbye as he took a seat on the carpet. Vince accepted a goodbye hug from Magellan before he sat next to Howard.
"Right, we're off," Naboo said, and Bollo brought them all into orbit.
"So your back rent is paid and I sent that club owner enough to cover the damages," Naboo said. Bollo grunted as they reentered Earth's atmosphere. Within minutes they had landed outside the Nabootique.
Vince allowed Howard to help him disembark from the carpet. "So we can go back to the band?"
"Not likely," Naboo said. "The van's still trashed and you've got a stack of notices in the kitchen banning you from playing every club in Europe. I don't think either of you are cut out for deliveries either. You might as well come work in the shop."
Howard's shoulders slumped. "Shopkeepers?" Vince said, not bothering to hide his disappointment.
"You've got to pay for room and board somehow," Naboo said.
Vince looked at the Nabootique. It seemed a very long way away from what he had started out wanting for himself and Howard.
"Come on, little man," Howard said gently. He put an arm around Vince's shoulders and walked with him into the shop, the door swinging closed behind them.