by Gary Jonas
Thomas was dressed like a Mormon missionary in black pants, white shirt, and black tie. If he’d had a pencil protector, he’d have been an old, but gruff computer nerd. As it stood, I saw him as Military Mormon meets ancient hipster. But he was a talented engineer, and when he played the song back to us, it was surprisingly good and catchy.
Michael nodded. “I’m not normally a pop guy, but that’s a damn good tune.”
“My muse worked overtime,” Apollo said.
If he’d meant it as a slap at me, I didn’t take it that way. Instead, I just nodded. “I like it,” I said.
“You can dance to it,” Quincy said. “But the guitar work sucks.”
“Clean it up a bit, and you can go home, Thomas,” Apollo said. “I’m heading home now, but before I go, allow me to fulfill my guaranteed payment.”
He stepped up to Michael, put a finger to his throat. Apollo’s finger glowed. Michael choked and grabbed his neck. He dropped to his knees.
“Michael!” I said, rushing to him.
“He’s fine,” Apollo said. “The pain will fade in three, two, one.”
Michael took a deep breath and looked up at Apollo. “What did you do to me?”
“You can now walk in sunlight, Michael. Enjoy the daytime hours.”
“He could be lying,” I whispered to Michael.
“I heard that,” Apollo said. “Brett, walk with me.”
I helped Michael to his feet, and Quincy grabbed my arm. “It wasn’t a request.”
He practically threw me into the hall.
Apollo walked ahead of me, and I hurried to catch up. “What did I do now?” I asked.
Apollo grinned. “You’re currently back in my good graces. Your soul belongs to me, you’re going to go on a world tour and while no one will know your name, you’ll get to sleep with a variety of women over the next fifty years. You don’t strike me as the adventurous type so I doubt you’ll sample the men as well.”
“I’m definitely straight,” I said.
“And there are plenty of amazing women on the road. Just one thing. You need to get rid of your demon pet before we embark on our tour.”
“I’ve been trying to do that.”
“Succeed.”
“How?”
“Banish it.”
“No kidding. Dude, I’ve tried. I don’t know how to do it.”
“I don’t like demons. They’re filthy little creatures.”
“Well, we have that in common,” I said.
“Yes, you’re a filthy creature too.”
“Walked right into that one,” I said.
He led me outside, and stopped on the sidewalk while Quincy moved past. “I’ll bring the car around, sir,” Quincy said.
Apollo nodded.
When Quincy was out of earshot, Apollo put a hand on my shoulder. “You have a great deal of magic flowing through your veins, Brett. I suspect your potential is right up there with your father.”
“You know my father?”
“Never had the pleasure.”
“Misfortune, you mean.”
“Fathers aren’t there to win popularity contests, Brett. No matter how bad you think yours was, mine was worse.”
“Your dad was Zeus.”
“And he was an asshole.”
“What’s your point?”
“I’ll tell you after the noise.”
“What noise?” I asked. It was a quiet night, and we couldn’t even hear cars on Seawall Boulevard from here. In the distance, I saw Quincy get into Apollo’s limousine under a street lamp.
“Three, two, one,” Apollo said.
The limousine exploded. The orange ball of fire lit up the night, and a wave of heat rolled over us even a hundred yards away.
“Holy shit!” I said.
The trunk of the limo blew fifty feet into the air, and crashed down on the street. The remains of the car burned brightly.
Apollo took out his phone and placed a call while he watched the car burn. “Denton, I’m ready. Yes, I was right. Pick me up on the side street.”
He disconnected.
“You knew someone was going to try to kill you?”
“That blast wouldn’t kill me. It would mess up my hair, though.”
“But Quincy is dead.”
He nodded. “Yes, well, Quincy wasn’t very good at his job.”
“And you knew it was going to happen.”
“I merely suspected. It’s a warning shot across the bow, so to speak.”
“Some warning shot.”
“I just need to figure out which of them did it. Now, back to my point about fathers. They tend to be tough on us, of course. That’s part of the job description. The trick is to get out of your father’s shadow. Be your own person. I managed it, and I had to get out from under a god.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
“Fire department is on the way. Probably the police as well. You might want to go back inside and pretend you didn’t hear or see anything. Save you from all the bothersome questions.”
I looked at the door. Michael and Thomas hadn’t come outside. “They didn’t hear that?”
“Soundproofing.”
A limo pulled up on the side street. Apollo gave his driver a thumbs-up, then turned to look at me.
“Time for me to go now. You should go back inside and record a song for the B-side.”
“Wait. How did you get out from under Zeus?”
He grinned. “I took his name away from him. The Romans called him Jupiter. What’s even better is that he never knew that was my work. In fact, when the Romans adopted us, I was the only god to keep his name.”
“Not sure how that helps,” I said.
“Desire.”
“Right. To me that’s a U2 song, or something I feel when I look at hot chicks.”
He walked across the grass toward the waiting limo. “Think about it. Meanwhile, demon gone in two days.”
I was about to go back inside when Kevin trotted up. “I didn’t know we were having a light show,” he said, pointing at the burning car.
I opened the door. “Inside, Kevin.”
“What’s going on?”
“I have no idea,” I said. We went inside, and as soon as we stepped into the control room, we could no longer hear the sirens.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nobody from the fire department checked the studio. No cops came inside either. Granted, I’d locked the door, and turned off all the lights except those inside the control room and studio, but I still thought we’d have to answer questions about the explosion.
It never came up.
But that’s not the important thing.
I entered the control room where Thomas and Michael sat talking about music. They looked up at me. Kevin was invisible, so while he stretched out on a table behind the control board, I grabbed a seat next to Michael and leaned back.
“Apollo wants us to record a B-side,” I said.
“But this is a digital release,” Michael said. “There won’t be a B-side.”
“Apollo wants a pressing on vinyl, too,” Thomas said. “He wants to hang it in his office. I was going to just remove the vocal track and put an instrumental version on the B-side, but it doesn’t matter what goes there, and I don’t mind staying for a while if you want to record another song.”
“So what are we supposed to record?” Michael asked.
“Whatever you want,” Thomas said. “It doesn’t matter. If it sucks, no one will ever hear it.”
“And if it’s good?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Then we have options. We can have Apollo sing and lay that in. We can have an actual drummer come in to record the drum track. For now, I’ll just lay in a track that fits whether it’s seventy-five beats per minute or more. Did you want to do a fast song? A ballad? I have a variety of beats we can loop.”
“Maybe we can do a song called ‘Demon in My Pants,’” I said.
“Is that an unrequited love son
g about yours truly?” Kevin asked, propping himself up on one elbow.
I ignored him.
Michael shook his head. “Get real, Brett.”
“Why? No one will ever hear it.”
“Unless it’s good. Did you not just hear there would be options?”
“Yeah, I heard that, but we’re starting with nothing unless you want to do a cover tune.”
“A lot of hits were written in no time,” Michael said. “Greg Kihn wrote ‘The Breakup Song’ in fifteen minutes.”
“I like that song,” I said. “It’s catchy.”
“Adele wrote ‘Skyfall’ in less time than that, and she won a Grammy and an Oscar. Black Sabbath wrote ‘Paranoid’ in no time. David Bowie wrote ‘Life on Mars?’ on a lazy afternoon. Led Zeppelin wrote ‘Rock ’N’ Roll’ in fifteen minutes. Jani Lane wrote the Warrant hit ‘Cherry Pie’ in fifteen minutes. I could go on.”
“To be fair, I understand that Jani Lane hated ‘Cherry Pie’ and that song haunted him for the rest of his career.”
“If we hate our song, we’ll put it on the vinyl and that’s it. But if we like it…”
“We can win a Grammy and an Oscar like Adele?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Adele has more talent in her little finger than our entire band will ever have.”
“You think she’s a siren?” I asked.
Michael laughed. “I think sirens aspire to be her.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s kick around some ideas. We have all night.”
“Sure,” Michael said. “What’s your favorite thing to do?”
“Nap,” I said.
Michael laughed. “Okay, Mister Lazypants. Let’s write a song about napping. What do you have?”
I’d never considered writing a song about napping. But it wasn’t really a joke. I loved taking naps.
Michael went to the studio, grabbed an acoustic guitar, and brought it into the control room. He handed it to me. “Let’s get started,” he said.
And fifteen minutes later, we had a lovely ballad about the joys of taking naps. I called it “Napping My Life Away.”
We recorded it in two takes. Thomas added a drum track, and then we listened to the song once he looped it together.
“This is really good,” Michael said.
“Apollo has his B-side,” I said.
“It’s fine for that,” Thomas said. “We’ll certainly do that.”
“Why do I sense a but coming?” I asked.
“Because I think this is too good to dump as a B-side for a single that’s just for Apollo’s vanity because he wants something to hang on his wall. Let’s take some time to record some video. Just do the lip synch thing. We’ll keep you around the table occasionally flipping over pages and jotting lyrics on a pad of paper. Then we’ll film you in the studio playing and singing. I’ll cut it all together and put it on YouTube. Then I’ll upload the song to iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and all the rest. Who knows? You might make enough money to each buy a cup of coffee.”
“It would be kinda cool to have a song available for download,” Michael said.
And we spent the next few hours recording us pretending to write and play the song.
Thomas looked uneasy toward the end.
“Something wrong?”
“I shouldn’t say anything.”
“And I sense another but coming.”
He nodded, and looked around, as if checking to see if the coast was clear. If Apollo had surveillance equipment, whether it was technological or magical, a glance around the room wasn’t going to reveal it, but I didn’t say anything. I just waited.
Thomas looked me in the eyes. He looked Michael in the eyes. He couldn’t see Kevin, who had curled up to nap in the corner. “I like you guys,” he said.
“We like you too,” I said.
Michael nodded.
More hesitation. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “Don’t get on the plane.”
“We can’t really drive, so flying is the only real option,” I said.
“You don’t have the flu or a coin toss to save you, so don’t get on the plane.”
I understood his reference of course. Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup had been playing with Buddy Holly, but on that fateful day in February 1959, Jennings gave up his seat to the Big Bopper, who had the flu, while Tommy Allsup lost his seat to Richie Valens in a coin toss. That plane crash was immortalized in the Don McLean song, “American Pie,” and known around the world as the day the music died.
“We’re in Galveston,” I said, “so we can’t get frostbite either.”
Thomas nodded because he knew I was referring to the other member of the Crickets, Carl Bunch, who was in the hospital with frostbite when the plane crashed.
“Just giving you a heads up,” he said.
Allsup had heads in the coin toss, so that could also have been a veiled reference. “I’ll make a note,” I said.
By the time we left the studio, the sun was coming up.
I glanced at Michael. “You might want to hurry.”
But instead, he stood still for a moment, and held his arms out to greet the sunlight. It washed over him and he smiled.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “Apollo was true to his word.”
“Apollo is an asshole,” Kevin said.
“That may be true, little demon,” Michael said, “but he’s our asshole.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A weird thing happened the next day.
I heard Apollo’s song on the radio.
“Hey, that’s you,” Kevin said, pointing at the stereo.
He was right. That was my guitar playing.
“Not bad,” he said.
Apollo started singing and it was strong, but when Helen’s voice joined in doing backup, and singing counterpoint, the song jumped in quality.
Helen’s voice had a magical allure, but as a siren, that made sense. Still, for it to come through even on a recording astonished me. I had to pull into a parking lot while the song played. I couldn’t focus on driving.
When the song ended, the spell broke, and I blinked twice.
“Wow,” Kevin said. He might have said more, but if so, it didn’t register.
The DJ said something, too, but I didn’t hear her. All I could think was that I wanted to hear the song again. It hadn’t been that way in the studio, but over the airwaves, it affected me deeply.
“Demonland to Brett, come in, Brett,” Kevin said. He made a static sound then snapped his fingers.
A commercial came on and I snapped out of it. I was off to get groceries. Just enough to get through a few days. We were flying out on Friday.
“I think that’s going to be a smash hit,” Kevin said.
“You may be right,” I said, and believed it.
I pulled back onto the street and continued to the store, but when the commercials ended, the DJ said, “By overwhelming demand, we’re playing Apollo’s ‘Believe in Me, I’ll Believe in You’ again.”
And the song repeated.
At the next side street, I turned off Broadway and wheeled over to the curb beneath the shade of a row of palm trees in front of Victorian homes. Kevin and I were silent as we listened to the song again.
When it ended, Kevin looked at me. “The engineer heightened the effect of the siren’s vocals.”
“Thomas is talented,” I said.
“There’s another song that came in with the Apollo tune. It just says it’s by Brett and Michael. I think I’ll play that now.”
And next thing I knew, my song was playing on the radio.
It didn’t have the same magic as the Apollo tune, but when it ended, the DJ said, “I love it! I love napping, too. Phone lines are lighting up, but before I get to those, I’m playing that Apollo song one more time.”
I stared at Kevin. “If this is happening at radio stations across the country, this could get crazy.”
“Apollo said around the world, didn’t he?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah, but just hearing the song here is more than I can wrap my head around.”
“Get over yourself,” Kevin said. “Buy me some Milk Duds.”
By Thursday, “Believe in Me, I’ll Believe in You” was the most requested song in the Houston area. “Napping My Life Away” was the second most requested song. Sorry, Taylor Swift. Sorry, Bruno Mars.
Billboard updated their charts Thursday at noon, and Apollo was number one. My song was listed, but didn’t show an artist. It was pegged at number two.
By Friday morning, Apollo also had the number one song on iTunes, and my little ditty was at number two. It also climbed the charts around the world.
Sabrina announced that Apollo’s song was her all-time favorite, and she begged me to have him sign a copy of the vinyl single even though she didn’t have a record player. She played it on her iPod over and over again.
And the weird thing was that I didn’t get tired of hearing it either.
Magic.
Michael picked me up at nine o’clock Friday morning. I hadn’t even tried to get rid of Kevin. He’d been nice to me since the song went into heavy rotation. Apollo’s song, of course. He said my song was a cure for insomnia, but I didn’t care.
“Is Sabrina around?” Michael asked.
“Haven’t seen her.”
“She’s pissed at me,” Michael said.
“Why? You’ve been giving her all you’ve got for the past few days. Morning, noon, and night you two are going at it.”
“I won’t see her for a while. She wants to go on the tour, but Apollo said no.”
“He makes up for his little dick by being a huge dick,” I said.
“You’d know.”
Kevin and I carried my suitcase and guitars to Michael’s car. We piled in and headed off to face destiny and a world tour as members of the most popular band in the entire world. It felt weird to even think that.
When we arrived at Scholes International Airport, Apollo’s private jet sat on the tarmac in front of a large hangar. Michael parked next to Lakesha’s hearse.
“What’s Lakesha doing here?” I asked.