“Bathrooms are for the customers only,” she said in a rattled English. A black-suited businessman pushed ahead of him.
He wondered which noble Buddhist truth this beggarly moment qualified as. Was this dukkha or nibbhana? Then again, perhaps it was tanha. It was hard to keep track of these things. He had to eat something.
“Please,” he said. “I’m a … starving … muzish-an.”
He wanted to sound like one of his prophet-heroes, but mainly he sounded like Captain Kirk talking to an alien life-form. His ears ached.
“I … must eat … some … food.”
He understood that he had devolved. He had indulged. He had lost his way. But wasn’t losing your way part of the way? To go against nature is part of nature too?
“Please,” he asked the little Dutch barista, nudging his way up. “Please give … me some cake … and coffee?”
She smiled politely, as did the whole counterful of green-aproned and black-polo-shirted Dutchies, and said nothing.
He looked around at the line of pensive, productive people.
“Please?” he said, smiling. “I’m in … a rock band. My bank account is empty. I’m … so … hungry.”
The Starbucks employees spoke to each other, staring at him. Then their noses wrinkled. Peanut butter could really get rank. All in line kept a healthy distance from His Royal Aromaness.
What would his mother say if she saw this? Oh, why did he have to think of his mother now, driving through Orange County in her yellow Miata, listening to James Dobson’s latest book on tape, nodding along with every fifteenth-century idea he threw out there.
“Here,” the girl at the counter said, handing him some coffeecake, reeling at his stink. “Take it and go. Please go.”
Outside, he wolfed down the burnt offering. It couldn’t be just the peanut butter that had them so revolted. There had to be something else. And then he looked down and gagged.
Dog shit. On his leg. On his shoes. At some point he had fallen in a mighty fresh steaming pile.
He thrust his head into the bushes just a few feet from suited Dutch people enjoying their civilized morning and vomited. Right in the middle of the pretty Dutch scene. Welcome to the jungle, baby.
A businessman almost tripped over him. He stared at Shane, let out a volley of curses, and kept walking.
He needed to get cleaned up, go to Morten’s place and get a fresh set of clothes and a shower, but he had exactly no idea where Morten’s was. Danika had pulled him into that closet backstage, and then they had run off, drunk and cavorting, before he got the information. And he had no idea where Joey was staying, either. He dialed, but Joey wasn’t answering. He left a message that made everything sound a lot better than it was.
“You know, so, no biggie,” he said. “But if I could use your shower before the show, that’d be great.”
Joey would not get the satisfaction of hearing him beg.
He belched up some cake that he hadn’t puked. A car drove by, and he heard the Sharpie Shakes jingle.
… creamy and smooth, it’ll getcha!
That really hurt.
Shane ran across the street to a little park, grabbed some leaves off the ground, and wiped off as much of the dog shit as he could. Nothing brought failure more into focus than wiping manure off yourself. Bile bubbled up in his throat.
A few bicyclists zoomed by and knocked him over.
“Assholes!” he yelled, and rubbed his shit-stained hands in the grass.
There had been triumphs, hadn’t there? There had been moments of glory, sweet glory, where it all seemed worth it, right? He scoured his memory: the time they played in Times Square on the Carson Daly Show; that three-night opening slot for Motley Crüe at the Henry Fonda, right after they finished the record; the photo shoot for Rolling Stone, and their cover story which never saw daylight because of that stupid charge of racism, that prick editor of Spin; the first American tour, rolling thunder in summer, everyone getting along, before Darlo got beat up by that crippled girl’s brother; doing LSD in the desert outside Tucson with those twins, taking off their clothes, mixing his lingam with their yonis, piercing them, a live wire into their energy fields, and the greatest good time of all, whether or not he cared to admit it, the money, that insane advance, and why did he have to remember that now, goddamnit? Why had he given all that money away to satisfy his shame?
Bobby being right galled him.
But all of that still didn’t even begin to explain how he had gotten to this wretched place. It didn’t explain shit. And speaking of shit, some of it had gotten on his hand. He wiped it on the ground, scratched his arm, and felt a little lump in the chest pocket of his jean jacket. That lump was a counterweight to his light wallet, a key to another door, behind which lay calm and happiness. He pulled out a twenty-euro note. He had no recollection of putting any money there. The flimsy scrip was a gift from the universe, a reminder of fortune.
“Thank you,” he said to his arm. “Blessed be, thank you.”
He shed a few tears of relief, making promises in his head and apologies to the sky. “I am so sorry,” he said, “that I let my anger divert me.”
The Buddha didn’t let anger get him. The Buddha didn’t get consumed with rage, step in dog shit, and lose track of the money he had in his pocket.
“O thanks to the peaceful ways of thee,” he said, and stumbled on.
The first food establishment he saw was where he would eat, he decided, even if it meant he would have to eat meat. So hard to find anything vegan in this town. So hard to find anything vegan anywhere in Europe. And there, like a mirage, stood a McDonald’s. He hadn’t eaten McDonald’s in years. It was the vegan Antichrist, the herbivore’s Beelzebub. But philosophy seemed like a luxury that cost a lot more than the twenty euros in his pocket, and suddenly he missed meat even more than he missed his long-lost sense of who he actually was. The golden arches beckoned like the arms of Shiva.
6
YOU PEOPLE ARE CRAZY!”
Joey bobbed and weaved in the tangles of another throng of cyclists.
Ring ring ring! Dutch Dutch Dutch!
“Jesus fucking Christ!” she yelled, but they didn’t give her the satisfaction of a glance. “Gonna kill me!”
Her brain floating in a pool of Stella, she stopped at a soup bar and sucked down minty split pea while a trio of teenagers made a bunch of noise about how great Ryan Adams was. “So cute!” one of them said. “So talented!”
She hobbled out, dry-popped a few more Tylenol, and approached the line at the Van Gogh, which ran halfway down the block. Adam stood near the front, reading a copy of Siddhartha, looking like an extra in Cirque du Soleil. Joey frowned. “Oh God, please don’t fucking tell me that you’re getting into that Tantric Buddhist bullshit too.”
“No,” Adam said. “I just wanted to see if anything in the book matches up with anything that Shane says.”
“Does it?”
“Not yet.”
Adam smiled at her in that annoying heartfelt way. The guy had a sincere streak five miles wide. But Joey knew she shouldn’t be sitting in judgment of anyone, and after all, that syrupy look felt kind of nice. No one else in the band was going to give her that look, especially with the bad news from Hackney. She wondered where in Amsterdam she could buy body armor.
“I went into the Grasshopper,” Joey said. “Have you been there?”
“For about ten minutes. Such a bummer. Like an opium den. Tour is already depressing enough.”
“Well, it’s almost over.”
Adam nodded solemnly as they shuffled forward. “I’ve been waiting months for touring to end, but now I really don’t know what to feel. It’s weird that we’re going to be in limbo, you know?”
“Roger that,” Joey said, but of course they weren’t going to be in limbo. One show was all that stood between Blood Orphans and the dustbin of rock-and-roll history.
“Darlo completely humiliated me onstage last night,” Adam said as they
filed in. “It’s the last time.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“This time I mean it.”
“You mean what?”
Adam said nothing, took out his wallet.
“That’s what I thought,” Joey said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”
The Van Gogh was packed with happy faces: the American upper-middle-class tourists with their new REI-approved hooded winter parkas; the hostelers with their water-resistant Thinsulate anoraks; the young Dutch couples arm-in-arm; the shutter-happy Japanese traveling in packs. But there wasn’t an ounce of happiness, Joey thought, in the work before them. MC Van Gogh sure had rocked the most miserable of painterly mikes.
Joey had minored in art history at UCLA, and she thought about painters in rock music comparisons. Monet was straight-up Lovin’ Spoonful. Mondrian was Kraftwerk with strings. Canaletto was two parts Beatles and one part ELO. But Van Gogh was his own thing.
“You’re really hobbling,” Adam said. “You OK?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and tasted lipstick. “Don’t bring it up.”
They stopped in front of The Cottage. A little rural house, the sun going down, a fire within through the stone window. Rough filters.
“I love this one,” Adam said. “I wrote a paper on it in art school. It was like a creative writing/art crit course, where we took paintings and extrapolated on what we thought the story was. I said that it was the house of a local murderer, a nineteenth-century serial killer.”
Joey scanned the crowd for hotties. Slim pickins.
“Where did you get that theory from?” she asked.
“It’s so sinister. Look at the wet olive tones and the burnt orange.”
Joey picked a cocaine crumb from her nose. “What, now olive and orange are symbols of death?”
Adam looked exasperated; she wasn’t playing her part. “No,” he said. “Jesus, Joey.”
“You’re not explaining it very well.”
“Well, quit being so literal. Just look at it, for fuck’s sake.” He stuck his hands out and made a scrunchy motion. “Just feel it.”
Joey stuck her hands out the same way. They looked like two people poking through an invisible pound of raw hamburger.
“Feel it?” Adam said. “Murder on the menu.”
“Hmm,” Joey said, and crossed her arms. “Do you think Van Gogh had a big cock?”
Adam looked down, exhausted.
“I should have been an art critic,” she said. “I should have followed my bliss. I could have been the art critic who writes about imagined artist cocks. Could have written a whole fucking book about it. I’d call it The Angle of the Dangle. An awesome muh-fugging title. Don’t you think?”
“Quit mocking me,” Adam said.
She still had that cocaine crust on her finger. It almost constituted a bump. She wiped the residue on her skirt. “Do you think I was a good manager, Adam?”
“A good manager?”
“Just check your reticence at the door and answer the question.”
Adam stuck out his lower lip. They had moved on to a series of paintings of flowers. “I think you did the best you could. I mean, I’m so wiped out it’s hard to say. Maybe in a week I could tell you.”
She squinted. “A week.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a complicated question.”
She looked deep into his eyes. He wasn’t kidding.
“Just say yes or no. Just go with your gut.”
Adam looked as if he suddenly had to take a raging piss. “I just don’t know, Joey.” He tried to move, but Joey grabbed him.
“Say yes or no,” she said. “Don’t write a letter. Don’t consult your genie in a bottle. Don’t call your mommy for advice. Just tell me what you fucking think.”
“Adam?”
A slight, beautiful hipster boy in the eighties-revival style emerged from the crowd.
“Oh, hey,” Adam said. “How are you? This is Joey, our manager.”
The boy introduced himself as Charlie Darling. He had photographed the band for British Vogue. For the shoot they had frolicked in the topiary of some thousand-year-old English manor dressed up like dukes, all Adam Ant–like. Charlie caught them in midair poses à la Hard Day’s Night. After, they had all done ecstasy. Bobby and Charlie Darling had made out behind the stables.
“Wow,” Joey said. “Bobby, huh?”
“Indeed,” Charlie said, playing with his headband. “And how is Bobby? Boy with the thorn in his side, eh?”
“In his hands, maybe,” Adam said. “What brings you to Amsterdam?”
“Long weekend of sexcapades,” he said. “You can’t beat this town for hobbying, and the price is where it’s at. But how have things been?”
“Terrible,” Joey said. “We’ve been abandoned by our label.”
Adam looked at Joey like, What the fuck is wrong with you? He actually looked disgusted. This improved Joey’s mood a hundred percent.
“Oh yeah,” she continued, “we’ve been fucked three ways until Wednesday by Warners. Left out to dry. Screwed, blewed, and tattooed.”
“Uh-huh,” Charlie said, because no one ever said stuff like that. You always kept up a bullshit front. You always acted like you’d just been asked to headline the Super Bowl. “Sorry to hear that. Such a good band.”
“You’re not sorry,” Joey said, disgusted with Charlie, a real Captain Disingenuous. “You probably think it’s funny. You’re probably just as fake and backstabbing as the —”
“Shut up,” Adam said.
Ah, fuck it, Joey thought. This was sweet, being able to speak her mind. But wait, she had always spoken her mind. That was the problem.
“I’m so sorry about the way things have gone,” Charlie said. “Hopefully things will improve.”
“Doubt it, Charlie,” she said. “Nothing personal. I’m sorry. But fuck you and fuck British Vogue and fucking fuck all of you.”
She winked at Adam, whose mustache had withered completely.
“See you outside?” she asked, and tried to skip away. But her bad leg wasn’t doing so hot, so she hobbled off, clutching herself, moaning in pain.
7
THEY’D BEEN HAVING such a nice time, Adam thought, and then Joey had exploded all over the fey photographer. Which made him think that maybe they hadn’t been having such a nice time, that in fact Joey had been acting strange since the moment she appeared in line, dim-eyed, beer-breathed, and limping, carrying a vibe that said, It’s over. Curtains. Sayonara. Auf Wiedersehen, Blood Orphans.
Joey, he knew, was a good soul; she may not really have known what she was doing, but if nothing else, she was a buffer zone between Darlo and the universe. Their only trouble-free tour had been the one she’d been along for; Darlo hadn’t gotten in a single fight, and Darlo could no more avoid fights than he could avoid semianonymous sex. The drummer’s feelings for Joey were hard to determine, but he sure as shit straightened up when she walked in the room.
Yes, they were having a gay old time, there in the Van Gogh, until Joey started going on about whether or not Adam thought she was a good manager. Got right up in his face, so that Adam saw the network of lines around her eyes, lines that ran down her cheek so she looked old, as if she’d smoked too many cigarettes and had lost the elastin in her face. He could see the process of decomposition starting to happen underneath the smooth Sephora sheen, like in a horror movie where the young, beautiful girl is revealed to be three hundred years old, and a bloodsucker.
“See you outside?” she had said, and scampered off like Quasimodo.
Adam found her out front, talking on the phone with Darlo. Joey hung up, smiling. “Darlo’s got his panties up in a bunch. Something with his dad.”
“Hope it’s not too bad.”
“I hope it’s bad.” She smiled tightly, cigarette smoke enveloping her. “The guy’s a fucking scumbag. I told Darlo from the day I met him that he needed to distance h
imself from the old slime-stain. And did he listen? No. God forbid he should listen to me.”
“You’re the only one he listens to.”
Joey looked at him, disbelieving, smoke shrouding her face. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Adam’s eyes went sharp. “You know what’s up.”
Adam watched confusion settle in Joey’s eyes. She looked around as if she stood in a cage, trying to find the lock.
“These bike riders are crazy,” she said. “I almost got hit too many times to count. Vast armies of them. Battalions of them. Or would that be batallia?”
She kept looking around, frantic to change the subject.
“You’re not a bad manager, Joey,” he said. “You’re a great manager. There’s the answer to your question.”
Her eyes came to rest. She brushed off her suit jacket. She even managed to look a little bashful.
“Thanks, Adam. Your lie is most appreciated.” She squeezed his shoulder. “The whole fucking time this band has been together, you’ve been playing Gandhi. Maybe it’s the best approach to all the bullshit.”
“It isn’t.” He unlocked his bike. “I can promise you that.”
She leaned on the bike rack, pulled her aviators from her hair, and put them on. “Anyway, this will all be over soon, which you probably know better than the others because you’re not all fucked up, you’re still the same person, no better or worse than you were when you were playing in Angel’s Sweat, and I hope in your post–Blood Orphans existence that you stop being the one everyone laughs at. The long-suffering martyr act didn’t serve you well in this band, and it won’t serve you well in life.”
Adam nodded, and thought, Joey, poor Joey. But behind those words, he smarted.
“I say this,” she said, wincing on her bad leg, “because I care about you, and Darlo, and even Shane, though I shouldn’t.”
“What about Bobby?”
Joey dropped her empty Players box. “Bobby sucks. I fucking hate Bobby. Little Darlo suck-up.”
“He’s all right.”
“Is he?” She stamped on the box again and again. “No one with hands like that is all right. I wish I could fire Bobby and fix the whole problem. But that would be too easy.”
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