“Shane,” she said, and pulled away as he tried to grab it from her. They rubbed against each other. Kiss me now, she thought. But he wavered.
“I wanna fucking talk to him,” Darlo said.
“Tough shit,” she said, and took the call. “What’s up, white bread?”
“Hi, Joey. You’re in Amsterdam, right?”
“Fine,” she said, “and how are you?”
“Fine. You’re in Amsterdam, right?”
“Oh good, I’m glad you’re well. How was the show last night?”
“You’re in Amsterdam, right?”
Darlo stared off into space, his square-jawed profile measuring up well as black hair flopped beautifully over his eyes. She lit a Players and passed him a match.
“I need to use your hotel room,” Shane said. “I need a shower.”
“What about Morten’s?”
“I didn’t stay there last night, and I could really use a nice bathroom right now, and besides, I don’t even know where Morten’s —”
“Find a hostel.” Silence. “Did you get that?”
“Joey, do me a fucking favor for once.”
“Apologize for telling Helen that I’m a shitty manager.”
“I didn’t tell Helen —”
“See you later.”
“Fine! I’m sorry. Where’s your fucking hotel?”
Joey stared at Darlo’s hair. Such good hair. “I’m at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. On Dam Square. Get a key from reception.”
Shane clicked it right in her ear.
“Dickwad,” she said, strangling her phone, and turned to Darlo. “Why does the singer always have to be the baby?”
“Gets him attention,” Darlo said, and blew smoke rings.
They continued to stroll in the wrong direction. Joey chain-smoked and gamed out dinner. How would everyone take it? Adam would act like a normal human being; Joey was sure the guitar player wanted out but was too spineless to quit without such a major development — this would be his chance. Bobby would laugh and scratch at his disgusting hands and pretend that he was thrilled, they had it coming — the Mummy was such a future-fucker — but inside he would be dying. Shane was a wild card; he could be sanguine or damning, biding his time, that careerist shit. Darlo wouldn’t accept it. He’d demand satisfaction, the phone numbers of all involved, just so he could embarrass himself even more deeply than he already had, as if two years were not enough to forever disgust everyone who pledged to help him. Or he’d skip the Rolodex, jump across the table, and throttle her.
Darlo had that thousand-yard stare on. Despite thinking that Père Cox was largely subhuman, she hadn’t thought he’d fuck over his son. But he had, right in the keester.
The drummer shook his head, as if breaking free from a spell. “I just can’t believe my dad would mismanage things like this,” he said. “He’s got an aging outlaw problem, man — he just wants to be young forever. It’s making him do weird, crazy shit.”
“You mean the snuff films?”
Darlo looked at her. Was that hurt on his face?
“They’re not snuff films,” he said.
“Close enough. You told me about that one girl.”
“It was just a black eye. He paid her for it.”
She laughed. “Please tell me you’re not defending him.”
“I’m not,” he said. “But it was acting.”
She too blew smoke rings, feeling competitive. “The sooner you start understanding that violence is wrong, always wrong, the sooner you and I can do business.”
“You mean fuck?”
“No, Darlo.” She stretched her aching leg. “Something deeper than that.”
Darlo changed the subject, started in on one of his diagnostic sessions, where he catalogued all that had gone wrong with the band and made recommendations for how to fix it. This was the vestigial, ossified version of the bull sessions the two of them had once so enjoyed, back when they were going to take over the world, back when the world was the length of the Sunset Strip and thick enough to spread all over the globe. Glory on a small scale was suitable for all kinds of dreamers. You could really plot that graph. But the bigger stuff required real mathematicians, required an actual and quantified understanding of the algorithms of celebrity, the positioning of image, the discipline to stay with the plan. Sting and McCartney and Steven Tyler had discipline, Joey thought. Jim Morrison and Sid Vicious did not. Neither did Darlo, or anyone in Blood Orphans except Adam, Mr. Anticharisma.
Adam had discipline. No wonder they hated him.
The intimacy of those bull sessions. The authenticity. Their collective ability to imagine it fully and enact it. Beautiful. Sunshined. Beers at the Silverlake Lounge and hamburgers at Tommy’s and cocaine at Peppermint Castle. And now here was Darlo, a little bug in the rainforest of fame, trying to drag the mighty leaf of perseverance across the jungle floor. Here he was, all alone with broken antennae. What could Joey do? She got down there in the dirt, stretched her mandibles, and gave a pull.
“Mistakes were made,” she said. “I won’t dispute that.”
Darlo lit up, managing to burn his hand on the match a little.
“One mistake we made,” he said, “was ‘Hella-Prosthetica.’ That’s a bad idea for a song. Fucking cringe-tastic, dude. Some kid e-mailed me a drawing of what it would look like to actually fuck some chick without legs.”
“Not to mention the fight you got in because of that stupid song.” Joey took a drag. “That didn’t wise you up?”
“No. That guy was a prick, man.”
“I’m sorry,” Joey said. “But it seemed totally reasonable to me.”
“Why? Because his sister had no legs?”
“That sounds about right.”
“Fucker had a strong punch,” Darlo said, in a tone of contrition. “If I had it coming, I sure as shit got it.” The bloodshot in his eyes had increased, as if he were crying on the inside of his sockets. “A real strong punch.”
They continued on, into Museumplein. Joey wondered how they had just gone in a circle. On the green, a couple hundred kids protested America’s involvement in every little thing. Hippies, straights, and a few modern primitives, a smattering of dreadlocks and old furs, and polar fleece like icing.
“The old devil America,” Darlo said. “Get a new hobby.”
The crowd grew fast, coagulating like hair in a drain. Banners waved under the gray Dutch sky, watched over by the old buildings, scoured and prettified. Joey wondered about all the different demonstrations that had occurred through history upon this Dutch square: greater chocolate tariffs, better representation for tobacco traders, anger over burgher-mandated funny hats. In this context, anti-McDonald’s-ism couldn’t match up.
“Look at these assholes,” Darlo said, motioning to the protesters.
“They’re not assholes,” Joey said. “They’re angry.”
Darlo ran tongue over teeth. “Spare me the fucking sociology, babe,” he said, “because you were sitting in your fucking office filing your nails while we were stuck in a van wasting time, wasting our fucking time because Warners didn’t do their fucking job, because you didn’t do your job. Fucking stuck in there going insane at eighty miles per hour, the black hole of rock-and-roll fucking Calcutta.”
They stood at the fringe of the mass. A young man with a blond beard, a real Dutch Guevara, stood on a platform, raised his fist, and railed. Joey didn’t understand a word, but the strident tone said it all.
Darlo pointed at a few choice female backsides. “We’re all the same, man. The way they put their ass in the air in those European beds, it’s no different from American girls. Except European girls like it more. Euros love getting fucked in the ass. Let history be my guide.”
Joey thought it best to not continue this line of conversation. It would end in an entanglement of her mind and spirit, and right now she needed to feel elevated over Darlo.
“All of them,” the drummer said. “Ungrateful worms.”
No one turne
d to look.
“All of them. Just like my band.”
Worrying about her dudes ran deep in the manager’s blood; Joey enjoyed the privilege, the exceptional vantage from which she could watch, diagnose, and take care of her boys. Even Darlo. Especially Darlo. Her old partner in crime, who now, in the midst of this bracing autumnal moment, at this late, late hour, was cracking hard and cracking ugly. Oh, to the untrained eye the young man appeared to be like any other snot-nosed hottie in a leather jacket, just another chauvinist-cum-tourist-cum-two-week-drunk, some frat boy with a little clothes sense. But Joey knew better. Darlo, waving his arms and mumbling about the undeserving, was a magician throwing blank spells. His abrasion and bravado, usually a vibe that came off him in feral waves, had lost transmission.
He continued to piss and moan. His ill-fitting amalgam of pettiness, bitterness, and flat-out incoherence looked to passersby like nothing more than the whinings of a sulky and privileged American son. But actually, this stink bomb of emotional dry charges constituted Darlo’s cry for help.
“Babe,” she said, grabbing his shoulders. “It’s OK.”
Darlo’s eyes popped at her. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“You know.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. Like you’re gonna let me in. Like you’re finally going to let it happen.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“You know how hard it is for me,” he said. “You totally know.”
Joey knew that she couldn’t go the tenderness route. Her sentiments hardened. “I’m worried about you. Look at you. You’re a mess.”
Cheering came up from the crowd. Dutch Guevara left the stage.
“Maybe I am,” he said. “But you can’t fucking help.”
“Because I won’t let it happen?”
He shook his head, as if he’d grown tired of explaining something important.
Everything was lost. Her band, her career, her twenties. The weight of it sank in while people around her grew louder, became strident, thought about things outside the purview of the radius of their collective navel. Joey wished she had any fucking idea how to navigate the maze of Darlo’s heart without getting lost in its bloated curves.
And then they were burning a replica of President Bush. Joey thought of the footage she’d seen as a child, of Iranian protesters parading the hostages, chanting, dancing, doing the anti-American hokeypokey. Hopefully they would circle her and Darlo and try to rip them to pieces. Bring it on, you bitches, she thought. Bring it on.
13
ADAM IMMERSED HIMSELF in the rush of cyclists moving along the Amstel. Joey’s behavior at the museum had freaked him out. Something about her mania felt dead serious, felt steady-on bad, portended doom. He was starting to feel as if today was a special day, profoundly special.
He wondered what had happened with Darlo’s dad. When the two had met in the Cox kitchen, the old freak’s eyes had climbed over him like spiders.
“You’re an artist, huh?” Cox asked. Wearing a karate outfit, he’d been practicing his forms on the back lawn while the band was swimming. Now he stood by the butcher block, sweaty, sipping water, thinning hair slicked back, looking at Adam as if he wore a stolen heirloom. “An artist, I said?”
“Yes. I’m at CalArts, studying —”
“My sister was an artist.” Sip. “Acid casualty.” Sip. “What do you think of that?”
“Think of what?”
“Art’s relationship to being fucked up.”
“Sometimes an intense vision comes with an inability to cope.”
“Ooh, smart guy.” Sip. “I think that art is for people who want to cover the walls of people with real jobs.” Sip.
“You’re entitled to your opinion.”
“Damn right —” Sip — “I am.”
Cox adjusted his black belt. No way, Adam thought, that black belt was real. Cox spit water into the sink. The man’s skin looked like distressed leather. Adam felt retchy.
“At least you play the guitar,” Cox said. “You can make some money out of that. And play quite well, Darlo says.”
“That’s very kind of him.”
“Kind?” he said. “No, not my son.”
Following the flow of traffic, Adam imagined Cox being escorted away from his porn palace in cuffs and thought maybe, a few years down the road, when all had been forgotten, he’d paint that scene, but switch Dad out for Darlo.
Now and then Adam had lobbied for changes in the music. Blood Orphans could evolve if they wanted, away from songs about girls who imitate vacuum cleaners, florid nuclear scenarios, and motorcycles that talked.
They had tried to learn one cover, early on: “Eighties,” by Killing Joke, because Darlo heard it in Weird Science and thought it sounded tough. They recorded it for the record, but Shane did Jaz Coleman about as well as George W. Bush did Abraham Lincoln.
“No good,” Sheridan, their stoner producer, had said from the control room. “Too soft.”
On the third tour, Adam broached the subject of adding acoustic elements to the next record, suggesting covers — Neutral Milk Hotel, Cat Stevens, Nick Drake — as a way into the soft parade.
“Neutral Milk Hotel?” Darlo had said. “The fuck’s a Neutral Milk Hotel?”
They were driving on I-15 through Idaho, one of the ugliest stretches of interstate, second only to I-20 across west Texas. Shane was at the wheel, which meant they were stuck in the right lane, cruise control set at sixty.
“They’re really amazing,” Adam said.
“They sound gay,” Darlo replied, and turned up the AC/DC.
Adam looked to Bobby for support. The bass player lit a Marlboro.
“Fu Manchu is right,” Bobby said. “You should listen to him for once. All the cool girls like it.”
“Is that so?”
“Yup. And you know who cool girls don’t like?”
“Who?”
Sometimes the drummer could be so thick.
“Us, Darlo. They don’t like us. Cool critics don’t like us either.”
“No critics like us,” Shane said. “We’re racists.”
They all laughed. It was still early enough in the game for them to laugh together, once or twice a week.
“We need some cool points, that’s for sure,” Darlo said. “Neutral what-did-you-call-it?”
The next day Adam stuck In the Aeroplane over the Sea into the car stereo while Darlo was driving.
“This is the band I was telling you about.”
“Uh-huh,” Darlo said, picking his nose. “Fine.”
They listened to about half the record, and Darlo seemed to be enjoying it. But then he reached for his soda, pulling through the piles, and came up with one of Shane’s Gideon Bibles, which, since the demise of his Extreme Teen Bible, the singer had begun stealing en masse from motels. He lobbed the volume back and popped Shane, asleep and drooling, in the head.
“I thought I told you to stop stuffing the van with these.”
Shane threw it back. “I’m collecting colors.”
“You can’t do that shit, dude. It’s not funny and it serves no purpose and we get it that you’re mad.”
Shane put the Bible under his pillow to prop his head. “I’ll do what I want, sex addict.”
And then it was on. The Shane and Darlo Show.
Darlo grabbed the CD out of the player. “This fucking whiny gay music is driving me fucking crazy!”
The next time Adam brought up the idea, a week later in a Nashville green room, Darlo rolled his eyes. “Oh my God. Will you just give it a rest, Adam?”
“This is only the second time I’ve mentioned it.”
Darlo adjusted his balls and threw an acidic smile. “Then I guess it’s two times too many.”
Adam looked at Bobby, but Bobby appeared to be operating on his hands. He squared up his weak jaw.
“We’re going to have to —”
“— shake it up for th
e next record. Yeah, yeah, I know, Adam.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Shut up about it!” Darlo chucked a drumstick at him. “Stop trying to undermine what we’re doing with your faggy folk-music ideas! Can you imagine me writing lyrics like ‘Double Mocha Lattay’ to some stupid acoustic music?”
“That’s his point,” Shane said. “You retard.”
Everyone, even Darlo, knew that the second record had to be different. They weren’t even the laughingstock of the music business anymore; other bands had taken their place. They were simply a synonym for utter lame-itude. As in, man, that song’s a real Blood Orphan, or, Jesus, that tour routing is just utter Blood Orphans, or, Fuckin’ A, the turnout tonight was full-on Blood Orphans. I mean, was anybody there?
Getting along was the least of their problems. At some point, Adam would have to go to Darlo and say, We’re fucked and you know it. Give me a turn at the wheel or I quit.
“That’s right,” he said, moving through traffic. “I’ll quit.”
He cursed his mousy voice. He rode his Dutch bike along some canal and contemplated years of big talk and no walk.
How many times had he promised to make things right? At least thirty.
How many times had he actually threatened to leave? Maybe two.
Degree to which he felt like he was a chickenshit loser? Priceless.
The little part of Adam with some cojones, tied up in the cellar of his sensitive-guy mind, marveled at his ability to get all the lessons of his childhood wrong, to come from a family of bullies, get attacked and ridiculed for being a sweet sensitive boy with feelings, and simply take it. To go out in the world and, at his first real opportunity, get into exactly the same dynamic of abuse that he’d promised he would forever be free of.
Adam had always found excuses. In childhood: the brotherly trouble ends sooner when I do nothing. In adolescence: soon I will be done and gone, no use dragging it out by antagonizing the Bakersfield apes. In Blood Orphans: but look at all the money, and the chance for glory, and the publishing money on top of it. Look at my bank balance!
Excuses.
But now the end of the line was here. He really had nothing to lose. Go ahead. Call my bluff. This time he meant it.
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