“So now you’re his errand boy?”
“Looks that way.”
Joey didn’t like this at all. Adam sounded happy and carefree, not like he’d just had the shit kicked out of him.
“Tell Fritz to go eat a bag of apples,” she said. “Is that it?”
“Sure. Uh, actually,” Adam continued, all jaunty-like, “I was wondering what time you wanted us at the hotel for dinner.”
“Six. How’s your face?”
“Puffed up but OK. Hey, I met the people who’re staying at Morten’s after us. A singer-songwriter named Deena Freeze and her manager. She just got signed to Warners and she’s opening for us tonight.”
Joey’s stomach rolled a little. “Oh yeah?” she said, faking nonchalance. “Had they heard of us?”
Hesitation on the line said it all. In that millisecond of hesitation lay the difference between hitting the ball out of the park and striking out. “Yeah, they had.”
“And what did they say?”
Another second of hesitation, a dagger in her heart.
“They said that they liked us. I played them a Bach fugue.”
“On the guitar.”
“No, on the stereo. Yes, on the guitar.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. So they’d take us seriously.”
The word traitor rushed up in her throat like a surging crowd at Riverfront Stadium, ready to trample all her remaining hope. Take us seriously. Oh, please. This is the thanks I get — I help stop two thugs from eating your velvet-covered ass and you go and audition for some Euro Tori Amos ripoff. Little sneaky fuck.
Blood Orphans without Adam. Great.
“Dinner,” she said. “Don’t be late for it.”
Adam was saying something plaintive, but Joey hung up.
“You suck, Nickerson,” she said. “How could you do that to me?”
Truth be told, when they all got back to LA, she planned on getting Adam into Natalia’s Edge, one of her new bands, but she still wanted all her options open. Just her luck to have Adam find a little confidence. Though better late than early; if he had any sense of his power as a shredder, Blood Orphans would never have happened. He’d be in a band called Adam Orphans, full of songs centered around long, silly, pyro guitar solos. He’d be the twenty-first-century Robert Fripp, and Darlo would still be hanging out at Spaceland, trying to get in her pants. Shane would still be in New Testament Express, or whatever the fuck his Christian Nation band was called. And Bobby would be scratching his hands in his apartment, watching Guy Ritchie films and feeling sorry for himself.
Adam. The prime mover. Who knew?
She neared the Grand Amsterdam, which resembled an in-city manor for kings and queens wedged between two canals off Dam Square. Hackney had done quite well for himself. She’d make him understand how much Blood Orphans meant to her. She’d get him down with the concept.
She dialed his number.
“Joey,” he said, sounding smooth and sleepy. “Hello, love.”
“I’m walking into the lobby of your baronial mansion,” she said. “We need to talk. We need some privacy. Know what I’m saying, babe?”
He just laughed.
“Cur,” she said, and felt a little dizzy.
Joey had once had a boyfriend, a musician of no talent but fine Sid Vicious–type looks, who liked the old trick-and-hooker role-play. She’d don her grandmother’s above-the-knee rabbit coat, gold stiletto heels, and not much else, plaster her face in rust-colored glitter and flesh-colored lipstick, and take a walk over to the Renaissance Hollywood. Those stilettos fucked her bum leg up pretty bad, but by the time she made it up the elevator, her hoop earrings swinging and nose ice-cold from the coke, she was soaked all the way through and ready to move on him like a butter churn.
Yes, acting like a ho on occasion really got her slick. So why, in the elevator of the Grand Amsterdam, was she dry as the Gobi? Coming here, she assured herself, was a good idea. She was saving her band, her career, her reputation, by whatever means necessary. She saw herself across the arc of the past few years, a highlight film of decree-making, fast talking, and other heroic business-related acts that required her to wave her arms around and prove significant points. She pepped herself to the task, looking at her distorted cute-as-a-button face in the elevator mirror, lost in the funhouse.
The elevator door opened. She marched on down the hallway of chrome and vanilla carpet, an odd color she had never seen in the States, and banged on the door of room 305.
“Candygram,” she said, turning the knob. “Love bunny.”
He sat at the foot of the bed, in slacks but shirtless, lit cigarette in mouth. He looked twice as good half naked as fully clothed — just the perfect spot of black chest hair, thick at the sternum and lightly spreading toward his nipples. Broad chest. Washboard abs.
“Damn,” she said. “Aren’t you a sight.”
“As are you. What a surprise.”
She put hands on hips in a bratty pose, pulling up the skirt a little so the hem lay halfway between knee and crotch.
“Wondered all day what you and me were all about,” she said, though she had no idea what that meant. “Wondered how maybe we could” — she unzipped her skirt — “get along a little better. I just don’t think that we …” She blinked, wondered what to say that could come across as witty. “… understand each other.”
Hackney snickered and stood up.
“We understand each other just fine,” he said, and went to her.
Across the room he came. Hackney took her in, a smile growing on his face, and Joey thought about how many times this scene had been presented to him: a young woman, in nicer clothes than she could afford, offering up her body. She wondered if anything she did to, for, or with this man would be different from what the other pieces of ass that had come to one of his hundreds of five-star hotel rooms had done. She wondered where that sense of righteous mission had gone. She wondered what the hell she was doing here, and why she felt as if, for the first time in her life, she was being unfaithful.
The manager put her hands up. “No,” she said. “No.”
Hackney stuck out his lower lip. “No what?”
“Fucking you … This, this stupid …”
Hackney smiled, put his hand on her shoulder, and kissed her. For a moment she saw it all, was on top of him, riding that rock-hard Midlands steed. She kept her tongue in his mouth long enough to get wet, but when she didn’t, her suspicions were confirmed, and she pushed him off.
“Seriously,” she said. “I’m sorry. Your mouth is a wonderland and I’m sure your body is too, but —”
“Joey,” he said, nodding in sympathy. “Fine, love.”
“And my leg is fucking killing me. Can I sit down?”
Hackney cleared a chair of some clothes and walked back to his bed. The dim lighting in here, Joey thought, really worked. All the elements — the color of the walls, the placing of the lamps, the type of bulbs — brought out the bronze in a person’s skin, the smoothness, the health.
“Do you want some water?” he asked, and put on a white undershirt.
Joey still wanted to fuck him. She also most definitely did not want to fuck him. Phantoms of ambiguity made plays for her soul. She felt sick from not knowing what to do, here in this stranger’s room, late in the afternoon.
She lit a cigarette and took out her flask of Applejack. “All day I’ve been mulling it over in my head. But I’m here because I just don’t get it.”
He sat back in his chair. Black hair fell forward, covered one of his eyes. He brushed it back. “Get what?”
“Why we’re being dropped.”
“Joey,” he said, in a you’re drunk kind of voice. “Come on, love.”
She kicked off her shoes and massaged her feet, which had gone numb. Fashion over comfort was a raw deal. “You should come to dinner and tell them,” she said, waving the flask near her lips. “Break their dreams down.”
“Joey, please, st
op with this.”
She took another slug. Bitter apple syrup coated her throat. “What about that tour with the Killers? Like, two months ago you promised us that. Like, two months ago you promised one more shot. People don’t even remember the racism bit anymore. People have half-lives for memories.”
“We’ve been through this.”
“Let me tell them it might happen.”
“It won’t.”
“Why not?”
Hackney’s expression hardened. “Shall I spell it out? Do you know that I can’t even mention you guys to my boss? It’s the fastest way to put him in a fit.”
“How’s that my fault?”
“Enough,” he said, and began to put on a shirt. Suddenly Hackney was her dad, and she was on the losing end of trying to get him to change his mind about her curfew.
“Look,” she said, and watched, through the squeaky-clean window, as snow came down in Disneyland drifts, as if she were back in Pasadena and riding the new kiddie ride called Amsterdam Snowglobe. “It’s a terrible thing, telling your friends that you have failed them. It really is, John. And I have failed them, man. It was my idea. My concept. My vision. I got all of them on board for it, and you could say that the stakes weren’t high, you could say that who cares, they’re just dopy kids who aren’t giving up a thing to do this, but now I have to say, Sorry, I have failed you, it was a bad concept, it was a ruse, it was a bill of goods, it was shit, utter shit. Please don’t make me do this. Please don’t, John.”
Tears came down her face, mixing with her makeup, rolling together like lovers between the sheets. “Are you listening, babe? Because I’m begging you.”
She sobbed. Her leg ached.
“One more chance,” she said, and looked deep in his eyes. “Please?”
But his eyes weren’t registering. Whatever she had done here on this fucking fool’s errand, whatever slutty heroics she was peddling, had failed. She could tell that he was neither angry nor disgusted. He was just bored, and in that boredom, Hackney had severed the last line between Blood Orphans and the record biz. Untethered, the entire gambit floated off into history.
“I wish you well, Joey,” he said, reasonable and calm, smoothing his tie. “I really do. But you have to go.”
Riding the elevator, she stared into the distorting mirrors and tried not to give herself a hard time about her pathetic attempt at a power play. An American family, decked out for a big night on the town, got in on the third floor. The parents couldn’t have been much older than her. Their two blond children were adorable. “How are you?” she asked the tykes, but the parents looked at her like she was covered in come.
Outside, she lit a cigarette and fought back some tears. Disneyland snow powdered her hay-hair. Her phone began to ring. Darlo on the line. The fucking reason for all this confusion. She had done it for him, and then not done it for him. Her leg ached.
She held her satellite phone out into the snow, her thousand-dollar-a-month flotation device in the sea of the hustle. Always another portal to the possible. Always another angle to be played. But it had always been a prop anyway, always a practice pad. Even the day they had signed their contract. There had always been real people to take care of the real business. Even that lawyer-freak McFadden looked like Richard Branson in comparison. She had been allowed the amusement of her own fantasy, but she was just part of the brand. She was just a serif in the signage.
And now he wanted to find out why she had ditched him. Post-prostitute, he wanted to know just where the fuck she was.
“Eat me,” she said, and smashed the phone into the cobblestone street. It made a mad pop. Pieces shot in every direction.
9
WHEN BOBBY WALKED INTO JOEY’S ROOM and found Shane passed out on the bed, he thought the singer was dead.
“How exciting!” he said, peering closer.
Splayed out on his back, Shane really did look dead, body twisted like it had been dropped from four stories up, tongue out of his mouth, head pushed upward.
Shane groaned and stretched, releasing a cloud of stink, but Bobby knelt close, studying his rival, who looked like he had aged a year in one day. Wrinkles snaked out from Shane’s eyes, and his ears were swelled up, like they’d been cuffed. Look at this, Bobby thought, at the very end of the road, look at how far the little self-righteous Christian rocker has fallen. Look at how he wears all his countercultural accouterments like they’re a fucking funeral suit. Look at those dreads, gnarly things, with those stupid beads in them like decorations on the most rotted of Christmas trees.
“What the fuck happened to you?” Bobby said, grabbing an open bottle of Jim Beam off the nightstand and pouring himself a glass.
“Everything,” Shane said, and turned away.
The bathroom floor was piled high with Dutch towels and dirty American clothes. Joey is a pussy had been scrawled in lipstick on the side of the mirror. Bobby washed his hands, took out his Tiger Balm, and applied a new set of bandages. His hands felt pretty all right, actually, and he reckoned that that had to do with the mass reduction of tension in his body, courtesy of Sarah — pointy-nosed, brown hair dusting her underarms, and shivering when she came — grinding in a magic rut on top of him.
Also, she had bitten his shoulder hard enough to leave marks.
“Shine on, you crazy diamond,” he’d said, and kissed her hands.
Shane’s jewelry lay on the sink — a cross, a tiny brass Buddha, and a silver steer head with ivory horns, given to him by a young girl in Austin.
Bobby lowered his fist onto the necklace, but it didn’t budge. His hand split open in numerous places. “Damn,” he said, examining the damage, quickly reapplying the balm and bandages Dr. Guttfriend had provided. Then he shoved the steer necklace into his pocket.
“Are you still here?” Shane yelled.
Bobby peeked his head out. Shane sat up. They greeted each other with the silence of inmates. The singer’s dreads were puffed up on one side and flat on the other, as if he’d been ironed.
“You look like shit,” Bobby said.
“Nice hands,” Shane replied.
Bobby felt the stolen amulet through the denim. “What time is dinner?”
“Like an hour.” Shane rubbed his face, then touched his ears.
Bobby opened the wet bar, removed a bottle of twist-off red wine, and took a few quick quaffs. Then he sat on the bed and grabbed the remote.
“Dinner’s gonna be fun,” he said. “Joey’ll have all kinds of good news, I’m sure, present her laundry list of all the ways we’ve fucked up, show off her new Prada suede bag and Gucci shoes.”
“I wish she’d stayed in LA,” Shane said. “What the fuck good does her being here do?”
“Makes her feel better,” Bobby said. “She can pretend she’s still a manager. She can think she still has a purpose on this planet.”
Propped up on pillows, they sat on the bed and watched VH1 Europe, the end of an hour-long celebration of Kylie Minogue. Then came a news story about Aerosmith’s new record and the first night of their world tour, a three-month affair of football stadiums, with intimate club shows in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago for members of their fan club. Intimate in Aerosmith-speak meant Carnegie Hall, the Henry Fonda, and The Metro. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry’s flat faces stretched across the screen.
“We’re excited to get back to our roots,” Tyler said. All that plastic surgery had given him a goofball Muppet patina. “Playing clubs really reminds all of us why we started doing this in the first place. You get up close and personal with your number-one fans, and that’s a gas, man. A gee-ass!”
Bass player and singer sat in their cell, watching the lovely old fleshbags provide the deep rock knowledge.
“We’re going to have a great light show on this tour, man,” Perry said, brushing his hair out of his eyes. “It’s all computerized now. Amazing.” He looked at Tyler. “Long way from the Brookline High gymnasium, huh?”
Tyler laughed and brushed ha
ir off his face. Perry flicked something from his eye.
“Man, no kidding, Joe,” he said. “No kidding.”
They watched new gods come and go: 50 Cent, Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay. That last band was, to Bobby, an especially galling example of midtempo, medium-talented, watery-emotioned light beer.
“It’s probably a good thing we got dropped from the Aerosmith tour,” Shane said. “Can you imagine being that terrible in front of twenty thousand people?”
“Seppuku,” Bobby said. “Suicide.”
Shane flipped through channels as Bobby stole glances at the singer, marking the new wrinkles, beginning to see the dull glimmers of someone whose chance has passed him by, the kind of guy whose face shows that he doesn’t understand that the fame game is long over and that he lost. Hanging out at Spaceland in the old days, they had watched show after show of loser desperadoes, secure that the hammer of the gods would forever drive their ships to new lands.
If Shane looked a little like that now, Bobby knew he did too.
“Oh man,” Shane said. He turned the volume up and wiped dreads from his face like they were seaweed. “You’re gonna shit, dude.”
On E! Entertainment Television, Darlo’s dad was being led out of his house in handcuffs. He wore clothes that marked him in deep porn time — fat polyester collar, gold chain, ambervision aviators — and appeared not the least bit upset, his chest out in defiance.
“No fucking way,” Bobby said, and leaned forward.
“Today,” the announcer said, “in Beverly Hills, shockwaves through the porn industry. David Cox, owner of Dirty Darling Pictures and a living legend in the world of adult film, was arrested and charged with seven counts of tax evasion and racketeering. But there’s more. In a double doozy, Mr. Cox was also arraigned on contributing false testimony in the disappearance of a young woman in 2003.”
A picture of a young girl, a head shot, appeared on the screen.
“Daniella Spencer, an adult-film actress who went missing over a year ago, resurfaced yesterday at an Encino police station, claiming that for the past eleven months she’d been a captive of Jeffrey Brown, the owner of Feels Real, makers of high-tech, lifelike plastic dolls.”
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