“At least I have a place to stay.” I look to Kenny.
He nods.
“I’ll get that started,” Dave says. “Now, as for the band—”
“We’re meeting with Wax Trax! in the late morning for the single. Kenny’ll sing that. That sets him up to be the new front man, with Jonathan no longer a member of Mercurial Visions.”
“Once you get the contract, send it over to me. I’ll make sure of all the details.”
“As soon as we get it,” I say.
“Sounds fine.”
I hang up.
“Now,” I say, turning to my partner-to-be. “About the meeting. And this is very important. You know these people. They don’t like delays or confusion. This is why we’re eliminating Jonathan. He’s on the way to getting our contract cancelled. We’re already way behind on the recording schedule. Tomorrow we’re telling them the plan to fix all that. Giving them a way we can keep on schedule and use the studio time already blocked out, and prevent further delays for the release of the single and then the CD. You got that? Keys: No delays. No confusion.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“So I’ll start. I’ll explain how things will work so they know exactly what to expect. We’ll record ‘Fantasy in Black’ and get the single out quickly. That you’re replacing Jonathan on lead vocals only for this single.”
“But—”
“We need to make it look effortless,” I say. “Don’t worry. He’s gone for good. But we have to make this transition look as smooth and effortless as possible to Wax Trax! As if there’s no transition at all. We’ll present you, simply, as a guest vocalist on a single. All we’ve got to do is hand over the demos and talk like it’s done. They know you’ll show up and will commit to this. They know your voice from Unknown Vices, so this is an easy crossover for a single. Once it’s done and they see it’s a hit, then we tell them that Jonathan’s tapped out, done, can’t write, and can’t sing, and you’re there to save the day. You’ll already have sung on the single. Simple. He’ll just be gone. Make sense?”
“Sure.” His tone shows little confidence and far too little enthusiasm.
“Hey. We need this to work more than we need to worry about anyone’s pride. We know you’ll be replacing him for good.” I move my hand back and forth between us. “Our knowing that has to be enough for now. It’s what we need to make this work. You understand that, right?”
“Yes. It’s that … No. I understand. I get it. Be patient. You’re right.”
“Great,” I say. “I’ll tell them we’ve already got this worked out with Nancy and AnnMarie, of course, and that everyone’s onboard. No dissension. No hesitation. When we show up to the studio, we’ll deal with who’s actually playing then.”
Kenny nods, looking into the palms of his hands.
“Once we’ve got that done, we’ll move to integrate or replace the other two with the Vices guys for the CD. Then we’ll get Unknown Vices back up and running. It’ll be like Al Jorgensen with Ministry, Revolting Cocks, 1000 Homo DJs, all his projects …”
“Right,” he says.
“Remember: you and I have to be completely in sync. Wax Trax! must believe in this: that they’ll not have to spend more money, that we will meet all the schedules, and that ‘Fantasy in Black’ will be a hit. That Jonathan’s gone for good. They don’t need to know that yet. Let’s get the single out. Then one step at a time. Simple.”
“Sure.”
He’s still not looking at me, so I bend down to find his eyes. “Look, I know Unknown Vices’ first CD wasn’t what we’d planned. But this time, you’re stepping into a spot in an established national act. You get the chance to avoid—”
“Scott, I get it.”
“Good, ’cause I’m trusting you with my future here—our future. Speaking of which, you haven’t told Chris about this, right? I mean, with you two involved … You don’t think she’ll try to sabotage us out of some sense of loyalty to Jonathan?”
I shake my head. He shakes his emphatically.
• • • • •
That night, I can’t sleep. Because his roommates are still watching TV, Kenny and I are trying to share his bed. It’s too small for us both. We keep touching each other. With the meeting tomorrow morning running through my mind, I’m stuck lying awake in bed feeling his body heat and sometimes his flesh.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
I try naming types of animals in alphabetical order. I start drifting off but then feel him shift in bed or remember how Jonathan’s face will look when I reveal my coup de grâce at Wax Trax!—that he’s done and that Kenny’s in.
I’m so tired.
I drag a hand down my face.
I don’t have a plan for Kenny doing Chris. But she’s snatch, and he prefers boys. Like me.
“Don’t you dare be another Jonathan,” I whisper. “He turned his back on me, ignored everything I did for him. ’Cause I don’t have a pussy.”
Chapter 55
Just Like Sammy
—Scott—
When the alarm rips through the room, I sit bolt upright, completely awake.
“It’s a day to reap,” I whisper at Kenny, who gropes for the snooze button, still mostly asleep. Sammy and I never got to do this.
As I shower, I picture everything unfolding today, starting with packing the tape of the acoustic version of “Fantasy in Black” we recorded last night. Then I imagine how I’ll lay it all out at Wax Trax!: we have a single already ready to go now. Jonathan’s AWOL, so Kenny’s stepping in as the new singer. Easy as pie. No schedules have to be changed—only a name on the CD insert.
Like a snake sloughing off dead skin.
After the meeting, I’ll call the girls and lay it on the line. Then it’s time to call the lawyer and get the former roommate handled.
In time, the loft will be ours—Kenny’s and mine. And finally I’ll have the kind of partner Sammy would have been. My whole body tingles like destiny.
We’ll record the new CD and have a supporting tour ready in two, at most two and a half, months. Bigger than the old Mercurial Visions ever had.
Oh yes, Kenny. Today it starts. It’s not easy, but it is simple. It only takes “persistence and determination,” I say, stepping out of the shower.
After drying off, I comb my hair and flash a smile in the mirror. Like what you see?
So do I. And just you wait, mister: this is only the beginning—of everything.
As we wait for the car service to pick us up, I call Jonathan and give him his only warning.
“I’m coming over to pick up some stuff,” I tell him. “My clothes, guitar, amp. The rest—the band’s equipment, furniture, whatever—my lawyer will be dealing with. Including the loft. In other words, don’t get too comfortable there.”
“Dream on.”
“I’ll be there this afternoon with Kenny. Be gone when I get there.”
He slams down the handset.
I sneer at the phone as Kenny looks at me the way Jonathan should have all these years: as if he’s looking at the man who’s going to take care of him.
About a half hour later, we’re in the car on the way to Wax Trax!
But the meeting with the executive producer and owner Doug starts all wrong.
“Scott,” he says, “I thought Jonathan rescheduled this meeting for later today. About a new single, ‘Daydream and Try,’ and needing—”
“What?”
“And we’re not interested in talking about Unknown Vices. Not now.”
“I know,” I say.
“So what’re you doing here, Kenny?”
“Well,” I say before Kenny can speak. “We’ve got some news on the single.”
“This had better be damn good news. We’re already behind schedule.”
“That’s why we’re here,” I say
. “We’ve moved the roadblock out of our way for the single. If you would.”
Kenny hands Doug a demo tape, exactly as Jonathan did with “Joie.”
“What’s this?” Doug asks.
“The single.”
“Where’s Jonathan?”
“That was the roadblock. He had writer’s block and couldn’t come up with anything. But Kenny—”
“But Kenny what?” Doug asks, looking like he’s just eaten moldy bread. “Where’s Jonathan?”
“He’s not going to sing on the single. Kenny—”
“Whoa, hang on here,” Doug says, waving his hands. “We’re two months behind schedule. I’ve made commitments. This is costing—”
“Nothing more. We’re ready to go with the current schedule. No extra time. The single will go out—”
“No, it won’t. No,” he says, shaking his head. “Look. Your first disc rocked. Your second, not so much. And now, you want me to think this singer of a B-list band is going to be better than Jonathan when he’s on? No. Scott, I have an agreement with you and Jonathan as Mercurial Visions. He’s the face of the band: the voice—what people buy. Generation X without Billy Idol is nobody.”
“Jonathan couldn’t write. Kenny could. A great song. A hit. This is the solution. It’s like Richard 23, Ogre, Al Jorgensen, and Trent Reznor—”
“No, it’s not. You don’t have one-tenth of the sales of Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Revolting Cocks, or Nine Inch Nails. This isn’t a game of musical chairs.”
“I know it’s not,” I say.
“These are the types of surprises that tell that me a band isn’t worth it.”
“This is the way out. Jonathan is spent. Kenny has it—a hit. We’re ready to go. No changes. One name on the liner notes.”
“This isn’t Columbia or RCA, Scott. We don’t have the money—bottom line. No. This isn’t working,” he says, folding his fingers together. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to exercise our right to cancel your contract. As of now, we no longer have a working relationship.”
All I can see is his face, saying words that are all wrong.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Marshall,” Doug says. “And good luck.”
“No, I don’t think you understand,” I say. “We’re—”
“Mr. Marshall, please leave. And take Mr. Magnum with you.”
I stand there.
“Now.”
Heat rushes into my face. It feels so hot. How can you be so fucking stupid not to see Kenny is best for all of us?
“If I leave now,” I say, “no one will use that name again—for anything. No reissues. No best ofs. No compilations. Nothing.”
Doug turns his back and calls the front desk. “Could you get security? And tell Adam that we’re no longer working with Mercurial Visions. I don’t want any calls from them.”
“I own that name. Remember that.” Turning, I wave for Kenny to follow me as I leave. I look at no one—at nothing. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer later,” I say to everyone who can hear.
Outside we stand on the corner in the cold wind, the sky starkly bright. Kenny is silent and seems afraid to even look at me.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Everything was so simple. Perfect. What happened?”
“Um,” he says, tentatively.
“I don’t know what to tell you about Unknown Vices.”
“Actually,” he says, “I was going to suggest we head back home.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Home?”
“We can blow off some steam.”
“Blow off some steam,” I say flatly.
“Then, like you always say, we can make plans. You know, ‘perseverance and determination alone.’”
I don’t answer at first, because I can’t be sure he’s not mocking me, but then, when I see he’s sincere, I’m surprised and grateful. It’s “persistence and determination.” I stay silent. At last—someone who actually gets it. Gets me. Gets that I am right. You really are just like Sammy. Truly.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes. Very good. Yes.”
“Sure, we’ll get something figured out. You’ll come up with something. You ran that band.”
“You’re damned right. We’ll prove I’m right. To Jonathan. To Wax Trax! To everyone.”
Things will be very different—better.
Chapter 56
Dizzy
—Jonathan—
“I’m coming over to pick up some stuff,” Scott says on the phone. Then he shakes his lawyer at me through the handset.
I slam it down as hard as I can.
This was always your plan, wasn’t it? The whole scene yesterday’s something you worked out with your lawyer so you can claim I kicked you out illegally. Or some shit like that. To take everything over and put your boy in.
I dial information for a locksmith and call the first one.
“Yes, it’s an emergency,” I say in answer to his question. “Yes, I understand there will be an extra charge for a new lock.”
After hanging up, I walk around the loft collecting the bits and pieces of Scott’s existence, to purge him and Kenny from my life.
I pick up and carry an armful of Scott’s albums to the elevator. I dump the vinyl on the wooden floorboards. Dust flies up.
Once the locksmith arrives, I show him the door, and answer his questions about the type of lock I want: “Stronger.” He starts working.
Then I start up the stairs to the sleeping dais. For more of my ex-roommate’s crap.
“Damn.” I called him an ex-roommate. And he is, as well as an ex-partner and ex-band member.
But you, Jennifer—you’re not quite an ex anymore. We’re not lovers, but we almost slept together, didn’t we?
I roll those words over in my mind again: “We almost slept together, didn’t we?”
Great title for a song. Or at least a killer line.
I run down the stairs to the keyboard and sit on the edge of the stool. “So how does uncertainty sound?”
I close my eyes, listening closely, and let out a hum of pleasure and then a whimper of doubt.
An hour later, my hands tremble from the buzz of drafting a song. It’s as if the world appears to us as black-and-white, but in truth it’s full of color, and I’ve seen reality’s full palette, just below the black-and-white surface. The sense of this vision always evaporates too quickly, leaving me with only black, white, and gray.
The locksmith pushes the door closed, and I can hear the new lock sliding home—the sound of Scott being expelled.
“There are your four copies,” the locksmith says, holding them out to me on a single ring.
“Excellent,” I say, taking them. I reach into my pocket and pull out a wad of bills. I count out fifteen twenties. The locksmith writes “paid” on the invoice, collects his tool kit, and starts down the stairs.
As I close the door, I find myself completely alone in all this space.
If Jennifer and I had known Scott would be gone, would it have been a mistake to get together again? Would our falling off the precipice still have broken us apart in the end? Or would we have floated back up and never touched the ground again, ever?
Two nights ago, we sincerely wanted to try. I wanted you. You wanted me. How could that be wrong now?
The place would be empty but for us; the blade that divided us, removed—not only from here but also from my life. Our lives. It can be if you want.
Yes, I should have protected us better—made us safe before. Instead I gave in. He thought you were nothing but a distraction. He never understood that our conversations, our moments together, our story—all the stories with Amy too—were the songs Mercurial Visions performed. That got him on the stage at Cabaret Metro. That gave him Kenny and Unknown Vices. Gave him everything.
“It’s always be
en like this,” I say, a chill flowing down my body.
But even that’s not true—not completely. I’ve been lying to you, to myself—to everyone.
It really has been about the tumult. You told me that, and I couldn’t see it.
“My god,” I say.
I’ve been running this whole time, trying to escape the emptiness—first with Amy and then with you. I’ve been falling in and out of love so I can constantly relive the moments when everything is as sharp, hard, and fierce as when I sing.
You thought life was movies and magazines. I thought it was nothing outside of falling in love or hurting from love’s end. Joy and despair, and all that nothingness in between moments onstage where the world burns away and I’m there, naked and pure.
“I am so sorry Jennifer. So, very, very sorry,” I say, crumbling to my knees. “Please, you must understand: I couldn’t see this back then.”
“Back,” I sing softly, “when we were broke and all we did was daydream and try.”
After kneeling on the cold concrete for I don’t know how long, the phone rings.
With a flick of my thumb, I wipe the last of a tear from my cheek and then stand to face what must come.
“No, Scott. You’re not getting in. Not without these,” I say, jingling the new keys at the phone. “See. Nine-tenths of the law, right here. In my hand.”
I grab the phone before the machine picks up.
This needs to end today.
“Yeah?” I say into the receiver, challenging Scott.
“This Jonathan Starks?” It’s Doug, our executive producer at Wax Trax!
“Yes?” I ask, confused at hearing his voice.
“Look, Mr. Starks. This isn’t working out. Your project is already too delayed. We’re not going to change the band’s lineup this late. I’ve already explained this to Mr. Marshall: There will be no new Mercurial Visions single. No new CD. We’re exercising our right to sever support for any further projects. We’ve concluded it’s not worth our time to sue for breach of contract, so you’ll be free to find another label after the stipulated time period. Our lawyer will send over the official documents explaining what rights you retain and what rights we retain. But please make sure Mr. Marshall understands that he is not to call or bring anyone by again. We’re done.” He hangs up.
A Perfect Blindness Page 39