Praise for Rock Angel
Debut novelist Bogino clearly has a passion and great understanding of Nineties-era rock culture. Shan is a complex and well-written character whose struggles have the reader rooting for her.
—Library Journal
Bogino portrays an authentic landscape of what it’s like to be a rock band in the early ’90s. Shan and Quinn both read as fully realized, flawed characters.
—Kirkus Reviews
In a show-business tale filled with ego clashes, sexual tension, drug addiction, dreams of success and nightmares of stardom, the rarefied world of ambitious musicians is rendered with a relentlessly keen eye and ear.
—Music Connection Magazine
I applaud Ms. Bogino’s brave portrayal of the music industry circa 1990 and anxiously await the next book. Rock Angel is a page turner that will cause you to suffer at least one book hangover—guaranteed!
—Sandra Bunino, author of The Colors of Us
Rock Angel
A Novel
Jeanne Bogino
Copyright © 2014 by Jeanne Bogino
All rights reserved, including all rights of reproduction, in whole or in part, in any form and by any means, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Prashanti Press, LLC
PO Box 83
Pound Ridge, New York 10576, USA
www.prashantipress.com
SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint,
A division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC
Tempe, Arizona 85281, USA
www.sparkpointstudio.com
Editorial production by Marrathon Production Services. www.marrathon.net
Cover design © Julie Metz, Ltd./metzdesign.com
Cover image © Getty Images
eBook Formatting by Polgarus Studio
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint lyrics from
“Cat People (Putting Out Fire).” Words by David Bowie. Music by Georgio Moroder. Copyright © 1982 UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. and SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“Trench Town Rock” (written by Bob Marley). © 1975 Fifty-Six Hope Road Music Ltd & Blackwell Fuller Music Publishing LLC. Copyright renewed.
All rights reserved. Used by permission. All rights in North America administered by Blue Mountain Music Ltd / Irish Town Songs (ASCAP) and throughout the rest of the world by Blue Mountain Music Ltd (PRS)
ISBN 978-0-9852313-6-1 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-9852313-5-4 (e-book)
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, September 2014
For Gram, who always knew I could.
And for Frank, of course.
Table of Contents
part one 1990 chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
part two 1991 chapter 18
chapter 19
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
chapter 23
chapter 24
chapter 25
chapter 26
chapter 27
chapter 28
chapter 29
chapter 30
chapter 31
part three 1992–1994 chapter 32
chapter 33
chapter 34
chapter 35
chapter 36
chapter 37
chapter 38
chapter 39
chapter 40
chapter 41
chapter 42
chapter 43
chapter 44
chapter 45
chapter 46
chapter 47
chapter 48
chapter 49
Questions and Topics for Discussion
Excerpt: angel on high
Acknowledgments
About the Author
part one
1990
Music is a beautiful opiate,
if you don’t take it too seriously.
—Henry Miller
chapter 1
Time was running out. The audition was that night and there were only a couple of hours left to prepare. Normally Shan could get by with a fraction of that, but the clinkers she was hitting today were glaring enough to set her teeth on edge.
She took a deep breath and hoisted Joanie into her lap, touching the guitar’s ebony fingerboard for reassurance. She could do this. She’d played the song a hundred times. She’d written it herself. Shan started again, fingers forming the opening chords with new resolve.
Another clam, this one even more strident than the last. She ignored the mistake and kept going, but had to stop in the middle of the next phrase when a fit of shivering seized her. The pick slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor.
Shan set Joanie aside, then sank to her knees beside the futon she used as a bed. She laid her hands against the worn Mexican blanket, fingers spread, and stared down at them. She had small but capable hands, nails unpolished and filed sensibly short. They were guitar player hands, sturdy and limber, the pads of the fingertips on the left one layered with thick, neat calluses. They didn’t often fail her, but today they shook so hard she couldn’t hold on to the pick.
Well, this day of all days, her hands had to function. They, and she, had to be at their very best because she had a chance at landing the kind of gig she’d always wanted, in a band she’d normally get close to only after the price of admission.
It was a pure fluke that she’d scored the audition in the first place. She was a popular act at small venues, but acoustic folk at a coffee house was a long stretch from playing lead guitar in an up-and-coming rock band. The guys in the band were pros and she was a kid only just starting out, so she’d been shocked when she’d gotten the call from the band’s drummer the night before. Still, Shan was a quick study and that was what they needed, so she had a shot. A long shot, maybe, but a shot just the same.
She resolutely took up Joanie. She’d do this. She’d make herself do it. She began again, this time playing “Street Ballad,” one of her favorite originals. It always had a tonic effect on her.
Except today, apparently. Halfway through the opening riff, her gut began to roil. She gritted her teeth and tried to play through it, but her stomach heaved and she tasted bile at the back of her throat. She set the guitar down with a dissonant jangle and dashed for the bathroom.
Ten minutes later, Shan staggered back to her room and collapsed on the bed. Pulling the blanket over her head, she closed her eyes and tried to will away the tremors that quaked her limbs.
After a time, she reached for the phone, her hands still shaking.
Later that night, she was still shivering. Even her heavy sweatshirt couldn’t keep out the cold, because it wasn’t coming from the warm air of late May. It emanated from inside, a rank chill that made her limbs feel as icy and dead as frozen poultry parts. Maybe that’s why they call it cold turkey.
She checked her watch. Almost nine. If she didn’t hurry she’d miss it, the audition she hoped would take her to a new place. Instead she was here at the old place: Jorge’s crack house in Spanish Harlem, a boarded-up derelict of a building as bleak and forlorn as the crackheads and junkies it housed.
She’d thought she was going to make it this time. She’d gone four d
ays without a fix. Four endless, miserable, heroin-free days punctuated by bouts of shakes, cramps, and nausea. Diarrhea, too. Sometimes all four at once, but she’d forced herself to tough it out, at least until it became clear that she couldn’t pull off a performance in her present condition.
She could still make it. Shan took hold of her guitar and grasped the iron railing to pull herself to her feet, but another spasm shot through her abdomen. She doubled over until it passed.
Who was she kidding? She wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe she’d come because of the audition, but now she wasn’t leaving until she got what she came for—the big H.
She blinked, momentarily blinded by the headlights of a passing police car. She shrank back against the building and shut her eyes against the sudden glare that shot laser-sharp pinpoints into her brain. Then, in the cruiser’s wake, she heard footsteps crunching on the sidewalk.
Shan opened her eyes. A blurry silhouette materialized, gradually coalescing into the tall figure of a man. “Jorge?”
The figure stopped. “Hey, Shan,” he said, swaying. “Am I late?”
“Two hours.” She jumped to her feet, grabbing the railing again as her knees quavered. “You told me to come at seven, remember?”
“I guess.” He scratched his head. His black hair was limp and greasy. “You need something?”
“Why else would I call?”
He grinned and she saw he was minus a few teeth now. “I thought you missed me.”
Shan was seized with a fit of coughing, her slight shoulders hitching in time with her hacking. “Can I get something?” she asked, when she was able to speak. “I’m dope sick.”
He started up the stairs. Shan let go of the railing and followed him up the four flights to his apartment, Joanie clutched against her chest.
Once they were inside Jorge switched on the light. The harsh glow from the bare bulb assaulted Shan’s eyes and she ducked her head as he vanished into another room. She blinked, then moved toward a sagging couch of indeterminate color.
She set down her guitar case and sank onto the couch, the only piece of real furniture. There was a wooden crate that passed for a coffee table, its top littered with razor blades and rolling papers. Shan watched a cockroach nose its way across the scarred surface, long feelers quivering as it encountered a pizza crust amid the debris.
Jorge emerged from the other room with an enormous brown rock in his hands. In the bright light Shan could see that he looked far worse than the last time she’d seen him, just two weeks before. Since then his thinness had turned skeletal and his skin, always bad, had taken on a yellowish cast.
All signs of a long-term junkie. She’d seen it before. Someone could use for years then, seemingly overnight, a relatively normal-looking person turned into a walking corpse.
He smiled and again she noticed the missing teeth. “I was wondering when you’d come around,” he said as he sat down beside her. “I figured you must be running low.”
Shan nodded, running her tongue over her own teeth to make sure none of them felt loose. There were the two on the side that had been missing for a couple of years, otherwise they were all intact. “I was trying to get clean,” she said. Her knee jittered up and down in a nervous staccato.
“Again?” Jorge sniggered. “When you gonna learn?” He set the rock on the table and picked up a razor blade to chop off a small chunk. The cockroach appeared interested. Shan grimaced as it scurried toward her.
Jorge’s lips stretched into an impassive grin as he reached out, drawing his index finger back against his thumb. With a flick, the cockroach was airborne, sailing across the room and disappearing into a stack of cushions. Jorge settled back, resting his arm along the back of the couch behind Shan.
“How much?” Shan asked, shifting away from his touch.
He didn’t respond, but his grin widened.
“How much?” she repeated. “I’m in a hurry. I have to be someplace.”
“Where?”
Like she’d tell him. “Just someplace.”
“One of them music things?”
“Yes. Now how much?” When he didn’t reply, she reached into her pocket and tossed some folded bills onto the table. “Just give me fifty, then. Can I use your bathroom?”
He nodded and she could feel his eyes on her as she stood up. “How about I talk you into skipping the music thing?”
She paused by the bathroom door. “Why?”
“I just got a special delivery.” He pointed to the rock. “We could ride this horse all the way to Belmont.”
“No thanks.” She shut the door and her stomach flipped over again as she switched on the light. The toilet was filthy and she could see more roaches scurrying for cover in the bathtub drain.
Breathing through her mouth, she surveyed her reflection in the cracked mirror over the sink. She looked like hell, face flushed deep red and shiny with perspiration, eyes clouded and teary. Her pupils were so dilated that they almost obscured the green of her eyes. Her dark hair clung to her forehead and cheeks in long, snakelike strands and she saw one lock was twisted around her silver nose stud.
She untwisted it, turned on the faucet and splashed cool water over her face, then used a sliver of soap she found to scrub it, as if she could wash away the febrile redness. When the door opened behind her, she didn’t hear it.
Then she felt a hand. She jerked upright, startled.
Jorge was right behind her, grinning his gap-toothed smile. “All nice and clean?”
She shrugged away from his touch. “Get your hands off me.”
“Why? They been on you before.”
He moved closer. Shan sidestepped, but he caught her wrist.
“Oh, come on,” he whined. “It’ll be just like old times.”
“I already paid you. In cash, remember?”
“Well, how about a discount?” He caught her wrist again. “It’s always nice doing business with you. Besides, I miss you, querida.”
She swatted his hand away and tried to push past him, but he when kicked the door shut Shan was momentarily disconcerted. “Will you get out of the way?”
He caught her by the waist. The glare from the uncovered bulb highlighted the yellow tinge in his complexion. His dark eyes were narrowed, predatory, and for the first time she felt a cold shock of fear. “Jorge, stop it. You need to let go of me. Now.”
“There’s only one thing I need, querida,” he informed her. When he pulled her close, she felt his erection against her stomach.
She pulled away but he held fast and kissed her, forcing his tongue into her mouth. His breath was sour and she felt a surge of revulsion, then a sharp burst of anger. She brought her teeth together, hard, and tasted the warmth of blood in her mouth.
He jerked his head back and his amiable, stoned grin vanished. “You little cunt!”
She kicked him, eliciting a yelp when her foot connected with his shin. He caught her by the neck, gripping hard, and she made a small sound of pain, then clawed savagely at his face.
His expression twisted into a mask of fury and he slapped her hard enough to knock her off her feet. Then he was on top of her, ripping at her clothes. Through a daze, she felt his hands fumbling at her crotch. He gave a hard yank to the zipper on the front of her jeans and it broke.
When she felt him groping between her legs, it jolted the fuzziness from her brain. Her nails connected with his eyes, wresting a snarl of pain from him, and he slugged her, slamming her head against the base of the toilet. She lay dazed as he pulled back to tear open his pants.
The sight of his penis jarred her back to full consciousness. Her leg jackknifed.
His howl of pain assured her that her knee had found its mark. She heaved him off her, then watched as he rolled heavily against the door, where he lay twitching and clutching himself.
His body was blocking the only way out. She was trapped.
Her eyes shot to the tiny window over the toilet. She scrambled to her feet and pried it open, then
poked her head out, praying for a fire escape or even a ledge.
Instead she saw a sheer drop to the street four stories below.
She heard a moan and whirled. Jorge was pushing himself up off the floor, pausing when he made it to his knees. “You,” he growled, “are going to be very sorry you did that.”
“Oh no I won’t!” Her fingers curled around the edge of the top of the toilet tank and, summoning every bit of her strength, she heaved it through the air and brought it down squarely on his head, knocking him flat. He didn’t move again.
Shan crept a little closer, eyeing him suspiciously, and prodded him with her foot. His head fell to one side and his lips parted, emitting a wheezing sound, like air escaping from a balloon.
She tugged at him, managing to slide his body far enough to inch the door open, then she slipped through the crack and ran for the front door.
She stopped dead with her hand on the knob. Joanie! She reversed direction and snatched up her guitar from where she’d left it next to the sofa. Then her eye fell on the big rock of heroin.
What about her stuff? She’d paid for it. She stared at the rock. Her fingers tightened, digging into Joanie’s case as the craving dug at her insides.
She jumped when she heard a throaty moan emanate from the bathroom, followed by a dragging sound, then a thud.
She paused only long enough to jam the whole rock into Joanie’s case, then got the hell out of there. Nice doing business with you, asshole.
chapter 2
Quinn strode down Bleecker Street, raindrops striking the top of his head and the shoulders of his leather bomber jacket. His eyes went from storefront to storefront as he made his way along the crowded, narrow sidewalk. Where in hell is this place?
Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) Page 1