His concern faded as the second band took the stage. Delta Rose was a throwback to the heyday of 80s hair rock and the Viper filled to half capacity with balding headbangers and young headbangers who emulated their elders’ teased-out hair and button-lanced jeans jackets. what would you do for crüe?, one button read. first you eat shit, then you die, explained another.
Rose was most of the way through a high-energy set when Clay noticed the brunette across the room. She was kneeling in one of the booths along the wall, hopping up and down on her knees. Sensing his eyes, she turned, and Clay’s stare fled. Smooth. Girls love a coward. By the time he dared to look again, she was no longer paying attention—which, if nothing else, gave him the opportunity to drink her in. The girl wore a masquerade mask, the sort that went over the eyes, but didn’t disguise her hotness. Clay couldn’t tell if her preppie red blouse and white skirt was a costume, but she was a headband and racquet away from a tennis game. Maybe she belonged here, maybe she didn’t. Clay was just glad to have her in his sightline.
A few songs later, Spider called with the news that the band had been waylaid by the annual Halloween parade in West Hollywood; parking was a bitch and they would have to schlep their equipment several blocks to the Viper.
Clay jogged downhill on Larrabee Street to find them unloading in a random apartment driveway. Savy—looking straight-foxy in a gothic lace dress and blue eye shadow—offered him half an eyebrow raise. Which was about as warm as she got these days.
“You missed tonight’s game,” Fiasco informed him. “Best all-time album titles.”
“Birth of the Cool,” Spider said. “Miles Davis.”
“A.C.,” Mo added. “Everyone Should Be Killed.”
Fiasco hauled Spider’s Pearl kick drum from the van. “Big Black. Songs about Fucking.”
Savy was in no mood to lollygag. She grabbed up two guitars cases and a duffle full of cords and gaffer tape and started the upward climb. “Park in a legal space, Fee. The rest of us will roadie this shit up. Let’s move!”
Clay watched her go. She seemed nervous, not herself. He was about to ask Mo if something was wrong when he caught a kick drum in the chest. “Welcome to the big-time, baby,” Fee told him. “Don’t hurt dem vocal cords marchin’ up-zee-hill.”
The club was filling in a hurry, people clambering for position at the front of the stage. Clay recognized a few of them—faces who had worked or gone to school with one of his bandmates, faces come to life from Facebook photos, even faces from their previous shows. Devotees, seemingly of all ages, who had braved the Hollywood traffic and overpaid for parking to see them, and that made Clay swell with gratitude. Anyone could waste thirty minutes of their life on an unknown band, but to do it twice?….
Ghost assembled behind the claustrophobic stage curtain. Unlike their previous shows, they had a sane amount of time to set up, sound check, and review the set list. At the five-minute warning, the club manager poked her head through the curtains. “We have a line full of people we can’t squeeze inside. Who the hell are you guys?”
Fiasco came over and tousled Clay’s already-tousled hair. “Ready to tear the roof off?”
Clay told him, yes, absolutely, and the sky above it too. Savy was standing at his elbow, nowhere to hide back here. “You ever think we’d sell a place out?” he asked her.
“Always,” she said. Her fist reached out and he knocked it, held it there a moment.
Strumming the strings of his guitar du jour—a Schecter Banshee Elite with super-charged pickups and a gremlin-green body (the same sweet axe he’d used for the demo recording)—Clay heard they were live over the PA. The crowd responded with hoots and whoops that made his stomach churn. Less with trepidation now than with the dizzying, intoxicating power he’d soon have over the animal of the crowd.
The stage lights blinked the one-minute warning. Savy counted it off on her watch and with ten seconds left, she started into the opening riff of “Houdini Nights,” and the curtains drew apart just as the bass and drums kicked in. “Viper Room!” Clay shouted at all the faces suddenly in front of him. “Let’s dance!”
The mass hardly needed the invitation. They occupied every inch of floor space, packed in so tightly it didn’t seem you could fit a leaf of paper between them. Although suddenly it was as if a tidal wave surged through the room. Bodies were thrown in one direction, then another. Beer and expensive drinks were swept from the bar. People were body-checked out the exit door—propped open for air—disappearing momentarily; then they shoved their way back in, only to be knocked out again. Bodies were standing in booths. Bodies were dancing in the bathroom hallway. There were costumes: vampires and Thors and slutty maids and slutty cowboys. A heavily tattooed man wearing an Alice Cooper mask and nothing else crowd-surfed into the center of the room, to much dismay. He grabbed hold of the resident disco ball, the prisms flashing against his flabby skin, and a few murderous tugs freed it from the suspension bolt. Then Alice plummeted to the floor, where people kicked madly at it—the ball, presumably, not the man—and tried to circus-walk on it before bouncers waded in to take possession.
Farewell Ghost had thirty minutes of stage time and they were determined to play continuously, with no dead air, segueing from one song immediately to another, or with one of them soloing while the others caught their breath, retuned, or swapped instruments. It was harder than it looked. Spider improvised a spastic tom solo that bridged the gap between “Disaffected” and “Skeletons at the Feast.” Savy clicked off her distortion pedals after “Skeletons” and performed a wordless threnody that made the room still and ponderous. Men cried out for her. Women cried out for her. Alice Cooper tried to crowd-surf to her, telling her she was number one (only not with words and not with his hands), and he was at last wrangled and tossed out.
After “Hot Blood,” a song Clay had written about his and Savy’s experience in Davis Karney’s house (using such vague phraseology as “the man with the flaming gun smiles” and “fake tits could not set us free”), Clay kept the wall of sound going by pressing his guitar to his amplifier and delivering shrill feedback and a deep, sustained hum until Fiasco could switch out his Fender for the upright bass he’d brought along (another item borrowed from the magnanimous chambers of Dooley’s Den). When the upright was set, Clay leveled off his volume and stepped to the microphone, and he and Fiasco performed an unlikely duet of The Clash’s “The Guns of Brixton,” which the crowd ate up like the ear candy it was.
From there they transitioned into “Voices in the Dark,” its ascending chord progression always the highlight of their set, then brought the whole thing home with “In Rolls the Storm,” the jam song, which delivered such a crashing, furious crescendo that Clay thought he could see the walls of the club billowing out.
The crowd wanted more. The crowd wanted to dance and slam the whole night through. Whatever Ghost had done to them, they wanted that feeling dragged out, on and on.
When the curtains finally drew shut and they were alone again in the tight, humid space, Fiasco was smiling bigger than anyone had ever seen him. Clay threw an arm over his sweaty shoulders and Savy stepped in to do the same, and they reached over the drums for Spider and hugged it out, the four of them, together.
They were immediately mobbed and separated. Most of the Viper Room was content to pat Clay on the back, offer a quick compliment or solicitation (“My twenty-fifth is next weekend. I hear you do birthday parties?”). But then some woman was shouldering her way through the throng, literally shoving people aside to cast her arms around him; and Clay wasn’t sure if he was about to be tackled, mugged, molested, or all of the above.
In the next instant, he recognized the melodramatic perfume and the quick-chattering face in the florescent-pink of the bar lights. His second housemate was beaming ear to ear at him. “I’m so proud of you, hon!” Essie shouted for everyone to hear. And she announced this as if she’d known Clay his whole life, understood all his worldly dreams and fears, all the deepest cu
rrents that ran into and out of his soul. It struck him as a particularly strange sentiment, something his mother might have said with actual merit, and he was immediately uneasy. “Oh, hey. Is my dad here?”
“He wanted to be. He really wanted it more than anything—but that Ferdinand has been keeping him late all week, the blood-sucker.”
Clay, who knew not of his father’s intention to attend the show nor of any blood-sucker named Ferdinand, nodded along. “Okay. Thanks for being his proxy.”
Then others were interceding, burly men with gnarled faces and faded tattoos, who had spent their lives haunting the Strip, and from whom an offer to buy a shot was testament to one’s musical prowess. Before Clay could entertain their offers, though, Fiasco was grappling him under the arms and dragging him away in a half nelson. When Clay managed to free himself, he found the bassist hang-jawed and giddy. “I just met some dude from Sweet Epiphany,” he barked. “They’re dyyyying to speak with us.”
“Where’s Savy?”
“Couldn’t find her. Maybe she went with Spider to the van? Let’s not wait on this.”
Sweet Epiphany Records was the creation of Bradford Garneau, guitar player for legendary L.A. punk band The Murder Winds. It was an indie label that specialized in punk and hardcore, ska and psychobilly; but they had also put out everything from spoken word to hip hop to outlaw country. Great music and an artist-first approach seemed the one true unifying theme.
Fiasco led Clay to a booth near the back of the room, where an entourage not much older than them was talking enthusiastically. At the sight of half of Farewell Ghost, they quit the conversation and one of them stood and introduced himself as Bobby Shay. Clay had been expecting another gnarled old-school punk, but Bobby Shay could have auditioned for Eddie Haskell in a revamped Leave It to Beaver. It didn’t take long for him to prove that music was his life though—the type of audiophile you could mention any band to and get a rundown of their best album, his three favorite songs, and the year and names of any changes in the band lineup. “Bobby, tell us—what’s the best album title ever?” Fiasco tested, as he and Clay squeezed into the booth.
Bobby didn’t hesitate. “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.”
And Fiasco turned to Clay in honest amazement. “Dead Kennedys. Yes. He’s right!”
“I love my job,” Bobby told them. “This is my office, and nights like tonight make watching a thousand Green Day wannabes worth it.”
“Well, if we knew you were here,” Clay said, “we’d have brought our A-game.”
Bobby cracked the appropriate grin. “If that wasn’t your best, I think Leigh, my boss, will shit a cinder block when she sees you. As it is, I’ve already called her. She’s at a fund-raiser up at the Castaway in Burbank, but she wanted me to ask if you’re willing to hang. She’s going to brave the parade crowd to come meet you.”
Fiasco looked to Clay, who nodded. “We can hang,” Fiasco said.
“Can you meet us back here at, say, midnight?”
“Perfect,” Clay echoed, having no idea what Savy and Spider had planned for the night. He supposed it didn’t matter if they were flying to the moon, their itineraries were changing now.
“Also, any chance you can play a gig tomorrow?”
“Where at?” Clay asked.
“The Stone Fox. Leigh was on the phone for the last half of your set. She wants you to open for Divinity Destroyed on a sold-out bill.”
“We’ll run it by our peeps and get back”—Clay checked his watch—“in ninety minutes.”
They shook hands all around, and Clay and Fiasco made their way through the crowd again, their feet twinkling six inches off the ground. Three gigs. Three fucking gigs and not even ten songs written and already they had A&R reps racing across town to meet them.
It was too good to be true.
Because it is, you dumbass. Clay stopped himself. His head twisted back to look at Bobby’s table. Surely they weren’t advance scouts for the Hailmaker. Their boss was at a charity function. Still, it was better to tread carefully, reconvene with Savy, get on the same page. “We need to find the others, Fee. Like, now.”
Clay hopped up on the brass rail of the bar to survey the milling crowd. Through the Viper’s side door, he spotted Delilah Jane, dressed as the green-faced Wicked Witch, standing near Spider and a cluster of vapers. “Our drummer and your girlfriend are outside, blowing smoke down Sunset Boulevard. Savy, I don’t see…” But even as he uttered the words, his eyes contradicted them. Savy was still in the club. Standing right in front of the curtained-off stage, in fact. Swaying to the M.I.A. song pumping on the PA. Laughing and smiling at a handsomely rendered groupie. Clay watched her fidget with a few of her jasper-stone bracelets, in a nervous, girlish way he’d never seen before. And he nearly died. There was a familiarity between her and Handsome, in their eye contact and how their bodies seemed to sway in sync to each other. Well, at least now I know why she was nervous before the show, Clay thought. “Fee? Who’s the pretty fool with his hands on Savy?”
Fiasco went up on tiptoes and looked immediately uneasy. “Oh. Our old frontman.”
“Bass?” Clay spat. Emphasis on the ass.
“Short for Basserman,” Fiasco said. “Gar Basserman.”
“Well, shit, that just rolllllls off the tongue. Gar? What kind of name is that?”
“I never asked. Guess it’s short for Garrett?”
“No. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s another fucking fish! Gar Bass. A double Fishman who wants to scale our guitarist.”
In some rational corner of his mind, Clay knew he didn’t have a right to be this furious. Savy had been clear about where they stood, had explained that their post-fire fever dream had been a one-time thing (and a mistake at that), had showed absolute candor in everything except Mr. Pisces here—who she’d obviously kept secret to spare Clay’s feelings. Except rationality meant very little right now. She had lied to him, after vowing that only the truth would live between them; she’d started fucking Gar Basserman when Costly Creation was together, then broke the band up and went right on fucking him; and Clay was furious, sick on the bitter feeling in his throat. “Hey!” he yelled across the club. “Screw him later, we have business!”
The journeymen at the bar whooped. But as Savy turned her head, Clay hopped off the bar rail. Not only a fool of the heart, but one without balls to stand his ground.
“Clay, relax, you’re a little drunk, I think.” Fiasco grabbed at him. “Look around at all the ass in this room. Actresses. Tattooed honeys. You can talk to anyone you want.” He clapped his palms over Clay’s skull and drew him in. “You need to feel what I’m feeling right now.”
“Don’t say ‘turned on.’”
“Our lives are about to change. Really change. I’ll gather the troops. You take the ninety minutes. Get your mind clear, drink up, get your johnson milked, whatever. I’ll see you at the twelve-stroke.”
Monologue over, Fiasco faded into the crowd, and Clay found himself retreating to the bathroom, which had one stall, one urinal, one sink, and band stickers over every surface and wall. Nevertheless the singer of the next band was staring into the smallest wedge of mirror between sticker clumps, combing his hair into an impressive surfable wave. The stall was occupied by someone shuffling restlessly inside, a one-man party that had nothing to do with a call of nature, so Clay stood at the urinal, feeling angry, feeling betrayed, feeling weak and cowardly, and powerful and murderous, all at once.
Clay listened to his urine striking the stickered porcelain. The singer exited and someone else entered the bathroom and stood behind Clay, waiting his turn. A moment passed. A hand slid around Clay’s cock and he jumped and spun, ready to deck the fucker, regardless of his size.
It was the brunette in the masquerade mask. The pert tennis player he’d noticed before his set. Her hand didn’t go away. “I love the feel of a man peeing,” she told him. “The vibration.”
She didn’t get to feel it very long. Clay harden
ed under the pressure of her palm, her fingers choking off the stream. He stared over his shoulder, astounded, the blue eyes peering out from the feathery mask as soft as a warm bath. “Someone’s in the stall,” he groaned.
“That’s a shame. Guess we’ll have to run to my place.” The girl released him as suddenly as she’d glommed on, leaving his erection to thump against denim. She didn’t bother to check if he was following. Why would she need to? He zipped as quickly and carefully as he could.
“Clay?” The voice came out of the stall like a phantom call. It was Mo’s, half-aware. All the way gone. “That you, my brother-brother-bro?”
Clay hurried out like he didn’t know a thing.
21
BABY DID A BAD BAD THING
He didn’t know if Savy saw him leaving with the girl—whether she would be jealous or relieved—but Spider and Fiasco certainly caught a glimpse. Clay could feel their eyes like four distinct points of heat as he strolled into the night with the masked groupie. Sunset was a madhouse of cars and costumes and screams and music. Clay hurried to keep the girl’s pace. “Where do you live?” he asked, trying to assert a little control, to remind her that she’d been the one who’d groped his private parts in the restroom and not the other way around.
“My apartment’s just across the way.”
They hiked across Sunset and up the aptly named Horn Street as it rose steeply away from the boulevard. The front door of her apartment wasn’t more than a two-minute walk from there; you could still hear the traffic and noise below, though it was far enough away to possess a dream-like quality, and it was matched by the pastoral screech of crickets in the brush. The girl’s duplex hadn’t been painted since The Doors were the house band at London Fog, and for a moment, Clay wondered if the place was abandoned. But nothing in this neck of L.A. was ever abandoned. People would share a cardboard box with flesh-eating rats for this kind of real estate.
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