Before the Flock

by David Inglish

  In the morning they fly first class to Fiji. They stay in a private resort. They fuck like rabbits and get tribal Fijian tattoos.

  In the contract, DCA has allotted eighty thousand dollars to make a music video. Felder shows the band some really cool reels and then tells them: “We can’t afford any of those guys. My buddy said he’ll do it.”

  “What’s your buddy done?” EJ asks.

  “You’ll love him. He did the Debbie Cherry video.”

  “Oh shit, that video has hip-hopping hoboes,” Eric says. “What does this guy know about rock and roll?”

  “This guy lives rock and roll.”

  The people at DCA submit a script that they think will go with the song “Kick It Clean,” a song about Kurt kicking Mellaril. The script goes as follows: Kurt is in a hotel room with a really beautiful girl in her underwear. The scene is postcoital, moody. The blinds create bars across their bodies, and a slow fan oscillates shadows in the heat. He sings the song. Then he goes out of the hotel room and there is the band playing their instruments in the hall, or down by the pool, or maybe not playing their instruments at all. But one guy has drumsticks, and he’s rat-a-tat-tat-ing on the banister.

  Felder reads the script, scoffs at it, and tells DCA: “Look, I’m the one with the MTV Astronaut; I know how to make art.”

  Then he hires the guy from the Debbie Cherry video.

  It is a low-concept performance video. The band will play on a soundstage in front of no one, with a fire in a junked car burning nearby and sparks spitting from the lighting rigging. The director tells Felder he is going to make Kurt and the Jovi look like stars. If he could do it for Debbie Cherry, he can do it for them.

  Eric has one minor problem. He doesn’t have much of a part on that song. There is a hit that sounds like gunfire in the distance, and he whacks that five times in real fast succession after Kurt sings the big line on the chorus, but he really doesn’t have anything to do. Eric asks Felder, “Should I sit this one out?”

  “No, it’s our first video. They gotta see all five guys. Make something up.”

  The Jovi laughs. “If I were you, I’d do something like this.” He starts rhythmically rapping out the beat to the song between his left and right hands on the keyboard, as if he were playing the bongos.

  “Yeah, that’s cool. I’ll do that.”

  Tiffany Tucker shows up wearing airtight shiny leather pants, a wife-beater with a crucifix, and collagen-injected lips. A pretty woman, she never really had lips. Now she has these motionless, gigantic pink lips stuck on her face. Her doctor has pumped them up until they have turned inside out, and a little clear saliva lingers on her now-visible gum line. She gives everyone in the band big air kisses and tells them, “Oh God, I’ve missed you boys! It’s so nice to be working with you.” She lights a cigarette and puts it between her gummy lips. After she found Thunderstik and brought the band to Felder, who made a boatload of money, her big reward is a job, a regular paying job, on a video for a rock band. Dane is still her assistant.

  Dane is constantly being sent to get this, steam that, go back and get those. Dane has a constipated look on her pretty little face, and she acts as if she is always looking for something on the floor. To Eric, beneath her cut-off black trousers, her bare calves look shiny and sexy. Near the wardrobe rack, he puts his hands on her hips. Her mop of blonde hair swings about and she looks at him with cold and distant eyes, like she is some beautiful bird of prey. “You’ve changed,” she says.

  “I’m a rocker now. That’s good, right?”

  “No.” She says and squints at Eric like he’s bright. “We’re done.”

  “No. You love me. You’ve always loved me,” Eric says and smiles and tears up a little.

  She dips down into a bag and brings up something, a black velvet mat with ten silver rings—skulls and goats’ heads and sharp, pointy things. “Tiff says put these on.”

  “You’re giving me rings? Satanic looking rings? Really?” Eric asks.

  “Put them on.”

  “You don’t love me?”

  “Hi, Honey.” Tiff arrives in a flurry. “With your long fingers on the keyboard, you’ll look fierce. Trust me.”

  She puts Kurt in a leather blazer, the Jovi in leather pants and a T-shirt with cutoff sleeves.

  The director shows up and disappears into the bathroom with Felder. A half-hour later, the two of them shuffle out and sit Indian-style in front of the band like two gurus, one with long, straight brown hair, one with a frizzy black Brillo pad on his head. The techs set up the real gear, cords and all—the director is into authenticity. They have a PA system, and on the PA system they play the album version of “Kick It Clean.”

  “What do we do?” Kurt asks.

  “Pretend like you’re playing the song,” Felder says.

  The techs cue up “Kick It Clean,” hit PLAY, and everyone in the band hops around pretending to play their instruments as if we are in a junior high air-guitar contest. Felder and his buddy don’t move. The DP changes camera angles, directs the band, and asks for solos.

  Between takes, with his ears ringing, Eric yells to the Jovi, “Dude, Dane dumped me!”

  “Nah! She loves you!”

  A week later they send EJ the video. Everyone meets at EJ’s mom’s house to watch it. We all agree that it has begun—We got radio play, we have a video.

  “We’re the best fucking band in rock,” Kurt announces.

  “Damn straight,” the Jovi says.

  Afterward Kurt and Eric drive down to Tower Records. The placard is there, but still no CDs. They ask for the manager. He is a white guy with dreadlocks down to his ass and a hoop in his nose. Kurt shakes his hand and says, “Have you guys ever seen anything sell like this? I keep coming in to buy Thunderstik, but it’s always gone—sold out.”

  The manager chuckles, punches the computer keyboard, and says, “We sold five.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, dude. Well, fifteen actually. Five CDs. Five cassettes. Five LPs. It’s all we ordered. Sold them all the first day. We ordered five more. Of each. Shoulda been in on Monday. Try again Friday.”

  “Dude. Can you order more?” Eric asks.

  “Yeah. Let me get the form.” The manager puts a piece of paper on the counter. “Here. Put your name here. Address here. How do you want to pay for it?”

  “No, man. You guys should order a bunch. We’re from here. We’re from San Diego,” Kurt says, clutching his head.

  “Yeah, we don’t get many tourists in…”

  “He means the band.” Eric says.

  “No way!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Cool. Okay. I’m on it, dude. I had no idea.”

  EJ, Kurt, and Eric listen to the radio and watch MTV at the same time. They watch the “AltRock Hour,” the “Fresh Rock Hour.” One guy at the beach says he has seen the Thunderstik video, but he’s a guy who lives in his car—it doesn’t seem possible.

  Eric calls Felder. “Hey, Adam, what’s up with the video?”

  “I’ll get back to you. I’m real busy right now.”

  The next week Eric calls Felder again. Carol says, “Adam’s busy. Can he get back to you?” Another week passes, September is ending in a flurry of hot Santa Ana days. Football is on TV. The club scene is quiet Sunday to Wednesday. Eric calls Felder at home and finally catches him. “What’s up, Adam?

  “Hey.”

  “So, dude, what’s up with MTV?”

  “Oh! Hey, babe, put that down. You heard me, put that down.”

  “Adam?”

  “Yeah. You remember Celine from the studio? Right?”

  “The blonde?”

  “Yeah. Very funny! Very funny, girl.”

  “So, Adam, what’s up with MTV? Is your buddy gonna play the video or not?”

  “My buddy? Oh yeah, my buddy, yeah…He said DCA sent the video in a brown envelope with no letter, no promo, so it went straight to the vault.”

  “So is he gonna play it?”r />
  “Said he can’t. Very funny. Where did you find that? Put it down, you could poke an eye out with that!”

  “Why not?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why can’t he play it?”

  “No spins. No push from DCA.”

  “No hookers? No blow? No nothing?”

  “You know the game. Why can’t Kurt be more like you? Don’t tell him, okay?”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “Gotta go. It’s been great. We should hang sometime. Give my best to Sophie, okay?”

  “It’s Eric here.”

  “Right.”

  The receiver clicks several times before Felder gets the phone to stay in the cradle.

  Eric drives down to Tower Records. The dreadlocked dude has finally scored some copies of the album, CD, and cassette. He waves his hands over the CDs like he’s doing some kind of magic trick. “It’s not that bad, dude.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What do you play?”

  “Keyboards.”

  “There’s keyboards on this thing? Whoa, I had no idea.”

  “They’re in there—you just gotta turn it up really loud.”

  “Right on. Right on. You guys make a video?”

  “Yup.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “On MTV?”

  “Look at all these rows and rows of rock records. There’s only twenty-four hours in a day and after commercials and Milli Vanilli, what’s left? It’s hard to get on MTV.”

  “That’s a fact, man.” He gives Eric a soul shake.

  “Thanks, bro. Can you play it once in a while? In the store?”

  “For reals,” he says, sliding the credit card slip under Eric’s hand.

  Felder books Thunderstik a gig at the China Club in L.A. When Sophie and Summer show up, Kurt is already wearing his dog collar and black gig gear. Sophie looks at him, puts her finger through the collar, and lets out a little bark. Felder loves it. He has a photographer snap black-and-white photos of the band backstage with Sophie.

  Sophie says, “I totally get this thing—it’s like Lou Reed in the Transformer stage—like that, and the cover of Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal. Right?”

  “Well, it’s my own thing, you know, but kinda…”

  “Let me do your makeup.”

  Kurt turns pink with joy. Summer and Sophie bring Kurt under the light of a ventilation hood. They turn the corners of his eyes up with eyeliner and mascara, a little rim of red around the lips, and then they white-out the rest. Kurt looks in the mirror. A rock ‘n’ roll dope fiend stares back at him. Sophie stares over Kurt’s shoulder, pushes her hair back with both hands, and stretches out like a cat in the sun. “Hold on, something’s not right.” She digs her nails into the shoulders of Kurt’s black T-shirt and rips the sleeves off.

  “Are you getting this? Are you fucking getting this?” Felder screams at the photographer. “Listen, the guys from Polygram are here. Slay these fuckers! Don’t break anything! Just make music! Show them the pretty singing, right, Kurt? We may need a new label”

  “Are you sure we want to change horses in midstream?” EJ asks.

  “Don’t break anything.”

  Kurt nods. “Let’s do it like Elvis.”

  The rest of the band takes the stage in complete darkness. Count it out. Come in together. “Do It Tonight.” It’s a tough-sounding, hard-driving rock anthem. When Kurt walks out on stage four bars in, the crowd screeches in approval.

  We finish with “Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Lou Reed.

  Afterward, Sophie wipes off the Jovi with some paper towels in the back room. Kurt’s makeup has run down his face and he is staring at the half grapefruits in Summer’s dress like he is gonna juice ‘em.

  Felder motions to the Jovi, Kurt, and Sophie. “Come with me. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

  They follow him down the hall into a catering prep room. There are broad metal trays covered with asparagus sprouts wrapped in ham. Sophie grabs one and pushes it in the Jovi’s mouth, then grabs another and puts it in Kurt’s mouth. A little bald guy in a leather jacket shakes the Jovi’s hand, shakes Kurt’s, and hugs Sophie.

  “This is Joshua Weiner from Polygram,” Felder says.

  “I always wanted to sign you guys. Maybe in our next lifetime.”

  “Really?” Sophie says. “Maybe you wanted to sign us in your last life too, and you just can’t get your shit together?” They all laugh.

  Felder says, “Well, Josh, you never know, do you?”

  “You guys are on DCA for what? Seven albums. I hope they don’t screw you the way they screw everyone else. Seven albums on DCA, that could be a death sentence for this much talent.”

  “Well, we’ll see. We’ll see.”

  Sophie grabs another piece of asparagus and crams it in Weiner’s mouth. Weiner is left chewing and laughing and wanting.

  They walk back to the changing room and Kurt vanishes.

  Felder takes the Jovi and Sophie to a swank underground after-hours party off of Vine. A guy waits by a little basement door with a walkie-talkie. He brings the three of them into a little black antechamber. A hostess in a Lycra dress brings them to a booth. Otto Led, the lead singer of Led ‘n’ Lilacs, is sitting in a booth on the other side of the room with a bandana on his head. He stares and bares his little gray teeth at Sophie. Sophie is pregnant and not drinking and ready to go home after a while.

  While they are driving home, Sophie says, “We should move to L.A.”

  “Why?”

  “After our little girl is born, I don’t want to be traveling so much. If we live in L.A., I could go on movie auditions, and you could record your music. My mom said she would move up and help me.”

  “Hey, my mom can help us down in La Jolla.”

  “Yeah, but it’s, like, boring.”

  “It’s not New York, but I don’t know…boring?”

  “And Darren thinks it would be better for my career if I could go on auditions and be around—”

  “Darren Getty? That guy’s still calling you?”

  “You know, he told me that if I weren’t pregnant, he would’ve given me that role in Muggsy Malone. He told me to get an abortion—he said that’s what a real actress would do.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? If I ever see that guy, I’m gonna fucking punch him in his little twinkly eyes.”

  “He’s just trying to help.”

  “He cast his girlfriend! You know that?”

  “Yeah. She’s not pregnant!”

  “That’s the way that whole thing works. The casting couch.”

  “Not for me, maybe if you’re a nobody.”

  “Don’t…”

  “I’ve got a name.”

  “I know.”

  “A career.”

  “I know, baby. You’d never do that.”

  “It’s my body. I can do what I want.”

  “What? You mean like sleep with some fucking—”

  “No! I just mean nobody can tell me what to do with my body. It’s mine.”

  “Oh. I gotcha, but really, right now, you’re sharing it with our baby.” He rubs her belly. “Is it nice?”

  She smiles and holds his hand on top of her stomach. “Yeah. But I could use a drink.”

  “No. You’re kidding right?”

  After a few miles, Sophie curls up and dozes off. When she wakes, they are pulling off the freeway. “Oh, this little baby makes me sleepy.”

  Even while she’s kissing Kurt and running her hands up and down his sides, Summer is different. Kurt doesn’t know this yet. He thinks it’s the usual race to completion as he presses her against the Fastback, bites her neck, and paws at her skirt. But then she stops rubbing him, stops kissing him, puts her hands above his pounding heart, and pushes him away.

  “No!”

  Kurt wipes his mouth with his hand and leans toward her, bent and panting in the moonlight.

  “You’re like a wolf. Wh
y don’t you try talking to me first?”

  “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

  “The weather.”

  Kurt looks over his shoulder at the gray L.A. night sky. “There’s nothing up there.”

  “That’s not true, there’s a moon and satellites and space trash spinning around the planet. Try it. Tell me something about the weather.”

  “Okay. It’s sixty-seven degrees and dark.”

  “That’s not romantic. Try something like: Isn’t this an enchanting night? But I fear one kiss from you, my love, and the heavenly firmament may fall.”

  “That’s lame.”

  “I’ve heard you sing things like that—not exactly, but close.”

  “I know, but that’s different.”

  “How?”

  “It just is. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wow. You’re such a Romeo. Let’s get out of here—that probably works every time.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Okay. Bye.” Summer walks back toward the entrance to the China Club.

  “Okay. Okay. Pardon me, dear beauty, would you like to go for a ride in my chariot?”

  “You’re right. That’s lame. Oh, well? Aren’t you going to open the door?”

  He does. She slides in, folds and unfolds her legs, and bats her eyelashes.

  The 5 freeway is a river that flows in both directions. Like the Seine, like the Thames, like the Hudson, it brings commerce and filth to its banks. In the day it is covered with silver-backed cars and belching trucks. It is bright in the night with glad-eyed Hondas and Subarus.

  Kurt sails south on this river of lights with Summer by his side. The Mustang is not what she once was, five out of eight cylinders fire in an uneven cadence tonight. The car whinnies and neighs and shakes her head, backfires, and slogs on. When she can feel the moist air of San Diego seeping through the holes in the car, Summer grabs Kurt’s thigh and squeezes. Kurt reaches over into Summer’s lap and wedges his fingers between her clenched thighs.

  “Two hands on the wheel.” She lifts his hand away.

  She unbuckles her seatbelt, gets up on her knees, and puts her face down in Kurt’s lap. She unzips him, reaches in. She drops her head down and licks from the base to the tip. She drops her lips down around the head and Kurt feels lightheaded. The road blurs. He lifts his foot off the accelerator and pulls the car toward the shoulder. Summer feels the uneven engine slow. “No! Keep driving.” Her long fingers move to his right knee and push it down, speeding up the car. She bobs up and down, her lips popping each time they pass the ridge. Kurt lets out a moan and she stops, lifts her skirt, and faces the passenger-side window on her knees. One hand on the wheel, one hand inside her, he slips his fingers in and out, sliding in the wet warmth with the movement of her hips and the uneven sound of the engine. She breathes in exaggerated gulps, as if she has just come up from the depths of the sea. Then she stops, pulls down her skirt, flops down in her seat. “That’s all.”