Rock Bottom (17 page)

“Can’t even imagine what kind of shit is waiting for me back in the States,” he said. “You think maybe I should move out and find my own place?”

“
Yes,
” Joey said. “That would be a start.”

“Maybe being too close to the old man is holding me back.”

“I could have told you that.”

“Yeah, well, why didn’t you?”

“Maybe because you worship the ground he walks on?” She made a face. “You’ve been clear that Thou Shalt Speak No Ill of Thy Father.”

Darlo shook his head and gulped his drink. “You know when you get, like, a feeling in your gut that everything is not what it seems? I mean, I don’t mean any mystical shit, I’m not about to get all Shane right now, just an unsettling sense that shit is off? In your life? A lot more than you thought? That’s how I feel. You know?”

Joey kept a straight face. “I have no idea what that’s like.”

“You don’t?”

She rolled her eyes. “Darlo, is this the first time you’ve wondered if Blood Orphans is fucked?”

“Fucked? We’re not fucked. I was talking about my dad.”

Joey looked at him in utter amazement.

“What?” Darlo said. “Babe, we’re not. We need a vacation is all.”

“Oh. Is that all we need?”

She spoke in a tone that said, You are fucking deluded, but Darlo was inflating again. Logistics and plans.

“We need more discipline,” he said. “I have all kinds of ideas for the next record.”

“Like what?”

“A power ballad, for one.”

She blew smoke and smiled. “Like covering ‘Home Sweet Home’ is going to fucking fix anything.”

Darlo looked at their reflection in the circular chrome that lined the bar. Their faces were elongated, like the eerie masks in that stupid Kabuki porn series his dad had done called
Yellow Fever.
Guys marched around in those masks and cock rings in some pagoda-type house and fucked Japanese girls dressed like geishas. Not one of Dirty Darling’s bestsellers. Still, he lingered on the image, staring hard.

“Enough,” Joey said. “Let’s quit ambling and go back to my hotel. You need a fucking shower.”

As they walked, Darlo tried to keep his head clear, but the dungeon in the basement of his father’s house reared up. The dungeon and the closet full of guns, knives, cocaine. They were coming upon Museumplein again, and the sound of the protest rose up.

“I need to use your phone again,” he said.

She lugged it over and crossed her arms. “Don’t take too long. That shit is a squillion cents a minute.”

He went into a booth and punched numbers. Satellite noise thrummed in his ear. Arctic blasts over Hudson Bay. Electrons bouncing through the ionosphere. The sound of Jesse’s voice had its own tweaky comfort.

“Oh, damn!” Jesse yelled. “My nigga!”

“Yo, Adamson.”

He clued Jesse. He told his drug dealer what needed to be done. “You know where I keep all of it, right?”

“In the pool house?”

“No, man. In the closet. In the shoe box. Next to the guns.”

Some coiffed art-student type in a black turtleneck and coat knocked on the booth. He spat at the little Dutchie. Loogie congealed between them.

“Can I have one of those guns?” Jesse asked. “As payment for services rendered.”

“Not a chance,” Darlo said, “and enough with the fucking thug life. This is serious shit.”

“I could hang up,” Jesse said. “I could do that.”

Darlo growled. “Take the Bren, if you want to be a bitch about it. But not the Glock.”

“You have a Glock?”

“Dude, this isn’t a joke! They’re going to search the place.”

“And that means your house is under fucking surveillance,
dude.
”

More Canadian static.

“What do you expect me to do?” Jesse continued. “Flash a badge?”

Drug dealers. You’d think they’d be more resourceful.

“Wait until five in the morning,” Darlo said. “That’s in a few hours. There won’t be anyone there.”

“You bet there will.”

“And what if there is? You get caught, it’ll be like that fucking time we broke into the Sharkey house down the street. Once they see your address on your license, they’ll scatter. Your fucking dad pays their salary. Now stop being a pussy,
bro,
and go get my shit.”

Darlo breathed out frost and lit a cigarette. Joey sat on a bench, looking pensive — looking, Darlo thought, like she was hiding something. Fucking knew it. That bitch is full-on withholding.

“Fine,” Jesse said.

“Yeah, look, just do it and —”

Static over Iceland. Birds over Newfoundland.

“— if it, if you can’t — Jesus, what is that?”

“Bad connection. Technology, man.”

“Just try, all right? And call me when you’re in there. OK?”

Jesse moaned. Darlo couldn’t believe how difficult he was being. “In the closet. With the guns. Leave the Glock.”

“Roger that,” Jesse said. “At your service.”

“Leave the Glock. I mean it. Go.”

12

SO HOW WAS THE MEETING?
” Darlo asked, handing over the phone. “With Hackney?”

Joey never thought the day would come when Darlo looked spooked, but here they were, walking toward Vondelpark, pretty sure they were going in the wrong direction from her hotel, and the drummer seemed so preoccupied and nervous she thought he’d walk right into Dutchie tram traffic. Of course, she understood that his dad’s arrest would rattle Darlo, but still, she expected him to put on a brave face. Darlo was the heart of Blood Orphans, righteously pumping, keeping the rotting body intact. Darlo showing vulnerability, however stunted, deflated what was left of her optimism.

And he really smelled. The smell of him made Joey’s eyes water in ways good and bad.

Joey shrugged and lit one of her matches. “Fucking Hackney thinks he’s so slick.” She wasn’t going to let on, not here. “Talking loud and saying nothing.”

“What
nothing
did he say, though? Are they upset? Are they happy?”

“We didn’t really talk about it.”

Darlo looked skeptical. She’d blown it a little there, underplayed it.

“What do you mean, didn’t talk about it?”

“He just wanted to party.”

“With you? At breakfast?”

“I’m attractive and easy.”

“Real virtues.”

“You don’t seem to mind.”

Darlo looked at the manager, who recognized, in his bloodshot valleys, profound problems that had nothing to do with her or the band. They were the red tangled map of a deep and fermented sorrow.

“Your eyes,” she said. “Jesus, Darlo.”

“I’m having a bad fucking day, babe,” he said. “My dad’s in fucking jail and I can’t get any money. So pardon fucking me if I look a little shitty.”

She resisted taking his hand. “We can talk if you want.”

He drew back, smirking. “About fucking what, exactly?”

Joey thought of pictures of rock musicians not long before they died: Brian Jones by the pool in which he drowned, pasty-faced, wearing a shirt of American flags; Jim Morrison, pig-faced and stringy-haired in a Paris café; Janis Joplin, slouched on a velvet couch, cradling a Jack Daniel’s bottle in her arms like a baby. Darlo had the same end-of-the-line vibe, and he hadn’t been famous in the bargain. She waited for feelings of guilt, as if, in her capacity as manager, she could have alleviated this condition. But no guilt came. Only worry that Darlo would start breaking down in ways she could not predict.

If I fuck him, she thought, finally and completely, will that do the trick?

Darlo picked something out of his hair. This took a minute. Her phone rang.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Shane,” she said, and pulled away as he tried to grab it from her. They rubbed against each other. Kiss me now, she thought. But he wavered.

“I wanna fucking talk to him,” Darlo said.

“Tough shit,” she said, and took the call. “What’s up, white bread?”

“Hi, Joey. You’re in Amsterdam, right?”

“Fine,” she said, “and how are you?”

“Fine. You’re in Amsterdam, right?”

“Oh good, I’m glad you’re well. How was the show last night?”

“You’re in
Amsterdam, right?
”

Darlo stared off into space, his square-jawed profile measuring up well as black hair flopped beautifully over his eyes. She lit a Players and passed him a match.

“I need to use your hotel room,” Shane said. “I need a shower.”

“What about Morten’s?”

“I didn’t stay there last night, and I could really use a nice bathroom right now, and besides, I don’t even know where Morten’s —”

“Find a hostel.” Silence. “Did you get that?”

“Joey, do me a fucking favor for once.”

“Apologize for telling Helen that I’m a shitty manager.”

“I didn’t tell Helen —”

“See you later.”

“Fine! I’m sorry. Where’s your fucking hotel?”

Joey stared at Darlo’s hair. Such good hair. “I’m at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. On Dam Square. Get a key from reception.”

Shane clicked it right in her ear.

“Dickwad,” she said, strangling her phone, and turned to Darlo. “Why does the singer always have to be the baby?”

“Gets him attention,” Darlo said, and blew smoke rings.

They continued to stroll in the wrong direction. Joey chain-smoked and gamed out dinner. How would everyone take it? Adam would act like a normal human being; Joey was sure the guitar player wanted out but was too spineless to quit without such a major development — this would be his chance. Bobby would laugh and scratch at his disgusting hands and pretend that he was thrilled, they had it coming — the Mummy was such a future-fucker — but inside he would be dying. Shane was a wild card; he could be sanguine or damning, biding his time, that careerist shit. Darlo wouldn’t accept it. He’d demand satisfaction, the phone numbers of all involved, just so he could embarrass himself even more deeply than he already had, as if two years were not enough to forever disgust everyone who pledged to help him. Or he’d skip the Rolodex, jump across the table, and throttle her.

Darlo had that thousand-yard stare on. Despite thinking that Père Cox was largely subhuman, she hadn’t thought he’d fuck over his son. But he had, right in the keester.

The drummer shook his head, as if breaking free from a spell. “I just can’t believe my dad would mismanage things like this,” he said. “He’s got an aging outlaw problem, man — he just wants to be young forever. It’s making him do weird, crazy shit.”

“You mean the snuff films?”

Darlo looked at her. Was that
hurt
on his face?

“They’re not snuff films,” he said.

“Close enough. You told me about that one girl.”

“It was just a black eye. He paid her for it.”

She laughed. “Please tell me you’re not defending him.”

“I’m not,” he said. “But it was acting.”

She too blew smoke rings, feeling competitive. “The sooner you start understanding that violence is wrong,
always
wrong, the sooner you and I can do business.”

“You mean fuck?”

“No, Darlo.” She stretched her aching leg. “Something deeper than that.”

Darlo changed the subject, started in on one of his diagnostic sessions, where he catalogued all that had gone wrong with the band and made recommendations for how to fix it. This was the vestigial, ossified version of the bull sessions the two of them had once so enjoyed, back when they were going to take over the world, back when the world was the length of the Sunset Strip and thick enough to spread all over the globe. Glory on a small scale was suitable for all kinds of dreamers. You could really plot that graph. But the bigger stuff required real mathematicians, required an actual and quantified understanding of the algorithms of celebrity, the positioning of image, the discipline to stay with the plan. Sting and McCartney and Steven Tyler had discipline, Joey thought. Jim Morrison and Sid Vicious did not. Neither did Darlo, or anyone in Blood Orphans except Adam, Mr. Anticharisma.

Adam had discipline. No wonder they hated him.

The intimacy of those bull sessions. The authenticity. Their collective ability to imagine it fully and enact it. Beautiful. Sunshined. Beers at the Silverlake Lounge and hamburgers at Tommy’s and cocaine at Peppermint Castle. And now here was Darlo, a little bug in the rainforest of fame, trying to drag the mighty leaf of perseverance across the jungle floor. Here he was, all alone with broken antennae. What could Joey do? She got down there in the dirt, stretched her mandibles, and gave a pull.

“Mistakes were made,” she said. “I won’t dispute that.”

Darlo lit up, managing to burn his hand on the match a little.

“One mistake we made,” he said, “was ‘Hella-Prosthetica.’ That’s a bad idea for a song. Fucking cringe-tastic, dude. Some kid e-mailed me a drawing of what it would look like to actually fuck some chick without legs.”

“Not to mention the fight you got in because of that stupid song.” Joey took a drag. “That didn’t wise you up?”

“No. That guy was a prick, man.”

“I’m sorry,” Joey said. “But it seemed totally reasonable to me.”

“Why? Because his sister had no legs?”

“That sounds about right.”

“Fucker had a strong punch,” Darlo said, in a tone of contrition. “If I had it coming, I sure as shit got it.” The bloodshot in his eyes had increased, as if he were crying on the inside of his sockets. “A real strong punch.”

They continued on, into Museumplein. Joey wondered how they had just gone in a circle. On the green, a couple hundred kids protested America’s involvement in every little thing. Hippies, straights, and a few modern primitives, a smattering of dreadlocks and old furs, and polar fleece like icing.

“The old devil America,” Darlo said. “Get a new hobby.”

The crowd grew fast, coagulating like hair in a drain. Banners waved under the gray Dutch sky, watched over by the old buildings, scoured and prettified. Joey wondered about all the different demonstrations that had occurred through history upon this Dutch square: greater chocolate tariffs, better representation for tobacco traders, anger over burgher-mandated funny hats. In this context, anti-McDonald’s-ism couldn’t match up.

“Look at these assholes,” Darlo said, motioning to the protesters.