Rock Bottom (37 page)

Sarah’s eyes widened. “Danika?”

Shane turned around. Danika stood there, her dreads back-lit like a teen Medusa. “Sarah?”

They said a few things in Dutch and broke into laughter.

“This is my little sister!” Sarah said. “Little troublemaker!”

“You’re
sisters?
” Shane said.

“What a coincidence, no?” Sarah said.

“And how!” Danika said. She clutched Shane’s arm as if he’d escaped and she would never let that happen again. He’d dealt with crazy girls before, whose ability to fuck was inversely proportionate to their ability to function, but the way she put the grip on portended a whole new level of nutty-bitch bullshit.

“I saw them last night, right here.” Danika giggled. “I stood over there and stared at Shane all night. I knew he would be mine. And then, the poor thing …” She pouted and shook her head, releasing right under Shane’s nose that particular batch of pheromones that, to his dismay, had lost all their magic; now she just smelled like old roses. “Marcus found him in my bed and chased him out.”

“We heard,” Bobby said. “Marcus is a real live wire.”

Shane looked at Bobby. “You
met
him?”

“He’s not our father,” Danika said. “So he’s powerless. Mother won’t let him lay a hand. All he can do is whine.”

“And perforate eardrums,” Shane said. “He can do that. He’s real sharp with the tops of garbage cans.”

He thought that would be enough to break the happy spirit of the conversation. But they didn’t even notice.

“He seems like he’s been through a lot,” Bobby said.

“A lot of drugs,” Danika said.

“But he loves our mother,” Sarah said. “He’s good to her. He treats her like gold. Our regular dad is a hothead too, but no nice side.”

“They’re both idiots,” Danika said happily, squeezing his arm hard enough to cut off the flow of blood. “We’ll see you later. Shane and I have to go have sex in the alleyway.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t. I, uh —”

“Have to go talk to the Buddha?” Bobby said.

“The Buddha?” Danika said, and closed Shane’s mouth. “I am your little Shiva right here, baby. You don’t need no Buddha, let the motherfucker burn!”

Danika led him around back, past the knowing glances of dudes without dates. Never before had he found the certainty of sex in an alleyway to be unappealing. He tried to beg off. “I’m not up for it,” he said.

“Sure you’re not!” she said, and shoved him between two Dumpsters. “Give it to me!”

The alley stank of rotting meat and old beer. There was just no way. But she pushed against him, grinding in her best cat-in-heat, so he couldn’t move. She reached and fondled.

“Hands off,” he said. “It’s not an orange.”

She really put the grip on him, as if his complaint were a dare to continue.

“Fucking cut it out,” he said. “Let go, Danika.”

“Sure, baby,” she said, her breath smelling a little bit of licorice. “I’m a freak.”

“I think there’s a language barrier problem here. I think we’re having — ”

She squeezed tighter. His hand grabbed the offending arm. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You like it,” she said. “That’s what your lyrics are about.”

“What?”

“Rough sex.”

“This isn’t rough sex. It’s torture. And I don’t write the fucking lyrics.”

She pulled at him like he was a cow.

“That’s enough!” he said, and shoved her off.

She lunged, grabbing at both sides of his head in another attempt at a hot embrace, so that her hands cuffed his ears, sending a shock of pain through him. Like stepfather, like stepdaughter. Shane was squeezed through some aperture, pulled though and squashed. He fell in pieces, in symmetry, crumbling like the demolition of an old building. No smoke rose from the sides, though. No professionals rushed in to assess success. No one shook in awe. No one whooped at the majesty.

17

JOEY STOOD IN THE STAR CLUB,
drinking Jim Beam and fuming. All that planning and worry, she thought, and they don’t care. She had plotted out a seating arrangement, fretted all day, and worried that she might get physically assaulted. But they had barely noticed. All she got was attitude. What was wrong with these people? They were so undeserving of her anxiety. After all the work she’d done, this was how much they loved her?

A head full of snow didn’t make her feel any better.

You care too much, Joey, she thought. At the end of the day, you care too fucking much to ever be a very good manager. And now you’re stuck drinking cheap whiskey in a glass that smells like detergent.

She really wished she hadn’t destroyed that phone. Without it she could barely breathe.

All the work she had done, and they were ready to roll over. They were just
so
unimpressed with her call to arms. No guts at all, this band.

She sipped her drink. Shane came rushing by, clutching his ears. Behind him ran a young girl in black dreads, calling his name. The little baby Jesus stopped and turned around.

“Leave me alone! Crazy bitch! Crazy fucking family!”

“Shane!”

“Leave me alone!”

The singer and his Dutch black-dreaded girlfriend shot apart, moved as if a wave had cast them to separate shores. The girl lifted her hands to the sky and ran from the club. Shane grabbed at his ears and howled and ran through the swinging doors, out of sight. The bartenders, loading up the well, shared a laugh.

“Christ, Shane,” she said, and chewed on some ice.

Then Adam walked in. Without his Fu Manchu.

“You didn’t,” she said. “But you fucking did.”

He smiled, and she couldn’t believe her eyes. Without the fuzzy caterpillar ’tache, Adam was really cute.

“I needed a fucking change,” he said, eyes glowing. “I should have done it a long time ago.”

“But where?”

“Your hotel room.”

“Damn.” She took a drag, squinting. “Did you put it in a bag? Like a fucking memento?”

He nodded. “You’re creepy, Joey.”

She crouched down, looked at him like an anthropologist poring over a specimen of some ur-creature. “Dude, I think you’re taller, too. That thing on your face was dragging you down.” She shook her head. “Keeping you hunched and hidden. You look
good.
”

He hugged her; it was like in movies when people overcome addiction and embrace the person who got them straight. She kept her arms in the air like she was sticking ’em up. She was just that stunned.

“Don’t tell the others,” he said. “It’s a surprise.”

He walked off into the club’s shadows. Joey sucked down her drink and ordered another. Fucking betrayer, she thought. You’re totally leaving me, us, the band. You finally figured out what was what. Good for you and fuck you and damn, Adam, you are a foxy piece of poncy ass, aren’t you?

Right on the heels of this scene, a young woman of staggering Black Irish beauty strode in with a guitar. Her ebony hair shimmered in the semidarkness, as if attracting all the visible light in the room. Behind her came a stylish-looking roadie who resembled Sting in
Quadrophenia
— she couldn’t remember his character’s name — with short white hair, a glossy two-hundred-dollar red Windbreaker, and cheekbones that cut glass.

Roadies, Joey thought. One more thing we never had.

Behind him came the manager, completing this triumvirate of gorgeous Anglos. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a shiny blue tie. A handkerchief stuck out from his breast pocket. Creases ran in fear from this guy.

That’s a rock-and-roll manager, Joey thought, wobbling on her heels. That’s a pro.

To her chagrin and excitement, the pro came over and ordered a drink. “Campari and soda,” he said, in a rough, all-business brogue. The bartender, who’d been insouciant to Joey, moved as if this guy were his boss.

Joey’s palms went sweaty. She wondered, Maybe I should fuck him. Maybe, through the osmosis of sweat and flesh, he’ll impart some managerial science. He’ll make me come and then he’ll call his good friend John Hackney and they can double-team me, thereby saving my career. Cowabunga.

She and the Hackneyette exchanged glances. He extended a hand. “You must be Joey Fredericks.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I heard you were short, blond, and beautiful.”

“Guilty as charged,” she said, and took his hand. “Who are you?”

“I’m John Bridges. I manage Deena Freeze.” He motioned to the stage. “We’re opening for you tonight.”

“Welcome to the funeral. Thanks for wearing black.”

Bridges laughed politely, because that was default behavior.

“We were dropped today,” she said, pushing it. “Warners dropped us. I just told the guys at dinner. So I’m feeling a little low.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Bridges said. “Terrible.”

Bridges took a little sip of his Campari — very classy, Joey thought, very sexy — took out his Palm, and started scheduling things. Here a tap and there a tap. Joey bristled; she had dropped her Palm off the Venice Pier last week when she’d been trying to use it with greasy post–hot dog hands. Damn thing had sunk to the bottom of the bay.

“They told us they would always be there,” Joey said, “and then they acted as if we didn’t exist. Oh, sure, people say that we screwed ourselves, that I should have kept a muzzle on Darlo. But how do you keep a muzzle on the mouthpiece?”

Diarrhea of the mouth flowed in a stream from her lips. Bridges was caught, if only for a minute. She’d better whine fast.

“You don’t muzzle the mouthpiece,” she continued. “That’s what you don’t do. You can’t change what you are. You’re dealt the cards and that’s what you play. We played them wrong.” She took a sip. “Why don’t you tell me what cards you were dealt, John?”

Bridges put away his Palm, and with just as much calm as confidence — an unnerving, royal confidence — he told Joey exactly what cards he and Miss Deena Freeze had been dealt: not as good as the one that Blood Orphans had been given, but Deena was the Lady of the Lake, and no doubt she and Slick Rick here would know exactly what to do. She wouldn’t, say, take the cards, shit on them, and wipe them in the dealer’s face.

“That is
so
great,” Joey said, feeling like the incredible shrinking woman. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go blow my brains out.”

Bridges smiled, sipped his Campari all sexy-like, took his Palm back out. “Aim for the temple, Joey,” he said. “The skull’s softer there.”

“Any other advice?”

He pulled out a business card from his wallet. “I’ll be in LA in a few weeks. Maybe I can help you sort out all this business with the label.”

She stared at the card. White lettering against a gold backing. So tacky it worked. “What kind of power do you have that I don’t know about?”

“I have the good faith of the label,” he said. “It goes a long way.”

“We have a long way to go.” She fixed a gaze on him. “All right. Sure. I mean, there’s nothing to be done, we’re fucked harder that a Hollywood hooker at dawn, but maybe you’re a magic man.”

“I was thinking more about you,” he said. “Not so much Blood Orphans. They’re beyond help, but you might need a job, eh?”

At that moment Joey saw it in his eyes. The player. She had no idea what he was talking about, but a tight rush up her spine told her nothing good could come of it. She was being taken; she was sure of it. She was a minor pawn in some bigger scene. For once she stood on the other side of total calculation, and felt its burning breeze on her face.

“I have to go, London Bridges,” she said, and handed the card back. “Have to go see which member of my band needs my help. Someone must. While we still exist. While I still get to play the part.”

He shrugged, like, Shoot yourself in the foot if that’s what you want, and smiled in a way that revealed that he might only have been trying to help out. Joey wondered when her bullshit detector had gone south on her, but then figured she’d only fooled herself into thinking she’d ever had one.

18

ALL THE PEP TALKS
Bobby had given himself about Darlo were useless. Day after day, month after month, for almost three years, every time he had locked horns with the drummer, his horns had snapped right off.

Passenger. He’d sat through the whole thing, and when it was over, all he’d been able to manage to do was storm off, tight in the throat, wanting to burst, to sob. I’m a runt of a man, he thought, the smallest of the litter.

Now he stood in the Star Club, chain-smoking, drinking free Stella. Interesting that his hands didn’t itch.

Sarah showed up. She wore some kind of handbags-and-glad-rags outfit, though the angles were still pretty tight. She gave him a big kiss.

“How’s my rock-and-roll star?” she said, and embraced him. “How are your poor little hands?”

“We were dropped,” he said. “Warners dropped us.”

She frowned, and for a moment he assumed the worst. Starfucker, he thought. Now that I’m out of business, she won’t want me. She was slumming.

“You must be very sad,” she said, and gave a reassuring kiss. “Sorry.”

“No, no,” he said, emboldened. “I’m psyched. Now I can do whatever I want. I was a fucking prisoner and now I’m free. This is great fucking news.”

Practice nonambiguity, he thought. It’s awful news but pretend it’s the best thing ever. Standing there with a bullshit smile on his face, Bobby thought of himself as the Terminator. He was going to have his skin stripped off, his metal guts laid bare, and get crushed in the trash compactor of failure before his desire to be famous would die.

Thinking of himself this way, as a towering monster from the bleakest future, lifted his spirits.

And then it turned out that her sister was fucking Shane, and psycho Marcus had cuffed Shane’s ears. That he and Shane had dipped their wicks into a very tight gene pool made him queasy, but he had gotten the good end of the deal. Clearly Danika was a thespian to the marrow, annoying and grandiose. The thespians always went for Shane. The bad girls went for Darlo. Adam got the wallflowers out on a dare. Bobby got … Darlo’s leftovers?

No more. Never again.

He bought Sarah a drink as Shane rushed back into the club, screaming and clutching his ears. “Fuck!” he cried, and ran into the green room.