A Lush Betrayal (3 page)

“And what’s Mel’s cut of everything?” I ask, not that I really care. We’ve got plenty of money already, but I know I’d be a crappy businessman if I didn’t ask questions like this.

“Twenty percent plus a salary for the summer and all her expenses paid on the tour,” answers Dave.

Everyone else seems fine with the finances. Mike is looking like he’s about to slide down the wall to pass out, and Colin’s thumbing through some guitar magazine that was lying on the coffee table. Walsh is smiling and nodding because, after all, it’s his future sister-in-law. What the hell can he say about it?

“And access?” I ask, getting to the real heart of the issue.

“Unlimited,” Dave responds, his jaw set.

Mike snaps out of his stupor. “What the fuck?”

“Dude, that is such a bad idea,” Colin seconds.

“Dave, we’ve been over this,” I chime in, feeling adrenaline start to course through my veins.

Dave holds up a hand to stop me mid-sentence. “Look, I know you guys don’t want to be ‘that band.’ I understand, and I respect it. I realize everyone is entitled to some privacy, and being ‘fucked up’ as you so frequently put it, Joss, isn’t where you want to make your name. However,”—he stops and looks seriously at each one of us—“you can’t go your whole careers and never give the fans anything but a website and live concerts. That isn’t how this business is run. If you don’t give them some access, the media will make the shit up. They’ll ruin you before you can even get started. The smartest way to handle it is to maintain control over access. Give them their taste, but you’re in control always. By doing this with Tammy’s sister, we can be guaranteed your best interests will be at the forefront. She’s not going to ruin her future brother-in-law’s reputation, gentlemen.”

“What about
our
reputations?” asks Mike belligerently.

“They’re one and the same,” replies Dave. “Something you all need to remember. You have to realize, Melanie wants to be credible as a photojournalist. If it looks too much like a fluff promo piece no one will be happy. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t in control of what’s going on behind the scenes. She knows the score here, and she’s going to respect the band and its image. This shit is going to launch her career into the stratosphere. She doesn’t want to fuck that up.” Dave ends by looking at me, because, ultimately, it’s my decision. You see, there’s something the outside world may not realize, and it’s not such a pretty thing to say.

I’ve been with Mike and Walsh since grade school. We met Colin when we were seventeen and looking for a bass player. We’ve been through it all together, living out of our cars, eating nothing but popcorn and beans for days on end, my mom’s death, Walsh’s bottoming out and four months in rehab. Girlfriends who came and went, parents who disowned us, and club owners who stole our money. But our deep dark secret is that, while we may have lived with one another and performed together and been friends all these years, we’re not really much of a band. Being a band implies the music is a joint endeavor, the decisions are made together, the effort is universal.

While there are lots of promo pictures showing
four
badass guys in leather and denim, in the end, Lush isn’t four. Lush is me. I’m the voice, the face, the songwriting, and the brain of this operation, and that’s not being cocky, just goddamned truthful.

Mike has been like acid etching away at my shell bit by bit over the last year. He questions everything I do and challenges me every chance he gets. His envy is eating him alive, and it may eventually eat through the delicate thread that binds the four of us.

But while I fear for Lush, I fear more for myself right now. Anyone can play my music. I can survive the breakup of the band. What I’m not sure I’ll survive is the relentless guilt I feel over Tammy DiLorenzo. She’s sitting next to Walsh in a pair of skin-tight jeans and a cropped t-shirt, and having her there—a constant reminder of my worst life mistake—is like having a flame licking ever closer to my skin, singeing me, charring me a little more each and every day. Some heat tempers you, makes you harder and more impervious to damage, but I’m starting to think that night with Tammy is actually the sort of heat that will reduce me to ashes.

“All right,” I say to Dave. “You win. We’ll give full access, but we sure as hell better be in control of it.”

Dave gives me a quick nod. “Good. I’ll let you guys get to work. I’ll hear the second single next week?”

“Yep, next week,” I say and stand to go in the studio, where I’ll spend the next six hours pouring my heart out into a microphone while the flame burns ever closer.

Mel

I’
M SITTING
in my studio apartment over Mrs. Thomas’s garage when the phone rings. I look at the caller ID. It’s Tammy. I brace myself before I answer. I’ve never kept anything from her before, but the shitstorm that has blown up since my meeting with Professor Marin is something I simply cannot let Tammy know about. Tens of thousands of dollars and now, no degree. Until a disciplinary committee can be convened, the Dean has changed my grade to an incomplete, thus postponing my graduation. I’m so screwed, and I’m so humiliated.

I try to sound casual as I answer. “Hey, Tammy.”

“Mel! You’re never going to believe this!” I hold the phone away from my ear so her cheerleader voice doesn’t permanently damage my hearing.

“Geez. Whatever it is, can you say it quietly? All the damn rock music must be messing with your hearing.”

“Mel, save the cynical for later. Guess what your big sister has done for you?”

“Um—” I pause a long time for effect. I can hear Tammy sighing on the other end. “Yeah, I got nothing,” I say finally.

“I got you your first job as a photojournalist!”

“What?” I scratch my cat Mesopotamia’s head lightly, figuring Tammy’s going to have me photograph her wedding and call it photojournalism because her fiancé, Walsh, is a public figure.

“I got you a job.
You
are going to spend the summer on tour with me and the boys and an exclusive all-access contract to shoot photos of the tour. You’re going to produce a DVD and a coffee table book of the hottest rising stars of rock and roll, Mel. You’re going to be the ‘It’ girl of photojournalism.” She finishes with a flourish—verbal one anyway.

In my mad scramble to stand up, I squeeze Mesopotamia’s head too tightly and he smacks me with an open paw and runs off. “Oh, Messy, I’m sorry!” I call after him.

“Mel. Focus here,” Tammy says in exasperation. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Uh yeah. I heard it, but it sounded way too good to be true.”

“Well, it gets better. You’ll also get a salary for the summer, all your travel expenses paid, and twenty percent of the profits from the DVDs and the books.”

I feel my heart stutter for a minute. I don’t know much about the entertainment business, but I do know it involves huge sums of money. Even before they hit it big with this new album, Lush was doing well financially. They had two albums out, and they’ve toured with some of the biggest names in alt rock. Tammy is earning more as their glorified gopher than my dad earns in five years as an asphalt layer. She and Walsh live in this giant house and she drives a Mercedes SUV. She hinted to me that the sales of the new album have already quadrupled anything they’d seen before, so that’s got to be a hell of a lot of cash.

My mind is spinning, trying to work out what a photo essay of the hottest new band on the planet might earn. Twenty million? Thirty? Twenty percent of twenty million dollars would be—Okay, I’m not very good at math. It would be a shitload of money though, an absolute shitload.

“Holy crap, Tammy. What have you done?”

“Little sister, I’ve set you up for life. I told you you’re talented, and now the whole world is going to see it too. So grab that diploma and get your ass down here, because we’re leaving on tour in ten days.”

I sit back down on the sofa, feeling my limbs get all tingly from shock.
Grab that diploma
. Oh fuck. This is a nightmare of epic proportions. A dream gig, something any student in my program would give a left arm for, and I might not be able to do it because I slept with my professor and screwed up my whole degree.

“So,”—I go into recovery mode—“what do I need to do to get this job? Do I need to give Dave my resume or transcripts or what?”
Please say no. Please say no
.

“Nah,” —I’m so relieved I practically leap on the coffee table— “I’ve told Dave all about your program and I showed him your website. He’s totally impressed. You don’t need to prove yourself. But there is one thing—”

Oh shit. Here it comes
. My stomach twitches in anticipation.

“We know that it’s standard for open access to be granted, and Dave wants the guys to know they’re on display 24/7, so hopefully they’ll clean up their act some.”

“
But
.”

“But he wants you to agree to a clause that says you won’t leak anything really damaging. Not that you’ll whitewash it all, but if there’s something serious, something that could ruin them, you won’t include it.” She stops, and there’s silence for a moment.

“And are you
expecting
there to be something like that?” I ask as I look out the window at the rain coming down in sheets. I wonder if the good things in life always come with a catch, some little deal you have to make with the devil in order to have your dreams come true.

“No, no, of course not!” Tammy recovers at the speed of light. Her PR skills have always been impressive. “But they’re a rock band, Mel. You know, there are parties and women and sometimes a little too much of both, and things can occasionally get, I guess you’d say ‘messy.’ We don’t need to have the messes displayed to the public, you know?”

“Yeah, I think I know. And so, this is the cost of the job?”

“It is, and I know it’s not a cost you’d choose, but I also know you’ll see this opportunity and what it can do for your career and you won’t turn it down.”

I can almost hear Tammy holding her breath, waiting for my answer. My heart is beating fast, and in my head I hear my journalism professors explaining the ethics of the profession: seek truth, report it, act independently, be accountable, and I’m sure somewhere in there was “no looking away while the band of the moment debauches some poor underage girl or shoots up heroin before every show.”

But in spite of all that, I know what my answer is. I need this job, and I may need it more if things don’t go my way with the disciplinary committee. “Okay,” I answer. “I’ll protect the band’s precious reputation. But, Tammy?”

“Yeah, baby sister?”

“If any of them so much as pinches my ass, I’ll blast it to the rags in London and back.”

When I hang up the phone, she’s still laughing. Apparently she doesn’t think I’m the rock-and-roll type.

I’
M FOUR
years younger than Tammy, so we weren’t even in high school together. By the time I started ninth grade, my wild, sexy, queen-of-the-rock-and-roll-scene sister and her drummer boyfriend had graduated. Well,
she
graduated. Who the hell knows about Walsh. I was always the lesser, younger sister. Not nearly as wild, not nearly as sexy, and never queen of any scene. Tammy and Walsh would come over to my parents’ house once a month for Sunday dinner and sometimes Tammy would drag me along to a concert, but for the most part I ignored Lush and they never paid a damn bit of attention to me.

The one thing about the band tough to ignore, however, was Joss Jamison. He was always the brooding rock god, even before he hit it big, and there wasn’t a girl between fifteen and twenty-five who wouldn’t have let him in her panties if he’d asked. He was hot, dark, and quiet. Pouring his soul out onstage and remaining silent and mysterious offstage. As much as I love my future brother-in-law’s cheerful, fun ways, Joss was always the band member who made my blood rush.

I’m trying to remember everything I can about him and the band as I walk off an airplane into PDX, scanning the crowds for Tammy. It’s been four years since I’ve seen anyone from Lush except for Walsh, and I haven’t even seen him but once in the last couple of years. I realize now that he was in bad shape and Tammy was shielding me from it. I may legally be an adult, but my sister still thinks of me as needing her protection.

“Mel, Mel, over here!” Tammy waves and jumps up and down, a huge sign reading “You Rock the Picture, Mel” in her hands. Next to her is Walsh, dressed in some bizarre Goodwill ensemble with pants that are too short and an old bowler hat covering his floppy brown hair. He’s also got on cowboy boots and horn-rimmed eyeglasses. It’s got a real Johnny Depp appeal to it.

“Hey, Tammy,” I say as I give her a big hug. “Nice sign.” Then I turn immediately to Walsh. “What, did you pick up some homeless guy on your way over?”

Walsh grins at me and grabs me around the neck, pulling me in for a big kiss on the forehead. “It’s so damn good to see you, Mel,” he whispers in my ear.

I look up at him and I can see that he means it. I can also see how clear his eyes are, how true his smile is. “It’s damn good to see you too, big brother,” I whisper back. “You look really good. Really healthy.”