“Tomorrow,” she vowed. “Well, later today. He can’t duck me forever.” She reached over and caressed the sexy blue star behind his right ear. “Right now I just want to get naked and get in bed. I need to take advantage of you before you go away to college.”
“Hey, that isn’t for three more months. And it’s only fifty miles from here.”
“Smart decision.”
His lip tugged upward. “Is that about my choice of school, or about what I’m about to say?”
“Both,” she responded.
“In that case, yes.”
“T
his is it?” Jack stared dumbfounded at a nonde-script gray low-level building on a nondescript side street off Sunset Boulevard near Vermont Street—a scruffy neighborhood of auto body repair shops, adult bookstores, Mexican bodegas, and medical-supply distributors just across from Los Angeles Children’s Hospital. “
This
is supposed to impress people?”
Dee opened up a small, discreet console on an exterior wall and punched in a numerical code. “The music industry is different than Hollywood,” she replied in her breathy voice. “It’s cooler to have that funky, bohemian, of-the-people thing. Wait till we’re inside.”
It was the next afternoon, Sunday—a warm and beautiful June day. Jack and Dee were standing in front of a single locked door paneled in deeply tinted glass. The only identification on the door was four numbers and four peeling white letters: RON’S. Jack was having a hard time believing this was a famous recording studio.
Last night, Dee had stayed with him in his tiny Santa Monica guesthouse. It had been blissful, as it had been every single time they were together. He still couldn’t fathom how fast and how deeply he’d fallen for her. Back at Princeton, he and Ben had been pretty much hound dogs, at least before Ben had met Anna.
The last thing Jack had expected to happen to him on coming to Los Angeles was to meet a girl he cared about. But there was just something about Dee. She was so genuinely sweet, her innocence brought out the same protective instincts he had for his brain-damaged younger sister. Not that Dee was brain damaged—far from it—but she had the same lack of guile as Margie.
This lack of guile was in stark contrast to her skills in bed, where she was anything but innocent. She’d confessed to him that many of her previous boyfriends had turned out to be gay, which had kind of led to her trying extra hard. He wasn’t complaining.
“Funky, bohemian kinda thing,” Jack repeated. “Yeah, I’m down with that.”
He chuckled, because what rich Los Angelinos knew about real working-class life was exactly nothing. Not like him. Take his own parents, for example: his pop worked the freight yards and barely made enough scratch to supply the family with Kraft mac and cheese. Jack wasn’t bitter about his background. In fact, he wore it as a kind of badge of honor, especially in this town. Oh sure, he had serious plans to create his own reality show and become very rich, very young. He knew he had the brains, and with his internship at Fox in the reality TV department, he’d soon have the connections to go with it. But he would never turn into one of them. He called them the richies. Pretentious pricks.
A loud buzzer sounded, and Dee pulled the door open. “We’re in,” she announced happily, leading him down a stark gray corridor. “Are you sure you’re ready to meet my parents?”
“As long as your dad won’t put me in a band. I already warned you about my singing.”
“He won’t,” Dee grinned.
“Then we’re cool.”
It was a unique way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Dee’s father—a major record producer—had invited Dee, who had invited Jack, to a showcase for a new band called Evolution. Jack was a bit uncertain about the outing. Meeting the Girlfriend’s Parents seemed like a big-ass step. On the other hand, so far, so good. He hadn’t yet found himself with that nauseous fight-or-flight feeling he usually got when a relationship got too serious.
The corridor was long; the walls were bright red and covered in signed album covers that had obviously been recorded at the studio. Dee explained that her father, Graham Young, had produced several of the old albums, but was now also moving into music management. He would be managing Evolution, as well as producing their first CD.
They came to the end of the hallway; harsh fluorescent lighting showed that they had three choices: the left fork went to the recording studios and sound booths, the right to a kitchen, conference room, and administrative office. Straight ahead, beyond a sliding glass door, was an outdoor lounge with two long maroon picnic tables.
Dee tugged him toward the conference room and kitchen. “Come on. I’ll give you a quick tour before we hear the band. And meet my parents!” She stopped a moment and nibbled at her lower lip. “Maybe I should have had Beloved do your chart before you met them. In case this is an inauspicious moment.”
“Come again?”
“Beloved. My mom’s assistant. Amazing astrologer. She knew Angelina Jolie was pregnant before Angelina did.”
Huh?
Every so often, Jack wondered if Dee was still just the teeniest bit … off.
The conference room was no great shakes—boxes of files covered the entire surface of the portable folding table, two drum kits were disassembled in the corner, and a couple of electric guitars sat on swiveling chairs. “Not much,” Dee acknowledged. “You hungry? There’ll be a buffet where the band plays. Organic. Mom’s caterer is Mother Earth on Melrose—mung beans, tofu …”
Jack shuddered. “I’ll take a big, fat pass on that one. I told you, back in New Jersey, as organic as my family got was Chef Boyardee.”
“I know. I hope I did okay.”
She walked him into a crowded kitchenette and pointed at a line of boxes and cans on the mosaic-tiled counter: SpaghettiOs with meatballs, Hostess Sno-Balls, and Little Debbie Zebra Cakes. This blew Jack away. They were the foods—the
exact
foods—he’d told her he’d loved as a kid.
“I wanted you to feel at home here.” She smiled her giant smile and her cornflower-blue eyes lit up.
“You are too much, girl.”
She opened a can of SpaghettiOs and poured the contents into a plastic bowl, then popped the bowl in the microwave. Meanwhile, he studied the signed photos of famous musicians that lined the kitchen walls. It was fascinating. Bebe Winans with a burrito, Bette Midler eating a Hawaiian pizza, Jello Biafra with a bowl of Jell-O, Rollins with a slice of pizza, the guys in Green Day holding up a large suckling pig. He had zero idea what that was about, but it was damn funny.
Just as the chrome microwave chimed, a voice from behind them chirped, “Hello, you crazy kids!”
The voice was soft, babylike—a dead ringer for Dee’s. Jack turned to see a tiny woman whose sleek blond hair hung perfectly down her back like Donatella Versace’s, only this woman had eye-skimming bangs. She had big, round, blue eyes that were just a tad googly, and a nose that was so small it was hard to imagine that it hadn’t, at some point, seen the pointy end of a scalpel. She was wearing bubble-gum-pink Cargo gloss, gobs of Lancôme bronzer, and a fuchsia Tory B tunic spangled with crystals, white Juicy Couture linen pants, and bare feet with French-manicured toes. She was about Dee’s height and had the same build plus twenty-five years and twenty pounds.
Instantly, Jack knew who it was.
“Hi, Cici!” Dee cried. It surprised Jack that Dee called her mother by her first name. “Wow, you look so cute!”
“Thanks, honey; I hope you don’t mind. I nicked the threads from your closet. The tunic hides everything in the middle, thank God. I can hardly breathe in your pants. But after a couple more days on the fat flush diet, I’ll be skinnier than you. People will think I’m your older sister, not your mother.” She stepped toward Jack. “Well, you must be the guy I’ve been hearing so much about.”
“Cici, this is my friend Jack Walker.” Jack relaxed visibly at the word
friend.
Dee hadn’t used the
b
-word. Boyfriend. “He just finished his first year at Princeton. He’s friends with Ben Birnbaum.”
“Oh my God, Ben’s father is just the best plastic surgeon in the world,” Cici gushed. “I know women whose lives the man has saved.
Saved.
”
“Burn victims?” Jack asked half-facetiously. He scratched his chin, trying to keep a straight face.
“Hardly.” She made a gesture at her chin to indicate hanging jowls, then a similar motion at her breasts. “One day you wake up and your whole body is just falling to the floor. It’s terrifying,” She grabbed Jack’s arm. “I think we need to all be very, very upfront about our feelings, our lives, our
essence,
don’t you?”
Fuck no. It’s no one’s damn business.
“Like, take the word
crazy,
” Cici went on, not letting go of his arm. “What does it mean, really?”
“It’s just a label,” Dee agreed. “A
mean
label.”
“Wait until you hear Evolution.” Her mother beamed, her googly eyes bulging a little. “They’re so in tune with their essence. I named the band, you know. Evolution. As in, evolved to a higher plane.”
“Gotta love it,” Jack commented. He now had a sneaking suspicion as to why Dee had gone off the deep end. It was genetic.
The microwave beeped and Dee handed him the steaming bowl. As he speared a few SpaghettiOs, a short, red-faced white guy stepped into the kitchen. He had the build of a snowman; a small round head atop a larger round stomach, which led to two sticklike legs in baggy gangsta-style jeans. There was serious bling around his neck. This look would have been acceptable, even expected, in the music industry, had the man not been forty-five years old.
“Hi, Daddy,” Dee called out.
Graham Young was too livid to return her greeting. “Have you seen Armando?” He was carrying a glass bowl of creamy Alfredo sauce, which he flung into a garbage can. “What the fuck is that cook trying to do? He knows my lead guitar player is lactose intolerant!”
“Honey,” Cici pointed out. “It’s tofu. Not to worry.”
He ran and literally fished the bowl out of the trash. “Oh. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Okay, Jack decided. The whole family was insane. Suddenly, Graham Young noticed his daughter.
“Babykins! Kitten!” He scooped Dee up in his arms, then stopped suddenly and turned to Jack. “So, you must be the guy I keep hearing about.”
The guy he kept hearing about?
Jack set his SpaghettiOs on a counter and offered him his hand. “Jack Walker. Nice to meet you, sir.”
“Sir. He calls me sir!” Dee’s father chortled. “Funny guy. Cici, do you know where the new guitar strings are? Cody needs them.”
“Beloved put them in his dressing room,” Cici explained, as her Sidekick began to sing inside her purple Balenciaga bag.
“Dad, can you put me down now?”
“Sure, sweetheart.”
“Beloved’s of the Baha’i faith,” Dee went on. “Very spiritual. Her name used to be Ethel.”
Jack nodded. “I can see why she changed it.”
“Listen, it was great to meet you.” Graham nodded vigorously to Jack. “Now I gotta go.” He zoomed out of the kitchen.
Cici smiled, as if her husband was the most normal person on earth. “So, kids. How about if we go hear the band?”
Evolution was comprised of four American guys in their early twenties who had met at an English boarding school outside the town of York, where they’d practiced in front of the roaring fireplace in their dormitory’s common room. Even though they were privileged kids from rich families, Graham Young had retooled them into the Beatles circa
Yellow Submarine
. He’d even had the lead singer—formerly Sam Gebhardt—legally change his name to Darwin.
The studio performance space was crowded—A and R reps from top record labels, music editors from
Rolling Stone
and
L.A. Weekly
, plus programming execs from MTV, VH1, and the other cable music channels all huddled around the good tables. The guys were all dressed in some variation on white T-shirts and jeans; the women seemed to have agreed that since it was a Sunday, sundresses were in order. Jack was glad that he fit in, with jeans and a navy blue New York Yankees T-shirt.
Cici and Graham had redecorated the room for the showcase, opting for an Indian subcontinent motif; tapestry rugs from Bombay were layered artfully on the hardwood floor. On top of the rugs were twenty or so squashy velvet pillows edged in delicate fringe. Sweet-smelling incense burned slowly in various metal holders studded with golden stars and moons. Cici was busy adding to the olfactory assault, scurrying around the room and fanning a huge feather over a large abalone shell that spilled sage smoke into every nook and cranny.
“My mom is spiritually cleansing the room,” Dee explained, as they stood in the back of the space, taking in the scene.
“Good to know. Let’s sit down.”
They found some unused pillows toward the back, since the industry guests were supposed to be closest to the band. Once everyone was settled, the Ravi Shankhar music that had been playing faded out, the lights dimmed, and Evolution took their place on the stage. Before they began, though, a shaman shuffled in, wearing a long red ceremonial gown of indiscriminate origin. He carried a long wooden branchlike item that tinkled with every step, and took a place behind the band.
“It’s a rain stick,” Dee whispered excitedly.
Jack had studied rain sticks in a Latin American lit course—they were hollowed, dried cactuses filled with pebbles. Both ends were capped and sealed, with the pebbles trapped inside. When the stick was moved, the pebbles ran over the interior thorns, making the sound of rain. They were traditionally used to serenade the gods in hopes of bringing moisture to the land.
What this had to do with Evolution was lost on him.
Then the shaman left the stage and the floppy-haired brunette lead singer mumbled into the microphone, “This first one is called ‘Monsoon.’” Then they started to play. To Jack’s surprise—no, shock—the band sounded pretty talented. He looked over at Dee, who was swaying happily to the melody.
Then he felt her small hand journey northward from his knee to his thigh to—
Damn. It was a good thing it was dark in there.