Revenant Rising (41 page)
Laurel is given no chance to respond to his impulsive behavior as he hustles her along the pavement leading to the carpark. More students are out and about now and several recognize him. High fives are offered and a sprinkling of rocker catchphrases, but it’s mostly double takes that answer to his ego needs. Laurel turns more than a few heads and draws admiring glances, and this too responds to his ego. Inside the car he’s about to start the engine when she puts a hand on his arm.
“What you did back there . . . that was inspired.”
“Sorry?”
“Kissing Emily. She can have a hard time with goodbyes. You must have noticed she was about to break up, and catching her off guard like that was funny and sweet and eased some of the strain. Thank you.”
A quick check of her expression establishes that she’s not having him on; she really means it, except she’s a bit mixed up about which sister it is that has a hard time with goodbyes. Nothing more is said till they’re back on the motorway and she brings out pen and paper from the satchel that’s now wedged between her feet.
“Leaving the press out of it for now,” she says, “eliminating the press—that’s a separate issue—and starting with colleagues and old friends you ran into in L.A., passengers encountered on the flight to New York, bystanders at the hotel, gawkers on Fifth Avenue, followers in the museum, tourists on the Circle Liner, and the assortment of students and faculty just now. . . .”
She pauses for breath and he’s holding his because he’s unclear where this is leading.
“At any time during any of that scrutiny did you have the feeling you were being evaluated for soundness of mind and body?” She looks at him from the corner of her eye. “Did you think any of those interested parties were looking for signs of infirmity, signs of failure?”
“Shit, it’s more than a feeling. It’s a bloody actuality and strongest amongst my own people, it is. You saw the way the lot regarded me the day they set out to rebrand me and offer me up as some sort of adulterated product. You were first to speak out against ’em—which I’ll not forget anytime soon—and now you’ve got me keen to know where you’re goin’ with this.”
“I don’t know that I’m
going
anywhere with it, it just occurred to me that maybe the general public has more faith in your abilities than your own people. Maybe it’s only your handlers who need to be brought up to speed, and that shouldn’t require more than a strongly worded memo.”
Is she backing out of the book deal? Is this her way of saying the story may not need telling at all, other than to a few professional skeptics? He tightens his grip on the steering wheel. Is her personal self halfway out the door with her professional self?
“Gibby Lester, the bloke just found dead in New York, was my late wife’s drug dealer,” he announces right out of nowhere in the interest of retaining at least the professional Laurel. “I had a bit of aggro with him, roughed him up some and relieved him of his truck the day she was killed. I’m told he never brought charges against me because he would’ve incriminated himself.”
There, that has to be a start in the right direction.
“My manager’s always maintained the Lester fuckbag was in league with Cliff Grant—another fuckbag that just happened to get whacked recently,” he plunges on. “This, because Grant allegedly did a bit of low-level drug dealing and also had in common with Lester an interest in porn distribution—hard core variety—but nothing’s ever been proved. As I said when you told me about Lester yesterday, nothing’s ever stuck to either blighter for very long except my name—notoriety by association.”
“I see,” she says in her inscrutable way.
“There’s good to come of this, though,” he says, undiscouraged. “Because if Nate gets stirred up about their commonalities again—especially now that both are homicides—that’ll give me a bit extra breathin’ space. Blessing I might wanna call that.”
She says nothing, inscrutable or otherwise, and he can’t read her expression; her head’s bowed, her profile’s blocked by the thick lock of hair that’s escaped the loosely tied scarf at the nape of her neck. An educated guess at what she’s writing braces him for questions about the possible relationship between Grant and Lester, about the drug and porn supply lines, and most dreaded of all, about the late wife.
They don’t come. Instead, she asks if he had adequate opportunity to look over the site of his first American gig and hands him the opening he wants like he’s just ordered up from room service.
Exactly as planned, he starts at the American beginning with a story calculated to have her asking for more.
“So, it’s 1977 and after a hard five-year slog through the Home Counties and grungier bits of the Continent, we’ve won a spot on the bill at Newt’s Place with a rough demo tape and some sketchy recommendations from promoters in the UK. We’re dying with excitement and anxiety well before we manage to fly to New York steerage class, purchase a fifth-hand van with a hundred thirty thousand miles on it, and find our way to New Haven. The day arrives, the hour approaches, the minute draws near, and what do you think? Our big entrance is delayed
ninety
fucking minutes because the patrons cannot be pried away from the telly that’s showing a championship hockey game gone into overtime! Gave all new meaning to the term ‘performance anxiety,’ it did.”
Her reaction is exactly what he wants—a moment of dismay followed by amusement. He elicits more of the same with similar stories of the often-hilarious indignities suffered as opening act to fading headliners. Sensing overkill, he leaves off after the fourth or fifth example and begins a new thread.
“We called the band Verge without deciding if that meant we were on the edge of a breakthrough or stalled on the edge of the road. Early on we were categorized heavy metal and that didn’t work because we weren’t loud enough, sullen enough, and couldn’t afford studded leather costumes. Then it was teeth metal they called us because we smiled when we should’ve been sneering. After that, the metal appellation got dropped altogether and some coked-up promoter called us a punk band and that sat about as well as if he’d called us disco queens. Finally, someone got it somewhat right by classifying us pop rock. That always worked for me, even though some consider it synonymous with pussy rock, and I say what’s wrong with that when one of the main reasons any lad has for gettin’ behind a guitar and into a band is to score chicks—the other reasons being to party and challenge the system.
“It was a wonderful and frightening time. We were immature because we could be. There was no good reason not to be. We didn’t make decisions, we made surprises. It’s a bleedin’ wonder we survived ourselves, and we wouldn’t have if Nate Isaacs hadn’t arrived the scene and caught us midair, so to speak. Whilst he’s good at a lot of things, he’s truly brilliant at artist management—even when he’s overdoin’ it. He was the right man for the job and for the time. This was the seventies, when managers were infamous for bludgeoning the way for their clients and personally carting off the gate receipts—sometimes to the detriment of the clients. Nate was at the forefront of the movement towards more civilized management techniques that depended on shrewdness over force and cookin’ the books over outright thievery.”
“Nate never. . . .”
“No, never. Back in those days the proceeds from some of our concerts wouldn’t have amounted to pocket change for him. He had better and more efficient ways of makin’ money than by dodgy means.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, I was explaining that Nate took us on at a critical point. Although he wasn’t that long out of business school and only a year or two older than the eldest amongst us—that bein’ me—he could’ve been of another generation. All grown up, he was. Excruciatingly grown up and bloody eager to prove it with a band who were wasting time, talent, and money for lack of direction.
“We came together with Nate in Vancouver, with its abundance of recording studios and strip clubs, where he supplied purpose as well as direction. The first album produced under his aegis broke in Japan and eventually sold thirty million copies worldwide. We toured behind it to fifteen different countries, two hundred shows in all, and made obscene amounts of money by givin’ people what they were conditioned to want instead of what we wanted them to want.”
“I haven’t forgotten what you said about bowing to the god of commercialism ahead of the god of artistic endeavor. Was this the initial concession?” Laurel says.
“You could say. Nate cut us an amazing record deal for a young band still strugglin’ to find its ultimate sound. Brilliant, it was. He flogged us as capable of everything from ‘caveman stomp’ to ‘reggae-inflected fusion,’ with intervals of ‘scorching metal meltdown’ and ‘power balladeering’ . . . Unquote.”
Laurel laughs. “That sounds like four different directions to me.”
“It wasn’t, actually, but it was a masterful mix of hyperbole and fact that got the job done and our collective feet in the door of the Pinnacle recording studios, where we made a name for ourselves by putting out what Saul Kingsolver, head toff of the label, wanted put out. At first this didn’t bother any of us in the band, and it never did bother Nate. He still caters to the masses—ever the merchant, never the artist. Good example of that is his arguing against the title of my Icon-winning tune. He thought the word ‘revenant’ wouldn’t be understood by the common folk and it turned out it was the uncommon folk, such as the organizers of the award gig, that were unable to grasp the contextual meaning.
“Sorry, I’m wandering. I was talking about the compromises and provisional sellouts made along the way. I was sayin’ how this wasn’t a bother with the first flush of fame, but with the second and third album releases we were startin’ to feel like a cover band, like we were playing someone else’s music—which we were in a sense—and we started agitating against it. Because we won numerous Grammys and BRIT awards, got massive radio play, charted four number one singles in a row, and individual album sales averaged between fifteen and nineteen million units at initial release, the label cut us loose to do one on our own. It remains the best thing we ever did and ever will do. Epic, it was. We didn’t eliminate any of the power that characterized our first three albums, but another sensibility was there—refinement, I wanna say.
“We went down to Muscle Shoals and put it together in a week with the help of a couple living legends—Tim Dales at the console and Idella Brown lending backup on four of the tracks. The album was called
Release
partly to twit the Pinnacle label and partly to signify our relief at being freed to express our true selves.
Release
shipped triple platinum and went on to sell ten million in ninety days. It’s now at thirty-eight million and counting. We toured behind it for over a year. For so long I started callin’ it the overwork tour, although I ordinarily wasn’t one to moan about something I’d so actively sought.”
He pauses, steals a glance at her sedate profile. “You’re awfully quiet over there. Gone numb with boredom, then?”
“Not at all. I’m just wishing I’d brought a tape recorder because you’re telling this better in your own words than anything I’m apt to write when I transcribe my notes.”
“You think today’s blather’s of value, then?”
“Did you intend it not to be?”
“No, of course not. Where’d you get an idea like that?”
He keeps eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel lest some involuntary action give him away. No matter, she still probably knows he’s lying or she wouldn’t have asked the question. Regardless, he goes on blowing smoke in the form of more record sales statistics and band trivia till she interrupts to let him know it’s edging towards seven-thirty GMT, and he’ll soon lose his window of opportunity if he wants to tell the boys a proper goodnight.
At the next off ramp Laurel directs him to a combination filling station and convenience store with a drive-up pay phone on the premises. The call’s gone through before he realizes how unprepared he is. The only rhyme coming to mind now pairs the words Connecticut and etiquette and he wouldn’t subject even a drowsy two-year-old to that level foolishness.