She-Rox: A Rock & Roll Novel (21 page)

President’s Office, Astral Agency, March 27, 2007, 11:47 a.m.

Grey Tierney looked across his imposing power desk at Vince Perini. He was very displeased. Each time he had to deal with one of his agents boffing the talent, he wanted to fold up shop and take an early retirement. He hated this part of the job. Human resources could have dealt with it, but the earlier phone call from Milos Ballantine requested that he do the dirty work personally. In exchange, Exposure would put The Katz on the cover of their next issue which would almost guarantee the band’s success and boost Astral’s image garnering bigger names. A dose of media like this would be more than beneficial, it would be life changing. Grey liked Vince, but this was business.

With his morning cup in one hand, Grey asked, “So, what’s this I’m hearing about you turning down the Exposure deal?” he asked.

“I didn’t turn down any deal,” Vince cried. “I didn’t even know there was a deal. Ginger met this guy and did it behind the agency’s back.”

“You couldn’t have worked something out? You know how much money we’ve been dumping into this project? It’s payback time.” Grey took a sip off his coffee. “There’s going to be a change in plans—I’m giving Rachelle the Katz and you are going on the road for a while. I need you to go check out some talent for me in Ohio and Muncie, Indiana —you’ll be gone for a while.”

“You can’t do that! I’ve been working with this band since the beginning! Now comes the payback and you’re gonna hand it to Rachelle? Forget it!”

“—which is exactly why I need you to go,” Grey explained, feeling as though he was being more than fair. “It’s time somebody else worked with them—you’ve gotten way too close.”

Grey pulled a check out of his top drawer and held it tight in his hand. It was Vince’s monthly salary plus a big, fat bonus. “I have something for you, but before I can hand it over, there’s something you have to do.”

“Oh, like handing The Katz over to Rachelle isn’t enough?”

“Careful, Vince—my current ex-wife and two kids are the only thing I’m inclined to give my patience at the moment.” As they both took a minute to sanitize their moods, Grey continued, “You’ve got something that belongs to these girls and judging from what I’ve heard, they want it back pretty badly—something about a
shoe box?
I’m going to assume you know what they’re talking about?”

Grey paused to see if he could get an answer to this new mystery, but Vince’s gaze was pointed towards the back corner of his office. “What are you doin’, Vince? C’mon, man, this is
embarrassing
. I get a phone call from a CEO who owns one of the biggest rags in the business and
my guy
,
from my agency
, looks like a total moron. Give these broads back whatever it is you’ve taken of theirs and you can keep your job and this check. And Vince?”

“Yeah?”

Getting eye contact, Grey waved the check and slowly warned, “This is your last chance. Quit diddling the talent. Do we understand each other?”

“Yeah, yeah
.”

“Don’t
yeah, yeah, me”
he snapped. “Do we
understand
each other?”

“Yes, I get it. I’ll give them the shoe box. I’ll go to Muncie.”

Vince stretched his arm out to take the check and as he did, Grey stated, “The shoe box first.”

Safeway Market, Palo Alto California, Saturday morning, April, 22nd

The May issue of Exposure had hit the stands and Kai had to hit a grocery store. His java stash was bare, which meant replenishing, stat. An academic without morning joe was a grumpy one. Pushing the cart past the periodicals and paperbacks, his eye caught two words: The Katz. Backing up to all the glossy paper to see if he was imagining things, he saw the two words again. He pulled a copy of Exposure that was partially hidden behind “Dirt Bike,” and got an eye-full of four babes in vivid colored bikinis bearing a whole lot of skin.

He kept staring at the cover, not comprehending the glut of emotions coursing through his previously sedate veins. His fingers began to clench the paper as he read the caption, “!!Grammy, Grammy We’ve Got The Grammy!!” The girls were all teeth, hair and breasts. Gretchen held Todd’s Grammy high over her head, her white blonde hair wind-blown as were all the girls’, smiling for the camera, as if to say, “Ha, ha, fooled you!” It was quite a picture.

He flipped madly through the pages to get to the article where Kai was met with more revealing pictures of the Katz at the home on La Punta. When he found the strength to tear his eyes away from the photos, he quickly read the article. It wasn’t more than a bio of the four Katz, their band as they struggled up the fame ladder only to play a harmless little joke on Grammy Award Winning Producer Todd Rivers. The prank went awry when the reward kept rising for said Grammy, but all’s well that ends well: a donation of $34,625.09 went to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation from an anonymous donor and the phone was ringing non-stop at the Kat House.

Not knowing whether to throw the rag back on the stands or purchase it, he went in search of his coffee and items he needed and found his way to the check-out stand as soon as humanly possible. He grabbed the bags, shot out the automatic door, and jumping in his car, he flipped open his phone to call T.J.

T.J. saw the ID on her phone and answered, “Hey, you climbed out of the bat cave.”

He shot, “Have you seen the cover of Exposu—”

“
Yes, isn’t it great!
I’m so proud of our girl!”

“
Proud?”
he mocked.

“Well, yeah,” T.J. explicitly stated. “She’s already on the cover of a big magazine. Who wouldn’t be proud?”

“I’m not, that’s who!”

“Oh, Kai—what is wrong with you? Any heterosexual male in his right mind would slap that picture on the door of his bedroom for bragging rights! When you hang up from me, you
call
Eddie and you
congratulate her
. Ya got it?” There was no response. Repeating herself, T.J. pushed, “You call her, Kai, and you congratu—”

He flipped his phone shut. He sat in the quiet of his BMW and breathed heavy. He had communicated very little with Eddie since Christmas and after seeing the cover, his guilt was doing gymnastics. He counted the months: January, February, March, April—four months.

He looked at his watch. He needed to get home and study. He hesitated making the call, knowing he would only come across sounding like a jealous boyfriend. He took the magazine out of the plastic bag, looked at it in amazement and told himself, “
Just keep your cool, buddy.”
Still seated in the car, he dialed Eddie’s number.

Since the cover had hit, the Katz had no peace, and last night was Zygotes Records’ release party for the punk band, “Patent Leather,” at Les Deux. The party had gone long into the night and when Eddie’s cell phone went off, it woke her. As the ringing reverberated through her room, she neglected to answer, hoping whoever was calling would leave a voicemail, but after a few seconds, it started up again.

She flipped open the phone, “Hhhmmmpphhhh.”

“Eddie, is that you?”

“Kai?” she croaked.

“It’s noon.”

“I’m exhausted. We were out all night.”

“Uh, you were out all night? Where were you?”

“At a club in Hollywood—a label invited us to a party.”

“So, things have been going pretty well then?” Hearing about a Hollywood party made Kai wish he’d never called.

“Yeah, the pace has really picked up. It was crazy last week and we’ve got a few small radio spots and TV scheduled for next week. I still have school, my homework, EMI in the afternoons, practice on the weekends and I’ve been asked to write at least six new songs for the band, which I haven’t had time to do. Add the networking, the photo shoots and I’m swamped.”

“Yeah, I caught one of your photo shoots this morning while I was at the store.” Kai let the genie out of the bottle, because he was out of words.

“Oh, you saw it then, huh?”

“Yeah,” he sighed heavily, “I saw it all right.”

“You didn’t like it.”

“
Like
, does it matter whether I like it or not?”

“Well, kind of . . . yeah, it matters whether you like it or not.”

“Eddie, let me put it to you this way—if I was going away to school to study and have a brilliant career as a doctor, but one day, you came to find out I was really cooking up glass in a meth lab, what would you think?”

“A meth lab?” she said, “you’d never do that.”

“Right, its shady and corrupt, not to mention dangerous—but I could, easily. I have more than enough education to win the National Cook-Off of Methamphetamine Chefs—but I don’t. Like you said, I would never do that. And I was under the impression that you went down there to work on a music career.”

“I did. I am.”

“Then, please, I know I’m not as musically gifted as you, but could you explain to me what a magazine like Exposure has to do with music?”

“Oh Kai, it’s no big deal. It just messes with this Lady Madonna picture you have of me,” she downplayed.

“This isn’t about crossing some imaginary line of good breeding, Eddie. You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie to you.”

“So this picture on the cover . . . this is what constitutes a serious musician these days?”

“It’s not what you think. We did it to get rid of a bad situation.”

“What bad situation? You mean this was the lesser of two evils? Who do you think you’re kidding, here? It’s bogus.”

“It is not. I’ve had nothing but endless hours of music school, a menial low paying job, I get no support from my parents and I’m down here alone, clawing my way up!”

“Why do you have to claw your way up anything? You insist on putting yourself on some sky-high pedestal. Why, so the whole damn world can ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ over your astounding achievements?”

“That’s not it and you know it, Kai.”

“Nevertheless, in the four short months we’ve been apart, you’ve ended up as a T & A display for some trashy magazine.”

“It’s not what you think!” Eddie blasted, totally frustrated.

“Exposure is just glorified smut, Eddie,” he seethed.

“I couldn’t help it,” she choked, trying not to cry. “I didn’t book the shoot and I’m under contract with this band. I had to.”

“You
had
to do this – someone had a gun to your head?”

“I’m doing the best I can, Kai. It’s not like you just walk into some executive’s office and they hand you a recording deal.”

“Yeah, I sort of mentioned that to you before.”

“You can’t be even a little encouraging? Is that so difficult?”

“Encourage you to end up on the back of
some middle aged man’s john?!”

“I didn’t know you’d be this upset. I thought maybe you’d like it?”

“Don’t give me that. You pranced for the camera like some show pony.”

“I don’t
prance
,” she defended.

“I’ve been so stupid.”

“I’m sorry,” she sniffed, trying to hold back her emotions that begged to fall. “It was just all this stuff with the Grammy and nobody knew about it and it was hidden in a shoe box in Gretchen’s room and we were afraid we’d never get signed if Todd found out, so we had to do something-
Kai . . . hello?”