Rock Bottom Read online

  “Don’t worry,” Steadman’s assistant told Joey. “We’ll get them on tour in more suitable markets. Youthcentric markets. Cutting-edge markets.”

  “Cutting-edge market” is code for “very small club.”

  Not that the band themselves, lost in the funhouse, noticed.

  And I am the one who takes it in the face today, Joey thought. I am the one who gets fucking dunked in it. Double Mocha Lattay, coming right up.

  Joey adjusted her mohawk, which had grown out into a thick blond lump that defied all attempts at order, and watched John Hackney, their soon-to-be-former A&R man in Europe, arrive at the café.

  “There she is,” Hackney said, and they rose to cheek-kiss. “Joey.”

  Hackney, Joey thought, sure was one hot piece of ass, complete with thick lower lip, sleepy-but-knowing gaze, and sultry half-smile. They had met only once before, in London, back at the start of this long, strange trip, before the road to riches went from shiny yellow bricks to sticky black tar. The two meetings were bookends to the miserable epic of Joey’s ineptitude.

  At that first meeting — drinks in Notting Hill, dinner in Soho, just the two of them talking strategy — Joey had made a pass at Hackney, but he’d declined, leaving her on a misty street corner like a poor man’s Twiggy. Maybe this time he’d want to show her his record collection.

  Hackney was dressed in top Brit gangster gear, and smelled of oranges.

  “Foggy day here in Amsterdam,” he said. “But it has its drama.”

  “Does it?” Joey wrapped her coat tight. “I didn’t notice.”

  Even though Hackney was supposed to be their Euro champion, the A&R executive had never been able to pretend excitement. Joey knew that Hackney thought Blood Orphans were that once-in-a-career clusterfuck he just had to grin and bear — that the fact that they’d been signed at all, let alone for a sizable percentage of the A&R budget for business year 2003, was a travesty.

  Sometimes shit didn’t break a band’s way. That was one thing. If you were John Hackney, you felt bad about that. You did your best. But with Blood Orphans, Joey knew that he was thinking, Thank fucking God, and let’s just forget this ever happened.

  “Talked to the band lately?” Hackney asked, sitting down.

  “No.” She tried to look indignant. “They’re not talking to me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Darlo says I’m a shit Midas. All I do is bring bad news.”

  “You’re their manager,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be —”

  “— a little self-defeating not to talk to your manager? The lunatics run the fucking asylum. It’s been a month since I spoke with them.” She thought about it for a second. “Actually, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes Darlo sends me text messages, one-word sentiments like ‘Lazy’ and ‘Lesbian.’ ”

  Hackney lit a Players, and Joey mooched a light.

  “I saw them play in Rotterdam,” Hackney said. “About two weeks ago.”

  “How was it?”

  “Memorable.”

  “You’ll have to elaborate. With those morons, that could mean so many things.”

  Hackney laughed at that, and so did Joey. But insults, even now, made her feel like a suck-up betrayer.

  “Let me guess,” Joey said. “Shane’s still a Tantric Buddhist.”

  “He sure is.” Hackney took a long drag. “And how.”

  “Did he mention it onstage?”

  “Between every song.”

  Shane had started off as the closest thing to a normal person in the band, despite the fact that when they all met, he was a most devout Holy Roller, part of some scary Orange County clan. But he wasn’t vicious like Darlo, or pretentious like Adam, or neurotic like Bobby. He’d been a pleasant kid whose blond good looks and affable personality could have fit in anywhere. But delusions of grandeur had fucked them all in different ways, and in Shane’s case had made him a preachy, annoying mouthpiece for a number of successive spiritual dead ends.

  “Let me see if I can remember it right,” Hackney said. “The cock is the lingam. The pussy is the yoni. The cock is also the jade stalk and the pussy is the emerald lagoon.”

  “What else?”

  He blew perfect smoke rings. Some calf hair peeked out where his cuff broke. Joey wanted to lick his legs bare.

  “A most comprehensive retelling of the Kama Sutra,” he said. “Which some drunk in the crowd kept calling the Come On Sarah.”

  “Did you get the guy’s address?” Joey asked. “I want to send the fucker some flowers.”

  Hackney laughed. Joey fixated on his pearly British chompers.

  “The heckling didn’t dissuade him,” Hackney said. “He kept on, into a discussion of Ashtanga yoga, and the virtues of ten glasses of water a day, and the magic aphrodisiac qualities of yohimbine.” He looked to Joey. “I know I’m missing some things.”

  “Genghis Khan died having sex,” she offered. “He was a brave warrior.”

  “He had many wives,” Hackney said, “and practiced the downward dog, the chanting hyena, the oracular ostrich, the galloping goat.”

  “You’re killing me over here,” Joey said. “Killing me softly.”

  Hackney puffed. “The lectures really thinned the room. By the end of the set the band was playing to their shadows. I introduced myself after the show, and they couldn’t have cared less. They practically pushed me out of the way to get to their beers.”

  Had there ever been a cuter man? Joey fixed a fuck-me-anytime smile on Hackney and looked deep into his eyes. This gaze, a little sleepy and full of dirty vibes, had worked extremely well in her days as a bartender, when closing time approached and she didn’t want to go home alone.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Of course.” She sat up straight, tapped a cigarette against the table. “Just a little tired.”

  He looked polite, confused, suddenly boyish. Boyish in a big strong man drove her crazy.

  “Thought you were going to pass out there.”

  She smiled professionally, took a healthy, outdoorsy breath, and imagined that this meeting was, in fact, an interview for a job at Warners, that they hated Blood Orphans but thought Joey’s talents wasted. Sure, why not? That would work. Maybe she and Hackney could negotiate the position while she fucked that polite-British-boy confusion right off his face.

  “The drummer,” Hackney said. “What’s his name?”

  “Darlo Cox.”

  “Good-looking kid. Strapping. His dad’s the porn king?”

  Joey nodded and uncrossed her legs.

  “David Cox. Dirty Darling Pictures of Van Nuys. He bankrolled the band. Before you guys.”

  The phrase not for long passed over them like a flock of starving doves.

  Hackney took a long drag and continued his impressive gangster slouch. He really had that charming throat-slitter thing down pat.

  “Shame that he’s the best-looking,” he said. “That face is wasted behind those drums. Looks like Jim Morrison. Lovely hair.”

  “He writes the lyrics,” Joey said. “Some of them are almost clever.”

  “Personally,” Hackney said, “I think the lyrics are very funny.”

  “So did a lot of people, before we were racists.”

  Hackney tried to look sympathetic. “Really unfortunate press, that,” he said. “Unfair.”

  When Joey first heard about the racism problem, she was cruising up Laurel Drive, on her way to Darlo’s in her just-bought, completely restored gold-with-blue-trim 1977 TR7. Steadman, their stateside A&R fair-weather man, called her up with an advance copy of Spin.

  “It’s bad,” he’d said. “It’s really bad.”

  She’d felt the blood leave her head, there in her new British steel, and pulled over to the side of the road.

  “Racists?” she’d yelled, as the good times rolled into a ditch. “You can’t be serious!”

  “Anyway,” he continued, “when Shane shut up and they played, they weren’t half bad.”<
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  “You’re lying.”

  “No, really. Kind of reminded me of Blink-182 meets Sabbath.”

  “OK, come on,” she said. “Blink-182? That’s cruel.”

  “They’ve sold millions of records.”

  “Hmm.” She nodded. “Can’t argue with that.”

  “Honestly,” he said, “they had their moments. And that poor bass player. His hands!”

  Disgust and contempt for Bobby rolled in Joey’s gut. That weasel. Bobby was only in the band because his ex-girlfriend knew Adam and every other bass player in LA had been busy. Bobby was the fucking passenger.

  “Eczema,” she said. “Don’t get me started.”

  “He wasn’t faring so well up there.”

  “He hides behind Adam’s guitar.”

  “Yes,” Hackney said. “Brilliant boy, our Adam. Funny mustache, though.”

  “I hate that Fu Manchu. He’s had it for as long as I’ve known him.” She lit a cigarette. “Anyway, Bobby.” She blew some smoke. “We’re going to fire Bobby, I think.”

  She had to try something, and maybe Bobby was the problem. Maybe without Bobby they wouldn’t get dropped. Maybe it was that simple.

  Sometimes she could really amuse herself.

  They ordered drinks. The label was paying, Hackney said. Knock yourself out. So Joey drank her vodka tonic and, grasping at some shred of pride, quit the whole this-is-secretly-a-job-interview fantasy. She couldn’t go over to the dark side, live on the Death Star, suck off Vader for a hundred grand plus bonus. Expense account, paid vacations, 401(k): she didn’t need the creature comforts that came with being a vampire. All her life she had been about the music, the sheer love of it, the might and the majesty, and working for the label would be a repudiation of everything she’d ever stood for.

  Pretending to have principles really made her heart race.

  “Look,” Hackney said. “You know why I’m here.”

  Joey’s throat tensed up. The slow trot to the guillotine was over.

  “This isn’t easy for anyone,” Hackney said. “We wanted to make this work.” He cupped the cigarette in his hands, leaned forward, and put his elbows on the table. A lock of black, professionally greased hair fell forward like a salute to his cheekbones. The knot in his tie was way past Windsor. Joey’s eyes gravitated to his gold wedding band. She wondered what his wife looked like.

  “What I want to know,” Joey said, “is why this didn’t happen sooner.”

  “An attempt at return on investment, I think.”

  “Right.” She nodded. “I guess our lawyer will be in touch … to tie up loose ends.”

  Hackney cocked an eyebrow. “Loose ends?” He smiled. “There are none, Joey.”

  She puffed and laughed, a nervous wreck. “Right. Just reading from the ‘got dropped’ script.”

  She had always wanted to be the woman in the know, the mover, the shaker, the closer. That was her dream. Some people wanted to be doctors, astronauts, firemen. Joey wanted to be the manager of the biggest rock-and-roll band in the world, and she couldn’t even bluff her way into a lawyer’s due diligence.

  Hackney lit another Players and drained his Limonata. Joey’s compromised left leg started to ache deep down in the workings of her thigh.

  “I’m going to see this band tonight,” Hackney said. “The Soporifics.”

  “Bad name.”

  “If we sign them, the name’ll change.” He pocketed the matches. “They have this gorgeous singer. He’s a real tall glass of chocolate stout. A good swinging boogie of a group. You want to join me?”

  She stared at his wedding band. “Maybe after the Blood Orphans show,” she said.

  Hackney shook his head. Wind blew the leaves down.

  “May I suggest,” he said, “that you spare yourself the pain?”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Closure.”

  Hackney sat back, looked a little deflated in his ultracool way. It pained her to resist his overture, but saying no was a nice way to create the illusion of self-respect. He stood up.

  “All right, then,” he said, laying down a hundred euros. “Good luck, Joey.”

  “Cheers, John.”

  He lingered for a moment, looming over her, a big hunk of English granite. Then he reached into his jacket pocket, took out a leather-covered pad and a tiny pen, and wrote something down.

  “Here,” he said, handing her a piece of paper. “Where I’m staying.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, acting nonchalant. “Oh, sure.”

  She watched Hackney walk away. He grew thinner, as in comic books when someone disappears into a crowd, losing shape, abstracting into anonymity, until the body becomes a jagged vertical streak, a simple black line, the closing of a gatefold on a double album.

  Joey, she thought. You fucking loser.

  She stretched her feet — her left leg was tensing up for real now — and ran her hands through her outgrown faux hawk. A hundred euros and keep the change on a two-drink tab. It seemed a huge insult, the financial equivalent of a pity fuck, about which Joey knew a great deal. A car drove by, playing the Rolling Stones, songs about the truth between men and women, defining the narrow space between evasion and protection, mapping the porous DMZ between anger and vanity. Unlike all the other men in Joey’s life, Mick and Keith had never lied to her. She leaned in and listened for clues.

  3

  HOW HE’D EVER GOTTEN STUCK with such a bunch of boring, cowardly, pretentious, panty-waisted faggots he would never understand.

  Hadn’t his dad told him that the world was full of people like this? Had he not explicitly stated that everywhere you looked, morons were in your path, trying to gum up the system, trying to disrupt your flow?

  Anger drove him now. Glory was still within his grasp. Glory was still possible, even if he had to carry them all on his back. Glory was a hot little bitch, waiting, hiding, coy.

  Damn, it was cold in here.

  So thought Darlo, lying in Morten’s apartment, hands on his balls.

  Darlington Archibald Cox was born on August 12, 1981, in Encino. His father, David Cox, was an adult-film producer who had the supreme luck to be panning for porn gold just when a whitewater torrent called videotape came rushing down the river. Consequently, his company, Dirty Darling Pictures, spearheaded porn’s great migration from theater to living room, making Cox, whose real name was Samuel Forest, a fantastically rich man. Twenty years later he was the dark analogue to Hugh Hefner, the kind of guy who was invited to B-movie premieres, who gave vast sums of money to the Cato Institute under a fake name, who had five Rhodesian Ridgebacks and one small man named Frederico, whose job it was to clean up all the shit the dogs left on the white shag rugs that covered the living room floor of Cox’s Laurel Canyon mansion.

  Darlo’s dad was not without a sense of humor. He’d produced numerous film series based on the happy marriage of fetish and farce; for those who liked to fuck outside, there was Garden Ho; for those who liked to watch men have sex with girls half their age, there was Poppycock; for those who had a yen for girls with glasses, there were seven volumes of Four Eyes. With flawless, sleazy precision, David Cox understood the turn-ons of lonely men in prefab, cookie-cutter apartments, and riches followed.

  Where other kids grew up with a white noise of television commercials, sibling rivalry, and mundane parental chatter, Darlo roamed in a bandwidth of ecstasy both real and put-on — the giggles, the moans, the screams. You could turn any which way in the Cox house and find reminders of sex, in the form of toys, wrappers, the heavy sweet musk of it floating like a demon firefly. Rampant, boundary-free sexuality was an everyday fact of life, like garbage collection or grocery shopping.

  His friends were always begging to come over, but what, Darlo thought, was the big deal about seeing a young woman walk down a hallway naked? What was so special about passing by an open door, on your way to pee in the middle of the night, and seeing a mass of bodies pounding against each other? What was so odd and unusual abo
ut your dad saying, “Show him your pussy, baby. Give Darlo here a little sneak preview of what’s in store for him. Give him a little smell of the heavenly body. Do it, baby. I said do it.”

  Didn’t it all come and go, like the weather?

  Darlo sat up and put on his clothes — a stained white T-shirt, old black leather pants, and muddy motorcycle boots. He walked over to the window, lit a cigarette, and looked at the posh, empty street.

  “Amsterdam,” he said. “It ain’t Hollywood.”

  The first thing to do once he was back in LA, freshly shaved and laid, was set the label straight. They were going to get the Darlo treatment, all right. Less money spent on turning the band into a post-punk Spinal Tap, a little more cultivating them as a serious outfit. Irony in the service of truth had been Joey’s line. Wasn’t it brilliant? Didn’t it have a certain brilliance? How could they not see the brilliance?

  “Shortsighted motherfucking record company,” he grumbled, and went to brush his teeth. In the living room, his acrylic Wonder Woman crumpled in on herself, upside down, headfirst onto the floor.

  Blood Orphans was his band and he had to take it back.

  After dealing with the label, he would do the next logical thing: fire Joey. Joey used to know what she was doing, but Darlo had grown tired of her capitulation, her weak bargaining stances, her utter inability to stand firm in the face of bluff. No record label would drop seven figures on a band and then wash its hands as soon as the ink was dry. The band had two million dollars’ worth of leverage, yet Joey treated every interaction with Warners as a plea. She had been so sharp back when they were starting out, but once she got the direct deposit of her percentage, once she was in the big show and got an expensive office and started managing other bands, she couldn’t keep her sloe eyes on the prize.

  He stumbled into the bathroom, felt a dryness in the back of his throat, and sighed. Just like that, the libido had its tenterhooks in him. In robotic fashion he pulled one off, feeling helpless but also feeling fine. Oh please God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.