by Jade Allen
I felt like it was only seconds later when Sophie cried out, over and over again, reaching one hand around to her back to grab at my arm, at my hand, as her body flexed around me in erratic little spasms. I held back a moment longer and then I couldn’t do it any more--I came, pounding into her from behind, hearing the sound of her moans and mine, the hoarse breathing, the noise of our bodies colliding and sliding together.
I sagged against her when we both finished, holding myself up against the stack, still buried deep inside of Sophie’s body as the aftershocks worked through me. “Fuck,” I said, still panting for breath. “We have got to have sex in a pitch black room more often.” Sophie laughed, breathless and giddy sounding.
“I’ll get blackout curtains,” she told me. “We can make this work.” I knew we’d probably taken longer than a half hour, but I didn’t want to pull out; I wanted nothing more than to keep going, to turn her on all over again and maybe the next time get her down onto the floor with me. But even in the haze, I knew I had to get ready to meet with Mark. I slid out of Sophie and tried to think of where my clothes could be.
****
“I’m fucking out of here,” Mark said, the minute he walked into the control room and saw me.
“Mark, sit your ass down,” Jack said.
“You told me you needed me to work on a drum track,” Mark almost shouted at the producer.
“Yeah, because I wanted you to get your ass down here,” Jack told him, unapologetic.
“I asked him to,” I cut in. “Look--Mark. This shit has gone on long enough, hasn’t it? Are you having a good fucking time working with half the band?”
“That’s not the point,” Mark said. He glared at me. “I told Ron I didn’t want to work with any of you, but I would on the condition that I specifically didn’t have to work with you.” I shook my head.
“How the hell are we supposed to tour this record if you won’t even be in the same room as me?” I stood up. Sophie had gone to the break room a few minutes before Mark had arrived; I didn’t want to risk anything more than I was already. If he was really being this pissy about a girl, it wouldn’t make sense to poke him right away. At least, not any more than I was already doing, getting Jack to get him into the building to talk to me.
“So we don’t fucking tour this record then,” Mark said with a shrug. “Am I the only one who’s a little tired of the goddamn grind on this shit?”
“If you’re tired of it, then why are you even still in the band?” Jack, I noticed, was very carefully pulling back, stepping away from me. He would have probably left the room, except for the fact that if he did, Mark would just walk out. With Jack there, he wouldn’t--at least not out of the blue, without giving me a chance.
“Sit your ass down,” I said. “Let’s talk about whatever the hell it is that crawled into your rectum in the last month and a half.”
“If I wanted to talk about it, don’t you think I would have?” Mark turned his scowl onto Jack, who just shrugged.
“Look,” Jack said, sitting up and making the chair squeak. “Either you talk to Dan, figure out what the hell the issue is, and figure out a way to resolve it, or you’re going to have a shit record on your hands, and you won’t even be able to promote it. Do you want the last album your fans hear from you to be some monument to petty bullshit?”
For a second, it looked like Mark was going to turn around and walk out, even with Jack sitting there. But then, instead, he sat down, throwing himself into a desk chair without even seeming to worry about whether he landed properly or not. “Fine,” Mark said. I stared at him for a minute.
“Well?” I spread my hands in front of me. “What the fuck, Mark?”
“What do you mean, what the fuck?” I closed my eyes, asking--I didn’t know who--for patience.
“I’m grabbing beers out of the fridge,” Jack said, rising from his chair. Mark shrugged off the implied offer and continued looking at me.
“This is where you tell me what the hell is going on that you can’t stand to be in the same room as me,” I told Mark. “So we can pretend like we’re an actual band that functions like fucking adults and solves our problems instead of just avoiding them.”
“My problem is that I’m pissed,” Mark said simply. Jack returned from the corner of the control room with three beers. He handed one to me and put one in Mark’s hand, and then sat down to open his own.
“Why are you pissed, exactly?” I opened my beer and took a sip. It was obvious no more actual work was getting done anyway, at least not that night.
“Because no one in the fucking band takes me seriously,” Mark said. “And before you laugh at me, it’s goddamn true.”
“Where the hell did this come from?” I shook my head in disbelief. “You pitched a fucking fit over the thing with me and Sophie, and the next thing I know we’re working on separate shifts and you won’t work with me and now you say it’s about how no one in the band takes you seriously?”
“No one talks to me,” Mark said firmly. “They talk at me.” He shook his head and cracked his beer and took a long pull from it. “Jesus, Dan--did you ever pay attention at all to me?”
“You sound like a fucking girl,” I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “I thought we were friends.”
“I thought so too,” Mark said with a shrug. “And then we’re in the studio and I’m catching shit because you’re not doing your job right, and you’re dating a girl you know I’m interested in, and no one gives a fuck--Mark will just roll over and take it, right?”
“I asked her out first!” I put my beer down before I was tempted to slam it down. “She said yes to you after she agreed to a date with me. If you want to be pissed at someone, be pissed at her.” I thought about Sophie, off in the break room, and almost regretted what I’d said. “Hell--what difference does it even make anyway?”
“It makes a difference because I had to find out from her, afterward, that she was already going on a date with you,” Mark said. “It makes a difference because it was the last fucking straw, man. Taking shit for you when I thought we were close…” he shrugged.
“We were! Until you pulled this bullshit tantrum and refused to work and nearly cost us the best recording arrangement we’ve ever gotten.” I thought about what Mark had said for a second. “What the hell do you mean, taking shit for me?”
“Whenever you fuck up on the goddamn takes, it’s always on me,” Mark said. “I’ve gone along with it because you’re my bud but what the fuck, dude? Even you pin that shit on me sometimes when it’s you screwing up.”
“When I screw up, I take the shit for it,” I told him. “I do not try and pin it on you when it’s me messing up a fucking line.”
“Whatever,” Mark said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Anyway, the thing with Sophie was just the last straw.”
“Last straw for what?” I stared at Mark, not quite able to understand why he was apparently so fucking put out with me dating someone, where he even got the notion that I was somehow trying to screw him over.
“No one in this fucking band respects me,” Mark said, his voice bitter. “I thought you did, but obviously you don’t.”
“Of course I fucking respect you,” I almost shouted. “When you pulled the bullshit act of not working for a week, who the fuck do you think argued the hardest for keeping you in the band instead of letting the label make us fire you?”
“The label was going to make you fire me?” Mark’s eyes widened.
“You weren’t fucking working! Of course they were going to,” I told him. “What the hell did you think would happen if you fucking derailed a project they’re investing half a million or more in?”
“After all this time, they were just going to kick me from the band?”
“Yeah, compadre, they fucking were,” I told him matter-of-factly. “Ron made the rest of us meet up to talk about what to do and that was where we came up with the brilliant fucking plan of having Ron talk to you and suggest
we work separately, since me, Nick, and Alex for sure didn’t want you to leave the goddamn band.” I let out my breath in a sharp gust. “Mother fucker: if any one of us isn’t in Molly Riot, the rest of us are not--fucking--Molly--Riot.” For a minute, Mark just stared at me, and I wondered what was going through his mind.
“Why the hell did you leave me in the fucking dark about Sophie?” That caught me off guard. I didn’t really have much of an answer to the question, even though I had been thinking about it for the whole month that we’d been working separately.
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “It was probably partly that I knew you were into her, and partly that I wasn’t sure it would even go anywhere, and a million other fucking things.” I found my pack of cigarettes on the desk by my side and shook one loose. I fished a lighter out of my pocket and lit the tip, taking as deep a drag as I could and wishing it was pot instead of tobacco. “When I heard that Sophie had said yes to your date, I was pissed too.”
“You were pissed and I had no way of even knowing that she’d gone with you first,” Mark pointed out. “You can’t see why it would tick me the fuck off to have the same thing--only worse, because my own friend wasn’t upfront with me about it?”
“Fair enough,” I admitted. “I should have told you the next day, and I didn’t.” Mark drank down more of his beer.
“You’re an asshole, you know that?” I hesitated for a second and then laughed.
“You’re the one who was going to implode the damn band, fuck-face,” I said.
“Whatever,” Mark said, shaking his head. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “So I take it you’re still seeing her?” I nodded.
“She asked me earlier today if I only wanted to have sex with her as some kind of way to get secret revenge on you for fucking shit up,” I told him. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but I actually--really--like her.”
“Were you fucking her all this time just to get back at me?” Mark snickered, and I felt something inside of me relax.
“No, asshole, I’ve been fucking her all this time because she’s a great lay and a lot of fun to be around,” I said. Mark shook his head slowly.
“Last single guy in the band,” he said quietly.
“Word on the street is you’re going through Tinder girls like you’re getting paid for it,” I pointed out.
“Easy lays,” Mark told me. “I have to do something with my free time, since I don’t hang out with any of you anymore. Do you realize how much time we spent together before all this shit came up?” I laughed out loud.
“Dude--you could have fixed this shit the day after you started it just by fucking talking to someone about it,” I said. “How bored have you even been?”
“I played through BioShock Infinite and I’m teaching myself goddamn Italian,” Mark said, cracking a smile again.
“That’ll come in handy,” I pointed out. “I mean, after all, maybe we’ll get some festival dates in Italy this summer, and you can try and flirt with a hot foreign chick.”
“You guys cool?” I looked over at Jack; I’d forgotten he was even still in the room.
“Not yet,” I said, glancing at Mark to confirm that he agreed. “But I think we can at least figure out a schedule that doesn’t suck asshole for the rest of the record.”
****
The control room felt incredibly crowded, even though it was just the band, Ron, and Jack sitting around in the different chairs. “So,” Ron said, looking at each of us in turn. “Do we have a working concept in place? We have a meeting with the A&R people in two days.”
“We’re working through it,” Alex said. “I think we’re all…” he shrugged.
“It’s going to take longer than we thought it would, and that’s just the facts of the situation,” I said. “We’re not going to go over budget, but we might have to opt for a less aggressive marketing plan for the album.”
“What’s the state of the band?” Ron looked from me to Mark, and I pressed my lips together.
“We’re figuring it out,” Mark said brusquely. “That’s all we’re prepared to say.”
“Should I be finding you guys some kind of therapist or something?” Ron gestured in the air.
“No,” we all said.
“Fuck that shit,” Nick added.
“We just need time to sort through things,” Alex insisted. “Mark is willing to work with us, and we’re going to get down to recording the live stuff again, but it’s going to take some fucking time.”
“I just want you all to be prepared for how this is going to change the label’s perception of you,” Ron told us. “It’s not going to be low stakes. They’re pushing a bunch of money into this album, and the longer it takes to come out, the less you’re going to be able to count on momentum from the last album, the promo tour with Juniper Woolf, and the rest of it to carry you.”
“It’s going to be a good album,” Alex said firmly. “I can feel that in my bones. It’s just going to be a situation where we can’t rush it.”
“Fuck,” Jules said, shaking his head. “We’ve managed to put out an album, tour it, and come back to work on another album every fucking two years for the past six. They can afford to let us take a little longer this time.”
“That’s not the way that labels typically think,” Ron warned us. “Normally they think that you need to keep grinding as long as there’s a demand.”
“So they want us to burn out? Because that’s what it sounds like,” Alex said tartly. I snorted.
“They’re interested in making as much money from us for as long as possible and then when they can’t make money anymore, they kick us off the roster,” I said. “That’s their whole business model.”
“Let’s not be cynical,” Ron said.
“It’s not cynical, it’s the truth,” Jules countered. “As long as we’re making money for them, they’re happy to have us. When we’re spending their money they want to make sure every fucking cent is accounted for.”
“Can you blame them?” Ron looked at Jules, raising an eyebrow.
“I’d hope that after a few stellar albums that made them decent money, they’d trust us,” Nick said. “I’d hope that they’ve gotten the idea by now that we’re a decent investment.”
“They wouldn’t have given you this budget if they didn’t think that,” Ron said, shrugging. “But it’s a lot of fucking money. They want to make sure you’re not pissing it away.”
“We’ve submitted all the accounting they’ve ever asked for,” Alex protested.
“And you had a full week where the studio was being paid for and nothing was happening” Ron countered. “They’re worried. It’s my job to un-worry them. It’s your job to un-worry me.”
“We’re okay,” I said, after a moment where everyone in the room went quiet. “Mark and I can stand to be in the same room as each other now. We’re reworking a lot of stuff, which will only make the album better in the end.”
“I’m going to go on record here and say that while the album they were building before wasn’t shit, it was maybe two steps above that,” Jack said. “I’m a lot more interested in the stuff they’re working on now. It’s stronger material. They’re making it better. That’s all the label needs to know and that’s all I’m personally going to tell them.” I couldn’t be sure, but it felt like we all held our breath for a moment or two.
“When do you think you’ll have an album for them to listen to?” Ron looked at each of us.
“We’re starting over...not from scratch, but from a way earlier point in the process,” Alex told him. “It may be another month before we have it nailed down enough to show them anything.”
The meeting went on, but I’d more or less checked out. No matter what Ron said, the fact of the matter was that we were going to go over-schedule, even if we didn’t go over the budget. The entire band had met up about a week after I confronted Mark, and we’d come to the conclusion that all of us hated the direction the album was go
ing in, and none of us were happy with the state the band was in. It was going to take however long it was going to take, but we ended up scrapping 90% of what we’d already recorded, going back to the demos.
“For the record,” Ron said, in a tone of voice that called me out of my thoughts, “the label isn’t going to like it. They’ll live with it, because they’ve already committed the money and because they’re bound by contract, but they’re not going to like it. This had better be the best fucking album you guys have ever turned in.”
“It’ll go platinum,” Alex said dryly, and we all laughed.
“At this point, that would be a saving grace for you all,” Ron said more seriously. He took a deep breath and sighed. “I’ll meet with the label, and give them the news. Keep me posted.”
He left the control room, and the rest of the guys started to wander off as well; we were planning on getting to work in a couple of hours, but they’d all want to catch their girlfriends up on current events. Eventually, it was just Mark and me in the control room, and I felt the lingering tension between us. It was getting better, but it wasn’t like one conversation, or even a few, were going to make everything the way it had been before.
“Hey--Dan,” Mark said after a few moments’ silence stretched out between us.
“Yeah?” Mark met my gaze and looked down and then looked at me again.
“You planning on going to Respects tonight?” I felt my throat tighten, but I didn’t lie.
“Yeah, I was going to hang out, since Sophie’s on.” Mark took a deep breath.
“I’ll buy a couple of drinks, if you want the company,” he said, not quite looking at me.
“Awesome,” I said, smiling as best as I could. “When Soph’s busy it gets super boring. I’d love to have some company.” I paused for a moment, watching Mark; we were getting better, but I’d seen him taking a breath when I’d mentioned Sophie. “Are we okay about the Sophie thing? I mean if you’re still pissed about it…”
