by MV Ellis
“No, I think you have it all covered.”
Holy shit! The voice from the back of the room had me jumping a foot into the air, and I knew without turning around who it belonged to. I spun on my heel to greet my new colleagues.
“Oh, good, I’m glad. So nice of you to join us. What time do you call this?” I made a big show of looking at my watch, as though I didn’t already know exactly what time it was.
“I call it, way earlier than I would have been here if I didn’t have my ‘conscience”—he motioned toward his bandmate— “to drag my ass off of my company from last night, and force me here.” Ugh. Talk about too much information.
“Oh, I guess I’m supposed to be grateful that you bothered to make an appearance at all, am I?”
He looked at me as though I was demented. “I don’t care what you think.”
Anthony Kingston stepped forward then, elbowing his sidekick in the ribs, extending his hand and giving me a wide smile.
“Excuse the errant teenager posing as my grown-ass musical partner. I’d assure you he’s not always this much of a douche, but my poker face isn’t for shit, so I know you wouldn’t believe me. Besides, I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with you by starting out with a lie.”
“Well, the horse has already bolted on that one, I’m afraid.”
“What? I haven’t lied to you.” He looked genuinely surprised.
“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant the wrong-foot part. I didn’t exactly leave that meeting filled with excitement at working with the two of you. I’m still not, if I’m honest.”
“From what little I know if you, it seems that you always are. Honest, I mean.”
“Ha! Yeah, I’m a bit of a ‘tell it like I see it’ kind of person, and my brain-to-mouth filter definitely seemed to be on vacay when we last saw each other. I’m sorry if I was rude.”
“Oh you were, but I’d have been pissed about the parking incident if it were me, then the three-ringed circus of that meeting just rubbed salt in the wound.”
“True. But still, it wasn’t my finest hour.” I appreciated him trying to let me off the hook.
“Maybe not, but no need to apologize. It wasn’t mine either, so that makes us even. Anyway, need I remind you of the third person in this equation? The ‘great’ thing about working with him”—King jerked his chin toward Rome, who obliged us by flipping him off.—“is that you’re unlikely to be ruder or more obnoxious than he is.” That was little comfort, under the circumstances.
Chapter 10
King
* * *
“Okay, so now we have the ‘pleasantries’ out of the way”—I air quoted, never one to miss an opportunity to drop a sarcastic comment“—can we get down to business? Quincy, I’ve listened to your stuff, and watched a whole bunch of videos, and on that basis, I’ve pulled together a list of covers that I think might work with what we do, and what you do.” I handed over my phone. “Why don’t you have a look and see what you think.”
“Nope.”
I glanced over at Rome as he spoke, and rolled my eyes. As with pretty much everything in his life, and consequently mine, he was determined to make the whole process feel like pulling teeth. That was just his MO.
“Nope what?”
“Well this is the first I’ve heard of any list. When were you going to run it by me?” Everything about his body language told me he was ready for a fight on this.
“Ha! Really? Are you insane? What am I doing right now, if not running it by you? Besides, do you think I’ve been trying to contact you all weekend just because I missed your sorry ass? Jesus, how self-absorbed do you need to be? I told you I had work shit I needed to talk to you about, and you proceeded to blank me—because you were too busy drinking vodka, snorting coke, and eating pussy—to give a fuck.”
Quincy shuffled from foot to foot, and I turned to her, having almost forgotten she was there.
“Umm… I hope you don’t mind cursing, because we can’t not.”
“It’s fine. I’m not a prude; it’s all good.”
“Okay, sorry. I guess I should have checked first.”
“No biggie, honestly. I’ve heard way worse.”
“Ha! Well that makes me feel a little better. I should also warn you that this is pretty much us twenty-four seven. If it’s a day ending with a Y, and one of us has even half a pulse, this is what you’ll find. Feel free to ignore most of it. It’s really not even worth us paying attention to, let alone anyone else.”
She nodded slowly, eyes fixed on Rome. I looked back toward him, following her gaze to his hands, which he was clenching into fists, then releasing, over and over again.
“No covers. We’ve already let those label assholes back us into a corner over this shit, so the least we can do is make it work for us. Originals only. A whole album, and who doesn’t like it can suck my dick.”
“No way. Let’s just do the minimum that needs to be done, get through this year, then end the arrangement, and forget it ever happened.” How could he even be considering anything else?
“Yeah, and why don’t we just bend over and let them dry-fuck us in the ass with a witch’s broomstick while we’re at it? Jesus. Do you have to toe the line all the time? Like seriously. Do you even own a set of balls?”
“You know exactly where my balls are, and what they look like, so shut the hell up. I’m just being a realist. None of us want to be in this situation, but now that we are, all I’m saying is that we should just do what we have to do to survive it until we can cut and run. What’s the point of prolonging the agony by making it more complicated than it needs to be?”
“I agree with Rome.” Rome and I both swiveled to look at Quincy. “Not that anyone’s asking, of course, because the two of you are clearly too busy with your little peeing contest to give a damn what I think. But for the record, I think that given we’ve been lumped in this shit show against our will, why not give the label the finger, and do what we all prefer musically? I’ve done my research, too, and you guys are decent writers.”
I guessed “decent” was her version of a compliment.
“As I said in the meeting, covers were never where I wanted to be with my career anyway; I just couldn’t get the label goons to understand that there was potential to shift units by putting out original music. They’re either too stupid, too lazy, too conservative, or an unfortunate combination of all three to grasp the concept. So in the end, just like now, I had no choice but to go along with what they wanted. This time, however, we’re not bound specifically to covers, so why go that route when it suits none of us?”
“Well, how long do you have? I could give you about a thousand reasons why this is the worst of the worst ideas, but I’ll start with two of the most obvious. The first is chemistry. You don’t just sit and write with random people. There needs to be some kind of chemistry or rapport there, or it’s going to be a fucking disaster from the get-go.” Why was I the only one of the three of us who got this?
“What do you mean? There’s plenty of chemistry in this room right now, bro. We’re dripping in it.” I shot Rome a stern look, useless though that was—he was going to go right on ahead and ignore me anyway. In a sense, he was right, but he was also being a douche.
“Not that kind of chemistry. You know what I mean.”
“Why not that kind? Chemistry is chemistry. D’you know how many songs and entire albums have been written purely because two people wanted to fuck each other? How long do you have? I could give you about a thousand.” He winked at the use of my own words back at me. I resisted the urge to junk punch him. Just.
“Nobody wants to fuck anyone.” Lies.
“Speak for yourself.” He grinned, clearly having fun baiting me.
“Whatever.” I did my best not to bite—one of us needed to be the adult at least some of the time, and that person was always going to be me.
“Anyway, that’s beside the point. The other, arguably bigger, issue is our repertoires. I
mean, it’s one thing to find pop-ish shit that kind of sits between what we both do—her r ‘n’ b, and our rock—we can work on arrangements that bring in elements of both styles. But, it’s another to create something from scratch that meshes the two.” Neither of them looked convinced of a word I was saying.
“Not to mention that I’d put money on the fact that we have totally different writing processes—because Quincy here really doesn’t strike me as the type to get wasted on vodka, then wait and see what happens—no offense.” I looked to her again.
“None taken, except for the part about us not being able to find a musical middle ground. You said before that you’re a realist, but I’ll be honest: all I’m hearing is pessimism. I don’t think you’re giving any of us due credit right now for what we could achieve if we applied ourselves and worked together. We’re all talented, well-trained musicians, and I’ll stick my neck out and say, despite outward appearances, smart people. Sure it’s a challenge, but why wouldn’t we be able to rise to it?”
Chapter 11
Rome
* * *
“You should listen to Quincy, King. Turns out she’s not just an extremely pretty face, after all.”
“Hey!” Quincy threw me a bucket of shade as she spoke. “I just backed you up and said I think we can do this, but it won’t work if you’re going to continue to be a huge jerk. Seriously, you can cut the demeaning comments any time you’re ready, or be prepared to explain to the label people why you wrecked the whole thing. If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it as equals. I’m as qualified as you are, and no, I may not have been busking in the streets since I was two years old—”
“Oh, so you really have done your research, haven’t you?” I smirked.
“Didn’t I say I had? I have free and easy access to the internet and enough braincells to navigate my way around Google unassisted. Why the hell wouldn’t I? Anyway, my point was that I may not have been playing professionally since before I could string a decent sentence together, but I’m no schlub. Like I said—it’s equals, and you stop patronizing me, or it’s nothing. What’s it to be?” She crossed her arms, which naturally drew my eyeline down to her tits. I dragged it back up again to meet her angry glare.
Everything about her stance and demeanor told me she meant business. Her green-gray eyes were hard, and her jaw was set in a stern line. Everything about her stance and demeanor also made me want to fuck her. Hard. As my dick sprang to life in my pants, I realized I was breaking all my own rules.
On the face of it, neither of us had more to lose than the other from the breakdown of this situation—though arguably, as we were the bigger of the two acts, King and I had slightly less to lose—both parties would end up in court if we couldn’t make it work. Yet, something nagged in the back of my mind…
If she walked away now, she’d never want to share the same air as me again, and I definitely didn’t want that. It was one of the few times in my life that I’d ever had more skin in the game than the other party, and I hated the feeling. It was screwed up.
“Whatever. This isn’t the fucking Treaty of Versailles. Can we just get on and write some music? K, what’s your vibe? You in, or do I need to start working on arrangements for Rihanna songs?”
King flipped me off, but a tight smile played at the corner of his lips. That was his version of saying yes, when he didn’t want to admit defeat to me yet again. Stupid really, because I pretty-much won every single one of our arguments, so by now, he should have been resigned to waving the white flag from the get-go. But he never did—he always wanted to go down with a fight. I found the whole thing totally tedious, but mostly gave in to the pretense that he could possibly win at some stage, just to keep him sweet.
The funny thing was that in our dynamic, he’d totally cast himself as the grown up and responsible one: the one who had to babysit my ass, or I wouldn’t survive the week without him. But while he’d been a kind of crutch and guide for me in the early days at the Con—when I had no fucking clue what I was doing and was like a fish out of water in that world—in general, the opposite was true. I’d been taking care of myself, literally keeping myself alive, since he was running around in short pants in prep school, still playing with Legos.
I’d seen and done shit that he couldn’t even imagine in his wildest dreams— some of which I’d probably never tell him, even though I trusted him implicitly as my best friend. However, he knew enough of my crap to understand that before I met him I hadn’t had it easy, but I didn’t want to have him pity me even more by knowing the full extent of it. Nor did I want to foot the bill for the therapy he would probably require to get over it, if I ever did tell him.
It was precisely those experiences that made me so blasé about most shit now. The stuff that filled other people with worry and anxiety didn’t even pierce my consciousness most of the time.
If it wasn’t life or death, I let the majority of it slide over me like water off a duck’s back, while King went about worrying himself into an early grave. The thing I knew was that none of that shit was going to kill me, and I’d faced plenty of things that could or would, so what did I have to worry about?
Still, I let King think he was my savior. It made him feel useful. And in truth, I was lazy, so if him believing he was protecting my ass meant that I had to take minimal responsibility for what went on around me, I was one hundred percent there for that.
That said, King had learned years ago not to underestimate me, and no matter how disinterested and out of it I seemed most of the time, I slept with one eye open, figuratively, and very little got past me. It was part of my in-built survival mechanism, the one that had been keeping me alive all these years.
He looked at me long and hard, shoving his hands in his pockets, no doubt to help him resist the urge to hit me. Then he closed his eyes, tipped his head back as far as it would go, and sighed, long and loud, before pulling it back up. He looked from Quincy to me and back again, then spoke directly to his shoes.
“I think you’re both out of your fucking minds, but it’s two against one and we don’t have the time, and I don’t have the energy, to carry on arguing in circles about it. I can’t figure out who’s crazier—you guys for thinking this is a good idea, or me for going along with a harebrained scheme I know is going to blow up in all of our faces, but for what it’s worth, let’s give it a go. I warn you though: if it looks like it’s going to shit, I’ll be the first one to pull the plug. I’m not about to give myself a fucking nervous breakdown over this crap.”
“Whatever man. I didn’t hear anything after ‘let’s give it a go.’ Everything else is just blah, blah, blah that’s getting in the way of that happening. So, now that you’ve had your gripe like the born-again Boomer that you are, can we get the fuck on with doing what we do, please?”
Chapter 12
Quincy
* * *
Rome turned to me, regarding me with lazy half-lidded eyes but saying nothing. I squirmed like a kid in the principal’s office. It was a long time since I’d felt so under scrutiny and in the spotlight, which was saying something, given that my job involved exactly that—standing under a spotlight before hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, with all eyes on me.
“Well, here’s an idea. Speaking of chemistry”—which nobody had been for a while— “why don’t we treat this as a chemistry session today? You’re right, K, we’re virtual strangers right now, or at least some of us are.” Rome leered my way, leaving no room for doubt about what he was referring to. I played dumb, maintaining a neutral expression, but felt my cheeks heat regardless. “So, it makes sense to break bread, break the ice, and break boundaries to get to know each other a little more…intimately, before we start trying to make sweet music together.”
He licked his lips lasciviously, as though I needed any more of a hint that he wasn’t strictly speaking about music. “It’ll be like a kind of musical speed dating thing. Although not so fast, y’know?”
I
had to admit it was a solid idea. I was pretty sure we’d achieve precious little if we attempted just to wade in cold and start trying to create together. If nothing else, we didn’t even have a brief or references for the kind of thing we were aiming for, which would be the usual way with these type of collabs. We were literally starting with a blank canvas in an empty room, as three randoms.
Well, the guys knew each other, of course—very well, apparently. But, apart from the near-anonymous encounter at the Sonata Awards, the three of us were new to each other, which was an “interesting” dynamic, especially because there were two of them to one of me.
And although the first big decision-making stage had gone in my favor, I didn’t anticipate that the winning streak would last. I was sure it wouldn’t be too long before I found myself ganged up on by them, in a stalemate about this issue or that. It was pretty much a given.
Yes, over the weekend I’d done my research about the duo—Rome especially, as his personal and musical background was fascinating. It was the kind of thing people made movies about. On the other hand, I knew better than to believe everything I read in the press—or anywhere, for that matter—and relished getting to know the men behind the myths.
I was especially curious to see if the clichés written, about Rome in particular, were true. From what I’d seen and experienced so far, I was inclined to believe that there were at least some grains of truth behind the rumors. There was no smoke without fire, after all, and if the way he’d behaved the first time we “met” at the awards night was anything to go by, he certainly seemed to embrace the main traits he was reported to display. Time would tell to what extent that was the case.
