“Put the pressure on, why don’t you.”
“Like you said, it’s all business.” And it was. The music industry was like that. Give them an inch, they take a mile, and expect you to run it even faster, especially when you’ve tasted success. Unreasonable, but doable. The pressure would indeed be on for Bev.
“Right. You see Kristin anywhere?” Bev glanced around, feeling a bit odd again, his head itching on the inside. Feels like a fingernail scratching my skull. He waved to some familiar faces while Jake playfully called someone a douchebag, pudgy hands grabbing a beer from a waitresses’ tray.
Jake swilled the beer. Some spilled down his chin, adding to the assortment of dark splotches on his shirt. “Naw, ain’t seen the bitch anywhere!” He guffawed, then melted into the crowd, shouting cuntlips! at Bev’s bassist, Pete Morse. Pete grinned uncomfortably. Bev chuckled then circumvented the room, looking for Kristin. He couldn’t travel two feet without being stopped.
While in conversation with Rock Hard Magazine publicist Rebecca Haviland, Bev shot a subtle glance across the room to a dark middle-aged man standing against the wall. Good looking. Chiseled features. Shadow of a beard. He had his hands behind his waist and stared at Bev, eyes contemplating him intensely. The man wasn’t at all familiar. Bev returned his attention to Rebecca. Smiled.
“Douchebag! There’s someone here you should meet.” Jake, of course.
Bev turned away from Rebecca, suddenly disengaged. “Excuse me,” he told her, grinning.
Jake brought over a thirtyish suit-wearing man with a grin as wide as city bus. “Let me introduce you to Bobby SanSouci.” Jake leaned over and whispered sour breath in Bev’s face, “He’s with Epic. They’re talking about renegotiating your contract for three more albums.” Jake grinned. Bev expected a canary’s feather to pop out of his mouth. “Eh? Eh? Can I work, or what?”
Bev smiled. This was good news. “Pleased to meet you, Bobby.”
Bobby kept on smiling, didn’t say word. Couldn’t really. Jake was all over it. “I’ve got his card, Bev. We’ll call on Monday and arrange a meeting. Sound good Bobby?”
Bobby nodded.
“Now go get laid. We’re not talking any more business tonight!” Jake winked at Bev, leaned over, whispered, “He’s a piece of fucking cake, Bev. You’re gonna be richer than richer!” Jake’s lips were wet with drool.
“Thank you, douchebag,” Bev said sarcastically, and again, Jake filtered into the crowd, cheeks glowing red, spewing more innocent abuse around. The man really enjoyed being outlandish. Knowing Jake for so long, Bev assumed it to be a way of compensating for a lack of self-esteem—toss his drinking into the mix, and you had a legendary case of low self-worth being masked by disposition. Just this last tour Jake had gone on a binge in Kansas City at Lou Piniella’s Restaurant & Bar and ended up trying to take on the entire Royals baseball team, calling them a bunch of ass-slapping faggots. Luckily, some of the road crew were there to bail Jake’s ass out before any real damage could occur.
“Bev?” Rebecca Haviland, still waiting. Smiling adoringly.
“Oh...I’m sorry,” he said, tossing a glance over to the spot where the dark man had stood. Gone. “Any chance we can do this another time? I haven’t seen my daughter in nine months, and she’s supposed to be here.”
She nodded, as though expecting him to shrug her off. “Call me on Monday. We’d like to get the story done for—”
“Daddy!”
She appeared from the crowd like an angel. She’d grown since the last time he saw her. Gone were the pudgy cheeks, the innocent eyes, even the dark freckles. Wow. His little girl had quickly turned into a woman, just like that. She ran to him and wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly. He kissed her soft cheek, just as he’d done a million times in the past, and even now, it felt no differently as it had when she was a baby.
They broke the clutch, holding hands. He stepped back to admire her. Five four. A hundred-fifteen pounds. Blonde hair, walnut eyes, a beautician’s makeover. She wore low-rise jeans and a tank top that revealed too much of her breasts. Suddenly, his admiration turned to offense. This was his daughter.
“I missed you so much!” she cried, bear hugging him again. More smacking kisses. Morbidly he thought of some of the girls he met backstage while on tour. Was his daughter just like them? No, God no...Kristin was classy. Driven. They may have looked the same but there was a marked distinction. All you had to do was peer a little deeper into their intentions. There’s where you’d find the difference.
“How’ve you been, hon?” Bev beamed, unable to control the flow of love for his girl.
“Oh, so busy. There’s so much to talk about! I finished another article for Rock Scene.”
“The one about...uh, I know you told me about it...”
“The decline of the L.A. rock band.”
“Uh, yeah, that one. When’s it coming out?”
“Next month’s issue.”
“Wonderful. Any new projects?”
“Well...yeah...”
“Care to tell me about them?”
“Yes! But not now, dad. This is your party!” Her eyes widened with genuine excitement. “We’ll talk about it soon. Now that you’re home we’ll have plenty of time, I hope. How long are you gonna be home for?”
“At least until Spring. I wrote some songs on the road, but need to get into the rehearsal studio pronto. The record company wants us to start recording in a few weeks. Plus, they’re talking about extending my contract for three more CD’s. Jake’s working on it.”
Her face lit up. “You serious?”
“Yep,” he smiled, hugging her again. She smelled amazing, like rose petals. Just like Julianne used to smell. They broke the clutch, and he asked, “So what’s with the outfit?”
She smiled. “Dad...”
“I’m serious...you look great and all, but damn, you’re my daughter.”
She did a pirouette, then said jokingly, “You know what the tabloids say.”
Nice way to skirt the subject.
“Well I’ll be a nun’s tit!” Jake barged in like a storm cloud, throwing lightning bolts. “Damn, you look fine!” he said of Kristin. “Bev, if I were you I’d take her out on the road with me. Girl like this should never be left home alone.”
“She’s not my wife. Douchebag.” Bev winked playfully at Kristin.
“Hi Jake,” Kristin said.
They remained in conversation for a few minutes, Jake close-talking with vodka-beer breath, Kristin nonchalantly leaning back, smiling, doing her best to avoid contact with the overbearing man. Bev did his best to pay attention to the unimportant conversation, but his gaze was suddenly drawn across the room to the dark man again, who’d appeared near the doorway. He peered back at Bev, eyebrows downcast, then bowed his head and exited the party.
“...isn’t that right, Bev? Bev?”
Bev focused back to the conversation at hand, at once concluding that he didn’t miss much. He nodded. “Absolutely.”
Jake roared something close to a laugh, then staggered away. Kristin smiled. “How do you put up with him?”
“It’s all business”
~ * ~
Bev felt sleepy. His shoulders were knotted and slumped, his eyes red and itchy from cigarette smoke. He paced away from the cluster of people near the door and checked his watch. Nearly one A.M. The party had finally thinned some, thankfully, and the man of the hour was more than ready to head home. He’d said his hellos to everyone, chatted with all the important people (and more than a few unimportant ones), and now looked forward to sleeping in his own bed again. Hadn’t done that in nine months.
Jake was still on his feet, but no longer going strong. He wore his last drink on his pants and had chewed his fingernails until they bled. Two road assistants had him supported, each with a burly arm over their shoulders, leading him out the door. “Bev, my man! You are the most righteous...” His words faded into the hallway.
Bev yawned, finally alone. He glance
d fondly at Kristin, across the room, engaged in an enthusiastic dialogue with Rebecca Haviland. Kristin had aspired to be a music journalist from a very young age. Her love for the music that daddy played seemed intuitive, coupled with a predominant desire to create. Bev had offered her guitar and piano lessons, but she showed limited interest in making music. Instead Kristin wanted to know about the people who made the music, worked behind the scenes, those active players in all facets of the industry, from the agents to the producers to the musicians themselves. Tirelessly, she researched every nuance of the business, and by the time she entered high school, was penning reviews of her father’s music and publishing them in her school paper and the local city rags. When Bev signed with Epic, Kristin immediately landed a job at Rock Scene, a newly published zine with a semi-national circulation. Her articles found an audience amongst the mostly male readership, who probably were taken with her looks too, which, as Bev time and time again had pointed out, had been acquired from her mother. Rock Scene didn’t pay very well, but it acted as the perfect stepping stone to magazines such as Spinner and Rock Hard Magazine. Kristin knew it, and Bev knew it too.
He winked at Kristin. She smiled. Rebecca smiled.
Scratch...scratch...scratch...
His head. Jesus. That feeling. There it was again. Like persistent fingers probing his skull. Hot flashes followed. Heart pounding. Stomach weighing him down.
Then a voice.
In his head.
Bevant Mathers...
Not his voice. Another voice.
Deep. Whispering. Distant. It echoed and faded. The scratching then stopped. Soon thereafter, he felt fine. Just tired. But the voice. Something...something bugged him about it.
It wasn’t until thirty minutes later, while he rode the quiet cruise of the limo, that he realized what it was.
It had an accent.
TWO
At one thirty-seven A.M., Bev asked the limo driver to stop at the Ocean Crest diner a quarter mile away from his home. Bev lived in an adobe-style rental home south of L.A., in Torrance. He’d realized at some point that he could very well afford a million dollar home, but hadn’t had the time or energy to pick up and move. And besides, he really liked his place. It had that lived-in, struggling-rock-star feel to it, gloomy and tight with CDs and amps and guitars. He also knew that in the music business, as quickly as fame and fortune came, it could disappear as well, and at his age, he wasn’t quite certain how long the ride would last. One bad album and you were toast. He’d decided to be prudent, play his cards safe and stay in the modest dwelling until his fortune reached disposable levels.
The diner was nearly empty, save for a young couple sharing one side of a booth, and four teens who might very well have been at the concert tonight. He hoped not—he wasn’t up for any attention. He sat at the counter, ordered a fresh turkey wrap and fries, then rubbed his tired eyes and thought of the sounds inside his head. He frowned, worried. The scratching had come first...muffled, yet striking enough to be heard above the blare of music emanating from the monitors on stage. Then came the ponderous desire to flee the stage. In the bathroom, some physical discomforts had emerged: light nausea, dizziness. Just tired, man, just very damn tired. Nine months on the road will do that to a man: the endless touring, night after night on stage singing and playing until he was soaked to the bone and gasping for air. Fatigue, he told himself. Exhaustion.
The waitress, birdlike and demure, brought his food with no smile. She trudged away and sat in a corner near the kitchen, counting her meager tips. He ate his wrap, staring at her. Pitying her. She looked up.
“Get ya something?”
“No. No, thank you.” She went back to estimating her net worth for the evening.
Bev heard the door creak open behind him. Tapping footsteps approached.
The waitress looked up. “Take a seat anywhere. I’ll be right with you.”
The unseen patron remained silent. Bev nibbled on a fry. The footsteps crossed behind him, and then a dark silhouette appeared in his peripheral vision and sat down two seats away.
Bev rubbed his eyes, ran his hands through his hair. There’s fifteen damn stools and the guy has to sit two away from me? The waitress walked over. Bev, focusing on his food, heard the man order black coffee. Bev ate. The man sipped. Neither looked at the other. In a minute, the man stood to leave. He left money on the counter.
Casually, Bev glanced up.
The dark man from the Forum’s backstage party. Middle-aged. Tall, legs like stilts. Eyes dark like charcoal. Short hair tousled. Defined.
Bev felt a sense of uneasiness. The man stood there unmoving, looking at Bev with insolence and perhaps defiance, as if at that moment he’d planned to break a law, and would let nothing get in his way.
He nodded once at Bev, clearly trembling. “Good show.”
Bev nodded back. Once. “Thanks.”
And then the man walked by, discreetly slipping a plain beige envelope on the counter between them...not close enough so that Bev could easily reach out and grab it, but not too far away either—clearly the man wanted Bev to know that it was intended for him.
Quickly, the man paced away. Exited the diner. The door creaked shut behind him.
Bev glanced around, saw the man’s shadow disappear into the black night. The young couple in the booth stood to leave. Bev put his head down so he wouldn’t be recognized—a presumptuous move for one who, at times, made an all-out effort to avoid the public when the mood wasn’t there. In doing so, his eyes caught the beige parchment of the envelope. On it, inscribed in handwritten block letters, was his name:
BEV MATHERS
He rubbed a hand on his cheek, looked out the door, looked back at the envelope, then at the waitress who was sipping coffee and trying to stay awake. Far away the four teens were silent behind their meals. No one else had seen the man leave the envelope. Bev looked at it again. Hesitated. He looked back out the door. No sign of the elusive dark man.
He leaned forward and grabbed the envelope. Crisp, sealed. He ran a finger along the pointed edges, staring at his name scrawled in dark hard contrast. Squeezing it gently, its slight density foretold of a note inside, a letter-sized document folded in thirds.
At one corner, he slipped a finger beneath the sealed flap, made a small tear along the edge.
The door burst open. A group of young adults entered, disrupting the interior calm and startling Bev. He spun in his stool and looked up at them.
They looked at him. The recognition was obvious in their widening, disbelieving eyes.
“Holy shit, it’s Bev Mathers!” one girl cried.
“Where?” asked another at the back of the group. Like dropped marbles, they diffused themselves so all could take witness to the sudden miracle. Bev could do nothing but smile. He tucked the envelope into his back pocket and stood to leave, hoping to avoid the inevitable. He nodded an acknowledgment at their grinning faces.
“Great show tonight, Bev!” a young man lauded.
“Yeah!” the others agreed in near unison.
“Thanks guys,” Bev replied. “Glad you enjoyed it.”
“Yeah!” they all extolled. Finally, one added, “Can we get an autograph?”
Bev nodded, reluctantly complying, signing odd items like brown paper bags, t-shirts, and white paper placemats pinched from the counter. The waitress and a cook looked on with curiosity, clearly unknowing as to who this man Bev Mathers was. While signing, Bev answered their impromptu questions, then shook hands with them, paid his bill, and fled the diner to the secure refuge of the limo, the distraction and plague of fatigue causing him to forget about the folded envelope in his back pocket.
~ * ~
Five minutes later, the Limo dropped Bev off at the end of the walkway leading to his home. A newspaper truck ripped by, promising the most up-to-date details of the nation’s events. He paced the long walkway, then up the lumbering stone steps to the front door; below, a slate embankment fell fifteen feet to an ad
ornment of azalea bushes. Behind the house, a half-mile of undeveloped woodland extended all the way to the freeway. At his door, he waved to the limo driver who returned the mundane gesture and drove off into the night.
In the distance, thunder rumbled. Soon thereafter, sheet lightning flashed. He looked to the sky. Dark purple clouds roiled in the distance.
For the first time in nine months, Bev Mathers entered his home.
Just as he’d left it. Clean. Neat. Kristin had promised a cleaning service once a month to take care of the dust and webs. Her pledge had been kept. The bay windows overlooking the woods glimmered; the raised brick fireplace and pine walls absorbed the color of the throws; in his bedroom, the crisp whiteness of the bed’s comforter invited him. He went into the bathroom, showered quickly, then investigated his “office,” a makeshift studio with foam-padded walls packed tightly with amps, stereos, guitars, and 16-track recording equipment: a reunion with old friends.
Back in the bedroom, he tossed his clothes on the floor, crawled beneath the covers, and stared at the ceiling. In the peculiar unfamiliarity of his home, his ears rang, nearly drowning out the rain now pelting the roof. His mind raced over his near-perfect performance tonight, of all the people he’d talked to at the party, and of Kristin. He’d never gotten a chance to say goodnight to her. Where had she gone? More than likely idling the hours away with Rebecca, the Rock Hard Magazine gal.
And then he thought of the dark stranger, milling about the party; eyeing him; showing up at the diner. The eerie reality of the situation set in, Bev realizing now that he’d been purposefully followed. He remembered the envelope—the stranger’s obvious intent had been to deliver it to him. And that objective had been successful. It was now wedged in the back pocket of the jeans he’d worn, strewn on the floor alongside the bed. He considered getting out of bed to retrieve it, but his weary body stifled his curiosity. It’ll be there in the morning, he told himself.
He closed his eyes and in seconds, was asleep.
Demonologist Page 2
