Rock Bottom

by Michael Shilling

  Cut to a picture of Daniella Spencer, blond and surly, in what looked like a mug shot.

  “Looking sickly and exhausted, Miss Spencer went on to claim that Mr. Brown and several associates, including Mr. Cox, were part of a sex-slave ring, complete with hidden basements and dungeons.”

  Cut to a shot of Brown’s French Normandie mansion. Cut to Brown, a schlump in a tracksuit, smiling at some tropical bar.

  “Mr. Brown, who is in a Los Angeles hospital with an undisclosed ailment, could not be reached for comment, but his attorneys deny all charges.”

  Cut to a man in front of a podium marked LAPD, Vice Division, who looked more or less like Tom Selleck.

  “Upon searching Mr. Cox’s house, we did find evidence that backed up the assertions of Miss Spencer, very specific assertions that we cannot at this time comment upon.”

  Then, another picture of David Cox, in a tuxedo, onstage at the AVN Awards, the porn Oscars, hoisting high the bronze. Younger and feather-haired, he looked like any suburban dentist.

  “Mr. Cox is, quite simply, a porn legend. The first to comprehend the effect that video, and then digital video, would have on the industry, he made Dirty Darling into the Coca-Cola of hardcore adult entertainment. His knack for understanding how to make money, and to continue to make money, has resulted over the years in some interesting crossover into the mainstream business world as well as the political arena.”

  Cut to an assembly line, a warehouse in Pasadena piled high with video boxes, DVD boxes, sex toys, lubes, all the spoils.

  “Mr. Cox was for many years a consultant to the Cato Institute, and through lobbying efforts to ease regulations in the cable television business forged questionable relationships with a group of congressmen, split evenly across the political spectrum, who in 1999 became known as the Cox Eleven for their now-dissolved association with the porn maven.”

  Cut to a white-haired fellow in front of a bank of reporters on the floor of some sanctified marble hall on Capitol Hill, identified as Representative Peter McDonough, Democrat of California, ranking minority member of the House Ways and Means Committee.

  “My relationship with Mr. Cox was perfectly appropriate. Like all citizens in this country, even those whose businesses, be they munitions or adult entertainment, some may find distasteful, he is perfectly entitled under the First Amendment to advocate his interests.”

  Cut to Cox with his arm around Bruce Willis. Then another one, on safari with Burt Reynolds. Then another one, arm wrestling with Hulk Hogan. Then another one, jamming with Motley Crüe.

  “A colorful, tall, strapping man, Cox has long served as the modern-day Hugh Hefner, sans the grotto and the toupee. He is known for his love of firearms and his stable of Rhodesian Ridgebacks. His reputation precedes him. But for now, that reputation is shrinking under a hail of allegations, allegations that sent the stock of his parent company, the publicly traded DD Holdings, plummeting.”

  Cut to Cox in a masculine embrace with Vince Neil, and then a fade.

  Bobby flexed his hands and thought, What a great day. First I get my Dutch angel, and now this. And just imagine what that will do, has already done, to Darlo, off somewhere in that twinkle of snowy Dutch city lights. Just imagine how that news will pull the spine right out of him, leave him on the floor, bleeding, confused, without a nucleus. All roads led to Dad, but Dad is closed for business. What would the drummer do without psychic Daddy energy? How would he even breathe under the weight of the news?

  “Tax evasion,” Bobby said, and got up. “Just like Capone.” He searched through the wet bar.

  “Grab me a bottle of vodka,” Shane said.

  Bobby found two minis of Stoli Lemon and chucked one at Shane. His hands tingled. “There you go, champ.”

  Shane snapped the top off and propped some more pillows. “You think this is serious?”

  “Serious as a heart attack,” Bobby replied. “Isn’t it fucking great?”

  “You bet your ass it is.” Shane reached over and they clinked bottles.

  Bobby sat in the Louis Quatorze chair. They swigged their vodka over the E! network din, which had moved on to Christina Aguilera’s latest attempt at going high-class. They lay resplendent in glee at the Cox family’s fortunes gone south, of the prince’s misfortunes and the king’s offenses, falling from divine right to regicide.

  10

  IN THE CANDY-PINK BROTHEL, Darlo zipped up his pants, all fired up, and it wasn’t about pussy. He was going to save the lives of those girls, go down in porn history as the guy who busted up his own father’s underground sex-slave trade. Forget about everything else, even his band — what difference did all of that make as long as he popped the sore on the busted ass that was his father’s sorry, sadistic life? The cops would get involved. Leading them down the stairs into the dungeon would complete his journey from accomplice to hero. Maybe they’d even give him one of those LAPD Vice Windbreakers as a present for doing so much good so fast.

  He put on his shoes. Ms. Pink sat on the bed in her pink negligee. Her lipstick was gone. Her hair was in place. Within leather trousers, his cock hung soft on the left side.

  “You really fucking helped,” he said. “Seriously. I think I figured out a lot. More than any other time hobbying.”

  She looked at him, anger clouding her perfect complexion. “Figured shit out, man? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about exposing a fucking sex-slave ring.”

  She rolled her eyes. “The ones like you are the weird ones, the ones who don’t like sex.”

  “I love sex.”

  She wiped the corners of her mouth. “No,” she said. “The ones like you just want to watch me undress and cry about it, or fucking moan, man, or talk to themselves.” She lit up a cigarette. Smoke filled the room like dry ice before Aerosmith enters the building. “Creepy people who pay to be with a beautiful woman and then become crazy. Without the little bit of self-respect to follow through on the promise they make to their bodies. Can’t fulfill the contract. Become little crazies instead, crying, whimpering. I hate that.”

  Signals starting jamming again in Darlo’s emotional airspace. The idea of calling the police seemed full of false promises. He felt like he’d done an entire eightball on his own.

  “If you had come in my mouth,” she said, “I would not have minded. I would not have loved it, but you know, whatever. But crying in my mouth?”

  “I didn’t cry in your mouth.”

  She grimaced. “Yes you did, boy. You stared down into it real close and started to cry. I felt your tears on my tongue and gums before you fell back into that corner.” She wiped at her wet face. “You think this is come? No. Tears.” She took a drag and French-inhaled. Her Dutch accent pinned the English down, flattened it out in the molten smithy of dialect. “That’s fucking real, man. That’s a shared fucking experience. That’s gonna stay with us forever, and you should have paid me a thousand fucking euros for that kind of intimacy.”

  Signals jamming. Tears?

  “Now just get out,” she said. “Go.”

  Darlo fought back the creeping numbness, the misery revving somewhere in his heart, popping into first, ready to roll below the horizon.

  “I said, go, boy.” She adjusted her top. “Now.”

  He adjusted his Harley belt buckle. Fighting back the numbness.

  “Hey,” he said. “You like rock and roll?”

  She stared right through him.

  “’Cause I’m in a rock band. We’re playing at the Star Club tonight.”

  “That’s fucking Disneyland, man.”

  “Just give me a name,” he said, sweaty, jumpy. “Just pick a name and I’ll put it down. You’re really foxy, you know that?”

  Still with the cigarette between her lips, she leaned back on the bed. The skin on her shoulders shone. Maybe he had cried on them too.

  “What do you say?”

  She waved a little. “Goodbye now.”

  “We’r
e called Blood Orphans.”

  “So long.”

  “Blood Orphans,” he said, like a sheriff who’d just busted up the ruffians. “See you there.”

  He would never say it like the rest of them did. He would never be ashamed, like Adam, or aloof, like Shane, or mocking, like Bobby. He would be proud of it until the bitter fucking end, which, if he had anything to do with it, wouldn’t be anytime soon.

  “Blood Orphans,” he repeated.

  She shrugged and spit his tears into a tissue.

  11

  JOEY STOOD IN THE LOBBY of the Krasnapolsky. A half-hour early for dinner, she had gone into the restaurant — a silly atrium full of pallid plants — and waited for the four stooges at their table, but nerves soon dictated that she pace around. And she had that post-bad-sex feeling, which she hadn’t known you could have without actually having sex. Darlo came through the revolving doors and marched over to her. Joey felt jealous and disgusted.

  “Do you have any change?” she asked.

  “What happened to you?” he said, not so much indignant as let down. “You ditched me. Where’d you go?”

  “Not telling you.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Where’s your phone?”

  “All over some street somewhere. I smashed it up.”

  “What do you mean you smashed it up?”

  “I decided it was ruining my life.”

  The drummer looked at her, cocked his head, shook it. Dust billowed out in the bright lobby lighting.

  “You used to be a person I could depend on,” he said. “You used to be the fucking foresight.”

  She lit a cigarette. “It’s all a mess is all.”

  “What is?”

  “The band, you idiot. You. Me. The whole fucking thing.”

  Joey saw herself back behind the bar at Spaceland, having to suffer the looks of those making their way through the crowd, who whispered into each other’s ears, Dude, that girl is the walking joke of Los Angeles rock and roll. She took out her flask of apple ripple, swigged, and offered it to Darlo. Never one to say no, he followed suit.

  “I really need that phone,” he said, and wiped his mouth. “I need to call LA. I think my dad is hiding some girl in a basement.”

  “Come again?”

  “My dad … babe, you just don’t know.”

  “Try me.”

  Joey liked the word dungeon. It sounded pretty fresh. And a false wall? With, like, a button located behind a fake copy of The Story of O? You mean, like a fucking horror movie?

  “No, babe, worse, because it’s real.”

  Anything was possible, she knew, when it came to Darlo’s dad. But that tone in his voice, that new righteous do-gooder shit, made her laugh.

  “Ooo,” she said. “Scary.”

  The drummer didn’t have time for Joey’s lack of faith and went stomping off. She watched him walk away, admiring his ass. Sure was cute how he was on a new mission. Sure was sweet that he’d discovered morality as it passed by on his emotional conveyor belt. A dungeon? Oh, sure. Shackle me the fuck up. Put my nipples in a twist. She took a breath, sickened by the saccharine, flip nature of her sense of humor, and hobbled over to a couch.

  12

  DARLO COULDN’T BELIEVE JOEY. What kind of person destroyed her phone just because her leg hurt all the time? Back in LA, on that date he would take her on, they’d get to the bottom of her aimless defeatism. But now he needed a phone. Spying Adam in the lobby, he felt a troika of unfamiliar emotions: loyalty, regret, and contrition.

  He marched over, gripped Adam, and stared at the guitar player’s blackening eye. Adam gripped him back.

  “You’re OK?” Darlo asked.

  “OK,” Adam said. “Good, actually. Thank you.”

  “No, thank you.” Darlo felt shivery. The new emotions shook through his body, turning up bedrock. “I wanted to fucking kill them,” he said. “I would have killed them with my knife. They would have died a most painful fucking death at the hands of the Magic Wand, and you better fucking believe it.”

  “I know.” Adam smiled to keep El Loco under control. “I hear you.”

  Darlo gripped his shoulder harder. “OK. Good. Now I just need to find a phone. Joey broke hers. Bitch is crazy.”

  Adam pulled out a silver Samsung. “Use mine,” he said. “It’s a quad-band. It gets America.”

  Darlo felt water well in his eyes. “Bless you,” he said, taking the phone. “Dude, I would have killed them.”

  He would get the LAPD on the horn and start talking. He would spill and spew information. But then he wasn’t sure. Maybe calling the cops was a bad idea. There might be all kinds of drugs he couldn’t remember all over the house. He didn’t want everything to spiral out of control while he was an ocean away. If he ratted on his dad, he’d get immunity. But they’d still drop all his coke down the toilet and confiscate his guns.

  Hmm. Call Jesse instead. It would be like seven in the morning in LA. Jesse owed him.

  “About time you called,” Jesse said.

  “I’m a little busy over here,” Darlo said, “trying to save my ass. So listen —”

  “No, you listen. I’ve been up all the rest of the night waiting for you, and there’s nothing good on the Comcast. Keeping me up like this, like I’m your fucking assistant. Fucking bullshit.”

  Darlo paced, bumping into people in furs and suits. “At least you’re in fucking LA,” he said. “At least you’re not losing your mind here in who-gives-a-fuck-ville. Did you ever think that maybe I wish I was in LA? That maybe if I was, I wouldn’t hassle you? Did you? Fucking did you?”

  Adam was still waiting at the elevator. He looked over. Darlo saw his black eye and felt completely responsible for the first time in his life. His hand that held the phone was wet.

  “So are you going to help me out?” Darlo said. “Are you going to —”

  “— go looking for your dad’s dungeon? No, I’m not.”

  Darlo felt pressure well up in his temples. His eyes lost focus. “I cried in a girl’s mouth today,” he said. “I went to a hooker and I was staring into her mouth and I don’t remember it, but she said I cried into it.”

  “Jesus, dude.”

  “That’s why I need your help, Jesse. I’m fucking freaking out. And now I’m crying again. Oh my God, what is going on?”

  A catatonia was setting in. A numbness. Nerve blockers shot up over dendrites. Can’t cry. Don’t cry.

  This numbness had happened to him before. When he had met his mother.

  They had been writing all these letters and he had been starting to get all fucked up with a question: Who was she?

  “Go, Darlo,” his father said, sucking down a Bloody Mary and looking for talent at Cheetahs. “I’m sick of hearing about your curiosities about your mother. It’s a real buzzkill, man. It makes me go soft like Silly Putty.”

  “You afraid of me finding out something?”

  “Yeah, I’m fucking terrified,” Cox said, picking some girl with a glance and a nod. “It’ll be your own little trip down the rabbit hole. Take a copy of Poppycock, with my best wishes.”

  During the flight to Des Moines, drowsiness had overcome him and his body had gone numb. You ride things out, he thought, looking around the cabin. That’s life, bitch. Get tough. Beat that terror upside its head. Look at all the weak people in their suits and dresses. Are you them? No. The world is run by the people who tough it out.

  The airport in Des Moines was flat, moonish. Two college-aged boys picked him up in a Ford Escort. They were dressed like Latter-Day Saints on holiday — blue polo shirts, khakis, loafers. They had thick, wheat-colored hair, rolling amber waves of grain, purple fucking mountains majesty.

  “I guess we’re your stepbrothers,” one of them said. “Jump on in.”

  He could barely breathe by the time they arrived at the farm. Horse stables. A woman who looked like him, and still beautiful. His eyes were open, but a vise was crushing his chest. His dad was in there, grinding him up.


  “You are so lovely,” she said in their living room, a well-worn, comfortable parlor festooned with portraits of her family in various active pursuits, and smelling of paperwhites. “Twenty years and here you are. Almost twenty years I have not seen my baby.”

  “Hi,” he said, and wheezed.

  His bravado had left him somewhere in the Pacific time zone. How could he be part of this, part of her? How could he have half his genes from this stranger who killed her own food and talked about the slaughter of the unborn at dinner? She was a monolith of mystery towering in front of him. He lay awake the whole night in a stiff bed — one she said had been used in a Civil War hospital — stared at the ceiling, and listened to the wind whip through nothing. What was the wind doing?

  In the morning, he and the two wheat-headed brothers, John and Robert, went horseback riding. This was the first time Darlo could identify with them; his dad had taken him to stables up in Malibu belonging to friends who kept horses, and he loved to ride. They trotted around on the five acres, access roads surrounding fields of the amber waves.

  “Such a beautiful day,” John said.

  “Heck, yes,” Robert said. “What do you think of God’s country, Darlo?”

  I hate it, he thought. No way could the Sunset Strip and this fruited plain coexist on the same spinner.

  “It’s a gas,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  When they returned, their father, the head of the Des Moines branch of Allstate, greeted Darlo without any of that midwestern condescension that his father had warned him about.

  “Well, if it isn’t Darlo,” he said. “So pleased to meet you!”

  The two fathers were connected now whether he liked it or not, and that night in his Civil War bed Darlo dreamed of his dad planting his Venus flytrap mouth on the man’s ear and sucking everything out, until he fell to the ground like a deflated balloon at a Thanksgiving parade. His dad had the eyes of a hornet and pincers for hands. He woke up covered in sweat.

  What was it with the wind here?