Rock Bottom

by Michael Shilling

  Joey came stumbling out, looking deranged. Darlo expected her to rustle him up, pull at him, get him to hurry the fuck up, fucking loser, fucking fool. But she just looked at him, eyes wide. Then she marched over, grabbed his face, and kissed him.

  Darlo grabbed her by that little waist, hoisted her up. She wrapped her legs around him. His whole body rushed to her. She put a vise grip on him.

  “Your leg,” he said. “Be careful.”

  “Fuck careful,” she said, and shoved her tongue down his throat.

  Her breath had days of liquor and chocolate on it. He breathed it in.

  “I fucking love you,” he said. “You crazy bitch.”

  “Shut up,” she said, and bit his lower lip, her breath shaking. “Shut the fuck up and fucking hold me.”

  Darlo had felt this passion with Jenni Feingold, and he had felt it, in a way he did not understand, with his dad. That there was precedent for this swooping, encompassing feeling, that he wasn’t just trying the emotion on, made it something he could trust.

  “OK, my leg hurts now,” she said.

  He put her down. They stared at each other. She barely came up to Darlo’s chest. He grabbed her faux hawk and tugged. She grabbed his black mane and tugged harder. Some animal ritual was satisfied.

  “My dad should have died at Wonderland,” he said. “He was supposed to be there that night.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My mother.”

  She nodded, squinting.

  “Ignominy,” Joey said. “Pure ignominy. Pure impetuosity. You OK?”

  “Yeah. I fucking love you.”

  She pulled him down and licked his lips. “I fucking love you too. You fucking mess.”

  “Cokehead gimp bitch,” he said, and smelled her breath.

  Darlo looked around at the Dutch Christmastime throng, glittering with purpose and life. The whole day was a dream. Everything was a dream. What was it with the snow here?

  Joey pulled away and started doing a slithering little Axl Rose–esque dance on a pole of cold Dutch air.

  “I’m practicing to introduce Blood Orphans,” she said. “You heard of them?”

  “They opened for Aerosmith, right?”

  Joey swayed, drunk on some kind of crazy wisdom. “That’s right. And now they’re finishing their triumphant two-year world tour with an intimate club date at the very not-at-all-posh Stoor Cloob. Their entire fan base of cripples, fat white boys in Babylon 5 T-shirts, and nose-picking sex offenders will be there. Plus exactly zero A&R and no representatives from the Sharpie Shakes company, from whom the band mistakenly did not take several hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Would it really have been that much?”

  “Try not to hold it against me,” she said, and went back to her stripper aerobics.

  The Dutch nighttime bustle was in full swing. A whole new army of cyclists, trams, and blond kids dressed as elves, faces covered in bootblack.

  “Why couldn’t we have ended the tour in a city just a tad less stuck-up?” Darlo said. “Why did we have to end the tour in Yawnlakhastan?”

  “Why go out on a good note?” the manager said. “Why operate in denial?”

  He lowered his eyes at Joey. “You used to make sense. Back in the day.”

  “Oh yeah?” Joey said, spinning on that invisible pole. “What was it like?”

  Darlo didn’t know. Joey put her hand out, and he took it.

  “You think about that, lover-boy,” she said. “I’m curious about what the hell that could mean. But in the meantime, let’s rock.”

  27

  BOBBY STOOD ONSTAGE, still noodling on his bass. He looked at his bandmates. He looked at the middling crowd. He looked at a girl who’d better be turned on by needy confused fuckers. He looked back at his singer.

  “I’m really sorry, Shane, for being such a shit to you.”

  Shane smiled and nodded like a priest on television. “It’s no problem, Bobby. So am I, dude.” He tapped the microphone. “You have no idea.”

  “We fucked it all up.”

  “Sure we did.” Something fell off Shane’s hair. “What did we know, though? What did we know at all?”

  “Come on, you fuckers!” the Dutch bartender yelled. “Kiss and make up, fuckers! Play dirty rock!”

  Adam emerged from behind his amp, walked his velvet-panted, Fu-Manchu-less way over. The guitar player’s new swagger hit Bobby in the heart.

  “It’s like part of you is missing,” he said. “You did yourself a world of good by shaving that thing off.”

  “Thanks,” Adam said, and stared soulfully at Bobby’s hands.

  Joey and Darlo walked in, arm in arm. Bobby wondered what that was all about, and thought of the ice caps melting. Darlo got behind the drums and winked at him.

  “We’re gonna play a bunch of covers tonight,” Shane said.

  “Fine,” the drummer replied.

  “Doors and Stones?” Bobby said.

  “Whatever,” he said.

  “ ‘Dead Flowers’?” Adam said. “ ‘Miss You’?”

  “Fuckin’ A.” He craned his neck. “Holy shit, you shaved off your —”

  “Play the dirty rock musak!” the two bartenders chanted. “Dirty rock muzak. Dirty rock muzak!” They held up copies of Rocket Heart. Joey and her tricks. Bobby’s heart warmed to the incompetent manager, who now, under the chant of the Dutchies, strode the stage like Don-fucking-King at Madison Square Garden, as if the whole damn world were waiting for her voice to ring out in sterling introduction.

  She grabbed the microphone, swatting away disappointment and fatigue, swatting all the pain away.

  “Good evening, blond people of Amsterdam. Hello! My name is Joey Fredericks, and I am the manager of the band standing here, who are about to entertain you with their tales of sexual and psychic woe and plunder, who have traveled the world in a wee little tour van to evangelize hidden truths of men and women put to jolly martial song. Can I get some fucking lights on us, please?”

  Lights shifted upon Joey’s five-foot frame. She had a frothy drink in one hand, and that limp was full on.

  “Thank you, sir,” Joey said, feeding back. “Now you may be wondering, fine international people, what makes you so very lucky. You may be wondering, How did I end up in a nice but unimpressive tableau of rock-and-roll mythmaking? You may be wondering, Was it something special that brought me here tonight? And the answer is yes! The answer is yes! You have been brought here by the universe to witness the end of a long, exciting journey. To witness the start of another chapter. To witness the denouement of a dream.”

  “Tell it!” the bartenders yelled. “Tell it!”

  “How long ago we started on this journey, lads.” She surveyed the four of them, holding her glass. “How long ago in the palm groves of darkest lost angels, in the shallow spires of the kingdom of the Pacific. How long ago did we meet: an art student, a Christian folk-seeker, a careerist with a skin condition, and the son of a pornographer. How long ago was it that we plotted the course of empire, delved into the delineations of delight, deemed the fiefdoms, carved up the land of our future leisure!”

  It had been forever since Bobby had heard one of these speeches, back when Blood Orphans was just another name for Party Down. He’d forgotten that Joey had the circus-barker-meets-poetry-slammer in her. Yet after all this time, her spiel still rang in heroic tones, and her voice was the sound of an Elysian wind come to bless them.

  “And off they went, off we went, into the complexities of contract, emerging as handmaidens to Aerosmith, interns in the office of international pop-stardom, squires at the round table of rock and roll. But the waters of whimsy turned against us. What was once smooth sailing became a racist riptide, pulling us down and down, descending into the maelstrom of uncoolitude. We were branded bigots, stupidos, morons. Our crown of jewels was replaced with a crown of thorns, and yes, we were punished for all the sins of the lifestyle, we were the railway children, the left-behind, the dashed
-away.”

  Darlo started up a jazzy midtempo beat, and the rest of them followed into a solid little vamp. Shane picked up a tambourine and shook in time, wincing from his busted ears but keeping the shake going. They locked in behind their manager as she sang their elegy, stirred up the attendants of this wake, made it glorious and shimmery. Like that, they were Joey’s backing band.

  “But on we trudged, still faithful to the times when posters filled our rooms, when every night as we lay in pubescent anticipation, Jagger stared at us, Lennon stared at us, Rotten and Page and Osbourne stared at us from glossy shitty-stocked four-color photographs crookedly taped to our walls, the poses of kings! Of kings, my friends, of kings!”

  For once, Bobby could get his stinging fingers to make all the changes. If he could only stay locked in this groove forever, he wouldn’t need anything. If he could just stay on this root-note plane, he would be happy and content. He had purpose here. He had peace and love. On Joey went, swinging her glass from hand to hand, then clutching at the mike like the Boston Strangler.

  “On we trudged, across time zones in a shitty van, across countries where no one cared, across the stunted dead tundra of an unfairly ruined reputation. To make it right. To make it worthwhile. To say to the world, We may be down, but we are sure as hot shit not out. And so here we are, washed upon the pointy-roofed medieval shores of Ye Olde Amsterdam, here to perform our last rites. And so I present to you, unimaginable, unfathomable, unpossessable, I present to you the very definition of a type of genius not yet recognized. I give you the stomp and hue and cry of the power-poppermost of the hard-hitting rockermost. Here at last, bloody, unbowed, and unsilenced, I give you tomorrow’s future bastards. I bid you sleep tight, my babies! Sleep tight, my darlings! I give you Blood Orphans!”

  A spark came up from the microphone. Joey reeled back, sending her drink in a wild arc to the middle of the room, sailing through the lights, descending into the maelstrom. The manager stumbled for a moment, looked at Bobby as if something amazing had been revealed to her eyes, and dropped to the floor.

  28

  WHEN JOEY LIFTED INTO THE AIR, Shane thought of that time at Christian camp when that young preacher had become engulfed with the spirit. They had taken a bus to the Redwoods, and Pastor Duncan had brought a friend from the sister South — he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five — to do a guest sermon as they ate grapes and held hands. Preacher-boy was a cocky dude from Louisiana, and his sermon had taken a hard turn toward Pentecostal weirditude; he began speaking in tongues, something they all considered a form of undue attention toward oneself in the eyes of the Lord. Hitting a crescendo, Preacher-boy had thrown himself back, and for just a moment under those ancient massive trees, for just a moment in that calm clearing, he had left this world. They all reeled, the entire contingent of the Christian youth, Shane and Donna, his girlfriend — who, in the tent the night before, would not swallow his sperm — and all their friends, cheery and wearing their new Eddie Bauer gear and Teva sandals. Their eyes went wide as the strange southern dude flew back and popped his head against some thousand-year-old stump. And yes, of course, could one avoid, when thrown back and flailing, chucking one’s arms perpendicular to one’s body? The southern preacher hadn’t been able to help himself, hobbled with the crutch of calculation. Maybe, Shane thought later, after Preacher-boy was driven away in a Yosemite EMT van to get his concussion treated, he was not what he had seemed. And now, as Joey lifted up her forsaken arms, flying on the wings of electric angels before falling to the stage, Shane knew that the young preacher on that Redwoods retreat had been consummately full of shit. For unlike him, Joey definitely bore the brunt of their sins.

  They rushed forward. Darlo, climbing over his drums, shoved them out of the way. “Move!” he said. “Oh, God!”

  Joey’s mouth was open, her tongue hung out the side, and her blond hair poofed straight up. Darlo grabbed her and shook her. Joey grunted and swung her arms, slapping Darlo across the face.

  “Joey?” Darlo said, getting really close. “Baby, are you all right?”

  She nodded. The two locked eyes and kissed.

  “No way,” Bobby said. Shane and Adam grunted, like, About time.

  Darlo carried her back to the green room with the rest of them in tow, and Shane thought about that Pentecostal soldier again, how he had recovered awfully fast from his spiritual shock. Faster than you could say massive scam, he had started in on how God had just touched him, yes, my friends, he had just received a shock from the greatest power source of all, and it was a mighty charge, a mighty wattage indeed. And then he had clutched at his head and dropped. But Joey, Shane knew, was the real thing.

  Darlo lowered her to the couch.

  “Maybe too much booze,” she said. “In my head and on the mike. Wet hands maybe. So fucking embarrassing.”

  “Are you kidding?” Bobby said. “That was like the most badass bit of rock-and-roll theater I’ve ever seen. And you’re following in a great tradition. Bill Wyman and Keith Richards were both electrocuted onstage.”

  “Sweet,” she croaked. “Keith’s hot.”

  “Babe, I saw you fall,” Darlo said. “I heard that pop and I saw you fall. Jesus, are you sure you’re all right? Adam, are you sure she’s all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Joey said, and threw an Altoid into her mouth. “I just have a headache and I’m still a little sick, but I’m fine.” She propped herself up. “You guys need to go play your set.” She winked. “Even though after me it’ll be one hell of an anticlimax.”

  Going back up there was the last thing Shane wanted to do, but when he opened his mouth to make the case to ditch, he had a change of heart. His ears ached, his hair was disgusting, and his faith was a stretched-out carcass of belief, but this was his life. This was where the quest had led him, to the masturbatory, soulless dream of some millionaire, but he had to honor that. Maybe this band was the purgatory for the next life and he was about to pass through, but maybe Blood Orphans could be salvaged, made new, made real for once.

  Either way, everything had led to this moment. He rose out of some surface that had formerly held him down in concrete clutches.

  “I know a party,” he said. “Let’s play the set and get the fuck out of here.”

  29

  THEY APPROACHED THE RODIN SUITE like a bunch of refugees. Shane stood at the front and banged on the door. Joey and Darlo flanked him like dime-store devils, broken ornaments you’d hang on Satan’s Christmas tree. Adam stood behind them, smoothing his phantom Fu Manchu, his eye ringed in black, dark but diffuse, like an espresso stain on a cheap napkin. At the back, Bobby had his arm around Sarah. He hoped for cacophony and good times, felt sentimental about this final moment of togetherness, which was not so different from the first time they had stood together in public, outside Spaceland with their amps, waiting for entry into a sacred celebration of the rock-and-roll high life. That for a time they’d been the ones on the other side of the golden equation seemed impossible.

  The door opened, and the sound nearly blew them back. A guy stood there, double-fisting Stella. Shrouded in buckskin fringe and leather pants, his beard spotty and blond, he could have been in charge of rigging the lights at Woodstock.

  “Ron,” Shane said. “You stoned fucker.”

  “Peanut Butter Bob!” he yelled. “And the rest of the Bloody mother-fricking Orphans. Entrez, mes amis, entrez!”

  Like all good rock-and-roll parties, the Rodin Suite was a living exhibit of the vapid and exultant. On the stereo, Bon Scott rang out his clarion call of beer- and tail-chasing, rang the bell that Idiot School was in session. The Young brothers riffed around his gravel-bound voice. AC/DC were the Australian Ramones. They were holy.

  “If you want blood,” people sang, “you got it!”

  “Did you have parties like this?” Sarah asked. “This is crazy shit.”

  “Back in the day,” he said.

  “You’re sad.”

  “I am.”
>
  She took his hand and kissed it gently.

  “Will you come visit me?” he asked. “Will you come to Los Angeles?”

  “Certainly,” she said. “As long as we go to the Getty.”

  Ron stood atop a couch and yelled for attention. Bobby couldn’t believe this guy; his Gram Parsons Electric Horseman look, straight off the case at Nudies, was so incredibly lame. Then Bobby remembered that he was in a band that, for most of their existence, had worn enough eye shadow to sell out the MAC counter.

  “Yo, bitches!” Ron shouted. “I have an announcement to make!”

  The whole room applauded.

  “You fuckers don’t even know what I’m going to say, man!” He laughed, and his buckskin fringe went back and forth, and then he swigged from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He had the whole routine down, and Bobby saw a pretty prominent hard-on through his two-hundred-dollar jeans, which hugged his jewels just like Keith’s on the cover of Sticky Fingers.

  “We’re in the presence of major rock infamy right now, people!” he yelled. “We’re in the presence of a group of dudes that got the most royal and criminal screwing by a major label!” He scanned the crowd and found Shane, who stood with the younger sister of Daisy Duke. Everyone here had grown up in Hazzard County.

  “Peanut Butter Bob!” he yelled. “All right!”

  Shane raised his beer, put his arm around the little Daisyette.

  “Get to the point!” Joey yelled.

  “And to the point I will get, yes!” Ron said. “The point is, that they were never given a fair shake, and were royally screwed, these brilliant ironists of rock-and-roll stereotype, and” — he belched — “were terrorized by the fucking whims of fame! But they are here tonight to party with us, these hard-rocking phantoms, impart some hard-learned wisdom and easy love, and that is an honor indeed. Cue up that stereo and play me some Blood Orphans!”