by Shayla Black
I felt it too. But we all took the same courses in school. We’d all known it was coming. Why act as if it was a shock?
I’d backed away slowly until I didn’t have friends who couldn’t cope. No one knew what to do with me. I didn’t even know what to do with me. I knew I didn’t fit in, and I didn’t care. Maybe it was my version of rich girl ennui. Maybe I was just too smart, too good at too many things. Or too acerbic to make those warm girly relationships. I depended on no one. Didn’t feel useful.
I felt as though I had more going on in my head than most people, then I thought I was out of my mind for believing that. So I reached out, trying to make more friends. Then I realized how empty relationships were. I realized I really did have more going on in my head than most people, and I started the cycle over.
Lynn had disappeared into the club, on her way to the suite to have a threesome or foursome, and I was left on the beach. I could have made it a fivesome, and why not? What would be the difference either way?
Screwing one or ten people didn’t need to be an earth-shatteringly meaningful experience, but I should know why I wanted to besides boredom.
“It’s not ennui then,” I said to myself.
My face squeezed tight, reacting to having sand thrown in it before my brain fully registered that two shirtless men had run past me, kicking up sand. They dove into the freezing surf.
God damn. Los Angeles was pretty warm in March, all things being equal, but the water was fucking cold.
They swam to the place where the waves rose cleanly and treaded water, looking toward the horizon. When a big one rolled in, curling at the top at just the right moment, they flattened their bodies and rode it in. They got lost in the white froth, then they came up sitting. They high fived. The wave they had ridden continued past them, past the boundary of wet sand, to the dry line six inches from my boots.
Tide was coming in.
One of the men came toward me, pants heavy with water, hair dripping, short beard glistening in the lights of the boardwalk. “Got a towel?”
“No.”
“Fucking cold.”
“Shoulda thought of that before you went in.”
Behind me, the other guy snapped a white hotel towel off the sand and gave it a shake before putting it around his shoulders. He had music tattooed all over his chest. That would be Stratford Gilliam. Unbelievable in person. Even in the dark.
“She’s got a point,” he said and darted back to the club.
The guy with the ginger beard was Indiana McCaffrey, and he was supposed to be fucking Lynn and Yoni. Instead, he was standing over me, shivering.
“I have fire,” I said, handing him my cigarettes and lighter.
He took them and sat next to me. “Thanks.” He pulled out two cigarettes, handed me one, and lit both with trembling hands.
“You should probably get inside.”
“I like being cold.”
“Sure. That’s why people move here.”
He blew out a stream of smoke. It took a hairpin turn two inches from his lips when the sea breeze sent it behind him.
“You from here?” he asked.
“Los Angeles born and raised. Fermented in Pacific brine and air-dried in the California sun.” I flipped my hair so the wind blew it out of my face. He was more beautiful in person than in any magazine. I didn’t know how I got to be sitting on the beach with Indiana McCaffrey, but once the cigarette was done, he was probably going to split. Every second counted. “Your Southern accent’s mostly gone. You could be a newscaster.”
He nodded, or he could have been shivering. “My father didn’t like me sounding like a hick, so he beat the accent out of me.”
“What else did he beat out of you?”
He glanced at me. “Besides the shit?”
His pupils were dilated eight-balls with blue rings. He was on some sensory-enhancing drug. Quaaludes maybe. Supposedly the blue capsules made you horny and happy enough to melt the awkwardness out of the threesomes. That’s what Lynn said. She got blued whenever she could. I kept away from blues. I didn’t need to be any hornier or happier.
The top layer of his hair had dried, and it fluttered in the wind as he looked down, rolling the tip of his cigarette against the edge of the sand.
“Shit’s the first thing to go,” I said.
He smiled, looking up at me with a cutting appreciation. As if I’d touched him in a way I hadn’t even tried. Asked him something real. I’d just been fucking around, but I’d hit a nerve, so I didn’t shrug it off and ask something different or dismiss the question.
“Came a day,” he said, putting the filter to his lips. “Came a day I stopped feeling anything good or bad. He’d beaten that out of me good. I like or don't like things. But everything else?” He flattened his hand and cut the air straight across our eyeline.
“I get it,” I said. “I have the same thing. No beatings though.”
“Everything’s better with a beating.”
I laughed, and he laughed with me. For a guy who had no feelings, I kind of liked him.
“I saw you play the KitKat Lounge the other night,” I said. “And the party after.”
He twisted his body to face me and looked me in the eye. “I knew I’d seen you somewhere.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was pretending to not know who you were.”
“Fair enough.”
“But you don’t have to stay here to be polite. It’s cold.”
He shrugged. The shivering had slowed, and his skin had dried. “My friend’s upstairs with a couple of girls, and I’m not in the mood tonight.”
“I think those girls might be friends of mine.”
He turned back to the ocean, mimicking my posture: knees bent, elbows wrapped around the peaks of his legs, shoulders hunched. “You want to go up there, it’s room 432.”
“I was on the beach to avoid that scene.”
“Why’s that?”
“Wanted to see if you two idiots would get hypothermia.”
He turned to me again, chin at his bicep, hair bending over one dilated blue eye. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen. Why?”
“We’re getting a poker game together at midnight. You in?”
I had nowhere to be until morning. And because I didn’t give away my hand with my voice or body, I was very good at poker.
“I’m in.”
Chapter 5
1994
The copyright case was pretty simple. Bangers, a UK-based pseudo-pop-rap band, had used a few bars of Haydn in their breakout song. Haydn wasn’t protected under US copyright, obviously, but Martin Wright was, and he claimed Bangers had used his recording of Opus 33 repeatedly in the song.
Bangers countersued for libel, denying the claims and producing proof that they’d hired a string quartet to play the piece. Martin Wright couldn’t prove it was his recording since he claimed they changed the speed so that they wouldn’t sync up.
“By way of introduction, everyone, this is Drew McCaffrey,” Thoze said.
Drew nodded at everyone, and I thought he lingered on me, but maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I lingered on him.
“Mister McCaffrey is here from the New York office, where he represents the interests of… god, how many musicians?”
“All of them, if I could.”
Ellen giggled, sighed, caught herself. She was newly divorced, in her mid-thirties, and suddenly giggling. She was tall and attractive. Well put-together in her daily chignon and Halston suit. Closer to Drew’s age and expertise. I had the sudden desire to lick him so I could call him mine.
Thoze continued. “Martin Wright, the cellist, was LA-based at the time of recording, and he’s trying to bring this through a favorable court system. Thank you for bringing this to us, Mister McCaffrey, but no one has a case.” Thoze closed his folder. “I say we send Mister Wright on his way.”
“They stole it,” Drew interjected.
“You can’t prove it,” Peter Donahugh
said, brushing his fingers over his tie to make sure his double-Windsor knot was still where it ought to be. “No one can. The cost to the client would outweigh the award.”
Drew put his pen on the table, taking a second of silence to make his case. I’d known a musician puffy from drugs and alcohol. The guy across from me, taking three seconds to get his thoughts together, had the same blue eyes, but he also had a law degree. He still had guitar string calluses on his fingers and a tattoo that crept out from under his left cuff.
The Rolling Stone piece I’d read hadn’t gone past Indy’s devastation over Strat’s death. I never heard about Indiana again. Didn’t know his career choice post-mortem.
God damn. This suited him.
He pressed his beautiful lips together, leaned forward, and turned his head toward Thoze the Doze. I could see the tendons in his neck and the shadow the acute angle of his jaw cast against it.
I remembered how that neck smelled when I pressed my face against it.
“It was the most popular recording of Opus 33 when the song was mixed.” Drew laid his fingertips on the table like a tent. “These guys, Bangers, didn’t have a peanut butter jar to piss in. Moxie Zee charged an arm and a leg to produce, but he’s a lazy snake. He billed the band for hiring a quartet that never existed, and I know him. He isn’t searching out the least-used version of Haydn’s Opus.”
“A case is only as good as what you can prove,” Peter said.
Drew kept his eyes on Thoze when he answered. “He’s produced a bunch of paper. Not one actual cellist.”
“We’re not in the business of proving what isn’t there.” Thoze wove his hands together in front of him. “Absent something that proves malfeasance, we have nothing.”
“What am I supposed to tell Martin? We don't care?”
“Tell him we’re looking for something we can act on.”
Thoze stood. His assistant stood. Peter and Ellen stood. I took the cue and gathered papers. I looked up at Drew to see if he was going to react at all, and he was reacting.
He was looking at me as if I had an answer. I couldn’t move. Ellen tried to linger in the conference room, but in our shared stare and shared history there sat a thousand years, and Ellen didn’t have that kind of time.
She cleared her throat. “Margie, can you grab me a coffee from the lounge on the third floor?”
“There’s coffee right there,” I answered from a few hundred miles away.
“It’s better on three.”
“I’m going for breakfast,” Drew said, not moving. “I’ll grab some coffee. Donuts too.”
“Send the clerk. That’s what they’re for.”
Was Ellen still talking?
“She can come.”
Ellen paused then slinked out.
As soon as the glass door clicked, Drew spoke. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I had no idea you had a brain in your head.”
It really was amazing how his lips were so even, top and bottom. How had I not seen that? Or the way his eyes were darker at the edges than the center?
“Things changed a lot since then.”
I was feeling things, and now with his voice sounding like a cracked sidewalk, I knew he was too. That wouldn’t do. It made me uncomfortable, as if my skin was the wrong size.
“I’m sorry. About Strat. I know you guys were close.”
I’d broken the spell.
Drew pulled his gaze away and put his briefcase on the table, snapping it open when he answered. “Thank you.”
“Was it bad?” I had no business asking that, but I had to because I should have been there. I should have done the impossible, leapt time and space, presumed a friendship I might have made up, and been there for them.
“It was bad.”
He plopped his briefs in the case. I was supposed to get up and straighten the room out, but I couldn’t stop watching him, remembering what he’d been to me for a short time and how those few weeks had changed me.
“What studio did Bangers record in?” I asked.
“Audio City.” He slid his case off the table and went for the door.
Just as he touched the handle, I spoke. “Have you done a Request for Production?”
He didn’t open the door but turned slightly in my direction, curious and cautious. “I don’t see what that would prove.”
I stood. “I’m only a clerk.”
“I’m sure that’s temporary.”
I pushed the chairs in, straightening up as I was meant to. I didn’t want him to feel pressured to take advice from someone who hadn’t even passed her bar yet. Someone who had been no better than a smart-mouthed groupie all those years ago. But I wanted to be heard.
“You want to scare the hell out of them, you call in some favors at Audio City,” I said. “Take Teddy out for some drinks. Be seen. And you file a Request for Production to aid discovery. Teddy hands over the masters.”
“They’ll be mixed down. They’re useless.”
“There’s more to a tape than the music. There’s pops and scratches. Match them to Wright’s master. It’s like a fingerprint.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s true if you believe it is. You’re not trying to prove anything. You’re trying to get Moxie Zee to crack.”
He took his hand off the door handle. I noticed then looked away.
“What you want,” I continued, trying to sound casual, “is for your client to be paid for his work, right? I mean, cellists make a living but not that much.”
“Not Drazen money.”
I ignored the jab. One, he smiled through it. Two, though I tried to be as anonymous as possible in the office, it was nice to be known.
“No.” I pushed the chair he’d sat in under the table. “Not Drazen money. If Moxie Zee is caught lying, most of his artists won’t care. Some will think it’s cool. But he works for Overland Studios as a music supervisor under his real name. Overland’s risk averse. They’re not keeping a guy who might have already exposed them to a lawsuit.”
“And you think Moxie will pay off Martin under the table over a fingerprinting technique that doesn’t exist?”
“People are pretty predictable.”
He nodded, bit the left side of his lower lip, tapped the door handle three times, then looked me up and down as if he wanted to eat me with a dick-shaped spoon.
“You’re still crazy,” he said softly, as if those three words were meant to seduce me.
They did. He was half a room away, and every surface between my legs was on fire. I would have swallowed, but I didn’t even have the spit to do it.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Eighteen.”
He walked out, letting the door slowly swing shut behind him, and I watched him stride down the hall in his perfect suit.
Men loved tits, legs, ass, pussy. Men loved long hair and necks. They loved clear skin and full lips. But some men, the right men—men like Drew and Strat—loved cutting themselves on sharp women, and I hadn’t been loved for the right reasons in a long, long time.
Chapter 6
1982 – BEFORE THE NIGHT OF THE QUAALUDE
Bullets and Blood was on the verge. Kentucky Killer had caught fire and made the small label enough money to keep the lights on. But then the Big Boys went after Bullets and Blood, sending hip-looking A and R guys around with pockets full of promises. They introduced them to music legends like Hawk Bromberg, with his little flavor-saver and sideburns, who talked up his label and everything they’d done for him.
This was background noise in the weeks following, but the morning after I cleaned them both out at poker, I knew nothing. I’d kept my bra on, put my shirt back on, and stretched on the couch for a few hours. Woke up with a headache and a throat that felt like a bag of dry beans.
I had to get to school.
Lynn was gone. So was Yoni. The hotel room looked over the beach and, in the yellow of the rising sun, seemed expensive and luxurious in a
different way than the night before.
“Morning,” Strat said from the balcony. He leaned on the doorway in a shirt and stonewashed jeans.
Behind him, Hawk smoked a stubby brown cigarette as thick as a middle finger, looking at me as if he was eight and I was a piece of birthday cake. He was a legend, but I wasn’t flattered. I was disgusted.
“Where’s Indy?” I asked.
“Out for a swim.”
Had Strat even slept? He still looked perfect, but maybe my standards were skewed. He looked as though he partied all the time, and that was what I found attractive about him.
“I gotta go.”
“You should come around later.”
Hawk nodded, picking the slick brown butt out of his teeth. He sang about heaven and earth with a voice like a fist, but I wasn’t loving his real presence.
“Sure.” I didn’t have time to chitchat. My father was coming back from a business thing in Omaha, and I had to be home.
“Do you have my beeper number?”
“No.”
I didn’t have time to scrabble around for a pencil and a piece of cleanish paper so I could set off the little black box on Strat’s belt. He wouldn’t even answer it. He was a rock star.
“Eyebrow,” he said. “Six-oh-six E-Y-E-B-R-O-W.”
“Six-oh-six? Kentucky? I thought you guys were from Nashville.”
“The beeper’s from Kentucky.”
I didn’t move. Just waited for the long version.
“My dad moved to Kentucky. He’s a doctor. He upgrades every six months.”
Mister Big Rock Star was either too frugal or too busy to get his own damned beeper. Or too much of a kid. Or too attached to his parents.
No matter what angle I looked at that from, no matter how the light hit it, I found it charming.
* * * *
I had no intention of using that number for anything, though I’d never forget it. My driver was off. So I got a car at the hotel’s front desk and sat back for the short ride from Santa Monica to Malibu. It was six thirty in the morning. I had ten minutes to get back.
