“Right,” Quinn said, “until Dan absconded.”
“I didn’t abscond,” Dan said and rolled his eyes. “I went away to college.”
“Whatever,” Quinn said. “Eventually I wound up at Berklee, which is where I met Ty, and that’s how Quinntessence was formed. There have been a couple of other guys that came and went for various reasons, but the three of us have been together for almost four years now.”
“But you only play together during the summers?” Shan said. “You must hate that.”
“I do. That’s Dan, too,” Quinn said, shooting him an annoyed look. “We tried to talk him into moving to Boston when he graduated, but he wouldn’t.”
“No, and I still won’t,” Dan said. “Denise can’t go anywhere until she finishes school next year and I’m not moving three and a half hours away from her. Not even for you, dude.”
“Whatever,” Quinn said again and Shan could tell this was a sore subject. “This is a good time to go over the ground rules. They’re simple. We never turn down a reasonable gig. We practice three days a week for three to four hours a day. It’s cool with your roommates to do it here?”
“It’s fine,” Shan said, “and there won’t be any problems with the neighbors, either. There are four other musicians in the building. One of them plays the trombone,” she added, wrinkling her nose.
“Great.” Quinn nodded. “There’s just one more thing. You.” He pointed at Shan. “No drinking on a gig. No drugging on a gig. Ever. And I mean never. Understood?”
Shan froze. She stared silently at Quinn for a moment, then found her voice. “So what if I drink or do drugs? I mean, what’s it to you?”
“Nothing.” Quinn shrugged. “I don’t give a fuck what you do on your own time. It’s none of my business. But when we’re gigging, you’re on our time. And you,” he pointed at her again, “are underage. You get caught partying when you’re with us, we get it in the neck.”
“But I’m sure you drink when you play…” she began.
“That’s different. Ty is twenty-six. Dan and I are twenty-five. We’re legal but even so, none of us ever gets fucked up while we’re gigging. That’s another ground rule. It’s unprofessional. And definitely no drugs. I’ve had enough of that bullshit in this band.”
“But—”
“This isn’t open for negotiation,” he informed her. “It’s a condition. Take it or leave it.”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“Good,” Quinn said curtly. “You remember that. Because if one of us catches you partying at a gig, you’re fired.”
Her temper flared. “Don’t talk down to me. I don’t need to worry about Big Brother watching my every move. I can take care of myself.”
Quinn shrugged. “I’m not questioning that. You seem pretty together for a sixteen-year-old. We wouldn’t take you on otherwise.”
“Almost seventeen,” she corrected him, slightly mollified. He turned away, but not before she saw his grin. She flushed and turned to Ty.
“I’m surprised you’re not all living together,” she remarked, just to change the subject. “It’d be a lot cheaper.”
Quinn turned back. “I told you we’re going to be rolling in dough. Don’t you believe me?” She nodded, but still looked doubtful. “We get top dollar for a bar band. Now you, you’re used to gigging solo and getting the door. The cover’s three or four bucks and you pull maybe a hundred and fifty on a good night?”
“A really good night,” she said ruefully.
Quinn’s smile was openly patronizing. “Well, the cover is seven to ten bucks for Quinntessence, depending on what night of the week it is, and we play a lot bigger venues. A good Friday or Saturday for us is around fifteen hundred. Minus the sound man and split four ways, you’re talking about three or four hundred bucks. Each,” he emphasized, as Shan’s jaw dropped.
“Yeah, but the door is shit, Quinn, remember?” Ty jeered.
“I’d still rather have a set fee going in, then get anything over a predetermined door take as a bonus. You can get screwed.” Quinn looked back at Shan. “Cat got your tongue, angel?”
“I wasn’t expecting that much money,” she said, shaken. “Do I get a full share?”
They all stared at her in astonishment. “Of course,” Dan said. “Did you think it was slave labor, since we have a resident slave driver?” Quinn gave him the finger, lips twisting sardonically.
“But I’m new,” she said, “and I don’t have as much experience as the rest of you.”
“Better start catching up, then.” Quinn snatched up the coil of cables and tossed it to her. “Time to learn how a big-time rock band sets up.”
Forty-five minutes later he surveyed the loft. Cables crisscrossed the floor and Dan’s drums filled an entire corner. His keyboard had a choice spot in front of the window. “Excellent spot for the Kur,” he said.
Dan grinned. “Better than my kitchen table, hey?”
“You bet,” he agreed and turned to Shan. “This place doesn’t seem so big now, does it?”
Shan pushed an errant curl out of her eyes. Her hands, covered with grime from the cables, left a smear of black across her face. “We do this every time?”
“Yep.” Quinn grimaced. “Then we have to break it all down again at the end of the night. My most immediate career goal is to be able to afford roadies so we won’t have to do it ourselves.”
“I’m used to hauling just a guitar and an amp.” When she gathered her hair into her hands and lifted it, Quinn again noticed the bruise under her jaw. Now it was a mottled purple-black. Then he saw two more marks on the back of her neck. They looked like fingerprints.
When Shan caught him staring at her, she dropped her hair. “Shouldn’t we get started?”
“Yup.” Quinn looked away as she went into the bathroom to wash the grime off her hands. Maybe she had a boyfriend who was into bondage, although it didn’t seem likely. She was a little too young and wide-eyed to be the whips-and-chains type.
Too young to be on her own, too. He wondered briefly what her story was, then pushed the thought away as Shan came back into the room. It was none of his business.
She took up her guitar. “What’ll we start with?”
Dan settled behind his drums, rapping a ska beat on the ride cymbal. “Let’s do something you feel comfortable with,” he said to Shan. “You’re the new kid.”
“Not for long,” Quinn said pointedly, “but we can start with a Dead tune. I assume you know ‘Friend of the Devil’?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” she laughed, picking out the opening guitar riff.
“Okay. I’ll sing lead. You and Ty shoot for three-part harmony on the chorus. I want to hear how you do with it.”
Shan went into the opening chords. When Quinn began to sing, his voice was strong and mellifluous. He used it like an instrument, easy and flowing. Shan paid close attention and joined in on the chorus, struggling to blend her voice with Ty’s deep baritone.
“Stop,” Quinn directed after a minute, holding up his hand. The music jangled to a halt. “You haven’t sung much with other people,” he said to Shan. It wasn’t a question.
She shook her head.
“Okay. Be quiet on the next verse. Danny, take the third vocal. I want her to hear how it’s supposed to sound.” They did another chorus, Dan’s voice merging easily with Quinn’s and Ty’s.
“Wow,” she breathed when they finished, “you guys sound fantastic!”
Quinn shrugged. “We’ve been doing it for a long time. And it’s harder to blend male and female voices in a harmony. They have different qualities. When it works, though, it’s powerful. And we’re going to make it work. Try it again.”
They went back into the same piece and she tried harder, emulating what she’d heard Dan do with his voice. After a few minutes, Quinn held up his hand again. “Better, but you still haven’t got it. You sing lead and I’ll harmonize. Listen to the difference.”
They went throu
gh it again and Quinn joined her on the chorus. He danced around her main melody, not competing with her voice, but enhancing it. She was shaking with excitement by the time they finished.
She wasn’t the only one. “Hot damn!” Ty yelled gleefully. “What a fucking sound! We’d better add some duets to the old repertoire.”
Quinn nodded. He wasn’t altogether displeased himself. They were good together, as he’d suspected they would be. “Right now she has to learn the playlist. You need a lot of work,” he said bluntly and Shan’s face fell. “You’re going to pick up most of the lead vocals, but there’s a few I’ll have to keep. They’re guy songs,” he added, “and Dan and Ty can handle the harmonies temporarily. Not long term, though, because it’s hard for Danny to sing and play drums.”
“But I don’t want to take the lead away,” she said. “You’re such a good singer.”
He nodded. “I am. I’m a good singer. A very good singer. But you,” he reached out and tapped her lip lightly, “can be a great singer. And you will be, because I’m going to coach you.”
Dan rolled his eyes and Ty chuckled. “Here comes Quinntila the Hun,” Dan said, sending Shan a sympathetic look. “Better make sure you have your armor on.”
Four hours later, Quinn flipped the cover over his keyboard. “We can break for today.”
Dan stood and stretched, checking the clock. “Hey, my girl oughta be home soon.”
Ty grinned. “I have a date myself tonight. Man, I love New York!”
Shan placed Joanie in her case. She couldn’t believe they were talking about doing anything at all after the grueling afternoon they’d had. Her shoulder hurt, her back ached, and her fingers felt like she’d held them on a grindstone. Her legs were starting to cramp, too, and her eyes to water, signals that it was time for a fix.
Since none of the guys showed any signs of leaving, Shan excused herself and went into the bathroom. She pulled out the small stash she’d hidden inside her cosmetic bag, pushed aside the heavy black curtain to open the window, and sat down on the toilet, lighting the strawberry-scented candle that resided on the tank. In her bedroom, she used incense to camouflage the fumes.
She discovered that she’d left her tooter there, so she pulled the last few sheets off the toilet paper spindle and used the cardboard tube. Just a couple of hits were enough to quell the jones. Another hit and she’d be feeling fine, but instead she blew out the candle. She returned the stash to her cosmetic bag, spraying air freshener to further disguise the smell.
When she came back to the living room, Ty was gone and Dan had vanished into Denise’s bedroom. Quinn was waiting for her. “You’re not gigging tonight, are you?”
“No, thank God,” she groaned. Her eyes felt fuzzy and she blinked hard to clear them. “I’m exhausted. And starving,” she added, realizing she hadn’t eaten anything since that morning.
“You want to split a pizza?”
She felt a rush of dismay. She didn’t want to go anywhere with him. As Dan had predicted, he’d been all over her ass all day. After he finished criticizing her voice, he’d started in on her playing. He had a problem with one of her solos. Too rough, he’d said. Too wild, not enough structure. He’d made her play it over and over till her fingertips felt like chunks of raw hamburger.
“Not tonight. Maybe some other time.”
“I’m not asking you for a date,” Quinn sneered. “You and I aren’t finished yet. You need coaching on your vocals and, if you’re not gigging, then we’re starting tonight.”
“But I thought you liked my voice. Why would you want to mess with it?”
“I’m polishing it, not messing with it. You oughta be thanking me, angel. When I coach people at school, I get forty bucks an hour. Now, what do you like on your pizza?”
“Mushrooms and pepperoni,” she said meekly. She went for the phone, suppressing a sigh. It was going to be a long night. In fact, she was starting to think it was going to be a long summer.
chapter 7
For the next week, Shan spent four to five hours a day practicing with the band and another two being coached by Quinn each night. Every minute she wasn’t practicing, she was scrambling to memorize the twenty-six songs she had to know for the Saturday night playlist. She’d never worked so hard in her life.
Her head had to be clear so she dosed on small amounts of heroin, but had to do it often to keep stable. She developed a routine of dosing when she first got up, again during midafternoon, once more before they started their evening coaching session, and at bedtime, to take her through the night. She knew it was the least she could get away with, because she could feel the jones setting in just before she dosed.
When she thought about it, which she tried not to do, she acknowledged that the H was the dominant force in her life. She had to arrange everything around it—her time, her work, even her sleep—and she hated being such a slave to it. She fantasized about getting clean, being able to live like a normal person, but she knew it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Turkeying was definitely not compatible with the nonstop work required by her new band.
At least she had plenty of H. The rock she’d taken from Jorge was huge, enough to keep her supplied for a long time, and so far she’d seen no sign of its owner. She’d always been careful to conceal her address from him and she’d cancelled all her solo gigs, so it would be hard for him to track her down that way. Still, she experienced a twinge of unease every time she scraped a chunk off the rock.
When she wasn’t dosing, she didn’t think about Jorge much because she was so focused on learning the new music. She loved playing with her talented bandmates, although Quinn’s coaching sessions were less enjoyable. They consisted of a grueling, repetitive series of voice exercises that went on and on. He worked with her in her bedroom, which was tiny. Quinn usually sprawled across her futon with a beer in his hand while Shan stood. Sometimes he made her sing with her hand over her abdomen to feel her breathing. Occasionally he had her play guitar while she sang. She had to practice the scales endlessly and it was torturous. Her throat was killing her by the end of every session.
When she complained, his face took on the condescending sneer she was growing to hate. “It hurts because you’re singing in your throat. If you don’t learn to control that, you won’t have a voice left in a couple of years. You’ll burn it out. Now do it again, and pull it down into your chest this time.” And so it went, on and on.
Band practice was much more pleasant most of the time. Quinn was still a tyrant, but at least there were three of them in his line of fire. She was the usual target for his abuse, but he jumped all over Dan and Ty, too, if he disapproved of something they did.
At first she wondered why they tolerated it. Dan was an incredibly adept drummer and Ty’s intricate bass playing approached the level of a virtuoso. Why did they put up with him?
Because he was invariably right, she discovered. No matter what musical debate erupted, he had an answer and could always back it up. Also, while the rest of them occasionally went flat or hit a wrong note, Quinn never did. He was always on pitch, on key, on time. It was uncanny.
Once she asked Dan why no one ever challenged his decisions. There were four of them in the band, after all, but Quinn was unquestionably the leader. He always had the final word.
“Well, it’s his band, technically,” Dan told her. “He formed it, named it, then handpicked the rest of us. And, musically speaking, Quinn is a genius. He plays keyboards, piano, and bass expertly, and drums and guitar well. You already know he’s a great singer, and you ought to hear him on hand percussion. He’s an awesome composer, too. He wrote all our originals.”
She’d figured that out already, because she’d been barked at for suggesting minor changes to the arrangements on a couple of them. “I know he’s brilliant,” Shan said, “but he’s not willing to listen to anybody else and I can’t believe how mean he can be.”
An unpleasant incident had occurred at practice that day. She’d been searching
for a particular high note and she’d scooped, her voice wavering uncertainly. Scooping was one of Quinn’s pet peeves and he’d swooped on her.
“You sound like a reamed-out sow squealing an orgasm,” he’d snarled. “If I wanted a hack, I’d have at least gotten one old enough to get in the clubs without a hassle. You’re supposed to be a professional. You’d better start sounding like one,” he’d concluded in a threatening tone.
She’d gone white-faced as both Ty and Dan turned on Quinn in a chorus of indignation. He’d backed off sullenly, but she’d been shaken and sang badly for the rest of the day, quaking every time he looked in her direction. “It was so humiliating,” she moaned to Dan later. “And what if he decides he wants me out? I’ll be screwed. I gave up all my other gigs, and you and Ty always go along with whatever he says.”
Dan was quick to reassure her. “That won’t happen. First of all, we don’t always let him have the last word and, secondly, he’s really impressed with you. He told me so himself.”
Shan was still dubious. During their session that night she continued to sing badly, her voice uncertain and lacking her usual self-assurance. When she scooped again during a standard voice exercise, she cringed visibly and stared at Quinn, awaiting a verbal blitzkrieg.
He sighed, then sat up and patted the futon beside him. “C’mere.”
She hesitated.
“Come on,” he said. “I won’t bite you.”
She perched on the edge of the futon and eyed him with mistrust. Here it comes, she told herself. You’re not going to work out, he’ll say. Sorry, but that’s rock ’n’ roll.
“I owe you an apology,” he said instead. “I had no right to lambaste you like I did today, especially not in front of the others, and I can see that it’s really upset you. I acted like a dick,” he concluded, not without difficulty, “and I’m sorry.”
“You mean I’m not fired?”
“Fired?” His eyes widened. “Why would you think you were fired?”
Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) Page 6
