The Hour of the Innocents

by Robert Paston

  In one of my rare outbursts, I told Frankie that if nothing came of it, I’d pay his share of the demo’s costs myself. Losing my temper never made me smarter.

  Laura was the unexpected bright spot.

  * * *

  “I’m so glad you like it,” she told me.

  “I do,” I said. “I really do.”

  The belated Christmas gift was a guitar strap in soft brown leather. I’d never seen one finer.

  Laura kissed me so tenderly, I barely knew her lips. “I’m sorry I was such a beast. It’s really unforgivable. I was just so frantic. You don’t know how important it is to me to maintain a perfect 4.0.” She stepped back, penitent. The winter light darkened her eyes. “That’s no excuse, of course. None whatsoever. And you were so endearing all the while, so kind. I really don’t deserve you.”

  Which man does not find sudden kindness suspect? I couldn’t decide whether she had been prescribed a new medication, had cast off a burdensome boyfriend back home, had murdered her mother, or felt genuine remorse.

  She wasn’t finished. Her talk assumed the quality of rehearsed speech.

  “The worst of it is how monstrous I was about that story you wrote. You did it for me, and I lashed out at you. It was so unfair. I do believe I was jealous, to be frank. I’ve always wanted to write well. And there you go dropping a splendid short story in my lap, something you just scribbled out, when I was struggling to get through my English final. I do think intellectual jealousy’s more insidious than sexual jealousy. Don’t you?”

  I wasn’t so sure. And I didn’t want to find out.

  “I’ll have to go to hear you play now. To see if you’re wearing your new strap. Did I mention that I want you to meet my mother? Not just yet, I don’t mean. I’ve been laying the groundwork, though. She’s so frightfully conservative. In the social sense. If only she sees past your hair, she’ll be impressed by your intellect. And you can be charming. Do you have a jacket and tie you could wear? If worse came to worst?”

  Even after we tumbled onto the mattress, she seemed to remember that I was a human being. Fucking became making love again. The only thing that didn’t change was the fierce, wordless way she would cling as we waited for sleep. Laura wasn’t physically strong, but once, in the dead of night, I awoke in a grip so tight that I could not move.

  * * *

  “I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick,” Joey Schaeffer said. Paging through a back issue of Rolling Stone, he had paused at a photo of Yoko Ono. “Man, what does the guy see in her?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t get it, either.

  “We should’ve just killed all the Japs at the end of World War Two, you know?” Joey added.

  “Peace, man.”

  Joey laughed. “Piece of ass. But not that one, brother. Makes my nuts shrivel up, just looking at her.”

  I rose to flip the record. We sat in my apartment, on a day as bleak as a coal bank, listening to The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. Joey appreciated the Incredible String Band, the north-of-the-mountain guys didn’t. “The Minotaur’s Song” always made me think of Matty.

  I cued the tone arm. “Listen to how they shift the time signature and the meter of the lyrics. It’s Tennyson on acid.”

  “They’re crazy fuckers, you know?” Joey leaned closer to the radiator.

  “The Incredibles? Or the Japs?”

  “No, no…” He wobbled his head from one side to another, as if reluctant to wake up from a swoon. “I meant the guys in the band. The other guys. Sometimes I think they’re from a different planet than you and me.”

  “They are,” I said.

  We had shared a joint of Acapulco Gold, then eaten a bag of Oreos between us. Joey was mellow, but I was just annoyed. I should have been practicing. I had more work to do for the recording session in Philly, I needed to nail down the last solos we usually just improvised.

  But Joey was a con’s con. And I liked him. He got the jokes my band-mates didn’t understand. He had talked me into the joint “for old times’ sake.” Joey never liked to smoke alone.

  “Stoned again,” I said. Raising my hands in false supplication.

  “You’re not stoned, man,” Joey said. He cocked his head and inspected me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you truly stoned in your life. I mean, not stoned stoned. It’s like you’re always standing back and watching everything.”

  “I thought that was your gig? Leaning back and digging on the fourteen-year-olds?”

  He cackled. “It’s different when I do it. I’m just having a good time. You, it’s like … I don’t know, it’s like you’re always judging everybody, like you’ve got everybody in a police lineup. Even dropping acid, you were like that.” He scratched under his beard. “I been reading about the French Revolution. I mean, that was some heavy shit that went down, they didn’t fool around. None of that pansy crap, revolution between semesters and Daddy goes your bail. And I can’t make up my mind whether you’re Danton, or Robespierre pretending to be Danton, or what. I mean, think about it … who would you send to the guillotine?”

  “Carol Burnett.”

  “No, I’m serious.”

  “Whoever gave Angela her first snort of meth,” I said.

  “See? You been thinking about it all this time. It’s like all the while I was reading, the deep waves were flowing into your brain.” He pondered the universe. The music ran out again. “Heap bad karma for Frankie, but heads must roll. Who’s next? I need to start a list.”

  “I always thought you were the one who turned Angela on to meth?”

  Joey was startled. “Me? Man, speed’s the last thing I ever would’ve laid on Angela. I mean, some free smoke, sure. I used to think she was pretty hot. Maybe some Quaaludes, if things ever got that far. But she needed shit to smooth her out, not crank her up. I mean, look at her now.”

  I nodded. Ready to get back to the music. But Joey wouldn’t let it go.

  “You’d really send Frankie to the guillotine, though?”

  I shrugged. “Figuratively speaking. The long-suffering people of France have submitted a list of righteous complaints against Citizen Starkovich.”

  Joey laughed. “No, man. No ‘figurative’ shit. Lay off the word games for a minute. We’re talking the real thing, the big blade. Chop-chop. Who’d be second?”

  “How much did you smoke before you got here?”

  “Don’t be so uptight. We’re off today, remember? No school. So who else is on the secret list? Who gets the ax?”

  “Come on, Joey. I’m not some kind of monster. Sailor, okay?”

  “Yeah, play Steve, man. I’ll bet he’s a monster, too. We’re all monsters, all of us. Like all those crowds cheering and yelling and getting high on blood when the heads got chopped off—know what that made me think of when I was reading about it? A rock concert, man.” He giggled. “I’m telling you, brother: Everybody’s got a monster inside, everybody. Some are bigger, some are smaller, some are better-looking, but the bogeyman’s always in there. Just waiting for the right moment to pop out from under the bed. And you, man … you’re, like, this nice, well-mannered monster. People think it’s safe to pet you. Except that it’s not. And once they stick their fingers between the bars, it’s too late. People think they’re using you, getting over on you. But all the while it’s you using them, just eating them up.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Freud. I think I’ll ask Dr. Jung for a second opinion.”

  “That’s why you and me get along, you know that? You do this Mr. Sincere act with people who don’t know you, that’s your thing. I play dumb-Joey-with-his-brains-fried, always good for a toke and a joke, that’s my thing. And we both let on that we’re in for the duration. But we always know when to stop, when it’s one tab or one toke too many. That’s the real difference between us and them, man. We’re monsters, too, but we’re not the monsters who fall off the top of the skyscraper. We hang around for the sequel. We’re survivors.”

  “Danton and Robespierre didn’t survive.�
��

  “Then you’re like that other guy, the one who always conned everybody.”

  “Talleyrand?”

  “No, no. The spy guy. Is that Boz or Steve singing?”

  “Boz. You make it sound like I’m the biggest prick going.”

  Joey shook his head. “Naw. Way too much competition. You’re okay, man. You mean well. Sort of. I didn’t mean to bum you out. It’s just, like, with the name of the band, for instance. All of them think you’re Mr. Innocent. They have no idea. None whatsoever. Poor Angela, for Christ’s sake…”

  “What about Angela?”

  The phone rang. I cut off Steve Miller’s voice, if not his head.

  “Will Cross? Milt Ehrlich, Eclecta Records. Remember?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just checking in. How’s everything? How’s the band?”

  “Good. Busy.”

  “Done that demo yet?”

  “We’re going into the studio tomorrow. Down in Philly.”

  “Good, that’s good to hear. When you’ve laid down some tracks you think are righteous, get the tape to me. As we discussed.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I have to tell you, Will … your music stuck with me. That’s the first test. Plenty of good bands out there, technically speaking. But the music has to stick with you, and most of it doesn’t. Yours does.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “How booked up are you, by the way?”

  “Our schedule’s pretty packed. The weekends, anyway.”

  “If I could get you a weeknight gig here in New York, could you make it?”

  “If the roads are okay. Sure.”

  “Check your schedule for me. For, say, the next two months. Mail it to me, all right? I want a few people from Eclecta to hear you. And I want to hear you again myself, the sooner the better. I’ll see if I can’t find a spot on some bill for you, it could be short notice. Now, I’m going be honest with you, Will. Sometimes I hear a band the second time and wonder what I was thinking. I dug what you were laying down in Philly, but that was in Philly. I need to take your temperature in front of a tougher audience.”

  “We won’t disappoint you.”

  “Any other labels approach you, by the way? Since we talked?”

  “No. Just that Danny Luegner guy. He’s been talking to Frankie, our lead singer. We’re scheduled to meet with him tomorrow night, after our recording session.”

  After a pause, Milt Ehrlich told me, again, “Just don’t sign anything. The guy’s a snake. I’ll tell you exactly what he’s going to do, he pulls the same shtick every time. He’s going to offer to set you boys up with a couple of good-money club gigs. Without taking his commission, to show goodwill and so forth. And that’s fine, if you want to spend the rest of your life playing Mafia joints in Jersey. But the guy can’t deliver a serious recording contract, or any decent concert venues. Which is what you want, right? He’s the original bad trip, that guy. Danny’s famous for breaking up bands, picking out the people he sees as walking dollar signs and dumping the rest. That’s one thing Danny Luegner actually is good at, splitting people up.” He sighed. “Let me know where you are, if you’re going to be on the road more than a day or two. Leave a number with my secretary, she’s cool.”

  And that was it.

  “Who was that?” Joey asked.

  “The guy from Eclecta Records.”

  “Man, wouldn’t that be a trip? If it worked out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You should be happy.”

  “I am happy.”

  Joey shook his head. “You’re Robespierre. Definitely Robespierre.”

  “I’m just worried about Frankie. The shit he pulls.”

  Joey snorted. “Well, I’m more worried about Matty. And you should be, too. That business with the cop, his uncle or whatever he is. I mean, none of us need that right now.”

  There had been another confrontation between Matty and his uncle John. They hadn’t come to blows this time. Instead, his uncle had drawn his service revolver and ordered Matty to leave his parents’ house. According to Stosh, who’d been there, Matty had just turned his back and walked away. With his mother wailing, “Don’t shoot him, Johnny, don’t shoot my boy.…” Stosh made it sound funny.

  “Matty can handle it,” I said.

  * * *

  Matty had to handle two of my guitar parts. I felt humiliated. Overall, the recording session went well. The engineers were surprised that we played with such precision, that we needed so few takes to nail a song. The raw-mix playbacks sounded as good as any of us could have hoped. Most of my parts were just fine, but I stumbled during two intricate sequences, one in which Matty and I played superfast runs that harmonized with each other and another in which we traded speed-freak riffs. When I’d played live, my performance had never been a problem on either number. The studio was another world, though, isolating each slight error, each minor imperfection and missed note. You could hear that I wasn’t hitting right on the money with Matty, that I lagged and, at the crucial moments, just blew it.

  I insisted on doing the overdubs myself but only became more flustered with each failed take. Frankie made no secret of his impatience as the hands on the studio clock drew bucks from his pocket. At last, Matty pulled me aside.

  “You’re trying too hard, man. It’s okay. Everybody has off nights. Let me do it this time, so we can get back in the groove and get out of here.”

  With the tape rolling again, he played my parts perfectly on the first take.

  We still got four songs in the can in five hours, although the mix-down would be extra. One of the engineers congratulated us on being the least stoned band he’d recorded in months. Both of the engineers seemed to get off on our music and said they looked forward to our next session. Given how much they heard—and endured—it struck me as a good sign. I just wished that I hadn’t been the only member of the band to fuck up.

  When we left the studio, everyone else was skying on the quality of the tracks we had laid down, but I remained frustrated. I didn’t want to sit down with Danny Luegner, our would-be manager, either.

  We were going to be his guests, and he had reserved a table for five at Bookbinder’s, pointedly leaving out Joey and Pete, who’d come down to the studio with us. My parents had always dismissed the seafood house as a place for tourists who didn’t know any better, but it was a perfect choice to impress guests from north of the mountain. At Luegner’s insistence, each of my band-mates started with a jumbo shrimp cocktail, to be followed by whole lobsters. I ordered chowder and crab cakes.

  Barrel-chested and runty, with curly hair, Luegner could have played Pan in a Steve Reeves movie. With all of the shrimp devoured, he piped in my direction.

  “Frankie tells me you’ve been talking to Eclecta Records.”

  I nodded.

  “Who’s been talking to you? Milt Ehrlich?”

  “Yes.”

  Luegner caressed his mustache. “Milt’s all right. Small potatoes, but he means well. A little desperate.” He looked around the table. “Wouldn’t you boys rather sign with a major label?”

  “Eclecta’s a major label,” I said. “It’s got great prestige.”

  “You can’t eat prestige.” He chuckled. “Oh, I know it’s got this for-the-artists reputation. Don’t believe it for a minute. I know Mac Steinman, the one-man band up there, and he’s a skinflint when it comes to advances.”

  “But they pay royalties honestly.”

  “Are you sure about that? I could tell you stories that might make you think otherwise, my friend. You—” He grabbed a waiter by the sleeve. “Take mine away, too, clean this up. Listen, Will … Eclecta got lucky with a couple of bands. But they’re all small-timers, they think small. And from what I’m hearing, the label could very well fold. Then where would you be? Tied up in a dead-letter contract, and nobody else wants to touch you. No”—he looked around the table again—“you boys need to be on a major label. Like Capitol,
say. Wouldn’t you like to be on the same label as the Beatles? And the Beach Boys?”

  “Who do you know at Capitol?” I asked.

  Luegner smiled. Pan in his lair. “You boys take care of the music, I’ll take care of the management side.” His smile warmed, growing friendlier, more indulgent, and his eyes moved from my face to Frankie’s, then to Stosh’s, and back to Frankie’s. “Now, I understand. Don’t think I don’t. It’s the most natural thing in the world for young Mr. Cross here to be anxious to sign a recording contract. After all, he’s the one who benefits almost immediately. You can cheat musicians on royalties all day long, but you’ve got to pay the songwriter.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen groups where the songwriter’s driving a Ferrari and everybody else in the band’s still eating canned soup. It’s all about the royalties and the publishing rights, that’s where the money is.”

  I had never discussed any of that with the other guys.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” I told Luegner and everyone else, “we can divide up the songwriting royalties evenly. I don’t care about that. It’s a group effort, anyway.”

  Luegner waved the offer away. “No, no, we couldn’t do that. This is about fairness. You write the songs, you get the royalties. That’s the way it works. But, as your manager, it would be my job to look out for the interests of the entire band. And I wouldn’t want to see you rush into anything you’d live to regret.”

  The main course arrived. The lobsters were presented with a flourish and fanfare that would have delighted the soul of any first-time visitor from Punxsutawney.

  “I ain’t wearing no bib,” Stosh told the waiter. “Get away from me.”

  “You boys”—Luegner picked up again—“you’ve got real talent. And that’s the truth. I knew that much before you were done with your first song. The sky’s the limit, if you play your cards right. But I want you to think hard about the future. Most groups don’t.” He smirked, letting us all in on a secret. “Most managers don’t, either. They’re content to play checkers. But you’ve got to play chess in this business, you’ve got to think several moves ahead.” He turned to me again. “Now you, Will. Your ability to write songs, that’s a gift. But I want you to do something for me, something for everybody here at this table. Forget the gimmicks for a little while. All this psychedelic music, acid rock or hard rock, whatever you want to call it … all the hair down to the waist and the craziness … it’s already dying. A couple of years from now—maybe just one year—nobody’s going to want to hear songs about screwing robots or sexed-up versions of fairy tales. Or strippers, for God’s sake. People are going to want what they’ve always wanted: moon, June, true love, and heartache. Take my word for it, I’ve been in this business a long time. All that mountain-of-amplifiers stuff’s on its last legs. So—just as a test, now—I want you to write a couple of real love songs for Frankie here to sing. I want you to think about the group, not just about what’s in that brainy head of yours, all right?”