~ ~ ~
Dragen made Rafe drive, so he could sit in the back with the girls. Rafe didn’t mind; he was still replaying his brief encounter with Marchance, so he just didn’t have the focus to attempt a score on one of these chicks, no matter how hot they might be. Or one of them might be; he didn’t usually go for the jabbery types. He tried to follow the directions he’d written down while Kate babbled. The girl never seemed to take a breath between outlandish stories of which she was usually the star. Dragen and Finnell flanked her, hanging on every word. He’d have to give them lessons on the groupie-rock star dynamic.
Every time Rafe glanced in the rearview mirror, Stacy, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the mattress, was looking back at him.
After they’d been driving for ten minutes or so—on a two-lane freeway that had taken them to the westernmost edge of the city, where the land became hilly and suburbs gave way to fields of large, overhanging oak trees—she suddenly slid into the passenger seat next to him.
“Hey,” Stacy said.
He glanced over in the van’s dome light, smiled and nodded.
“I just wanted to say, I thought you were really incredible.”
“You just caught us on a good night.”
“No, not the band.” She winced and smoothed a few loose strands of that glossy, perfectly straight black hair into place. “I mean, yeah, you guys were great and everything, but I was talking about you, specifically. You can really hit those high notes.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“God, that sounds lame. You probably hear that all the time, huh?”
“Uh…” A flash of Marchance, telling him he had ‘pipes.’ “Not really.”
She sighed and covered her eyes with one hand. “You must think I’m a dork. I told Kate I’d be too nervous and fuck this up. I’ll leave you alone.”
Stacy started to scoot back out of the seat, but Rafe said quickly, “No, wait! Don’t go. It’s cool, hang around up here and help me find this place.”
She bit one side of her lip—covered in black gloss—and sank back into the seat with her knees together and combat boots out to the side. He handed the laptop to her and said, “I get it from my mom.”
“The…laptop?”
“No, no, the voice. My mom, she was a lounge singer back in the day.”
“It shows. You have range. God, some of those high notes would’ve shredded most people’s throats. On stage, your whole style, you kinda reminded me of a young Timothy Blakemoor.”
“What, from Cirrus?” Rafe lifted an eyebrow at the mention of one his all-time favorite underground slash-punk singers. “You’re too young to remember them, right? How old are you, anyway?”
“Nineteen. But my parents are total metalheads. They have tons of albums going all the way back to the original 45s.”
“That…is incredibly cool.”
Stacy squinted at him. “Why, how old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
She nodded her head as if this was acceptable and then bent to study the directions on the laptop. He took the opportunity to check her out. Her face was like porcelain, fair skin, great eyes, high cheekbones, lips a little on the thin side, no piercings, thankfully. Her legs were sensational beneath the hem of the short skirt, but, damn, he was so much more impressed by that queen-of-the-damned hair. Rafe wanted to run his fingers through it. As this mental image floated through his head, he realized there was an erection straining at the crotch of his leather stage pants.
Jesus, when was the last time he’d had sex? His last girlfriend had left him for a travelling roadie almost three years ago, but there had been a couple of one-nighters since. Mostly Warp Face was either on the road or practicing too much for him to think about another serious relationship.
“Oh, turn here!” she cried out, and he managed to tromp the brakes in time to get them around the corner onto another even smaller road.
Five minutes later, they pulled to a stop in front of the address.
“Christ, he lives here?” Dragen asked. “We hit the jackpot, boys!”
If the place wasn’t a mansion, it was as close to one as Rafe had ever seen. It was set back from the road all by itself, the closest neighbor a least a mile back, all white stucco and tiled roof to give it a Mexican hacienda feel. He counted three stories worth of windows in the main building, and two in the separate wing that jutted from the right side. As Rafe turned onto the gravel driveway that led up to it, floodlights blazed overhead, revealing a beautifully manicured front lawn, including several gardens and fountains.
Stacy looked over at him. Excitement lit up the girl’s eyes.
Rafe found himself smiling as he pulled to a stop in the circular driveway. This was entirely too much good luck for one night.
The five of them piled out and started up to the massive front door. Stacy stayed at his side the entire time. She jumped and grabbed at his arm when the door opened just as Rafe reached for the bell.
A tall man in a black tux stood on the other side, looking down his nose at them. It took Rafe a second to realize this was an honest-to-god butler, just like in the movies.
“Hi, we’re, uh, Warp Face?” The sudden fear that this had all been a prank gripped Rafe. Instead of fifty pizzas, some bozo had delivered a very exhausted heavy metal band to this poor guy’s doorstep. “We’re supposed to be staying here tonight. I think.”
“I was told there would only be three of you,” the man said.
“Three members of the band,” Dragen jumped in. He slung an arm around Kate and hiked a thumb at Rafe. “This idiot forgot to include our manager and, uh…”
“The lead singer’s girlfriend,” Stacy said quickly, clutching Rafe’s hand to her breasts.
The butler regarded them another moment. “Follow me, please.”
He stood aside and allowed them to enter into a foyer that was bigger than the one-bedroom apartment Rafe rented back home. Delacord was loaded. Rafe took it all in, and couldn’t help but imagine himself living in a place like this one day, after making millions doing the thing he loved most in the world.
Something squeezed his hand. He looked down and realized Stacy’s fingers were still entwined with his. She dropped him a wink, and he realized she knew exactly what he’d been thinking.
The butler closed the door without another word and walked fast through the house, forcing them almost to jog to keep up. The interior of the place was just as impressive as the outside, but they didn’t have much time to look. They went up a grand staircase, Dragen and Finnell and Kate oohing and aahing over a chandelier and artwork, and finally arrived at a set of double doors the butler opened and then motioned them through.
“Mr. Delacord will be with you momentarily.”
They stepped through.
Into a museum to rival the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
On the other side of the double doors was a huge, rectangular room, hardwood floors and pleasant tract lighting, filled with rows of musical exhibits on pedestals under glass. The entire right side of the room was a massive stage complete with concert lighting and wired for speakers, but with only a lonely microphone in the middle. They wandered inside as the butler closed the doors behind them, gazing around in amazement, then started through the aisles to check out the treasures.
“Holy crap!” Finnell’s voice echoed from one of the other rows. “He’s got a signed Peter Frampton guitar!”
“And one of Hetfield’s original wardrobes from the Kill ‘Em All For One Tour,” Dragen added.
“What? Let me see!”
Rafe and Stacy stayed together, going from piece to piece, still holding hands, until Dragen called out from somewhere ahead, “Dude, Rafe, who is this guy?”
“I have no idea. Why?”
“Cause if this is him, he’s got pictures of himself with about a billion gods.”
Rafe walked forward with Stacy in tow until he found Dragen and the others, standing in front of the long back wall of the room,
which was covered in 8 x 10 framed photos taken at various nightclubs or concert halls or arenas that appeared to go in rough chronological order from right, mostly black and white jobs, to left. The common denominator in all of them was a nondescript white guy with an easy smile, perpetually happy eyes, and a wave of short brown hair that lay lank against his forehead. If the guy—and Rafe had to assume it was Delacord—got any older in them, he sure couldn’t tell, which was amazing for a man that looked to be forty in even the earliest.
But that wasn’t really what interested Rafe.
What interested him was the fact that in each one of these photo, Delacord was standing with different musical legends spanning the last five decades.
Rafe scanned the wall, looking for faces he knew. There was Buddy Holly, caught in the middle of a laugh as Delacord pounded him on the back. One of Elvis Presley from late in his career, where the gut was coming in but he still had most of his hair. Michael Jackson back when he was mostly black, embracing Delacord like an old friend. Kurt Cobain, looking incredibly awkward and uncomfortable with Delacord’s arm slung over his shoulders.
Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. Tupac Shakur.
“How does he know them all?” Finnell asked.
Brad Nowell, with the rest of Sublime in the background. ‘Dimebag’ Daryl Abbott. Jim Morrison.
“Or knew,” Dragen corrected. “Some of these people are playin that great big venue in the sky.”
Stevie Ray Vaughan. Aaliyah. John Lennon.
“I have no idea,” Rafe muttered.
Courtney Love. John Denver. Amy Winehouse, by far the most recent of the collection.
Among the big names in music history were tons of faces that Rafe didn’t know, as well as an entire galaxy of one-hit wonders, bands and musicians that had come and gone in the blink of an eye. He only recognized them from all those specials VH1 loved to air. Rafe picked out such classics as Soft Cell, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Right Said Fred, Gerardo, the Baha Men, Carl Douglas, the Kingsmen, Norman Greenbaum, the Buggles, and, of course, the reigning champ of them all, Mr. Vanilla Ice, flashing an upside-down peace sign in front of Delacord’s face.
They worked their way down the wall until they reached the open area in front of the stage. Kate, bored with photos, jumped up onto the platform to begin giving a pretend performance at the mic, and Dragen and Finnell went with her. Rafe and Stacy continued perusing the photos, letting go of each other’s hands for the first time as Rafe searched for one photo in particular.
And there it was, high up on the third row: Delacord posing with Dave Marchance. The picture wasn’t even that old either, maybe from the tour just before their terrible last album came out.
“Holy shit,” he heard Stacy say. “Take a look at this one.” She was further down, standing on her toes to look at one of the photos, and he went down to join her.
“That’s Tyler Wannaker,” he whispered in awe. “Lead singer for Crushup.”
“Yeah, but take a closer look. See that jacket? That’s what he wore for the—”
“Highland Wastes Tour,” he finished for her. Which meant that, no more than a few weeks after this picture had been taken, the tour had come to a premature and tragic end when Wannaker, who’d been having trouble with his voice at the last few shows, pulled out a gun on stage, stuck the barrel in his mouth, and painted the rafters. Here he still looked happy and healthy as he pinched one of Delacord’s wrinkled cheeks, undoubtedly hiding the depression at work in him.
Looking at him, Rafe realized for the first time how much wasted potential was represented on this wall. Some of them were musicians who had died prematurely. Others whose later works had never measured up or caught on. Some who had just stopped trying as life or drugs got in the way, and watched their careers take a serious downward spiral.
But, whatever the reason, the world had been robbed of the art they might’ve produced had events played out differently.
“It’s not often my guests are so well-versed in history,” a voice called out from the far side of the room.
Rafe and Stacy spun; on the stage, the others froze and looked up, so that they all got their first look at their host together.
He was undeniably the man in the photos, but dramatically aged, looking every bit his 90 plus years. The merry eyes were still there, and the friendly grin, but the rest of him was no more than a bald skeleton wrapped in tissue paper skin. He sat in a wheelchair, bony stick legs jutting out in front and gaunt fingers using a joystick on the armrest to move the electric conveyance forward.
As he rolled down the exhibit aisles toward them, he said, “Even the musicians usually just smile and nod. They don’t know the stories, the industry. Such a welcome change!”
“Are you Mr. Delacord?” Rafe asked.
“The one and only!” Delacord rolled to a stop in front of Rafe, next to the stage, and held out one of his thin, crooked hands. Appearances aside, the guy was just as pleasant as he’d sounded on the phone. “I take you to be Rafael then?”
“That’s me,” Rafe said, shaking the offered appendage delicately. It felt like he might be able to snap these twigs with the slightest pressure.
Delacord motioned at the men on the stage. “Which makes you Dragen and Finnell.”
Finnell squinted, eyes flicking between him and Rafe behind his glasses. “How did you—?”
“I wanted to learn more about the artists who would be staying under my roof, so I took the liberty of looking up the Warp Face fan page on Facebook. Do you realize you gentlemen have surged up almost fifteen hundred members tonight alone? And they’re all raving about your performance!”
“It was a great show,” Rafe confirmed. “But we really can’t thank you enough for letting us stay here.”
“Nonsense! It sounds as though the honor is all mine! And who are the ladies joining us this evening?”
“This is Kate and Stacy.”
“Charmed to meet both of you.”
“Mr. Delacord?” Stacy said his name timidly, coming to stand close to—and just behind—Rafe. “If you don’t mind me asking…where did all this come from? How did you get to take all these pictures?”
“Those? Oh, I used to be a talent scout of sorts. For years I traveled the country, seeking out fresh new acts and faces. Those are the results.”
“Wait a minute,” Rafe said. “You’re not saying you discovered all those people, are you?”
Delacord waved the sentiment away. “I don’t mean to make myself sound more important than I am. You won’t find me in any biographies about these fine artists. I wasn’t a professional, you see, just an avid music listener with an uncanny nose for talent. In most cases, I became aware of the performer during my travels and then just turned a record label on to them. I was a guarded secret in the industry once. Now, I just like to do my part to help out the up-and-comers, like yourselves. But I haven’t had anyone answer my ad in quite some time.”
“Totally fuckin wicked,” Dragen said. “Hey, you still got any connections you could hook us up with?”
The old man laid a spindly finger at the side of his nose. “If you’re as good as your newfound audience is saying, I’m sure I could dredge up an old friend in the business.”
Dragen and Finnell high-fived while Kate squealed with delight behind them. Rafe tried to smile, but he felt curiously resentful of the offer. It was nice of the old guy, and he knew he should feel incredibly lucky—shit, all these years of pounding the pavement, and now they had two industry professionals falling all over themselves to give them a leg up on the same night—but honestly, he wanted to take Marchance up on the offer, a man that had walked their same road. Then again, if Delacord was somehow responsible for the singer’s fame, wouldn’t they be right to stick with him?
His thoughts were interrupted when Kate said from the stage, “Hey man, maybe you should tell them about me, too! I can sing!” With that, she grabbed the microphone and began belting out the chorus to Joan Jett’s “Bad
Reputation,” the speakers loud enough to fill the whole room with her voice. It was a little flat, but the girl made up for it in spirit. Dragen put two fingers in his mouth and whistled as Stacy clapped.
Delacord’s reaction to her impromptu audition was not so appreciative.
“STOP!” the old man roared. Kate’s singing died in the middle of a string of ‘oh no, not me’s.’ Rafe looked down to see Delacord doubled over in his chair, arms wrapped around his midsection like a man with monstrously bad constipation. His face was red as he screeched, “Stop it this instant, young lady!”
As the last of Kate’s voice reverbed through the speakers and an uncomfortable silence fell across them, Delacord seemed to collect himself. He straightened and took a breath, but still looked a little green around the gills. “I…I’m sorry, but you were badly off key and…I have incredibly sensitive ears.”
Oh really? Rafe thought. Then why weren’t you covering them instead of your stomach?
No one spoke. Kate looked embarrassed on the stage, and Dragen put an arm around her. Stacy gave Rafe’s hand an uncomfortable squeeze. Finally, Delacord turned his wheelchair around and rolled toward the door, all business now. “Come then. I’ll show you where you’ll be staying and we can take care of payment in the morning if you wish.”
“Um, hold on, sir,” Rafe said. “What exactly is the payment? It didn’t say on the website…”
“Did I not mention?” Delacord halted his chair, but did not turn around to face them. “The payment is the same as I ask of every musician that stays here, and every talent I discover. Perform one song for me, at the time of my choosing. For you, I shall merely require it before your departure.”
“That’s it?” Dragen asked. “Man, we could do that tonight! I’m still so pumped from the show, I don’t think I can sleep!”
“If you wish. In that case, I’ll let you get yourselves situated on stage, and will return momentarily.”
Delacord rolled out the door, and Rafe moved over to the stage to whisper, “Are you guy okay with this?”
Dragen hunkered beside him. “If this old fart can hook us up with somebody, let’s fuckin play for him all night if he wants.”
“Yeah,” Finnell agreed. “I mean, he’s starting to give me the creeps, so let’s just get this over with.”
Rafe considered telling him about Marchance’s offer, but decided not to. Dragen was right, they needed all the help they could get, and besides, it was only one song.