“John.” Roger Chester let the name sit out there like an egg being fried. He smiled; it went away; he smiled again. “Nice speech, but pointless. Let’s say you three walk out of here today, mad as hornets, and you decide that’s it with this agency. You decide to fire me, for trying to make you lots of money and be very successful. Well…the thing is… I run this show. Not just me. Others like me, everywhere. See, we kind of guard the gate. We look for musical talent, sure. Got to have that. But there are lots of folks with musical talent. Then we look for the pretty people, or the people with something quirky about ’em. The people with attitude and personality. Something the mass audience would buy. We look for the rebels, or we create ’em. We line up the critics and the mentions in the magazines. We water grass, not weeds. So if we’ve let you in and you don’t click, if you don’t have the amount of sales we’re looking for, if it’s just not right, then…we kind of push you toward that gate again. And we’ll hang with you for a while, but if it looks to us like our time can be used more productively…then we have to push you out the gate, and we hope you do real well in the future. So you can walk out of here, but where will you go? Oh, I forgot the Internet! Like you can ever make any real money, or a real career, off half-assed bloggers and low-rent CD pressers.”
Roger Chester took a long sip of his coffee.
Then another long sip.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
Nomad’s solo was finished. It was echoing off along the black walls. Ariel stepped to her microphone again, and sang.
“So welcome to the world, and everything that’s in it,
It’d be a poor old world, described in just four minutes.
You got to get out there, see what’s in it, don’t let life make you crazy.
I wish you safe travel, courage, you can find it.
I wish you safe travel, courage, you can find it.
Was the old world,
Today the new old world.
Was the old world,
Today the new old world.”
And then the drums quietened again, to the beat of the bass and the snap of the hi-hat, and Ariel sang softly, as if reciting a children’s rhyme.
“Try and try, grow and thrive,
Because no one here gets out alive.
Try and try, grow and thrive,
Because no one here gets out alive.”
Sitting on the brown leather sofa with Berke and Ariel, Nomad thought of the plight of Ezra’s Jawbone, and the men in the suits saying that the awesome rock opera Dustin Daye, which followed no model nor copied any current sound, was no good because it lacked a single the kids would buy. And they made the members of Ezra’s Jawbone think they had failed, when it was the suits who couldn’t hear the music.
Nomad knew. It was partly why the man’s speaking volume was so loud and uncontrolled. “You have a tin ear,” he told Roger Chester. “Your hearing’s fucked up. So you wait for someone else to say music is worthwhile, it has value, and then you rush around and gladhand people and say you knew it all along. Maybe you’re afraid, because you have investors who are looking for quick money, and you can’t—won’t—support anything but the sure thing. But you make more money with the sure thing, right? The comfortable thing? So if you don’t like music anyway, if you don’t see the value in it beyond money, then how can you lose? And there we are…one day nobodies, the next day as sure a thing as you can get. Because tragedy struck, and we got some attention.”
“Sounds like a golden opportunity to me,” said Roger Chester.
“How you got yourself in control of people who really care about music, I have no idea. And you,” Nomad said to Ash. “You’ve got your ears up your butthole.”
Roger Chester took his glasses off and wiped the lenses with a white hankerchief. He still wore a slim smile. “All I can say to that is, we’re talking about the age-old war between business and art. Correct? Friend, business won that war a long time ago. And if you don’t already know that to be the truth, then…” He put his glasses back on, the better to see the face of the vanquished. “Welcome to the world,” he said.
Nomad told Berke and Ariel that he thought it was time to go. They all stood up, and then Roger Chester went a buttkick too far.
“I guess this means your friends died for nothing.”
Nomad stared at him across the desk. One month ago he would have thrown himself at the man, no matter who the fuck he was or how old he was, and he would’ve made that mouth regret its lips. He would’ve folded this man up at the joints and made him smile where the sun did not shine.
But not today.
He said, “You know where to send the checks.”
“I certainly do, Mr. Charles. Minus our fifteen percent commission, and minus expenses for travel, various promotional considerations and extra expenditures as specified in the agreement. I certainly do.”
They started out of the office. Before the door closed, Roger Chester said, “You’ll be back.”
On stage, Nomad couldn’t help but wonder what this song would’ve sounded like with Mike’s bass thumping at the bottom, and Terry’s keyboards floating in and out like golden smoke. They were almost done, it was almost finished, and Nomad still feared this song because he didn’t understand it, not the why of it, and he didn’t know what was going to happen when the last note was played.
Ariel, her mouth up close to the silver microphone, repeated the rhyme once more.
“Try and try, grow and thrive,
Because no one here gets out alive.”
Then the drums came in full-voiced again, Berke put her muscle into it, Nomad launched some soaring lines into the multi-colored air, and Ariel finished it out with an impassioned cry.
“Oh yeah, from this old world,
Could be a new world.
Could be a new old world.
Could be a new world,
Could be a new old world.
Might be a new world.
Just not the same old world.
It was the old world,
Today the new old world.
Might be a new world.”
And she let the last line stretch out until her opera-trained voice roughened and rasped and held on to its control by the thickness of a thinned-out vocal cord.
“Just not the same old world.”
They approached the end, a few seconds away. The music began to quiet, and with one last sweep of electric guitar like a sword through the air Nomad was done, and Ariel went out with the same progression that had opened the song, and Berke hit the bass and snapped a hi-hat, and it was over.
As far as Nomad could tell, nothing changed in this old world.
The audience cheered and clapped, the cameras flashed and the videos were captured, the cries instantly went up for more, Berke threw her drumsticks into the crowd, Nomad said, “Goodnight, and thank you,” and he unplugged his Strat and walked off with it. Ariel followed him, and then Berke. The house lights came up, saying the concert was done. Recorded music spilled from the speakers, the voices of some other band. The audience, nearly all of them wearing The Five T-shirts, began to file out in small groups. They were happy; it had been a good show.
Thor Bronson came backstage. He wore a white suit and his Five T-shirt. His tan glowed and his hair was lemon-yellow. Hanging on his arm was a blonde fox who could’ve been his teenaged daughter, and she was dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl and kept a BlowPop in her mouth. Nomad figured that Thor was now tapping the porn dolls. “You’re one cheap sonofabitch,” Nomad told him, referring to the fact that Thor had saved himself ten dollars by wearing the shirt, and Thor said that now the little prissy motherfucker had time on his hands he ought to come out to Cali and kick it with him. Nomad said he’d think about it, and Thor said don’t think, do. He said he was staying at the Driskill, going to meet some studio people and party for the next few days, catch some Texas sun, hear some new bands, and he said that if Nomad didn’t come visit him he would roast a pa
ir of balls over a campfire and though he was not gay he would eat them on a slab of Texas toast with habanero sauce.
“Okay,” Nomad said.
True and his wife passed Thor and his pony in the doorway to the Green Room, and Nomad thought that if the old world didn’t crack itself wide open on that one, we were solid for the next few thousand years.
True and his wife sat in the Green Room with Nomad, Ariel, Berke, the Vista Futura’s owner, a couple of guys who ran Internet fan sites, a sound tech, and the old bearded dude who wore a beret and owned Play It Again, Man, which was a vintage vinyl and CD store out on West Anderson Lane. He’d wheeled in a handcart bearing two big boxes full of The Five CDs he was wanting to get signed, in silver marker, by the remaining members. A few other people came in and out, to meet-and-greet and take pictures. Someone, a kind soul, brought cold beers to the band. Two silver markers ran dry. The old dude supplied more from his massive backpack that smelled slightly suspicious to True. Sewn into the stained fabric was the depiction of a big marijuana leaf. True’s wife, a small-boned, attractive woman named Kate, kept glancing uneasily at the bearded dude, who had the habit of staring at people, herself included, and not blinking his bulbous eyes for what seemed to her minutes at a time. He also had the habit of getting up, pacing around the room a few times, and then sitting down again in his chair with his legs crossed under himself Indian-style. She whispered to her husband that she didn’t think that man was from earth. But True didn’t say anything. He had a bandage over his right eye. His elbow was aching under the cast, and it was time they were getting back to the Radisson because they had an early morning flight home.
“Better head in,” True announced. Ariel hugged him, and Berke came up stone-faced and sullen, and he didn’t know what she was going to do. She balled up her fist and hung it in the air and he gave her one of those fist-bump things and then she grinned at him like the dumbass he was and she hugged him too.
“Glad it’s not me having to sign all those,” True said to Nomad, motioning with his good hand toward the boxes.
“Yeah,” Nomad said. “Managers get off easy.”
True nodded. He looked at Kate and saw her staring at the bearded man and the bearded man staring back at her, a battle of the X-ray eyeballs. “Do you have a card?” True asked Nomad.
“A car? I’ve got a car.”
“A card,” True corrected. He had one of those in his left pocket, ready to give Nomad, and he took it out. “A business card, with your phone number on it.”
“Oh. No, I don’t have one of those.” Nomad accepted the card, which had True’s office number and extension on the front, and on the back, in scribbly left-hand-written ink, his H.P. number.
“You should. People need to know how to get in touch with you.” True knew that if he ever did want to get in touch with Nomad, he had the whole network of the FBI behind him as his White Pages. “Why’d you think I said ‘car’? Are your ears ringing?”
“No, it’s because nobody ever asked me if I had a card before.”
“You might think about some kind of ear protection. All of you need that. You know, your hearing is very important.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that.”
True stared at him. “You’re a little asshole,” he said, but he couldn’t do it straight-faced, he couldn’t keep the smile from creeping in.
“Yeah,” Nomad said. “I’ve heard that too.”
“You owe me some money, by the way. For certain dental expenses and mess cleanup on damage done at a Greek restaurant in Tucson, and the less you know about that the better. But I’m going to collect it from you someday. By then you’ll be rich enough to pay me back.”
“Maybe.” Nomad shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“Well,” True said, “better head in.”
Nomad’s heart ached. He put his arms around Truitt Allen and pulled him close, and True said, “Watch the elbow,” but his voice cracked when he said it. Kate stepped away a few feet, and the old bearded dude blinked and aimed his eyes at the silver-signed CD in his lap, a picture of The Five standing against a statue of one of the descending snakes on the pyramid of El Castillo at Chichen Itza, a washed-out purple-tinged glow of light all around them, and the title in dark purple lettering Catch As Kukulkan. The old dude had no way of knowing it was all computer-generated and photoshopped—no way could they afford the trip to the Yucatan—and had come from a dream Ariel had after eating a Mexican TV-dinner that evidently did not agree with her. She’s been left with a compelling and somewhat frightening image of travelling through space and time on the back of a feathered flying serpent, Kukulkan the link between the gods and human nobility, the overseer of human sacrifice. The Catch As part came from the term ‘Catch As Catch Can’, which meant getting through a situation however you could, using whatever happened to be lying around that could help. It was just something she’d come up with.
“Keep it real,” True said to Nomad, a statement he’d been planning on saying at this moment because it sounded like something a rocker would appreciate.
“Real, cranked to eleven,” Nomad answered.
Which True couldn’t make heads or tails of, but that was okay. This was where two worlds, having converged for a brief time in a circumstance of necessity, now by necessity moved again into their separate orbits.
“Thanks for getting us through,” Nomad said, and that made sense enough, though True would have many nights to wonder if there had been any other way to get them through, and if somehow Terry Spitzenham didn’t have to be dead. But he would never forget Terry playing in that studio, the voice of Lady Frankenstein rising from the speakers, and Terry saying thank you for giving me time.
He knew, though, that Ariel was the one who’d really gotten them through, and he’d told her so. Standing up to Jeremy Pett and his rifle as she had was probably the bravest—or most foolhardy—act he’d ever witnessed in his life. There ought to be civilian medals for something like that, but as Kate would be the only person on earth to hear the whole story, or what Ariel had impressed upon him to be the truth as she understood it, an FBI Certificate Of Appreciation was the best he could get for her. It was the best he could get for the others in helping put an end, however tragic, to a dangerous individual who had been a brother Marine. But behind the scenes he could have John Charles’s money obligations taken care of and his record expunged. In his own case, he was to be awarded the FBI Star and the Medal of Valor at a ceremony next week.
True felt honored to have known them all. He felt like one of them. After all, Ariel had told him she’d realized what the song was about from that off-handed statement he’d made. Just when you think there’s nothing new in this old world. She’d told him that after hearing those words, it was all clear to her. So part of him was in the song, too. He was a songwriter.
Sort of.
His wife took his left hand, because he was not moving and in his heart he wanted to stay until all the CDs were signed, every one, and the lights went out.
She led him from the Green Room, and when he looked back it was with the idea to tell them he planned to take up the guitar again when his arm was healed. But he let it go, because they needed to finish up their night and get home to bed, and so indeed did he.
THIRTY-ONE.
They were nearly done signing the CDs when a tall young man, maybe all of twenty, walked into the Green Room. He wore a The Five T-shirt under his red-striped jacket. He had long sandy-brown hair and gray eyes. He was handsome, but he was thin and angular and he had a darkly troubled expression. When Berke looked at him her first thought was that Gina Fayne, the new Janis Joplin and outspoken voice of the Nation, had died of too much life.
The young man’s name was Ben Rivington. He was the bass player for the Mudstaynes. He came right up to Berke, and he said, “Can I talk to you?”
“Shoot,” she told him, as she continued to sign the last two dozen.
He looked around at Nomad and Ariel
, who knew who he was but didn’t exactly know him personally. Berke had never spoken to the guy in her life.
“I’d rather talk in private,” Rivington said.
“Okay,” Berke decided. “Let me finish these first.”
“It was a great show,” he told Nomad and Ariel. “I’m a big fan, have been since your first CD. I wanted to speak to you at the Curtain Club, but…you know…sometimes you get hung up. People get in your face. You know.”
“Do I ever,” said Nomad, signing away.
“I bought the shirt online.”
“Looks good on you,” Ariel said. She was wondering, as Nomad was, why this gator wasn’t playing somewhere tonight. Gina Fayne and the Mudstaynes were hot and hugely talented, they were young—the oldest being the twenty-two-year-old drummer XB4Y—and they had energy to burn. “I didn’t know you guys were in town. Did you have an early gig?”
“No,” he said. “I drove down from Dallas when I found out about this. Um… Gina’s not feeling too well.”
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s not well,” he repeated, his eyes haunted, and Ariel knew not to go any further. He watched Ariel sign her name on a CD and then reach for another. “You really came through the fire,” he said. “I don’t know how you survived it.”
“We were lucky.”
“I heard you were more than lucky. I heard you were…” He looked down, and Ariel waited for him to find what he searched for. “Blessed,” he said. “You’d have to be blessed to get through that. Does that sound fucking stupid?”
“No, not really,” Nomad told him. “I mean… I can handle that.”
“I liked that last song,” Rivington said. “The ‘New Old World’. It spoke to me.”
Ariel lifted her eyes to his. She could tell he needed something, a desperate need, and he would not have come here if he didn’t hope he could find it.
“After the gig, I was going to come back and speak but you had people on you, and I know how that goes. So I took off. Went to another club and had a beer. Heard another band finishing up. But that last song spoke to me. It told me to come back here. That part about, you know, changing things. That you’ve got to, like, step up to the plate if you want to get anything done. Take responsibility.” He grinned suddenly, like a shy kid, and he actually blushed. “Man, does that sound fucking dorky. Me saying it that way, not the song,” he corrected. “All props to the song, dudes.”