How to Kill a Rock Star

  “Mr. Winkle,” Michael said. “Why aren't you ready?”

  Paul shrugged and made no effort to get moving. He poured himself a glass of orange juice and paced the kitchen in a tiny circle.

  “Who's Mr. Winkle?” I asked, trying to peek into Paul's room for evidence of Avril. All I could see was the foot of his bed and an empty liquor bottle on the floor.

  Paul's flashlight eyes met mine and made a trail down to my toes and then back up again. “You're sweating,” he said.

  “I was running.” I wiped my forehead and helped myself to a glass of juice. “Who were you talking to last night?”

  “Huh?”

  “After you got off the phone. It sounded like you were talking.”

  “Oh, nobody. I mean, I was talking to myself.” Paul went into his room and came back with a microcassette recorder. “I decided to start chronicling my life. I've always wanted to keep a diary but I'm too lazy to write shit down so I bought this.” He fiddled with the knobs. “Oh, but if you're referring to Beth, she's gone.”

  “Beth?” I practically shouted.

  He put the machine in my face, flicked the RECORD button, and said, “Say hi.”

  I thought I'd be over the dizziness by morning, but there was no way around it: being near Paul Hudson made me feel like I'd just stepped off a fast-moving merry-go-round. It was either a good sign or a very bad one.

  “Paul,” Michael sighed, “we don't have time to socialize. Go get dressed.”

  Paul finished his juice and wandered into the bathroom while Michael carried his half-eaten piece of pizza to the garbage.

  “Who's Mr. Winkle?” I asked him.

  “Paul calls all record executives Mr. Winkle.”

  “Why?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Then, trying to sound nonchalant, I said, “Who's Avril?”

  Michael rolled his eyes. “Paul's girlfriend. But her name's not Avril, it's April. She's trying to break into modeling and decided she needed a classier name.”

  “How long have they been going out?”

  He shrugged. “A month, maybe.”

  “Then who's Beth?”

  Michael shrugged again. “Eliza, a piece of advice: don't try to make sense of Paul's love life.”

  Paul exited the bathroom shirtless, zipping up a pair of jeans. His chest was gaunt and hairless, his arms were sinewy like the Jesus on the cross above my bed, and he had another tattoo, a Chinese symbol, on his right shoulder. The tattoo occupied my attention for entirely too long.

  “It's pronounced wu,” Paul said, fingering the black ink.

  “What does it mean?”

  ” To awaken to righteousness.” He paused. I'm not sure what he saw in my eyes, but he said, “Yeah, I know. It's an ongoing process for me.”

  I glanced down into my glass and pretended to pick a piece of pulp from my juice. When Paul spun around, I watched him reach to the floor of his room, grab a random shirt, smell it, and then slip it over his head as smoothly as if carried by the wind.

  It occurred to me then that I hadn't had sex in six months. The last time was the day I found out Adam was sleeping with Kelly, when I'd come across a text message on his phone and realized he'd been with her less than an hour after he'd had his head between my legs.

  Ballistic, I went straight to Starbucks, ordered my usual, and asked Kelly if she liked the way my pussy tasted. She threw the caramel macchiato at my head and called me a psycho.

  “Why do you call record executives Mr. Winkle?” I asked Paul.

  “Because that's what they do,” he said. “They wink at you. Then they wipe their asses with their hands and shake yours, and they think you can't smell the shit.”

  Paul started pacing near the door. He wasn't wearing a watch but he glanced at his wrist, glanced at Michael, and said, “Let's go. We're late.”

  “This is a bad goddamn sign.”

  That's what I said to Michael when we arrived at the meeting spot designated by Mr. Winkle—a crowded, upscale micro-brewery in Midtown, filled with the grown-up versions of the guys I went to high school with—the shitheads who scored touchdowns, got all the girls, and called me a fag.

  The other two Michaels were already at a table. When Caelum and I sat down, Burke said, “Winkle's not here yet.”

  This is where I should probably describe the band. For— what do you call it when you want your kids and their kids to know? Posterity?

  I'll start with Burke, our bass player. Burke's a tall, gangly guy with more rhythm than John Entwistle and John Paul Jones combined. He just turned twenty-five; he and his girlfriend Queenie live in a studio apartment below street level, and they have this big laundry sink in their kitchen where they make ice cream in their spare time. Burke is obsessed with ice cream. His dream is to own and operate a homemade ice cream shop someday—he's constantly talking about what kinds of “epicurean” flavors he'll serve, and how the secrets to a custardy consistency are the use of fresh ingredients and a perfect ratio of cream to butter fat.

  People always ask if Burke and Caelum are brothers because they're both so tall, and neither Michael seems bothered by the question, but it drives me out of my mind because besides the height they look nothing alike. Burke's got blond hair and freckles. Caelum has a mass of dark pubic hair growing out of his head. Plus, how the hell could they be brothers when they have the same first name? That only works if your last one is Foreman.

  Caelum—what can I say about Mikey C? He's the best friend I've ever had. A subtle but really innovative guitarist who lives and dies by this band. His dedication is inspiring, really. He makes fliers for all the shows, he designed us a website, and he's polite and friendly to Winkles, which is more than I can say for myself. I respect Caelum. He's a good guy and I hope we don't lose him.

  Incidentally, Michael's sister just moved in with me. Eliza. More on Eliza later.

  Angelo, our drummer, is the stereotypical rock star of the band. He drinks like a sailor on leave, has a penchant for well-endowed co-eds, and bears a strong resemblance to a serial killer named Richard Ramirez—you know, that goddamn Night Stalker guy. Believe it or not, this makes him a real hit with the ladies.

  The Michaels and I, along with my manager, Tony Feldman, had met with the tardy Winkle twice before. The first time, he came to a show and made us a bunch of promises that got our hopes up. Second time he took us to a big industry party and got us drunk. But Winkle's eyebrows look like caterpillars trapped in cocoons, and I'm pretty sure someone catching bugs over their eyes can't be trusted.

  Needless to say, the guy gives off a bad vibe. Being around him inflames my pancreas like nothing else. But the multimedia company that employs him happens to be the same company my favorite band, the Drones, signed to. The Drones are Winkle's big claim to fame. He discovered them in a garage in Fresno and a year later their first record went platinum. So did their next two. And they're no walk in the park. They're fuzzy guitars, feedback, and electronic experimentation, not the breezy pop music that's been saturating the airwaves, so their success is no small coup, believe me. Very little of the good shit ever makes its way into the mainstream.

  When Winkle finally walked in, he craned around the restaurant like an ostrich until he found me. As he approached the table, I detected a look of surprise on his face. Standing above us, he eyed the Michaels like they were part of a police lineup and said he didn't realize we were all going to be there.

  The waiter came over to take our order. I wanted chicken fingers but he said they were on the kids' menu and apparently you have to be twelve or under to eat strips of fried chicken. The guy even had the balls to ask me how old I was. Winkle slipped him two twenties and a ten and said: “He's fifty. Bring him his chicken.”

  After that, Winkle stood up and said—and this is his exact voice, like he has a dozen rocks in his throat—“Gentlemen, would you excuse me and Mr. Hudson for a few minutes?” He looked at me, and the little imprisoned caterpillars straightened into one
long chrysalis. “Let's you and I go have a drink.”

  I gave the Michaels an iffy look and followed Winkle to the farthest corner of the bar.

  “You've got an incredible voice,” he said. “And some great songs. Really powerful stuff.”

  I thanked him and tried to convince myself the bad feeling I had was just nerves.

  “I'm ready to offer you a deal,” he said. “Right here, right now.”

  My heart pounded like a bongo drum, the kind of beat you can feel from your head to your toes, and strangely enough, the first thoughts that ran through my mind involved my new roommate. I imagined sprinting up the stairs, bursting into the apartment to tell her the band had just signed a record contract. Her cheeks would be flushed like they'd been this morning from running. Her skin would be warm and salty. She would throw her arms around me and kiss me and then she would drag me to the ground and we would do it like dogs on the kitchen floor.

  “However,” Winkle said, knocking me out of my little insta-fantasy as I began anticipating some sort of ludicrous stipulation I desperately hoped I could live with.

  Then he goes: “We only want you.”

  My stare stayed totally fixed on that asshole's eyebrows. I told him I wasn't sure I understood what he meant, even though I had a pretty good idea.

  He told me to can the band. He said, “You're better than they are.”

  According to Winkle, signing four guys to one contract is asking for trouble. And anyway, as far as he's concerned, Paul Hudson is Bananafish.

  I didn't speak or move until Winkle looked like he was about to resume his discourse-o-shit, then I raised my hand to keep the silence in tact, and to halt the world as it spun around me.

  “We're talking about the opportunity of a lifetime, Paul. Not to mention a lot of money.”

  Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars—that's the number he threw at me. Let me repeat: Three hundred and fifty thousand goddamn Gs.

  I dropped my forehead to the bar, then I looked up at the table of Michaels across the room. I pointed their way and said, “Those guys are my friends.”

  Winkle said he'd make sure I had more friends than I knew what to do with, then he went on to outline the main points of the contract. I listened to all of it, feeling like the acid from the orange juice I'd had an hour earlier was eating away at my insides. Maybe it's killing the cancer, I thought hopefully.

  With more desperation than I care to admit, I asked Winkle if we could work something out, if we could at least start with the band and see how it goes.

  He said he sees me as a solo artist, plain and simple. But even a solo artist needs a band, right? The next twenty seconds went something like this:

  “Paul, we've got the best studio musicians in the country lined up and waiting.”

  “I don't want a bunch of goddamn studio musicians. I want the Michaels.”

  “It's not open to negotiation.”

  I said I needed a minute to think. I hit the bathroom in a daze, locked myself in a stall, put the lid down on the toilet seat, and sat with my head in my hands, staring at the piss stains on the concrete, pondering the proposition that had just been laid before me, and also wondering why the idiots who used that stall couldn't aim their dicks into a bowl wider in circumference than my head and Winkle's ass put together.

  A thick lump had formed in my throat, I wanted a cigarette, my pancreas hurt like hell, and for one pathetic instant I thought I was going to say yes.

  I'm not sure if I spent five seconds or five hours like that, and I have no recollection of returning to the bar, but when I was back in front of Winkle I heard myself mumble, “I can't do it.” I didn't even turn around when Winkle called my name because I was afraid he'd be able to change my mind.

  My chicken fingers were waiting for me, with two little bowls next to the plate. One had ketchup in it; the other had some kind of creamy salad dressing shit. Normally I'd never in a zillion years put salad dressing on chicken, but I picked up a finger and dipped.

  Burke asked me what happened and I said, “I'll tell you outside. Let's just go.”

  Angelo, who'd ordered a rib eye and the most expensive wine on the menu, said, “Can't we eat first?”

  I dragged them outside. In the cab ride back downtown, I told the disappointed Michaels that Winkle didn't understand the direction of the band. They asked a zillion questions and I repeated the same answer: “I don't want to talk about it.”

  The suckiest part was I felt almost as bad about lying as I did about the truth.

  To be continued. I'm late for work.

  Over.

  The Sonica offices occupied the fifteenth floor of a tall, unremarkable building below Columbus Circle. Terry North, the editor in chief of the magazine, was on the phone when I walked in. He invited me into his cluttered office using a fly-swatting hand gesture and nodded for me to sit.

  After finishing up his call, the first thing he said was that I looked just like his kid sister, Maggie, who had been killed by a drunk driver at the age of twenty.

  I didn't know what to say to that. “Mr. North, I really want to thank—”

  “Call me Terry. And don't thank me. I didn't hire you because Doug said you know your stuff, I hired you because your piece was smashing. I've known that guy since 1970 and I've never been able to get him to talk like that.”

  Terry was as an amiable but blunt man, mid-fifties, tall, with a head of bristly dark and tan hair like an Airedale.

  From behind me, I heard a woman's voice, replete with sharp, hypercritical insinuation. “So, you're Doug Blackman's little friend.”

  Terry introduced me to Lucy Enfield. “If you want the good assignments you'll have to be nice to her,” he said, “even if she isn't always nice to you.”

  Lucy Enfield was the creative director of the magazine. She had a reputation for being tough, and her obvious hauteur, combined with her sharp, uptown style, told me she thought she was better than all the music geeks who worked beneath her.

  Lucy had long legs, tiny slits for eyes, and an ambushing smile. She made it a point to tell me she was the authority on the New York music scene and said, “If I don't know who they are, they're not worth listening to.”

  “Have you heard of Bananafish?” I asked, hoping my job would present me with an opportunity to help Michael.

  “No,” Lucy said. “But that's the dumbest name I've ever heard for a band. Who do they sound like?”

  I found it revealing that Lucy said who instead of what. Furthermore, Bananafish was not a dumb name for a band. And even if it was, the greatest bands in the world have the dumbest names.

  One glitch: I had no idea what Bananafish sounded like. I hadn't heard them yet.

  “Radiohead,” I told Lucy. To my knowledge, Bananafish sounded nothing like Radiohead, but this seemed to be the thing to say if you wanted to impress a critic.

  Lucy looked momentarily intrigued. “Where do they play?”

  “A place called Rings of Saturn, mostly.”

  As fast as I'd grabbed her, I lost her. “Eliza, Rings of Saturn is where bands go to die.”

  Terry told me to come back and see him at the end of the day, and from there I followed Lucy on a tour of the office, which could have been the headquarters of any generic business and wasn't nearly as hip as I had imagined.

  Further dampening my mood, Lucy repeated her earlier dig, presenting me to one of the senior editors as “Doug Blackman's friend.”

  No matter that I'd only known the woman for fifteen minutes, I hated Lucy Enfield.

  “I hope you weren't expecting a corner office with a view of the park,” she said, coming to a stop at a partitioned cubicle to the left of a large room.

  My cubicle was identical to the ten or so other associate editors' cubicles surrounding it. It contained a desk and chair, a computer, and one encouraging sign—a coffee mug with a photo of U2 circa The Joshua Tree that the last occupant must've left behind—only there was a cautionary chip in the mug, ri
ght in the middle of the Edge's hat, like someone had pulled a William Tell on him.

  Lucy pointed to a large stack of papers and two FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY CDs on the desk. “Letters to the editor,” she said. “Weed through them, see if there's anything worth printing. And the CDs need to be reviewed for the next issue.”

  I waited until Lucy walked away and then I sat down. It occurred to me that I might be in over my head, but I had to bury that, otherwise I would've started to cry. Or worse, run to Port Authority and hopped a bus back to deathland.

  With nothing to put away, I opened and closed all the drawers in the desk, booted up the computer, and spent the rest of the day listening to one of the CDs I'd been given to review. The disc was called Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog-Flavored Water. In my humble opinion, it was crap, but I had to figure out how to say that using five hundred well-thought-out words.

  At six o'clock I went back to see Terry.

  “How's it going, Mags?” He tilted his neck from side to side and I heard his vertebrae release two loud cracks. “Mind if I call you Mags?”

  “No,” I said, even though it seemed creepy.

  “Everything all right? You look a little gray.”

  I took a step forward and kept my voice down. “This might be out of line, but is Lucy always so curt, or did I do something to annoy her?”

  “Both.” Terry told me there was a hierarchy at Sonica. Lucy had started as an intern, putting in sixty-hour weeks to get to her high-ranking position; thus she had an aversion to any person who didn't start in the mailroom, especially if the person's employment could be construed as “carnal nepotism.”

  “But I swear, I never so much as—”

  “Not my business.” Terry waved me off. “Just expect the shitty assignments for a while. Hence the 66 gig.”

  Lucy came in shortly thereafter, handed me press credentials for the 66 show that night, then gave me a blue-lined copy of the September issue and explained that as an associate editor, I was required to read and copyedit the magazine before it went to print.

  “You have until noon tomorrow,” Lucy said.