Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) (3 page)

“Enough,” Ty interjected. “I’m freaking bored with this conversation. This meeting is about the band, not Dan’s love life. Where are we at?”

“Our first gig is here and it’s next Saturday,” Dan replied, “working for the door. If the crowd likes us, they’ll book us regular for the summer. We get free beer, too.”

“I’m not playing for the door all summer,” Quinn said. “The door is shit. You can’t count on the door.”

“If you didn’t suck so much, the door wouldn’t
be
shit, Q,” Ty snapped, just to shut him up. The truth was that Quinn didn’t suck at all. The man had an ear like a bat and his technical skill was extraordinary.

“Excuse me?” Quinn regarded Ty with mock indignity. “I don’t suck.
You
suck. You handle that bass as if you were whacking off a three-foot dick. That’s why you never get laid. It scares all the chicks away.”

“Maybe it scares
your
chicks away,” Ty said. “You oughta borrow one of Dan’s drumsticks. At least it’ll stay hard.”

“He doesn’t need my stick,” Dan said. “He can just keep diddling himself on his keyboard. He plays better when the keys stick.” Ty gave Dan a high five, snickering.

“Very funny,” Quinn said. “The door is okay for this first time but when they hire us, we renegotiate. This time let me do it,” he told Dan. “You’re too soft.”

“That’s not what my girlfriend says,” Dan said.

“Let’s get back to the gig,” Ty prompted. “Do they have a house sound system?”

“Yes,” Dan nodded, “but we have to bring our own man. I hired Bruce. He’s willing to do us all summer, same as last year. He’s upped his price, though.”

“That’s okay. He’s the only one who ever gets our sound right.” Quinn drained the last of the gin and tonic. “Tell me about the system,” he said to Dan. “What’s the monitor situation?”

“Should be fine. They’ve got a bunch of JBL fifteens.”

“Sounds like we’re good to go then, gentlemen. Let’s drink on it. Another round, darlin’,” Quinn called to the waitress with a wink, “and add a seven and seven.”

The waitress leapt to attention, hips undulating as she walked to the bar. Quinn watched for a moment, then turned back to his bandmates. “Too bad Jason couldn’t make it tonight,” he remarked. “What did he have going on?”

Dan’s smile faded. “I was going to mention that next. There’s one more thing we need,” he said. “Another guitar player.”

“What do you mean?” Quinn asked. “We’ve always had only one.”

“I know. But now we’ve got none.”

“Come again?” Ty stared at Dan. “Where’s Jason?”

“Rehab.”

“
Again?
Christ,” Quinn spat. “I’m so sick of this bullshit with him!”

“Poor guy.” Ty shook his head. “He just can’t seem to get off the crystal.”

“‘Poor guy’ my ass,” Quinn growled. “That fucking basehead is way more trouble than he’s worth. I wanted to get rid of him last time. This time I will.”

“I think so, too,” Dan said eagerly. “We ought to find somebody right away. In fact—”

“Not right away,” Quinn said. “There’s no time. We’re stuck with him for the summer, at least after he gets out. When’s that?”

“Uh, it’s more complicated than last time.”

Ty frowned. “Why?”

“Meth lab,” Dan replied, avoiding Quinn’s suddenly intense gaze, “in his kitchen. After he gets out of rehab, he has to do some jail time.”

“Shit,” Ty gasped. “When’s he getting out?”

“Not for a couple of years. At least,” Dan added.

“Fucked!”
Quinn exploded, slamming both fists down on the table. Dan’s beer bottle fell over. It rolled off the edge and shattered on the floor, the shards tinkling musically. “We are
fucked!
How long have you known about this?”

“The sentencing was Friday,” Dan said, “but I have a plan. This isn’t a catastrophe.”

“It
is
a catastrophe,” Quinn corrected him angrily. “Jason does not just play guitar. He sings twelve of the fucking songs. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“Because I wanted to break it to you gently. I knew you’d freak, and I was afraid you’d stay in Boston and take that session shit if you knew. Besides, we are not fucked,” Dan reiterated. “I found another guitar player.”

Quinn continued to glare, but Ty leaned forward. “You have a replacement in mind?”

“Yes. She was supposed to be here tonight, but—”

“
She?
” Quinn’s eyes were huge again. “A girl?”

“Yeah,” Dan nodded, “and this girl is a major talent. Seriously, you’ve never heard anything like her.”

Tyrone looked thoughtful. “What kind of music does she play?”

“Folk, mostly,” Dan said and Quinn groaned out loud, burying his head in his arms. “But she rocks, too,” Dan added hurriedly, “and, man, can she sing!”

“Didn’t you say she was supposed to be here tonight?” Quinn interrupted, raising his head. Dan nodded. “Then where the fuck is she?”

“I don’t know.” Dan frowned. “Something must have happened. She’s reliable, usually. And she learns superfast. I’ve played with her before.”

The waitress brought their round and knelt to pick up the pieces of broken bottle, affording Quinn an ample view of her cleavage. Normally he would have jumped to assist, but now he had other things on his mind.

“Is she a babe,” Quinn asked after the waitress walked away, her ass now twitching with indignation, “or is she one of those nasty girl-musician-dyke types?”

“What does that matter? You’re gonna play music with her, not fuck her.”

“I don’t want some ugly rug muncher fronting our band, that’s all.”

“Nobody said anything about her fronting. She’s just gonna play guitar.”

Quinn held up three fingers on his right hand. “Three guys.” He raised his left hand, index finger extended. “One girl. And you said she sings. Who do you think everybody’s gonna watch?”

Dan was silent.

“Does she have the right look, is all I’m asking.”

“Enough arguing,” Ty said. “When can we meet her?”

Dan sighed. “I’ll set something up for tomorrow. We need to move fast on this.”

“Can you get ahold of her?” said Ty.

“Yeah, no problem. She’s Denise’s roommate.” Quinn let out a snort and Dan reciprocated with a dirty look. “Q, you are really beginning to bug me, bro. Why don’t you stop with the negativity and give her a chance?”

“I can’t wait.” Quinn said. “I mean, seriously. How many decent female rock guitarists do you know of? Bonnie Raitt. Maybe Nancy Wilson. What are the chances that one just
happens
to be living with your girlfriend?”

Shan’s knees were shakier than ever as she made her way out of Jorge’s building. She hurried a few blocks down to 112th, then cut over Lexington to Desperado’s, a cantina she occasionally played. She recognized the bartender, a tall Latino she knew only as T-Bone. He was a regular at Jorge’s so she avoided him, heading straight for the restroom with her face averted.

Shan squeezed into a stall with Joanie and opened the guitar case. With shaky hands, she pulled out the rock of heroin, a piece of foil, a lighter, and a short plastic straw. Pinching a bit off the rock, she put it on the foil, sparked the lighter, and applied the flame to the bottom of the foil.

The heroin sizzled, its vinegary aroma filling the air. Shan used the tooter to inhale the smoke, savoring its chemical tang. She took one hit, then another. As the first effects began to filter through her brain, she felt the nausea melting away, the shakiness evaporating, and the wonderful lightness stealing over her. She slid to the floor and closed her eyes as she took another hit.

A sudden hammering made her eyes fly open. “There’s a line!” said an angry voice.

But the restroom was empty and she’d only been there a moment. She checked her watch.

It was after eleven. She’d nodded out, for over an hour.
Oh no.

Shan crammed her stuff back in Joanie’s case and stumbled out of the stall, avoiding the hostile glares of the women in line. She left Desperado’s and hurried down the street to the subway station. She missed the eleven-twenty train and was afraid to linger in Spanish Harlem, so she trekked downtown to the next stop. By the time she finally caught the train to Bleecker, it was after midnight. She gave up and rode to her usual stop in SoHo.

Shan wearily climbed the steps to her building and let herself into her apartment. She fastened all the locks, leaned back against the door, and heaved a sigh.

Just as well.
That band was out of her league and she knew it. She went into the dark living room, shrieking when she walked smack into one of her roommates. “
Denise!
You scared me!”

Denise Jennison recoiled. She was a tall, slim girl of twenty-five, with spiky red hair and round blue eyes. “I was waiting up for you. Dan called. I was worried.” She flicked on the light and her eyes widened. “My God, what happened?”

Shan looked down at herself. Her clothes were disheveled and the zipper on her jeans was broken. Her neck hurt, too, and she wondered if she had bruises. She shook her head to clear the H-induced fogginess. “I got mugged,” she improvised, “on the subway.”

Denise gasped. “Are you all right?”

Shan nodded, heading for her bedroom, but Denise dogged her. “Did you call the police?”

“No,” Shan said. “What’s the point?” When Denise erupted into a chorus of protests, Shan interrupted her. “Is Dan furious?”

“No, but—”

“Do you think he’d give me another chance?”

“Definitely,” Denise said. “He wants you to call him first thing tomorrow.”

Shan felt a glimmer of hope. “Good. I’m glad he’s not too angry.”

“For God’s sake, don’t be silly! Just tell him what happened.”

Shan went into her bedroom without replying. She set down Joanie and surveyed her reflection in the mirror. She
did
look awful. The torn clothes and shadowy bruises were the least of it. It was her expression that was most telling. She looked haunted, shell-shocked.

Denise was hovering in the door. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I told you I’m fine,” Shan snapped, then experienced a stab of remorse at the hurt on Denise’s face. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just been a lousy night and I’d like to be alone.”

“Do you want me to make you some tea? There’s chamomile.”

“No thanks. I’m going to take a bath.” She moved past Denise, pausing when she reached the bathroom. “If you talk to Dan before I do, would you tell him I’d still like to audition? I’m gigging at the Grotto tomorrow night. Maybe they could come.”

“Why don’t you invite them over for dinner before you play?” Denise said. “A free meal is always a perk for starving musicians, especially when they’re male.”

“That’s a great idea. I’ll do that. Good night.” Shan closed the bathroom door. She ran a bath as hot as she could stand it and stripped off her ruined clothes, searching for a place to put them. The bathroom was big and cavelike, with heavy black fabric over the window and a countertop cluttered with equipment and vats of chemicals. Denise was a photographer and used the bathroom as a darkroom, so space was tight. Shan closed the lid of the toilet, set her things on top of it, and climbed into the big claw-foot tub.

She wished she could afford to live alone. Both her roommates were fine, nice people really, but she just couldn’t get the hang of the female bonding thing they were so into. Both Denise and Oda Solomon, their third roommate, seemed to view their living arrangement as some sort of substitute family, but Shan had worked too hard to escape her own family to surrender herself into the clutches of another one.

She leaned her head back, rubbing a cake of sandalwood soap between her hands. She closed her eyes, inhaling the bright, woodsy fragrance that rose through the steam. It reminded her of her mother, like it always did. That was why she used it.

Abby O’Hara, who always smelled of sandalwood, had died when Shan was twelve. At the time it had seemed sudden, but now she understood that her mother had been sick for a long time.

The illness didn’t make her mother didn’t look any different, not at first. She was slim and pretty, with the same dark curls and big green eyes as her daughter. She still went to work every day at North Adams State, the western Massachusetts college where she taught piano and voice.

Abby sang like a nightingale, played the guitar as well as the piano, and loved music more than anything in the world. Shan’s earliest memories were like a mixed tape of the music her mother made on her petite Takamine guitar and the records she played on their battered stereo.

Shan loved to sing, too, and from an early age she hummed and crooned almost constantly. As she grew, she trilled rock songs like “Rave On” and “All You Need Is Love” the way other children chanted “The Wheels on the Bus.” She used her toy tambourine to tap out reggae rhythms like the ones she heard on her mother’s Bob Marley records. She listened to rock, bluegrass, gospel, and jazz, but mostly the folk music that was her mother’s passion, especially her idols, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. Abby loved them so much she named her Takamine after them. She had a couple of other guitars, a basic no-name classical and a beautiful Fullerton twelve-string, but always preferred the smaller, sweeter-sounding Joanie.

Abby began teaching Shan to play the piano when she was just five years old. She took to it so quickly that she surprised even her mother, who was used to teaching the musically inclined. By the time she was eight, Shan was playing Mozart from memory and making up her own songs.

At ten, she taught herself to play the guitar. She still remembered the look of amazement on her mother’s face the day she found her with the classical, playing “Blackbird.”

That night after she went to bed, Shan could hear her parents arguing.

“Gary, do you know how difficult that song is?” her mother asked. “I’ve never even given her a guitar lesson. And her voice,” she added, “her pitch—it’s unbelievable.”

“Forget it, Abby,” her father said. “You know we don’t have that kind of money.”

“But she’s gifted,” her mother persisted. “She can hit notes that even I can’t sing. LeBarron is the best music school in Berkshire County. That’s where she belongs.”