Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) (37 page)

It felt like the members of Quinntessence had only just gotten back from their first tour, but already it was time for the second one. Shan knew it would be a crazy, confusing kaleidoscope of concert halls, hotel rooms, restaurants, and highways, just like the first tour had been.

When
Quinntessence: Innocence
was released nearly nine months before, it had performed quite well. “Black Mile” had achieved hit status, rising to an impressive number sixteen on the national chart, and Cardinal had been quick to pluck another single from the album, “Voluntary Exile
.
” They’d commissioned a video, at which point Quinntessence was assigned a production manager and a rep from the artist and repertoire department, then turned over to a team of stylists tasked with creating a “brand” prior to the shoot. All of them received a makeover and Quinn insisted upon personally approving every suggestion made by Rachel, their A&R rep. He had only cursory comments about the looks proposed for any of the male band members, even his own, but he had strong opinions about Shan’s.

“She’s the face of the band, so she shouldn’t look too girly,” he said. “Not trashy, either. I don’t want her coming across as a Madonna or Cyndi Lauper clone. As a musician, Shan has an edge. She’s unique and her look should reflect that.” And it did, when the stylists were finished with her. They’d primped, plucked, and waxed her to within an inch of her life. They’d made her get her teeth fixed, put her on a regular regime of facials to improve her skin, and tinted her hair, giving it a purplish sheen that she thought looked cool.

Next they turned to her wardrobe, fastening on to the hippie boho style that she favored and suggesting enough quirky touches and accessories to give her a look all her own. She now wore her favorite hot-pink baby doll dress with Doc Martens and oversized sunglasses, her hair rolled up into a high, messy bun to reveal chunky turquoise earrings. She performed in a flowing, cambridge floral print with gladiator sandals and a long linen scarf. She was photographed for a
Spin
interview in low-rise denim shorts and a brief, lacy tank, with her hair cascading from the back of a black leather baseball cap and studded ankle boots on her feet. She loved the clothes, although she felt like she was in costume every time she went out.

Quinn’s look didn’t change much. His preference in clothing was simple, good cuts and muted colors, and he still dressed that way, although his stylist had outfitted him with a dozen pairs of soft leather pants that made his derriere look like a sculpture. Dan suffered from the heat onstage, so he preferred Jams and wife-beaters, or going shirtless altogether. This was permitted, but Rachel produced a collection of funky vests and engaged a personal trainer to give some definition to his abs. Ty’s look fell somewhere between hip-hop and beatnik while Dave, the peacock of the band, acquired an array of bright scarves and studded belts that he wore with tight jeans and spandex T-shirts snug enough to reveal his killer physique.

“Voluntary Exile” debuted at number thirty-two, leapt to the twelve spot when the video hit the channels, and Cardinal sent the band on tour. It meant four months on the road, Lorraine explained, although they were expected to be back in California no later than October 1 to begin recording their next album.

Four months?
“What about Sugaree?” Shan had asked Quinn.

He frowned. “I don’t think we should bring her, Shan. Maybe next time, but she’s too little to be stuck on a bus for that long. Let’s see if Denise will keep her.”

Denise was delighted to dog sit. She’d been recently promoted to a full staff photographer position at the
Weekly
and had no desire to give it up in order to follow the band around. Since she’d be the only one in the house while the others were on tour, she was happy for some company.

The tour commenced with Quinntessence playing a series of openers, R.E.M. in Philly, the Smashing Pumpkins in New York, and the Spin Doctors in Charleston. They appeared alongside Siouxsie and the Banshees and Liz Phair, even played Lollapalooza with Jane’s Addiction and Nine Inch Nails.

For four months the tour bus was home, a forty-five-foot coach complete with a shower, kitchen, well-stocked bar, even a laundry room. It comfortably accommodated all five of them as well as the driver, a curmudgeonly fellow named Fred. Most nights they stayed in hotels that ranged from the five-star Carlyle in New York to the downright scary Peach Bottom Inn in Mobile, Alabama. Their Tulsa show coincided with an aerospace convention, so they wound up at a fleabag where the accommodations included a herd of cattle in an adjacent feedlot that bellowed all night long and a used condom that fell out of a bath towel Shan was unfolding.

She called Quinn’s room. “I can’t take a shower!”

“Why not?”

She told him. “It’s lying on the floor, like a snake. I can’t bring myself to touch it!”

He was there in a flash to dispose of the offensive object for her, but had a good laugh later when he regaled their bandmates with the story. Condom jokes were a guaranteed hit these days, since the bus held an apparently endless supply. There was a big bowl of them, all colors and varieties, on the coffee table in the common area. They turned up everywhere, on the counters, in the bunks, garnishing the frozen margaritas Dave liked to whip up in the galley. Once Dan woke from a particularly savage bender to find his entire body festooned with them, like a safe-sex Christmas tree. Fred kept the blue bowl stocked, grumbling when he saw how rapidly its stores were depleted.

It was a matter of serious contention to Shan, too, how quickly the condom bowl was emptied. Her bandmates regularly utilized the bus to avail themselves of the groupies who materialized after every show. She’d raised it as an issue more than once. “I think it’s disgusting,” she told Quinn, Dave, and Ty. Dan appeared to be maintaining a monogamous state, at least in front of her. If he wasn’t, she didn’t want to know. “All three of you had girls in there at the same time after the Dallas show.”

“We used different bunks, though,” Dave assured her.

Shan wrinkled her nose. “That’s just nasty, and I couldn’t even come on board to change my clothes. It’s so disrespectful, the way you treat those girls.”

“They’re not girls,” Quinn said. “They’re groupies.”

“They’re still people,” she insisted.

“Barely. You ought to know by now that they’re a different species. Groupies are like cats in heat. You can do anything to them and they beg for more.”

Shan refrained from further comment, before he said anything more specific about what he did to them. She didn’t want to know that, either. She already knew far too much about his sex life as it was. Quarters were adequate, but tight, and there were no secrets on the bus.

Occasionally they had to drive through the night to make it to the next show on time. As the only female, Shan was awarded the master stateroom, which boasted the most comfortable bed, a full-sized queen, as well as a loveseat that unfolded into an additional berth. There was a pull-out couch in the common area for sleeping, as well as four bunks curtained for privacy and a tiny compartment behind the driver’s seat where Fred napped during the day.

The upper bunks were the least desirable sleeping quarters, especially after both Dave and Quinn were launched out of them in Minnesota, when Fred slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a moose on the road. Whenever they had to spend the night on board after that, Dave slept on the couch in the common area while Quinn took possession of the pull-out in Shan’s stateroom. He was in there all the time anyway, since they used the space for composing while they traveled from city to city, show to show.

It was also the designated drug-free zone, a haven where they could escape the rampant partying. The cloud of pot smoke was perpetual, the amount of alcohol consumed staggering, but it was the more powerful chemical usage that bothered both of them. Shan had discovered lines of coke cut out on the condom table, heard her bandmates giggling in what she was sure was a hallucinogenic state, and, just once, smelled a rich, vinegary tang that she knew was burning heroin. That night she locked herself in the stateroom and didn’t emerge until morning, opening the door only to admit a grim-faced Quinn.

She’d felt guilty taking the only bed and had offered to share it with him. He’d declined, kindly but firmly, but that night he’d climbed in alongside her. He held her as she shook, overcome with a craving she hadn’t experienced since before the tour when she’d unsuccessfully tried to wean herself off methadone, and the next morning she heard him upbraiding Dave.

“You will be out of this band if you ever bring smack on this bus again, Dave,” Quinn was yelling, really screaming, “and I personally will break every bone in your fucking body!” Shan knew that Quinn didn’t really have the authority to fire anyone anymore, not since they’d gotten signed, but Dave apparently still respected his authority. She never smelled H on board again.

During the tour Shan found herself clinging to Quinn more than ever, their relationship the one constant in the bewildering, constantly shifting montage her life had become. More than ever he was her family and that was how he treated her, familiar, comfortable, with an offhanded affection that was carefully devoid of passion.

Most of the time, anyway. Every so often he’d drink enough to catch a good buzz and, on those occasions, he touched her. A lot. He’d finger her lips, wind his hands through her hair, fondle her arm or shoulder or leg with covert, feathery strokes that brought goose bumps to her flesh and a painful neediness to her groin. It was still there, the heat between them, stewing and simmering, but these days he dedicated his energy to only two things: making music and having sex with as many women, excluding Shan, as he possibly could.

So she was still waiting, something that got harder and harder as time went by, especially after the shows when she’d watch him vanish into the bus with an anonymous groupie, sometimes more than one, and she hated him at those times, but needed him, too, and loved him no matter what he did.

She was glad when the tour ended and they could go home, but the breakneck pace let up only slightly even then. They had to be back in the studio immediately, to record the second of the four albums for which they were contracted. They’d produced a slew of material while they were on the road, heavy with themes of movement and journey and quest. The band set right in to learning, then practicing and honing the new songs, and by Thanksgiving they’d completed recording on their second album,
Quinntessence: Odyssey.

Before it was even mastered, plans for the next tour were well under way, not to mention preparations of a different sort. Denise and Dan were finally getting married, a fancy holiday wedding strategically scheduled to occur toward the end of the band’s hiatus so that the newlyweds would have time for a honeymoon before Quinntessence set back out on the road.

It was a flowery, festive affair, Denise having spent the better part of the past year, and most of Dan’s advance, planning and funding it. Shan had to don a sea-foam frock for her role as maid of honor. Green was usually her best color, but this dress made her look like a piece of seaweed and she consoled herself with the notion that at least she’d get to walk down the aisle with best man Quinn, an event she knew was unlikely to recur during her lifetime.

The best part of the wedding was that Oda flew out for it. Shan had spent the night with her when the band played the Beacon Theatre in New York, but had to depart before seven the next morning. On the eve of the wedding, the three former roomies holed up in a suite at the LA Biltmore where the reception was taking place.

“One of you needs to loan me something,” Denise said, examining her bridal costume. “You know, something old, something new…”

“Here, you can borrow this,” Shan said, taking off a delicate silver necklace.

“How beautiful,” Denise exclaimed, as Shan fastened the chain around her neck. It was a tiny eighth note carved out of jade. “Where did you get it?”

“Quinn bought it for me, at an outdoor market in San Francisco.” She smiled slightly. “He said the color reminded him of my eyes.”

Denise grimaced. “No thanks.” She unfastened the necklace and handed it back to Shan. “Oda, can I borrow your pearl earrings instead?”

The wedding was lovely, if over the top. Dan and Denise flew to Puerto Vallarta for a weeklong honeymoon and, when they returned, they moved into the small house they’d purchased, a sweet bungalow in Pasadena. Ty was buying a home, too, a Santa Monica condo, which left only Shan and Quinn in the canyon house.

He’d insisted that it was pointless to keep the place when there’d be nobody living in it, so they’d given notice and now the movers were here. Their belongings were boxed, ready to be transported to a storage facility in nearby Sunland. Their bags were packed. The limo was outside, waiting to take them to the bus. They were ready.

After Quinn finished fussing with the bags, he straightened up and looked at Shan. “What’s wrong?” he asked when he saw her melancholy expression.

“I feel sad,” she said. “I’m going to miss this place.”

“You’ve hardly been here during the past year.”

“I know, but it’s still been home. Even when we were on the road I knew it was here waiting for me, with all my stuff and Denise and Sugaree.”

“You’ll have a new home,” he promised, “six or eight months from now, when we finish the tour. Till then your stuff will be in storage, home will be the bus, and Suge will be with us. Okay?” She nodded and he hefted her suitcase, heading for the stairs.

Shan slung her purse over her shoulder, then paused for one last look at her room. Out the window she saw the creek bed where she’d birthed so many songs, the trail where she and Sugaree had taken their hikes, the mountain where she’d once made love with Quinn. She’d been happy here, happier than at any time since her mother died.

Then she took up the backpack and followed Quinn down the stairs, Sugaree at her heels, ready for the next phase.