She-Rox: A Rock & Roll Novel (3 page)

At 9:40 a.m., Eddie’s cell phone shot into the morning air. “Hello?”

“Eddie?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“Oh good, I’ve found you. It’s Ginger. We gotta talk.”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“No, not now, can you meet me at The Roxy? I’ll be there tonight.”

“I don’t get off work till eleven.”

“That’s perfect.”

“Can you put my name at the door?” Eddie asked.

“Just cell me when you get there. I won’t be able to talk because Gretchen’s going to be with me.

At 11:15 p.m., Eddie stood outside the club on Sunset Boulevard and dialed Ginger’s number. Ginger, not answering, showed up in no time, asking, “So, where’s your ride?”

“My van is around the corner,” Eddie motioned with her thumb.

“Great.”

Seated in the dark of Eddie’s van, Ginger decided it was safe enough to spill. “Okay, here’s the deal. All that stuff that Gretchen has been telling you about how we don’t need another guitarist . . . well, it’s not exactly true. We do, badly. Our management is ready to let us go if we don’t hand them a commercially viable song to shop to the record companies, and I mean like yesterday. We were in Todd Rivers’ office—you know who that is, right?”

Eddie nodded.

“We were in his office about a month ago and he was listening to the songs we had been working on . . . well . . . he
hated
them,” Ginger said.

“He didn’t
hate
‘em, Ginger”.

“No, hate is the word.” She continued, “Todd yanked Vince out into the hallway and told him that our music was
stale.
We had a band meeting and Vince told us we have one more chance. He suggested we get another member to help us out. The only other option was to use other songwriters who have top Billboard hits, but there’s no way my sister would go for that. She wants her band, her songs, her everything. If we don’t give Todd a hit, we’re going to be dropped from our management and getting dropped means we would have to move out of the house . . . Eddie,
I can’t move out of that house and back to Nebraska. I won’t do it
. So, I’m talking to you because you came over and did all that stuff with ‘Forever Blonde’ and we
really
need your help. Gretchen, she just has major LSD.”

“LSD?-”

“Lead singer’s disease”, Ginger said.

“Is that it?” Eddie asked.

“No, there’s more. Gretchen heard Todd tearing her stuff apart. She got ticked off about that, too. Mad as I’ve ever seen, so she stole his Grammy from his office, put it in her purse, and I’ve got to figure out a way to get it back.”

“No wonder you wanted to talk to me in my van. Todd Rivers has been nominated the last three years in a row for one of those. He looked positively relieved when they finally called his name.”

“Three times . . . I didn’t know that. If word gets out that the Katz stole the great Todd Rivers’ Grammy, we’ll probably get blackballed in this entire town.
I don’t want to go back to Nebraska.”

Eddie tried to console her saying, “Sorry, but that is probably the craziest story I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, well this is L.A. You’ll get used to crazy.”

“Who’s Cart-A-Crash?”

“How do you know about Crash?”

“When I called to speak with Gretchen the first time she, uh, brought it up.”

“He’s some guy that wrote this dumb song and our band is getting a bunch of heat to seriously consider recording it.”

“Is it any good?”

“Sure,” Ginger shrugged, “if you wanna rap . . . ‘
I kicked him to the curb, what he asked was absurd, I got a pocketful of John’s who’ll do one better, better -- word.’
”

“Catchy.”

“Uh hum.”

“What about your sister?”

“You leave her to me. I’ve got enough dirt on her to start a landfill.”

“What if we don’t get along—you know musically—the direction of the band?”

“You wanna talk musical direction or do you want a recording contract? Because if you’d rather, I’m sure you could spend the next four years going from one audition to another till you find just the right fit that matches your musical direction.”
Ginger stopped. “Or you could take a chance and maybe go for the ride of your life. If I didn’t feel you were right for the band, do you think I’d actually tell you about Todd and the Grammy?”

Eddie drove back to her apartment that night. The news of the stolen Grammy didn’t even make her flinch. She wanted to tell Tara June, but T.J. would tell Kai.

“I saw you leave the club, alone,” Gretchen said. “Couldn’t find a worthy candidate?”

“No, I found one alright . . . Dom Perignon,” Ginger sneered.

“Some nights, that’s all there is.”

“I met up with Eddie.”

“Was he any good?”

“No,
Eddie
– the girl that came over and worked on ‘Forever Blonde.’ The girl you practically dropped kicked out of the house.”

“You mean that condescending have-piano-will-travel opportunistic little weasel that tried to con her way into our band . . . that Eddie? I’ve yet to see anyone twist chords into submission like that. Talk about desperate.”

“We’re the ones who’re desperate.”

“I am not letting that Star Search reject come anywhere near us.”

“We need help.”

“No we don’t.”

“Gretchen, your last song, ‘Two-Timer,’ could be your last hurrah.”

“I like ‘Two-Timer.’ It’s got rock and roll swagger.”

“No, it doesn’t—it’s not even good enough to be labeled vintage and management is ready to throw us out of here like a sandwich past its due date.”

“I’m working on some lyrics – good ones.”

“Lyrics require soul searching.”

“I’m loaded with soul, baby.”

“No, you’re just loaded.”

“Ginger, what’s with the hostility?”

“What’s with stealing Todd’s Grammy?” she cried. “Trying to land us on the six o’clock news?-”

“So we get a little media. We get attention, we get entre—the guys in this business have been getting away with insane behavior—girls have barely scratched the surface. We’re expected to do this kind of stuff—glue furniture on the ceilings, throw TV’s out windows—steal Grammy’s. There’s no such thing as bad press.”

“The press, yeah, but you took Todd’s bragging rights. Do you know what that’s like in a town like this? Industry people
live and die
for that kind of shit. He’d been nominated three times before he finally snagged one.”

“How do you know that?”

“Oddly enough, Eddie told me.”

“Here we go again. Can we leave her out of this?”

“No.”

“She’s not getting an audition.”

“Yes she is.”

“No, she’s not.”

“Your right, she’s not getting an audition. She’s already in.”

“Are you high?”

“She’s in the band, Gretchen, or I’ll do something that’ll make your Grammy screw-up look civilized.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Yep.”

“With what?”

“Jeremy.”

The Kat House, October 2006

Eddie dumped her belongings into her new room, as Ginger shouted, “Daphne’s here!”

Daphne, the band's stylist, came over every other Saturday morning to weigh the girls and make sure the house rules were followed.

When Eddie got to the top of the stairs she saw a peach-fuzzy-blonde woman wearing a white tank top. Daphne smiled and said, “Ah, there she is,” as she looked Eddie over. “How tall are you?” she asked.

“Five-nine-ish” Eddie said.

“Good, good, and your exercise regime?”

“Nonexistent.”

“Well, that’s going to change.”

After weigh in, Daphne walked Eddie downstairs to give her “the talk.” Eddie expected Daphne to walk her back to her room, but instead she turned the opposite direction at the bottom of the stairs and opened another door. Eddie was met with a small but complete home gym.

After a ten-minute rundown on the apparatus, Daphne dove in. “My dear,” she said, “you are a beautiful and, no doubt, talented girl. That is why you made it here. There will be times when you may want to overeat due to stress, frustration, anger or boredom. You will have pressures from rude people, pushy fans, photographers, industry heads, travel, late nights, rehearsal, stress of live performing, interviews and little sleep.

“There will be a smorgasbord of drugs offered to you at industry parties. These parties are considered business and need to be treated as such. Your behavior will be watched.”

Eddie nodded.

“Now, the house rules,” Daphne said. She took a deep breath, and began, “The only people allowed to stay overnight in this house are you four girls. This means no boyfriends, no one-night stands, no brothers from out of town. No stray dogs or cats, or musician friends who haven’t paid their rent and want to sack out on the couch. Do drugs of any kind and you are immediately out of the band. You come around here looking like a crack-head—you’re gone. Your image is everything to the Astral Agency.”

Eddie let her hands slap onto her thighs and said, “Okay.”

“The girls are all heading to band rehearsal after this. You might want to get a ride with Raven. She will show you where the band room is and can be very instrumental, shall we say, not only on the bass, but in helping you navigate the waters that are all things G-Force.”