Brando 2 (6 page)

“What
the fuck is this?!”
I
hear her scream as I walk through the lobby of the Texas hotel with
my band. “
‘Mildly
interesting voice’?
What does that even mean?
‘Songs
that don’t
match her stage presence’?
Who the fuck is this guy?”

I
turn to see Lexi sitting with her entourage in the lobby’s
lounge area, so many of them there aren’t
even enough couches. She tosses the tablet toward one of her crew,
almost hitting him on the head with it, then turns her head and
notices me.

“There
she is! The fucking usurper!”

She
even talks like an under-threat queen now. My bandmates look at me,
but I nod for them to go on through to have breakfast without me. I
can handle Lexi.

She
gets up and stalks toward me, her long legs bringing her near me in a
couple of strides. “You
read the review?”
she
says, her voice low but menacing. “They’re
saying you’re
putting on a better show than me.”

“Lexi,”
I
sigh. I don’t
have time for this. I’m
too hungry and it’s
too early in the morning to get into a catfight. “It
was Austin –
they
like guitar music down there, that’s
all.”

“Oh,
that’s
very fucking magnanimous of you. Easy to be gracious when you’re
the one getting all the praise, isn’t
it?”

“Since
when do you care about reviews, Lexi?”

“Since
they started talking shit about me, that’s
when,” she
hisses, leaning in. “I
know exactly what you’re
trying to do. It won’t
work.”

I
lower my head, pushing down the instinct to bite back at her crazed
paranoia.

“It
was one show,”
I
say slowly. “The
reviews for every date we did on the West Coast were positive about
you. I was lucky to get a paragraph at the bottom for most of them.”

Lexi’s
face doesn’t
soften, but some of the venom disappears from her eyes.

“Maybe
you’re
right about the hicks down here,”
she
says. She starts slinking away, but then stops and turns back around,
the menace still lingering. “You’d
better hope so.”

I
almost run off stage when the set’s
over, my blood boiling, my hands clenched into fists, heat behind my
eyes. I’m
so angry I could punch a wall right now. I storm through the
backstage area and continue marching down the hall, breathing fire
and clenching my teeth.

I
stop, tense every muscle in my stomach, and scream.

“Fuck!”

Then
continue steaming ahead with livid, aimless determination.

Brando’s
the only person who’s
dumb enough to come near me, running sideways beside me to keep up as
I burst through one door after another.

“Haley,
what happened?”
he
says, his voice muffled and distant beyond the cloud of my
frustration.

“Haley?”
he
repeats. “Talk
to me.”

I
stop tensely and face him.

“My
fucking guitar! First it was…out
of tune…then
too loud, then too quiet. I played the first half of my set sounding
like some amateur at a fourth-grade school recital. Then when Mike
gave me another one of my effects pedals, it was all on the wrong
settings.”

“I
don’t
get it.”
Brando
shakes his head. “It
was fine during soundcheck.”

He
looks to the side and notices Mike standing at the end of the
hallway, carrying my guitar and arguing with someone.

“Mike!”
he
shouts. The long-haired guitar tech runs toward us with apologetic
confusion written all over his face. “What
the fuck happened?”

He
holds the guitar up and shakes his head. “I
don’t
know, seriously dude. The guitar’s
a mess. The strings are way out of tune, the neck has a bow in it,
and one of the pick-ups is coming loose. I swear, I’ve
never seen anything like this. Maybe it’s
the dry air, but…I
don’t
know, dude. It must have got knocked over or something.”
He
turns to me and hangs his head. “I’m
sorry. I swear, it won’t
happen again. I’ll
take the guitar off stage right after soundchecks from now on, and
double-check everything right up until you go on—”

“It’s
okay, Mike,” I
say, putting a hand on his shoulder. I look at Brando. “I
know who did this.”

Brando
waits, and I wonder if he knows what I’m
going to say.

“Lexi.”

“No,”
Brando
says. “She’d
never—”

“Yes.
She would. She’s
scared that my show might get more attention than hers, and this is
the only way she knows how to stop that.”

Brando
pushes his hair back with his hand and looks up at the ceiling.
“Sabotaging
your set?”

“What?
Is it out of character for her?”
I
reply, voice drenched in sarcasm. “Does
it go against her strict moral code? You’re
right. Lexi’s
the kind of person who takes criticism constructively, and would be
really happy for me if I started upstaging her.”

“Okay,
okay,” Brando
admits. “It
could have been her. Look, Mike, you make sure you take extra care
with the instruments for the upcoming gigs. We’ll
do soundchecks closer to the concert time, and I want you to
double-check everything –
not
just the instruments, the amps, the mics, the lighting –
everything.”

“I
swear,”
Mike
says, nodding vigorously before turning back down the hallway, still
shaking his head at the guitar.

Brando
turns back to me.

“Look,
don’t
jump to conclusions, Haley. I know Lexi can seem like somebody poured
pure evil into a pair of Louboutins, but she’s
still a musician. She wouldn’t
do something like this.”

“You
heard Mike,”
I
say, skeptically. “Somebody
fucked with my guitar. If not her, then who else? Nobody else hates
me like she does.”

Brando
shrugs. “Lexi
isn’t
in touch with reality. She has hundreds of people around her –
working
for her, depending on her. If she doesn’t
do well, they don’t
get her crumbs. Any one of them could have thought it was a good
idea. Lexi doesn’t
have a clue what half her entourage does for her. She lives in a
bubble.”

“When
do I get a bubble?”

He
laughs warmly. “I’m
not saying don’t
watch your back, I’m
just saying that right now you’re
doing awesome. And this kind of thing is the price you pay when
people start noticing how awesome you are. There’s
always someone, somewhere, who’ll
try to bring you down. You’ve
got to just roll with it, to be tough.”

I
let a pouting smile form on my lips, put my hand on his chest, and
slowly caress his front from his six-pack to his pecs. “Brando,
I’m
much tougher than you think,”
I
say, before pushing him away. “I
know I’m
in this alone.”
I
take a few steps backwards down the hall, facing him still. “The
question is: Do you?”
I
say, before turning my back to him and walking away.

Brando

By
the time we get to New York, the final show on the tour, I’m
going out of my mind. It’s
one thing to want a girl so badly you could fill a book with the
things you want to do to her, but it’s
a whole new level of ball-ache when she’s
everywhere you look.

In
every town we go to, I get calls all day long asking for a few
minutes with the hot new star, pleading music reporters sounding as
desperate as I feel. The photo shoots we did for the first single
start popping up on magazines and newspapers, her sexy eyes and
slightly-less-than-innocent smile tempting me to tear out the pages
and do bad things to myself like a guilty schoolboy. And to top it
all off, night after night I have to watch her go on stage and become
a guitar-playing goddess, making thousands of fans go as crazy for
her as I am. Jealous every time I see her put her lips close to the
mic, curling her fingers slowly around it…

I
was a bad enough wreck when I lost her, but being near her like this
is a torture that even a war couldn’t
justify. She’s
growing with every show, getting sexier with every victory. It’s
not just me noticing anymore, every member of the crew who works with
her, anyone who catches a glimpse of her shows realizes that they’re
in the presence of something special, that this is the start of a
star being born.

The
good thing is that Haley’s
progress is making everyone work at the top of their game. I’ve
never seen so many people willing and eager to do the best job they
can out of love for an artist, but the bad thing is that I haven’t
had a moment alone with her since our unlit private encore after her
first gig. I have to barge my way through a crowd of people every
time I want to ask her something.

But
I’m
not completely out of action yet, and if I have to play a little
dirty, then so be it.

I
pace a little, standing at the steps of the MOMA. I check my watch
and stick my hands back deep inside the pockets of my designer
jacket. I miss New York, but not the cold –
I
find it much easier to look good with fewer clothes on.

I
notice her immediately when she emerges from the bustle of people and
traffic, how could I not in those tight patterned leggings and the
same leather jacket she seems to wear like a security blanket. I
smile as she draws near.

“Where’s
everyone else?”
she
asks as soon as she’s
in earshot.

“Who?”

She
gives out a deep laugh, one that says ‘I
get it.’

“My
band?
”
she
says, deciding to play the game a little with me. “Aren’t
we going on a tour of the city?”

“Oh
yeah,” I
say, offering my arm for her to take. “Your
band is sitting on top of a sight-seeing bus right now, probably
freezing their asses off. You, on the other hand, get the special
treatment.”

She
starts walking beside me, our arms linked.

“What
kind of ‘special
treatment’
is
that?”

“You
get to see New York with a real New Yorker. The authentic
experience,”
I
say, leading her up the steps to the museum. “The
good
bagels and coffee.”

“And
the good pizza?”

“And
the best shops on Fifth Avenue.”

“And
the nicest drug dealer in Central Park?”

“And
the rudest, smelliest cab driver.”

She
throws her head back and laughs. I can’t
help joining in.

Even
though it’s
been a long time since we were alone with each other, it doesn’t
take long for us to slip into same rhythm we had before: Easy,
laid-back, and with more than a little sexual tension in the spaces
between our jokes. We amble around the museum, dedicating as much of
our attention to each other as we do to the masterpieces around us.
Haley asks me to take pictures of her next to a Georgia O’Keeffe
with the giggling excitement of a schoolgirl, and she’s
anything but the hottest young star on the music scene, nothing like
the magnetizing whirlwind of energy that her fans can never be near
enough to.

When
we’re
done passing amateur judgment on the art, we leave the museum and I
buy us a couple of hot dogs at a stand outside Central Park. I hand
hers over and wait.

“What
are you looking at?”
she
says, holding the hot dog inches away from her lips.

“Just
watching you take a bite out of that hot dog.”

She
grins and rolls her eyes. I half-expect her to turn her back and eat
it, but instead she locks her eyes onto mine, and takes a slow,
soft-lipped bite. I know she’s
playing it for laughs, but the almost heart-attack inducing rush of
blood to my cock is no joke. She chews with a smile, and after
swallowing says, “Damn,
that’s
good. You satisfied?”

“Mind
doing that again?”

She
punches my arm and we laugh as we start walking through the park.

“So
what do you wanna do?”
I ask.
“Times
Square? The Empire State? We should have enough time still for the
boat to the Statue of Liberty.”

Haley
groans.

“Ugh.
I’ve
seen those things so many times on TV I feel like I’ve
already been there. Didn’t
you say you were gonna give me the ‘authentic’
New
York? Why don’t
you show me the places you used to hang out?”

I
breathe in through my teeth. “You
sure? The places I used to hang out sure weren’t
LA.”

“All
the more reason to see them,”
she
challenges.

I’ve
never liked introducing girls to my friends. The last time I did that
was with Lexi, and she had a habit of arguing with them and making
them hate her, or flirting with them and making me hate her. With
Haley, though, nothing ever feels tough. She’s
almost too good to be true. I start hoping she’ll
disappoint me, let me down, or just show me a flaw, so that not
having her will be a lot easier, but she never does.

We
take the subway to Brooklyn, and I take her on a whirlwind tour of
the record stores, instrument stores, and studios that I know better
than I’ll
ever know LA, and where the owners treat me like I was just there
yesterday. Haley dives into the stacks of records like a kid on
Christmas, and drinks in every drop of history from the dirty corners
and graffiti-stained walls of the forgotten parts of the city. I
watch her face light up as my friends tell her the same stories of
landmark gigs and famous musicians I’ve
heard a million times, but feel new now that I’m
hearing them with her.

We
head back to Manhattan and duck into an old Irish pub to have a few
drinks, but by the time we get out it’s
already gotten dark and the temperature’s
dropped a few more degrees.

“You
know, the Mercury Lounge is just a few blocks away,”
I
say, as we step out of the loud bar onto the street. “I
got a good tip that there’s
a pretty hot, unsigned band there doing their first gig in New York.”