Exile (18 page)

Royce leads me down branching hallways, and we leave the shimmery entry spaces and enter grid after grid of cubicles similar to Maya’s. Charts, graphs, a drab kitchenette with a stained coffee machine, a stark conference room.

We pass through a graphic design department and briefly everything looks like I had imagined and I am in love: everyone’s workspace is cluttered with posters, sketches, album covers, and they’re dressed in jeans and T-shirts and sundresses, with stubbly chins and barrettes and thick glasses. After that it’s back to crisp shirts and graphs and charts.

Finally we reach a closed office door. Royce knocks.
“One sec!” the voice calls from inside.

Royce checks her watch. She has astonishing eyelash extensions and a body like a comic book, all straining against a tweed skirt and blouse. Her face seems to have no pores, no hairs. Is she even a mammal? Also: this is what Ethan was into when I wasn’t around? Gross.

She has yet to look at me and she pops open the door in spite of Jason’s request and ushers me in wordlessly.

I’m expecting to find Jason kicked back at his desk, feet up, but he’s hunched over a chaos of papers, his neck kinked to hold his phone. “I know, right just . . . um—one sec.” He glances up. “Thanks, Royce,” he says sarcastically. “Stick around to bring her back out, ’kay?”

“Mmm.” She nods icily and closes the door. I hear her heels clicking away.

Jason gestures to the single chair in front of his desk. It’s a hurried motion, not the cocky guy from the party. I don’t sit right away.

The office is barely wider than his desk. There’s a skinny window behind him that looks out on another wing of the building, a small couch behind me, and a bookcase to my left that houses a mishmash of CDs and books. I notice some rock biographies, and also some business-y books, with titles like
Spotting the Talent Within
and
Predict the Next Big Thing!

On the right wall is a collage frame: photos of Jason with various celebrities. I see Jeff Tweedy and Katy Perry.
In the one of him and Michael Stipe from R.E.M. he must be, like, thirteen. And in that shot and many others, Daddy Jerrod is never far away.

“I understand that, Mel,” Jason is saying back into the phone. “Pre-sales aren’t my problem.” He taps his pencil rapid-fire against the clutter of papers on his desk. “I get that the promoter is unhappy, but honestly, it’s freakin’ Memphis. Where does he think he—no, I . . . yeah. Of course distributors matter. Listen, I gotta go. Okay—no, I will. Definitely.”

He hangs up and for just a moment, I see what is maybe stress on his face . . . but then he looks up at me with a jackal’s smile. “Hey, intern.”

“I thought someone as successful as you would have a bigger office.” It doesn’t feel like the best barb, but I can’t think of another.

“My office is in here,” Jason says, tapping his eraser against his temple. “Besides, when you’re the boss’s son, everyone expects you to take a big office upstairs. But I have no intention of just following in Daddy’s footsteps.”

It’s the first thing he’s ever said that I can relate to. I nod to the phone. “Sounds like trouble in Memphis. That’s where Postcards’s next show is, right?” I’ve been tracking their tour online.

Jason shrugs. “The record’s not hitting there. What can you do.”

“Why did you send them there before you built a fan base?”

Jason wags his pencil at me. “See? This is why you’d make such a good intern. My job is talent, seeing it, knowing it, and bringing it in. You could play the role of the plucky whiz kid, and we could own this label in a year.”

The vision of me, professionally dressed buyer-of-lunch-for-impressed-parentals, flashes across my mind again. I do my best not to show it. “Am I supposed to swoon?”

“Summer,” he says, “look, you can’t take it personally that you got cut out of Postcards from Ariel’s contract. You’re a kid. This is a grown-up’s game. Nobody is going to take you seriously as a band’s manager, because you don’t know how the game is played. You can’t. You’re too busy being this little idealist, which is totally fine—hell, necessary. This place could use more of it. But you’re not a shark. You’re more like an adorable parrot fish. You’re not meant for the big open sea—”

“Okay, I get the analogy already.” I know I should know this. That it shouldn’t hurt. But it does anyway. And yet also, I’ve spent so much time loathing Jason that it’s surprising to me to hear that, of all the people, he sounds like he’s taking what I do seriously.

This internship might be enough to reschedule a college trip, too . . .

But I still have this deep, whirring feeling inside that somehow this would be wrong, that it would be putting Caleb and his music, the whole band, and my soul, at risk. Last year we read
Animal Farm
, and isn’t this it? The pigs become the men, the parrot fish becomes the shark, or whatever other unappealing metaphor you want to use. Maybe I could resist it. Or maybe I’m being horribly naive to think I could, or that I even should.

There’s a knock at the door and Jason stands. “Ah, good.” A gruff-looking girl in goth makeup, a tank top, and jeans comes in and hands him a printout. “Thaaank you, Carla,” says Jason, then to me, “Had my graphics girl whip this up for you.”

I hear her sigh as she walks back out the door. So far it seems like nobody working here likes Jason. This makes me laugh to myself.

“What?” Jason asks.

“Nothing. Just . . . I don’t think Carla liked you calling her your graphics gal.”

Jason glances at the door as if this hasn’t occurred to him. I wonder if his biggest problem is that he just isn’t that aware of how he comes across. “See how valuable you are?” Like that, does he mean it to sound as slippery as it does? “Anyway, check this out:”

He hands me what I now see is a poster. It’s got a cool, spacey design, and reads:

THE AUDIO FACTORY

presents

SUNDAYS ON MARS

October 27, 10 p.m.

with special guest opener

DANGERHEART

featuring Caleb Daniels,

son of Allegiance to North’s Eli White

I read that last line and my breath catches in my throat. Jason steps back and leans against the window, arms crossed, and he grins and I realize:

The trap has been sprung.

Think fast. Sound casual
. “Oh,” I say, “so, you know about Caleb’s dad.”

“Surprised?” says Jason. “You shouldn’t be. Everybody knows. Well, I mean, everybody connected to Allegiance.”

“Caleb didn’t even know, until a month ago.”

“Nope. After Eli died, Caleb’s mom was adamant that he not be told. She wanted him to grow up out of the spotlight. Everyone honored that. But we’ve of course had our eye on him. And I mean, I can’t put Dangerheart on a bill of this magnitude just based on that performance at the Trial.”

“Caleb doesn’t want to make it on his dad’s name,” I say.

Jason laughs. “Is that the career advice he’s getting from Moonstone Artist Management?”

“It’s—They’re going to be great on their own,” I say.

Jason shrugs. “Maybe. But . . .” He points back to the flyer. “Come on. Ask me how I knew.”

“How you knew . . .”

“How did I know that Caleb knew? That’s the question, isn’t it?”

He’s right. It is my question. I just didn’t want to ask it.

Jason doesn’t wait for me to ask. Cue full-on shark grin, multiple rows of jagged whites, as he says, “You told me.”

I feel a flush of nerves, heart scrambling, and I try to think of what I could have done. I haven’t posted anything about it. . . .

“Or I should say, you gave me the hint. Let’s see . . .” Jason is searching on his phone. “Here: ‘People have this idea about LA. I have that idea and I live here. But then there is this other LA . . .’ You posted that on Friday night to Twitter and BandSpace.”

“So what? And also, it’s creepy that you’re looking at my posts.”

“Not really. Like I said at the Trial, your band made an impression, and so later that night I was sussing them out online, and conveniently, BandSpace automatically includes location tags on all posts, which is a very nifty feature for fans to find a gig. And that’s how I knew this post was from Canter’s Deli.”

Location tag. Dammit! I knew they weren’t on Twitter, but it never occurred to me to check BandSpace.

“I’ve heard all the stories about Canter’s,” says Jason. “My dad went there with the band all the time. I’d seen you leave the party with Caleb, and it was so curious to me that you went there with him, not to mention his uncle Randy. He was tight with Eli, back in the day.”

“We were hungry,” I say weakly.

“Of course you were. But I stopped by Canter’s the next day and talked to good ol’ Vic.”

Oh no
.

“He told me you guys were there. That it was Eli’s son. He even put you in their old booth.” Jason nods to the poster. “So I figured Caleb must have known about his dad, and you’ve now confirmed with me that he does.”

I look at the poster, trying to keep my breathing calm. Waiting. Does Jason know anything else? Vic had been helping Eli keep the secret of the tape for fifteen years. He wouldn’t have told Jason about it, would he? He hasn’t mentioned anything about the tapes yet. I try to steer us away from them. “Caleb doesn’t want to get famous because of his father’s name.”

Jason smiles. “I bet you’ve tried to convince him otherwise. Obviously, it would be the thing to say about Dangerheart, wouldn’t it?”

This makes me flush. It’s one of the first things I tried. Ugh, but I am not like Jason! “I respect his decision,” I
say. “And we already have a gig in San Fran.” I have the overwhelming urge to get out of here. “So . . . about that interview with your dad.”

Jason grimaces. “Yeah, about that. I don’t know, you won’t be my intern, you won’t let Dangerheart open for my band . . .”

“You said all I had to do was come down here.”

“The first rule of negotiation is get the band through the door.” Jason looks at me and suddenly his face is serious, a gleam in his eyes, and though I’ve been making shark jokes all along, this is the first time that he looks truly predatory. “Summer, I can’t help but think . . . Caleb finds out about his dad, you guys visit Canter’s . . . the very next thing you do is book a gig in SFO, which, don’t think I don’t know, was the next stop on the band’s final tour.”

“Was it?”
Stay calm, stay calm
.

“I’m pretty sure it was, considering I was there. I was only twelve when dad took me along for a few shows and I mostly had to hang out in the hotel, but I still remember the route.”

“We’re only going to San Fran because it makes sense as a first tour from here. I was trying for San Diego, too, it just didn’t come through.”

Jason continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “And to top it off, then you want to meet with my dad.”

“Well, just because Caleb has some questions. He just wants to know Eli better—”

“Or . . .” Jason pauses. “There’s something else.”
What does he know?
It’s making me crazy. He turns and looks out the window. “Everybody was really mad at Eli on that tour. Even a twelve-year-old could tell. He was erratic, tanking shows, not to mention holding up the new album, and that was before he blew the whole thing up and took off. There was even talk that he was holding out his new songs, the ones that never got finished.”

“I was never a big Allegiance to North fan,” I say.

“Strange circumstances around his death, too,” says Jason.

That’s a comment I can’t ignore. “What do you mean?”

“Just, all the legal battles at the time. Complicated stuff. Dad doesn’t like to talk about it. You should ask Randy. I’m surprised he’s never told any of it to Caleb. Maybe he feels guilty.”

“And why would he feel guilty?”

Jason shrugs. “Second rule of negotiation. Never play your whole hand. Last chance to be my intern, get your interview.”

Whatever part of me thought coming here or even interviewing Jarrod Fletcher was a good idea now just wants to get . . . out. Fast.

“Sorry,” I say. “I guess I’ll just go.”

Jason sighs. “Okay, then. Have fun on your little tour.” I expect more, like that he’s going to tell the band about the opening slot, but instead he just sits down and starts looking
at his laptop like I’ve already left.

I let myself out. Royce is of course long gone, so I text Maya. People hurry by me in the hall. If I’m not invisible to them, I’m a nuisance. Standing there, the enormity of my failure starts to sink in. No meeting with Jerrod. No info on the second tape. And, if anything, I only raised Jason’s suspicions.

Finally Maya shows up. “Hey! How’d it go?” she asks as she leads me back through the cubicles.

“Like the Cold War, more or less.”

“Aww. I guess I was hoping to have you on board, but I know Jason’s a jerk. Nobody here likes him. Do you have time for a snack?” Maya asks hopefully. “I have a teensy expense account at the cafeteria, at least enough to split a chocolate croissant.”

“Okay.” I’m in no rush to get back to band practice with all this on my mind.

We head down a few floors to the cafeteria. While Maya goes through the line, I text Caleb that I won’t make practice. I suggest meeting up after to go see Pluto. He doesn’t respond. They’re probably running the set.

Maya’s a few people back at the register, and I notice that the walls are lined with framed black-and-white photos. I see pictures of Candy Shell’s biggest names, all caught in candid moments.

I walk the perimeter, and find shots here and there of Allegiance to North. There’s one where the band is standing
in a Dumpster, wearing suits, visible only from the chest up. There’s a small accompanying photo from above and behind, revealing that they’re wearing no pants. I snap a photo to show to Caleb. He and his dad both with Dumpsters in their past.

The next wall is somber: tribute photos to those who’ve died. Most are serious, reflective shots. I find Eli’s, and expect the tortured artist, but his is actually kind of playful. He’s crouched down on one knee, hugging a grinning golden retriever. He gazes up at the camera, his eyes in dark circles, stubble on his face, but lit by a weary grin. It twists me, and I fight back tears.