Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (18 page)

Franklin and Bill were dumbstruck.
 
They’d never met a young artist who seemed to
know so much about the business.
 
Artists
usually didn’t know this much ‘till they’d been screwed several times, lost
their record deal, been through detox, and ended up in court with the IRS.
 
Herron and Peavy could only stare across the
table at this prodigy.
 
This kid was
going places.

“Here’s what it boils down to,” Eddie said.
 
“You want me and my song, you’re gonna have
to do it my way.”
 
He shrugged.
 
“Otherwise I’ll find somebody else.”

Each of them had a reason for agreeing to Eddie’s
terms.
 
Big Bill needed the money he knew
the song would fetch.
 
Franklin
didn’t care about the money as much as being associated with a hit.
 
He figured it would go a long way toward
earning him the industry respect he so coveted.
 
Bill and Franklin looked at one another with what-do-you-think
expressions.
 
They’d worked together long
enough for each to know what the other was thinking.
 
Finally, they both nodded.
 
“What the hell,” Big Bill said.
 
“We’ll try it your way.”

Eddie’s face didn’t light up the way most young artists did
when their deal closed.
 
In fact if there
was any change at all in his demeanor, it was that he seemed to grow a little
darker.
 
“Oh, yeah, one
more thing.”
 
Eddie leveled a
knowing finger at Franklin.
 
“The standard royalty rate for a new artist
is twelve percent,” Eddie said.
 
“Not
eight.
 
Twelve.”
 
He looked off toward the kitchen, then back
at the stunned lawyer and his partner.
 
“After we eat, I’ll tell you about my marketing plan.”
 
He turned and looked back toward the kitchen
again.
 
“Now where’s this shrimp plate
you’ve been bragging about?

27.

Megan was doing her best to forget about Jimmy.
 
Clean
breaks hurt less, right?
 
Was that true both
of bones and of broken hearts, or was it just bones?
 
Wait a second, it was clean cuts that hurt
less than ragged ones.
 
That was it.
 
Paper cuts hurt more than — Christ!
 
Why am I worried about paper cuts?

Megan knew Jimmy was in love with her but she didn’t think
she bore any responsibility for that.
 
All she did was go out with him.
 
Sure, she laughed when he told a joke, and she’d met a few members of
his family, but that didn’t mean anything, did it?
 
And, yeah, they’d had sex, pretty good sex,
come to think of it, but so what?
 
They
screwed more than they made love, or at least that’s what Megan’d been
doing.
 
Jimmy would probably tell the
story differently, but he tended to be more of a romantic about those sorts of
things.
 
Was it Megan’s fault that guys
just tended to fall in love with her?
 
It’s not like she asked them to.

Well, she couldn’t worry about that right now.
 
She was running out of time.
 
She was at the radio station clearing out her
desk.
 
She was due in Nashville
in two days to start her new job.
 
Between now and then Megan had more to do than she had time to do
it.
 
She was in too much of a
hurry to worry about neatness so she dumped the contents of a drawer into the
liquor box she’d brought for packing.

As she slid the drawer back into the desk, Ken Hodges, the
station’s general manager, appeared in the doorway.
 
He looked like a weasel wearing a bad hair
piece.
 
It wasn’t really a rug, but his
hair was done in such a rigid Trent Lott style that it looked like one.
 
“You can’t just quit,” he said.
 
“You gotta give me some notice.”

Megan pulled out another drawer.
 
“I gave you notice an hour ago, Ken.”

“C’mon Megan, that’s unprofessional.
 
I need a couple of weeks.
 
Just do your shift for two more weeks.
 
I’ll give you a little raise.”

Megan dumped the contents of the second drawer into her
box.
 
“Starting to wish you’d given me
that contract last year when I asked, huh?”

A sigh of resignation seeped out of Mr. Hodges.
 
He needed to keep Megan on the air.
 
She had terrific numbers and, up until now
anyway, Ken hadn’t had to pay her much more than minimum wage.
 
“All right,” he said.
 
“We can talk about a contract, if you want.
 
But—”

“There’s no point in talking about it now, Ken.
 
You’re too late.”

Mr. Hodges assumed a fatherly tone.
 
“Megan, you’ve heard the expression ‘the
grass is always greener on the other side’?
 
You might want to think about that.
 
In fact, you know what?
 
I got a
file full of resumes from jocks in places like Nashville.
 
They all hate working in markets like that
where they live from book to book, their job completely dependent on their
ratings.
 
They all want to come here
where there’s security and more of a family atmosphere.
 
Isn’t that what you really want?”

Megan stopped what she was doing and turned to face
Ken.
 
“Do you remember what you told me
every time you refused to give me a contract or even a small raise?”

He thought about it for a moment.
 
“No.
 
I
mean, about what?”

“You said the real value of working here is that it’s a
springboard to bigger markets.
 
That’s
how you justify your piss-ant wages.
 
You
said this was a training ground for moving up.
 
The thing you always said I should aspire to.”

Ken shrugged, unembarrassed by his lies.
 
“Well sure, what do you expect me to say?”

“You’re right,” Megan said, “
by
now
I should just expect you to lie.
 
I
suppose you don’t have any other skills to rely on.”

Ken gestured at the flowers Jimmy had given Megan.
 
“What about your boyfriend?” he asked,
snidely.
 
“Is he moving or are you
leaving him too?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Megan insisted.
 
“He’s just a guy.”
 
Megan paused, surprised by how easily those
words had shot out of her mouth.
 
But she
meant it.
 
Jimmy was just another guy
standing between her and something better.
 
Sure, she cared about Jimmy in her own peculiar way but she wasn’t in
love with him.
 
She’d never said she
was.
 
More
important
, Megan thought,
yeah, the
grass has got to be greener
.
 
If
nothing else, she owed it to herself to take a look on the other side of the
fence.

Ken knew he wasn’t going to change her mind, so he decided
to try something he’d been considering for a while.
 
He glanced up and down the hallway to make
sure no one was watching,
then
he slipped inside the
small office and closed the door behind him.
 
Click.
 
He locked it.
 
The next thing Megan knew, he was standing
directly behind her with his hands on her ass.
 
“You know, I was just thinking I might be able to come up with a real
nice severance package for you.”

The clod was kneading her ass like pizza dough.
 
And his tone wasn’t that of just another
idiot good-old-boy making a clumsy sexual advance.
 
He sounded more determined than that.
 
Megan scanned the desk top.
 
Her options were a letter opener, a stapler,
and a pair of scissors.

Ken fumbled with his zipper.
 
“Whaddya say we tear off a quick piece and I’ll see about a couple
week’s
pay as your parting gift?”
 
He leaned against her, trying to pin her to
the desk.

Megan selected the best office supply for her needs and
reacted with remarkable swiftness.
 
Grabbing the large stapler with both hands, she opened it like a set of
jaws, spun around, and closed it within an inch of serious pain.
 
Ken was stunned not only by her quickness and
her accuracy but by the viciousness of her proposal.
 
If she finished what she’d started, the next
time he peed it would look like a gimmicky lawn sprinkler.
 
“Okay, okay,” he said putting his hands in
the air in surrender.
 
“But you don’t
know what you’re missing.”

Megan shook her head.
 
“I can’t even believe you said that.”
 
Then she stapled him.

Ken screamed like a baby.

Megan handed him the staple remover then shoved him
aside.
 
And on her way out the door she
snatched Jimmy’s flowers and tossed them in the trash.

28.

Jimmy knew he’d screwed up.
 
Instead of popping for the yellow roses, which he knew Megan loved, he’d
made the mistake of operating under the naïve assumption that it was the
thought that counts, resulting in the chintzy $6.99 grocery store
arrangement.
 
But in a world where
upgrades are always available, who can blame a girl for wanting to improve her
position?
 
Jimmy figured it was unfair to
expect Megan to lower her standards just because he was a broke-dick writer.
Better that he improve his own financial position and pop for the roses next
time.

Once again he thought about calling Megan to apologize.
 
He knew the worst thing he’d done was to buy
cheap flowers but he was still thinking about an apology.
 
Christ
,
he thought,
this sensitive guy thing’s
got a death grip on me.
 
I didn’t do
anything wrong.
 
Why should I always be
the one to try to smooth things over?
 
Would it be any skin off her perfect, slightly upturned nose to pick up
the phone and call me with a little sweet talk and an ‘I’m sorry’?
 
I mean how tough would that be?

All this was running through Jimmy’s head as he sat staring
at his computer.
 
On the screen was a
tentative outline for the opening chapters of
The Eddie Long Story
.
 
But
Jimmy hadn’t written anything lately.
 
The
momentum of his great book project had petered out owing largely to the fact
that Jimmy was spending most of his time trying to figure out a way to make
Megan fall in love with him.
 
Jimmy
looked up at plastic Elvis for inspiration.
 
“Give me a sign,” he said.
 
“Tell
me what to do.”
 
Jimmy jumped when the
phone rang.
 
He stared at it a moment
before picking up.
 
“Hello?”

“Hey, man!
 
You workin’
on my book?”

Jimmy smiled.
 
“Hey, Eddie, how you doin’?
 
I was just about to call you.”

“Uh huh, and I bet you promise you’ll pull out in time
too.”
 
Eddie laughed the way guys do when
they retell old jokes.
 
“Listen, Mr.
Hemingway, I was just callin’ to let you know that I got your next two
chapters.
 
It turns out yours truly has
signed a contract with Herron and Peavy Management.”

“Holy shit!
 
As in Big Bill Herron?
 
Damn.
 
Congratulations!”
 
Jimmy opened a
new blank document and started typing.
 
“Details, man.
 
What’s the deal?”

Eddie told the story of his performance at the
Bluebird.
 
“After I played the song,” he
said, “I just walked out of the place.
 
Left ‘em with their jaws on the table tops.”
 
He told Jimmy how Herron and Peavy had
approached him afterwards, and how they had sealed the deal at Estella’s.

Jimmy pried the particulars from Eddie.
 
He knew there was a good anecdote in the
scene where Eddie negotiated changes in his contract over a plate of fried
shrimp with Joe Tex singing in the background.
 
Now that Eddie had signed with one of Nashville’s
most storied producers, Jimmy felt new momentum gathering on his project.

“Alright,” Jimmy said, “so you signed with Herron and
Peavy.
 
What’s the other chapter?”

“My marketing plan.”

Jimmy paused.
 
“Your marketing plan?”
 
He stopped typing.
 
“I don’t think
so.
 
But here’s an idea,” he said brightly.
 
“Maybe you could write a song about it.
 
A real honkey-tonker about
direct mail and targeted demographics.
 
I can hear it now.”
 
Jimmy started
singing in a twangy baritone.
 
“Come ‘n’
listen to a story ‘bout my marketin’ plan, gonna do some advertisin’ and
establish me a brand.”

Eddie summoned a dark chuckle,
then
lapsed into his own exaggerated country accent.
 
“Well shoot me for a billy goat if ‘at ain’t the funniest thang I ever
heard!”

“You’re the one with the funny ideas,” Jimmy said.
 
“The book’s supposed to be about the rise of
a populist singer-songwriter, not a business plan.”

“And if it was still nineteen-fucking-sixty and I was just
handing my career over to a producer and his shyster partner, I wouldn’t even
bring it up.
 
But times’ve changed and
one of the things you’re gonna wanna put in there is how I took charge of my
career from the get go.
 
And, to tell the
truth, I bet this’ll be one of the better chapters.”

“Yes, as the marketing section of most
musician’s
biographies tend to be,” Jimmy said.

“Look, smartass, you don’t have to use it, but you oughta at
least hear it.”

“All right, what’s the plan?”
 
Jimmy sat back and propped his feet on the
table, figuring there was no need to write this part up.

Eddie took a deep breath.
 
“We’re creating a character,” he said.
 
“A very mysterious character, a guy with a tragic
background.
 
And once we’ve
generated sufficient interest in this mystery man, we’re going to find
him.
 
And then we’re going to sell him to
the public.”

Jimmy sat up.
 
He had no
idea where this was going, but it wasn’t what he’d expected.
  
He put his hands back on the keyboard and
listened with increasing fascination as Eddie explained the plan.
 
They had already put the first part into
play.