Louder Than Love (18 page)

I laughed. “See? And you said this wasn’t a museum!” I picked up one of the paperboard oyster pails delicately by the handle. “And you will note here the detail in early paper construction, indicative of the development of fast food during the Western Han Dynasty,” I said as enthusiastically as a museum curator.

“Okay, I’ll admit it. I don’t do much cooking in here. Manhattan makes it too easy. I had the local deli send up a pack of cigarettes one winter because I couldn’t be arsed to walk down and get them myself!”

“My fridge isn’t much better,” I assured him. “Marissa always tells me food is love. I keep wondering when I am going to be arrested for neglect.” A sauerkraut jar of indeterminate age rattled on the door shelf. “Is that left over from the Nazi occupation?”

“Nah, that was from the Luna Rose occupation. My relationship with that fräulein expired long before the jar did.”

“Luna Rose . . . sounds like an exotic dancer.”

“Lingerie model, actually,” Adrian said matter-of-factly, pulling mugs from the cupboard. An apparition of a long-legged, small-pored beauty with a gleaming updo and a push-up bra, all smoky eyes and no cellulite, perched on the kitchen island in a vision before me, pouting shiny swollen lips and tapping a stiletto heel.

“Okay, I’m going to shut up now,” I mumbled, feeling the heat flame to my face.

He put a hand on each of my cheeks to cool the burn. “All the beauty in the world can’t help an ugly relationship,” he said softly. Pulling his fingers down along the edge of my jawbone and lingering on my chin, he tilted it ever so slightly. “This . . . now this is pure beauty.”

His lips found mine in that slow and strong way, and I was lost to the world. The coffee machine began to gurgle and spit rudely and, to my utter surprise, speak in tongues.

“Ó Senhor Graves! Dê-me licença.”

Adrian pulled back abruptly, and I saw we were not alone. A girl of about twenty, with a curtain of long dark hair, stood rooted to the spot. She wore sweat pants rolled up to the knees and flip-flops around her pretty pedicured toes. A cross of gold peeked in and out of her tank top as she labored to catch her shocked breath.

“Desculpe, Ana . . .”
Adrian stuttered as he searched for the right words, and I was amazed to hear them slip from his tongue with relative ease. It sounded similar to Spanish . . . Portuguese, perhaps? “
Esta é a minha amiga, Katrina.
Katrina, meet Ana . . . I completely forgot she was coming today.”

She smiled brightly. “
Olá!
”

“
Olá
, Ana.” I echoed the only word I was pretty sure I knew and gave a friendly little wave.

“One minute, luv?” Adrian asked me, and beckoned to Ana to follow him. They chattered back and forth amicably out of sight, and then I heard the latch of the door. He whizzed back into the kitchen, grinning apologetically. “So sorry. Housekeeper.” He pointed to a bucket of cleaning supplies stashed near the sink that neither of us had noticed.

“I figured she wasn’t the German lingerie model.” I thought of my deliberation between wife and maid and was relieved to have confirmation it was the latter. “I didn’t know you were bilingual, Mr. Graves.” I sidled back up to him. “Very sexy.”

“That’s Senhor Graves to you . . . hmmm, yes. I’ve spent a bit of time in Portugal. Wonderful people.” He kissed my earlobe. “Come, I have something to show you.”

“We’re not going to run into any butlers buttling, are we? Or gardeners gardening?”

“Nope. Jeeves and José have the day off.”

We left the kitchen the way he and Ana had and found ourselves back in the foyer. Adrian proceeded straight ahead to another set of double pocket doors off the living room. He slid them open to reveal a library, its four walls lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in rich mahogany. “I knew you’d like this. I don’t own nearly enough books to do it justice.” I gazed around in wide-eyed wonder, instantly in love with it. There were brown leather couches beckoning invitingly and small brass table lamps like the ones found in the Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library.

“Curses, I forgot the coffee. Be right back.”

I made a beeline for the shelf nearest me. Rows of colorful spines with their thick fonts called out their siren’s songs. I ran my index finger along
The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll
, volume two of
The Complete Beatles
, and several other coffee table–worthy music books until I came to
Godforsaken: The Truth and Turbulent Times of Corroded Corpse
by Alexander Floyd. Hmm.
A librarian’s job is to thoroughly and objectively evaluate and validate printed matter,
I reasoned, peeling it off the shelf and cracking the stiff binding.

Under the rigid social structure of pre-Thatcher-era Britain, Douglas Adrian Graves and Richard David Rottenberg had only a snowball’s chance in hell of ever crossing paths. The younger of two rough-and-tumble sons of divorced working-class parents, Digger (as he was christened early on by his friends “for my early fascination with the sandpit, not due to the wordplay on my surname”) spent his youth in state comprehensive schools and hanging out near the Portsmouth docks. Riff, by contrast, grew up sheltered in Hampstead, the only child of wealthy educated Jews. Art historians by profession, they would take their young son with them regularly to Stockholm, Paris, and New York. Private tutors had provided him with the bulk of his early education. But at thirteen, both lads found themselves enrolled in a newly established independent day school located in a stately home known as Ditcham Park. And so the snowball avalanched.

After divorcing the elder Douglas, Polly Graves remarried up; her new husband taught math at the elite public school, akin to a private prep school in the United States. She thought the secluded environs and smaller class size would be good for her teenage sons, who were slipping through the cracks of society under the not-so-watchful eye of their hard-drinking, hardworking motor mechanic father.

Dual sabbaticals for the Professors Rottenberg at NYU’s prestigious Institute of Fine Arts landed Riff under the care of his favorite aunt in Petersfield. His parents, keen on providing him with a proper British education, were impressed with nearby Bedales School, but his aunt Barbara, or “Bootsy,” as she was affectionately known, convinced them Ditcham Park would be a better fit. The two boys became thick as thieves there within the first week, with Riff turning Digger on to fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, and Digger in turn introducing Riff to a whole new religion: heavy metal. Second only to his wife, Simone, metal music became Riff’s lifelong love.

Rick. Simone. And Wren. Names I don’t often like to think about.
I remembered Adrian’s words, my fingers flying to the index and locating Wren in the order. Chapter five. As I flipped through the pages, I caught a glimpse of a wedding picture.
Rick and Simone, 1982.
The groom’s haystack of dark hair needed a postal code of its own, and Simone radiated happiness from everywhere, especially her cavernous blue eyes.

Three more pages and . . . Wren. I found myself staring down at a suited slim man with an easy grin and hair too short to be trusted. The mirrored shades, fashionable at the time, didn’t improve my opinion of him. Judging from the tone of the paragraph, I had a hunch Alexander Floyd wasn’t his biggest fan, either.

Wren Blackmoor had worked his way up the chain. He had paid his dues as a dogsbody, doing grunt work at various major labels and playing assistant to prominent A&R reps of the day at EMI and Columbia. He vaguely alluded to projects he had been involved in with famed producers Mutt Lange and Martin Birch, and would name-drop and pull quotes from management greats like Peter Grant, Don Arden, and Malcolm McLaren with such ease that one was easily convinced he had had intimate dealings with such heavy hitters. At the time the band met him, over pints and pool at an Earls Court pub, Wren claimed he had sorted the key steps in the formula for commercial success and was ready to strike out on his own and develop a band and a brand, a household name that would keep back catalog profits churning for decades to come. All he needed was a young and talented band with the beginnings of a loyal following and a strong work ethic that wasn’t afraid to go for broke.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Adrian was back. He handed me my coffee and snatched back the book. “Now don’t pout. I promise I will give you a no-holds-barred exclusive peek into the sordid lives of the tortured souls who made up Corroded Corpse.”

My eyes followed him over the top of my mug as he tossed the book aside and made his way to a bookcase in the far corner. “Check this out.”

The bookcase revealed a hidden doorway. I hesitated for a moment, thinking about Leanna’s torsos-in-the-freezer comment. Peeking in, I saw numerous gold albums, leaning in their frames against the walls of the small room in piles, none hung up. I thought back to the children’s drawings prominently displayed on his fridge. Ironically, his own accomplishments were hidden out of sight. “Welcome to my lair.”

One corner of the room was dedicated to a workbench for fixing his guitars. There were guitar strings of various gauges coiled tight like tiny silver and gold snakes. On the wall above the bench was a pegboard completely filled with keys—hotel keys. The old-fashioned kind, complete with heavy plastic ring tags sporting various hotel names. What didn’t fit on the pegboard was spilling out of the drawers of a tall black-and-gray metal case. There had to be at least two hundred of them. The case was on casters, with
CORRODED CORPSE
stenciled in white on all sides. I assumed it was some sort of road case that used to travel with him.

“I see you’re admiring my collection. From the good old days, before key cards spoiled all the fun.”

“Why did you take them?” I picked up one and inspected it. The thick silver was engraved with the words
DO NOT DUPLICATE
; the turquoise diamond-shaped tag was emblazoned with the word
PHOENIX
in gilded lettering and the number 22.

“Dunno. Just something to collect, I guess. We played over one hundred cities a year. After a while, I felt like I was leaving a little piece of me behind every day I was on the road. I needed to take something in its place to remember who I was.” He touched the key in my hand. “Our debut in San Francisco, during our first US headlining tour. Dodgy neighborhood, but a gem of a motel. All-night jam sessions by the pool with topless ladies in attendance, and no one seemed to mind.” He began to finger several others, as if the anecdotes lay in their raised lettering and colorful geometric designs. “We were staying here when we learned our album went platinum. I was here, in Belgium, on Natalie’s first birthday. And this is where I was”—he shook a key ring embossed with Japanese Kanji—“when Robyn left me. She rang me up at four in the morning Tokyo time and informed me she had moved out.” His voice trailed off, lost in thought.

My eyes rested on a key from the Plaza. His eyes must have followed mine. “Ah yes. You commented on how at ease I had seemed there. We stayed at the Plaza every time we played New York. My favorite hotel.”

“So I wasn’t the first one you brought there.” Sordid visions of groupies, trashed hotel rooms, and nights of excess swam in my head.

“Actually . . . yes, you were.” He began to explain that despite all of the nubile and willing temptations presented to him on the road, he had managed to keep most of his wedding vows to Robyn intact until she dumped him. “Sadly, Robyn had never fully trusted me on the road. And I had met her at a gig; imagine that. The moment she got her claws dug in me, she was suspect of any girl in the audience. I suppose I made matters worse when I told her I didn’t want her or Natalie on the road with me.” He explained the reason behind his decision, painting a picture of walking into his dressing room one night in Los Angeles to find a beautiful young girl servicing two of his bandmates simultaneously. “She had invited me in on the fun, but I politely declined, opting for a pre-gig line of quality blow with some friends.” He had assumed she was some random groupie until, after the concert, he was introduced to one of his all-time idols, a well-respected musician “whose name I don’t dare reveal,” and the man’s fifteen-year-old daughter, said beautiful girl whose lips had been wrapped around the organs and other sundry parts of Adam and Rick backstage. “I knew right then I didn’t want Natalie exposed to that kind of life, so I put my foot down. Not so
I
could do whatever I wanted on the road, as Robyn later accused, but rather to shield them. That was the beginning of the end, as she didn’t like playing second fiddle to anyone or anything, especially not to the road.”

“So being on tour really is like all those rockumentaries describe. How big of a rock star were you? Like, panties-thrown-at-you-onstage big?” I ventured.

“Panties-thrown-with-phone-numbers-written-in-them big,” he admitted. “But I never snorted ants or bit the heads off bats or any of that crazy business.”

“Yet you kept company with those who did?” I was incredulous.

“Do you still want to be with me?” he asked, a hopeful yet heartbreaking look on his face. I dropped the keys and took his hands in response. “It used to be women wanted to sleep with me after they learned who I was. Kind of ironic . . . now that you know, I’m worried you
won’t
want to be with me.”

“I just want to get to know the real you, whoever you are. I want the tap water.”

He pulled me close, an impish smile on his face. “Might want to turn those taps on pronto, let ’em run for a bit full pelt. Shake the rust loose.”

“Oh, yeah?” I murmured, my lips grazing the ringed lobe of his ear. “I think I know exactly how to turn them on . . .”

***

Adrian’s bedroom was a tranquil masculine retreat of brown, gray, and crisp white. I was delighted to find his bed was a futon, although it was actually on a frame and ten times more comfortable than mine. Large square wall panels behind the headboard in a rich dark grain matched the wood on the floor and gave the room an insulated-from-the-world effect. Thick velvet drapes lent themselves to the mood as well. Adrian lit a large candle the color of the darkest chocolate, and the room instantly simmered with the same peppery smell that infused his skin. Fifteen stories below, the hushed and steady thrum of traffic could barely be heard, with just the occasional chirp of a truck horn or police siren breaking through.