Playing Dirty (3 page)

“It was Rachel,” Martin said. As Quentin turned, Martin was straightening his glasses, which immediately fell crooked again, as always. He returned the phone to his music stand. “Our esteemed record company hired one of those crisis management types to keep the band from breaking up. She’s at the PR office
right now
.”

“To keep the band from breaking up,” Quentin repeated, hoping he sounded incredulous. He lifted off his bass guitar, set it in its stand, and circled his stiff neck to pop it. For the past month, he’d worried constantly about the band breaking up. But that would happen only if the other band members knew what he knew—and that was exactly why he didn’t want some specialized public relations consultant poking around.

Erin told Quentin, “This is your fault.”

Quentin reached to the wall and turned off the sound into the control room before he challenged her. “Why is it
my
fault? The record company checks on us once in a while.”

“This is not a regular record company check-in,”
Martin said ominously. “She honestly thinks the band is breaking up because you two are doing it”—he gestured between Erin and Owen—“and you’re jealous.” He pointed at Quentin. “You took it too far this time, Q.”

“I did not,” Quentin protested. After two years, he knew
exactly
how far to take the band’s antics, gaining them the new fans he loved and frightening the record company he hated, without the record company sounding the alarm and sending an agent to spy on them.

At least, he’d
thought
he did. Now that the band actually had something to hide from Manhattan Music, maybe they should have behaved themselves for once. But he’d figured that would seem even more suspicious than their usual debauchery. So he’d set up all sorts of mischief for them in the past week.

He’d gambled and lost.

And he’d lost more than this wager. He was losing his edge. His near-death experience in Thailand must have affected him more than he’d thought.

“
You
fired our manager,” Owen yelled at him from behind the drums. “
You
made us delay production on the album.
You
engineered this thing between Erin and me. It’s too much at one time. Now we’ve got the Evil Empire up our ass.” He stood.

Quentin made a fist, ready for anything.

But Owen passed Quentin without taking a swing at him. He stomped out of the sound booth, slammed the glass door behind him with a sickening
crack
, and jogged up the stairs toward the kitchen.

“That broke something,” Quentin said.

“If that didn’t,” Erin squealed, “this will.” Too late, Quentin saw her moving toward him with her hand out. He was used to the sting of her slap, but this time it jammed his glasses painfully into the side of his nose.

Martin came around the drums to catch Erin from behind and pull her crashing into the cymbals.

The Cheatin’ Hearts suddenly looked more like professional wrestlers than country music superstars. Which was appropriate, since they’d practiced these moves a thousand times.

Quentin pressed his fingers to his skin to stop the bleeding, wishing the fake fight was a little more fake. Later Erin would claim she’d put on the show for the album technicians in the control room. It was always someone like a technician, supposedly on their side, who was the unnamed source in the tabloid story about the band’s behavior. Feeding stories to the tabloids was almost as important to their careers as putting out new music, in Quentin’s opinion.

But he suspected that this time, Erin had just wanted to hit him. It had been a hard month.

“You could let me take my glasses off first,” he growled at her. Of course, he shouldn’t complain. Whenever he fake-fought Owen, he really let Owen have it. Good to get some aggression out. Lord knew they had plenty.

Pulling away from Martin, Erin mouthed behind her hand at Quentin, “I’m sorry,” and stuck out her bottom lip.

Quentin laughed and mouthed, “S’okay.”

“Let me go fetch Owen and make up for our lovers’ quarrel or whatever that was supposed to be.” Erin passed Quentin and pulled the door. It didn’t budge. She turned to Quentin and said, “The dumbass actually broke it.”

With a sigh, Quentin stepped forward to try the door for Erin. It was stuck. He gave it a good jerk and heard glass breaking. One of the technicians got up and was able to open it from the outside. Several shards of glass and a loose screw fell onto the floor.

Erin jogged up the stairs after Owen. Despite the stories they’d leaked to the media, Owen and Erin’s brand-new romantic relationship was fake. Even Quentin and Erin’s long-term affair was fake. In reality, Erin and Quentin had broken up for good two years ago, before the group had signed with the record company. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the sight of her running up the stairs in very short shorts.

After she disappeared, Quentin remembered the Timberlanes and hoped they weren’t horrified at the band’s fake violence and real damage to his house. He punched the intercom button. “Mr. and Mrs. Timberlane, would you like some more iced tea?”

They shook their heads. Mrs. Timberlane was smiling and patting Mr. Timberlane’s knee like she was thoroughly enjoying this date. Mr. Timberlane kissed her forehead.

Erin led Owen downstairs by the hand. Owen closed the door to the sound booth behind them and
unsuccessfully tried the handle, like he didn’t believe he’d broken it (typical). The Cheatin’ Hearts resumed recording, but the session was ruined because their concentration was lost. They all anticipated Martin’s phone playing “Stars Fell on Alabama,” signaling more bad news. Finally the call came, and Quentin reached over to turn off the sound to the control room again.

Martin’s eyes were wide behind his crooked glasses. He unclapped the hand over his mouth to announce, “The PR chick is enormous and scary, with pink hair.”

Owen said, “She sounds like a girl Wookiee.”

“She’s headed this way,” Martin said ominously.

Quentin took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, touched the wound on the side of his nose, and slid the frames back on. “I guess I’d better go put my contacts in.” Part of his job as the band’s front man was to look as studly as possible. He hoped his glasses didn’t make him look as nutty-professor as Martin, but he knew they made him look nerdy enough, which was why he never wore them when meeting with record company representatives or starting bar fights that would be photographed for the tabloids.

“It’s more serious than that, Q,” Martin said angrily.

Quentin quickly looked around on the floor for something non-electronic that wouldn’t cause a fire when he ripped it up and threw it at Martin. Martin had no right to lecture Quentin about the band’s serious troubles.

Luckily, before Quentin could bust up more of his house, Martin was saying, “Okay. Love you, too. Bye.”
He clicked the phone off and informed the others, “The Wookiee used the word
imbroglio
in conversation.”

“What does that mean?” Erin asked.

“She’s onto us,” Quentin said.

“It’ll be fine,” Erin said soothingly. “We’ll do the burly hick act.”

She was right, of course. They couldn’t turn on each other with this PR she-monster approaching. They had to face her head-on. Quentin turned the intercom to the control room back on just long enough to dismiss the technicians for the day. Then he stepped around the piano and over a mass of cables to huddle with the others. “Okay, we’ll show her that we’re tight-knit, so she’ll be satisfied that we’re not breaking up, and repulsive, so she’ll run screaming from the state and leave us alone.”

“Sounds like she doesn’t scare easily,” Owen said.

“Whose turn is it to get drunk?” Martin asked.

“It’s my turn,” Quentin said, “but you know me. I’ll blow our cover. Let me get drunk at something that doesn’t matter so much, like the Fourth of July concert. That means it’s Erin’s turn.”

Erin shook her head. “We were going to record ‘Barefoot and Pregnant’ tomorrow, Q. I don’t want to be hungover when I’m recording something with that much fiddle in it.”

“It’s for the greater good,” Quentin told her.

“It’s
your
turn,” she responded with more heat than he thought this issue deserved. “You can get a saline IV in the morning and be okay. I’ll be sick for two days.”

“Fine.” He shrugged.

“But don’t start laughing and crack us all up,” Owen warned him.

“I’m telling y’all,” Quentin said, “if I’m getting drunk, you have to be prepared for certain things.”

“And remember Rule Three,” Martin added.

“You think I’m going to
sleep
with the PR rep sent by the
record company
?” Quentin exclaimed. “She’s a Wookiee.”

“Let’s get to it,” Erin said impatiently. “I don’t think I have any alcohol in the house. Do y’all?”

“We have a six-pack,” Quentin said. “Not enough.”

“Do we have time to go to the store?” Owen asked.

Martin said, “She’d already left the Galleria when Rachel called.” He glanced at his watch. “Traffic’s died down. She’ll be here any minute.”

Quentin said, “Owen, take the Timberlanes home, and ask them if they have some liquor we can borrow. Martin, find cards and poker chips.”

Owen pulled the glass door of the sound booth, which didn’t budge. Mr. Timberlane rose from his seat in the control room in slow motion to open it. Then Owen followed Mr. and Mrs. Timberlane up the stairs at a glacial pace. Martin, in a show of forethought that had been rare for him lately, waited with his foot propping the broken door open until Quentin put his own foot in the space.

Quentin watched Martin climb the stairs, then turned to Erin, who was packing her fiddle away. “I’ll
go put in my contacts.” He paused. “You should take your bra off.”

“You wish.” She sashayed toward him with her fiddle case. “If I take something off, everyone else does, too.” She snapped her fingers. “That’s it! Strip poker. That’ll scare this lady away.”

“Excellent,” he said, and kissed her forehead. Then, because they were alone now, he added, “Let me see them.”

Unperturbed, she batted her eyelashes at him.

“I can’t catch any kind of break today,” he said dejectedly, holding open the sound booth door until she walked under his arm, then mounting the steps to the kitchen after her. It really was disturbing. No one in the group was allowed to have sex with Erin—that was Rule Two. But she’d pretended to be his girlfriend on and off for the last two years. That had made for a lot of very pleasant PDA. Even in private, if he teased her and asked to see her breasts like he used to when they were dating, she would at least flirt back. After Thailand, he’d told her to pretend to break up with him and choose Owen instead, but he hadn’t foreseen that she’d take her fake flirting with her.

They all met a few minutes later on the back patio in the evening heat. Quentin and Martin had taken off their shorts and thrown them in the pool, and Erin had stepped inside the house to take off her bra, by the time Owen arrived with a wooden crate he set on the outdoor table.

He pulled out a small box and tossed it to Quentin.
Over-the-counter sinus medication, expired ten years ago. “Mrs. Timberlane is worried about your allergies,” Owen explained. Next came a dozen tomatoes from the Timberlanes’ garden. Finally, in the bottom of the crate, Owen reached several dusty bottles of tequila. “The Timberlanes took a trip to Mexico in the seventies.” He handed one of the bottles to Quentin. “Get started, Q.”

Quentin broke the seal on a bottle, unscrewed the top, took a swig, and grimaced. It was for the greater good, he reminded himself, but he hadn’t wanted to get drunk tonight. He’d wanted to have one beer, bake some bread, and retreat to his Fortress of Solitude to read the latest issue of
Clinical Immunology and Allergy Today
.

He was in for a long night.

Quentin’s a coke fiend, eh? That’s too bad. Well, thanks anyway for e-mailing his pic. First impression:

GOOD LORD.

Let me study it. Perhaps I was too hasty.

Okay, GOOD LORD.

Is that a stalk of straw in his mouth? O that I were this straw. Caution be damned, I might just let him sniff coke off my naked belly. Though it would be a long line, because my belly is the size of Brooklyn.

Wendy Mann

Senior Consultant

Stargazer Public Relations

Sarah clicked her phone off and tucked it into her bag, shaking her head. Now in her ninth month of pregnancy, Wendy clearly felt the heat.
There but for the grace of God go I
, thought Sarah, telling herself she wasn’t jealous of Wendy.

Sarah had parked in the brick driveway of Quentin’s gorgeous old Spanish Colonial mansion. The rest of the group lived elsewhere in town. According to Manhattan Music, they were all staying with Quentin to record the album. In the past, Quentin’s girlfriend Erin would have moved in with him while the other two men stayed in the guesthouse out back. But now that Erin had switched boyfriends, she’d also switched residences, staying with the drummer in Quentin’s backyard. Judging from the look of Erin in her push-up bra on the album covers, the wonder was that the group hadn’t had
more
problems over the years, and that all three men hadn’t been tossing her around like a baseball.