Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) (36 page)

All eyes turned to Quinn, who nodded. “I’ll call Dazz, get him over here.” He headed for the phone and their new manager was left standing in the foyer with Ty and Dan, who both seemed speechless.

In the living room, Shan was sitting on the floor beside the couch, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, the Angel in her lap. She didn’t get up. She couldn’t. While she’d gradually grown accustomed to her roommates seeing her scarred legs, she wouldn’t expose herself to this impressive woman. “Uh, please come in and sit down,” she called, blushing to the roots of her curly hair.

“Thank you. I will.” Lorraine Slater replied, taking the armchair across from the couch and focusing her attention on Shan. “It’s lovely to meet you. I enjoyed your set, very much.”

“You were at the Troubadour?”

“Yes. I heard you at Club 33, as well.” That’s was why she’d looked so familiar. Shan recalled her velvet sheath and the smooth, upswept hairstyle that exposed ruby earrings the size of guitar picks.

Dave arrived within the hour. Quinn was in possession of a contract, which he’d apparently already had vetted by Marshall-Merrick. All of them read and signed the lengthy document. It appointed Lorraine Slater as their manager and, by the end of the conversation, Shan’s head was spinning with terms like
intellectual property
,
partnership agreements
, and
publishing royalties
. She felt overwhelmed, confused, and in over her head.

After Lorraine left she took Sugaree and escaped to the creek bed, but found it already occupied by Quinn, who was smoking and moping. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” he grumbled.

“You don’t look it,” she said and sat down beside him. “I’m weirded out, too,” she said. “It just feels too fantastic, like it would be stupid to get excited. I mean, is this for real?”

He nodded. “It is, Shan. Didn’t I always tell you we’d get here?”

“I never believed it, really,” she confessed. “I mean, there are a gazillion musicians trying to make it. Why us?”

“Because we’re special.
You’re
special. You worked hard for this, angel. Go ahead and get excited.”

“You don’t look all that excited,” she said.

“I am,” he acknowledged, “but…” He didn’t finish, just fell silent, and Shan fed Sugaree a bit of biscuit, then tossed a stick for her to fetch while she waited him out. “I swore I’d never take anything from them,” he said finally. “I knew I could make it on my own, on my talent, and I was willing to do the work, whatever it took. I didn’t need their help, that’s what I always said. Look at me now, though.”

“You
are
making it on your own,” Shan said, understanding immediately that he was talking about his family. “No one’s worked harder than you have. All your folks did was set up a gig. And if you’d refused it,” she added, “you’d be dead. We’d kill you, me and Dan and Ty. Dave, too. It’d be a lynching, Q.”

He laughed. It was a good sound. “So what do we do next?” Shan asked.

“We wait,” Quinn replied.

They didn’t have to wait long. The following week, Lorraine got another call. Cardinal wanted their body of work. They packed up every one of their demos and handed them over to Lorraine.

A couple more weeks, then another call. Cardinal wanted something new, to see how quickly they produced. Shan and Quinn spent a couple of days camped out in the music room, coming up with an intense tune called “Sinner’s Blues.” The band spent a day in the studio recording it, then sent the disc off.

Another week passed and the following Saturday they were performing at the Music Machine in Santa Monica, a venue Quinn usually loved because of the excellent sound system, but he was out of sorts as they set up. They all were, really. The waiting was hard.

Shan turned as Quinn emerged from behind his keyboard. “Should we do ‘Sinner’s Blues’ tonight?” It would be the first time they performed it in public. He didn’t reply. Shan followed the trajectory of his gaze across the room and saw Lorraine approaching. Her smile was blinding.

“Good evening,” she said. She reached into her purse and produced a small black box, which she handed to Quinn. “A present for you.”

He took the box. “A pager? Why?”

“Because I’m tired of not being able to reach you. I’ve been trying to call you all day,” she said. They’d been incommunicado because they’d played another gig during the afternoon, an unplugged AIDs benefit at Venice Beach. They’d come directly to the club without going home. “I have some news,” Lorraine continued, still smiling.

Quinn gave a sign to Ty over at the bar and waited until he, Dan, and Dave congregated around them. “What’s the news?” he asked.

Lorraine’s smile widened. “I’ve received an offer from Cardinal. And it’s a good one. A
damned
good one.”

Four hundred thousand dollars.
Four hundred thousand dollars!
Even Quinn was speechless. And this was just the beginning. There would be royalties, and tour revenues, and personal appearance fees. This was an advance, Lorraine explained, against the profits of the albums they were expected to produce, six, according to the offer.

They were elated and ready to sign right away, everyone but Quinn. He wanted artistic freedom and he wanted it in writing. “They could dictate our creative direction, soften us up,” he insisted when the rest of them freaked. “Our sound is unique, so we can’t let ourselves be force fit into some preexisting niche. I won’t settle for anything less. I’d rather go with an indie label.”

Lorraine worked hard to change his mind, but Quinn was obdurate. He wouldn’t budge, even when Cardinal countered with a higher offer. By then the buzz surrounding them had spread and other labels were developing an interest, sending out feelers.

Before long, a third offer was forthcoming. Four albums, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and full artistic control for the band. Songs and compositions. Producer approval. Video concepts. Everything.

Quinn was jubilant, the rest of them less so at the reduced figure. At Lorraine’s suggestion, the bulk of the money was banked to cover the expenses they would incur while recording their debut album. Studio time was costly, she reminded them, and she was negotiating with high-end producers. After two hundred thousand was salted away and she presented each of them with a check for ten thousand dollars, though, the complaints dwindled.

Shan didn’t complain at all. Ten thousand dollars, all hers? She was dazed.

What would she do with it? She needed so many things. A new electric guitar. A car. A real bed, but she was afraid to spend any of it, as if they might take it back. She was used to getting by with very little, so she deposited the check and guarded it like a miser. Her resolve lasted until the next time she went to the Guitar Center and saw the rows of electric guitars. Then and there she decided to spend some of her money on a new electric, but which one?

She’d always lusted after a Gibson, the hollow-body ES, but it was bulky and she liked to move when she played. The vintage Stratocaster she’d been eying was smaller, but heavier. Electric guitars were always heavy, though. Even the Peavey made her shoulder hurt after a long set and this model was lighter than most. It was so pretty, too, cream and chrome, and its tone was fantastic, ringing out clear and glassy on the high end.

The ES had a completely different character. The sound was thicker, more like an acoustic, with clean highs and gritty lows. Its fat, rich timbre was perfect for mournful tunes like “Sinner’s Blues” or “Wanderlust,” but she preferred the Strat for shredding.

What to do? She’d wanted a new electric for years, but now that she had the means she couldn’t make up her mind.

Then she remembered. She had ten thousand dollars! She bought them both.

Just like that, more than a third of her money disappeared. She was a little embarrassed when she arrived home with the two beauties and expected Quinn to scold her, but he was delighted.

She couldn’t wait to begin playing them and she didn’t have to, because Lorraine was right. Cardinal wanted Quinntessence in the studio immediately. They needed a producer and met with a series of them, all of whom Quinn nixed. He had a different reason for each rejection. Different vision. Lack of chemistry. Too commercial. He finally approved one, but insisted upon visiting the studio where they’d be recording before he would sign anything.

Shan was dazzled by the space, all chrome and slanted glass windows with the biggest console she’d ever seen. Not Quinn, though. He ignored the fancy equipment, instead walking around the bright, shiny studio space, pausing here and there to clap his hands.

After he’d finished, he came into the control room, where the rest of them were looking over the console. “Who chose this space?”

“I did,” said the hapless producer.

“You’re fired. Sorry.” Quinn turned and walked out, leaving the rest of them gaping.

When his bandmates protested, he was scathing. “Every room has its own sound that becomes part of the music, almost like another instrument.
That
room doesn’t. It’s an anechoic chamber. We record anything in that, it’s going to sound dry and tasteless, crappy as dehydrated dog shit.”

The next producer that Lorraine presented to them was Michael Santino, a soft-spoken man with olive skin and long curly hair. They’d all heard of him. He was one of the top guys in the industry and he cost a fortune. Just to get him in the studio would eat up half their advance, but Lorraine lobbied hard for him. He was the best, she said, with a reputation for bringing in nothing but winners. His skill at dealing with temperamental artists was renowned, too, she added when Quinn was out of earshot.

Santino owned and operated his own studio, Limelight Records, which Quinn insisted upon visiting as well. It was a big, dark, ugly room with layers of thick waffle board and heavy black fabric coating the walls. It looked like a haunted house.

As before, Quinn ignored the equipment in the control room and headed directly for the studio. He moved from the vocal room to the drum booth and back to the larger common area, clapping his hands. He spent a long time in there, longer than any other place they’d seen.

Eventually, Santino flipped a switch. “So, what do you think, Quinn?”

He turned around. He was smiling. They had a producer.

Two weeks later they were in the studio. A month after that, they’d finished preliminary recording on their debut album,
Quinntessence: Innocence.
By April the project was complete and in June the album was released.

Shan poked her head into the house. “Come and look at it!”

Chuckling, Ty accompanied her outside. Dan and Denise followed and found her capering with excitement as she pointed out all the features of the forest-green Jeep parked in the driveway.

“It’s got four-wheel drive and a car phone and look at these speakers! The stereo didn’t have great sound, so I ordered a whole new system. What do you think?”

“I think it’s great,” Ty said. “It’s time you finally got your own set of wheels.”

“I had to do something with all this money! Do you know that, when my alarm went off this morning, ‘Black Mile’ was playing on the radio?” she said, her sneakered feet doing a jig on the driveway. “I went and dragged Quinn out of bed to make him listen to it.”

As they went back into the house, Shan glanced into the music room. “Lorraine says we need to find another place to practice. She thinks the space is limiting us.”

“I think she’s right,” Dan said. “How long are we going to live in this shack, anyway? I’m sick of the hot water running out after two minutes. Besides, if the album does okay, I’m thinking Denise and I might buy a house.”

“I think you can start looking,” said Quinn. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his forearms crossed over his chest and a magazine tucked under his arm. He was wearing jeans, a Rush T-shirt, and the biggest shit-eating grin Shan had ever seen.

“Why? What did you hear?” she asked him.

“Nothing I didn’t expect. Just that
we
” —he slipped the magazine out from under his arm and they saw it was a copy of
Billboard
—“are on the motherfucking charts. ‘Black Mile.’ Number fifty-six.
With a bullet
,” he added, just before he was drowned out by a rebel howl from Ty.

Shan pushed the suitcase closed, then attempted to engage the lock. The sides of the suitcase wouldn’t meet over its bulging contents. “This is
not
going to work, Suge.”

Sugaree wagged her tail in response. She was reclining on Shan’s futon, no easy feat since it was rolled up and tied into a shape resembling a burrito. She fit atop it nicely, though. They’d celebrated her first birthday a month before, but she was still petite. She’d grown into a lovely dog, slim and graceful, with a shining black coat and a long, aristocratic snout that pointed to some greyhound in her lineage, or maybe whippet.

“I think you need your own bag,” Shan told her, extracting a collection of squeak toys, a water bowl, and two partially chewed Nylabones from the suitcase. One of them caught on the cup of a lacy bra and Shan paused to unwind the thread from the bone.

Quinn poked his head through the doorway. “The movers are here,” he said. “Aren’t you ready yet?”

“Almost, but I’m having trouble fitting Sugaree’s things in my bag.”

Quinn snorted. “She’s a dog. How many things does she need?”

She held up the toys in one hand and the water bowl in the other. Quinn went back to his own room, rooted through a box, and returned with a backpack into which he stowed Sugaree’s toys, brush, food bowls, extra leash, and a box of treats. After that he rolled up her dog bed, maneuvered it between the pack’s shoulder straps, and handed the bag to Shan.

Then he turned his attention to her suitcase. He flipped items left and right, extracted and rolled a few pieces of clothing, replaced them and fastened the bag closed. “Packed,” he pronounced. She knew that the items in his own bags, already neatly stacked in the downstairs hallway, would have been arranged and stowed with the precision of a Tetris game. He was anal that way, but he’d become even more so since they began spending most of their lives on the road.