She-Rox: A Rock & Roll Novel (36 page)

“Oh yeah.”

“Anything else?”

“I doubt it.”

“So, they haven’t?”

“
No
, they haven’t.”

“How sure are you of all this?”

“Very sure,” she spilled. “We’re talking about Eddie here, Kai. If she was hookin’ up with anybody, I’d know about it, trust me. She’s had no experience with men. Trying to swim in the deep end of the pool with Slade has scared her off. She pushes him away.”

“Yeah, that’s what happened to me as well—she’s not ready. But what I’m afraid might happen is that she’ll be on a tour bus traveling to Sioux Falls, South Dakota with Slade and
bam
she’s ready and I’m not there—he is,” Kai lamented, not expecting to admit to so much.

“Then do yourself a big favor and don’t drive her away with all your extremes. You’re either kicking up a hissy fit, blustering like some infant, showing all your insecurities or it’s the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s nothing—no phone calls, no communication. You can’t treat her like that and expect her to come running into your arms. She's frustrated with all the hot and cold.”

“I’m not insecure.”

“You’re not only insecure when you get like this, you’re also jealous and it’s beginning to show. Settle down genius . . . try to enjoy the ride. If you don’t blow up, then this will all end up the way you want.”

“Do you think she’s in love with me?”

“Yes, I think so. Suffice it to say that you can go back to Stanford knowing that you are the lucky scholar with a Kat for a girlfriend. You are still the smartest, most talked about, most wanted man on one of the most exclusive campuses in the world. Are you happy now?”

“Uh, huh,” he smiled. Kai was happy. He was happy that Slade was the loser.

July 7, 2007, LAX, 8:20 a.m.

Boarding the plane, back to San Francisco, Kai played the “goodbye scene” over in his head for the third time.

“You gonna miss me?” he had asked. Nodding, Eddie buried her face in his shoulder. “You know, if you were in a marching band instead of a rock band, we wouldn’t be having this problem.”

“I'd hate the outfit.”

“Listen,” Kai pleaded, “you have to promise me you won’t wander off somewhere alone.”

Eddie nodded.

“Promise me, Eddie. I want to hear you say it.”

“I promise.”

“This Slade guy . . . he’s not who you think he is.”

“I’ll be okay,” she whispered. “I promise I’ll be careful.”

His strength started to cave as he gave a last and final kiss, feeling her all too inviting flesh. He devoured the soft lips he had grown to crave, taking one last drink which had to last till the devil knew when.

The anxiety of breaking away was at hand, as he made one last plea. “If you
ever
decide that you don’t want to be in L.A. any longer and you want to come home, call me. If you decide, halfway through your bus tour, that you’re cold, tired, hungry and miserable, call me.”

“Stop worrying.”

Tuesday, July 17, 2007, Night of the Showcase – 7:10 p.m.

Marvin Giles, staff writer for CMM, wanted to get The Katz secluded, behind closed doors, to personally interview them. He had kept up with the band, attending their performances, but he wasn’t yet converted. He couldn’t make the leap from boy band to girl band. It messed with his macho image of exactly who should be brandishing such manly gear as that of an electric guitar.

He entered the rehearsal hall, saw the daunting stage, and heard the girls talking in a small dressing room. Ginger was in “the chair” as Daphne fixed her hair. The others waited their turn, sitting on a padded bench that flanked the side wall. As Marvin walked in, he came face to face with The Katz, and set up camp with his weapons of mass destruction: paper, pen and a digital recorder to pick up every word, sigh, cough or slip of the tongue.

He pushed the ‘record’ button and asked, “Ready to go?”

“Marv,” Gretchen drawled, “You think you’re gonna intimidate us with those devices? Good luck.”

“So let’s get this out of the way . . . are any of you married?” He looked up from his pad giving The Katz a counterfeit smile.

As the four laughed their ridicule, Gretchen parodied, “Yeah, we’re all going on the road, leaving our collective husbands with six kids, all in diapers.” Seeing him cock his head for a real answer, she said, “No, none of us are married
.”

“I’m sure our readers,
your fans
” he pressed, “will all be glad to hear that.” Looking at his next questions, he asked, “So how’d you get together . . . how did all of this get started anyway?”

Gretchen, still speaking for the band, answered, “Ginger and I started a band together back in Lincoln.”

“
As in Nebraska
—
You guys are from Nebraska?”

“No, just Ginger and I—Raven’s from Canada and Eddie’s from San Francisco. But we used to sing in our church choir and then sort of started our own small band during high school, stuff like that. We never got anywhere with it, so we came to L.A. hoping to find better musicians.”

“Your church choir didn’t happen to see the cover of Exposure, did they?”

Gretchen shrugged her shoulders, the digital recorder not picking up the gesture.

Marvin pointed his pen at Raven and asked, “So, how’d you come to L.A.?”

“Me? That’s easy—I wanted to get as far away from bad weather as possible. You know how cold it is up in Canada?”

“Did you play in a band up in Canada, then?”

“Yep, ski resorts, hotels, but it’s too weird trying to bust a move in moon boots.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that one.” Looking to Eddie, he ventured, “You’re the new member, the baby right? What’s your story?”

“M.I.,” Eddie said, giving the short answer.

“Oh, okay.”

Getting to the heart of his planned article, he pushed, “So, you all came together on your own. This band, The Katz, is not an entity put together and packaged by some private corporation looking to make a pile of money off four hot chicks in bikinis – is that correct? You are all willing to go on record stating that
all your music
,
studio recordings
, etcetera, are all your own?” he asked, deadpan, like some kind of homicide interrogation.

Gretchen, with marked triviality answered, “Yeah.”

“You’ve probably been asked this before, but since I'm a guy, would you please humor me and describe what it’s like to be in an all-girl band?”

“The groupies,” Ginger laughed.

“The groupies . . . What makes
your
groupies different from anybody else’s?”

“They’re men.”

“Oh, right,” he uttered, checking himself before almost blurting,
What’s the difference between girl and guy groupies?
He looked up from his notepad, thumped his pen against it and pointed at Eddie. “There’s a buzz going around about you. Someone I know was at Lanni’s brunch and heard you play a monster classical piece. Is that true?”

“Yeah.”

“The latest stuff I’ve been hearing from this band is far different than before. Your music has changed drastically,” Marvin punctuated. “It’s completely divergent. I remember seeing you play the Roxy, like a year ago, and the contrast between that and your last gig at the Troubadour—”

“We’ve been putting a lot of time and energy in the new material,” Gretchen jumped in, taking back her spot as band spokesperson.

As Marvin’s eyes slid back over to Gretchen, he dug a piece of paper from out of his notepad. It was a program that had been printed for the evening, giving a short bio on each member and listing the songs that were to be performed. He glanced over the program and said, “I’ve heard ‘Dead In Bed,’ ‘1-900,’ and ‘Beauty’. But these new songs . . . um: ’All For The Show,’ ’Dream Maiden,’ ’In The Confessional,’ ‘Scar’ and, what’s this one— ‘Sultana Reign’-- who wrote all these?”

“We write them all together,” Gretchen stated, “as a band.”

“Oh, okay, then, I’m just curious—how’d you come up with Sultana Reign?” He looked at Gretchen for an answer, “I’m not even sure if I know what that is.”

Eddie waited for Gretchen to give Marvin an answer, any answer, even a fake one.

Finally, Eddie delicately said, “It’s a concubine—a sultan’s concubine. The song is about a girl from the Middle East whose family sells her to a sultan to become part of his harem and secretly she takes birth control, not wanting to give him a child.”

“Huh,” Marvin proclaimed, “it sounds, ah, intriguing.”

“It’s one of our best numbers for the evening.”

Gretchen immediately perked up, “Yeah, it’s a big number, for sure.”

“Okay, sorry, but I’ve got to ask . . . there’s another story floating around about the entire lot of you and Slade McAllister. What’s all that about?”

The Katz broke into nervous laughter. Gretchen, with a guilty smile and silky voice, said, “Oh, we’re all just friends. He’s part of the family.”

“I’ll bet,” quipped Marvin. “What about the possibility of The Katz getting put on his Bad Blood tour, stateside?”

“None of that’s been decided,” she disclosed.

“So, this showcase is pretty important tonight, isn’t it?”

As the girls all nodded, Marvin speculated, “If you do end up on the bill with Slade, I can only imagine what kind of tabloid fodder that’s going to generate.”

They all rewarded him with their girlish laughter, before he pressed, “
But none of you have anything goin’ on with Slade, right?”
As The Katz continued laughing, he looked over at Eddie. She wasn’t laughing. Her lips were turned up into a tight smile as she looked on.

Gretchen steered, “All dating does in this town is throw you into the rumor mill, and that’s all they are—rumors.”

“Well, rumors are the vehicles that drive the news. So, if you get a label deal, what then?”

“Tattoos,” Raven jeered, bored with the interview. She didn’t understand why these reporters and radio jockeys all asked the same stupid stuff: ‘How’d you start,’ ‘how’d you come up with the name,’ ‘who writes the songs.’

As Daphne finished up with Ginger, she called, “Gretchen, you’re next.”

“Okay, ladies,” Marvin said. “I can see you need to finish getting ready, so I thank you for the interview, and we’ll have a photographer take pictures later before you go on.”

“See ya, Marv,” Ginger sang.

9:10 p.m.

All guitars were tuned, and the massive soundboard was fired up, ready to prove why it cost such an exorbitant amount of money. Duff Barry, the Mix Master, had been hired to divine the vocal and drum microphones to their sweet spots, while overhead on the house sound system was John Kay of Steppenwolf singing “Magic Carpet Ride.”

Taking a last look in the mirror, Gretchen glanced at Eddie sitting on a folding chair, her fingers running Mixolydian scales up and down her neck. “Scared, yet?” she asked.

With the seriousness of a quarterback on game day, Eddie replied, “Nope.”

“Nervous?”

She stopped her scales and said, “Live performing is a demon and I willingly shake hands so it doesn’t consume me. Either way, it’s not for the faint of heart, and being a little nuts goes a long way.”