The Devil of Echo Lake (22 page)

But when the smoke cleared at the end of each session, and he longed to tell someone just how crazy these fuckers he was locked in a soundproofed box with really were, and how scared and thrilled he was to be pulling it off, it was Ally he wanted to talk to. Always. He took it for granted that living the dream he had worked for was ultimately pretty meaningless if he couldn’t share it with the one who had stood by him and watched as he reached for it, the one who had come this far with him and would love him whether the record went platinum or collapsed under the weight of the egomaniacs making it.

The one who will love you if you’re there for
her,
as more than a pen pal.

He took a pen from the drawer where they kept the books of matches and batteries and wrote a short entry.

Ally,

I’m sorry you’re sad. Just remember, please—this is a phase, and it will pass. You should go home if you want to. I would say I’ll miss you, but I guess I already do. Just be back by Christmas, okay? The project will be over soon and if you’re back, maybe I’ll even give you your Christmas gift early.

Love,

Jake

He staggered to the bedroom like a drunk and crawled under the blankets beside her. She stirred a little, but settled without waking.

Despite his fatigue, sleep eluded him until right up to the threshold of dawn. He slept through the alarm and woke up to Ally shaking his shoulder.

No time for a shower. Only a few hours had passed since he went to bed, but the light in the room looked like about nine o’clock. He tried to force his fatigued body into motion. It was stubborn and heavy. He stood up, wobbled, and pulled on some clean clothes, almost falling over in the act, leaving a pile of laundry on the floor and hanging out of the dresser.

In the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face, glanced at his wild hair, and made a mental note that if he shaved his head, he could save time in the morning and get by with fewer showers. He ran deodorant across his pits, squeezed toothpaste onto his finger and rubbed it around in his mouth as he jogged down the stairs. He could rinse when he got to the studio.

Allison yelled his name as he yanked the front door open. He looked up just in time to see his car keys flying in an arc over the stairs and caught them, noting that they sounded like a hi-hat when they smacked into his palm. He blew her a kiss, trotted out to his Pontiac Shitbox and still managed to arrive at the studio twenty minutes before the session start time.

Half an hour later, Rail walked in, looking rested and rejuvenated. Billy had still not descended from the loft. Rail approached Jake and, in his most polite British tone, asked, “Jake, where the fuck is Billy Moon?”

“Still upstairs sleeping, I guess. I haven’t seen him yet.”

“I see.” He took the revolver from his jacket and fired it into the rafters. The gun barked fire and sounded a deafening blast. Jake and Ron cowered with their hands to their heads. “Billy!” Rail shouted over the fading sound of the gunshot. There was no reply, no sound at all from above.

Rail ascended the spiral stairs. Jake and Ron exchanged a wary glance but neither ventured a word. When Rail returned a moment later, his gait was lazy and resigned. He simply said, “Not here.”

Jake asked, “What do we do?”

“Wait. We wait for the artist.”

It was a long, tense wait.

Billy came in at one thirty in the afternoon with a scarlet-haired goth groupie clinging to his jacket.

Rail didn’t shift from his reclining position in the control room with his feet atop a road case when Billy arrived. “Decided to take the morning off, did we?” he called out.

Billy picked up his acoustic guitar and started tuning it. The goth girl cracked her gum and gazed wide-eyed at the guitars and microphones scattered everywhere. Rail swept his eyes over her like a scanning laser, reading her price and moving on. Then without warning, he stood up, shot through the double doors with feline grace and, within a second, was towering over Billy.

Rail said, “Gravitas is shelling out two grand a day for this room and you decide to spend half of that having your knob polished?”

Billy strummed a chord and adjusted the tuning.

“I’m talking to you.”

“You’re fired,” Billy said softly.

Rail laughed, turned toward the control room glass and called for Gribbens to put up the current reel.

Billy finally made eye contact. He said, “Didn’t you hear me? You’re fired.”

Rail sighed as if losing his patience with an insolent child. He said, “You can’t fire me, and you know it. You are centimeters away from landing in the bargain bin. Gravitas will drop you like a burning coal if you tell them you’re firing me,
and
you will be contractually prohibited from releasing new material on any other label for
years
. Put the guitar down. We’re doing vocals today. And get your pussy out of here. It’s time to work.”

The goth girl said, “Hey, who do you think you are? That’s Billy Moon you’re talking to, and I’m the one who talked him into showing up here at all today.”

“Really. So what are you, his number one fan?”

“My name is Rachel.”

“Rachel, then, let me ask you: which record did you like better,
Eclipse
or
Lunatic
?”

She shot a look at Billy. His eyes were riveted to a spot on the floor. She said, “
Eclipse
.”

“Then you have me to thank. I produced it. And if I can do my job today, you will have another brilliant Billy Moon album to cherish. So please sit down and shut your gob.”

Rachel cleared some clutter from the couch at the back of the control room and laid down on it. Gribbens took a not-so-inconspicuous mental snapshot of the shadow in her plaid miniskirt before she adjusted it. Reclining there, she looked like a piece of art the studio had selected to add ambiance to the room: stainless steel studs gleaming under the track lights, vampire chic makeup faded in perfect gradations of violet around her black eyeliner, a tattoo of the letters and numbers from a Ouija board exposed on her stomach when her short black shirt rode up.

Billy went into the makeshift vocal booth looking like he wished it had a proper door he could slam.

“From the top,” Rail ordered as he sat down beside Jake at the console. Jake rolled the tape. Everyone leaned forward into the sound field when Billy’s raspy whisper entered after the chugging guitar intro.

You wear those boring clothes and think that nobody knows

You try to conceal it, but girl I can feel it

I can’t see it, but I know it’s there

I can’t see it, but I know it’s there

“Stop tape,” Rail said. Toggling the talkback button on a wand in his hand, he told Billy, “Your rhythm is off again. Listen to the snare drum. It’s supposed to be pushing forward, not hanging back. It sounds uninspired.”

Releasing the switch, he told Jake to run it back to the top of the song, and to turn up the snare in Billy’s headphones.

Jake knew this take was worse before Rail even called, “Cut.” When Rail did stop it, he swiveled his chair to face Rachel on the couch. She raised her eyebrows theatrically. He said, “You fuck his brains out all morning? He’s clearly spent.”

“None of your business,” she replied, holding his stare until he swiveled back around. Then he laughed.

She couldn’t help herself, she said, “
What?
What’s so funny?”

“I guess you didn’t or you would have said so. Your kind usually wants everybody to know. Especially when you’re getting credit for wearing him out.”

“Fuck off.”

“Careful, now. Remember, I can show you the door.”

Rail clicked the button and asked, “What is it, Billy? You’re killing me here. Can you sing this like you mean it or not?”

“Trevor, I don’t want to do this song.”

“This is the song I need, Billy.”

“Well, I’m not into it. I don’t even think this one is right for the album. It’s an old song. It didn’t make the cut on the first record, so why are we reworking it now when I have new material?”

“Because, Billy, I’ll decide what belongs on the record, and frankly, I don’t think a lot of the new material is up to snuff. This one has radio written all over it now that we’ve added Flint’s guitars. Come, now. Do it again.”

Jake rolled the tape, but this time Billy skipped his cue entirely. He just stood out there and lit a cigarette as the music passed by. Rail’s hand swept past Jake and swatted the STOP button like he was killing a fly.

“Am I wasting my time here?” he said with a note of remorse to the little mic on the desk. “Are you throwing it all away, Billy? The houses, the cars, the freedom to make a living doing what you love?”

“I don’t love this.”

“What’s not to love? Do you know how many younger men would kill to be in this room with me?”

“It’s got nothing to do with love, what you’re making me do.”

“What am I making you do?”

“Singing this fucking song when I’m not feeling it. I thought we were done with this song. You know I wrote it with Jim.”

“So? You don’t have to pay a dead man royalties.”

“You’re a sick son-of-a-bitch.”

Rail laughed. “You take yourself too seriously. This is the same old game of egos and echoes it’s always been. You made the choice to play a long time ago. So sing, lad.”

Billy threw the headphones on the floor and stormed out of the booth, then out of the church. Rail reclined in his chair, put his feet up on the road case, took a penknife from his pocket, and set to work cleaning his fingernails. Rachel got up and went after Billy.

Jake waited long enough to determine that no orders were forthcoming, then slipped out of the control room and up the stairs to the bathroom in the loft.

Ally had pointed out on a couple of occasions that social tension seemed to give him an over-active bladder. She said it was a physical response to confrontation that gave him an excuse to get out of the room. He had argued that it wasn’t psychological; when he had to go, he really had to go. She had countered that it was still a nervous reaction. He didn’t know if he believed her theory that this was the flight half of a fight-or-flight equation, but he definitely had to go pretty urgently right now. As he stood there pissing and pondering how much it had to do with his expectation that Rail would shortly be applying the little knife to more than his manicure, he was reminded of how much he missed talking to the woman who knew what made him tick.

The sound of the flushing toilet trailed away, and Jake heard voices floating up through the screened window. Peering out, he could make out the little shapes of Billy and Rachel below, standing under a pine tree, passing what was probably a flask between them.

“I think it’s a great song,” Rachel said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. You should at least record it, even if you don’t put it on the album.”

“I dunno. Things went bad between me and the guy I wrote it with. I don’t think he’d want me to make a dime off of it.”

“But it’s your song, too, isn’t it? I mean, don’t you have the right to record a song you co-wrote?”

“Well, sure I have the
right.
But that’s not really the point.”

“You’re upset because your friend died.”

Jake couldn’t hear what, if anything, Billy said next. The wind picked up and a tree branch scraped against the building. Rachel said, “I’ve lost friends, too. It sucks. But you can’t always fix things.”

They both let the statement hang there in the space between them. Maybe she was touching his hand. Jake started to feel creepy about eavesdropping but he wasn’t quite ready to go back down while Billy was still outside.

“Here,” she said, “finish it.”

Jake heard the metallic clink of the cap being screwed back onto the flask.

“Whatever else you and your friend had between you, there was chemistry. You should honor that.”

“We were just stupid, horny kids when we wrote it. Now it just reminds me that I miss him.”

“How did he die?”

“The house I used to live in with him and the rest of my old friends burned down. Three people died, and he was one of them.”

“Oh my God.”

“It was right after my first record came out, not long after the band broke up. We were on bad terms. Never had a chance to reconcile. How am I supposed to sing a sex lyric when it just makes me feel guilty?”

“Sex and death go together like peanut butter and chocolate, Billy. Guilt, too.”

At that, he uttered a dark laugh.

“Seriously,” she said, “the song would suck without that kind of tension. You must know that. The lyrics might make it a sex song, but the music is darker.”

“I guess.”

“Trust me. I can help you find your way on this one.”

Billy made no reply to that.

Jake rinsed his hands and went back downstairs. Rail was clapping his hands slowly. He said, “The lovely Rachel talks our star back into the studio for the second time today. Bravo.”

“I can do more than that,” she said, in a low voice, sidling up to the producer.

“What might that be?” Rail asked.

“I think I can provide some much needed inspiration.”

“I wouldn’t get carried away, love. Why don’t you have a seat?”

“Why don’t you blindfold him?” she said.

Rail seemed to reappraise the girl. A dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth. He said, “Why should I?”

“The lyric is,
I can’t see it,
right? So why don’t you have him sing it with a blindfold on?”

“Because despite what you may fancy you know about producing music, it’s not about role playing. I have a deadline, and I just need him to sing the damn song and move on. I don’t have time to indulge your bondage fantasies.”

“Oh, okay. I guess I thought the problem was that he sounds uninspired.”

Rail snapped his knife shut.

Rachel said, “Let me inspire him.”

“You know what? Fine. I’ll sit this one out. But if we don’t have a track in half an hour, Ron is going to drive you to the bus station.

“Jake, record this amazing bit of inspired singing, would you? It’ll be a novel experience for you to take direction from a groupie.”