The Five (5 page)

“Sir,” said Benjy, obediently brushing.

“I tell you what, put that poster up there. Just stick it up right there next to the bullet holes and fling some paint on it. Kinda put it at an angle.”

Benjy dutifully crossed the room and retrieved from one of the canvas bags a crumpled and wrinkled The Five poster, which showed their faces—all as serious as sin, couldn’t have a musician smiling, that would be instant death—with the signature black handprint in the middle. Nomad knew Ash had sent Gogo a press kit, with their pictures and bios and shit, when he sent the video. “Angle it like so,” Gogo directed. Benjy pushed the poster up against the wet paint as he was told. “Okay, fuck it up some,” said Gogo, and Benjy flung droplets of red paint across it. “One more time. Yeah, there you go. Art for the artists,” Gogo said.

“We’re ready,” the tech guy with the skunk-shave hairdo announced. He’d been shifting the floodlights around and checking his meter, and now everything was as he wanted.

“Let me tell you how we’re going to do this.” Gogo took a black handkerchief from an inner jacket pocket and wiped the sparkles of sweat from his cheeks, even though the fan’s air was fluttering his bolo. “We’re going to get you placed, and then I’m going to gab with you for about a minute in front of this wall,” and here he indicated the red-spattered poster and the bullet holes. “Then we’ll move you back there,” a nod toward Old Glory against the shiny burn, “and gab for about two more minutes. That’s your spot, three minutes. You really get more than that, ’cause remember, we’re showing the video in between the backdrop changes. George, how about introducing me around real quick, huh?”

“Hey…can
I
ask something?” Nomad spoke up, before any introductions could be started. He didn’t wait to be invited. The heat, a solid prickly thing, was making sweat itch the back of his neck and trickle down his sides. Gogo stared at Nomad blankly, as he put his handkerchief away. “I’m not getting what this place has to do with our video.”

“I’ll tell you, then.” Gogo didn’t miss a beat. His tone was flat and his eyes were still blank, as if he were conserving all his energy for the interview. “I
watched
your video, okay? Very technically well done. Who shot it for you?”

“Some film students at UT,” George answered.

“The actors were students?”

“Yeah, but we hired local actors too.” It was amazing how quickly a video project could eat up two thousand dollars, if you really wanted it to look pro: the costumes, the props, the smoke pots and blank ammo, the special effects and the editing work. In the end, as they were running out of cash, George sold an old reel-to-reel tapedeck he had in a closet, Nomad tapped the account that held the money he earned as a house-painter, Mike ditched an axe on eBay, Berke gave an afternoon of drum lessons to teenage wannabees at the Oakclaire Drive YMCA for twenty bucks, Ariel played for change several days running on the UT campus, and Terry donated from his gig giving piano lessons at the Episcopal Student Center on 27th Street.

“And it was shot where?” Gogo asked, still staring at Nomad. “Looked like some kind of abandoned building, about as fucked up as this one.”

“An apartment complex,” Nomad said, getting the point. “Turned into a crackhouse. A few days away from the wrecking-ball.”

“There you go, huh? I wanted the interviews to have the same kind of backdrop as the video. Wanted it to be edgy. See, I even found you some bullet holes, so you should be grateful. They’ll look good in the shot, won’t they, Hector?”

“Yeah,
muy bueno
,”
said Hector.

“Okay, then. Christ, I’m melting. Introductions, Georgie. Who does what?”

George did a quick job of the intros, because it was obvious Gogo wanted to get to business. That was fine for everyone else, because they were all sweating and miserable in this mean little room. Then Gogo said, “Ready,” the two techs got their camcorders, switched on the cam lights and checked the volume settings on the microphones. The generator’s low drone in the other room wasn’t loud enough to kill anything in here, and Nomad figured it helped the vibe.

“Okay, everybody move against this wall. Watch the paint…what’s your name again?”

“Ariel.”

“Wet paint, Ariel. Scruffy, move to your left about a foot. We want the poster to show.” Mike obeyed without comment. “How’s it look?” This question was aimed at the techs, who were peering through their rubber-rimmed eyepieces.

“Tall dude needs to shift to the right,” Hector said, and Nomad moved. “That’s got it. I think we’re set.”

“Count it down,” Gogo directed. He turned off his personal fan.

“In five…four…three…two…one.”

“I’m
here
,” said Gogo with a dazzling smile and forceful emphasis, speaking into Benjy’s camcorder, “with the Austin-based band, The Five. These guys have just started their new tour, and they’re bringing us a look at their fresh redhot video. The song’s called ‘When The Storm Breaks’. We’ll get to that video in just a minute, but first…you know…heh heh…I’ve got to ask a question.” He turned his attention to the band. Benjy’s camcorder stayed on his face, while Hector’s was pointed at The Five. Nomad was aware of being at the center of bright light and black shadows. “Take a look at that poster,” Gogo said. “Give us a tight closeup on that, Hector.” Obviously, the techs were not only the crew but also part of the cast. “Okay, this is my question: which one of you is the
thumb
?”

There followed a few seconds of deafening silence. Nomad thought it was probably the most asinine question he’d ever heard. Their first minute was ticking away. He said, “I don’t know who the thumb is, but
I
can be the middle finger.”

“Cut it,” Gogo told the techs. The lights on their camcorders went dark. Gogo scratched his chin and smiled without warmth. “Listen,” he said, “let’s understand that
I’m
the host, huh? I’m going for some humor. I’m not challenging anybody to a big dick contest. Now, to be honest with you, I’m doing this for Roger because he’s a decent guy and he’s sent me a lot of business. So save your attitude for the stage, and we’ll all go home happy. Count it down,” he told Hector.

The camcorders lit up again. “In five…four…three…two…one.”

“I’m
here
—right here, wherever we are—with the Austin-based band, The Five. These guys have just started their new tour and we’re going to get a look at their video, ‘When The Storm Breaks’, in just a minute, but first I want to remind you to check out our Weekend Special Deals coming up, see what Felix Gogo can do for you, doesn’t have to be just the weekend, we’ve got deals
every
day of the week, walk in, drive out, and remember, my friends, sometimes good guys don’t wear white.” He’d been speaking directly into Benjy’s lens, and now he looked at the band and gave an expression of exaggerated astonishment as if the light-washed figures had suddenly materialized before him like floating spirits. “There are
five
of you!” he said, clownishly. “I don’ know what I wass es-pectin’!” He gave a big grin into the lens, put an index finger against the side of his head, lolled his tongue out and staggered like the village idiot, and Nomad just clenched his teeth and looked down at the trashy floor.

Ariel laughed, but it was all nerves. Beside her, Terry wore a frozen smile. His eyes were hot and sweat glistened on his scalp.

“Take you a long time to come up with that name?” was the next question. “Ariel?”

“No,” she answered. “Not really.” She felt herself trying to recoil from the lights, but there was wet red paint on the wall at her back.

“We thought about The Four, or The Six,” Berke suddenly said, her voice calm and controlled, “but for some reason it didn’t seem right.”

“Duh!” said Gogo, with another fanatical grin into the camcorder. “See folks, you think my job iss
heeesey
? We got some great minds in here tonight! Okay, somebody set up the video. You went to Iraq to shoot this, right?”

“It’s about the war,” Nomad managed to say.

“Song’s called ‘When The Storm Breaks’, by The—” Gogo held up his own hand, palm out and fingers spread, for Hector’s camcorder to focus on.

“And cut,” Gogo said. He walked a couple of steps to turn the fan back on, and he took the black handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket and mopped his face and did not give a glance at George, who stood about three feet away.

Gogo lifted his double chins to catch the breeze. “Have you people ever done a fucking
television interview
before? Pardon the truth, but you are
slow
. Benjy, get me some water.”

“I don’t think we got our full minute,” Nomad said.

“What?”

“I said,” Nomad repeated, “that we didn’t get our full minute.” He came forward, brushing between Ariel and Terry. George was shaking his head, warning him:
no…no…no
. Nomad stopped, but he had no intention of backing down. “You used our time for a commercial. That’s not right.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Gogo said, as he took the bottled water that Benjy had brought him from one of the bags. He uncapped it, drank but did not offer any liquid relief to anyone else. “This whole
show
is a commercial. What’d you say you called yourself? Nomad? Okay, when you get the Nomad Show on cable, you can do what you please. Until then, the Felix Gogo Show is the name of this one, and I do what I please. Somebody fucks up, or acts like a moron, or doesn’t appreciate the humor…” He shrugged. “There’s the door. We can shut this down right now.” He turned to George. “You want to shut this down right now, George? I can go sell some cars, huh?”

The tech guys were waiting to see how this turned out before they moved the floodlights. George looked from Gogo to Nomad and then back again, and he lowered his head and said, “Nobody wants to shut it down.”

Still the tech guys waited. Gogo drank about half the water. Then he recapped it with a flourish, victor of this particular battle. “Okay,” he announced, and the tech guys started working again.

Nomad caught Berke’s gaze. Her eyes were slightly narrowed. She was asking him,
Do you believe we have to put up with this shit?
He didn’t want to, anymore than she did, but they needed this. Even though the show would run too late to put anybody in the audience at Common Grounds, it and the Saturday afternoon rerun would bring people into The Curtain Club for their Saturday night gig in Dallas.

“Do you want to talk about the video?” Gogo asked them. “Or do you want to talk about your tour?”

“The tour,” Nomad said, after a quick questioning glance at the others.

“Fine with me. That video’s going to be about as popular around here as a cactus sandwich covered with turd sauce. But that’s just my opinion. Okay, I want you all standing in front of the flag.”

The band was in place (like mannequins in a store window advertising a small and hollow version of patriotism, Nomad thought), the floodlights were on, the camcorders lit up, the countdown done, and Felix Gogo got on the right track by mentioning their gig at the Curtain Club in Dallas’ Deep Ellum. Doors at eight-thirty, other gators on the bill the Naugahydes, the Critters, and Gina Fayne and the Mudstaynes. Gogo asked Mike about the tattoos, and Mike said they were a history of his life. Gogo asked Ariel how long she’d been a musician, and she said she couldn’t remember not hearing some kind of music and wanting to write down what she heard. Gogo asked Terry what his favorite song was that The Five had done, and Terry said it was a tough question but he probably had two favorites that were very different from each other and displayed their range: the slithery ‘This Song Is A Snake’ and the hard-edged ‘Desperate Ain’t Pretty’, which they sometimes did as an encore. Gogo was a fly, landing here and there, long enough to start an itch, quick enough to slip a swatter.

Then Gogo looked directly at Nomad and asked, “You guys have been together three years, right? So how come you don’t have a record deal?”

It sounded so sincere and sincerely interested, but Nomad knew they were having a big dick contest, after all, and Gogo had just pulled Nomad’s jeans down to show the shrivelled little member that hung there.

In his allotted time, Nomad could not explain that Don Kee Records in Nashville had gone belly-up a month before their first CD was supposed to be distributed. He could not explain that their slick A&R rep with Electric Fusion Records in Los Angeles had been caught screwing the money-man’s wife in a hot tub, and thus not only was Slick kicked, but every band Slick had picked was kicked. Nomad could not explain, in this happy moment, that the music business was a devastated landscape and that the sale of CDs fell every year and bands were fighting to survive on gigs that at best put a hundred dollars in the pot to be divided, but then again Gogo already knew this, and what was truth to working gators in the industry could sound like sour grapes to the paying audience. Anyway, Nomad decided, desperate ain’t pretty.

He pulled up an easy smile. It was probably one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do because it felt so hideously, rottenly false, and he said, “We’re working on it,” which he’d heard many others say when they were sliding down the tubes.

“Well, good luck with that,” said Gogo. He looked at Terry again. “Where you going after Dallas?”

“We’ll be at the Spinhouse in El Paso on Friday night, the 25th. After that, we’re at—”

“So I guess your fans can find you on the web, right?” Gogo interrupted.

“Uh…yeah. And we’ve got a MySpace page.”

“Good enough. I want to give you a great big Gogo thanks for being here tonight, and I
know
you guys are heading for great things.” He grinned into Benjy’s lens. “And
speaking
of great, my friends, let’s take a look at these great Weekend Special Deals. Felix Gogo Toyota makes it
eeeeeasy
to walk in, drive out any day of the week. Comin’ at you right
now
.” He pointed his finger into the lens and made his eyes pop and he pursed his lips as if trying to kiss the customer—or, at least, the customer’s wallet.