Chapter 6
1982 – BEFORE THE NIGHT OF THE QUAALUDE
Bullets and Blood was on the verge. Kentucky Killer had caught fire and made the small label enough money to keep the lights on. But then the Big Boys went after Bullets and Blood, sending hip-looking A and R guys around with pockets full of promises. They introduced them to music legends like Hawk Bromberg, with his little flavor-saver and sideburns, who talked up his label and everything they’d done for him.
This was background noise in the weeks following, but the morning after I cleaned them both out at poker, I knew nothing. I’d kept my bra on, put my shirt back on, and stretched on the couch for a few hours. Woke up with a headache and a throat that felt like a bag of dry beans.
I had to get to school.
Lynn was gone. So was Yoni. The hotel room looked over the beach and, in the yellow of the rising sun, seemed expensive and luxurious in a different way than the night before.
“Morning,” Strat said from the balcony. He leaned on the doorway in a shirt and stonewashed jeans.
Behind him, Hawk smoked a stubby brown cigarette as thick as a middle finger, looking at me as if he was eight and I was a piece of birthday cake. He was a legend, but I wasn’t flattered. I was disgusted.
“Where’s Indy?” I asked.
“Out for a swim.”
Had Strat even slept? He still looked perfect, but maybe my standards were skewed. He looked as though he partied all the time, and that was what I found attractive about him.
“I gotta go.”
“You should come around later.”
Hawk nodded, picking the slick brown butt out of his teeth. He sang about heaven and earth with a voice like a fist, but I wasn’t loving his real presence.
“Sure.” I didn’t have time to chitchat. My father was coming back from a business thing in Omaha, and I had to be home.
“Do you have my beeper number?”
“No.”
I didn’t have time to scrabble around for a pencil and a piece of cleanish paper so I could set off the little black box on Strat’s belt. He wouldn’t even answer it. He was a rock star.
“Eyebrow,” he said. “Six-oh-six E-Y-E-B-R-O-W.”
“Six-oh-six? Kentucky? I thought you guys were from Nashville.”
“The beeper’s from Kentucky.”
I didn’t move. Just waited for the long version.
“My dad moved to Kentucky. He’s a doctor. He upgrades every six months.”
Mister Big Rock Star was either too frugal or too busy to get his own damned beeper. Or too much of a kid. Or too attached to his parents.
No matter what angle I looked at that from, no matter how the light hit it, I found it charming.
* * * *
I had no intention of using that number for anything, though I’d never forget it. My driver was off. So I got a car at the hotel’s front desk and sat back for the short ride from Santa Monica to Malibu. It was six thirty in the morning. I had ten minutes to get back.
Nadia, Theresa’s nanny, would be up because she didn’t sleep. Hector, the groundskeeper, was probably already working. Maria, Graciella, and Gloria. Definitely rousing Carrie, Sheila, and Fiona for school. Dressing them. Making sure homework was done. Deirdre, Leanne, and Theresa would be causing havoc. If I got right in the shower, there was a pretty good chance no one would notice I had even been out.
Except Mom. She was a wild card. She usually slept until eight, but if she drank the night before, she actually woke up earlier. And if she caught me out, she was unpredictable. She’d been pregnant six times since I was born, so she always seemed to be in a constant state of flux. Big. Little. Tired. Energized. Horizontal. Running. One person. Two. She was as likely to lock me out and act as if everything was normal as tell my father, which would be bad. Very bad. All bad. He did not like losing control. He seemed to have two emotions: cold calculation and satisfaction.
I loved him. I loved both of them. But I never knew what to make of them. In the end, I realized they didn’t go on and on about how they felt but concerned themselves with actions. I respected that. It was what I thought it meant to be an adult.
I knew I’d pushed it. Playing strip poker with two guys in a semi-famous rock band in a semi-luxurious hotel room? And telling them my name?
My God. I didn’t know what my parents would do to me, but everything about it was trouble. Dad cared about what people thought. He cared about appearances and chastity. Even if he wasn’t in town, he had the nannies dress us all up and take us to church on Sunday. He made sure we had ashes on our forehead and palm crosses in our hands. He never mentioned God at all, but the Catholic Church always loomed as the ultimate authority.
I’d asked him why, and he said something odd.
He said, “Invisible gods are ineffective.”
I had to hope that Strat and Drew had no reason to find out who the Drazens were. How old their money was. They wouldn’t. I wasn’t anyone to them. I made myself invisible in my mind when the cab got to my house. I gave the cabbie one of Drew’s hundreds, ran into the side door, and made it into the bathroom without being seen.
I washed the night away with scalding water.
Six-oh-six eyebrow.
Go over pre-calc in the car.
History
Comp
Stupid’s not a verb, asshole.
Forty minutes to memorize a hundred Latin conjugations
Tennis
Photography
Eat something
What’s your name?
Catholic Women’s Club
Chess Strategy Club
Then?
Then?
Then…