Chapter 8.
1982 – Before the night of the Quaalude
I didn’t have to remember E-Y-E-B-R-O-W or six-oh-six, which I happened to know was a Kentucky number from a friend at Carlton Prep. I got a beep in the middle of chess strategy with a Nashville call back number. An hour later, I was in the passenger seat of a Monte Carlo driving into Pacific Palisades. Strat was behind the wheel, and Indiana was in the back with Lynn and Yoni.
I had no idea why I was there. I wasn’t the prettiest girl who hung around them. I hadn’t screwed either one of them, though apparently Yoni and Lynn had had a fine time with Strat before the poker game had gotten under way. I didn’t understand why I was there because I didn’t understand men.
Yet.
It came to me many years later, while reading Rolling Stone. During the interview, Indy was sitting in front of a mixing board they’d installed in the Palihood House (He was “producing” because that was always the story arc. Small-town beginnings>cohesion of the group>artistic satisfaction>commercial success>drug use>break up>The Bottom>redemption>rebuilding/branding). His hair was scraggly but intentionally so. His shirt was clean. He’d lost the puff around the eyes, and he was talking about Strat.
“He was like a brother to me, but more. A partner. And when he died, man, it was like someone ripped me open.”
In the passenger seat of the Monte Carlo, with the two of them still poker-playing strangers, I didn’t know they were like brothers. Years later, reading the Rolling Stone article, that Monte Carlo ride came back to me.
I’d been so clueless about how close they were and how lonely they were.
I always assumed I was brought into this world fully formed. Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I didn’t understand people the way I thought I did. I chewed on that then forgot it, because it only turned up the heat on a cauldron of stew that had everything and nothing to do with the Bullets and Blood boys.
Indy leaned forward and pointed at a locked gate closing off a road into the foothills of the Palisades. “Up here. Code’s fifty-one-fifty.” He turned to me, and I could feel his breath on my cheek. “Wait until you see this place.”
“It’s nice up here,” Lynn said before cracking her gum. She was in a black lace corset and tiered skirt. Red, red lips and black, black eyeliner.
“This is the ass-end though,” Yoni chimed in. “It’s the Palihood.”
“Yeah, anything east of the park.”
“South.”
“East.”
I rolled my eyes.
Strat ignored them. “He can’t afford it.”
“We just got a quarter-million dollar contract.” Indy leaned back and kicked Strat’s seat.
Strat shook his head. “Have you read it?”
“You don’t read Greek either.”
Driving up the hill under the clear spring sky, the fact that he’d read the contract and understood it made me look at Strat’s arms, his music tattoos, the muscles of his legs, and respect him with a sexual heat.
We pulled up to a house made of glass and overhung with trees and surrounded by tall bushes. When we got out of the car, the shade was a welcome respite from the blasting sun, and the birds cut through the white noise of the freeway.
“It’s nice,” I said.
“And I can afford it.” Indy pointed at Strat as he headed for the front door.
“Fuck you can,” Strat muttered.
Yoni and Lynn had no interest. They’d started bantering about the coyotes in the hills, bouncing with excitement, as we went up the cracked steps onto the pocked flagstones.
“Ye of little faith.” Indy opened the door. “I have the down payment next week. Made escrow already.”
The black linoleum floors shined, and the sightline went through the house, over the west side, and to the ocean. Yoni and Lynn were already checking out the bean-shaped pool in the back.
You’d think a musician on the cusp of fame wouldn’t want to be tied down to a house. He’d want to ride the tour bus and fuck a few hundred girls. That was the norm. But Indy stood in the empty space between the front door and the horizon and lit two cigarettes before handing me one.
“I can move in next week.”
“Dude,” Strat said.
“Dude,” Indy snapped.
Strat turned to me, hands out, pleading. On the whole ride up, I’d wondered why they brought me, and I feared at that moment that they’d gone to the library or talked to their lawyers and found out who I was. Now they were going to ask me for money, and I couldn’t give it to them. There was no other reason to put me in that car.
I liked them, but that house had to cost two hundred grand.
Would they threaten to tell Daddy things? The poker? The bra? The smoking? Would they tell him I drank and I kissed? Or that I was a cocktease?
When I brought the cigarette to my lips, my hand was shaking. I didn’t know which scenario terrified me most. I inhaled the nicotine and blew out rings as if I had control of this. Whatever this was. It was my first cigarette of the day, and it made my palms tingle.
“Why the fuck am I here?” I asked.
Strat stepped forward, finger pointing at me then Indy. “Keep me from killing him.”
“Fuck you,” Indy retorted.
I didn’t have anything much more intelligent to offer. “It’s a nice house. Needs work. Get an accountant to tell him if he can afford it.”
“Let me give you the short version.” Strat’s comment was directed at me but meant for Indy. “Two fifty minus fifteen percent to WDE. Two twelve and a half. Eighty-three grand. Minus three points to our producer. Two-oh-five. And by the way, we, you and me and Gary—the band—we have to recoup their points.”
“We will. I’m telling you.”
“Two-oh-five divided by three? Sixty-eight thousand dollars for a three-year contract. And you haven’t even paid your taxes yet.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at the ceiling. If Strat and/or Indy noticed me acting my age, they didn’t say anything.
“There’s income, fucktard.” Indy patted his pockets and found a thick marker best suited to sniffing and writing graff. “I need a napkin. Fucking find me a napkin. An envelope. I gotta write on the back of it.”
“Fifty grand for the studio we gotta pay back,” said Strat the Sensible. “Recoupable. Producer. Recoupable. Equipment rental. Re—”
“Stop it!” I shouted.
I’d had it with the two of them. I didn’t know much of anything. I didn’t know how to run a business or how to make money, but I knew how to think like a rich person. Maybe that was why they’d brought me.
“You guys. You’re so cute with your middle-class shitsense. You act as if it’s money to spend. It’s not. It’s money to make more money. You.” I pointed at Strat. “You move in here with Indy. You take your sixty grand, and you set up a studio in the garage or the living room. I don’t care where. You.” I pointed at Indy. “Get a commercial loan. You lay down the next record here and collect the fifty grand instead of paying it in recoupable expenses. You rent it out to your other musician friends and let them pay your mortgage, and you pay down that fucker because at eighteen percent interest, you’re getting killed.”
I took a pull on my cigarette. It was so close to the filter that my fingers got hot. Jesus, figuring that out felt good. Whether they did what I said or not, putting it together had been damn near orgasmic. “I need a fucking beer.”