CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I’m fucking out of here,” Mark said, the minute he walked into the control room and saw me.
“Mark, sit your ass down,” Jack said.
“You told me you needed me to work on a drum track,” Mark almost shouted at the producer.
“Yeah, because I wanted you to get your ass down here,” Jack told him, unapologetic.
“I asked him to,” I cut in. “Look--Mark. This shit has gone on long enough, hasn’t it? Are you having a good fucking time working with half the band?”
“That’s not the point,” Mark said. He glared at me. “I told Ron I didn’t want to work with any of you, but I would on the condition that I specifically didn’t have to work with you.” I shook my head.
“How the hell are we supposed to tour this record if you won’t even be in the same room as me?” I stood up. Sophie had gone to the break room a few minutes before Mark had arrived; I didn’t want to risk anything more than I was already. If he was really being this pissy about a girl, it wouldn’t make sense to poke him right away. At least, not any more than I was already doing, getting Jack to get him into the building to talk to me.
“So, we don’t fucking tour this record then,” Mark said with a shrug. “Am I the only one who’s a little tired of the goddamn grind on this shit?”
“If you’re tired of it, then why are you even still in the band?” Jack, I noticed, was very carefully pulling back, stepping away from me. He would have probably left the room, except for the fact that if he did, Mark would just walk out. With Jack there, he wouldn’t--at least not out of the blue, without giving me a chance.
“Sit your ass down,” I said. “Let’s talk about whatever the hell it is that crawled into your rectum in the last month and a half.”
“If I wanted to talk about it, don’t you think I would have?” Mark turned his scowl onto Jack, who just shrugged.
“Look,” Jack said, sitting up and making the chair squeak. “Either you talk to Dan, figure out what the hell the issue is, and figure out a way to resolve it, or you’re going to have a shit record on your hands, and you won’t even be able to promote it. Do you want the last album your fans hear from you to be some monument to petty bullshit?”
For a second, it looked like Mark was going to turn around and walk out, even with Jack sitting there. But then, instead, he sat down, throwing himself into a desk chair without even seeming to worry about whether he landed properly or not. “Fine,” Mark said. I stared at him for a minute.
“Well?” I spread my hands in front of me. “What the fuck, Mark?”
“What do you mean, what the fuck?” I closed my eyes, asking--I didn’t know who--for patience.
“I’m grabbing beers out of the fridge,” Jack said, rising from his chair. Mark shrugged off the implied offer and continued looking at me.
“This is where you tell me what the hell is going on that you can’t stand to be in the same room as me,” I told Mark. “So we can pretend like we’re an actual band that functions like fucking adults and solves our problems instead of just avoiding them.”
“My problem is that I’m pissed,” Mark said simply. Jack returned from the corner of the control room with three beers. He handed one to me and put one in Mark’s hand, and then sat down to open his own.
“Why are you pissed, exactly?” I opened my beer and took a sip. It was obvious no more actual work was getting done anyway, at least not that night.
“Because no one in the fucking band takes me seriously,” Mark said. “And before you laugh at me, it’s goddamn true.”
“Where the hell did this come from?” I shook my head in disbelief. “You pitched a fucking fit over the thing with me and Sophie, and the next thing I know we’re working on separate shifts and you won’t work with me and now you say it’s about how no one in the band takes you seriously?”
“No one talks to me,” Mark said firmly. “They talk at me.” He shook his head and cracked his beer and took a long pull from it. “Jesus, Dan--did you ever pay attention at all to me?”
“You sound like a fucking girl,” I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “I thought we were friends.”
“I thought so too,” Mark said with a shrug. “And then we’re in the studio and I’m catching shit because you’re not doing your job right, and you’re dating a girl you know I’m interested in, and no one gives a fuck--Mark will just roll over and take it, right?”
“I asked her out first!” I put my beer down before I was tempted to slam it down. “She said yes to you after she agreed to a date with me. If you want to be pissed at someone, be pissed at her.” I thought about Sophie, off in the break room, and almost regretted what I’d said. “Hell--what difference does it even make anyway?”
“It makes a difference because I had to find out from her, afterward, that she was already going on a date with you,” Mark said. “It makes a difference because it was the last fucking straw, man. Taking shit for you when I thought we were close…” he shrugged.
“We were! Until you pulled this bullshit tantrum and refused to work and nearly cost us the best recording arrangement we’ve ever gotten.” I thought about what Mark had said for a second. “What the hell do you mean, taking shit for me?”
“Whenever you fuck up on the goddamn takes, it’s always on me,” Mark said. “I’ve gone along with it because you’re my bud but what the fuck, dude? Even you pin that shit on me sometimes when it’s you screwing up.”
“When I screw up, I take the shit for it,” I told him. “I do not try and pin it on you when it’s me messing up a fucking line.”
“Whatever,” Mark said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Anyway, the thing with Sophie was just the last straw.”
“Last straw for what?” I stared at Mark, not quite able to understand why he was apparently so fucking put out with me dating someone, where he even got the notion that I was somehow trying to screw him over.
“No one in this fucking band respects me,” Mark said, his voice bitter. “I thought you did, but obviously, you don’t.”
“Of course I fucking respect you,” I almost shouted. “When you pulled the bullshit act of not working for a week, who the fuck do you think argued the hardest for keeping you in the band instead of letting the label make us fire you?”
“The label was going to make you fire me?” Mark’s eyes widened.
“You weren’t fucking working! Of course they were going to,” I told him. “What the hell did you think would happen if you fucking derailed a project they’re investing half a million or more in?”
“After all this time, they were just going to kick me from the band?”
“Yeah, compadre, they fucking were,” I told him matter-of-factly. “Ron made the rest of us meet up to talk about what to do and that was where we came up with the brilliant fucking plan of having Ron talk to you and suggest we work separately, since me, Nick, and Alex for sure didn’t want you to leave the goddamn band.” I let out my breath in a sharp gust. “Mother fucker: if any one of us isn’t in Molly Riot, the rest of us are not--fucking--Molly--Riot.” For a minute, Mark just stared at me, and I wondered what was going through his mind.
“Why the hell did you leave me in the fucking dark about Sophie?” That caught me off guard. I didn’t really have much of an answer to the question, even though I had been thinking about it for the whole month that we’d been working separately.
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “It was probably partly that I knew you were into her, and partly that I wasn’t sure it would even go anywhere, and a million other fucking things.” I found my pack of cigarettes on the desk by my side and shook one loose. I fished a lighter out of my pocket and lit the tip, taking as deep a drag as I could and wishing it was pot instead of tobacco. “When I heard that Sophie had said yes to your date, I was pissed too.”
“You were pissed and I had no way of even knowing that she’d gone with you first,” Mark pointed out. “You can’t see why it would tick me the fuck off to have the same thing--only worse, because my own friend wasn’t upfront with me about it?”
“Fair enough,” I admitted. “I should have told you the next day, and I didn’t.” Mark drank down more of his beer.
“You’re an asshole, you know that?” I hesitated for a second and then laughed.
“You’re the one who was going to implode the damn band, fuck-face,” I said.
“Whatever,” Mark said, shaking his head. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “So I take it you’re still seeing her?” I nodded.
“She asked me earlier today if I only wanted to have sex with her as some kind of way to get secret revenge on you for fucking shit up,” I told him. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but I actually--really--like her.”
“Were you fucking her all this time just to get back at me?” Mark snickered, and I felt something inside of me relax.
“No, asshole, I’ve been fucking her all this time because she’s a great lay and a lot of fun to be around,” I said. Mark shook his head slowly.
“Last single guy in the band,” he said quietly.
“Word on the street is you’re going through Tinder girls like you’re getting paid for it,” I pointed out.
“Easy lays,” Mark told me. “I have to do something with my free time, since I don’t hang out with any of you anymore. Do you realize how much time we spent together before all this shit came up?” I laughed out loud.
“Dude--you could have fixed this shit the day after you started it just by fucking talking to someone about it,” I said. “How bored have you even been?”
“I played through BioShock Infinite and I’m teaching myself goddamn Italian,” Mark said, cracking a smile again.
“That’ll come in handy,” I pointed out. “I mean, after all, maybe we’ll get some festival dates in Italy this summer, and you can try and flirt with a hot foreign chick.”
“You guys cool?” I looked over at Jack; I’d forgotten he was even still in the room.
“Not yet,” I said, glancing at Mark to confirm that he agreed. “But I think we can at least figure out a schedule that doesn’t suck asshole for the rest of the record.”