Before the Flock Page 2

  “Turn your guitar down, and I’ll give you vocals,” the soundman speaks into a mic in his mixing board. His voice comes out of the stage monitors.

  Kurt nods, walks back to his amp, and fingers the knobs, not really changing anything at all.

  The next song, “I Wanted You,” feels just right. It is salve for the soul. A pop love ballad with a secret: Kurt wrote it to God. I wanted all of you. The song has a break after the guitar solo. The band brings the dynamic down to a whisper. This is the moment. Kurt picks his acoustic and hums softly as if he were singing a southern spiritual. But then Kurt hears a “Fuck you!” It is a wicked voice. He is confused. Have they returned? The voices? Is it Wayne? No, Wayne is in the back with his arms folded. Is someone else on stage? “Fuck you. Hey, pal, it’s me, fuck you.” The voice continues. Does anyone else hear it? “Hey, fuck you. Turn your fucking guitar down.”

  Kurt steps back from the microphone still strumming. “Dickey, do you hear that?”

  “It’s the soundman, Kurt. He wants you to turn down your guitar,” Dickey yells. “Turn it down.”

  Kurt looks behind the mixing board and the soundman is emphatically flipping him the bird.

  “He’s ruining our song,” Kurt declares.

  When the song ends, there is some applause. Then the soundman speaks and everyone can hear. “Hey, asshole!”

  Kurt looks up from tuning his guitar.

  “Yeah, you, you’re blowing my mix. Would you turn your fucking guitar down?”

  Someone in the audience laughs. Not Wayne, he nods his head and holds his thumb and forefinger close together. Kurt’s brow creases. He puts down his acoustic. He shakes his head in dismay then an answer comes—“ROCK AND ROLL!” Kurt yells to Dickey, EJ, and Gary. “ROCK AND ROLL! NOW! LET’S GO!” Dickey takes the cue and plays the opening guitar riff of “Rock and Roll” by Lou Reed. Kurt pulls off his shirt, lights a smoke, slings the Tele over his shoulder, and sings: “Jenny said when she was just five years old . . .”

  It’s a song they know. Something starts to happen. Everything Kurt does, people on the dance floor do. He jumps. They jump. Kurt shakes. They shake.

  Kurt lays into the lead and it sounds like all our expired summers, boiled down to one fleeting moment that matters.

  Kurt sings the second verse into the mic but can’t hear himself. There are no vocals in the PA. He keeps strumming and singing while emphatically signaling for some volume. The soundman returns a sarcastic wave then drags his finger across his throat. Incredulous, Kurt takes the microphone stand above his head and brings it straight down with a decisive slam. The audience shrieks with joy. The mic stand, now in two pieces, is at Kurt’s feet.

  The soundman screams into his mic, “You’re gonna pay for that, asshole! You fucking asshole!”

  The crowd cheers.

  Kurt nods at EJ, walks back to his amp, runs his hand across the buttons from left to right. Everything now on ten, he hits the distortion pedal, bends the strings, and begins another solo.

  The soundman has ears but cannot hear. He pushes a button below some rhythmic red lights and kills the power to the PA. It’s just the amps and drums. Kurt goes from Gary’s amp to Dickey’s amp turning every knob to ten while still playing his own guitar. Gary turns his amp back to five. EJ brings more tempo and even more force to every strike. The audience doesn’t miss the PA, girls are dancing, guys jump up and down, shake their heads. The band gains speed, playing faster and faster until the soundman darts behind the stage and in a sudden giant amplified groan, every electric instrument and every light on stage dies. Powerless. Nothing is left but the acoustic sound of EJ’s drums and darkness. EJ does one final turnaround, crashes the cymbals, and says, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “More! One more!” a drunk yells.

  EJ reaches for a stand in a workmanlike manner and starts breaking it down. Gary and Dickey unplug, walk straight off the stage through the stage door, and put their guitars in Dickey’s Toyota pickup.

  Kurt follows Wayne through the club and out the front door. Kurt is shirtless and panting in the cool night air.

  “Dad! What’d you think?”

  “Kurt, I’m going back to the desert.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “I don’t know if that matters.”

  “That crowd. They were into it.”

  “Meds, Kurt, that’s all I’m going to say. Goodnight.”

  Wayne gets into his diesel Rabbit, waits five seconds for the ignition light, starts the engine, and rattles down the street.

  Kurt walks through the club. “Hey, asshole, come here!” the soundman yells.

  “In a minute.” Kurt walks out the stage door.

  “Did you guys take my guitars and amp?” Kurt asks Dickey in the parking lot.

  “Yeah, we got ‘em.”

  “Right on. Heavy show.”

  “Kurt, that was pretty out of hand in there. Didn’t have to go down like that.”

  “What do you mean? That was the best show we’ve ever played.”

  “Dickey’s got a point,” Gary adds.

  “I’m just saying you could’ve turned your guitar down,” Dickey says. “Then we wouldn’t have to fight with that guy.”

  “What are you guys talking about? That wasn’t a fight.”

  “C’mon, Kurt, you know what I mean,” says Dickey.

  “You guys were on stage. Couldn’t you feel it?”

  “I’m talking about the soundman.”

  “That guy had no respect. Every one of those guys is going to be sorry. We will get a record deal. We’re gonna be the biggest band ever.”

  “Kurt, you’ve been saying that since I met you.”

  “It’s true.”

  “It’s been two years,” Gary says.

  “If this is what the gigs are gonna be like now, I’m just not into it,” Dickey says. “The gigs were good before.”

  “What? I was dead. You can’t put me back on…”

  “It’s just not working for me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Me too,” Gary says.

  “What is this?” Kurt asks.

  “We quit,” they say.

  “Sorry, Kurt,” Gary adds.

  “Don’t quit. Give me a chance. Think about it. Just think about it.”

  Gary and Dickey leave Kurt standing in the parking lot. There is a concrete-block wall that has THE SPIRIT spray-painted graffiti style in orange and blue. Kurt lifts his hands to the sky, lights a cigarette, and walks back in the club.

  “LISTEN, MAN! I DON’T OWE YOU A THING!” EJ is yelling at the soundman as he packs up the last of his things. “I DIDN’T BREAK IT!”

  The soundman holds the pointy chrome mic stand in his hand. He tries to twirl it ninja style. “Hey, you’re not leaving here until you pay me. Got that?”

  “We’re not paying you anything,” Kurt says. “You tried to ruin our show.”

  “SECURITY! SECURITY!” the soundman screams.

  By the door, on a stool, he turns and sits up on his hind legs and grows nearly to the rafters. He’s a lot of leather and arm and beard and skull—a Hell’s Angel maybe, a bouncer for certain.

  “Are these guys giving you trouble? I like trouble.”

  “We’re going to hold his drum set until they pay me,” the soundman says. “Lock it in the utility closet.”

  The bouncer reaches for EJ’s snare drum. EJ grabs the other end. “Don’t take my things. I didn’t break it!” EJ yells.

  The bouncer pulls EJ into his armpit with ease, flexes, and starts squeezing his neck. EJ is turning red, flailing his arms wildly. The soundman laughs.

  Like Moses giving orders to Pharaoh, Kurt yells, “LET MY DRUMMER GO!” Then he picks up a bar stool and aims the legs. “HEY, FAT ASS! DIDN’T YOU HEAR ME? LET MY DRUMMER GO!” The bouncer smirks and pushes EJ onto to the concrete dance floor. EJ lies in spilled beer, gasping for air.

  “Kick his ass! Kick his fucking ass!” the soundman ch
eers from a safe distance, still holding the broken mic stand as if it were a weapon.

  Kurt and the bouncer circle each other. A beer-bellied ogre and a tan, skinny surfer brandishing a bar stool.

  “Here!” The soundman tosses the mic stand. The bouncer snatches it out of the air and holds it like a mace. He takes a broad swipe at Kurt but whacks the bar stool instead. This is it. The smoke in Kurt’s mouth is down to a nub. EJ is floundering on the floor, wheezing. The bouncer attacks, aiming for Kurt’s head in a giant chopping motion, but his makeshift ax catches on a hanging stage light and in that second of hesitation, EJ pounces for his legs. The bouncer stumbles. Kurt thrusts the bar stool forward. With a resounding crack, the falling leviathan’s forehead hits the base of the bar stool. His knees buckle. His potbelly hits the ground. He lays face first and motionless on the floor, unconscious. Kurt smiles at EJ. EJ’s eyes are uncharacteristically huge.

  “I am calling the cops right now!” the soundman yells and runs away.

  EJ bolts outside and throws the last two pieces of his drum set into his mom’s station wagon. He slams the tailgate, starts the car, and spins the rear wheels as he takes off.

  Kurt rolls the bouncer over. He has a perfect round welt on his forehead. He tries to open his eyes. He sees Kurt looking down.

  “Who? You?” he asks, groggy.

  “Thunderstick. Don’t forget it.”

  The bouncer reaches for Kurt’s neck with his heavy arms and grasps air. Kurt runs out the stage door. The cars are all gone.

  The bouncer sits up, climbs to his feet, and stumbles after Kurt. At the door he sees a shirtless kid with Beatle boots sprinting down deserted Morena Boulevard in the lamplight.

  In the far distance a station wagon slides around a corner and skids to a stop in front of Kurt. He dives head first through the open window on the passenger side. The station wagon sloshes from side to side on dead shocks, makes a little smoke, and turns right at the Jack in the Box. Kurt’s feet dangle out the window. EJ drops him off at his apartment. He is alone. He rummages for some smokes. Finding none, he walks down La Jolla Boulevard to the 7-Eleven, a buck and a quarter in his hand.

  They call them the Big Girls. The Big Girls make fourteen to twenty thousand a show, real money, Reagan money, Rambo money. Everybody has to have them. So if you are a Big Girl, you might do four shows a day during fashion week. Hair, makeup, strut, turn, sashay, Town Car. Hair, makeup, strut, turn, sashay, Town Car again. Yes, four times a day, imagine that, for a week. Hairdressers throw their hands above their heads and squeal something about child labor laws. Everyone laughs.

  At some point the Big Girls will go out of style. It always changes. Then it will be girls with misshapen heads and goldfish eyes and no curves—grave and solemn and heroin chic. The Big Girls will end up doing a couple shows for the established designers, and then the cutting-edge types will replace them with their weary, ghoulish army. It is the art-school crowd’s revenge on the cheer squad. But the Big Girls won’t care. Care? They won’t even notice. Nobody tells them. They do movies—one each. They marry rock stars, then billionaires. Rock stars first, but that never has legs, then billionaires because rock stars fade like mirrors. And billionaires wear hand-sewn leather loafers, designer jeans, and five-hundred-dollar dress shirts. Flying commercial is for salesmen and personal assistants. Billionaires pull the strings, open the restaurants, send the jet, buy the art, and make the artist.

  Sophie Clark is a gangly eighth grader living in an American suburb, eating cafeteria sandwiches with ham pressed and saved like a rose in a book. She’s a full head above the boys in gym class, but a little too awkward for volleyball. It is her mother who finds the ad in the Poway Gazette Jean has always found the thin walls and aluminum awnings and dirt yard considerably below her, and now she finds herself in her Toyota Celica driving Sophie to Los Angeles to Aspire Model Management for an open casting call.

  In the car, Sophie looks out the window as the avocado groves spin away into dry, rolling hills. “Why didn’t we bring Audrey? She’s pretty too,” Sophie asks, and taps her long finger on the plastic sill.

  Jean turns to look at her with a wry smile. “You think your sister’s pretty? Isn’t that sweet.”

  “She has pretty eyes.”

  “Audrey’s got rings in her eyes, like her father, like a marmoset monkey.”

  “They’re cute.”

  “Cute if you’re swinging from branch to branch in the jungle, I guess. Cute to another marmoset.”

  Sophie laughs. “She doesn’t look like a monkey.”

  “You look like me, but you’re tall like Victor.”

  “I’m not going to get as tall as Dad am I? That would be totally wrong. I would be such a freak.”

  “God, no. You’re five foot ten. That’s the perfect height—I checked. And you got my eyes. Eyes like crystals. Nobody’s ever gonna look in those eyes and think you did something wrong. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “No. What did I ever do?”

  “Remember when you were just five, it was Thanksgiving, and the sink got all stopped up. I told you the plumber was coming to snake it?”

  “Yeah. And I thought it was going to be a real snake, so I hid and fell asleep—”

  “—under the dining-room table, beneath the white tablecloth. I had put it out for Victor’s parents. When the plumber left, and I couldn’t find you, calling your name over and over—I thought he had kidnapped you. I called the police. We had people looking. A policeman even stopped the plumber in his van and asked him questions. When I found you, I wanted to shake you and wring your little neck—you had embarrassed me so. And then you—”

  “I know and then I looked up at you with my big bright eyes—”

  “—and you were like a little doll with mussed-up hair, like a doll version of me, only better, a version of me that didn’t have to make all the same mistakes, that didn’t have to live hand to mouth.” Jean squeezes the wheel, looks in the rearview mirror at her reflection, runs a finger under her left eye where the mascara has smudged. “A poor man will steal from his woman—and sometimes he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.”

  “Who steals from us?”

  “Nobody. I’ve always wanted a better life for you. I just didn’t know how to get it. Now I think I know.”

  Sophie leans her head out the window, and the breeze pushes her hair back. She imagines the feathered wing of a giant swan brushing against her cheek, a unicorn sprinting by the side of the car.

  In Los Angeles they march them out in a queue, weighed and measured, fit to the task. Convention halls or shopping malls, it’s all the same. Now and forever the name of the game is you—Sophie. It’s the stage, and then it is over.

  Giuseppe Cassavetes is the founder of Aspire Model Management, and for this decade he wears his customary white linen suit with a black shirt and white tie. On that Saturday he sits enthroned at the end of a long folding table with a vase of flowers in the middle. He casts a disparaging look at the arrangement. “Who did this? Who made up this table?”

  Thick and young and business gray, Caitlin raises her hand.

  “Come here. Look at this.” Giuseppe extends his hand. “Did you arrange these flowers?”

  “Yes, Mr. Cassavetes.”

  “This, this, this is ugly! This is not Aspire. Why do you do this to me?”

  Caitlin opens her mouth and only a broken breath comes out.

  “Don’t give me none of this sad-girl bullshit. Let me tell you something, I am never going to stand in the way of your success—don’t you ever fucking stand in the way of mine.”

  Caitlin’s shoulder pads move in exaggerated trembles, and then she bursts into tears.

  “Somebody make this room look like something other than shit. And bring me the girl. What is her name?”

  “Sophie Clark. She’s with her mother.”

  Giuseppe pauses and shakes his head. “What is this shit?”

  “She’s a minor. She needs her mother
to sign the contract.”

  “You. Crying girl. Come here.” Caitlin walks over slowly. When she is within reach, Giuseppe squeezes the back of her neck pulling her into his chest. He lets out a big, singular laugh. “We are all friends here. Go. Open the door.”

  On Monday there is an empty seat in Algebra, Spanish II, and English. Audrey is told that she’s a big girl and the freezer is full. Feed the father. Her mother will be back in a week. Sophie is in the model’s apartment with five other girls on the corner of Eightieth and Madison.

  Jean is the guest of Mr. Cassavetes, and at thirty-eight she still has something about her. Giuseppe can’t help but taste it. When it is done and she is naked and stroking his chest hairs, he tells her she can go back to wherever it is that she has come from, L.A., yes? Sophie will be fine. “I will make absolutely [sure] of it.”

  Back in Poway, Sophie’s father, Victor, is ecstatic. He tells Jean as much when she walks in the door. “When you get your shot at the big leagues, you’ve got to take it to the hole and slam it down. When you see the other guy getting gassed, that’s when you’ve got to give one hundred and ten percent, that’s when you take it to the hoop, no mercy. Fuckin’ A. This is just the break I need.” He lifts his hands up and palms the acoustic tile on the ceiling. “Yes!”

  The screen door slams, and Victor and Jean turn to find Audrey standing there with her backpack. “Where’s Sophie?”

  “Honey, she’s in New York. Listen to this, I arranged for her to be the personal guest of Mr. Cassavetes!”

  “So what?” Audrey drops her backpack in a chair.

  “The founder of Aspire Model Management? Do you even know who I’m talking about?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Don’t you get it? We’re all going to be rich.”

  Audrey laughs and says, “Whatever.”

  It is New York in the eighties, and there are still places to be avoided. Sophie’s been told and must try to remember, but she can’t get over how nice everybody is. She tells Caitlin as much. “New Yorkers aren’t rude. A man walked me all the way to the modeling agency—it was like so many blocks. Is this SoHo?”