Before the Flock Read online

  “Eric,” The Jovi says, “that shit is deep.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “This guy right here is his brother’s keeper. He got Kurt off Mellaril and helped me get clean, too.” The Jovi says and grabs James’s shoulder.

  “You’d do it for me,” says James.

  “You think Kurt would want a keyboard player in the band?” asks The Jovi.

  “Maybe.” James says and sips his coffee.

  “You mean me?” Eric asks and smiles brightly.

  “Dude. I can’t live at my parents’ forever. Move me in. I will teach you rock.”

  The next day around noon, the Ford Falcon is stuffed to the gills and puttering up the hill from Windansea. The street turns from quaint to rental and then Eric’s house is at the top, near the boulevard. His front yard is the size of a couch—perfect to park the Roach on. The pad is a shoebox with a door in the middle and a window on either side. Above the windows, there is a line of Spanish roof tiles that look like eyebrows. It makes the house look surprised.

  Eric’s girlfriend, Dane, and Larry the dog greet the Jovi at the door. The Jovi unloads his posters and art in the backroom. He takes out every white light bulb and replaces it with a blue, red, or green one. In a matter of hours, the back room, a converted garage, changes from a blank white box to the Jovi’s lair.

  The Jovi puts a hand on Eric’s shoulder and says, “Listen, man, I’m easy. If I come home some day, and you’re banging Dane in my closet, I will be totally cool with that. Mi casa, su casa.”

  Eric laughs. “That’ll never happen.”

  “Lesson number one: Maybe it should.”

  Kurt and EJ come back from L.A. and call for a band meeting at the Pannikin. Kurt says, “Look, we need two hundred bucks so we can play at the Roxy.”

  “Wait a second,” the Jovi says, “that’s not how you get a record deal.”

  “Well? What should we do?”

  “We record a new demo—more rock, less New Romantic. We use the demo to get a manager. The manager gets us a record deal.”

  Kurt says, “A three-song demo is eight hundred bucks. Where do we get that? My wife fucking left me!” Kurt lifts his hands up in the air.

  “I know the guy,” the Jovi says. “My new roommate, Eric. He’s got bank. His grandfather invented spray-on cheese. We bring him in on keys and split the demo five ways. He wants in.”

  “Huh?” Kurt says.

  “New roommate?” EJ asks.

  Kurt is silent for a full minute, then he says, “The last time I saw Echo in concert you could just feel that it was missing from their songs—all of the string parts, all of the keyboards. It was missing. If we had a keyboard player, that could be the one thing that puts us over the top, but I don’t want him trying to add parts and solos and shit. We just need some synth pads behind the music, some string parts. You know what I mean. Can you buy me a burrito? Ivo took all my fucking money.”

  “Yeah. Sure. He’d be stoked to do whatever.”

  The Jovi walks into the house and finds Eric sitting on the futon watching TV. “You should get away from that,” he says.

  “But I trust TV. It brings me a world I can parse and understand.”

  “Dude. You’re a full-blown Spock Rocker, aren’t you? We should get you a V-necked sweater.”

  “Nah, man.”

  Someone knocks on the door.

  Eric says, “It better not be those fucking Jehovah’s Witnesses again—I’ll give them an earful about YHWH!”

  The Jovi opens the door and finds Kurt looking like a half-shorn sheep. “Franklin? What’s with the hair?”

  “Dude. What? It’s getting long, right? I cut the sides. Let’s teach this guy a song. Where’s the keyboards?”

  They walk into Eric’s bedroom. He opens the French doors. They lead to a small square of red concrete. Kurt sits down in front of the keys. “How do you turn this thing on?”

  Eric flips a switch.

  “I Wanted You” materializes in a fade. Kurt is playing the keyboard part.

  “Show me that again.” Eric watches carefully.

  “You think you could do that?” Kurt asks. “I did it on the demo. If I can do it, you can do it.”

  Kurt puts his Ovation acoustic in his lap. The Jovi plugs in. Eric sits at his keyboard and starts plunking, mistake after mistake after mistake until he gets it. The room fills with music. They rock back and forth in unison. “Yeah. That’s it. You’re getting it,” Kurt says. “Let me teach you another one. This doesn’t have a keyboard part yet, so maybe you can write one.” Kurt begins the song.

  Eric asks, “What key is it?”

  “E.”

  He struggles as Kurt plays.

  “No, man, E. E.”

  Eric finds E, clunks around, searching aimlessly for a hook, then it happens. Eric’s eyes migrate into the back of his head. The command between his head and hands is lost. Fingers just do their thing. A subtle vibration moves from the bottom of his throat and climbs to the base of his skull then continues down his arms to his hands where it stays.

  “That’s it! Right there!” Kurt strums his guitar. “Play those notes again! No, no, just the three. Yes, like that. Now again.” Eric like a half-deaf circus bear, Kurt a sublime apprehension, and the Jovi the rhythm, the chunk, the attitude. It works.

  When the notes are ingrained and the song is over, Eric says, “I’ve never done that before.”

  “What?”

  “Created anything.”

  “Nah…”

  “Really, man. You showed me how to get there. And I don’t even know where I went…”

  “It’s just music…”

  “No, man, that was like a trance. And you guys gave it to me like some tantric master. You busted me over the head with the clay pot of enlightenment. I stopped thinking and just let it flow through me. I never stop thinking—it’s a fucking curse.”

  Kurt says, “You did good.”

  “Let’s do that again.”

  “Later. You want to come in for a couple songs in the band?” Kurt asks.

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “Come to practice on Monday. We’re making a demo. Bring a hundred and sixty dollars. You can play on those three songs. Maybe some day you can play on more.”

  Sophie wakes up, looks out the small oval window, and sees a tiny yellow car parked on the tarmac. Two burly baggage handlers approach and greet each other with a kiss. This must be Paris, she thinks. The cab smells like something in between old cheese and horse blanket. It’s hard to tell where the cabby and his seat separate. It’s as if he’s sprouted from the thing. At the Paris office, there is a woman, very much like Caitlin, but she speaks with an accent and very quickly. Sophie feels the critical gaze. It’s not like the way men look at her. Men look at her like food. This woman looks at Sophie like a pilot looks at his plane, as if she had a clipboard in her hand. It’s a walk around. Cheekbones, check. Good skin, check. Legs, check. Tits, check…

  The jobs are the same, more than the same. Nobody speaks French. Everybody speaks broken English, even the Americans. It’s a stone-age vernacular that everyone understands.

  At night it’s Les Bains Douches. The music is inescapable. It makes the room and everything in it thump and throb. Cassandra, one of the girls from the Paris model’s apartment, comes back from the bar and hands Sophie a drink. “He said if we drink this within one minute, he’ll give us two more for free!”

  Sophie gazes over the rim of the glass into the bubbly clear liquid. She’s a little tentative, as if she is looking down into a precipice. But then she says, “Okay,” and throws it down. The carbonation makes her eyes water. She hands the empty glass back to Cassandra.

  “Look at the floor!” Cassandra yells.

  “The what?” Sophie asks.

  “The floor!”

  “Why?”

  “This was a Turkish bath house!”

  “So?”

  “The floor! Look at the floor!”

&n
bsp; Sophie looks at the floor. It’s made up of little tiny square tiles. White tiles and black tiles are set together to make larger squares. “Harlequin!” She yells. “Like a jester!” She looks up from the floor and Cassandra isn’t there. There’s a touch on her shoulder. She turns to find a glowing face. “Sophie! Hey Sophie Clark!” He’s tall with big bright eyes and a perfect chin. “Hey, I was the captain!” He yells. “I was in the paper, in Poway!” His hands shake at the end of bent arms for emphasis.

  The dance that she’s feeling requires Sophie to tilt her head, as if she is clearing water from her ear. He thinks it means she doesn’t understand.

  “We went to State! Remember?”

  Sophie puts her hands over her head and dances a circle. When she returns to his eager face she gives him a smile. Cassandra gives her a drink. It’s gone again. She hands the glass back.

  “I was the quarterback! In Poway!”

  “What are you doing here?” Sophie asks embedded in a laugh.

  “Modeling!” He yells. “What are you doing here?”

  She smiles and looks into a spinning blue light.

  “You go home ever?” He asks and gyrates his fists to the music. There’s a line of them now, all gyrating their fists, wearing cut-up sweats and flannel shirts – male models.

  “Where?” She yells.

  “Home!”

  She shrugs her shoulders. Cassandra is back with another drink. “I like Paris,” Sophie yells to Cassandra.

  “J’aime Paris!” Cassandra yells back. “It means I love Paris.”

  “I only said I like it!” Sophie yells and puts her hands over her head to continue the dance.

  Somewhere in the night, a wave of happy consumes Sophie. Her tongue is the ambassador, dressed in a tux, greeting foreign dignitaries. There are staircases that descend, to harlequin floors, and great rooms filled with a waiting audience. And this time it feels good when he enters her. And she moves with all of his movements. And it lasts just long enough and ends with two sweaty beautiful people entwined in sleep. A few hours later, she wakes up and looks out the tall French door into the night sky above Paris. The moon is coming down over the silver rooftops. He grumbles and she tells him her secret, “Maybe sometimes I do miss Poway, just a little.”

  With a thick French accent he asks, “What is this Poway?”

  It’s a slice of summer in January. Hot, dry Santa Ana winds and blue skies make the afternoon hours bright and warm and fleeting—the sun travels across the sky at double speed. At four, it will be cold. Eric sits on the stoop with Dane. “Something’s missing,” she says.

  They hear the Roach coming up the hill from the sea. On the gas tank, a happy dog—on the back, riding sidesaddle, a girl smoking a cigarette.

  “It’s Larry,” Eric says. “Larry’s missing.”

  “Not anymore.”

  The Jovi kills the engine, hands him the dog, and says, “I saw the little guy cruising down by the beach, so I brought him back up. Thought you’d be stoked.”

  “How’d Larry get out?” Eric asks.

  “You know how these dogs are, they smell a bitch in heat, and they’re gone.”

  “Been there,” Eric says. “But Larry’s a girl.” He looks at the back gate. It is open with the Jovi’s wetsuit dripping over the side. “Can you do me a big favor?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Can you just remember to close the back gate?”

  “Eric. Relax. I got you covered. Have you ever met Nänce?”

  The girl on the back of the bike unfolds herself from the Jovi and puts her black boot on the curb. She runs her hand through her pixie hair then holds it out to Eric. “Yooooo must be Dirtdick’s roooooommate,” she says in a long, drawn-out whine.

  “Nice to meet you, Nänce.”

  “I’m his girlfriend. Don’t laugh! I know he’s a whore.”

  The Jovi shrugs his shoulders and smiles. “Nänce knows the deal.” He takes her shoulder and turns her sideways. “Dude, look. She’s skinny, but how about the rack?”

  Eric reluctantly eyes Nänce’s breasts.

  “Well?” the Jovi asks. “Do you want to grab ‘em or what?”

  Dane says, “You’re disgusting!” and walks in the house.

  Eric blushes and looks at Nänce.

  “Well? You can,” she says.

  “They’re nice, but no thanks.”

  “Hey, Nänce, we’re gonna teach Eric about chicks. He’s doing a research paper.”

  “Oh God, don’t do that. You’re awful.”

  “I’m not awful,” the Jovi says. “I’m upfront. I watch their body language. A girl starts touching her hair or her face while she’s talking to me and I know it’s on. That’s when I ask for it.”

  “Wow. And it works?” Eric asks.

  “Oh, and the real trick? You want to know the real trick?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t shower. When they catch the scent of another chick on you—they can’t control themselves. It’s like a wolf. You know a wolf will roll in a deer turd when he finds it. It covers his scent. The deer doesn’t smell a wolf coming, it smells a deer.”

  “More like deer shit,” Nänce says.

  “Same difference. You know what I mean. It works. You should try it.”

  “So when was your last shower?” Eric asks.

  “I shower every Sunday, for the Lord.”

  “Dude! You’ve had company!”

  “What does that mean?” Nänce asks.

  “Dude! C’mon! You make it sound gross. I’ve been in the ocean like every day. I got a little salt creek but…” The Jovi reaches down and rubs his weld. “But it works. I’m telling you, chicks dig it.”

  “What kind of chicks?” Dane is back on the porch and glaring at the Jovi.

  “Wild ones.” The Jovi smiles.

  Dane glares at the three of them. “You are dirty. All of you.” She goes back inside.

  “Wow.” Eric nods.

  “Seriously. It works.”

  “He’s full of shit,” Nänce says. “Don’t listen to anything he says. Take a shower. Why does your girlfriend hate me?”

  “She just met you.”

  “I’m not a whore. I don’t sleep with anyone but the Jovi.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m nice. Why doesn’t she like me?”

  When Sophie returns to New York in the fall of 1984, by anybody else’s standards, at sixteen, she’s just a kid. In modeling, after two years in the business, she’s a franchise. While in Europe she scored six covers. The checks piled up. Her mom and dad and sister, Audrey, moved into a house that didn’t have wheels. Caitlin tells Sophie, “Your too big for the model’s apartment. Why don’t you buy a place?” Sophie takes Randy George with her apartment shopping. 1 Bond Street, she likes the name. NoHo, next to Broadway, a cast-iron building, it makes Sophie think of an ornate birdcage she saw in a Parisian shop. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars seems like an astronomical and almost incomprehensible amount of money. The man who does her taxes tells her she can afford it. Randy George marvels at the light, holding his hand out in it, remarking on the row of windows, each with their two giant plates of glass, each with a view to the cobblestone street below.

  “Let me tell you something, child.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so glad to have you back in town, but I will miss your phone calls. Will you promise to continue to call me at ridiculous times?”

  Sophie laughs. “Of course. What’s ridiculous?”

  “Two, three, four a.m. When I would hear my phone ring in the middle of the night, waking me from my dreams, I somehow knew it was you, calling me after a club or after a date, calling to share with me how happy you were in that moment. I could just close my eyes and see the sun coming up over Paris, you walking down the street weaving in and out of bread vendors, carrying your high heel shoes over your shoulder.”

  “You could see all that?”

  “Do you know what it was
like?”

  “A love letter?”

  “No. It was like a kite. I felt like I was holding the string and watching you fly.”

  Sophie takes Randy George’s hand and opens it palm up. She closes it. “Don’t let go.”

  “Oh, Sophie.”

  “This place is big enough for both of us.”

  “What is this a Western?”

  “Please move in with me. I won’t have to call you, I’ll just walk in your room and snuggle you.”

  Sophie’s mom and dad show up in New York to sign the papers for the loft. “Have you thought about breast implants?” Jean asks over a bowl of Tom Yum Gai in a trendy Vietnamese restaurant.

  Randy George spits his spring roll onto his plate and laughs at Jean. “Did you really just ask that? Of your daughter?”

  Jean turns sharp to Randy George. “I don’t even know who you are? As far as I’m concerned you’re just some hanger-on, trying to leach off my daughter. She doesn’t need you. She’s got family.”

  Randy’s lip quivers a little then turns to a smile. He nods at Sophie, stands up and walks away. Sophie slumps her shoulders, snivels, and lets out a sad moan.

  Her father, Victor, intervenes. “Now Jean, that just wasn’t necessary.”

  “I think that man is homosexual. Sophie you shouldn’t be around him anyway…”

  “Okay! I’ll get the boobs!” Sophie yells, throws her napkin in the soup and marches for the front door.

  Victor looks at Jean and asks, “Great! Now who’s going to pay for dinner?”

  Ivo puts tape on the reel, hangs a Persian rug behind the drum kit, and moves some boxes around until he’s happy.

  The band is very businesslike. EJ taps around the head of his snare drum in a circle; his ear is cocked to the sound. Each pong pong pong is slightly higher in pitch until pong pong pong, becomes ping ping ping. Kurt starts his vocal warm-ups from deep in his chest—“ah, ah, ah, eh, eh, eh, oh, oh, oh” Spewing scratches his head like a monkey.

  It happens in layers. Basic tracks are first—drums, bass, guitar, and vocals. They play the three songs. Eric lays down two-finger parts on his synth. Then Kurt gets in Ivo’s makeshift iso room—it’s just a bunch of Persian rugs hung on drum stands. Kurt asks Ivo if he’s ready. Ivo counts one, two, three. Kurt begins a cyclical, rhythmic guitar part. From the control room, the only sound is Kurt’s dub guitar. It’s a half-mad melody played backward. It’s a riff on a hook of an unknown song. Kurt plays it through the whole song. It doesn’t make any sense at all, and then Ivo hits a button on the board. The rest of the song pops up and it fits seamlessly, adding texture and depth. Then Kurt sings a vocal track, a falsetto on the tag.