“Obviously it would only work if I already have a contract with you and they cannot go behind my back and offer you forty. That is why I’m offering you this now, before you have masters in hand and before any of those pricks have had a chance to hear what it is y’all are going to be negotiating with. You see, I’m taking advantage of my unique ability to evaluate your efforts before anyone else can and I’m making this offer on the strength of what I’ve heard so far. I have faith in Jake and Celia. Those albums are going to sell. And, if you sign with me at forty percent, that is all I’m going to take from you in royalties no matter what I ultimately end up with. You see, I’m taking the risk here, not you. If I’m wrong, and no record company will sign a MD&P deal with me for less than ... say, fifty-five percent, I’m the one who is going to have to eat that, not you. I’ll be paying fifteen percent royalties out of my own pocket, not you.”
That did actually sound kind of intriguing, Pauline had to admit to herself. Truth be told, their best-case estimates of what royalty rate they would end up paying the record company they signed with had been in the thirty-five to forty percent range— and those were the best-case estimates. And here was Obie offering to sign them to forty, masters unheard. Very interesting.
“You have certainly given me something to think about, Obie,” she told him.
“That was my intention,” he said.
“It’s not a decision I can make right here and right now, however. I’ll have to talk it over with Jake and Celia and the Nerdlys ... and Greg, of course.”
“I wasn’t trying to push for a deal here and now,” he said. “There would still be a whole lot of particulars that need to be negotiated anyway. I just wanted to put the offer on the table for you.”
“I will pick up that offer and present it,” she said.
“Very good,” Obie said. “There is one thing I would like to impress upon you, darlin’, and I hope that you convey it to your people.”
“What is that?”
“I’m an honest man,” he said plainly. “I don’t play games, I don’t lie, I don’t cheat. I’m interested in making money, and making lots of it, and I’m a tough-ass negotiator who will try to get whatever advantage I can, but I play by the rules at all times and I will tell you what is on my mind at all times. My offer is genuine and my assessment of how y’all would do on your own is my best opinion, without exaggeration. I don’t have any way of proving to you and yours I speak the truth, but I do, and I expect the same out of y’all.”
Pauline looked in his reddened eyes with the brown irises. She nodded. “I believe you, Obie,” she told him sincerely. “And I can assure you that Jake and Celia and I operate the same way.”
“Fair enough,” he said with a smile. “Now then, our business seems to be concluded for the day, right?”
“I suppose it is,” she allowed.
“How about that drink now?”
Her smile got bigger. “Stolichnaya on the rocks?” she asked.
“Coming right up,” he told her.
That same evening, one thousand, eight hundred air miles to the southeast, in Houston, Texas, Matt Tisdale was more than a little hung over as well, more so, by a considerable margin, than his normal level of hangover just prior to a show.
New Year’s Eve had been an extended travel day off, a day of rest after traveling from the December 30 show in New Orleans. He and his band and a few select roadies who were part of his inner circle had spent the entire day, the entire night, and most of the early morning hours in a state of catastrophic annihilation. They had done it alclass="underline" Cocaine, marijuana, a little bit of the methamphetamine that the roadies were fond of, and, of course, gallons and gallons of high-tension booze, mostly consumed directly from the bottles.
Matt did not even remember the turn of the year. His last recorded memory was sometime around ten o’clock. He remembered snorting two lines of coke and chasing them down with a swig from a bottle of some kind of clear booze—it might have been gin or vodka—while a hot looking young groupie they’d picked up in the hotel bar earlier (at least, he thought she was young and hot looking, but he knew the beer goggles had been on) was sucking his dick out on the balcony of his hotel room. The next thing he knew, it was nine-thirty in the morning, he felt like he had been dead for the past two weeks, and Greg fucking Gahn was telling him that he needed to be at the local hard rock station for an interview in one hour.
Though usually Matt’s rule of four hours prior to a show meant that he actually did no intoxicating substance for the entire day before the show, he made an exception on this day and accepted two more lines of coke from Greg to get himself moving. It didn’t work very well, but it was enough to get him through a shower and into the bus, where he needed two more lines so he could be coherent enough to speak to the moronic DJ who would be interviewing him.
And now, ten minutes to showtime, as he and his band sat in the stage left area, listening to the enthusiasm of the six thousand, three hundred and twelve Matt Tisdale fans who had shown up for his show in Spencer Arena south of downtown, he still felt only slightly better than terminally ill and fading. His head throbbed rhythmically despite having taken two grams of Tylenol on two occasions today. His mouth was as dry as a ninety year old woman’s pussy, despite the nearly gallon of water he’d put down his throat in the last two hours. And he ached all over, every joint in every appendage he possessed.
Maybe I oughta start thinking about slowing down on some of this shit, he thought, not for the first time, and with not so much of an inkling of sincerity.
Still, the show must go on was a credo that Matt believed in with every fiber of his being. When the time came, he stood up with his band and walked out on that stage. The cheers of adoration seemed to revive him a bit. He picked up his Strat and, when the lights came on, he started to play.
No one out in the audience noticed anything amiss. Matt played with his usual enthusiasm. He did not miss a single riff, did not misplay a single note, did not fail to follow a single tempo change. His voice sounded good despite the dry throat. If there was any outward sign of what was occurring, it was perhaps the amount of sweat coming out of his pores. Though sweating during performance was normal and expected—after all, a performer was standing under hot lights and moving at aerobic exercise level for ninety minutes at a time—this fell well into the range of excessive. Sweat was pouring down Matt’s face and dripping onto the stage floor, was running freely down his arms, down his chest. Though he usually waited until the first extended guitar solo to take off his shirt, he pulled it off during the second song on this night.
As for Matt himself, he knew that something was not right almost from the start. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, a physical, pounding, beating thing that felt like a jackhammer. And it seemed like he just wasn’t getting quite as much air as he really needed. He sang fine, but it seemed he had to gasp between verses, between chorus and bridge, something that he had never had to do before. And there was this troubling ache in his chest. It was a burning sensation, an unpleasant heat that spread from his sternum into his shoulders.
He ignored all of this the best he could and went on with the show. As the time stretched by, he began to feel worse and worse, his breathing now a pant when he wasn’t singing. When the final number of the main set came to a close, he didn’t even have the energy to give them the fake good night bit before the encore break. He simply staggered off the stage into the stage left area. He immediately sat down on a crate and began to pant.
“Matt, you okay?” asked Roger Stone, his personal assistant, who was standing there with a large bottle of Gatorade.