Finally we reach a closed office door. Royce knocks. “One sec!” the voice calls from inside.
Royce checks her watch. She has astonishing eyelash extensions and a body like a comic book, all straining against a tweed skirt and blouse. Her face seems to have no pores, no hairs. Is she even a mammal? Also: this is what Ethan was into when I wasn’t around? Gross.
She has yet to look at me and she pops open the door in spite of Jason’s request and ushers me in wordlessly.
I’m expecting to find Jason kicked back at his desk, feet up, but he’s hunched over a chaos of papers, his neck kinked to hold his phone. “I know, right just . . . um—one sec.” He glances up. “Thanks, Royce,” he says sarcastically. “Stick around to bring her back out, ’kay?”
“Mmm.” She nods icily and closes the door. I hear her heels clicking away.
Jason gestures to the single chair in front of his desk. It’s a hurried motion, not the cocky guy from the party. I don’t sit right away.
The office is barely wider than his desk. There’s a skinny window behind him that looks out on another wing of the building, a small couch behind me, and a bookcase to my left that houses a mishmash of CDs and books. I notice some rock biographies, and also some business-y books, with titles like Spotting the Talent Within and Predict the Next Big Thing!
On the right wall is a collage frame: photos of Jason with various celebrities. I see Jeff Tweedy and Katy Perry. In the one of him and Michael Stipe from R.E.M. he must be, like, thirteen. And in that shot and many others, Daddy Jerrod is never far away.
“I understand that, Mel,” Jason is saying back into the phone. “Pre-sales aren’t my problem.” He taps his pencil rapid-fire against the clutter of papers on his desk. “I get that the promoter is unhappy, but honestly, it’s freakin’ Memphis. Where does he think he—no, I . . . yeah. Of course distributors matter. Listen, I gotta go. Okay—no, I will. Definitely.”
He hangs up and for just a moment, I see what is maybe stress on his face . . . but then he looks up at me with a jackal’s smile. “Hey, intern.”
“I thought someone as successful as you would have a bigger office.” It doesn’t feel like the best barb, but I can’t think of another.
“My office is in here,” Jason says, tapping his eraser against his temple. “Besides, when you’re the boss’s son, everyone expects you to take a big office upstairs. But I have no intention of just following in Daddy’s footsteps.”
It’s the first thing he’s ever said that I can relate to. I nod to the phone. “Sounds like trouble in Memphis. That’s where Postcards’s next show is, right?” I’ve been tracking their tour online.
Jason shrugs. “The record’s not hitting there. What can you do.”
“Why did you send them there before you built a fan base?”
Jason wags his pencil at me. “See? This is why you’d make such a good intern. My job is talent, seeing it, knowing it, and bringing it in. You could play the role of the plucky whiz kid, and we could own this label in a year.”
The vision of me, professionally dressed buyer-of-lunch-for-impressed-parentals, flashes across my mind again. I do my best not to show it. “Am I supposed to swoon?”
“Summer,” he says, “look, you can’t take it personally that you got cut out of Postcards from Ariel’s contract. You’re a kid. This is a grown-up’s game. Nobody is going to take you seriously as a band’s manager, because you don’t know how the game is played. You can’t. You’re too busy being this little idealist, which is totally fine—hell, necessary. This place could use more of it. But you’re not a shark. You’re more like an adorable parrot fish. You’re not meant for the big open sea—”
“Okay, I get the analogy already.” I know I should know this. That it shouldn’t hurt. But it does anyway. And yet also, I’ve spent so much time loathing Jason that it’s surprising to me to hear that, of all the people, he sounds like he’s taking what I do seriously.
This internship might be enough to reschedule a college trip, too . . .
But I still have this deep, whirring feeling inside that somehow this would be wrong, that it would be putting Caleb and his music, the whole band, and my soul, at risk. Last year we read Animal Farm, and isn’t this it? The pigs become the men, the parrot fish becomes the shark, or whatever other unappealing metaphor you want to use. Maybe I could resist it. Or maybe I’m being horribly naive to think I could, or that I even should.
There’s a knock at the door and Jason stands. “Ah, good.” A gruff-looking girl in goth makeup, a tank top, and jeans comes in and hands him a printout. “Thaaank you, Carla,” says Jason, then to me, “Had my graphics girl whip this up for you.”
I hear her sigh as she walks back out the door. So far it seems like nobody working here likes Jason. This makes me laugh to myself.
“What?” Jason asks.
“Nothing. Just . . . I don’t think Carla liked you calling her your graphics gal.”
Jason glances at the door as if this hasn’t occurred to him. I wonder if his biggest problem is that he just isn’t that aware of how he comes across. “See how valuable you are?” Like that, does he mean it to sound as slippery as it does? “Anyway, check this out:”
He hands me what I now see is a poster. It’s got a cool, spacey design, and reads:
THE AUDIO FACTORY
presents
SUNDAYS ON MARS
October 27, 10 p.m.
with special guest opener
DANGERHEART
featuring Caleb Daniels,
son of Allegiance to North’s Eli White
I read that last line and my breath catches in my throat. Jason steps back and leans against the window, arms crossed, and he grins and I realize:
The trap has been sprung.
Think fast. Sound casual. “Oh,” I say, “so, you know about Caleb’s dad.”
“Surprised?” says Jason. “You shouldn’t be. Everybody knows. Well, I mean, everybody connected to Allegiance.”
“Caleb didn’t even know, until a month ago.”
“Nope. After Eli died, Caleb’s mom was adamant that he not be told. She wanted him to grow up out of the spotlight. Everyone honored that. But we’ve of course had our eye on him. And I mean, I can’t put Dangerheart on a bill of this magnitude just based on that performance at the Trial.”
“Caleb doesn’t want to make it on his dad’s name,” I say.
Jason laughs. “Is that the career advice he’s getting from Moonstone Artist Management?”
“It’s—They’re going to be great on their own,” I say.
Jason shrugs. “Maybe. But . . .” He points back to the flyer. “Come on. Ask me how I knew.”
“How you knew . . .”
“How did I know that Caleb knew? That’s the question, isn’t it?”
He’s right. It is my question. I just didn’t want to ask it.
Jason doesn’t wait for me to ask. Cue full-on shark grin, multiple rows of jagged whites, as he says, “You told me.”
I feel a flush of nerves, heart scrambling, and I try to think of what I could have done. I haven’t posted anything about it. . . .
“Or I should say, you gave me the hint. Let’s see . . .” Jason is searching on his phone. “Here: ‘People have this idea about LA. I have that idea and I live here. But then there is this other LA . . .’ You posted that on Friday night to Twitter and BandSpace.”
“So what? And also, it’s creepy that you’re looking at my posts.”
“Not really. Like I said at the Trial, your band made an impression, and so later that night I was sussing them out online, and conveniently, BandSpace automatically includes location tags on all posts, which is a very nifty feature for fans to find a gig. And that’s how I knew this post was from Canter’s Deli.”