"Now wait a minute," Crow said. "Nobody said anything about..."
"And furthermore," Pauline said, "he will be subjected to the same rules as the other band members. We're hiring him as a temp, but from your standpoint he will be nothing more or less than a full-fledged replacement for Darren. That means the band will be the one to fire him if they feel they need to, not you."
"We did not agree to any of this," Crow said.
"But you will," she said. "If Meyer becomes a member of this group it will be with all of the protections I can offer him. I will not be a party to the ruthless exploitation that you in that building force upon the musicians who work for you. Do I make myself clear, Crow?"
"Yeah," he said at last. "You make yourself clear."
Charlie Meyer's apartment complex was two blocks away from the complex Jake and Nerdly had lived in while recording Descent Into Nothing, the first Intemperance album. It was two blocks away but it was miles more depressing and squalid. Composed of run-down post-war units whose better days had been back when Chuck Berry had been king, it was now full of parolees, drug addicts, hookers, and hopeless alcoholics. Charlie's apartment was on the second floor, near the very back of the complex. At 10:30 AM he sat in a battered easy chair watching an old black and white television set with rabbit ears on top of it.
Charlie was sitting in a pair of torn and filthy denim cut-offs. He was shirtless, his hair unwashed and hanging down around his shoulders, his face showing several days worth of stubble. The odor of sour sweat and cigarette smoke hung around him like a cloud. The television was tuned to an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show and the living room floor was cluttered with beer cans, laundry, cigarette butts, and old food containers. As Andy and Barney replaced the homemade pickles in Aunt Bee's pickle jars with store bought pickles, Charlie dug through a pile of debris on his end table and came up with a half-empty pack of generic cigarettes. He took one out and lit up, dropping the match into an empty beer can. He dragged thoughtfully and then looked up at the wall above the television, the wall where two gold records had been hung amid a display of framed photographs of him and his bass guitar.
When Nerdly had said that Charlie seemed "almost suicidal" he hadn't been kidding. A dark depression was constantly hanging over him, a depression that had started more than two and half years ago but that was now threatening to strangle him into nothingness. More and more these days he seemed to find himself thinking about the National Records Building only fifteen blocks away from where he now sat. He thought about how easy it would be to walk into that building on any given weekday and take the elevator up to the top floor. From there it was an easy trip to the observation platform up on the roof. From there, it was an easy climb to the top of the barricade that blocked access to the street two hundred and forty feet below. Wouldn't that be a fitting end for a disgraced rock star? Would there even be an obituary for him in the Birmingham News? What would be waiting for him in the next life? It would have to be better than what was waiting for him in this life, wouldn't it?
Charlie was twenty-six years old on this day. He had been born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, raised by his mother and a succession of verbally and sometimes physically abusive stepfathers. He had started playing music in sixth grade and had been a band geek all the way through school, playing the trumpet, the trombone, the obo, and even the drums for a brief stint during his high school days. He had picked up the bass his senior year in high school, taking it to it like Matt Tisdale to a threesome with two groupie sluts. From there he had joined a series of local bands, eventually finding his way to that magic combination that had initially been called Stratos. They had enjoyed a year's worth of popularity in the Birmingham clubs before Mike Landry, their singer and songwriter, had sent one of their demo tapes to a Los Angeles agent and they'd been discovered. They'd changed their name to Birmingham at the suggestion of Steve Crow, their A&R guy and then the roller coaster ride had started.
Everything after that seemed like such a dream now that sometimes he wondered if it had really happened. Only the two gold records on the wall — one for their album, Southern Nights and one for their only single, Texas Hold-em — could convince him at times that it had been real. They had recorded their album and had heard their song played on the radio. They'd watched it go all the way to number one and then off they'd gone on concert tour, opening for the legendary Intemperance at cities all across the nation. They'd lived the good life, the life they'd always dreamed of, with groupies sucking their dicks in the shower, with bowls full of pot in their dressing room, with cocaine shoved under their nose day and night. They'd lived in luxurious condos with servants and traveled in limousines. They'd even been nominated for a Grammy award, perhaps the pinnacle of it all.
After failing to win the Grammy everything had crashed down around them in a matter of weeks. National refused to invest in a second album, stating poor sales and anticipated weaker sales on a second as the reason. They were told they were not allowed to play as musicians until the six year contract expired and then they were kicked out of their condos and onto the street, all of them owing National somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy thousand dollars in unpaid recoupable expenses, most of which was for the drugs, alcohol, and housing they'd used during the course of their careers.
Charlie was the only one still in Hollywood. Mike and the others had returned to Alabama long before and all of them were now working menial jobs in factories, in fast food stores, in retail outlets. Mike himself was now selling used cars the last Charlie had heard. Charlie, however, had never been able to quite admit to himself that it was really over, that his entire music career had come and gone in less than a year. He'd secured this apartment and gotten a job at the Speedy-Lube in West Hollywood and he'd kept his name as much on the minds of the National Records staffers as he could. Eventually, about a year ago, his desperate efforts began to pay off. Recognizing him as a talented bass player they'd started using him for the occasional overdub work on some of their entertainment industry recordings. The pay was a pittance and the work was far beyond intermittent but it was enough to make him feel like he was still a professional musician, enough to keep that depression far enough at bay so he wouldn't actually act on it.
It was getting harder and harder to do that lately though. With each day that went by, with each car that he lubed on the rack in his greasy overalls, the thoughts of taking the plunge off the top of the National Records building seemed more and more appealing. Every day that went by where he found himself sitting and drinking generic beer and smoking generic cigarettes in front of a twelve dollar TV set he'd bought from a fence, waiting for his next afternoon shift at the Speedy-Lube, the idea of moving onto the next life seemed like the only thing to do.
As he sat there, watching the Andy Griffith Show and smoking his generic cigarette, he was pondering what he was going to do with his day. He was supposed to be at the Speedy-Lube for work in one hour. He could do that or he could walk down to the National Records Building and jump off. He pondered this choice the same way other men debated whether or not they should burn a sick day to go fishing. He was actually leaning more and more toward the latter choice when someone began to knock on his door.
He almost didn't answer it. The only time anyone ever knocked on his door these days was when he or she mistook his apartment for the methamphetamine dealer's apartment next door. It was only when someone outside called him by name that he realized that he really did have a visitor. But who could it be? He'd paid his rent this month, hadn't he? He seemed to remember doing that.