Reid had never gotten the LA thing. The cities of the east defined his conception of what a metropolis should look like, and this one looked like an endless suburb.
Just the same, he was up for being charmed.
Roncho roomed him with Corey again, seemed Jordan going Hollywood was a permanent situation. But who could complain about this suite? It had a living room, its own balcony. Brandon had left a gift basket with chocolates and oranges as big as softballs.
While Corey ducked into the shower, Reid changed into a fluffy white bathrobe that came with the suite. He clicked on the remote-control gas fireplace, sunk into an overstuffed couch, popped a piece of Swiss chocolate in his mouth. He could get used to this.
The knock came too soon.
“Why aren’t you dressed?” Roncho said.
“The radio’s not until ten,” Reid said.
“The station’s in Santa Monica.”
Reid didn’t understand the space-time continuum of Los Angeles. He barely understood that their hotel was in West Hollywood. At any rate, he submitted to the apparent necessity of leaving two hours early, put his clothes back on, and went down to the lobby.
Jordan was waiting with Brandon and a slender, blonde woman Reid didn’t recognize.
“You like the gift basket?” Brandon asked, making sure Reid knew it was from him. “The aromatherapy candle was my wife’s idea.”
“Lovely. Thank her for me.”
“This is Carrie, our regional rep, she’ll be driving you to the station,” Brandon said.
“I’m double parked outside,” Carrie said, the extent of the introduction.
It was a late model Honda, red. Jordan went straight for the backseat without saying anything, which Reid took to mean he’d already struck out with Carrie. Reid sat up front and attempted polite conversation.
“You live in LA long?”
“Long enough.”
The regional reps in other parts of the country were usually a little friendlier. Maybe it was something Jordan had said. Maybe it was an LA thing. He cracked the window.
“I’ve got the air on,” Carrie said.
Reid rolled the window back up, wishing he were in the backseat with Jordan. It was a quiet trip after that.
KCRV had a surprisingly dingy studio in the basement of the community college in Santa Monica. Show host Doug Harmon welcomed them enthusiastically, which made up for the dour ride on the way over.
“We’ll set you up right here. You can play a song, then we’ll talk a little, see if we have time for another.”
The show was called Morning Vibes. It was widely syndicated on NPR stations around the country, so it was a coup to get on, and more than a little pressure not to fuck it up.
Reid tuned up the borrowed Ibanez Carrie had arranged. The B string buzzed conspicuously, dead smack in the middle of the riff he would be playing in less than 60 seconds. This is what he got for leaving it up to chance.
Blissfully unaware of Reid’s predicament, Jordan strummed the band’s own Taylor and sang off mic, until the producer leaned in.
“Thirty seconds…”
They muted their strings with open palms and sat quietly, perched on stools with their headphones on, waiting.
The microphones went red.
“Alright, that was Inertia Creeps from Massive Attack,” Doug Harmon said on the air, fading the last song. “Morning Vibes on KCRV. We’re here in the studio with Jordan Falk and Reid Whitaker of X-13, they’re playing tomorrow night at the El Rey. Jordan, Reid, welcome to the show.”
“Thanks Doug…” they overlapped.
“We’re gonna talk about your new album, Pareidolia, in just a minute, but first you’ve got a song for us, what’re you going to play?”
Jordan leaned closer to the mic.
“This one’s called Dream of Night, Doug.”
“Alright then, Dream of Night, here’s X-13…”
Jordan started strumming. Reid improvised quickly, playing the hook on a lower string, triggering a concerned glare from Jordan who nonetheless soldiered on. This was radio. Don’t think. Just play. Jordan closed his eyes and leaned into the mic…
to breathe…
in the darkness…
crumbling scaffolds fade away
to see…
in this darkness…
past offenses of the day
In the isolated world of the headphones, Reid’s no-effects guitar sounded tenuous, but playing in a different register than usual proved to be the saving grace. Not knowing exactly what he was doing put him right on the creative edge. He mimicked Liz’s bass line and walked them up to the chorus…
all that was concealed
somehow is revealed
in this dream of night
It was impossible to correlate the smallness of the room with the perhaps tens of thousands of people out there listening. Three and a half minutes seemed an eternity. Through the tempered glass window of the control room, Doug Harmon smiled, nodded enthusiastically. Whatever they were doing, they just had to keep doing it.
During the bridge, Jordan, eyes closed, leaned slightly too far forward and brushed the mic with his forehead. Other than this, the song seemed to go off without a hitch.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” Harmon said when they finished, clapping mutedly along with the engineer and producer. “That was X-13 with Dream of Night.”
Reid, who’d been hunched over, sat up straight, realigning his neck and back. Jordan wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“So great to hear it stripped down, you can really hear the lyrics,” Harmon said. “Your new album, Pareidolia, is actually quite lush, somewhat of a departure from your first album, was that intentional?”
“Well, it wasn’t so much a conscious decision as an…evolution,” Jordan said.
“Those are real strings, on the album version?”
“Recorded at Slide Mountain, upstate.”
Looked like Jordan was intent on dominating this one. Reid let him. Getting through the song had been enough, he didn’t need to engage in further banter.
“Great stuff,” Harmon said, “hey, something else I want to touch on, what would you call it? this sort of tour journal you’ve been posting on your website?”
“Yeah.”
“For those of you who haven’t been following it, X-13 have been posting what can only be described as a paranormal account of their life on a tour bus. Who’s generating this?”
Off-mic, Reid cleared his throat, he thought Jordan was about to toss this one to him. But Jordan kept on talking.
“Well, like everything, it’s sort of a collective,” he said.
“How much of this stuff is actually real?”
“Oh it’s all real,” Jordan said. “If you don’t want to mess with ghosts, don’t play rock-and-roll.”
“Well, there you have it, X-13, and a whole mess of ghosts,” Harmon said, “catch them tomorrow night at the El Rey, opening for Benzedrine, or today at three pm at Tower Records on Sunset, and be sure to check out the tour journal on their website, it’s a wild read. Here’s another song off their new album, it’s Re-Entry, here on KCRV…”
The album version kicked in, the mics went green. Doug Harmon came straight in to shake their hands, tell them what a pleasure it’d been to have them on the show.
Reid went along with everything. They’d made it through in one piece, he really didn’t have anything to complain about.
But he kept going over in his head how Jordan had steamrolled the entire interview and just told the city of Los Angeles that the online tour journal was a collective effort.
In actuality, Reid might’ve said more-or-less the same thing, give his bandmates partial credit. It was the gracious thing to do.
It just would’ve been nice to be given the chance to say it.
# # #
Tower Records was less than a mile from the hotel, Carrie drove again. It took a half hour. Liz sat up front with Carrie.
“I could never pull off boots like that,” Carrie said to Liz.
“Sure you could,” Liz said.
“Are they comfortable?”
“You get used to them.”
The two continued to chat like old friends while Reid and Jordan sat in back. Reid looked out one window. Jordan looked out the other.
When they pulled up to Tower Records, there was already a line waiting to meet them. Reassuring. There was a table set up. The store manager was very accommodating.
“Can I get you guys some waters?”
Jordan, Liz, and Reid took seats behind the table, in that order, and the line began to file past.
Jordan, who was well-practiced making eye contact when he needed to dominate a situation, found it better to keep his eyes on the cd he was signing so he could get this over with, move the line along.
Liz was selective. Like at the merch table, she would take a minute to talk to earnest fans, but was not going to tolerate fools or creeps.
Reid would basically talk to anyone. He figured if they were going to buy their record and wait on line, the least he could do was talk with them.
“Hey Reid, I know everybody probably does this, but…”
The kid who handed him the demo was maybe 19 years old.
“Is this a hand-drawn cover?” Reid asked, inspecting the cassette tape as if with genuine interest.
“I drew it myself,” the kid said.
“Cool, I’ll check it out.”
“Thanks Reid, you’re fucking awesome.”
At this point in technology, there probably wasn’t a single cassette player on the whole tour bus, but Reid would dutifully throw it in his suitcase and add it to the cardboard box of demos back home that maybe one day he would listen to.
It took maybe twenty minutes to sign cds for everyone who’d been waiting. At this point X-13 found themselves just sitting at this table in front of Tower Records while customers streamed past them, not stopping.
“Is everything okay?” Reid asked Liz.
It felt like he hadn’t talked to her in days.
“Fine,” she said.
They weren’t facing each other, but continued to watch passers by in the bustling store, cars driving past out on Sunset Boulevard.
“Okay,” Reid said. He had tried.
“I need a cigarette,” Liz said.
“What fucking time is it,” Jordan said.
After another half hour with no action passed, the store manager came up.
“Well, how’d it go?” he asked.
“Great, man, thanks,” Jordan said.
Jordan eyed the prominent end cap display with Pareidolia right up in the front of the store. He hoped it would still be there twenty minutes after they left.
# # #
The Little Porch was selected, in part, as one of the last reasonably nice restaurants in West Hollywood that still allowed smoking on the outdoor patio.
Brandon had floated the idea of dinner in the hotel bar, but Jordan felt with some justification that Brandon had skated far too long without employing the full muscle of his corporate credit card.
The ambiance was quite nice, actually. Moroccan lanterns hanging at staggered heights and intervals, French provincial tablecloths, subdued dub music mixing pleasantly with surrounding conversations.
Brandon was still talking loudly on his cellphone, seemingly about another band, when the waiter dropped drink menus.
“Hi, my name is Brian,” the waiter said.
“Hi Brian,” Reid said in a tone meant to be a joke about being at an AA meeting that no one seemed to get.
“Grey Goose,” Jordan said. “Neat.”
“You got it.”
Liz and Celia sat next to each other, looking at the wine list together. Looking across the table, it was almost as if Jordan was noticing her for the first time.
“What are you still doing here?” he asked Celia.
“Hi Jordan,” Celia said with almost playful indifference.
Thing was, they may or may not have played around one hazy night when they were sophomores, back when he was wasn’t famous and she still liked boys. Jordan couldn’t quite remember and, if she did, Celia just didn’t care.
“She’s my emotional support animal,” Liz said, only half joking. “Don’t fuck with her.”
Jordan took the wine menu from their hands and pointed to the cabernet at the top, the one with three-digit price tag.
“This one,” Jordan said.
“Nice choice,” Brian the waiter said.
“But SoundScan doesn’t track in Sweden,” Brandon said into his cellphone.
“Is that the one made from potatoes?” Corey asked, doubling back to what Jordan had ordered for himself.
“Polish rye, actually,” the waiter said.
“I’ll have one too,” Corey said.
Reid ordered a club soda. Brandon, finally wrapping up his phone conversation, ordered a single malt and jumpstarted the appetizers while Brian the waiter was still at the table.
“Do you still have that merguez sausage platter? Fantastic. Enough for the table,” he said, then, looking over at Liz and her friend, added, “and some humous and grape leaves and all that other stuff that comes with it.”
Menus were retained for ordering mains, drinks arrived, toasts were made, then Brandon slipped sideways into business.
“Radio show was fantastic,” he said.
Jordan nodded.
“I finally checked out that tour journal,” Brandon said. “It’s a little out there.”
“No one reads that stuff,” Jordan said.
“Well, if Doug Hanson is talking about it on Morning Vibes, I would said yes, someone is actually reading that stuff.”
Jordan snickered.
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” he said.
“If it’s not selling records, it’s not a good story. Look, we’re spending over five grand—a day—to keep you on the road. It’s hard for me to keep defending you to the guys upstairs when you’re not taking this tour seriously.”
Jordan didn’t know how much more seriously he could be taking this tour, but the monetary gauntlet had been thrown down, waking him from complacency.
“Talk to Reid, he’s the one writing it.”
Reid was almost in shock. Beyond having just been thrown under the bus, there was a fundamental code being broken. Whatever the situation, the band rose and fell together. You didn’t break ranks.
Brandon looked to Reid.
“Can you point this thing in the right direction?”
The temptation was strong to throw it back at Jordan, who had read the first entry and signed off on it. But this would’ve been another step in the devolution into petty squabbling in front of their A&R guy.
He wasn’t going to do that.
“Did you want me to list our top five records, like, if we’re ever stranded on a desert island?” Reid asked.
“Something like that.”
Reid took a sip from his club soda. He was the clear-headed one here.
“I don’t know, Brandon. Seems like Doug Hanson must sorta like the thing or he wouldn’t’ve brought it up on his show.”
Brandon, to his credit, gave this a moment’s thought before automatically doubling down.
“Well, I’d like it too, if there wasn’t so much riding on it… just, you know, think about what you’re doing here. It all matters.”
“Thank you,” Reid said.
“The Kobe here is fantastic, by the way,” Brandon said, changing the subject.
# # #
The dinner party migrated to the hotel bar. Reid stuck with it a while, leave things chummy with Brandon before saying his goodnights.
Standing outside his suite, he heard talking coming from inside. Opening the door, he found Corey talking on a cellphone.
“Well, gotta go,” Corey said to whoever he was talking to, cutting short the conversation. He couldn’t tuck the phone away fast enough.
“So, you hit LA and got yourself a cellphone,” Reid said, kinda jokey.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Lemme check it out.”
“Ah, it’s nothing.”
“No, seriously, I’m thinking of getting one myself.”
Reid held his hand out. Corey, reluctantly, took it from his pocket and handed it over.
Just a regular flip phone, nothing special. Then it struck Reid what was odd about it: the corners were worn, the numbers slightly faded.
“You get this used or something? Reid asked him.
“I’ve had it awhile, actually,” Corey admitted, taking the phone back, slipping it into his pocket. “Don’t really use it much.”
Reid nodded like he understood. But what he didn’t understand was why Corey had concealed it all this time. He recalled a few times over the tour when a working cellphone would’ve helped in a tight spot, why had Corey not stepped up?
Corey pulled out a joint, he held it tentatively.
“You don’t…want any?” he asked.
“Thanks anyway.”
“I’ll just go out on the balcony then.”
Left alone in the living room, Reid rummaged through the gift basket on the table, past the aromatic candle Brandon’s wife had selected. He unwrapped a piece of imported chocolate and popped it in his mouth.
The fluffy white bathrobe was still waiting for him on the couch where he’d left it. Somehow it seemed like a stage prop now. He found the remote, flicked on the gas fireplace and sat down in front of it.
Things seemed out of balance with just about everyone in his life at this moment. He stared at the fire as if something in its primal nature could answer a question about things he hadn’t quite formulated yet.
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The tension is rising – Jordan vs Reid. What do you do if you can't break ranks? I sense that Reid is pulling away from the team while still being a team player, the pro that he is. I'm not sure it's the ghost who's to blame...