Chapter 4

 

Chris waited patiently for the knock on the door at the specified time. This had to be handled carefully. Lou was scheduled to be on the other side of that door any minute now, but she thought she’d be meeting Crash Burns, and, as soon as he opened the door, all she’d see would be Zippy. She’d be surprised, but she’d quickly realize that Chris, Crash and Zippy were all the same man. He hoped. 

Everything else had gone to plan so far. The label honchos had gone nuts when he’d hooked Lou’s iPod up to a set of speakers and told them to listen. He’d waited until their curiosity was at its zenith before revealing this was the singer-songwriter behind Guyville. He’d then told them that Guyville was outsville, and let them suggest the idea that Lou take the slot instead. They told him they’d always thought the songs were the band’s strength and that they hadn’t been impressed with the various indicators of unprofessionalism on display when they’d finally met the band. Yep, everything had gone exactly the way he’d wanted it to.

Now he just had to get Lou stage ready. With her level of performance anxiety, playing before a live studio audience with a network audience in the millions would not be easy. Yet, when the label had called her with their plan—twenty-four hours of performance coaching from Crash Burns before she made a final decision—she’d said yes. Quietly. Nervously. But a “yes” all the same. He grimaced. If her final answer had been “no,” he’d agreed to appear in her place. Even though he had no fresh material to offer, other than the song he’d just finished writing about Lou. Which kind of put his heart out there for Lou, and everyone else, to see. One way or the other, he’d put himself on the line for her. And he needed her to come through.

There was a tentative knock at the door, and he bounded over to it before his nerves got the better of him. He opened it wide and smiled at Lou, who was clutching her guitar case as her mouth dropped open. “You,” she said. He ushered her into his suite, watching her as she walked around. “Aye, you work for the label, too. Of course you’re here.”

“Huh?”

She looked out the window. “I can’t believe I’m in the Chelsea Hotel,” she said, “where Janis Joplin gave Leonard Cohen a blow job. Where Sid murdered Nancy. Where—”

“—Crash Burns coached Lou Marzaroli over her stage fright.”

She gave a nervous giggle, and sidled up next to him. “You didn’t tell him the awful things I said about Snakebite, did you?”

Oh my. She still hadn’t figured it out. “Um…”

“I really appreciate you taking my music to the label the way you did.” She whispered in his ear, “When they called… I couldnae say no. I need to give this a try. They said if anyone could help me, Crash could.”

Chris nodded uncomfortably. He thought she’d make the connection as soon as he opened the door. Apparently not.

She stood on her tiptoes and put her mouth to his ear. “When this is all over, Zip. Whatever happens. Fancy a quickie back at my place?”

He pursed his lips and looked down at her. “No.”

She raised her eyebrows, obviously surprised.

“You’re gonna need all your energy for what Crash has in mind for you.”

Her mouth and both eyes became round, and her hands began to tremble.

“Oh, do ye think he’s going to be very hard on me?”

Chris nodded. “You’ve agreed to place yourself entirely in his hands. He’s prepared to do whatever it takes to get you ready. And you have to be prepared to do anything he asks of you. Are you willing to do that?”

She nodded, with a slightly fearful expression.

“Crash overcame a crippling case of stage fright himself. He knows how you feel. He knows how to get you past it. Are you ready, Lou? Are you ready to meet him?”

Lou let out a little squeak. “You’ll be here, too, Zippy, won’t you? I feel comfortable with you.”

Chris nodded. “Time to meet Crash.”

Lou looked around. “Where is he? I thought this was his hotel suite?”

“It is.”

Chris stuck out his hand in her direction. “Chris O’Conner. Formerly known as Crash Burns. Also known as Zip, Zippy or Zipman. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”

Lou dropped her guitar. “Um. What? You? You’re…” Her mouth opened and closed once. Twice. Three times. Then her hand slid into his. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

Chris shook his head, watching as her face went through several shades of pink before finally ending up a brick-colored red. Her hand was clammy and shaking. He grasped it. “You were right about Snakebite, Lou. Over produced, more style than substance. You were wrong about Jake, though. He was a good guy. The best.”

The flush on Lou’s face started to fade. “I thought he was a junkie.”

Chris nodded. “Addicted to heroin, yes, for the whole time I knew him. Didn’t stop him from being a good guy.”

“Did you… Are you?”

“Good guy, yes. Addict, no. I saw too much with my mother. Never went near the stuff unless it was to hide Jake’s when he needed me to.”

“Your mother was an addict?” Lou gasped. “Was that how she died?”

“It was why she died, yes.” He watched Lou. She was remembering what she’d said about junkies, was trying to apologize. “Shh, it’s fine,” he said, gently touching her lips.

“You were so young when she died,” she whispered, her eyes full of compassion. “You grew up with your father?”

He shook his head. “Never knew him. I left. Stuffed my clothes in a garbage bag, grabbed my guitar and headed out to LA the day after Momma’s funeral. I was fifteen. Ended up on the streets with all the other homeless hopefuls. Jake found me, took me in. Gave me everything and never asked for anything in return.” He relinquished Lou’s hand. “Please don’t ever say anything bad about him again.”

* * * *

Lou gazed up into Zippy’s eyes, ashamed of how she’d spoken of his friend, his band, his music, his mother. Not Zippy, she corrected herself. Crash. Or Chris. “What should I call you?”

“How about boss?” He grinned. “Time to get to work, darlin’. You have a performance to prepare for.”

Lou gulped. “Okay. How do you want to start?”

His smile grew wider. “Grab that guitar of yours and give me a song.”

She froze. “What? Right now?”

He shrugged. “Then just sit on the couch and tune your guitar. Get comfortable. I have a few things to do anyway.”

She could manage that surely? She unclipped her guitar case and pulled out her beloved—an original 1974 Gretsch BroadKaster. She heard Zippy whistle softly.

“That’s a beauty.”

“My Beloved. Got it cheap from a pawnshop in Glasgow. And when I say cheap, I mean it wasn’t cheap at all.”

She tentatively started tuning it. Pointless, really. It was already perfectly in tune. She just needed to get up the courage to start playing. Needed to buy some time.

He was moving around the room, turning on lights, then pointing them all in her direction. “When you’re on the show, the house lights will be down, and you won’t see the audience. You’ll see nothing but brightness. Like this.” He turned off the main overhead. Lou squinted, seeing nothing except the burning white in her eyes. “Keep your eyes down if you need to,” he murmured. “Just look at your guitar, if it helps.”

She adjusted a capo onto the neck and played a tentative chord.

“I’ll be in the bedroom. Need to get some stuff together.”

She heard him move towards the bedroom door. With him gone she felt a little better. She picked out a song, an old Scottish ballad. One of the first songs she’d ever learned to play. She sang, softly, not wanting him to hear. Bangs and rustling noises came from the bedroom. He wasn’t listening, she realized, and instantly felt her voice and playing grow stronger. She closed her eyes. She was alone in the bathroom where she usually recorded herself. Door locked. Great acoustics. She lost herself in the song. Almost. The sound of the bedroom door opening made her instantly forget the words and screech to a halt.

“Sounding good, Lou. Keep going.” His voice was soft and sweet in the darkness.

“I...I...can’t.”

“When did this start? Did anything in particular happen?”

Lou took a deep breath. She knew exactly when it had started. She’d been in the school choir and band with no performance problems. She’d been studying music education at university and had no problems with her exam recitals. No, the problem had started with “Strathglennan Miners’ Club.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “Mum had only been in the ground a couple of weeks. I got a phone call, asking if I’d be interested in opening up for a local band. The original act had cancelled for some reason and they needed someone in a hurry. That night. I needed the money, so I said I’d do it.” Lou swallowed nervously, listening to the patient silence. “I was kept late at work, so I got myself and my gear into a taxi. Too expensive, but it was only a couple of towns over. I got there a bit later than I should. Found out I was opening for some kind of speedcore heavy metal outfit and that the audience was not happy about having to wait.”

He was out there, behind the bright lights. She closed her eyes again. If only she hadn’t been able to see the audience that night. Maybe… She stroked Beloved, feeling the smooth heavy gloss beneath her fingertips. “I didn’t get more than a few words into my first song when they started to boo. Then they started to shout. Soon they were all chanting the same thing, the same words, louder and louder.” She dropped her gaze to the floor.

“What were they yelling?”

“Tits out or get off. Over and over and over.”

“Bastards.”

“And then…then…” She heard him move behind the lights, a soft shuffle of feet. As if he was backing off. As if he didn’t want to know how bad it had been.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice firm. “I can’t help you get over it if I don’t know how traumatic it was.”

Lou sucked in a deep breath. She had to get this out, had to lay it out there on the table. “They threw something at me. At first, I thought it was a pint of lager. That’s what it looked like. But the smell told me what it really was. Urine. They threw a pint of piss on me.” Lou realized her teeth were bared, the fury and humiliation of that night coming back to her. “I put my guitar away, dragged my amp off the stage while they jeered and cheered. I didn’t have enough money for a taxi, so I had to wait for a bus. All the way home, crying, and reeking of someone else’s piss.” She strummed her favorite chord—B7th—its plangent tone too sad to voice her anger, but perfect for the grief she’d felt that night. “I’ve never been able to get on stage since. I freeze up. I forget the music. I forget the words. I remember those jeering faces. I remember feeling stripped naked. Humiliated. I was only nineteen.” She dropped the guitar and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t do it, Chris. I’ll never be able to do it.”

He was there, kneeling in front of her, his arms going around her. “I’ll kill them. Every single one of them. Slowly. Painfully. How could they do such a shitty thing?”

“Drunk. Impatient. Bored. A young girl on the stage in front of them, obviously nervous.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know the music business was so hard on women.” She stroked her fingers through his hair. “But I know now.”

“I didn’t realize it could get that bad. It couldn’t get any worse than that.”

Lou stared into his sympathetic eyes. “It was terrible, but that was only the start. I managed the band, but do you know how often people just assumed I was a groupie?” She watched him flush. “No matter how many people looked at my name underneath the songs, do you know how many people assumed they were Paolo’s?”

He lowered his head until it was resting on her knee. “Lou, I’m sorry.” He looked up at her. “How can I make it up to you?”

“Get me over it. Get me past it. Get me back on stage. I don’t care what it takes. Do it. Just do it.” Lou looked down at her hands. They were shaking with the rage at what had been done to her, with fury at herself for letting them win. She should have stood her ground. She should have stayed on that stage, dripping piss, and played until they loved her, until they begged for another song, just one last encore. She could have done it. She should have done it. She wanted to do it on American TV.

“Then play me a song,” Chris said softly.

Lou’s hands went to her guitar. Now. Do it now before you even think about it. She played the first notes of her angriest song and opened her mouth to sing. The words melted away into the back of her brain, irretrievable. Her fingers forgot the notes. Her hands dropped and so did her head. She squeezed her eyes tight against the angry jeering faces, smelled the reek of urine, felt it drip down her hair. It was useless. She’d never be able to get over this.

“Are you back there again? Are you reliving it?”

She nodded, closing her eyes to hold back the hot tears.

“And this happens every time you try to perform in front of someone else?”

She nodded again, then glanced up into his eyes.

He leaned back on his heels. “I’ve got an idea, Lou.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Might be kind of rough on you, though.”

“How rough?”

“Pretty damn rough. But I don’t think anything I do would make your performance anxiety any worse. And something drastic is called for, that’s for sure.”

He wasn’t wrong there. She nodded. “I’m in your hands, Chris. Let’s give your idea a try.” A shiver ran down her back. That was as close as she’d ever come to telling someone she trusted them.

He cocked his head to the side, his eyes mischievous. “Back in the day I had a wicked case of stage fright myself. I was sixteen, skinny as hell, with bad skin. No way I was gonna be able to get up on a stage and rock out the way I did in rehearsal. Jake wanted me to share frontman duties. He wanted full on Rock God. Pretty tall order for a shy, skinny, zit-faced kid. But he got me there. It was tough. I hated him for it—for a while at least—but it worked.”

He ran a finger down her cheek and touched her lips. “I don’t want you to hold a grudge against me, Lou.” He dropped his gaze to the floor and shrugged. “I really like you.”

Lou smiled. She could almost see the skinny kid with a spotty face and low self-esteem.

But then he looked up, smiling. And he was once again the mature, confident man she was falling in love with. She gasped. What on earth made her think that? She wasn’t… She couldn’t… She gave him a hard push and he fell backward onto his ass.

He climbed to his feet slowly. “Gonna be like that, are you?” He smiled wolfishly. “Well, that’s gonna make this easier.

Oops. Lou wished she hadn’t shoved him. She needed him to be kind and gentle. She was already feeling a bit fragile.

“Stand up,” he ordered.

She did.

“Play.”

She played the opening chords on her favorite ballad.

“No. Something angry.”

She paused, selected a song and put her hands in place. Nothing.

“Start playing. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He disappeared into the bedroom again and Lou started to play. Quietly, but at least with Chris no longer staring at her, she could manage. He re-entered, dragging a box, paying absolutely no attention to her, then disappeared into the small kitchenette. Lou continued to play. As long as he ignored her, she could do it. Nervous, true, and not on her best form, but she was managing.

“Louder,” he barked.

Lou upped her volume a little, feeling a pang of anxiety, but the words stayed with her, even if she couldn’t blast them out the way she was supposed to on this song.

Chris returned and plopped down in front of her. She froze.

“Play, damn you,” he growled.

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can!”

He approached her, then shoved a sparkly blond wig on her head. “You’re not Lou. You’re Maggie May. Or Jolene.” He took a few steps back, then returned with some oversize sunglasses, which he shoved on her face. “You’re Billie Jean or some other badass woman who doesn’t give a fuck about anyone except herself.”

Lou stood there, disbelieving. “I don’t think—”

“Just play the same chord over and over. Sing la-la-la. I don’t give a shit. Just play something!”

Lou placed her left hand on Beloved’s neck, formed her fingers into the first chord she’d ever learned. She strummed it once, then sang “la-la-la.” This was ridiculous. The wig wasn’t on properly, the sunglasses kept slipping down her nose. Suddenly she was playing a different chord. Her voice wavered as she sang some silly words, an old nursery rhyme her mother had sang while dandling her on her knee. She stared into the back of the sunglasses, avoiding the sight of Chris in front of her, her voice growing stronger. She was playing… She was playing! She attempted a little run up the neck then switched into another song. The words were right there in the front of her brain where she needed them to be. She grinned, then opened her mouth to start singing—

“Tits out or get off!”

Lou froze. He didn’t. He didn’t. He didn’t just say that. It was too cruel. He’d never be that unkind. She looked at him over the sunglasses, a lump lodging in her throat.

“Tits out or get off!” he screamed. “Play that G chord. Sing la-la-la. Now!”

Lou sniffed hard and attempted the chord. No sound came out of her mouth. The large lump prevented anything from escaping.

“Sing it, Maggie May! Then get your tits out.”

She closed her eyes. She wouldn’t have believed he could be such an arsehole. Her Zippy.

She sobbed.

“Cry louder, Jolene! Or get off!”

Lou dropped her hands from Beloved, the tears steaming down her face. His eyes were so hard; he didn’t care if he was hurting her.

“You’re wasting my time,” he growled. “You need to get back to whatever gutter you crawled out of. You’re nothing. You’ll never amount to anything. You’re useless. Can’t even get your tits out.”

Lou gripped Beloved. Hit him with her treasured guitar? Or put it down and use her fists?

Chris wrestled with something in his hands. He finally managed to wrench the top off the bottle of beer. He approached and poured the bottle over her head. “Tits out or get off,” he whispered.

Lou felt something rise from deep within her gut. Not just anger. Not just rage. Something more. Something to do with the unfairness of it all. Having found him, having trusted him, having put herself in his hands—just so he could humiliate her, hurt her. Deep within, she found a hard knot of pride. She grabbed him by the scruff of his t-shirt, wiped her face on it, then shoved him hard in the chest. She bent over, plugged Beloved into the amp and turned the volume up to eleven. She was in the Chelsea fucking Hotel in New York fucking City in front of a man who used to wear nothing but a ridiculously small thong on stage.

And she was better than all of them!

She gritted her teeth, put her hands on Beloved, and hit a power chord while screaming her rage right into Zippy’s shocked face. Her hands found the music for a piece she hadn’t yet written the words to. Or thought she hadn’t. The lyrics consisted mostly of the words “fuck you.”  She dropped her hands. “Want to see my tits, do you?” She ripped her shirt, starting at her neckline, shredding it down the seam of one sleeve. She yanked it down, her bra strap coming with it. With one breast exposed, she started playing again, faster, faster, louder, louder, until ending on one long desperate discordant note. Panting and gasping, she licked the beer that still dripped down her face.

She walked up to Chris. “Want an encore, you fucker?”

He nodded, looking appalled. Lou lurched forward and gave him the Glasgow kiss—her forehead smacking hard into the bridge of his nose. Then she turned, switched off the amp and collapsed on the couch. She glanced down at her bare breast and shrugged. “I’m not getting off.”

Chris held his nose and stared at her wide-eyed. “Oh, yes, you are.” He stood and walked toward her, yanked Beloved away from her and tossed the guitar onto the couch. He grabbed her by the arms, pulled her to her feet, then, unbelievably, picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. He carried her into the bedroom, dropped her onto the bed and stood above her, staring down.

“What the—” But then Lou felt all the fight go out of her. His mouth was on her breast, then licking the beer from her face, then tenderly nibbling at her lips. His hands couldn’t seem to decide which part of her to touch first, so they were trying for everywhere. He mumbled in her ear. Something that ended with a “please.” She shoved him off her.

“What did you say?”

He looked down, panting, his eyes wild and barely focused. “I said don’t do the bare breast thing on network TV. Please.”

And then his mouth was on her neck and his hand unzipping her jeans. So she was going to get off then? She grabbed his shoulders. She’d done it! She’d performed a song in front of someone else and she’d done it well. She hadn’t thought of Strathglennan Miners’ Club. She’d been too angry. And Chris had got her there. To that place she’d needed to go.

She relaxed into the pillows, lying back, allowing Chris to make her feel good, to bring that rage back under control, to get her off. She grinned. Would she be able to do it again? Strange how she didn’t doubt it. It was like a dam had burst or a volcano erupted. Unstoppable, now. She felt it. She knew it.

She looked down at Chris’ head as he worked his way south. “My tits are out, now get me off.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured into her belly. He looked up, grinning. “You’d best enjoy this, Lou, because we still have work to do. Every time you do good. Every time you impress me. I’ll get you off.” He slid the denim over her hips. “Every.” Kiss. “Single.” Kiss. “Time.”