“This is Boyle’s,” Clay assured him. “It came with the house.”
“Yeah? Well, money’s not buying your way into the Terrible Geniuses, friend.”
Savy jammed her finger into the side of her bass player’s head. “First off, we’re not the Terrible fucking Geniuses, or Isosceles Triangle, or any of your other half-baked monickers. Second…” Now she snatched his shirt and dragged him off beneath the girders, where they had a brief and serious conversation. Clearly Fiasco didn’t like what was being said, but he listened. “Come on,” he retorted. “He’s just like Bass, but with less talent!”
Bass? Emphasis on the “ass,” not the “ace.” As in, the fish. Clay imagined a six-foot Fishman standing at the mic between Savy and Fiasco. Bigmouth Billy, of wall-decor fame, crooning “Take Me to the River,” “Mack the Knife,” and all your favorite bygone hits. It’ll be hard to replace a cultural icon like that, Clay imagined telling Boyle, and he cracked up, loud enough for Fiasco to glance over.
To avoid deeper conflict, Clay turned away to admire the view—the brightly lit boulevards stretching in every direction; the vehicles (small as slot cars from this vantage) racing along the 101 Freeway; the rounded, space-age tower of the Capitol Records Building; and the ghostly white shadows of the Hollywood sign, floating unlit in the dark of the nearest hillside.
“Don’t worry about him,” Savy said at his shoulder. “When he was five, he got put in timeout for a crime he did not commit—he’s been a real dramatic dick ever since. Just play well, and you’ll win his respect.”
Clay half-nodded. “This is a great place to practice. Don’t people complain about the noise?”
“Most of the hotel residents don’t hear me when I’m screaming right in front of them,” Savy admitted. “Everyone else? It’s Hollywood—it’s supposed to be loud. People assume the music’s coming from the Stone Fox across the street.” She lifted her chin at Fiasco, who was busy tossing extension cords over the side of the building. “We plug into the honeymoon suite on eleven. It’s where Marilyn honeymooned with DiMaggio. Did Spider tell you?”
Clay indicated that Spider had not.
“Fucking Spider. Well, this hotel has quite a past. Frances Farmer stayed here.”
“The one who had her revenge on Seattle?”
Savy grinned with hot-pink teeth. “She got arrested and dragged out of her room wearing a shower curtain. Not impressed? How about Johnny Mercer? Two of the Three Stooges? Elvis?”
“Shit, Elvis? You should’ve started there.”
“Right, Heartbreak Hotel! And then there was Harry Houdini.”
“This isn’t where that punch killed him, is it?”
“No, he was dead for years before he got connected to The Knickerbocker. Houdini said after he died he’d report back on what the afterlife was like. So his wife conducted annual séances on the anniversary of his death—Halloween night. Every year for a decade. The last one was held on this roof, right where we’re standing.”
“Did he show up?”
“Open to debate. But legend has it, halfway through the séance it started raining—on the hotel and nowhere else. Who knows? Maybe the dead speak in ambiguous ways.”
They don’t, Clay thought.“Ever see anything yourself? Like you did in the Generator?”
“You mean like a ghost?” Savy gave him the stink eye, surly and flirtatious. “What do you take me for?”
“You invited me to your rehearsal, so you can’t be all that stable.”
“Okay, fair,” Savy laughed. But then her expression tightened. “There’s a few hard and fast rules for jamming though: One is you show up on time—so far, so good. The second is no addicts. Hate to be insensitive, but if you do any snorting, shooting, ingesting, or if you’re just so thirsty you empty every bottle in a five-block radius, we’re not your scene. Cool?”
“I understand,” Clay replied. And he did—having a brother like Mo, and an idol like Rocco Boyle, had put Savy off people with addictive tendencies. Did he dare confess his high school sins and blow his chances right away? Was it any better to start their relationship on a lie? “I’m not into that shit,” he told her. “It makes for a bad musician.”
So a lie. Sort of a lie. He was two years sober and believed what he said, at least.
Savy scrutinized him. She looked like she wanted to say more, but at that moment, Spider sprinted onto the roof and leapt right on his drummer’s throne. “Okay, people, life is short, let’s get it on!”
In less than a minute they were all plugged in, standing in a loose circle around Spider’s bass drum. They agreed on a Foo Fighters cover to start. “It’s in A Minor,” Fiasco pointed out. He had warned that he didn’t want a lot of feedback and fucking up, but that was exactly how Clay spent the first five minutes of the audition, struggling to adjust amp levels and distortion pedals. Finally, he got himself set and nodded to Savy, and the mood on the rooftop shifted.
Spider’s stick pounded snare like a heartbeat kickstarted with adrenaline, and a moment later Fiasco’s deep-thrumming bass joined in. Clay stepped to the microphone and the voice that came out of him was smooth, almost confident.
It wasn’t until that moment that he understood the true power of playing. How an individual sound could unite with others to form one harmonious beast—an audible alchemy as intimate as any human experience. The anger and sadness that too often enveloped him was gone; in its place was a sensation of soaring, of flying out across the starless night.
And their amps were cranked; a robust sound storm against Clay’s back, strong enough to rattle windows and rumble surfaces. He had spent hours rehearsing “The Pretender” and now his hands moved automatically over the frets, allowing him to focus on vocals. Dave Grohl had long perfected the art of singing clean one moment and screaming his lungs out the next. “The Pretender” chorus was a long exhalation of
