Nine groupies had accompanied them back to the hotel for the festivities, every last one of them hot, slutty, and dressed for easy access. Music was playing from the room’s sound system at a level that was undoubtedly disturbing other guests in the vicinity. Liquor was flowing freely from the room’s bar. Three joints were currently being passed around—Matt thought the English weed was pretty shitty compared to what he was used to—and two of the groupies were making out on the sitting room couch for the entertainment of all. Austin was getting a blowjob from the short-haired, punk looking groupie in the Metallica shirt. Matt himself was sitting between two of the groupies on the other couch, crunching up a healthy pile of cocaine on a mirror with his right hand while his left was feeling up the bare inner thigh of the groupie with the leather miniskirt.
The phone began to ring that shrill, rapid double ring that English phones were known for. Matt looked at the phone, which sat on the room’s writing desk, in annoyance. It was probably the manager wanting them to turn the music down. That happened quite frequently. Usually, if they called early enough in the festivities before Matt reached maximum belligerence, he would comply.
“Hey, Jimbo,” he barked at the medic, who was sitting in one of the chairs, his football on the floor next to him, watching the two groupies suck each other’s tongues. “Get that fuckin’ thing, will you?”
“Uh ... yeah, sure,” Jim said, reluctantly dragging his eyes away. “What’s your hotel name again?”
“Norm Worthington,” he said, telling Jim the diminutive of his middle name and the name of the street he had grown up on.
“Right,” Jim said, getting to his feet.
“Tell him we’ll turn the tunes down if he promises not to call up here again,” Matt said.
“Right,” Jim said again, heading over to the writing desk. He picked up the phone. “Norm Worthington’s room.” He listened for a moment. “What? Who?” A pause. “Oh ... hi, how are you?” Another pause. “Yeah ... he’s here. Just a minute.” He turned back to Matt. “It’s Kim.”
“Kim?” Matt asked. “What the fuck does she want?” Kim had never called him while he was on the road before.
“She didn’t tell me,” he said, “but she says it’s very important.”
“All right,” he sighed, wondering what kind of shit was hitting the fan now. “Tell her to hang on a second.”
Jim told her this and put the phone down on the desk. Matt quickly finished crunching up the cocaine and then expertly separated it into six fat rails. He picked up the mirror and then pulled his sterling silver straw from his shirt pocket. He snorted up two of the lines, one for each nostril, and then handed the mirror to the leather mini-skirt groupie.
“Here you go, hon,” he told her. “Fire up.”
She took the mirror and the straw from him. He got up, grabbed his Jack and Coke, and walked over to the desk. He picked up the phone and put it to his ear. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Hey, Mattie,” Kim’s voice said from five and a half thousand miles away. “It sounds like you’re having some fun there.”
“I’m trying to,” he said. “What’s the deal? Why did you call me?”
“I got a call from your accountant earlier today,” she said.
“Hopple?”
“That’s the one,” she said.
“What the fuck did he want?”
“He says he needs to talk to you right away,” she said. “That it’s very important.”
“Did he say what’s so important about it?”
“Not to me,” she said, “but he did make a point to stress that he really needs to talk to you today.”
“It’s not today anymore, it’s tonight.”
“Not here it isn’t,” she reminded him. “It’s just past three in the afternoon. He said he’ll be in his office until six tonight. He gave me the number in case you don’t have it with you.”
“I do not have it with me,” Matt sighed. “The last fucking thing I want to bring to Europe with me is that fucking asshole’s phone number.”
“You got a pen?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, picking one up and then pulling over the pad of courtesy hotel stationary. “Go ahead.”
She rattled off the number to him and he wrote it down. She made him repeat it, just to make sure he had written it correctly. He had.
“Okay, thanks,” he told Kim. “I guess I’d better see what dicknose wants.”
“I guess you’d better,” she said. “Talk to you later, Mattie.”
“Yep,” he said and then hung up. He looked at the number on the paper for a moment and picked up the phone. Just as he was about to dial, a loud cheer of enthusiasm erupted throughout the room. He looked and saw that the two groupies on the couch had progressed a bit in the action. The short-haired one had pulled off the long-haired one’s pants and was now licking away at her slit.
“Yeah!” cheered Corban. “Suck that fuckin’ snatch!”
“Make her come!” yelled one of the other groupies.
“And don’t try to fake no orgasm!” Jim yelled. “We know the difference.”
“If she keeps doing that, I won’t need to fake it,” the groupie said dreamily.
In a rare moment of discretion, Matt decided he should maybe make his phone call from the bedroom phone. He got up, taking the piece of paper with him. He walked by the two groupies he had staked his claim on and told them he would be back.
“Make it quick,” the leather mini-skirted one said, “or we might get started without you.”
“That works for me,” Matt said.
He picked up his pack of cigarettes and his lighter and went into the bedroom. He closed the door behind him, dampening down, but by no means eliminating, the whoops and cheers and shouts of those watching the two women going at it. He listened to the sounds of them with envy. Just as the party was getting good, he has to call his fucking accountant.
“I’m calling that motherfucker collect,” he said. And that was just what he did.
He went through the hotel operator to the international operator and gave her the number. The phone rang on the other end. A woman answered.
“Hopple and Hopple,” she said brightly. “How may I direct your call?”
“This is the international operator. I have a collect call from Mr. Tisdale to Mr. Hopple. Will you accept the charge from the United Kingdom?”
“Excuse me?” the secretary asked.
“This is a person to person call from Mr. Tisdale to Mr. Hopple,” she repeated in a nasally voice. “Will you accept the charge from the United Kingdom.”
“Whoa,” Matt said. “This is some serious Pink Floyd shit here.”
“I beg your pardon,” the secretary said, confused and upset.
“It’s Matt Tisdale calling,” Matt said impatiently. “Hopple needs to talk to me. Now accept the charges and put me through.”
“Uh ... well ... he did say he was expecting a call from you, but...”
“Then accept the fucking charges,” Matt barked. “Come on. I’ve got a couple of chicks dyking out in the other room and I’m not watching it because Hopple seems to think there is something more important than that. Now accept the goddamn charges, please.”
“Okay,” she said meekly. “I’ll accept the charges.”
“Thank you,” the operator said, seemingly unfazed by the conversation. With that, she clicked off the line.
“I’ll put you through, Mr. Tisdale,” the secretary said. There was brief pause and then, “Do you really have two women ... you know ... doing that in the other room?”