"And you know that I don't open envelopes labeled Personal and Confidential," she said huffily. "Jeez, just bitch me out for doing my job, why don't you?"
She did have a point. "Sorry," he said, more to preserve his copulation later that night than out of any real regret. "I guess you're right. But now that you've brought it to me, I guess I should give it my full and complete attention, shouldn't I?"
"I guess you should," she agreed.
And with that, the envelope ended up in the same place as the other twelve Matt Tisdale had sent to talent agents from Nashville to New York to Chicago to Los Angeles. Unopened in the round file next to someone's desk. And in fact, though he didn't know it, Matt should have been proud. This was only the second one that had actually made it into the office of the man it had been addressed to.
"So, anyway," Shaver said, "do you think you can dig me up some copies of those video rights agreements we signed with Earthstone? When Galahad gets here at ten I want to be well versed on what I'm talking about so he doesn't screw us on The Two Lips gig the same way." Steve Galahad was the head of the New Media department at Pacifica Records, the label that had signed The Two Lips. The New Media department was a relatively new subdivision of the recording industry hierarchy that had been formed by most of the larger labels in response to the popularity of music videos over the past year, a popularity that was becoming more of a force every week since the debut of MTV a few months before. The Galahads of the world all thought that videos were the wave of the future and that music was about to undergo a fundamental change as drastic as that caused by the invention of the electric guitar. The Shavers of the world, on the other hand, still thought of videos as just another pain in the ass thing they and their artists had to deal with.
"I'll have them and the notes you made on them on your desk by 9:30," Trina replied. "Anything else?"
"A blowjob?" he suggested.
She giggled. "How about in the car on the way to Aces and Spades?"
"Deal."
She left the office, closing the door and leaving him alone. The moment she was gone he opened the drawer on the front of his desk and removed the sterling silver container he kept his cocaine in. He dumped out a small amount and then went about the task of chopping it up into a fine dust and forming a line. Once this was done he snorted up and stashed his paraphernalia back where it belonged.
Before the latest dose even had a chance to work its way fully into his bloodstream, his office door opened again and Trina poked her head through. "Galahad just called," she said. "He cancelled his ten o'clock with you."
"Christ," Shaver said, shaking his head. "What the hell for?"
"His secretary said that one of his artists showed up drunk at a video shoot and tried to rape a dancer in the bathroom. He has to go deal with the fallout."
Shaver didn't disbelieve the excuse. On the contrary, to a man with as many years in the music business as he, it sounded all too plausible. "Okay," he said. "Is he going to reschedule?"
"She said she would call and set something up for early next week as soon as she can shuffle around his calendar. Anyway, it looks like you're free for the next two hours."
"Bitchin," he grumbled, wondering what he was going to do now. Before it occurred to him that a little rendezvous with Trina on his couch might be in order, she had already shut the door and disappeared. He could have called her back, of course, but he really wasn't that much in the mood himself. At least not at the moment, anyway.
As the cocaine finally hit his brain, filling him with cheerfulness and washing away his fatigue, he decided that maybe a drink was in order. True, it was only 9:15 in the morning, but it was lunchtime in New York, wasn't it? And didn't all the really important things in America happen in New York? He concluded that this was sound logic and walked over to the bar. He took down a water tumbler and filled it with ice from the machine in the freezer. On top of the ice he poured a quadruple shot of Chivas Regal. He then grabbed a Cuban cigar from the humidor next to the freezer and carried these acquisitions back to his desk.
He took a few sips of his drink and then sparked up the cigar. He leaned back in his chair and puffed thoughtfully for a few minutes, not thinking of anything in particular, just enjoying the effects of the coke and the sensation of the nicotine tingling his mouth. When the ash on the cigar grew to the point where it needed to be flicked off, he leaned forward again and opened the side drawer, reaching in to get the ashtray he kept in there for just such occasions. It wasn't there.
"Goddammit," he muttered, though in a good-natured manner. It was hard to be unpleasant when you had a couple lines of Bolivian flake coursing through your veins. He flicked on the intercom and buzzed Trina. She didn't answer until the third buzz.
"Yes?" she almost hissed, her voice impatient.
"I think you forgot to put my ashtray back in my desk last time you cleaned in here," he said. "Can you hunt one up for me?"
"Can it wait a few?" she asked. "I've got Galahad's secretary on the line and we're trying to come up with a time for the meeting."
"Oh, sure," he said. "Take your time."
"Thank you," she said, more than a hint of condescension in her tone.
With no ashtray to use, he leaned over the garbage can next to the desk and flicked his ash in there instead. It landed on the brown envelope that had been sent to him without his solicitation. He looked at this for a moment and had a momentary worry that he might accidentally start a fire. To avoid this he dug the envelope out, brushed the ash off it, and set it on his desk. He would throw it back in there when Trina finally brought him the ashtray. Until then, he would enjoy his illegal smoke.
He puffed away for a few more minutes, not thinking of anything in particular, occasionally dipping his ashes in the garbage can or sipping from his Chivas. Eventually his eyes found their way back to the envelope on his desk. He could read the return address in the upper left corner. Instead of a name there was only a word: Intemperance, presumably the name of the band.
"Fucking Intemperance," he mumbled. "What a stupid name." His eyes took in the city and zip code portion of the return address. "Fucking Heritage. What a dump." He had in fact never actually been to Heritage before, or anywhere in California that was north of Santa Barbara for that matter, but he assumed that any place that had a population of less than two million had to be a dump.
Impulsively, he decided to open the envelope. Unsolicited demos were usually accompanied by a cover letter of some sort-assuming the moron who had sent it knew that that was the custom-and they were often quite amusing to read. Maybe it would be one of those ones that was so full of misspellings and incorrect grammar that he could use it as an anecdote the next time he had lunch with a few of his colleagues. Hell, if it were lame enough to be amusing he would actually photocopy it and pass it around. After all, you took humor where you could get it in this life.
He picked up the envelope and used the switchblade letter opener in his pen jar to open it. He discovered that there was not just a cover letter inside, but an entire sheaf of papers, most of them copies. He glanced at the cover letter first, expecting the salutation to say: Dear Sir or Madam, or To Whom it May Concern, or something equally generic. Instead, he was surprised to see that it was properly headed with his full name and title, his address, and the first line was, Dear Mr. Shaver.
The text of the letter was professionally formatted and neatly typed. The gist of it was that the writer, a man named Matthew Tisdale, was the lead guitar player for a band called Intemperance and that the band had become very popular in the Heritage metropolitan region over the past year. The letter spoke of sold out shows and of receiving $500 per set plus fringe benefits.