AT FOUR, LIAN Logan appeared at Krim Recordings. When she stepped into the office of the man who’d worn all black when he’d first heard her sing, she saw that he was again dressed in all black. She idly wondered if he had four or five identical outfits like that.
Buoyed by this opportunity that her luck had brought, she stood straight and as tall as her small frame allowed. Krim Recordings was the top studio in Manhattan. Probably the Western Hemisphere, she speculated.
The man backhanded a flaccid wave at her in greeting, not rising from his black leather chair, rather leaning back and swiveling as he wordlessly examined her like a doctor preparing to give her a physical. She made a mental note that when she rose to the top she’d make sure every man in every room she entered would rise in respect. Soon.
“Where’re your partners?” he asked.
“They weren’t my partners. I work alone.”
“And the music…?”
“Twenty-seven of the songs are mine. I wrote them and own the copyrights to them all.” Her assurance carried her through the long moment during which the man stared at her.
Suddenly she said, “Listen to my signature song. I don’t believe you’ve heard it. It would be the showpiece of my first CD.” And without permission, she lifted the Gibson from its case, slipped the strap over her shoulder and began, “Leave me now, I’ve moved on anyhow. Lah tee dah, down the MTA highway, the next stop will be better, lah tee dah…”
At the end, the man sighed. “Totally. Totally.”
She nodded, taking the compliment as her due.
Then he rose from his chair, opened the heavy oak paneled door to his outer office, stuck his head through and shouted, “Get Bobby in here. And Frank-no, I don’t care what they’re in the middle of, get them now.”
He shut the door again, smiled into her perplexed face and sat. “It’ll only be a minute.”
“What will-”
But just then the door opened and in strolled two young men. The blond one with very long hair had that emaciated, bad facial-skin look of chronic drug use, although his eyes were clear. Fresh from rehab, Lian guessed. The other looked like an ex-beach bum, sun-streaked curly mop of dark hair, dark tan, lean and muscled, his shirt unbuttoned to display sixpack abs and an outie belly-button ring. The ring had a large stone in it, all too obviously a cubic zirconium-if it had been a diamond, he’d have needed a body guard, she thought scornfully. The rings in his ears were too numerous to count, ending in one large stud in his right earlobe. Shmuck, thought Lian to herself. Both men gazed at her expectantly.
Then she got it. Lian exhaled deeply. She turned to the man in the chair. “They sing.”
The man nodded enthusiastically. “You need partners. You three will blend like sons of bitches. And if not,” he shrugged. “We have technology that will-“
“I work alone,” said Lian, her voice deeper and clearly full of anger held in only tenuous check.
She repeated, in case he hadn’t gotten the idea. “I work a-“
“You sing for us, we handle things the way we want. Only deal you’ll get.”
“And my songs?”
“Oh, you’ll be the headliner, no question. Songs and all. We’ll fix you up with some backup instruments.”
Lian listened as the man in black outlined the next years of her life. The two “singers” bobbed their heads like plastic dogs in a back window of a vintage car. First Lian examined one, then the other. She nodded to herself, as if agreeing with a voice inside her head.
She turned her attention back to the black-clothed manager from Krim Recording Studios. He was digging in his drawer for a contract form. She read it over twice, crossed out one paragraph outlining a few rules about her so-called “band,” then altered the three-year length of the agreement to one year. She raised her eyebrows to see if the man would object.
He waved away the rejected paragraph, but then looked up in disbelief. “One year? Most performers would give their mother’s arm to increase their time with Krim!” He pronounced the agency name as if speaking of the pope.
“We’ll see how you do,” she only said.
He gave a short laugh, shrugged, initialed the changes, then signed and initialed three more copies. She did the same. He gave her a copy that she tucked into her deepest jeans pocket.
As he carefully recapped his burgundy Mont Blanc pen, she said, “I like to spend time underground.”
The man’s brow furrowed. “Under-“
“In the subway tunnels. The action there inspires my songs. I can’t write them anywhere else.”
The man waved a magnanimous hand at the two male “singers.” “Hey! I understand art. You guys go with her, practice down there. You might even pick up her style better down there. Worth the effort.”
The two men shrugged, obviously under total control of the man in black.
Lian placed her guitar carefully back into its case, hefted it up over her shoulders. She nodded at the two. “Bobbie?” she asked the ex-druggie.
He shook his head. “Frank. This here’s Bobbie.” He thumbed in the other singer’s direction.
Lian ignored Frank’s outthrust hand. “Meet me eleven A.M. tomorrow at…” she considered. “The East 34th Street entrance to the downtown tunnel. Right?” She felt she’d worn out the usefulness of the West 50th Street station.
The two nodded.
Just Another Hollywood Ending by DAVID BART
“IS SHE DEAD?”
It was a feminine voice, echoing through the hollow darkness in which Matt Corey lay; perhaps a faint glow from somewhere removed, he couldn’t be sure.
A booming sound had preceded the unseen woman’s question; something loud enough to have awakened him… though he must surely still be dreaming, suspended without sensation in this featureless void, a profound absence of feeling throughout his entire body… except maybe his face, seemed he could feel movement of air.
“I did the guy,” the male voice said, followed by an ominous clicking sound.
Weird dream. Maybe one of those lucid kind where you-
– another booming roar!-streak of fire pierced the blackness, briefly illuminating a… hell, he couldn’t be sure he’d glimpsed anything really.
“Never would have suspected she had a lover,” the male voice declared over a papery sound; back of a hand scraping the edge of a lamp shade, groping for a switch.
The woman blurted, “What’re you, jealous?”
The conversation seemed too linear for a dream; Corey’s dreams were usually fragmented, jumping back and forth along the temporal line like a decaying quark, and he didn’t really hear voices in other dreams, somehow just sensed them.
– incredibly harsh light flashed through Corey’s eyes to the back of his brain! So phenomenally bright there should have been pain-which quickly faded into a dark-spotted glow, like flashbulbs discharging in your face, reminding Corey of the hoards of paparazzi at some promo tour or movie premier.
The male voice, exclaiming, “Wha-who in hell is this?”
The words were clear but also distant, like conversation skittering across a still lake at night, voices originating a half-mile away but so distinct it’s as if the people stood next to you on the dock.
“I recognize him, I think, but that’s not your wife!” the woman said.
Vague images began to congeal within the fuzzy glow before him, black spots fading… indistinct forms and surfaces grew ever-more defined, though his line of vision was along a single plane-couldn’t move his eyes or even blink-staring fixedly upward at an angle.
The upper edge of a huge, Spanish-style armoire appeared in the gathering clarity, and a mirror, presumably attached to a dresser below… a closet, though all Corey could see were tops of louvered, white folding doors-above it was all black and empty, as though the periphery of tunnel vision. He was unable to move his line of sight downward, see if there were bodies to go with the voices.