"I don't imitate anyone," Matt said self-righteously. "I'm talking about improving on it, making it my own sound. I've been practicing the last few days. When we get together to jam I'll show you some of the riffs I came up with. They're fuckin' tight, dude."
Jake was still doubtful but he nodded, conceding for now. "I'm looking forward to it," he said. "I got two tunes I've been working on too. We still up for a session next week?"
"We'd fuckin' better be," Matt said. "If Darren tries to flake out of it like he did this party I'm gonna kick his ass."
"We're going to have problems with him," Jake said.
"Going to? We already have problems with that asshole. He barely said a word to any of us during the whole fuckin' tour, just moped around, drinking and smoking and eating. He stopped moving around on stage, his voice on harmony sounded like shit, and when he did talk it was just to whine about something."
"Usually his damn ear," Jake said. Near the end of the Thrill Of Doing Business tour in 1984 a pyrotechnic explosion onstage injured Darren, who had been drunk and stoned at the time. He had suffered second-degree burns over a good portion of his body and his right eardrum had been massively ruptured. It was the burns that got Darren started on the injectible narcotic painkiller Demerol but it was the chronic ear pain that remained after the burns had healed that had eventually led him down the road to heroin use and a hefty addiction that had included Coop — their drummer — as well. It was only after the new contract had taken effect that Jake, Matt, and Bill had been able to force the two of them into rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic by threatening to kick them out of the band. Both had been off the heroin ever since and Coop seemed to have recovered nicely and was now back to his old self. Darren, on the other hand, had been nothing but resentful ever since and still, to this day, had yet to admit that he'd even had a problem with the drug.
"Yeah," Matt said, "his fuckin' ear. I'd like to stick a screwdriver in that goddamn ear and show him what pain is really all about."
"He's hardly left his condo since we've been back," Jake said. "He's still got that same spy for National Records working as his manservant and he's still going into debt because he's living outside his means."
"I think we need to sit his ass down and have a talk with him," Matt suggested. "All of us, maybe Pauline too. He needs to get his shit together and start being a member of this band like he used to be or his ass is out of here. There's a million bass players out there who'd love to take his place."
"How about on the flight to New York next Friday?" Jake suggested.
"We're going private, right?" Matt asked.
"Hell yeah," Jake said. "NBC is paying for it too. That was part of the deal Pauline worked for us to appear on Saturday Night Live. Fifty grand for the band, deluxe accommodations at the Plaza Hotel, and private air travel to and from."
"That sister of yours is all fucking right. Remember last time we were on SNL? They fuckin' flew us down on a flight that had to make two connections because National wanted us to get mobbed in four airports and then they put us up in some fleabag place in Queens."
"And we didn't get a fuckin' dime for any of it," Jake said. "I remember."
"National sure got paid well for that gig though," Matt said. "Are they getting a cut of this one too?"
"Of course they are. They own the rights to the songs. They don't do anything for free."
"How much are they getting?"
"We're not privy to that," Jake said. "It's a private matter between NBC and National is what they told Pauline."
"Fuckin' scumbags," Matt said. "I bet they're pullin' in a hundred grand for doing absolutely nothing."
"That's the way they like to make money," Jake agreed. "So anyway, we should have enough alone time with Darren to have a talk with him. Hopefully he'll listen this time."
"Yeah, hopefully," Matt said. "I wouldn't count on it though. My guess is we'll be looking for a new bass player soon. If he keeps acting the way he's been acting while we're trying to put together the next album, I'll sure as shit vote to send his ass packing."
"Me too," Jake agreed. "But I think he's still salvageable. He tends to change his act when he knows we're serious about kicking him out."
Matt shrugged and flipped a few more of his fish fillets. "Time will tell," he said. "Time will fuckin' tell."
Later that night, while Matt was enthusiastically fucking the girlfriend of one of the sound technicians while the tech was passed out in a lounge chair on the beach, and while and outrageously drunk Jake was playing a game of quarters with six other people at Matt's dining room table, Darren Appleman was in the Flamingo Club in Hollywood, talking to a skinny, wanna-be actress he'd just met.
This was Darren's first outing since returning from the tour. All of the other evenings he'd spent sitting on his living room couch, smoking marijuana and cigarettes, drinking booze, and occasionally snorting up a few lines of high-grade cocaine. The drugs and the booze helped a little with the black depression he'd been in for the past twelve months but not nearly enough. He knew what he needed to lift the depression but he'd never quite had the nerve to go get it. On this night, however, the depression had lifted a little of its own accord, just enough for him to realize that he was fucking horny. He hadn't been laid since their last concert in Seattle three weeks before.
The Flamingo Club was one of the places that the band had always frequented in the past. It was full of hot women who were always willing to go home with someone from the band Intemperance — even the least important member of the group: Darren. His plan was to scope out the available prospects and make his move quickly, getting the bitch back to his place so he could fuck her and then send her on her way. At that point he could go back to smoking his weed and playing his video games, just like he did every night.
The skinny, wanna-be actress was named Allison and she had fawned all over Darren from the moment he'd asked her to dance. She had been inseparable from him ever since, enjoying six drinks at Darren's expense and four lines of coke from his supply.
"So whadaya think?" Darren asked her as he drained the last of his Chivas and Coke. "Feel like heading over to my place for a little bit?"
Allison smiled. "I thought you'd never ask," she said. "But... well, there's one thing we could maybe do before we leave. If you don't mind, that is?"
"Anything, baby," he told her, stroking her thigh under the hem of her micro-mini.
"I could use a little blackball, you know what I mean? You think maybe you can get us some to... you know... put us in the mood?"
"Blackball?" Darren asked. He had never heard that particular term before.
"Yeah," she said. "Black tar? Haven't you ever done any?"
Darren licked his lips a little. "Isn't that... you know... like heroin?"
"Well... it's kind of like heroin, but not really," she said. "You don't have to shoot it up."
"You don't?"
"No," she said. "I don't shoot it at all. It's hard to get acting jobs when you have track marks on your arms. I just smoke it."
"Smoke it?" He had never heard of such a thing.
"Hell yeah," she said. "You just put it in a bong like it was some bud and burn it. It's a bitchin' rush. You just gotta try it, Darren. I'm telling you, it's the shit."
Darren's mind went through a brief struggle as the rational part — which was being suppressed by alcohol — tried to tell him that black tar was heroin and that even if he didn't inject it, heroin was heroin. The irrational part — the part that controlled his penis among other things — immediately countered this with two very compelling arguments. In the first place, black tar was not really heroin, right? The heroin he used to do was white powder that he'd liquefied with a candle and a spoon and then injected into his veins. This was black tar she was talking about. In the second place, she wasn't talking about injecting it, she was talking about smoking it. If you smoked it, it really couldn't be the same thing as heroin, could it? He wouldn't really be violating the agreement he'd made with the band, would he? Besides, even if he was, what right did those fuckheads Jake and Matt and Bill have to dictate what he could and couldn't do on his days off. They really had no fucking right at all, did they?